by Adira August
Ferriter reined in his reaction. “That's great, isn't it? I mean, he’s okay, right?”
Ruth's face knotted with hate, tears spilled over.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen? Tell me. I've been worrying about the little guy all this time.”
Her hand went to the base of her throat as if she couldn’t breathe.
“He... He didn't choke? He couldn't. He's not— Did he die? Tell me! You tell me!”
Her head dropped. She looked at the broken pieces of ceramic. The bent wastebasket. Her torn hands. Tears dripped from her chin onto her sweater.
“Well. If he's dead, I guess”—a smile in his voice—“we'll never know what happened.”
SHERIFF VEHICLES AND a few civilian SUVs and pickups crowded the lot of the Jeffco substation. Pairs of deputies and volunteers waited in the cold while Avron and Vargas handed out assignments.
The searchers moved out, caravanning along Big Horn Gulch Road, peeling off in twos and threes into private drives, some with For Sale signs tacked to trees.
Downslope from the edges of the various parking areas behind homes or on empty lots, teams of searchers spread out. One deputy and two civilians had dogs—a Malinois, a golden retriever and a beagle.
Working their way downslope, the teams spread further and further apart. The wind backed off as the sun lowered. The trees stopped moving entirely.
A few fat flakes drifted down.
HUNTER OPENED THE surveillance room door. “Chang?”
Xavier poked Chang and pointed at Hunter. Chang removed the headphones and followed him into the hall. They shut the door.
“DiMato’s staying across the hall, we’ve got live feed,” Hunter said. “Can you take a few minutes and give him a short course on note-taking and logging? He knows the logging procedure, but when and why you make a time notation is a mystery to him.”
“Sure. It’s pretty straightforward. Hang on, I’ll grab a clean notebook and let the kid know I’ll be gone for a few.”
WHEN CHANG CLOSED the door, Xavier let out a breath it felt like he'd been holding for hours, grateful for the quiet. For being alone. The sight of Ferriter on the screen made him sick. He leaned back, staring at the ceiling tile and rubbed his face with both hands.
At least he’d have a few minutes respite from the carefully non-judgemental looks for the rookie who’d let Brian Trowbridge be tortured to death by a perverted sociopath because Xavier ran into a mirror and fell down.
“WE WON’T, WILL we, Ruthie? How can we know? I mean, they might not find him at all. Animals get at the body. Scatter the parts. How can we ever know what happened?”
Her head snapped up, her loathing for him palpable.
“Oh, come now,” he smiled serenely. “You don't think I had anything to do with this? Because of what it said on that arrest paper? Ruth. I know things got out of hand before, I know. Sometimes I get so upset. Mother says—”
Her face was stony.
“Could you just please sit down?”
She didn’t move.
“Please.”
She pulled her chair out. The metal wastebasket caught underneath screeched along the floor.
Ferriter's eyes moved to the clock—3:18—and back to Ruth, perched on the edge of the chair, hands folded, her gaze unflinching.
He smiled. Friendly Ferriter.
“Honestly, Ruthie, I don't know why you bothered to call them to come get me. You know they'll have to let me go.”
“I don't know that.”
“Look at the clock.”
She did. “It's three-eighteen.”
“Eighteen minutes too late. Remember? I had to be at the jail by three or my rights are violated.”
“What are you talking about?” She sounded genuinely puzzled.
Ferriter’s eyes glittered in his triumph. “I heard him. Your lieutenant, the one you're so wet for? I can hear everything at your desk from in here. He told you. I had to be booked in by three o'clock. I didn't distract you, did I? So maybe you just forgot? Ruthie?”
She held his gaze for a moment. Then it was Ruth who smiled the smile of an indulgent parent for a foolish toddler.
“I'm afraid you've misunderstood, Mister Ferriter. That was about the storm. You see, all nonessential personnel were to be released at three o'clock today. To get home before the blizzard hits. Clerks. Assistants. Maintenance is on skeleton staff. That's all he meant. I'm so sorry, I wish you'd asked me about it.”
“Bullshit. I know what I heard.”
“Well, what we hear isn’t always what someone says, is it?” Her smile widened.
“They'll still have to let me go, you dried-up cunt!” His hands fisted around the bolt head.
Ruth shrugged.
“None of your friends bothered to give me my rights. Not. One. Not that asshole kid who stopped me. Not any of these detectives. Not your boyfriend. Nobody. Ever. Advised me.”
The webcam behind her couldn’t see the moment of victory on her face. Only her back and mad-looking Ferriter, eyes wild, leaning over the bolt head were caught by the lens.
She kept her voice even. Pleasant. But her expression shrieked odium and revulsion. “That’s only if you’re questioned, Mister Ferriter. No one needs to advise you unless you're questioned. And no one asked you a single question. Not Officer Xavier when he arrested you. Not any detective who spoke to you. Not me.” She leaned slightly toward him, allowing her delight to show. “I’ll be called on to testify to everything you've said here, though. Everything you did. Entirely of your own volition. Like begging me to go into your wallet and find that dog picture.” She winked at him.
A frozen moment.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN TAUNT ME YOU FUCKING BITCH?”
He launched himself across the table to get at her. The bolt shank swung wildly from the short chain between the handcuffs.
XAVIER FLIPPED THROUGH Chang’s notebook.
Chang was a bit of an artist, Xavier discovered. Small sketches along the edge of the page were easily recognizable as people on this case.
He came across one of Carol Twee and smirked at the full-body sketch highlighting her backside. Xavier had to admit it was an ass worth emphasizing.
THE MOMENTUM OF Ferriter’s body knocked Ruth and her chair to the floor. The chair knocked aside, Ruth lay stunned—legs akimbo, skirt hiked up, cardigan bunched around her shoulders from the killer’s slide onto her body.
Draped across her like a demented lover, Ferriter’s elbows pinned her arms to her sides. The chain of the cuffs cut across her throat. His hands pressed down. The chain and cuff edges bit into her flesh, compressed her trachea.
“How you gonna testify now? Who you gonna tell now? Who? Who? Who?”
He ground his hips into her, because he could. His thumbs caressed her neck. Mouth close to her ear, the dachshund pin incongruous next to his sweaty cheek and wet lips, he crooned threats as endearments.
“You thought you had power over me, Ruthie, but you. Were. Wrong.” He bit her earlobe hard enough to draw a thin whistle of pain from her as her body jerked weakly against him. “Jesus, Ruthie, that’s so good. Know what I’m going to do next?”
Eyes wild with fear sought the doorway.
“There's no help for Ruthie. No help for Ruthie.” A singsong taunt. “Chained to the floor like a brat chained to a tree.”
He let up on the cuffs a little, and she grabbed for breath. “Oh, I’d love to tell you. I want to so much.” His eyes closed, imagining. He pressed into her, aroused again. “Damn, I wish we had more time before you die.”
He eased up on the chain even more. “I want hours with you. To make you watch him. Watch him shivering and crying and dying. It’s really too bad he's dead. It's better my way—a slow, exquisite death.”
XAVIER FLIPPED TO a new page in the notebook.
A larger drawing of a dark-eyed vampire biting Ruth Teller in the neck. Oddly appropriate and funny, he laughed and glanced at the monitor.
The notebook hit the floor.
FERRITER LICKED HER ear slowly with the whole width of his tongue. Smiled at the sound of disgust she made. She jerked her head to the side.
The chain cut up under her jaw as he grabbed her other ear with one hand and wrenched her head back around. Giggling. He licked her again, holding her motionless as she uttered a roughened, retching cry.
“Any way I want it, Ruthie. Any way I wanted it with them all.” He smiled at some particularly pleasant memory. “Little Marky tried so, so hard to keep his feet up out of the water. To keep his shoes dry so his mom wouldn't get mad.”
He pushed himself up to exert maximum pressure. “I put them all out there. Eddie in the ditch. He went too fast. Danny begged and begged. It was excellent—the bugs and birds got to him.” She fought him. Choking. “Now you know. But how are you going to testify?” He started panting. Humping her. Saliva dripped from his mouth to her thin, bluish lips.
The blank monitor reflected the empty desktop. It moved slightly with the motions of the thing on the floor.
XAVIER POUNDED DOWN the hall past Video Production and the elevators to slam through the stairwell door.
Garza leaned out to see what the racket was and spotted Xavier disappearing into the stairwell. “Ah, fuck.”
Xavier leapt down stairs. Three—four at a time. One flight. Two flights. He raced by Assaults, swung around a corner, slipped, caught himself, saw the Homicide Information Desk ahead.
He rounded the corner of the wall to the open door of Interrogation One—
Deedee had Ferriter on his stomach, one knee in the center of his back, his handcuff chain across the back of his neck as she pressed his wrists to the floor and he thrashed about, kicking at the walls, at her.
“Give me your cuffs!” she snarled.
Ruth tried to rise, coughing and gasping.
“Captain!” Xavier moved to help Ruth, but she held up a hand.
“Help Davidson secure the prisoner.” It was barely a croak, but unmistakably an order.
More feet pounded. Hunter and Chang arrived. Hunt stepped inside, torn between dragging Ruth bodily out of the room or shooting the son of a bitch Xavier and Davidson were recuffing behind his back.
Merisi arrived but hung back. It was a small room.
Hunter opted for doing his job. “Everyone out. This room's a crime scene.” He made space for them to pass and stationed himself in the doorway.
Ruth allowed Chang to help her to the Information Desk chair.
Against a wall opposite the entrance to Homicide, Garza contemplated Ruth—his dark eyes glittering, body taut and motionless.
Ruth carefully removed her dachshund pin. A thin wire attached to the pin pulled out of the sweater. She handed it to Chang. “How was the sound?”
He hesitated, then, “Loud and clear, Captain.”
“Good. Thank Intelligence for me. Davidson, move Mister Ferriter to Assaults.”
Every detective looked to Hunter, who filled the doorway to Interrogation One. He tapped off a cell call.
“Xavier, cover this door until Twee gets up here to process the crime scene. No one in or out unless she okays it. Stand by while the room is processed and do whatever she says.”
“Chang, cover the feed.” Hunter held out his hand. Chang dropped the dachshund pin into it and left without a word to Captain Teller.
“What feed?” Ruth asked.
Hunter ignored her. “Merisi, escort Captain Teller to Captain VanDevere’s office and stay with her. An ambulance is on the way to check her out.”
“I’m fine,” she protested. “I’ll decide when—”
“No, you won’t, Captain,” Hunt snapped. “Protocol will be followed.”
Stare down. Neither surrendered.
Merisi moved to her side. “Captain?”
She rose. “I’d like to see you in my office as soon as possible, Dane.”
“You want me to go down to Burglary/Theft?”
“VanDevere’s office,” she snapped. She addresses Merisi, “I’m going to visit the ladies room first.”
Hunter gave Merisi a slight nod.
She reddened, her lips tight, but left with Merisi following. They passed Garza. He didn’t acknowledge her.
“You have really great tits under that sweater, Ruthie,” Ferriter yelled.
Hunter held up a no assaulting the prisoner hand. “Davidson, move the prisoner to Assaults. DiMato should already be there. I want one of you inside the room with him at all times.”
“Yes, sir, we're all ready for him.” Deedee Davidson led Ferriter up the hall.
IN THE BATHROOM, Ruth scrubbed furiously at her ear and cheek with a fistful of paper towels. Steam wafted up from the water running into the sink. She trashed the first wad of paper and got more, many more, wetting them down. The mass of paper towels steamed in her hand.
She attacked her arms and hands until her skin was raw, wiping every cell of Ferriter away. That wad hit the trash and she grabbed more, went after her face, leaned over into the sink so the searing water ran over her ears and hair.
More towels for her arms. She scrubbed away bandages on her fingers and hands. The cuts bled again.
Brian Trowbridge wriggles with painful slowness around the base of the tree, using numb fingers to move the chain around the tree with him.
Inch-by-inch.
He pulls his pile of forest debris along with his feet.
On the opposite side of the tree, he stops and holds one arm out. He gives the camera that now cannot see him, the finger.
Red hands around his mouth, he takes a deep breath.
“Hellllllppp meeeeee. … Hellllllppp meeeeee. … Hellllllppp MEEEEEE……”
A light coating of falling snow turns his world to black and white.
Strategy
* * *
“You blew the Grand Plan? The boy will die?”
Diane Natani faced Bradley Cowl across a polished slab of mahogany desk. “Nobody said he was going to die.”
He pointed a thick index finger at her face. “Did you see the press conference the mayor held before he left? On your advice? ‘Search in progress, suspect in custody, have every hope’.”
"‘Have every hope’ is a great line. Did you write that?” she asked mildly.
“We'll see about this shit!” Cowl shoved his chair back and made for the door.
Natani went after him and grabbed his arm. Cowl ripped it away with an I will slap the shit out of you look.
Natani stepped back, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. “Brad. Please. Just don't go over there. Not now, after he attacked Captain Teller.”
“He did what? Jesus!” Cowl hesitated with one hand on his ornate brass doorknob. “Enough.” He checked his watch and went back to his desk. “He should be home by now. You go back over there and tell everybody to sit on their damned hands until the Mayor decides what to do. You understand? The Mayor will decide.” He picked up the phone.
Natani nodded that she understood. What she’d understood was: Hunter Dane would never let that happen.
Leaving him and the building to get back to police headquarters, she found the street lights had come on. Snow drifted steadily down, the flakes large and widely spaced—a peaceful and picturesque harbinger of death.
HUNTER CROUCHED BY the return, examining the eyebolt with the cuffs attached Twee held up for him.
“The bolts are carbon steel with four-inch shanks,” she said. “Not possible for a suspect to unscrew while cuffed to it. You have video?”
“Yeah. He worked the bolt back and forth for a couple hours to loosen it.”
“Then the nut must have been removed first. It’s consistent with traces of sawdust and the chewed-up look of the hole it left behind.”
“You find a nut?” he asked her.
“Nope.”
“You couldn’t find the nut? Can you tell when it came off?”
“Not really. These restraints were installed in a dozen interview
rooms just last year. Not enough time for discoloration or other differences to develop.”
The remains of the trashcan were still under the chair. “Can you tell if it was ever in that trash can?” he asked.
“By ‘it’ you mean the nut.”
“Right. The cans are emptied on a regular basis. Maybe daily.”
“You want to find a window of time for removal of the nut,” she said. “It’s a longshot but possibly I can place the nut in the can, if we find it soon and the trace hasn’t been rubbed off by environmental contact. I’ll bag the can.”
“Do that. Removing the nut took a tool. A wrench or pliers. If we find that, can you match it definitively to the nut?”
“You think somebody sabotaged it?”
The blank look he returned told her not to assume. Or mention.
“If I have them both, I can match tool marks as well as microscopic residue transfer.”
They both stood up.
“You might say something to Xavier, Boss. He feels pretty bad.”
“He should.”
She pushed him. “Have you ever looked to see if the nut’s on the shank? If the nut had just been removed, that bolt would have felt completely solid.”
“That’s not the issue, Twee. Focus on your job.”
Hunter left her to her work and passed Xavier guarding the door without giving him a look or a word. Video surveillance had shown the attack on Ruth Teller continued for two full minutes before Xavier started his dash to Interview One.
Garza came off the wall where he’d been waiting. “You didn’t know.”
“None of us did. Seems she had her own agenda.”
“You giving up?”
“Come with me to Video Production. I have to collect a copy of tonight’s ‘broadcasts’ as evidence.” They walked to the elevator in silence. Hunt pushed the button, and the door opened immediately. “I don’t do giving up, Special Agent. Neither does my team.”
“Good.”
Hunt gave him a speculative look as the door closed. “You have a contingency plan?”