Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Durham, New Hampshire
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
7:19 p.m.
Dean had been released from custody.
Every cell in her body screamed as though it’d been put through the blender. It’d worked. The alibi she’d given Durham PD had gotten him released. He was coming home. Any minute now. It’d been a long few days. She hadn’t been able to sleep alone in her too-small twin bed across from her brother’s since Dean’s arrest. Classwork had been shoved to the back of her mind. She’d barely managed to remember to feed her and her brother, but none of that mattered anymore.
He was coming back. To her.
Leigh pinched the end of the balloon with one hand and blew into it. Dean hated yellow. Said he had a physical reaction anytime he saw it, but that was all she’d been able to get from the bookstore on short notice. The streamers might’ve been a bit much, but they had reason to celebrate. She’d done her hair and makeup. She’d told her brother not to expect her back in their dorm room tonight and left him with money for pizza. She still wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol, but she and Dean could get by without it. Actually, she preferred it that way. She wanted to remember this night. Every minute, every touch, every kiss.
She tied off the balloon and tossed it onto the bed with the rest. She’d even taken the initiative to clean up his space. Washed the sheets, lit a candle, tossed all the garbage. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she set her palms on her knees and studied the decorations. Then got up and fixed a streamer that’d fallen. Everything had to be perfect. And she was ready. For them to move on with their lives. To start something new. Just as she’d tried—and failed—to do for her dad. But the past wasn’t going to ruin tonight. This was about the two of them and his promise to take care of her. Always.
The minutes ticked by. Too slow. Twenty. Fifty. Two hours.
Leigh checked her phone for the one hundredth—or was it the two hundredth?—time. He hadn’t called or messaged her. Hers went unanswered. Straight to voicemail. Had the police found a reason to keep him in custody? The investigating detective had told her he’d be released today, and Professor Morrow hadn’t emailed her about any more developments in the case. As far as Durham PD was concerned, Dean was innocent. Her alibi had saved him.
It wasn’t until after midnight Leigh got off that damn bed and stumbled back to her dorm room. Knowing Dean wasn’t ever going to walk through that door again.
Durham, New Hampshire
Thursday, October 10
7:36 p.m.
Her fingertips prickled with numbness.
Leigh tried to drag her chin away from her chest, but the momentum only caused her to overcorrect. The back of her head hit metal. Lightning struck down her spine. She couldn’t help the groan that followed.
“What was it that gave me away, Leigh?” That voice. She knew that voice. Familiar but different. Rawer.
Churning water reached her ears. Instant dread pooled at the back of her throat. Water. The basement. Gravity pinned her in place. So… heavy. Sharp edges cut into her wrists as she tried to bring one hand up, but the bite of pain was enough to wake her up. A single emergency lantern lit up a corner of the room. Thick columns supported an exposed ceiling of piping, electrical work, and fluorescent lighting. No windows. The entire room had been painted white, but there didn’t seem to be any use for it other than storage with cubby-like shelves framed against the wall in front of her.
Her shoes were soaked, under a foot of flood water. A new wave of nausea seized control as she tugged at the zip ties around her wrists and ankles. The chair swayed as she rocked from left to right. One wrong move, and she’d never get back up. “You… You killed them.”
How was that possible? How hadn’t she seen the signs before now?
“Was it the driver’s licenses?” Movement lapped water higher up her shins. Then he was standing right in front of her. Looking the same as she remembered. The lantern cast half of his face in shadows, but he didn’t resemble the monster they’d been hunting all this time. “No. You were suspicious of me before that. Had to be the tattoo that medicolegal investigator found on the marshal’s body. What’s her name? Jenny. Also, that’s a really weird word. Medicolegal. What the hell kind of position is that? What do you think?”
The marshal. The real Max Ford. His was the body she’d recovered from the kill room. Leigh sucked in a humidity-laced breath to clear her head. People really had to stop hitting her in the head. She wasn’t sure how much more her brain could take, but, she supposed, it was better than being stabbed or given a bullet wound. She summoned the energy to meet his gaze, but it cost her more than she’d thought. Her head slumped downward again. “I’m starting to think I’m a terrible judge of character.”
His laugh reverberated through her. Ford—or whatever the hell his name was—straightened. “Can’t argue with that. You read killers better than anyone I’ve ever met. Except for the one right in front of you.”
“You’re a real terror. You know that? Who steals their victims’ identities and tries to become them?” Leigh memorized the layout of the room. Every inch, every corner, every wall. Water leaked in from the ceiling and walls, past the rubber-like sealant and paint. The entire city seemed to drain straight onto this campus. But she had time. She could get herself out of this.
“I live those lives better than they ever could.” Ford pulled his glasses free, tucking them into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He stripped that off next, tossing it. In a matter of seconds, he stood before her as an entirely different person. No longer unsure of himself or his role in this investigation, but volatile. Provoking. With a murderous edge that could surely destroy her. He shrugged, but the movement didn’t feel natural. A leftover from one of his stolen identities. “And maybe one day, I’ll find one that sticks.”
A laugh ripped free without her permission. Most likely from a concussion, because this certainly wasn’t a funny moment. “I don’t think you’ll ever stop. You like the challenge too much. Staying in one place or in one identity too long equates to death for you. You’ve gotten a taste for it, and now you’re addicted. You couldn’t stop if you tried.”
Ford cocked his head to one side, the lantern lighting up more of that face she’d found so handsome mere hours ago. Well, more than handsome, but she wasn’t going to think on her love life right now. “Does that brain of yours ever stop trying to work out the patterns?” He crouched in front of her, showcasing the gun at his hip. Along with the badge he’d taken off a dead man. “Does it ever drive you mad when you don’t get the answers it craves?”
“Do you ever stop trying to be a murderous asshole?” She was kind of proud of that one. Leigh rotated her wrists to test the slack in the zip ties. There was none. If she was getting out of here, it would most likely be in a body bag when the medical examiner recovered her remains and Ford was long gone. But that wasn’t going to stop her from trying.
“Come on now, Leigh.” Straightening to his full height, Ford unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled them back one at a time, exposing muscular forearms. And the stretch of bloodied gauze. From where she’d sliced into him with a moldy shard of mason jar. He turned his back on her, reaching for something near the lantern. She couldn’t see what. If she was being honest, she didn’t want to. It most likely would be bagged as evidence in her murder later. And who really wanted to see how they would die when it came right down to it? “Be honest. You would’ve had me undressed in a matter of seconds if we hadn’t been interrupted during that last kiss.”
Acid charged up her throat, and she stuck her tongue out to counter her gag reflex. She really did have the worst taste in men. “That was before I knew you’d killed nine people. Can’t say murder is a turn-on, even in my line of work.”
“That’s too bad. Because I’m afraid our time together is just beginning.” Ford approached her with a single syringe in one hand, his thumb positioned on the depressor. “No one knows you’re here. Not even your daughter. I made sure she knew you’d be gone for a while so we could search the building together. No one will be able to hear you scream. And you will scream, Leigh. I’ll make sure of it.”
The last shred of her bravery seemed to rush out of her at the sight of clear liquid in the syringe. Arsenic and cyanide? Leigh tried to press her toes into the floor to add distance between them, but the chair wouldn’t budge. That needle was not going in her eye. “You’re Teshia Elborne’s high school boyfriend.”
“Surprise.” His voice hiked up on the last syllable, but again, it sounded so unnatural. Trying too hard to mimic someone else. “You know, I’d done a damn good job making sure Teshia’s death couldn’t be linked back to me. I did everything I was supposed to. I destroyed evidence, wore gloves, changed and burned my clothes after I left her in front of this building. Never once touching the body. But your buddy Dean just wouldn’t let it go. Probably because I tried to frame him for murder, but then you had to go and give him an alibi. You ruined my plans.”
Ford took a step closer.
Fear spiked in her veins. Raising her heart rate. Interrupting logic. Suddenly, she was all survival skills. Faced with a very real threat she couldn’t run from. Sweat beaded at the back of her neck. “Why?” She wanted that question to sound more stable, but she had to give herself credit. “Why kill her at all?”
“Would you believe me if I told you it’d been an accident? That one minute she was standing right in front of me and the next I’d stabbed her with a syringe.” Ford’s gaze took on a glazed distance. “We had a plan. I was supposed to take over my parents’ farm. We’d planned on getting married after high school graduation, having a couple of kids. All I wanted was a simple life. I thought she did, too, but then she started talking about going to college, seeing the world, finding herself, and all that bullshit people romanticize, but I knew that’s not what she really wanted. Then again, Teshia had never been good about following orders. I tried to get her to come around—by force sometimes—but the last time she checked herself out of the hospital without my permission and disappeared. Didn’t take me long to catch up with her, though. Never was very bright, but I never intended for her to die. I loved her. That’s why I followed her to Granite State. I just wanted her to come home, but she wouldn’t listen.”
So he and Teshia Elborne hadn’t been on again–off again. She’d been on the run from an abusive partner. The seat of the wooden chair cut into the backs of Leigh’s thighs as her body tensed against his approach. “But you didn’t stop there. You framed Dean Groves for her murder, used chemicals from his lab to connect him to her death.”
“He really shouldn’t have touched what was mine,” Ford said.
The possessiveness in that single statement dried her mouth. “And the others? The men you killed, the ones whose lives you stole?”
“Do you ever find yourself wishing to be someone else? Wishing you could run away from all the problems in your life and start over? It worked for a while. Becoming those men helped with the guilt of what I’d done to Teshia, but the more lives I stole over the years, the less I could pretend someone else had killed her. After a while, nothing helped.”
Faster than she thought possible, Ford was on her, pulling her head back by her hair. Pressing the tip of the needle against her left eye, he stared down at her. A stranger. Nothing of the man he’d manipulated her to see left in his features. An unrealistic sense of calm came over him. As if this was always meant to be the end between them. Like he’d planned this exact scenario. Had any of it been real?
“Until I learned Dean had caught on to my little experiment about a year ago. Color me surprised when I discovered he hadn’t been charged and sentenced with Teshia’s death and that you had alibied him for the night she died. Well, I couldn’t think of a better way to lure him out of the shadows than by putting you right where I wanted you. But to get to you, I needed your attention.”
Understanding hit. “Alice Dietz.” It’d been a trap. One she’d fallen into without a second thought. “You said you researched me. You knew who I was, knew that I wouldn’t be able to turn down the chance to find Teshia Elborne’s killer and close the case.”
“Closure. I think that’s your need, Leigh. First with your brother’s case, now this one, and I wanted to give it to you. For my own purposes, of course. So I did my homework on you, discovered your ties to Professor Morrow and this university. And there she was. His plaything. She really does look an awful lot like Teshia, doesn’t she?” Ford backed off a few inches. “You really have a talent for understanding why killers succumb to their nasty little urges, Leigh. All this time, after all my research, I thought I’d understood you just as well, but you surprised me with that theory I needed those victims to fulfill needs I couldn’t get anywhere else. It was inspired. But would you believe me if I said you’ve managed to show me one need I could never satisfy with them?”
Dean had been telling the truth. He’d disappeared to find the man responsible for Teshia Elborne’s death. To clear his name. Leigh clutched the end of the chair’s arm, fingernails digging into the soft wood. The needle was one wrong move from piercing her cornea, and it took everything in her power not to flinch.
“You made me want to be understood.” Ford tugged her head back into the chair. “That’s why I’m going to make this last as long as possible.”