Morgan stood up to go. “There is nothing wrong with me. I am not sick.” She crossed the small office in four strides. Her black Doc Martin boots thumped on the floor.
“Try not to think of it that way, Morgan.”
As Morgan put her hand on the doorknob, Dr. Taylor asked, “When do classes start?”
“They already have.”
“Criminal psychology?” Dr. Taylor asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Yes. I have to find out what happened to Fay.”
“You know what happened to her.”
Right when Morgan pulled the door open, a thought entered her mind and she pushed a strand of dark-brown hair away from her chin. She turned to the doctor seated in the yellow chair that surrounded her like a big glowing halo.
“What is it?” the doctor asked.
Morgan let the door close without shutting it completely. “You can’t tell anyone, can you?”
“Of course not. Do you want me to?”
“No,” she said, too emphatically.
“Morgan,” Doctor Taylor clasped her clipboard to her chest, and she stood up slowly. “I can’t share any of our discussion unless I think you are a danger to yourself or to others. From what I’ve seen, you are neither. I don’t believe you have harmed anyone. But you need to take this seriously. When the symptoms manifest—and they will—things will get hard for you.”
“So you can’t tell anyone? Ever?”
The doctor closed her eyes and bent her head in a nod. “Not a peep.”
Morgan opened the door and strode through it without looking back.
Since then, the doctor’s words had haunted Morgan. Someday something would trigger those memories to open. A jack-in-the-box. Surprise!
CHAPTER 60
MORGAN
Donnie’s surgery was successful. The shattered pieces of bone had been removed and the bones pinned together. If the surrounding tissue healed as expected, joint replacement surgery would take place before next spring. He was home now, under the watchful care of his wife and girls, but would return before the new year to begin his transition to lieutenant. Morgan had mixed feelings. She was sad to lose the best partner she could have asked for, but happy for him. Monday morning the department would choose a new temporary partner for her.
And Caryn Klein hadn’t been found. It had been two weeks.
Morgan parked the rented Toyota in the Raffertys’ dark garage, then sat for a moment. Her life seemed on the edge of a precipice. She could accept that Ekhard might have killed Fay and now he was dead. But had Caryn killed Hallie? There was no evidence in her favor.
I have been so wrong. About Fay, about everything. But Morgan pushed these thoughts aside. She had to if she was going to move on.
The morning after Ekhard Klein’s murder, a neighbor had found the condo manager Brad Olafson naked and tied to his bed with leather bondage gear. He refused to implicate Caryn but did tell Morgan that she had visited him the night of Ekhard’s murder. He claimed it was a night to remember. Caryn had likely escaped in Brad’s vehicle. That day, he reported his truck stolen too.
Morgan called an old friend, Keith Broderick, a U.S. Marshal, and shared details. If anyone could find Caryn, Keith could. A full-scale manhunt with Caryn’s viral photo was in place. Would US Marshals catch her? She had evaded police thus far.
In the meantime, Morgan had taken the seven-hour test for admission to U.S. Marshals. Now she would wait. The process could take months, or years, depending on what they needed when they needed it. Morgan was hopeful, given her record and the good references put in by Holbrooke and Donnie. She had begun training much harder at the gym, knowing that if she was accepted, she would still have to pass the eighteen-week training program in Georgia. Physical fitness was imperative. The USM standards were much higher than law enforcement.
She took the keys in her hand and got out of the Toyota. The automatic overhead light on the garage-door opener had burned out this fall, so it was dark once she turned off her headlights. She felt her way around the car.
Focused on Ekhard, and Fay, for too long, Morgan had ignored mundane chores like replacing light bulbs. The bathroom sink was dripping, and a knob had fallen off the bedroom closet door. Repairs needed to be made.
After closing the garage door, she went inside and found the laundry room light on. No wonder light bulbs are burning out, she thought. Morgan dropped her keys on top of the dryer, and then hung up her coat. One by one, she pulled off her ankle-high boots and kicked them under a bench that Bill had installed last summer.
Now that Morgan had a few minutes to relax, she remembered she had promised to call Rob. She dug her cell phone out of her pants pocket and checked the time. Rob might be home from work. She wanted him to know the truth about Stan. When she’d bumped into him at the station the other day, he seemed to have forgiven her. Hope filled her heart.
Phone in hand, she took two steps into the kitchen. A movement to her right caught her eye when she pressed the call button. Crack. Something struck her in the head. As her knees buckled, the phone fell out of her hand.
From the floor, she couldn’t see the intruder. She tried to reach for her gun with a hand that was pinned to the floor by a woman’s shoe. Her last thought was that a hammer had hit her.
CHAPTER 61
MORGAN
Head hurting like it was in a pressure cooker, Morgan emerged from blackness. The strong odor of menthol burned her sinuses.
“That’s it. Wakey, wakey.”
Morgan didn’t recognize the voice. She tried to lift a hand to touch her head. Fuck, it hurts.
That’s when she remembered getting hit.
Consciousness blew away the fog. Morgan peeled open her eyes. Her vision, cloudy at first, grew clear, and she made out a person standing in front of her. The light in the room seemed exceptionally bright. Is every light bulb pointing at me? She blinked.
The woman standing in front of her had her arms folded over her chest. She looked down at Morgan. “There you are. Welcome back, Detective.”
Morgan closed her eyes and flinched. A wave of nausea rose from her belly. She held it back by struggling to get up and realized she was seated in a chair.
“Oh, don’t bother. You’re not going anywhere.” The woman moved out of Morgan’s field of vision to set something heavy on the edge of the bar-height kitchen counter.
The turn of her head caused a shot of pain in her eye socket. Morgan closed her eyes. The woman remained out of sight behind her. Rope bound Morgan’s wrists to the arms of the dining-room chair she was sitting in. And though she couldn’t see, her bare feet felt heavy. Perhaps they were also tied to the chair. She wiggled her toes.
Dizzy, she opened her eyes to get her bearings and the floor swam up to greet her. The breakfast table floated on her left, the kitchen on her right. In front of her, the stairs moved like something out of a Harry Potter film. The nausea rose and fell in waves. Morgan kept her breathing steady. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her aggressor and flinched.
“It’s okay, darling. I won’t hurt you … yet.” She squatted beside Morgan, then with a long, slender finger turned Morgan’s head. “I want you to look at me.”
Morgan opened her eyes again. She wore thick makeup—foundation, eye shadow, and bright-red lipstick. False eyelashes fluttered against her soft features. Her jet black hair made her pale complexion look sallow. Sickly.
“Do you know who I am?” The woman teased. “I ought to make you guess. Let’s see if the neurons are still firing in your damaged, pretty head.” She poked at Morgan’s temple.
The realization made Morgan’s stomach lurch. “Caryn Klein,” she said.
“Not anymore. I’m following my brother’s lead and changing my name. No looking back.” Caryn stood up. She pulled another chair in front of Morgan and sat down.
“The surveillance unit.” Morgan’s tongue felt thick. “They would have f
ollowed you. They’re right outside.”
She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
In an effort to stay awake, Morgan kept talking with her. “You killed Suzanne Aiken. Did you also kill Hallie Marks?” she asked.
Caryn’s head snapped around, her gaze locked onto Morgan. “Oh no you don’t.” She leaped forward and placed her hands on the ropes binding Morgan’s wrists. “I get to ask the questions.” Her breath smelled sickly sweet, like she’d been eating fruit or pie, and underlying that was a distinct smell of alcohol.
Morgan recoiled. With the movement, another lightning bolt of pain shot into Morgan’s face.
“I miss her, you know.” Caryn backed away.
“Who?” The sound of her own voice vibrated in Morgan’s skull. An internal explosion.
“Hallie Marks. Don’t be an idiot. I loved her, too. Everyone did.” She kicked the chair back under the table and paced back and forth. “Even though she fucked everyone …”
Nausea surged again. Morgan struggled to keep down the contents of her stomach.
“Hallie made us all feel special. She loved romance. How she strung Rebecca along. And Ekhard. I’ll never figure it out. They had no idea what she was up to.” She backed into the steps across from Morgan and sat down. “But I got the last laugh, didn’t I. And I broke everyone’s hearts.”
“How did you meet?”
“Don’t you know? Hit the Mark Design was hired to redecorate my office downtown. Hallie flirted with everyone, even Harry the Dick. I think she even fucked him. But I liked her attitude. She was no victim, if you know what I mean. In so many ways, she was like me. Obsessed.”
Morgan said something just to keep awake. “So you became friends?”
“We did. Until …”
Caryn clapped her hands together right in front of Morgan’s face. “Stay awake, Detective. I’m telling you the story!”
What Morgan would give for a couple ibuprofen, or something stronger. “What happened with Hallie?”
“Hallie and I used to go to the Blue Room together. As friends. We would dance. I never had any friends like Hallie before. She loved to party. Do you know how I found out she was going to marry Eks?”
“No. Tell me.” Morgan’s eyes closed for a moment. She forced them open again. Caryn slid off a pair of metallic-blue, high-heeled shoes, trading them for a pair of trainers.
All of Morgan’s hostage negotiation training told her to keep Caryn talking, no matter what. She wanted her confession. “How did you find out she and Ekhard were engaged?”
“That was a stroke of luck. Hallie and I were out at a club. Drinking and dancing. She went off to the bathroom or somewhere. It seemed like she was gone a long time, so I went looking for her. I found her at the bar doing shots with—none other than—my brother.”
Morgan could hear the anger in Caryn’s voice.
“I left. I was so angry that he’d shown up there.”
“So you killed her?”
“At one point Hallie told me she was dumping Rebecca to be with him. In so many ways, she reminded me of my mother. In the end, she would have left me, too. I could never let that happen.”
“Who else did you kill?”
“Others. Many others. They all reminded me of Anna Clare.”
Morgan wanted to ask, but the names of victims she and Donnie had investigated eluded her right now.
“How many?”
“Twelve. You would think that would make sixty blows. Three strikes to each face, one to each hand. But in total there have been eighty-seven hammer strikes. I counted. Sometimes I didn’t quite hit the mark.” Caryn laughed. “It didn’t matter. They looked like my mother. They all looked like her. And so I smashed their faces.” She walked over to the bar-height counter and toyed with something heavy.
Unable to turn her head to see, Morgan assumed the hammer was there. “Have you ever been to Bloomington?”
With fire in her eyes, Caryn looked down at her.
“Fay Ramsey was my friend and I think you killed her,” Morgan guessed.
She put her hands on her thin hips. “Is that what this is about? Some old girlfriend?” Caryn laughed a crazed, loud cackle.
Ire rose in Morgan, swelling her painful head. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, darling! Did your heart get broken too?” Caryn leaned over Morgan, placing both hands on top of her tied wrists and asked, “Detective. Do you think you’ve found your friend’s killer?
“We’ve all lost someone, isn’t that true? I lost my parents. Then… Ekhard left me. He said he would never ever do it. After all that we fought against, he fucking abandoned me. And I could never forgive him for it. After all we went through… ”
Caryn’s last words faded to a whisper. It seemed like she had gone somewhere in her mind. Morgan wondered about Fay again. “What about the others, Caryn? Who else did you kill?” Morgan wanted the whole confession, but her eyes were closing, and her head throbbed with pain.
Caryn’s head jolted up again and she slapped Morgan in the face. “I’m done answering your questions!”
A wave of nausea rose, and Morgan wanted to throw up. She had to keep Caryn talking at all costs and so rephrased the question as a statement. “Ekhard dated Fay Ramsey.”
“Ekhard thought he could get away from me, but he couldn’t. He thought that by changing his identity, he could have a life that was all his own. But he underestimated little Ceecee.”
“How so? How did he underestimate you?”
“I am not like my mother. My mom was a cold-hearted bitch. She would take us by the hand and squeeze. She broke Eks’s fingers once. She would take the back of a spoon and smack the bones till you were black-and-blue.”
Morgan turned her head and vomited on the floor. The violent retching sent knifelike stabs through her skull. When she was through, she said weakly, “Anna Clare left when you were young.”
“I am not like that. I am not like her!”
Every nerve in Morgan’s body had woken up with the tone of Caryn’s voice. Her skin prickled. The hammer was in Caryn’s hand. Morgan knew the damage that tool could do. The threat was very real now. I have to talk her out of this. “I’m on your side, Caryn. I understand how you feel. Your brother betrayed you. He hurt you.”
“He said I’m just like her. He said I’m a psychopath. He abandoned me. He’s more like our mother than I am. I’ve been proving him wrong ever since. Just because he left didn’t mean he could get away from me.”
Caryn continued to smack the handle on her palm as she moved behind Morgan with the weapon. “So I proved him wrong! I proved that I’m not like our mother!”
Morgan sat up straighter, pulling hard against the ropes binding her. “Tell me more about him. Tell me about Ekhard.” She disguised her fear by using her best interrogative voice. The sound rattled her aching head.
A loud explosion of shattered glass sounded behind Morgan. As far as she was able, she shrank away from it. Caryn had hit the china hutch, breaking glass and the Raffertys’ fine dishware. Out of sight, the threat of the hammer remained behind her. She tucked her chin to her chest and cringed.
“Ekhard can’t hurt you anymore! You don’t have to do this!” Morgan noticed the panicky tone of her own voice. And she heard something else. Knocking? Is someone at the door?
Caryn must have heard it too. On Morgan’s left, Caryn appeared with hammer raised, her gaze directed at the front door.
“You don’t have to do this!” Morgan yelled. If someone was at the door, she wanted them to hear her.
“You are mistaken, Detective.” Caryn swung around to face Morgan.
“I can help you. Let me help you,” Morgan pleaded with as loud a voice as she could tolerate. “We can get through this together.” What fear she had felt before grew exponentially in seeing the weapon—the long, gleaming, steel hammer—raised over her head.
Caryn had cracked. Her eyes were wild, darting from Morgan to the door and back to the hammer in her
hand. Morgan kept her gaze locked on Caryn. The pounding at the door became louder. Muffled voices called through the door.
With all her might Morgan tried to back away, but she was unable to pull out of the bonds on her wrists or the ropes holding her legs in place. She couldn’t escape. Sweat broke out on her neck and chest. Keep her talking. “Caryn, I can help you.”
The hammer swung in a big arc over Caryn’s head.
An explosive sound filled the room when the tool came down on Morgan’s left hand, crushing the bones. Her broken left hand splayed in an ugly sprawl with fingers going the wrong directions.
A high-pitched scream threatened Morgan’s consciousness. At first, she thought the scream had erupted from her own throat. Pain radiated up her arm to her shoulder.
Now a fuzzy image, Caryn turned toward the garage entrance with her lipstick-red mouth opened wide as she let out an ear-splitting howl. As she backed away with the hammer held high in the air, police officers—three, four—stormed into the dining room, pointing guns at her.
There was shouting. Then gunfire.
And Rob asking Morgan if she was okay.
CHAPTER 62
MORGAN
Morgan lay in her bed, grateful that the cold, dark night swallowed daylight early on this winter day. Light sensitivity gave her occasional migraines since the encounter with Caryn, as did reading on the computer for longer than fifteen minutes and watching fast-paced movies. Though the road to recovery would be long and bumpy, Morgan was grateful to be alive.
On the bedside table, her cell phone vibrated. She pushed up on one elbow to see who the caller was. Jeremy. They had been talking more often.
“Hey there, how are you?” he asked. Jeremy’s voice soothed her, like a cool bubbling brook washing over Morgan’s exhausted mind.
“Never better,” she lied.
“Hope you’ve been resting, taking it easy. Are Adrienne and Bill taking care of you?” As soon as they had learned of the attack on Morgan, Adrienne and Bill had returned from Florida.
“As much as I’ll let them. When are you coming to visit?”
Best Kept Secrets Page 26