Deathscape

by Dana Marton

  Only two more places to go. Another abandoned farm and the old train station. He was almost sure the old train station didn’t have a basement either, the place little more than a shack. He checked it anyway. But neither the train station nor the farm panned out.

  He called William Price again. And when the man, once again, ignored his call, Jack decided to swing into Philly. He didn’t feel like going back to his lonely rental. The sticky note Leila handed him with the phone number also contained an address, in the posh Art Museum district.

  He had some time to think on the way. He went down the list of things he knew about Blackwell for sure, as he did several times a day.

  Name: unknown. Blackwell was a name he’d used early on at a motel where he’d stayed. He would have used a number of aliases, Jack expected.

  Age: midthirties to midsixties.

  Body type: medium, fit. He’d been strong enough to drag Jack into his car after he’d tased him.

  Occupation: possibly something that required travel.

  Smart. He’d outsmarted everyone for a long time now, taking victims when he pleased, as he pleased.

  Strong possibility for sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies.

  A collector. That would make sense, since he kept parts of his victims.

  No accent of any kind.

  Jack turned all that information over in his head, plus the timeline, the victims, every single clue strong or weak that he’d collected over the years. He was close, so close he could taste it. But he wasn’t seeing the big picture yet, no matter from what angle he looked.

  That left him pretty frustrated by the time he reached William Price’s penthouse apartment. The doorman let him up when he identified himself as a police detective. But the housekeeper, a middle-aged woman named Bertha with ridiculously curly gray hair and a goofy mess of elbow macaroni necklaces, tried to make him wait outside the door upstairs. He simply pushed his way in.

  Then all his bluster leaked away when he saw a little girl, a small replica of Ashley Price, watching him from the lavishly furnished living room with anxious eyes. All right, he was a hard-assed bastard but not at the point yet where he would have enjoyed scaring small children.

  “Hi, Maddie.” He did his best to soften his face. “I’m Jack. I’m a friend of your mom.” He stretched the truth there, more than a little.

  The kid’s face lit up with a smile. “Is my mom here?”

  “No. I came to talk to your grandfather.”

  The man in question appeared through a doorway, holding a phone and tapping his earpiece, probably muting it. He cut an impressive figure, clean-cut in a conservative suit, with a faint air of superiority. He could have passed for a politician. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “He says he’s from the police,” Bertha rushed to say.

  “Detective Sullivan. Broslin PD. Not an emergency. Nothing bad. But I need to talk to you in private.” He looked toward the little girl, who was hanging on their every word.

  The man nodded. “I’m in the middle of an important meeting. Let me wrap up. Give me two minutes.” Then he turned and tapped his earpiece again, walking away, probably back to his home office.

  “I’m playing princess,” Maddie said.

  Definitely. The million-dollar Persian rug in the middle of the elaborately furnished living room was smothered with dolls and horses and castles. Some small toy stores had a lesser inventory, he was sure.

  “The drawbridge is stuck,” Maddie prattled on.” If Prince William can’t get to Princess Lillian, they can’t fall in love.”

  A tragedy.

  “Bertha can’t fix it.” The little girl looked at him expectantly.

  Kids were trouble. He wasn’t good at relating to kids. But it was clear that this one expected something from him.

  He cleared his throat. “I could look at it.”

  The smile that lit up her face was nothing short of angelic. She had eyes the exact shade of green as Ashley’s, and hair the same color too, except with some waves to it.

  He strode over and went down to one knee, and wiggled the drawbridge that had gone off track. He pulled out his pocket knife and popped the piece of brown plastic back in, sliding it up and down a couple of times while Maddie clapped her hands and made happy kid noises.

  He stood as Prince William rode his white horse into the castle, slid from the saddle, then stumbled his way up to the tower room to have tea. Poor bastard.

  “Did you see my mom today?” Maddie asked while the prince and the princess gazed blankly at each other over a pink plastic miniature table. They didn’t look like they were having the time of their lives, frankly.

  “Not today.”

  She jumped up, scrambled over to the marble coffee table, and grabbed a sheet of paper from the pile. “I drew her a picture. It’s me and Bertha making cookies. Can you take it to her?”

  Someone out there might have been able to say no to that face, but he sure couldn’t. He took the picture, two stick figures playing with something that looked like dog doo-doo. Didn’t look like the kid had inherited her mother’s art genes.

  She kept looking at him expectantly.

  A few seconds passed before he figured out what she wanted. “Very, um, pretty.”

  Her smile widened another inch. Her tiny teeth were going to fall out if she didn’t watch it. He’d never seen anyone that happy.

  In stark contrast to her mother, who had shadows all around her.

  “Can you take her some cookies too?”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Sure.”

  Whatever her grandfather’s reservations were, the kid clearly loved Ashley. The thought that he was here to dig up enough dirt on her to put her behind bars left Jack slightly uneasy. Which was plain stupid, so he shook off the feeling.

  He stepped back, but if he’d been hoping for some distance from the kid, he wasn’t about to get it.

  Maddie grabbed his coat sleeve and dragged him through a door into the kind of fancy kitchen he’d only seen on cooking shows when he couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and clicked through the channels. Gleaming hardwood and granite stretched everywhere, punctuated by stainless-steel appliances that were at the high end of high end.

  Bertha followed them with a pinched look on her face, but she did help with obtaining a plastic container from the fancy cabinetry.

  “Would you like a cookie?” Maddie offered him a lopsided plop of brown something.

  On second thought, her drawing wasn’t too off the mark.

  “No, thanks.”

  The smile began sliding off her face. “I made it.”

  He took the darn thing and bit in. The perfect sweetness spread on his tongue. Whatever the cookie looked like, Bertha had clearly made sure all the right ingredients had gone into it. “I like it.”

  She beamed at him.

  Even Bertha seemed to defrost a little.

  “Can we give some cookies to Jack too?” the little girl asked the housekeeper.

  As Bertha produced a second container, William Price appeared in the doorway.

  “Detective Sullivan. I should be able to talk to you now.”

  So Jack left Maddie and Bertha to pack the containers and followed the man back to his home office. Mahogany-paneled walls, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a sprawling desk, an antique globe bar—the place looked like a movie set from a period movie about the English aristocracy, the smoking room where the gentlemen withdrew for cigars after a dinner party.

  The man pointed to a sprawling leather armchair. “Since you’re from Broslin, I assume this is about my daughter. I wasn’t aware that the accident was still under investigation. Isn’t it time to close the door on that unfortunate event?”

  Didn’t sound like he knew about the latest trouble. Interesting. Jack sat. “I’m not here about Dylan Miller.”

  The man stayed standing, leaning against his desk. He seemed the type who would enjoy the position of authority. Jack didn’t mind letting
him have it if it would set him at ease and make him more talkative.

  “I’m here about the recent incident on Miss Price’s property.”

  The man shot him a blank look.

  So Ashley had told her father nothing. Maybe they weren’t close enough to share things. Although, this was pretty big, and they did see each other regularly. He knew Price took his granddaughter nearly every weekend to visit her mother.

  “What incident?” the man demanded.

  So Jack filled him in, keeping to the basics, not mentioning the paintings.

  “You can’t think that my daughter has anything to do with this,” Price charged Jack when he was finished.

  “How close are you to your daughter?”

  “Close enough to know what she’s capable of. You people harassed her enough. I don’t want you to talk to her again without a lawyer present.”

  “That’s her choice, I believe.”

  “If you think—”

  “Why are you raising your granddaughter? Why isn’t she with her mother?”

  The man flashed a grim look. “Ashley has had a hard time since the accident. Anybody would. Look, she’s struggling with depression. She’s taking medication, and she will get better.”

  “You believe that her being alone is the best thing for her?”

  “I offered her to come here.”

  Another interesting tidbit. He wondered why Ashley hadn’t accepted.

  “She has this…anxiety,” the man said. “She doesn’t like to leave her house. She’s mentally fragile at the moment. But not like her mother,” he quickly added.

  “Her mother?”

  He’d found the story of the woman’s meltdown and subsequent death in the online archives, society pages, but he wanted to hear Price’s version.

  The man stepped to the window and stared out, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “My late wife was an actress. Broadway. She pushed herself. Stimulants to work, depressants to sleep, other drugs she thought would help her with emotions and creativity. I didn’t realize at the beginning, and then… She’s…” His jaw tightened. “I’m not sure what happened at the end. She began having hallucinations. And then her heart gave out.”

  “How old was Ashley?”

  “A teenager. A bad time to lose a mother.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a good time.”

  Price nodded as he turned back to him. “I suppose you’re right, Detective.”

  They shared a moment of silence while Jack thought of his own mother. He barely remembered her. He remembered Shannon a lot more clearly; the big sister who’d stepped into the mothering role and had taken care of him. Only he’d been too much of a snot-nosed teen to appreciate it. And then she was gone. Taken.

  “Is Ashley seeing anyone?” he asked, although, all that time he’d spent watching her house, he hadn’t seen anyone go inside her place and stay.

  “No. What does that have to do with anything?” Price strode back to the desk. “Is she in any kind of danger?”

  “We don’t believe so. Nothing in the killer’s profile says that he would go after her. His victims have always been carefully selected, two or three at a time. Then he moves on to a whole other state. This time, he wasn’t hunting. He just wanted me off his trail.”

  Price didn’t look reassured.

  Jack watched for his reaction as he asked, “Can I ask where you were during the first three days of this month?”

  “Now, listen—” he blustered immediately, but Jack raised a placating hand.

  “I’m asking everyone I talk to regarding the case. No suspicion implied. Standard procedure.”

  But the man shot him another dark look before he glanced at his calendar. “Thursday and Friday I was at work, then here with Maddie and Bertha. Saturday my granddaughter and I went to see Ashley in Broslin.”

  An alibi easily checked, so no point lying about it.

  Jack asked the man some questions about his job, about his relationship with Ashley, then more questions about his daughter, her childhood, her career.

  William Price was a type-A, dominant personality. Ashley wasn’t, although she had fire inside her, part of her artistic passion. But crimes of passion were usually part of domestic violence. Being a serial killer required cold ruthlessness. She didn’t fit a killer profile, he thought for the dozenth time. But would she allow herself to be dominated by one? After all, she let her father call the shots regarding her daughter.

  Could she be manipulated or forced into some sort of twisted relationship with Blackwell? Did Blackwell need an audience? Mementoes of his crimes? Was he using her for that?

  But none of her paintings, other than the one of Jack, were of Blackwell’s known victims. A lot of those crimes had been solved, and he couldn’t find cracks, no matter how hard he’d looked, in the convictions.

  Nothing made sense.

  Frankly, her tale of dark visions came closest to an explanation, the only possibility he refused to consider.

  He thought about the absurdity of her claims all the way back to Broslin, with two batches of grossly misshapen cookies on the passenger seat.

  He wanted to give the cabin in the woods another look.

  He found nobody there this time, so he picked the lock, eased inside, inch by careful inch, ducking low and watching for a trap.

  He looked through the arsenal, opened the boxes—ammunition and water bottles, no instruments of torture, no Taser, no human remains. He could see nothing he could tie to Blackwell, dammit.

  * * *

  Ashley looked at the small chunk of cheese and wilted celery in her nearly empty refrigerator. She was going to have to brave the grocery store tonight. She needed bread and milk, cold cuts, some microwave dinners for herself when Maddie wasn’t here, and the makings for a healthy, homemade meal for her daughter tomorrow.

  Her father and Maddie were coming, finally. Which meant she couldn’t put off the shopping trip any longer. As much as she dreaded the store, the thrill of seeing her daughter again gave her strength to do it. Their way-too-brief visits were the only thing that kept her going.

  She closed the fridge door, then tidied up the old-fashioned tile countertop a little. Not that her small kitchen was messy. She’d already mopped the ancient glazed-brick floor. Once she filled the fridge and her plain oak cabinets, she’d be ready for visitors.

  She’d go shopping after midnight; by then the store was usually deserted. She wasn’t looking forward to sleep anyway. The night before, she’d dreamt of Detective Sullivan, had awoken with a start, then dreamed of him again. And again, variations of the same dream over and over. Always the dream started with him coming for her. Sometimes he took her to jail. Sometimes he made love to her.

  She really was going crazy now, she thought as her phone rang. Her father.

  “I just heard about the incident on your property. Good God, Ashley, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her jaw clenched; a headache blinked awake in the back of her head and quickly intensified. “It was no big deal.”

  “A Detective Sullivan came to see me about a serial killer.”

  “They don’t know that for sure. And the…victim is fine. It’s over.”

  “I don’t know if I feel comfortable bringing Maddie out there.”

  Her throat tightened. “But I didn’t see her last weekend either.”

  “You shouldn’t be out there alone.”

  Her head pounded too hard suddenly to point out that Broslin rarely had any violent crime, while there were half a dozen murders on the average day in Philadelphia where her father lived.

  Nausea rolled in her stomach. Her palms began to sweat, and with a shock, she realized what it meant. She knew what was coming.

  So damned unfair.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. She shouldn’t have another stupid vision. She’d saved a man’s life. Shouldn’t that have bought her some sort of salvation?

  She fought back her rising desperation and focused on ke
eping her voice steady. “The police and the FBI were here for days on end. They checked every ditch and bush.” She stared out the living room window into the moonlit night but barely saw the road or the fields on the other side. “Everything is perfectly safe.”

  “Why don’t you come to my place? You could stay with us for a while. I’ll even have Bertha set up a second room as a studio so you can paint.”

  The first impulse was to say no. Half a dozen excuses sprang to her tongue. She swallowed them.

  If she could somehow go… She would see Maddie every single day. And she would never be alone in her father’s eight-room penthouse that overlooked the art museum. She wouldn’t have to jump at every noise the wind made in the trees. Her father would be there in the evenings and at night. During the day, she would have Bertha and Maddie. Maybe she wouldn’t have another spell if she wasn’t alone.

  But if she gave up her hard-won independence, she wasn’t sure if she could regain it again. She needed to fight the anxiety, not give in to it, or her life would become smaller and smaller.

  That was the truth, and she knew it, but she also knew that she was using that truth as an excuse because she was terrified of driving into the city. If she were well, going to stay at her father’s for a few days would be no big deal.

  Then Maddie came on the phone and said, “Mom, Grandpa said you could come here.” The little girl squealed. “Can you come today?”

  Her sweet voice reached inside Ashley and got hold of her heart. She drew a deep breath, pushing down on the nausea. “How about tomorrow?” Her forehead broke out in cold sweat as she added, “First, I have to pack.”

  “She’s coming! She’s coming!” Maddie’s voice wobbled as she probably jumped around with excitement. “Grandpa says we’ll be expecting you. We’ll be right here.”

  A black car shot down the road, slowed as it reached the end of her driveway, turned, its headlights cutting through the dark. Ashley’s stomach dropped as she recognized Jack Sullivan’s Crown Victoria. Her headache kicked up a notch.

  “I better go and find some bags.” She smacked a kiss into the phone. “Tell Grandpa I’ll see you both tomorrow, okay?”