Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

  Bliss snickered. “Yeah...we’re just the opposite. What would make her into a multiple personality?”

  Zane raked through his memory for what he remembered of psychology classes in college. “Well, the original personality is very repressed and has suffered severe emotional trauma of some kind. Another personality develops to act out what the repressed personality can’t.”

  Allison grunted. “Deirdre was nothing if not repressed.”

  “The question is whether that could also give her two similar but individual scents.”

  She looked thoughtful. “I don’t know the answer. Right now it doesn’t matter. We know Gary’s probably dead and Diana killed him. Deirdre is either with her as another personality or a separate person...unless Deirdre is separate and went back into the house. I’m going to check that out presently.” Allison pulled her phone from her pocket and punched in a number.

  Zane listened to her talk to Dispatch. “You’re just asking for an Attempt To Locate on the car? You’re not going to mention Golden?”

  “Send human officers gunning for Diana...and have the media watching them?” She snorted. “We’ll handle looking for Diana.” She punched in another number. “Drew? The situation isn’t improving.” She moved out of Zane’s earshot to talk to Makepeace. When she disconnected, she turned to Kindly and Bliss. “Drew is going to round up some clan members. Since Diana said she has a boat, maybe she headed back there, so we need to check the pleasure craft at the Basin. I think when it’s daylight...” She glanced at the eastern sky, just beginning to lighten. “...we ought to check the bay off the ferry landing for Gary’s car.”

  Kindly nodded grimly. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Get me scuba gear and a headlamp and I’ll dive right now,” Bliss said. “I’ve been a SEAL, remember?”

  She gave his arm a squeeze. “Go for it. Del, communicate by phone. The hunter has Gary’s radio.”

  After they left in Kindly’s car, Allison turned and eyed the Hilst house. “Now let’s start asking questions here.”

  The elaborate wrought iron gates were closed and locked but the gate post had access controls attached to it. Allison pressed the call button. After five minutes of leaning repeatedly on it, they still had no response.

  She called Dispatch for the Charles Hilst telephone number. The telephone finally woke someone. “Mrs. Hilst, this is Detective Goodnight of the police department. We’re at your front gate and need to speak with Leonard and Deirdre Hilst...Yes, I do know the time but this can’t wait for morning.”

  Presently a sleepy-eyed woman in bare feet and a bathrobe, Julie Hilst, hauled open the massive carved front door and padded across the courtyard pavers to the gate. She held out a hand. “Let me see your identification.”

  They handed the badge cases through to her.

  She raked a mane of black hair back from her eyes and squinted at the ID’s, then looked up in surprise at Zane. “I don’t have my contacts, but I know you, don’t I? We’ve met at the Basin.” She handed back the ID’s. “What’s this about?”

  Twenty years ago when she became the then sixty-five-year-old Charlie’s second wife, Juliana Figueras had been stunningly beautiful. The daughter of a fisherman, someone told Zane. Charlie kept a honeymoon photograph of them in his office at the Basin. In her forties she remained handsome and her skin only slightly leathery from all the hours she and Charlie spent on the water in the sun.

  He gave her an apologetic smile. “We’re sorry to wake you but we need to see Leonard Hilst and his wife.”

  She squinted at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay...but I refuse to take responsibility for anything Len says when we wake him.”

  Julie returned to the house. Presently the gates swung inward. Inside the house they followed her up a sweeping curve of stairs to a corridor running parallel to the front of the house. As Julie stopped at the door of a room facing the street, Zane saw Allison’s nose twitch. He wondered what she smelled.

  Julie knocked. “Len? The police are here. They want to talk to you.” After a minute she knocked again, louder. “Len!” When that still brought no response she rolled her eyes. “They must really have gone at it last night.” She hammered the door. “Len, damn it, wake up! The police are here!”

  A rush of current raised the hair on Zane’s neck. He glanced at Allison to find her staring intently at the door, nostrils flared. Whatever she smelled clearly disturbed her.

  “Try the knob,” she said.

  Julie blinked. “What? I can’t just walk in.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that they don’t wake up?”

  Julie squinted at her. “Do you know something? Is that why you’re here?”

  A thin smile answered her. “Let’s say I’m concerned. Please try the door.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Julie wiggled the doorknob. “It’s locked.”

  Allison bent down to the key hole. “I don’t see a key.”

  Julie showed no surprise. “We never use keys for these doors. The inside part of the lock is a flat box on the door with a thumb thingy on top to push sideways to lock it.”

  “But you do have a key somewhere?” Allison said.

  “Oh, sure.” Julie nodded. “But I’ll have to hunt for where Charlie put them. Are you sure this is necessary?”

  “Yes. Is there any other way in besides the balcony out front?”

  Julie shook her head.

  Allison took the stairs down three at a time, leaving Julie and him to scramble after her. Outside they stood on the driveway staring up at the balcony.

  “There’s a ladder in the garage.” Julie pointed at the three broad arches on the far side of the courtyard.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Allison said. “Kerr, make a stirrup for me.”

  He linked his hands. She set a foot in it and braced her hands on his shoulders. At her nod, he lifted and she sprang. It felt as though she flew up out of his hand. She was still rising when she caught the balcony railing and swung over it.

  Julie whistled. “She’s sure athletic.”

  Allison pushed at the tall window opening onto the balcony. It swung inward in two narrow halves. After fumbling with the drapes for several seconds, she found the center and pulled them apart.

  Watching, Zane asked Julie, “Do you know of any psychologically traumatic event Deirdre suffered as a child?”

  “Event?” Julie snorted. “How about her whole childhood?”

  Above them Allison turned away from the window. The tight mask of her face knotted Zane’s gut. She swung back over the balcony railing and dropped to the ground. “We need Ident.”

  Julie caught her breath. “What’s happened?”

  Allison pulled out her phone. “I’m sorry, but your step-son has been killed. I didn’t see Deirdre.”

  “Killed!” Julie crossed herself. “Are you sure? You just looked in for a couple of seconds.”

  “I’m sure.”

  That flat tone sounded ominous. As Allison turned away with the phone, Zane caught Julie’s elbow. “Why don’t we go inside.”

  She resisted, staring up at the balcony with concern. “Deirdre could be wounded up there and dying for lack of help...or hiding, terrified. Charlie dropped dead at work and it was terrible enough just being told. If I’d seen him die, let alone being killed...”

  Zane made his voice reassuring. “I don’t think Deirdre’s up there. Come on.”

  She kept looking back at the balcony as he steered her into the house. “You don’t understand. She wouldn’t leave the house at night. Kick in the door or something. It’s all right with me. I just want to know she’s all right.”

  He pushed the front door closed. “I know. We’ll take care of it. May I fix you some coffee or something?”

  “Coffee?” She shoved back her hair again and glanced vaguely around her. “I expect there’ll be a lot of people in and out. Should I make coffee and sandwiches? We have a troop-sized coffee maker.”

 
“Thanks but that won’t be necessary.” Too bad, in a way. Mundane tasks would give her something to do besides imagine the scene upstairs.

  “Well, I’ve got to have some.” She led the way through the house into a roomy kitchen...where she plugged in a regular twelve-cup coffee maker and went about adding coffee and water.

  Zane made himself comfortable on a stool at a kitchen island. Pots hung above it hung from a wooden grate that looked like the hatch cover from an old sailing ship.

  Julie glanced over her shoulder at him. “Do you suppose a burglar killed Len? The house is all wired for security, of course, but there’s a by-pass switch on each of the upstairs windows so someone who wants to can have theirs open without setting off the alarm. A burglar might have noticed the window ajar.”

  Deirdre almost certainly knew about the by-pass.

  “Could the burglar have kidnapped Deirdre?”

  Deirdre rated much more concern that Len did, Zane noticed. “It’s entirely possible Deirdre didn’t leave of her own volition.” Not if the Diana personality was in control at the time. If they dealt with a dissociated personality. “You said Deirdre’s whole childhood was traumatic. You mean she was abused?”

  “I suppose that depends what you mean by abused.” She dug cream cheese and bagels out of the refrigerator. “I have to eat something. Low blood sugar turns me into a raving bitch. How about one for you, too? No sense wasting space in the toaster and I’m sure a man your size needs breakfast.”

  “Thank you.” The last thing he had eaten had been some kind of snack food grabbed in one of the bars and who could say when he would have time to eat next. “You were telling me about Deirdre.”

  She sliced two bagels and dropped the halves in a four-slot toaster. “To start with, she’s an orphan.”

  He blinked. “Orphan?” With families the size Allison’s people had, how was that possible?

  Julie nodded. “She was found as a toddler, all alone on an English Channel beach, lashed to a rubber life raft.”

  That would do it. No wonder she knew nothing about herself. “I take it no one identified what boat she came from or located any of the family?”

  “No.” Julie pulled the half-filled pot out of the coffee maker and divided the contents between two big mugs before replacing the pot to finish filling. “And worse, according to Charlie, who heard it from Len, she became considered unadoptable. People are idiots!” She slapped one mug in front of Zane. “At first plenty of couples wanted her because she was so pretty, but when they took her home for test visits they were shocked, shocked, even when they’d been told her about her, to find she had nightmares and sleepwalked, sometimes destroying things when she did. They all ended up bringing her back to the orphanage. But not before one couple, according to what Len learned, tried having her exorcized to stop the nightmares.”

  Zane blinked. “Exorcized!” Jesus.

  “Can you imagine?” Julie shuddered as she picked the bagels out of the toaster and slathered them with cream cheese. “I’m amazed she’s just pathologically religious and not totally screwed up.” She handed one bagel to Zane.

  Biting into it, he reflected, maybe Deirdre was totally screwed up.

  “So this is where you went.” From the kitchen doorway Allison eyed his coffee and bagel with arched brows.

  “Would you like a bagel, too?” Julie set down her own bagel to reach into the cupboard for another coffee mug.

  Allison shook her head. “One wouldn’t be enough. What I can use, however, is the key to that bedroom, so Ident won’t have to pick the lock when it arrives.”

  Julie’s eyes widened. “Oh...yes...of course.” Grimacing in apology, she hurried out.

  “This has been your night for satisfying appetites, hasn’t it,” Allison said. “You didn’t think to have her look for the key?”

  Okay, he should have done that, but Zane found himself irritated instead of feeling guilty. Screw her. After being terrified shitless, what did he care about a little sarcasm? “Are you interested in what I’ve learned about Deirdre’s background?”

  She dropped onto the next stool. “Talk.”

  Between bites of the bagel, he told her...and watched her eyes go dark with anger when he came to the exorcism.

  Then her expression and voice went thoughtful. “I wonder why Deirdre turned on Hilst, though. Diana, rather. She killed him as Diana. I smelled both of them up there.”

  “I take it she did to him what she did to the others?”

  Allison grimaced. “Worse. Garroway certainly wasn’t pleased being wakened by the news and learning he’ll also have to weather the press briefing without me.”

  “How did you explain us happening to find the body?”

  A brow arched. “How do you think? A tip from an informant that Deirdre Hilst fit the descriptors of our killer. So we staked out the house--I had to admit to that since Patrol saw us--to see if she’d try for yet another victim and when we didn’t catch her leaving, we called on her for an early interview.” Allison’s mouth set grimly. “It’s do or die, Kerr. We have to end this today. If we don’t, once the public learns the killer is murdering people in their beds, we’ll have panic on our hands.”

  “Got ‘em.” Julie trotted into the kitchen waving a ring of skeleton keys. She had taken time to dress as well as hunt up the keys, exchanging her robe for jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals, and pulling her hair back in a ponytail. “They were in Charlie’s desk up in his study. I’m not sure which key it is, but I’m betting several might work.” She handed them to Allison. “Do you know there are police cars parked in the street and yellow tape strung out there?”

  Allison nodded. “I requested them. Kerr, let’s go unlock that door before Ident arrives.”

  Upstairs she had to try several of the keys before one turned. Deadpan, she pushed open the door.

  Zane considered himself hardened to crime scenes but this rocked him. The other killings had been only a warmup. In tonight’s berserker frenzy, Deirdre completely dismembered her victim. Only a headless, limbless torso with intestines ballooning out of it remained on the blood-soaked bed. The head was impaled at the foot of the bed on one of the four-poster’s thin, six-foot corner posts. Blood streaked and splashed the walls, ceiling, and carpet.

  “Where are the arms and legs?” He barely recognized the strangled voice as his.

  “Take a look at the near corner of the room.”

  He peered around the door jam...and saw an arm lying on the carpet. Blood smeared on the walls above it indicated it had been thrown at the corner and slid down to its present position. Similar but larger blood smears marked the corners against the outer wall, and by peering through the opening on the hinge side of the door he spotted blood on the wall of that corner, too. A chest of drawers blocked his view of the floor there, as a small arm chair and the bed hid the floor of the outside corners, but Zane guessed if he had a clear view, he would see the other extremities.

  Staring at the carnage, it hit him that in Deirdre’s attack he saw what any of Allison’s people were capable of...Allison, Honora, Rikki, the officers he worked with on Patrol...officers he had followed into dark alleys and buildings. Cold ran down his spine.

  “As you see, there’s no sign of Deirdre,” Allison said.

  A ship’s bell clanged loudly somewhere. A minute later Julie’s voice called up, “Someone from something called CIU is here.”

  He and Allison went down to meet them.

  While Janice Tran and Phil Castenado unloaded cases from their van in the courtyard, Allison pointed out the iron fence. “The killer went over somewhere along there. See if she left any trace evidence.”

  Leaving Castenado checking the fence, she led Tran upstairs. Julie watched from the lower hall with an expression of fascination.

  “Holy shit,” Tran said when Allison opened the bedroom door. “This one’s going to take a while.”

  “If you need us,” Allison said, “we’ll be downstairs talking to the vict
im’s step-mother.”

  4.

  At the bottom of the stairs Julie leaned on the wrought iron railing, staring up at them. “I heard that woman. Did you find Deirdre up there? Is she dead, too?”

  “No,” Allison said. “So we have questions we have to ask.”

  “Do you mind asking them in the kitchen?” Julie shivered. “It’s warmer in there.”

  “Fine.”

  In the kitchen Julie climbed up on one of the island stools and sat cupping her coffee mug in both hands, hugging it against her chest. “I can’t believe this is happening. It’s so unreal.”

  “I know.” Zane circled the island to the coffee maker for a refill. Allison probably intended to start the questions so he might as well take advantage of the opportunity to substitute caffeine for lost sleep.

  Allison turned a stool to face Julie. “Mrs. Hilst–”

  “Just Julie, please.” She hugged the cup tighter. “Look, I want to know what happened. If Deirdre isn’t up there, where is she?”

  Allison eyed her. “Fled, we think, after murdering your step-son.”

  Julie snorted. “That’s ridiculous! Killing someone takes backbone, even if she had a reason to do it. Which she doesn’t. Deirdre is a clinging vine and Len what she clings to. I don’t know how often I’ve wanted to shake her and say hey, we’re not property anymore, so learn to be a person. But...” She shrugged. “...maybe in her place I’d be the same. She didn’t have anyone in the world before Len met her in that restaurant in Bath and she probably lives in terror of losing him.”

  “How would you describe Deirdre’s mood when she came back from the art gallery?”

  “Not homicidal.” Julie rolled her eyes. “Sex is the one time Len likes her asserting herself. He’s bragged to Charlie about what a tiger she is in bed. She gave Len maybe five seconds to say goodnight and tell me not to expect them up until late this morning before dragging him upstairs. By the time they reached the top she had off his tie and tux jacket and was working on his shirt and belt buckle.”

  Been there, done that. The flashback to Rikki shot heat through Zane.