Amanda's Story

by Brian O'Grady

  CHAPTER 33

  Amanda stared at the ceiling and listened to the house creak. Weeks earlier, she had come to realize that she needed less sleep. In fact, she wondered if in time she wouldn’t need to sleep at all. She sat up in bed and the LED clock told her that it was 2:14 AM, or three minutes later than the last time she checked. She wondered what Suzie Watts was doing at this very moment. Was she sleeping comfortably, unencumbered by 2:00 AM feedings? Was she sedated, filled with remorse and guilt? Amanda had no proof beyond Greg’s impressions that she had killed her son, but at 2:14 in the morning they would suffice.

  Killing Suzie would be easy, even with the paparazzi dogging her every step. Grieving mother, consumed by guilt, takes her own life, complete with suicide note. The thought of watching Suzie Watts dying by her hand nearly pushed Amanda to the edge. She rolled out of bed and started pacing away the nervous energy.

  “Calm yourself,” she whispered to a growling Mittens. The relief she experienced with Adegbite and Diaz had faded quickly, and Mittens was becoming restless. Their deaths had been as much a learning experience as it was a release. For one thing, it taught her that torture for the sake of torture, and murder for the sake of murder, were incapable of satisfying her need. It was power and control over a human life that she craved, and violence was simply the most convenient tool to create the appropriate conditions. Mittens disagreed, but the empty feeling as she watched Diaz mutilate himself was undeniable. Within a matter of minutes he had surrendered to the inevitable, which made it completely unfulfilling. Adegbite, on the other hand, refused to surrender or to cede control; he struggled to the end, a premature end.

  Which was her second lesson. She had lost all situational awareness. Blinded by her desire to drain the old man, she had forgotten about the young man. Only after Adegbite was dropping to his knees did she remember that they were not alone. Devoid of her influence, Diaz’s natural instincts asserted themselves, and he could have stabbed her just as easily as he had stabbed Adegbite.

  “Stupid,” she whispered to herself. She had lost every semblance of control, and it was only out of sheer luck that she survived. She wasn’t much better than one of Diaz’s addicts, nearly sacrificing everything for a fix. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Suzie Watts wasn’t the cold-blooded killer Diaz had been. In fact, Amanda doubted that she was even a predator, but she would be treated like one. In all likelihood she had killed her son in a fit of rage, a true moment of insanity, but that wouldn’t change Amanda’s approach.

  Why are you losing sleep over this woman? So she killed her son; what does that have to do with you? A voice that once may have been a conscience asked. An admitted psychopath has no real human emotions, or interest in the artificial constructs of morality or justice. They are interested only in things that affect them. If you just need a release, why not go next door and kill the neighbors? It’s far more convenient. In fact, you could make a night of it.

  She waited for her mind to process its own question. The house continued to creak, and she could just make out Greg down the hall snoring away his five beers. But no great insight that explained the apparent contradiction revealed itself. The truth was she didn’t know what she was, or what she was becoming. Psychopath was just the latest coat she had tried on, but now it seemed too confining. She was forced to admit that her interest in Suzie Watts extended beyond simple convenience, and had to accept the fact that a part of her still clung to a fragment of morality.

  Amanda slowed her pacing and finally sat on the edge of her bed. She could live with a small degree of morality, so long as it didn’t interfere with Mittens. Her alter-ego made Amanda feel strong, resolute, and confident, and each time Amanda allowed Mittens to express herself they had both grown stronger.

  A wave of fatigue rolled over Amanda and she lay back into the bed. She was tired of always examining her motivations. Life was so much easier without rules or reasons.

  Like an animal. No thoughts of why, just of how, her conscience said in a voice that resembled her husband’s.

  It was an ugly, uncomfortable image, and Amanda tried to ignore it as she fell asleep.

  ***

  Randi Garner stomped through the bullpen with an expression that scattered the early morning knot of detectives. “Is he in?” she asked without pausing. The officer outside Greg Flynn’s office wasn’t even on his feet before Randi was inside, the door closing with a loud rattle that shook the entire department.

  “Well good morning to you,” Greg said as the ADA dropped her purse and coat on his office sofa and dropped into the chair opposite his desk. “Are we grumpy this morning?”

  She took a deep breath. “I have a message from Mr. Dunlop,” she said, and Greg felt the temperature in the room fall considerably. Ray Dunlop was Randi’s boss and the El Paso County District Attorney. “We have been informed by Internal Affairs that they have started an investigation into your unit and are requesting our assistance in appointing a special prosecutor.”

  Greg stared into Randi’s eyes, looking for signs that this was a joke, but her gaze was unwavering. “Run that by me again?”

  “Allegations have been raised about evidence tampering, intimidation, torture, and murder.” Randi closed her eyes and dropped her head a fraction as she recited the list.

  “You can’t be serious,” Greg answered, feeling as if he just fell down the rabbit hole. “Is this about the Watts case?” The bodies of Suzie Watts and her occasional live-in boyfriend had been found three days earlier in an east-side motel. She had requested police protection after her house was sprayed with gunfire. No one had been hurt in the incident, but the local media, who had been camped out on her doorstep, had quite a scare. An alert film crew had managed to tape the shooter’s car, and the two men responsible were already in custody.

  “Who picked the motel?” Randi asked pointedly.

  “You know better than that.” His tone was uncharacteristically severe. The city had contracts with a number of hotels for witnesses, juries, and occasionally suspects, which were used on a rotating basis.

  “The Sky-Line was next up; why was she taken to the Mountain Aire?” She jumped on him as if he were a witness who had been caught lying.

  “Because the Sky-Line said ‘no.’ Anybody with a television and half a brain would know who we were trying to protect.” Greg was talking through clenched teeth. He could accept these questions from Ray Dunlop, or an internal affairs investigator, but not from Randi Garner. “We don’t even know what happened. For God’s sake, the autopsies aren’t even back.” He stared her down. “Do you seriously believe any of this?”

  She hesitated only a moment. “I spent two hours this morning defending you and this unit, but there are things that I can’t explain.”

  “Namely?” Her answer eased his sense of betrayal, but not entirely.

  “You arrest John Eden, and then his wife says that a woman no one can find intimidates her into confessing.”

  Greg raised his voice. “No one intimidated that woman. She was alone in an elevator!”

  “Like I told you before, there had to be more to the story. And now we have four dead bodies that are related to cases this office was investigating.” She matched his decibel level. “And this suicide note sounds more like it came from a college professor than a guilt-ridden high-school drop-out.”

  Greg slumped in his chair. He couldn’t fault her for voicing concerns that he shared. “I realize that, and I can only imagine how this looks from the outside, but no one, no one in this unit is involved with whatever has been going on these past couple of months.” His eyes burned with sincerity and watched as Randi subtly eased back into her chair. “So is this an unofficial heads-up or a formal interview?”

  “A heads-up. Dunlop doesn’t want to deal with this any more than you do. So how do we make this go away?” She had calmed, although her complexion remained flushed.

/>   He thought for a moment. This was uncharted territory; never before had anyone questioned his integrity or competence, and he didn’t know who to turn to, or to trust. “You heard about this early this morning. I’m guessing the Chief of Police knew before you did and decided not to warn me. That means he wants this to go forward; so let it.” He faced Randi. “Tell Ray that we have nothing to hide and will cooperate fully.”

  “You might want to think this through. Once it starts, you are guilty until proven innocent. Not to mention the fact that these investigations are a convenient way to settle old scores,” she cautioned as they worked their way back to their normal comfortable relationship.

  “Stonewalling will only make things worse. I’m not afraid of the truth, Randi, and I speak for the entire unit.”

  “Perception always trumps truth.”

  “If that’s the case, then maybe it is time for me to leave.” It was a thought he had a lot lately.

  She stood and retrieved her purse and coat. “You have a responsibility to this unit and those who have come to rely upon you.” She held his gaze long enough to communicate her meaning and then turned and left. He should have seen this coming, but hadn’t. Despite his occupation, he was basically a trusting individual and expected the same courtesy from others, a naivety that had plagued him in the past.

  There was little doubt in his mind that the sudden and far-too-convenient resolutions of these three cases were related, and even less doubt that the deaths of Suzie Watts and her boyfriend would officially be deemed homicides as soon as the autopsy results were available. He watched four of his detectives go about their business and toyed with the idea that perhaps one or more of them had taken matters into their own hands. It had happened elsewhere, on more occasions than anyone wanted to admit. It took less than five seconds for him to utterly reject the idea. He knew these people, he interacted with them almost every day, and not one of them had given him the slightest cause for concern.

  Of course, that didn’t mean that someone outside his unit, or even the department, hadn’t decided to lend “justice” a hand. A very clever vigilante would go a long way in explaining the police’s sudden unnatural good fortune.

  He glanced at the clock and decided that it was early enough to check with pathology and see if they had come up with anything. He dialed the number from memory, hoping that it was the Chief Coroner who performed the autopsies, but that his secretary had the information.

  “Hi Greg,” Linda Miller said. “Don’t you just love caller ID?”

  “Hi Linda. Anything on the Watts case?” He had known Linda for at least a couple decades, and on this rare occasion he traded on that history to avoid small talk.

  “For that you will have to speak to Him. Sorry.” Everyone had the same opinion of Phillip Rucker, MD. Brilliant, but painfully awkward and well beyond any point of social ineptitude. Rucker lived inside of himself, and only rarely did he venture out.

  “Detective Flynn, I have some information for you.” No introduction, salutation, or even vocal inflection. Phillip Rucker could quite easily have been a computer program written by Linda. He smiled at the thought that Linda was secretly running the entire coroner’s office. “Both bodies were without signs of struggle or injury. The toxicology report lists THC and alcohol, both in small amounts. Inspection of the external surfaces revealed no puncture wounds …”

  Out of necessity, Greg cut him off. Rucker was incapable of filtering information and probably couldn’t understand why mere mortals needed the condensed version of anything. “Do you have a cause of death, Doctor?”

  “The female died of diffuse intracranial hypertension caused by extensive subarachnoid hemorrhage …”

  “She had a bleed in the brain,” Greg tried to clarify.

  “That is not precisely correct …” Greg let Rucker drone on for two minutes, thoughts of Mr. Spock running through his mind.

  “The male had a similar pattern of subarachnoid hemorrhage, but died of cardiopulmonary insufficiency initiated by a pulmonary embolus …”

  “A blood clot in the lung,” once again Greg clarified. “Both deaths were natural, then.”

  “At this point that is correct. However, it is subject to change should new information become available. ” Rucker answered robotically.

  “That doesn’t fit with the evidence at the scene, Doctor. We have a suicide note.”

  “That is inconsistent with my findings,” Robo-Rucker said. “Is it possible the note came from someone else?”

  “Anything’s possible, especially lately, but the note appears to be genuine, written by the female.” Rucker’s impersonal speech pattern was becoming infectious. Greg was silent for a moment. If the examining physician had been anyone other than Rucker, he would have asked that the exams be repeated, but Phillip Rucker did not make mistakes. Ever. “I am stumped, Doctor. We have a situation in which a mother confesses to killing her own son in a suicide note, and then both she and her boyfriend suddenly fall over dead from natural causes.”

  “That sounds unlikely.” If Greg hadn’t known Rucker better, he would have thought that the pathologist was making a joke.

  “It sounds biblical.” Greg shifted gears. “The two bodies from Pueblo, have they been examined?”

  “Yes. The older man died from cardiopulmonary failure as a result of blood loss. He had multiple stab wounds that were the proximate cause of the blood loss. The younger man also died from cardiopulmonary insufficiency as a result of blood loss. He had eight digit amputations …”

  “I see,” Greg said forcefully. “So both were homicides,” he concluded.

  “No, Detective. The older man’s death has been ruled a homicide but the younger man’s death has been changed to suicide. He amputated his own digits. In addition, both men were found to have subarachnoid hemorrhages, but in neither of these two cases were they fatal.”

  “So all four of these individuals had bleeding around the brain?” Greg asked, for clarification.

  “That is correct,” Rucker answered succinctly.

  “What would cause the bleeding around the brain?”

  “Unknown. Subarachnoid hemorrhages are not uncommon in trauma situations. However, evidence of cranial trauma is conspicuously absent in all four victims.”

  “None of this makes sense,” Greg commented to himself.

  “Do you have any more questions, Detective?”

  “No, Doctor, thank you.” The phone went dead. Rucker’s findings would give Greg and his unit a little breathing room. Suzie Watts and her boyfriend would disappear from any official inquiry. Diaz would also likely disappear, leaving only Adegbite, whose cause of death was clear. The Pueblo PD had hand and finger print matches to Diaz on the knife stuck in Adegbite’s back. On the surface everything could be explained. Below the surface nothing made sense.

  CHAPTER 34

  Amanda fastened her seat belt and wrapped herself in a cloud of hostility to discourage the predictable and meaningless conversation from the man who sat next to her. She had no interest in hearing how much he hated to fly, or how much she looked like a girl he once knew (which was a lie), or any of the other dozen or so opening lines he was preparing. She nudged his attention towards the attractive flight attendant and restrained the impulse to punish him for invading her solitude. She curled into the leather seat and closed her eyes as the plane pushed back from the gate.

  A week earlier, she had flown to Dallas to close out her employment with the Lieber Institute and collect her belongings, left in a hotel room a lifetime ago. By day, she dutifully attended the multiple exit interviews with the Red Cross and the Department of State, saying all the right things to allow them to close the book on this “unfortunate business,” and played her dual role of both hero and victim perfectly. By night, she slipped into the more comfortable role of predator.

  She opened her eyes as they
lifted off and the long, flat expanse of north Texas rolled out to the hazy horizon. She was on a plane headed to Washington, and for the life of her she couldn’t say why. Ted Alam was already there, and in less than a day he would pass top secret documents to a foreign agent, or die trying to protect them. So was it a sense of patriotism that drove her? She smiled at such a lofty and selfless sentiment. No, it wasn’t patriotism. She wasn’t going to protect Ted either. He had made his choices.

  So why did you deceive everyone and get on this plane? her conscience asked in Michael’s voice.

  She tried to ignore the question but it dogged her. Personal reasons, she finally answered. It was the best she could come up with. Her mind was in so much turmoil that she simply couldn’t trust any decision she made, and was running solely on instinct.

  A voyage of self-discovery, Michael’s voice mocked. Or another opportunity to restart the cycle of disillusionment?

  Amanda was starting to burn with anger, and she wanted to lash out at something, at someone. But, like Ted Alam, she was the source of her own problems. Time had not brought her clarity, or even stability. With every life she took she became a little more desperate, a little more disillusioned, and a little more unstable. Violence and murder had become the focal point of her life, and for a time she had thought that it could sustain her, give her a sense of purpose, but all it seemed to do was hollow her out by increments. But still she defaulted to it; it was familiar, comfortable, and for the briefest moment made her feel whole again.

  Cycle of disillusionment, she repeated to herself. Even the murder of Suzie Watts and her low-life boyfriend hadn’t sustained her for more than a couple of days. By the time she had reached Dallas, Amanda was already in search of another opportunity. She was able to restrain Mittens for two full days, but then her alter-ego demanded another fix, and one without a trace of moral justification. Just pure self-indulgent, wanton violence. Two nights in a row Amanda tried to satisfy Mittens’s desires. The first night she choose a street corner drug-dealer out of simple convenience, and the next night she found his supplier. She allowed Mittens to be as creative as she wanted and in the end took everything from each of her victims, only to awaken the following mornings to the now all too familiar gnawing emptiness.