Novels 11 Adam Read online

  Then killed Daniel, one officer, and clipped Lori’s arm with a shot. He’d taken the girl. Still missing.

  Lori had rushed Daniel to meet an ambulance and managed to resuscitate him after several minutes. Death to life.

  So they told him, but Daniel could remember none of it. Not the sight of Eve coming out of the dark, not the shot to his head, certainly not dying or being dead. Or waking. His memory ended with Lori cradling Eve sixteen in her arms as they rushed down the mountain, then resumed with his waking in this bed.

  The door opened on his right, and Lori walked in with a man Daniel assumed was a doctor. No smock, just khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. Daniel could see a guard standing outside his door as it closed.

  Lori put her hand on his arm and smiled gently. “How you feeling?”

  “A bit of a headache. A bit groggy.”

  “That’s probably the morphine,” the doctor said, stretching out his hand. “I’m Dr. Willis.” He stared at the left side of Daniel’s head. “If you don’t believe in divine intervention, now might be a good time to reconsider. That or you have enough luck to walk out of Vegas a rich man.”

  Daniel looked from one to the other. “You mind telling me what happened?”

  The doctor reached for the bandage around his head and began to peel it back. “The bullet struck just above and to the side of your left eyebrow where the upper bone of the orbital socket is at its thickest. An eighth of an inch up or down and you’d be dead.”

  “I thought I was.”

  The doctor nodded. “You were, but thankfully your brain escaped irrecoverable damage. The bone diverted enough of the bullet’s energy laterally, around the side of your head, so that it didn’t actually penetrate the skull. It traveled under the scalp and exited behind the left ear.”

  “Sometimes having a thick head comes in handy,” Lori said, then moved on as if she was perfectly serious. “The bullet recovered from the side of the Suburban was fired from a .38 special. They’re still working on it, but enough of the bullet’s trunk is intact to make a type ID. Likely a police-issued Colt Cobra firing a lead semiwad-cutter bullet—used primarily for targets, not humans.”

  “He doesn’t like to kill with a gun,” Daniel said, shifting his eyes to the ceiling. “His pattern is more about how and why they die, not that they die. Death is hardly more than the unfortunate end.”

  They looked at him, unsure.

  “Could be,” Lori finally said. “Your mind hasn’t shut down, that’s good.”

  “Like I was saying,” Dr. Willis said, “pretty lucky. I’ve seen worse, but this one’s worth a write-up.”

  “And what did kill me?”

  “Hydrostatic shock,” Lori said. “The bullet’s energy transferred to the soft tissue of your head and sent your nervous system into failure. Your heart and lungs went into full cardiac and pulmonary arrest.”

  “Shock killed me.”

  “Shock kills plenty of people, nothing unique there.” She stood, peered at his skull now exposed by Dr. Willis, and handed Daniel a mirror. “Take a look.”

  At first he thought the mirror was reversing the sides of his head, but glancing to the right he saw that neither side of his curly blond head had been shaved. His brow was stitched up on the left, just above the eyebrow. Some bruising traced a line across his left temple. He would have a black eye for a few days.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” she said.

  He sat up in bed, felt his head throb, but let it pass. “So then I’m free to go.”

  “Not so fast,” Dr. Willis said, urging him back with a hand on his chest. “We have to keep you under observation.”

  “Observation? For your sake or mine?”

  “You were dead six hours ago, Mr. Clark. Your brain was starved of oxygen for over twenty minutes. Acute hypoxia. You seem rational enough, but there’s no telling what damage has been done.”

  “Damage. Such as what?”

  The doctor frowned. “Apart from more severe effects, which obviously haven’t presented? Disrupted fine motor skills, memory loss, possible hallucinations. There’s no telling.”

  Daniel stretched his fingers, wondering if his fine motor skills had been affected. No indication apart from a slight buzz that lit through his whole body. Staring at his fingers, he was bothered by the notion that something had changed. His ability to digest food, perhaps, his sense of humor, his proficiency with logical constructs, his tear ducts, the muscles in his left leg.

  Something.

  “The point is, you’re alive,” Lori said. “Montova will be here soon.” She stood back, crossing her arms under her chest. “So . . . what was it like?”

  “Honestly, I don’t remember. My mind is blank. I remember you giving the victim CPR in the rear seat, and I remember waking up an hour ago in this bed.”

  “Nothing at all in between?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Nothing. Why?”

  “Because you saw him. You have an image of Eve locked away in your mind somewhere.”

  His mind spun with the implications. “You’re sure?”

  “He was ten feet from you. You had to see him. Lit up by the car’s high beams.”

  “So we have a positive ID.” Eve wasn’t in CODIS, but a positive sighting could lead to their first real identity break. “What was he like? Blond bangs over deep-set eyes? A strong, pitted jaw? Tall? The farmer next door?” He’d constructed an image of Eve based on a hypothetical history drawn from his own profile of the man.

  “I don’t know,” Lori said, watching him with soft, unblinking eyes. “I didn’t see him. I was getting off the floor when he shot you. The girl blocked my view at the side door.”

  Daniel blinked, searched his mind for a hint of something that didn’t belong. Anything that might ignite his memory. But his mind was blank.

  “So the first real break in the case is locked in my mind. We have to find a way to get it out.”

  “A break? How so?”

  “I could provide the details for an accurate artist’s sketch. We break the case wide open and put his mug shot on every computer screen across America. Information is the greatest weapon we have in the age of the Internet.”

  “Seems to me Eve would know that too. So why did he risk being seen?”

  “Because he didn’t bank on either one of us surviving.”

  She nodded. “He killed you, and he would have killed me if Brit hadn’t shown up.”

  “So it seems.”

  “What did it feel like?” Lori asked, again returning to his death. “You don’t remember, but do you feel anything? Do you think you saw anything? In the mind’s eye, that is.”

  “You mean a near-death experience,” he said. “No. Not that a hallucination of that kind would help us anyway.”

  “No, but hitting the right switches could trigger your actual memory. We’ll just have to wait, won’t we?”

  “For what?”

  “For your memory of Eve to resurface. Memories are bound up in chemicals. In your case most likely DMT. Dimethyltryptamine. Excreted in massive doses from the pineal gland during the trauma surrounding death. The hallucinogenic drug thought to be responsible for near-death experiences. It’s part of what may have caused the block in your memory.”

  “You’re saying you think there’s a way to trigger this hidden memory I have of Eve. Is there?”

  “I don’t know. Time. Time brings back memory.”

  Dr. Willis held up the bandage. “Let’s get this back on.”

  “Is that necessary? It’s just a couple stitches in front.”

  “You were lucky, but not that lucky. You have cranial bruising and a good tear on the back of your head. I really think—”

  “Please, Doctor, I’m not a child here. My head’s not falling apart. Give me a few Advil and I’ll be fine.”

  Dr. Willis shrugged and set the bandage on the over-bed table. “If you insist. I’ll check on you again at noon.”

>   “If it doesn’t bust anyone’s chops, I need to visit the crime scene, while it’s relatively fresh.” Pain stabbed through Daniel’s head, but he didn’t react except to lie back on his pillow. “Something might jog my memory. You have a problem with that?”

  “For all we know you’ll take five steps and drop dead from an aneurysm,” Dr. Willis said. “Get some rest. I’ll be back at noon.” The doctor excused himself and left the room.

  For a moment Daniel stared at the closed door, mind oddly blank. He threw off the sheets, pulled the IV out of his arm, sat up, and swung his feet to the floor, ignoring his swimming head.

  “So what, I’m a dead man walking?”

  He stood to his feet, and Lori instinctively reached out to steady him. “Please, Daniel. There’s too much at stake for you to start acting crazy.”

  “At stake? Eve’s at stake. The life of his next victim’s at stake. What would you know about what’s at stake?”

  “Your life’s at stake,” she shot back, jaw firm. “Now, sit down!”

  He took no offense at her frustration. If anything it gave him a small measure of comfort—this never had been a game for the weak.

  Ignoring her order, Daniel walked forward five feet and stopped. No dizziness or other warning symptoms that he could tell. He crossed to the door, pulled it open, and stepped into the hall. The door closed behind him.

  The nurses’ station stood ten feet to his right, currently manned by three attendants, who looked up at him. Only then did he look down and remember that he was still dressed in a hospital gown covered in tiny blue paisleys. Underneath, his boxers. No undershirt.

  Daniel turned back to his room and walked in. Lori stood near the hospital bed where he’d left her, wearing a thin, hooked grin.

  “Forget something?”

  “Where’d they put my clothes?” he asked.

  “In the closet. But I wouldn’t head out before talking to Montova.”

  “You know as well as I do that the crime scene is all we have now. No word of the victim?”

  “They’re combing the proximal area,” she said.

  “He had another car stashed. Brit’s on that, right?” Daniel crossed to the closet and yanked the door open. “I need to be there.”

  “Of course Brit’s on the car,” she said. “It was his first assumption—Eve’s always planned his scenes down to the last detail, probably months in advance. He knows every possible escape route and has alternative flight paths prepared. They’re on it. Question is, what are you on?”

  “I’m on the case.”

  “You’re also on an overdose of DMT.”

  Daniel buttoned his pants and lowered his arms, ignoring his shirt for the moment. There it was again. His memory. The most obvious way to close in on Eve.

  Lori’s cell chirped and she flipped it open, turning her back on him after a lingering look. “Ames.”

  Daniel grabbed his ripped black T-shirt, shrugged into it, and wondered if a shower might be in order. But the thought of the evidence response team picking through the cave before he did was burrowing under his skin.

  His head throbbed. A slug had smacked him with enough force to trigger cardiac and respiratory failure. He should be on life support or cooling in the basement. He had no business being out of bed, much less heading to the crime scene.

  Daniel finished dressing, lifted his wallet and cell phone from the bed stand, and faced Lori as she finished her conversation. “I understand. Immediately.” She snapped her phone shut.

  “They found the body.”

  Eve’s sixteenth body. Daniel felt his well-fed obsession with Eve uncoil in his gut and shove its way through his chest. The bodies had come once a month for sixteen months, and each time he’d crawled a little farther into Eve’s mind by studying that undisturbed body.

  He took an involuntary step toward the door. “Okay, I—”

  Darkness smothered him midstride so suddenly that he was forced to stop when his right foot landed, two feet in front of his left. The dark crashed over him like a plunger cup, slamming his ears with a percussive blow that left his head ringing.

  In that darkness he saw a nondescript form striding for him.

  And then it was gone.

  Lori had reached him and taken his arm to steady him. “You okay?”

  No dizziness, no lingering darkness. His heart slogged through a thick molasses.

  “Tell them to stay back,” he said, heading for the door. “No evidence technicians until I’ve had some time.”

  “What about Montova?”

  “We’ll call him on the way.”

  “The doctor . . .”

  “You’re a doctor,” Daniel shot back, pulling the door open. “Tell me I’m not well enough to look at a dead body.”

  She finally nodded. “Try to keep your heart rate down.”

  NINE

  DANIEL KNEW BEFORE he’d set foot outside the hospital that Lori was right in suggesting he had no business walking around a room, much less running down to a crime scene. A sharp pain bit his skull with the incessancy of a barking dog. But the morphine took the edge off, and the blackout spell he’d suffered in the hospital hadn’t recurred, so he kept his mouth shut and tried to focus on Eve.

  Eve. A name tied to the killer’s victims as much as to him. Young women trapped between innocence and guilt. As with so many serial killers, Eve was undoubtedly driven by ideology. Faith. Religion. God. Satan. Ideas likely introduced by his mother.

  To Daniel’s thinking, ignorance bred killers as much as it bred religion. Once a person began to look for answers in a place unbound by the restraints of science and logic, he opened himself up to accept religious edicts that defy reason. To make war on a neighboring country or bomb the World Trade Center. Or kill innocent women every lunar cycle.

  Inasmuch as humans used religion to destroy others, religion was an enemy. Daniel explored this idea at length in Fixing the Broken Among Us.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Lori asked, setting her hand on his knee. They sat side by side behind Joseph, a local driver assigned to them by the FBI.

  Daniel blew out some air and touched the black headband she’d insisted he wear to protect the entry and exit wounds. “It’s just . . .” The thought faded.

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing, really. Eve.”

  She nodded. “Eve. He’s crawled inside of you, hasn’t he? He lives there.”

  “Now you’re sounding like Heather. My wife.”

  “I know who she is. Was.”

  Daniel glanced at her and saw that she was staring out the side window. “Was.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  Now it was her turn to play coy. “Nothing, really.” Lori faced him. “Eve.”

  The Suburban snaked up the same road they’d traveled last night. An evidence response team from FBI–Denver had already taped off a perimeter that allowed only one route into the scene, limiting potential contamination. The driver rolled down his window, spoke to the local police officer enforcing the entry point, then rolled into the canyon.

  They’d established the perimeter several hundred yards from the abandoned van’s location, curious to Daniel until he saw the black Suburban he’d driven last night sitting cockeyed on the road, under examination by a couple of agents.

  A stain darkened the asphalt beside the driver’s door. His blood, he realized.

  “Anything come back?” Lori asked.

  He shook his head.

  The driver looked over his shoulder. “Would you like me to stop, sir?”

  “Not now. Get me to the body.”

  Three vans were parked fifty yards farther up the road, still a good couple hundred yards from the cave Daniel had entered last night. The driver parked next to them.

  “Right through the trees. Special Agent Holman is waiting.”

  Daniel followed a yellow-tape corridor through the trees, toward the cliff. Lori followed close behind.

 
“He took her from the car fifty yards down the road, headed straight into the trees, and worked his way back up the cliff,” Daniel said. “This wasn’t his entry point.”

  Lori didn’t respond. Several agents stared at them as they exited the path. Only then did Daniel consider how his appearance at the scene after being shot dead must sit with anyone who knew. Which was undoubtedly all involved.

  He lowered his eyes and walked past them to Brit Holman, who stared at the cliff, smoking a cigarette. The old habit died hard among those who faced death on a daily basis.

  No cave that Daniel could see. “Where is it?”

  Brit spun back. Extinguished his cigarette in a red Altoids can he carried for this purpose. He dropped the sealed can in his jacket pocket and strode forward.

  “I’ll be a son of a gun. You’ve got to be kidding.” He stretched out his hand.

  “Better than a dead son of a gun.” Daniel stopped and studied the cliff for an opening. “It appears I owe my life to the one who studies the dead for a living.” He glanced at Lori, who smiled.

  Brit glanced down Daniel’s body, an understandable bit of observation, considering. “You were dead, my friend. She did bring you back though, didn’t she? I’ve seen my share of close calls, but . . .” Brit shook his head. “You have any . . . you know . . . anything happen?”

  “Tunnels of light? No. Where’s the victim?”

  “This way.” Brit angled for a large rock, skirted it, and walked past four agents waiting to enter the crime scene. He motioned for one of them to hand Daniel and Lori flashlights, then stepped into a narrow, obscured cave entrance now lit by a string of battery-powered fluorescent lights that ran along the floor.

  “It’s an unmarked cave. We found the exit at the top of the cliff first, then backtracked this way. Watch your head, it’s smaller than the cave we found last night.”

  Brit led them in, panning the walls with his light. “No telling how many other escape routes he had. Picks the one that suits him. Deadpan thinking, not impulsive. He had a car waiting at the other end—tire impressions indicate a sedan. There was no way we could have found this cave or the car in the dark. And he knew it. He’s got a good six hours on us. Could be in Utah by now.”