Incarnate Page 25

  Albert grinned. “Don’t tell me, you got a real gun in there?”

  “Men like you can’t satisfy a real woman, so you turn to children,” she said thoughtfully. It wasn’t true, of course—plenty of pedophiles were married or in seemingly typical relationships—but she was trying to provoke him. “When did you stop being able to perform with women, Albert? Sexually, I mean.”

  Albert’s mouth snapped shut and he glared at her. “Don’t you dare try to psychoanalyze me. I ain’t never been the problem. Women are. They let themselves go. Quit giving a crap what they look like.”

  “We all age,” Kim said conversationally. “Normal people continue to enjoy healthy sexual relationships well into their seventies and even eighties. But there’s definitely a problem with you—when did you stop being able to satisfy a woman?”

  “Shut up,” Albert said. His fingers twitched spasmodically. “Just shut the hell up.”

  “You wouldn’t be the only one,” Kim said, feigning boredom. “Most times we can treat dysfunction with drugs and therapy. But some men—the ones who prey on children, for instance—it’s like their whole manhood has drained right out of them. They might as well be eunuchs, since they can only get it up with children.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Ha,” Kim said contemptuously, pointing the gun at his groin. He was rapidly losing his composure. If Kim had to guess, she’d say his mind was battling between protecting his fragile identity—everything that “being a man” meant to him, including power and dominance and control—and admitting that underneath it all he was merely a bully, a predator, a coward, and weak. If she could just push a little bit harder . . . “In fact, I wonder if that’s why you ended up killing Henry. Because you couldn’t manage to get it up.”

  “You bitch!” Albert said, lunging for the gun, and managing almost to reach it before Kim stepped out of the way. “I got rid of that little bastard because he wouldn’t shut up. Kept crying and whining, even after I gave him candy. He was gonna say something. He was gonna rat me out. So I put him in a place where no one would find him. Well . . . not for a hundred years, anyway.” Albert chuckled wickedly. “You should have heard him pounding from the inside of that capsule. Lasted a good half hour . . . before the oxygen ran out.”

  Bingo. Kim gripped the gun more tightly, knowing that she’d just recorded a confession that could be used to put Albert away. But she was going to need more in order to save Scarlett. “And what did Isabel do to you? Laugh at you? Reject you? Did you offer her money, was that it? Did it finally sink into your pathetic twisted mind that you can’t even pay for sex anymore?”

  “I don’t need to pay!” Albert hollered, his face purpled with rage. “And I didn’t touch that girl!”

  This time when he lunged for her, Kim was ready. She was poised between the recliner and the wall, and her plan was to dodge behind the sofa. Albert would never be able to pose a threat to her once she had a large, heavy object between them—he was too old and too weak.

  But as her foot came down behind her, it struck an object she hadn’t noticed before: a soda can that had rolled there during the scuffle. It crumpled beneath her shoe, but on the slick surface of the wood floor, it slid easily, her leg going out underneath her.

  She was able to right herself by grabbing the back of the sofa—but not before Albert, seeing his opportunity, came at her with all of his strength. His shoulder butted her in the chest and she fell to the floor, on her back with him on top of her. He pounded her face with his fist, once, twice, and though the blows weren’t hard enough to do any lasting damage, she made the critical mistake of putting up her hands to defend herself. The gun loosened in her grip. Albert’s eyes lit up and he snatched the gun.

  Before she had time to react, he had rolled off her and aimed, his finger steady on the trigger. Clearly he was no stranger to firearms. He crouched in a ready position, aiming at her heart, while she struggled to sit up.

  “Don’t move,” he snarled. “Not one more inch, or I’ll blast you through and through.”

  “No,” she tried to scream, but it came out as a breathless whimper. So this was how it was going to end. Kim would die here, and nothing would have changed, nothing would be gained from her death—and Scarlett would be left with no one to believe her.

  Suddenly, Albert tilted sideways and tumbled onto the floor, hitting his head on the coffee table as he went down, the gun flying out of his hand and skittering away. There had been a flash of movement, a collision of shapes at the periphery of Kim’s vision. Her brain tried to catch up to what had just happened.

  Someone crouched down next to her. “Oh my God, are you all right?”

  Scarlett.

  Scarlett was pulling her up, her face a map of fear and worry. The front door stood open, sunshine pouring into the dim interior of the house. The tacky dog figurine had been shattered over Albert’s head—no great loss.

  “How . . .” Kim managed to get out.

  “It wasn’t that hard, you left the car door open when you got out to swing open the gate at the hotel. I climbed in the back. You never knew I was there.” Kim stared her down. However grateful she was, she was also annoyed. Scarlett shrugged. “I’m a teenager. We’re good at sneaking around.”

  Kim felt a wave of dizziness pass through her as she managed to pull herself up to her knees, then awkwardly crawl up onto the couch. On the other side of the coffee table, Albert lay crumpled facedown, motionless.

  “Kim, what the hell were you thinking?” Scarlett sounded furious. “He almost killed you.”

  “I had to . . . try to get him to confess.”

  “By almost getting yourself killed?” Scarlett shook her head in disbelief. “You tell me to take care of myself, and then you do this crazy shit?”

  Far in the distance, Kim heard sirens. “You called the cops?” she asked incredulously.

  Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. What was I going to do, let you kill him and go to jail for murder?”

  “But I was never going to kill him.” Slowly, Kim absorbed the full import of what Scarlett was saying—she’d jeopardized her own safety to ensure Kim’s. Been willing to face the police and the accusations against her, just to make sure Kim was okay. “Listen, Scarlett, I recorded everything. Albert confessed to—”

  Suddenly Scarlett yelped. Albert rolled over and shot out his arm, grabbing her ankle and pulling it savagely. Scarlett lost her balance and fell practically on top of him. Albert moved much faster than Kim would have thought him capable, looping his arm around her neck in a stranglehold and jamming the gun up under her chin.

  “So you came to save the day,” he said, and all traces of weakness were gone from his voice. “You think you got the stones for it, girlie?”

  Scarlett whimpered in pain and fear, her head forced back against his shoulder. How many other young people had he threatened, just like that? How many had he killed?

  “Don’t do it,” Kim pleaded, afraid to move, worried any sudden motion would unsettle him and make him shoot. “Let her go, Albert. We’ll leave—”

  “Don’t see how that does me any good,” Albert said, almost conversationally. The sirens were closer, from the sound of it, only one or two streets away. “If they got that conversation you recorded, why, I’m cooked. Won’t matter what I do to you two, I still end up in jail for the rest of my life. Only way I don’t kill the both of you . . .”

  “What?” Kim demanded frantically. He had shoved the gun up into the soft underside of Scarlett’s chin so hard that she was making soft choking sounds. One reflexive squeeze of his trigger finger and she would die. “Tell me what you need us to do, Albert!”

  “Gimme that phone,” he said. “If there’s no recording, there’s nothing for me to confess to. I’ll tell them you broke in here talking crazy. I have a right to defend myself in my own home. They’ll see what you did to me. They’ll see you for what you are, a couple a lyin’ whores.”

  The recording
was the only proof Kim had. Without it, it would be his word against hers. And given the things she’d done recently, the mistakes she’d made, the people she’d angered and betrayed, who would believe her?

  But if she didn’t do as he asked, Scarlett could die.

  She tossed the phone on the floor between them.

  Albert stared at it for a moment. Then he pointed the gun at it—and fired.

  But at the last possible second, Scarlett twisted in his grip, breaking free and staggering backward. The shot went wide, clanging off the metal coffee table leg and lodging in the sofa. The phone lay, unharmed, exactly where she’d tossed it. Kim lunged for it.

  Albert fired again.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Zack peeled into Albert Sullivan’s driveway with a screech of tires and leaped out of the car without bothering to close the door. He ran toward the house, ready to shoot out the lock if he had to, but the door was standing wide open. Just as he crossed the threshold a shot rang out.

  He hit the floor, rolling, and came up in a shooter’s stance, trying to make sense of the scene. Scarlett Hascall was cowering against the wall next to the kitchen. Sullivan was lying on the floor, moaning. And Kim was standing over him, one foot smashing his hand into the carpet.

  “Are you hit?” Zack yelled, alternating between pointing his gun at Albert and at Scarlett. There were dark stains on Albert’s clothes, but they didn’t appear to be blood. Scarlett looked more agitated than harmed, but a thin trickle of blood was running down the side of Kim’s face.

  “We’re fine,” Kim said, though she sounded anything but. She appeared to be putting all her weight on the old man’s hand. He’d be lucky if she hadn’t broken his fingers. “But Albert Sullivan confessed to killing Henry. I recorded it all. It’s on my phone. He tried to shoot it twice, to destroy the evidence. Luckily he shoots like he probably fucks.”

  She pointed at the floor, and Zack took his eyes off the scene just long enough to see that an iPhone lay on the carpet barely out of Albert’s reach.

  “What happened to your head?” he demanded, ignoring the phone for the moment.

  “Oh,” Kim said. She touched her cheek, and her fingers came away bloody. She shrugged. “He shot at me, grazed my forehead.” She looked at her fingers again and realized that there was actually quite a bit of blood. “At least I think it just grazed me.” She turned her head toward Zack. “Is it bad?”

  Zack stepped forward and dug his knee into Albert’s back, taking Kim’s face into his strong left hand, as his right one kept his gun trained on the back of Albert’s neck. He studied her forehead. “I think you’re going to live.” Kim nodded, obviously relieved. “It might even improve those looks.”

  Kim smiled, her body coming down from the high of the pandemonium. “I hear guys like a girl with scars.”

  Zack shrugged. “If they’re earned.”

  Zack’s demeanor shifted as a second cruiser arrived, its sirens blaring, and its tires squealing to an abrupt halt. Two other officers burst through the door. Now there were three of them with their guns drawn on an old man and two unarmed women. After a moment, the officers relaxed and holstered their guns.

  Zack felt a little ridiculous. “Cuff this guy,” he ordered the others. “And please search Ms. Hascall. Make sure she doesn’t have a weapon of any kind.”

  He turned to Kim, who already had her hands in the air. She must have thought he was going to search her, too. Instead, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her hard.

  “Don’t ever do anything like this again,” he ordered.

  But Kim’s focus wasn’t on the welcomed hug but rather on Scarlett. She had noticed that Scarlett didn’t seem to register her name when Zack referred to her as “Ms. Hascall.” Her eyes looked distant.

  After the female officer frisked a confused-looking Scarlett, Kim approached the teenager, pulling her gently aside. She could tell by looking into Scarlett’s eyes that she had switched—certainly caused by the traumatic incident.

  Kim whispered, “Izzy?”

  Scarlett’s eyes darted up, making immediate eye contact with Kim. It was most definitely Isabel Wilcox who stood before her.

  Scarlett glanced up at Kim’s forehead, seeing the blood. The girl made an effort to comfort Kim. “That’s going to be fine. The face has a lot of capillaries, like a spiderweb of blood vessels just under the skin. A paramedic told me that once. That’s why we blush, when the blood rushes to the surface.”

  Kim stayed cool, knowing that Isabel was there to help Scarlett deal with the distressing experience of having a gun to her head. She quickly and calmly helped Scarlett transition back, without Zack or the other officers even aware that the switch had happened. It was better that way, for all involved.

  * * *

  IT TOOK A WHILE to sort out what had happened. Everyone was talking at once, until Evelyn told Albert that if he didn’t shut his mouth, she was going to stuff his underwear in it. After that, he sat glumly on his sofa, muttering from time to time.

  “Please take good care of that phone,” were the first words out of Kim’s mouth after Albert was cuffed. “It is my professional opinion that this man cannot be rehabilitated.”

  The CSI folks were on their way—their van was seeing more action this week than they ordinarily did all summer—and Holt was driving in from Two Pines Lake, where he’d been fishing with an old buddy. The paramedics would be there in moments. Zack needed to make some quick decisions.

  “Bag that,” he said, pointing at Kim’s phone with his shoe. “Get Fogliano over at the station to process it—all we need is for one of you guys to accidentally erase that recording. Scarlett, Kim, I want you both checked out. You’ll ride to the hospital with the paramedics.”

  “I’m fine,” Scarlett said. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Kim may have been injured more seriously than she thought, as I’m very sure she is aware. She needs to be checked out. And I’d rather have you both looked over, if you don’t mind. You’ve been through something pretty traumatic here.”

  Zack had a long night ahead of him. Phil would ride along to the hospital, and he’d already said he didn’t mind taking the overnight shift outside Sullivan’s room. Sullivan was only slightly banged-up—none of the shots fired hit him, but he was sporting a nasty lump on the top of his head—so he had to be checked out. The police would post a guard until he’d been treated and medically cleared. Zack wouldn’t be able to listen to the recording until the phone had been logged into evidence and examined by their tech specialist. Holt would need to be present, too.

  It was true that he was concerned about Kim’s injury, but mostly he just wanted her in one place until he was ready to talk to her.

  It was going to take him a little while to figure out the right words. And he didn’t want to screw this up.

  * * *

  IT WAS NEARLY SIX o’clock in the morning when Zack finally left the station. He’d stuck around the scene until the investigators were nearly finished. They’d had a hell of a time finding the stray bullet, which had lodged in a couch cushion so filthy that the entry hole was nearly invisible among the stains. Zack had personally logged eight boxes of evidence, mostly old magazines, DVDs, and photos that Albert Sullivan had purchased through the mail over the years. There was enough in those boxes alone to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. But when Officer Jennifer Fogliano finally finished with the phone, having made backups of everything on it, and they listened to the recording Kim had made, he felt certain that Albert Sullivan would be convicted of murder, too.

  Getting into his car outside the station as dawn broke, he decided to leave a message for the Jarvis Hospital’s chief of staff. To his surprise, Dr. Graver herself picked up, explaining that she liked to get in early so she could catch up on her work before things got too busy. Zack gave Dr. Graver a brief summary of the confrontation and Sullivan’s confession, emphasizing Kim’s role in helping to solve Henry Beaumont’s murder and de-emphasizing the
risks she’d taken in the process. Graver knew that he was making a case for Kim, without saying it directly.

  Having already heard that they’d treated Sullivan downstairs in the ER, Dr. Graver predicted that he’d be released into police custody after morning rounds, having suffered nothing more serious than a bump on the head. Zack thanked her and asked that Kim not be released until the afternoon.

  “She’s slept through the night with no issues,” Dr. Graver said. “She had no sign of concussion. She should be able to rest at home.”

  “We need to get her statement,” Zack said. “I’d like to get that out of the way before she leaves the hospital. That way we don’t need to call her back in while she’s, ah, recuperating.”

  There was a longish silence before Dr. Graver said, “All right. I suppose that makes sense. But, Detective, I wonder if you could convince your officers to . . . treat her gently. She’s been through a lot.”

  “I think I can make that promise,” Zack said.

  Once he got home, he practically fell facedown on his bed. But when his alarm went off a few hours later, he forced himself to get up and stood with his face in the shower, keeping the water cold enough to leave him gasping. He needed to be in top form for what he was about to do.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Despite the fact that Kim had been there fewer than twelve hours, and had suffered only a cut requiring a mere four stitches, there were already three enormous bouquets of flowers in her hospital room when Zack arrived to see her. She caught him noticing and shrugged, appearing embarrassed. “My parents; my former boss; and, uh, a secret admirer,” she said sheepishly. When he nodded, she added quickly, smirking, “It’s not actually a secret admirer, it’s my father and he’s been pulling the same joke since I got stood up at my high school prom and he sent me flowers to make me feel better and I saw his name on the return receipt and . . . I’m telling you too much, aren’t I?”