Griffin saw the flicker of needle–thin light only at the last moment as he plummeted down to pin McKenzie on his back, a syringe in the pilot’s hands.
Griffin landed hard on top of McKenzie and grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the syringe just before it sank into his chest. His weight as he fell drove the needle toward him and he was forced to roll aside to prevent it from penetrating his chest.
McKenzie let out a growl as he rolled with Griffin and scrambled to get on top.
‘You’re done McKenzie!’ Griffin shouted through gritted teeth. ‘We know everything!’
McKenzie did not reply as he kicked his legs and scrambled up on top. Griffin felt the pilot’s weight pin him down onto the damp grass. McKenzie let out another strangled growl as he leaned all of his weight down upon Griffin. Griffin strained against the pilot’s body weight, the syringe held barely two inches from his chest. Griffin had no idea what was in the damned thing but at a guess he figured some kind of powerful sedative or perhaps even a poison of some kind: whatever had allowed McKenzie to kill those other victims, their supposed suicides and accidental deaths neatly concealing his murderous tendencies.
McKenzie leaned further over Griffin, pushing his weight up over the syringe. Griffin’s arms trembled and bolts of pain lanced through his wrists as they were bent backwards trying to hold the syringe away from his chest.
‘Sweet dreams, detective,’ McKenzie snarled.
The syringe eased its way toward Griffin’s shirt. The detective let out a strangled groan as he felt the tip of the needle puncture his skin with an exquisite pain, and then he drove his knee with all of his might up into McKenzie’s groin like a sledgehammer through a peach.
McKenzie screamed as his weight, precariously balanced over the syringe, was shoved upward and over Griffin’s head. McKenzie writhed and then toppled sideways. Griffin jerked his head to one side as his arms gave way beneath McKenzie’s weight and the syringe plunged down alongside the detective’s neck, scraping the surface of his skin as it plunged down into the soft earth beside his ear.
Griffin released McKenzie’s wrists as the pilot toppled onto his side on the grass and rolled away, scrambling to his feet as McKenzie struggled to regain his. The pilot was hunched over, tears streaming from his eyes and one hand clasping his genitalia as he tried to get up.
‘Where is she?’ Griffin yelled.
McKenzie glared up at him with defiance etched into every pore of his being. ‘She’s history.’
Griffin lunged at McKenzie again, saw the syringe flicker in the gloom as McKenzie tried once again to stab him with it, but this time Griffin saw it coming and he dodged to one side. The weapon flew past as Griffin lifted one boot and stamped it down hard on the outside of McKenzie’s right knee.
The pilot gagged as his leg buckled and he sank down onto the damp grass. The syringe swung wildly back toward Griffin, who caught McKenzie’s wrist and wrenched it to one side as he gripped the pilot’s palm and twisted it savagely over. McKenzie cried out as the syringe span from his grasp.
Griffin picked the needle up with his free hand, flipped it over and slammed it up to the hilt into McKenzie’s neck. The pilot cried out as Griffin yanked his head and snarled into his ear.
‘You tell me where she is or I’ll fill you full of this shit, you understand?’
McKenzie, his face twisted in pain, laughed out loud. Griffin yanked his head closer and stepped forward, keeping the syringe buried in McKenzie’s neck as he head–butted the pilot hard across the nose. McKenzie howled as his nose collapsed with a crunch of crushed cartilage. Blood spilled from his ruined face, black in the harsh white light of the headlamp beams.
‘Where is she?!’
McKenzie, crippled and still in pain, laughed again. ‘It’s just a sedative,’ he spat. ‘You’ll get nothing from me.’
Griffin looked up at the bank and at the nearby lake, and in an instant he knew. He looked down at McKenzie and then squeezed the syringe. The remaining sedative drained into the pilot’s neck, and with moments McKenzie slumped onto the wet grass in the darkness, his limbs loose and defenceless.
Griffin tossed the syringe aside, turned and sprinted up the bank.
His car’s headlamps illuminated the edge of the lake in the faintest glow but he could see clearly enough the tyre marks in the grass, flattened stems leading down to the water’s edge.
***
45
Kathryn felt her hair levitating in the freezing water, felt her heart pounding in her chest as she struggled to release her seatbelt. Her hands fumbled blindly in the pitch black and she realised that she could not even figure out where her door was, so completely disorientated was she.
She tried not to let the panic rise up and destroy her, but already she could see sparks and whorls of light spiralling in her vision. Her chest throbbed with each beat of her heart and her lungs felt as though they were swelling to twice their ordinary size in her chest as she fought for her life.
She released some of the air in her lungs, felt a dribble of bubbles leak past her lips, and some of the pressure eased.
Just one breath of air was all she needed. Just one.
The seatbelt release clicked, and in a frantic scramble Kathryn yanked the belt free and pulled it over her head. Her body floated free of the seat as her head hit the roof and her flailing hands smacked against the steering wheel.
She searched for the door handle but could not find it. Her limbs twitched erratically as she bumped against the car roof, more bubbles leaking from her lips, her hands flailing blindly for a release from her flooded prison. Panic flushed her as she realised that she had only seconds remaining, her lungs burning and her heartbeat squelching laboriously in her ears as it desperately sought oxygen in her weakening blood.
Kathryn banged the window of her door in a last desperate attempt to escape as sparkling galaxies of light flickered like phantasms in her field of vision and her senses contracted until she felt as though she were a tiny insect trapped in a vast black universe entirely deprived of air. The effort made her inhale a tiny amount of freezing water that scorched her nasal passages and leaked down her throat toward her lungs.
Her body convulsed as she tried not to cough and she doubled over, her hands falling away from the door handle as the last of the air from her lungs spilled from her lips in a feeble dribble.
In the freezing, flooded darkness and utterly alone, Kathryn’s lungs convulsed inside her one last time and then she opened her mouth and sucked in a lungful of blessed air. Except there was no air. Her lungs filled with the freezing water, expanding once again as pain ripped across her chest and a final, bright white light filled her vision.
Bubbles streamed away from her as she saw the interior of the car illuminated as though by moonlight. As her consciousness slipped away she glimpsed the door being yanked open and a figure plunge into the vehicle, Griffin’s face glowing in the light and pinched with a volatile mixture of determination and anxiety.
*
The pain returned, scraping at the insides of her chest as she gagged and coughed a splatter of cold water across her chest.
Strong hands grasped her body and rolled her over onto her side as she coughed and choked. She smelled the scent of grass, felt it touching her face. Felt the hands gripping her shoulders firmly but gently. She coughed a last mouthful of water out onto the grass as she felt her senses reconnecting themselves, as though she were awakening from a particularly unpleasant dream. Pain, from her ankle. Shivering, from the bitterly cold water. Fear, from reaching the verge of death and being yanked from it.
Kathryn slumped onto her back, her limbs still feeling as though they belonged to somebody else. Bright hazard lights flickered blue–white and red, headlamps cast beams of light through nearby trees and reflected off a sheet of thermal blankets onto which she was lifted by the paramedics swarming around her.
As she lay back on a gurney, she saw to her right the lake now illuminated by the h
eadlamp beams of Scott Griffin’s car, the driver’s door wide open. In front of it, police were using a tow–truck to pull Kathryn’s vehicle out of the lake.
Behind the paramedics treating her, watching silently, was Detective Scott Griffin. He observed her without expression as though she was somebody he had never met before. Somehow, through her weariness and pain, she managed to force one corner of her lips into a feeble smile as her eyes melted with a gratitude she was too tired to convey in any other way.
Griffin watched her for a few moments longer, made as though to say something, and then he offered her a curt nod in response before he turned and walked away.
***
46
Kathryn was hurried to hospital and fussed over by nurses for almost an hour before, finally, she was left in peace. She lay in a hospital bed in a private room and watched as nurses bustled past the door, which had been purposefully left open by an orderly who had recently visited her to check on her plaster cast.
Her ankle would take around four to six weeks to heal, she had been told. Fortunately, the X–Rays had revealed that Dale’s brutally inflicted injury had not severed any tendons or broken any bones. The swelling would subside within a week or two.
Kathryn leaned back into her pillows, thoughts racing through her mind as she replayed the past few days of her life.
‘Miss Stone?’ Kathryn looked up to see Maietta walk into the room. ‘How you holding up?’
Kathryn smiled. ‘I’ve been worse.’
‘Could’ve fooled me,’ Maietta said as she pulled up a chair. ‘You just got your ankle busted and nearly drowned.’
‘It was a long day.’
‘I’ll say. Listen, I gotta ask you a few things, okay? Won’t take long.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Did you have any idea that Stephen Hollister was living a double life?’
‘No,’ Kathryn whispered. ‘I knew that he was cheating on me and that he had a woman in the city, but that was all. I didn’t have any names or anything.’
‘So you had no idea that the woman we were looking for, Sheila McKenzie, was married to the man you called Stephen?’
Kathryn chuckled bitterly. ‘Hell, no. If I had, I could have helped you guys close the case far sooner. Is she okay, the wife?’
‘She’ll live,’ Maietta said, ‘just. Start at the beginning, Kathryn. How did this all come about?’
‘When I learned that my fiancé was a lying, cheating bastard,’ Kathryn smiled sweetly. ‘I decided to check him out, see what he was really up to. I was hoping that I was mistaken, that he was secretly working two jobs to pay the bills or something.’
‘But he wasn’t,’ Maietta said, as though possessed of clairvoyance.
‘No. He was married to another woman. Not just seeing her – married to her. I followed them for a while at a distance, mainly because I guess I couldn’t believe that it was happening.’
‘And you never identified her?’ Maietta asked. ‘You didn’t recognise her at all back at the precinct, in the photographs we had?’
‘I never got that close enough to them to see her face clearly,’ Kathryn said. ‘I only saw her twice, from a distance. I knew that she was a blonde and maybe older than me, but that’s about all.’
Maietta said nothing for a moment as she scribbled in her notebook. ‘So, you decided to do something about the affair?’
‘I was the affair,’ Kathryn sighed.
‘Okay, how did you end up in that storage–unit?’
‘I followed Stephen,’ Kathryn sighed. ‘When I realised that he was cheating on me, I started looking into his life. I found things out. So I engineered this scheme to try to force him into a position where he would have to come clean and admit to the other relationship. I know it sounds stupid now but I wanted him back, really I did.’
Maietta looked at her notes. ‘Okay, go on.’
‘Anyway, I noticed purchases by him on his credit cards and did what I could to track them down, see what he was up to. One of them was for a Triple A storage unit in town near the airbase on the east side. I figured I could go take a look, see what else he was up to. I’d made copies of the bastard’s keys, so it didn’t take me long to figure out which one was needed. That’s when I found her.’
‘Sheila McKenzie.’
‘Yeah, although I didn’t know it at the time. I was trying to untie her from that chair when Stephen showed up. He had a gun. Then…’
‘Then what?’ Maietta asked.
‘Then he attacked me, got me on the ground and stamped on my ankle so I couldn’t run away. He injected me with something so I couldn’t move. Then he put the gun in my hand, turned me around and shot the woman, Sheila.’
Maietta nodded. ‘Then what?’
‘He dragged me to my car, put me in the trunk and drove me out of the city. If Detective Griffin hadn’t showed up when he did, I’d have drowned.’ Kathryn looked at Maietta. ‘How did he figure it out?’
Maietta leaned back in her chair. ‘He was in a restaurant with his wife. Saw a picture of you with Stephen, or as we know him, Dale, on the wall. He figured you were about to become a victim and made his move.’
Kathryn sank back into her pillows. ‘Jesus, too close.’
Maietta nodded. ‘Just got a couple more questions for you. We’ve got traffic camera footage of your car in the vicinity of Sheila McKenzie’s house in the city just a few days ago. You been there, Kathryn?’
Kathryn nodded. ‘I drove past it more than once. Looks like a palace, doesn’t it, compared to my little apartment? I had to go into the city because I wanted to find a restaurant to take Stephen to, a nice night out to help woo him back to me. I figure now that it was a lost cause, because he had far more to gain by staying with that other woman.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have just tossed the asshole out and found somebody else.’
‘Serial killers and con men aren’t known for their emotional attachments,’ Maietta said.
‘Thanks for the head’s up.’
‘And all this was before Sheila McKenzie was abducted?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kathryn said. ‘After I’d last followed them I never actually saw her again until I went to that lock–up.’
‘Where Dale had been holding her,’ Maietta said. ‘She was alive?’
‘Yes,’ Kathryn said. ‘She’d been cared for.’
Maietta nodded. ‘Here’s the problem I have. Dale McKenzie abducts his own wife in return for a ransom. He then makes no further ransom demands for delivery of the money. Then, he uses you to kill her. Why? Why did he not make a ransom demand?’
Kathryn stared up at the detective. ‘You’re asking me to explain the motives of a psychopath?’
‘You’re the psychologist, Miss Stone.’
Kathryn sighed and shook her head. ‘I suspect that he had a plan, something more than just a ransom demand. I can’t be sure but my putting him, or rather Stephen, under pressure might have upset whatever delicate little scheme he had in play.’
‘So?’ Maietta asked. ‘Making a demand for the transfer of funds in return for Sheila’s life was the next logical step but he never made it. If he wanted the life insurances, then he would just have killed her and avoided the whole hostage charade.’
‘Like I said,’ Kathryn repeated, ‘I may have screwed up his itinerary. Maybe he figured he was better off just using me to kill her, framing my suicide and then sitting back and collecting the life insurances she had. He could go back to his airline job and his life with me would simply vanish into thin air.’ Kathryn sank back into her pillows. ‘I’m just glad you guys got involved when you did, or right now I’d still be ten feet underwater and that bastard would be sleeping it off back in his wife’s bed.’
Maietta closed her notebook.
‘You sure should be,’ she said, ‘because your ex is in fact a man wanted for four killings.’
Kathryn lay silent and still for a moment. She stared at the ceiling tiles. ‘Say that again?’
‘He’s been linked to four murders committed a decade ago,’ Maietta said. ‘Dale McKenzie used the identity of his deceased younger brother, Stephen, to court young women before drugging them with a sedative called Pancuronium bromide, same thing he used on you, to fake suicide scenes and take off with their money.’ Maietta gave Kathryn a serious look. ‘He targeted orphans, Kathryn. You, and Sheila McKenzie, were both victims waiting in line. He carried a lock–box around with him, which we found at the scene of your attempted murder. It contained jewellery and a lock of hair from both a victim from several years ago and Sheila McKenzie, and connects Dale to the four unsolved murders. Your hair was in there too.’
Kathryn felt a shiver ripple down her spine like the cold touch of death. She lay back on her pillows as Maietta looked at her notes.
‘So, how come you cleaned out Stephen’s bank accounts?’ she asked.
Kathryn smiled. ‘Our accounts,’ she replied. ‘Stephen has been lying to me about his earnings for years, and I’ve had to pay our rent and food. That bastard was ripping me off from the moment we met. I just took back what he owed me.’
‘You know that’s theft, right?’
‘It’s justice,’ Kathryn shot back. ‘So arrest me. I’ll fight for the right to the money in the courts.’
‘Easy tiger,’ Maietta said. ‘I ain’t sayin’ I don’t sympathise, but you can’t be running off with his money if you want to see him go down for life.’ Maietta scanned through her notes. ‘Anybody else in on this with you, Kathryn?’
Kathryn was about to shake her head when she suddenly gasped in horror.
‘Ally! Stephen might have…’
‘She’s fine,’ Maietta said, ‘a little shook up but she’ll be okay. Right now all you’ve got to do is rest. Griffin’s talking to Dale McKenzie right now. He’s screaming to high heaven that he didn’t abduct his wife and that he knows nothing about any murdered women, but I don’t think anybody’s going to buy it.’
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