He pressed her into the closet. The room beyond it was tiny. Painted dark gray. A twin bed along one wall. Small bookcase, black. Gray rug. No color at all.
“You look so surprised.” His lips curled into a smile. “I wanted you to feel at home. I know you’re not a fan of color anymore, Bella.”
She hesitated, bending her knees to run.
Spencer grabbed her by the arm, threw her toward the space.
She caught herself, ducked under his arm. He was faster. Shoved her into the wall and slapped her hard across the face. She dropped to her knees. Gasped. Tasted blood in her mouth. An angry pulsing in her lip.
“I warned you, Bella. I’ve had enough.”
She remained on the floor. “What do you want?” she screamed at him.
He cocked his head sideways, his eyes narrowed. Insane. “What every good husband wants . . . to make my wife happy.”
“You killed Ava to make me happy?” she spat at him.
“You made—” He caught himself and closed his mouth, shook his head.
He did it. Of course he did it. She wanted to hear it. “Say it, Spencer. Say you killed her.”
Spencer held the stun gun high in his right hand. Moved toward her.
She scrambled backward, but he caught her leg, held her. His grip too tight. The stun gun. He clamped a knee on either side of her waist until she was forced onto her back.
Pulse throbbing in her neck. Every cell screaming no. She tried to twist free.
He pinned her hips, leaned down across her.
She shoved his chest. “Get off me!”
The stun gun touching her cheek, she froze. Waited for the clicking sound that didn’t come.
He patted down her jacket. Removed her cell phone from her pocket.
“Let me guess. One zero two zero.” He typed in her passcode, grinning.
He knew her passcode. Ava’s birthday. Of course he did.
He held the “Power” button, shut the phone down. “No recording in here, darling.” He tossed the phone over his shoulder. It bounced across the closet carpeting. She lost sight of it.
“Now, let’s take your jacket off,” he said, pushing the jacket down off her shoulder.
Panic lodged in her chest, her throat. She couldn’t breathe.
The stun gun made a buzzing sound. She flinched.
“Hush,” he responded. Calm. The stun gun so close to her face.
He grabbed hold of the jacket’s sleeve, yanked it down off her hand. Shoved her to one side, pinning her hips, and jerked the other sleeve free. Patted the jacket until he was satisfied it held no wire. Tossed it, too. She gasped at the feeling of his hand on her shoulder. Clenched every muscle against his touch. His palm moved down her arms. Across her legs and hips, up to her crotch; he let his hand rest there.
“I don’t feel a wire,” he said. “That’s good.”
She squeezed her eyes closed. He palmed her breasts, cupped them and squeezed hard. She gritted her teeth against the pain. He could not hold her. They would find her. Harper or Hal. Someone would come here. Wouldn’t they? She would die first. He could not keep her alive here.
He rolled her over, clutched her backside. His weight lifted, and she drove onto her hands and knees, scrambled away from him.
“You’re clean. I’m so relieved,” he said with an exaggerated exhalation. “I want to trust you, Bella. We have to have trust in our marriage.”
“You want trust? Then, tell me,” she said, her breath heavy with fear. “Tell me you killed Frances Pinckney. That you killed—” Her voice broke.
She couldn’t say Ava’s name.
Then he was on top of her, his hot mouth at her ear. “Yes, Bella. I killed her. Because of you, Bella,” he whispered. “Because you wouldn’t come home to me. But I knew how to get you here, didn’t I?” And then he shifted away, his voice returned to normal volume. “Come see your anniversary present, Bella. This is the year we make our son. Just like my parents did. A beautiful, healthy boy.”
How could he say those words, not twenty feet from where he’d killed her baby girl?
The hideous smile grew until it consumed his face.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t you want to experience it fully?”
When she hesitated, he reached down and grabbed her arm. Yanked her upright.
She twisted her hand from his grip. “I’ll never have your baby,” she seethed. “We will never be together.”
He laughed. “I like this new you, Bella. This strength suits you.” He moved forward again, the stun gun coming toward her.
She stumbled back, struck the bureau. Reached to catch herself. Her fingers brushed something hard, metal. She eased her hand toward it, felt the thin metal. One of Spencer’s pens. She wrapped her fingers around it, pulling it into her fist. The pen hidden at her side, she shifted away from the bureau as he closed in again. She took another step backward, desperate to be angry and not afraid. To feel fury. It had been there.
“Your father would be proud.”
The words were as sharp as a scalpel. She moved away, stumbling.
Suddenly she was in the tiny room. Her prison. Darkness surrounding her, the baby’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. Spencer blocked the doorway, huge and too close.
The baby’s ultrasound filled the screen again. Thu-thump, thu-thump . . .
As she fought to look away, Spencer’s face filled the screen. Her baby’s heartbeat echoing off the walls.
Images flashed around her.
The wedding, herself huddled on the ground in Ava’s garage, her baby . . .
And then Spencer was beside her. Gucci cologne filled her nose. He drew in a deep breath, inhaling her scent as if she was prey. His tongue on her cheek, his mouth on hers.
The walls closed in. She couldn’t breathe. Her fingers tightened on the pen.
He lifted the stun gun to her cheek. “I won’t let you leave again, Bella,” he said through gritted teeth.
She raised her left arm against the stun gun and swung her right, using all her power to drive the point of the pen into his arm. Spencer cried out, dropped to his knees. The stun gun slipped from his hand as he reached for the pen that stuck straight out from his shoulder. He jerked it free.
“You bitch!” He launched toward her, his eyes bright as a caged lion’s.
She stumbled toward the hallway. He yanked her down.
“You fucking bitch,” he shouted. His hand clawed at her arm, his fingers tightening on her neck. “You’re not going anywhere, Bella.” He bashed her against the wall. She struck her temple, saw black.
She screamed and kicked. Swung her elbow at his head, missed. Felt his grip loosen. She stretched her fingers toward the stun gun.
His fist struck down on her back, and she collapsed into the ground. The carpet stung her face as she gasped for breath. Rage built inside her, and she rose, swinging her fist backward. She connected with his groin. He doubled over, and she launched her foot into his chin. Kicked her other foot into his chest.
He groaned.
She bucked herself across the carpet until her fingers gripped the stun gun. Rolled onto her back and moved away. He was huddled, cupping his bleeding arm. Blood pooled beneath him. His eyes were hooded, narrow. His teeth bared like an animal’s.
She stood, aimed the stun gun. Lunged at him and pressed the button. Electricity crackled. Spencer didn’t react.
She’d missed.
He rose slowly, pushing his back up the wall. His face shone with perspiration. A line of spittle marked his chin. He stepped forward. Closer. The stench of his sweat in her nose.
She buzzed the stun gun again.
He took another step. He was only a couple of feet away. She willed him to stop.
He smiled. And kept on coming. He wouldn’t give up.
She launched herself at him and connected the stun gun to the wound on his shoulder. Pressed the trigger and held it.
Spencer let out a piercing scream and collapsed.
/> Schwartzman sprinted through the bedroom to the sliding glass door. Unlocked it and yanked on the door. It didn’t open.
Glassy-eyed and panting, Spencer filled the closet doorway. “You should have stayed, Bella,” he growled.
“Never.” She grabbed the antique marble-top bedside table that had been hers. She tilted the table, dumping the light onto the floor.
The bulb exploded.
The table was bulky, awkward to lift, but she heaved it into the air. Clutched the top to her chest, the legs aimed at the glass door.
“No!” he shouted.
She closed her eyes and charged through the door. Glass exploded, raining down small, tempered bits. She crashed onto the porch, fell across the table, landed hard on her hip. Scrambled up. Fighting to draw breath, she ran into the street.
“Call nine-one-one!” she screamed. “Someone call nine-one-one.” Her cries were answered by the wail of sirens.
Two squad cars screeched to a stop in front of her, their lights swinging through the night air. She bent down, holding her stomach with both arms and fought not to cry.
44
Greenville, South Carolina
Schwartzman pressed the back of her hand to her bleeding lip. She didn’t take her eyes off Spencer’s house.
He was inside.
A third car tore up to the curb, and Harper Leighton jumped out. “You guys make sure MacDonald doesn’t go anywhere,” she shouted to patrol.
The officers started for Spencer’s door.
Then Harper was beside her. “Are you okay?” the detective asked.
“How in the world are you here?” Schwartzman responded.
“I called in a favor from a friend down here. He works for a local security firm. I asked him to do a drive-by for your car.” Harper motioned to Schwartzman’s face. “He hit you?”
Schwartzman touched her lip, saw blood on her fingers. “A few times.” She wiped it on her pants, looked back at the detective, who still wore the dress from Frances Pinckney’s service. “I’ve only been here twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. It’s a three-hour drive from Charleston.”
“I had a hunch you were coming here.”
“So you drove three hours?” Schwartzman asked. Was she worried that Schwartzman had planned to kill Spencer? Or was she worried that Spencer might hurt her? It didn’t matter. Either way, that was going way beyond the job. Schwartzman felt a deep surge of gratitude. Instead of facing a group of strangers, she had an ally.
“There was something about the way you were at the Pinckneys’ house.” The detective paused. “That and Hal Harris wouldn’t stop calling me.” Harper nodded to the house. “MacDonald inside?”
“Yes,” Schwartzman said, shuddering at the memory. “He recorded me in Ava’s garage. Not the attack itself, but he’s got video of me in the garage. Can we use that?”
“Yes. Proves he was there.”
Unless he has another explanation. Which he would. Spencer would have a story about how he’d found her there. He had admitted to her that he had killed Ava. No one would ever hear it, but she had. She knew.
Let him try to explain the evidence she had planted.
Tightness in her gut. Planted evidence.
She didn’t make him kill.
She flinched at something touching her.
“You’re shaking,” Harper said, wrapping a jacket across Schwartzman’s shoulders. Harper waved to a man in a suit. “Tom.”
“Harper,” he said, raising his hand to her. “Long time.”
“This is Annabelle Schwartzman,” Harper said when the man joined them. She turned to Schwartzman. “This is Tom Overby. He’s a detective with the Greenville PD.”
Overby motioned to the house. “You want to tell me what happened in there?” he asked Schwartzman.
Schwartzman drew a shaky breath. She wanted to leave, to be as far from here as possible. Soon, she told herself. “Spencer was—is my husband. We’ve been separated for seven years. He killed my aunt Ava and another woman in Charleston. And I’m pretty sure he was involved in a death in San Francisco. The lead detective out there is Hal Harris.”
Overby nodded to Harper. “Detective Leighton caught me up on the theory.”
Schwartzman was keenly aware of the intensity of Harper’s gaze. She kept her eye on the Greenville detective. A man she didn’t know. Would never know. “I wanted him to tell me he did it. I wanted to hear him say he killed them. And I thought there was a chance that I could find some piece of evidence to link him to their murders.”
“So you decided to drive up to Greenville from Charleston and show up at his house?” Overby flipped open his notepad. “This man you suspect murdered your aunt and two other women?”
Schwartzman risked a glance at Harper. “We’re burying Ava tomorrow.” She looked back at Overby. “Ava is my aunt. I had to try. We know how she died, but I thought maybe I could discover something more, something I could tie back to evidence on her body. Some evidence to prove it was Spencer. Before we buried her, I had to know I hadn’t missed something.”
Schwartzman felt the fear settle lower in her chest. She could do this. There was no doubt between her and God that Spencer was a murderer. That he’d killed them. All she was doing was making the justice happen.
“And did he confess?” Overby asked.
“Would it make a difference?”
“Not unless it’s recorded,” Overby said.
She shook her head. It was not recorded. “He has video footage of me in the garage of my aunt’s home, where I was attacked.”
“He showed you this film?” Overby asked.
She cleared her throat, pushed past the sound of the baby’s beating heart. “Yes.”
The detective looked at the house. “We need probable cause to go in.”
“Look at my face,” Schwartzman says. “He hit me. He was holding me against my will. I had to throw a table through the sliding glass door to get out,” she said, hearing her voice rise. “And he used a stun gun.” She pulled up her shirtsleeve to show him the mark. Two small red burns. She ran her finger over them, grateful for their presence. They would probably scar. She would have a lot of scars. She took a deep breath. “He locked the bedroom door from the inside. He’s added this area by the closet—it’s like a kind of prison.” And there the fear rose again, into her throat.
Overby nodded. To Harper, he said, “It’s enough to hold him for a few hours, take a look around the house. But I don’t know how much more—”
“It’s enough,” Harper said as though she knew what was inside. Could she know? Schwartzman glanced at the detective. She had faith.
Schwartzman had lost that. Overby instructed one of the patrol officers to go in for Spencer. “Tell him he’s being held on assault and battery and unlawful imprisonment. And read him his rights.”
Schwartzman watched the officer walk to Spencer’s door.
“Will you excuse us for a minute?” Overby asked Schwartzman as he pulled Harper to the side.
Schwartzman watched the backs of the two detectives, wished she could hear them. Overby motioned to the house, to the street. Was he changing his mind?
Would they let Spencer go?
“I’ll have your badges for this!” Spencer’s voice.
Schwartzman jumped at the sound.
“This is private property. She’s the one you should arrest. Her! Right there!”
Schwartzman wanted to look away. She forced herself to look at him, to watch as the officers led him to the patrol car. His eyes narrowed on her, but they weren’t frightening. She held her chin up, her eyes steady.
I’m not afraid of you. Not anymore.
The officer opened the door to the patrol car, put his hand on Spencer’s head as he was lowered into the car. The door closed behind him. Schwartzman watched every second of it.
Harper returned to Schwartzman, put an arm around her shoulders. “The paramedics are here, Detective Overby. If there’s nothing else you need,
I’d like to get her checked out.”
“Go ahead,” Overby said. “I’ll call out the Crime Scene Unit, and we’ll see what we can find.”
Harper led Schwartzman away from the detective. They made a loop around to avoid walking by the patrol car where Spencer sat shouting. Schwartzman wanted to ask what the detective had said. At the same time, she didn’t want to know.
“You should have told me you were coming,” Harper said.
“I know. I wanted to see if I could find anything. I—” She stopped. She wanted to curl into a ball. It was almost over. Wasn’t it? She stood straight and wiped her hands across her pants. She turned to Harper, who waited patiently. “How did you get the police to come? I tried to call them from inside the house, but he had a jammer. The calls never went through.”
“I got nervous,” Harper admitted, then lowered her voice. “In the end, I told them that you had called me for help. That was enough to get them over here.”
“I was . . . he has this room—” Schwartzman felt the throbbing pulse of her baby’s heart. The sobs just broke free, and she struggled to contain them in her belly and chest, to hold them back.
Harper wrapped her arms around Schwartzman and led her past the ambulance, out of view of the patrol car.
“He told me,” Schwartzman said. “He told me that he killed them—that he had to because I wouldn’t come back to him.”
Harper exhaled and pulled her into a hug. Schwartzman didn’t fight. She rested her head on the detective’s shoulder and let the tears come. “We’re going to get him,” Harper said. “We are.”
Schwartzman didn’t answer. What more could she say?
As the tears slowed, Harper moved her ever so gently to the ambulance. A paramedic helped her sit on the wide bumper. The adrenaline fading, she began to shiver in earnest. A second paramedic wrapped a blanket over her shoulders while the first started to clean up her lip. They put ointment on the burn from the stun gun. “You’ve got a nasty bruise up here, too,” he said, grazing her temple.
She flinched at the pain. Was that where he’d hit her? Or where she struck the wall? It all ran together. It’s over, she told herself. Pressed her eyes closed to let that sink in.
Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) Page 35