id816
“Is she okay?” Jessie demanded.
“I’m trying to determine that right now,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of confusion.”
“What officer are you talking to?” Ryan asked, wrapping a protective arm around Jessie’s shoulder. “Can you conference them in with us?”
Before Parker could reply, Jessie got a call on her cell. The screen read simply: Lemmon. She answered it immediately, hoping that the psychiatrist would be on the other end of the line and not some officer bearing bad news.
“Dr. Lemmon?”
“Jessie,” the familiar voice of Janice Lemmon said, “I’m okay, mostly.”
“What do you mean?” Jessie asked, feeling like a child talking to a parent.
”There was an intruder,” Lemmon said. ”He attacked me. I was able to fend him off, but not before I got a few bruises and a nasty cut on my forehead. The EMTs are cleaning it up now, but they want to take me to the hospital to suture it properly and do a more thorough work-up on me.”
“But you’re going to be okay?” Jessie appealed.
“I’m going to be okay,” Lemmon assured her.
Jessie was amazed at the woman’s calm, almost clinical tone. Admittedly, before she left law enforcement to focus on psychiatry, Janice Lemmon had been a profiler who worked with the FBI and LAPD. She’d seen more awful stuff than most. But to be so composed in the face of an imminent threat to her own safety was remarkable.
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“It appears that Jessie’s old friend, Mark Haddonfield, has long tentacles. Another one of his devotees, who apparently also read his manifesto, decided that as long as people were trying to take out her friends and family, an old lady with a cane might make a good target. I don’t know how he found out I was your therapist, Jessie, but he did. Anyway, he waited until Amy went on her lunch break and I was eating alone in the office.”
“I thought you increased your security lately?” Ryan said.
“I did,” Lemmon told him, “with additional locks and a security guard hired by the building who patrols our floor regularly. But apparently this young man waited until the guard went to the restroom to make his move. He broke into the outer office and then my inner one. Then he charged at me with a hatchet. Luckily, when I heard all the hubbub in the outer office, I had to time to get out the taser I now keep in my top drawer. I fired it at him, and he collapsed. Unfortunately, his momentum led him to collapse into me too, knocking me out of my chair and slashing my head on a cabinet. Thus, the bruises and the impressive gash. The guard heard me calling for help and secured the young man—who was still convulsing from the taser—until the police arrived.”
“But the EMTs don’t think you have any life-threatening injuries,” Jessie said, as if speaking the words forcefully would make it so.
”We”ll know for sure in a bit, but I think it will turn out to be just bumps, bruises, and cuts,” Lemmon said, before adding, ”They”re telling me that I have to hang up. They”re going to take me down to the ambulance in a stretcher, and we”re about to get moving.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “Please give us an update when you’re able.”
“Will do,” Lemmon said before hanging up.
In the brief silence that followed, one thought came into Jessie’s head. This had to end. How many of the people she cared about would continue to be put at risk in her name? Mitch was dead. Kat had almost met the same fate. And now Dr. Lemmon had barely escaped a hatchet attack in her own office.
Jessie could think of only one way to make this stop. She had to go to the source. Despite everyone’s recommendation that she not feed the beast—that it would only make things worse—she had to meet with Mark Haddonfield.
“Are we all still on the line?” Captain Parker asked after what she apparently deemed a respectful pause.
”We are,” Ryan told her. ”Dr. Lemmon is gone, but Jessie and I are still here.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation, but I was glad to hear the doctor seems to be doing okay,” Parker said. “I’d certainly understand if you wanted to go to the hospital to see her, Ms. Hunt.”
“No,” Jessie said quickly. “We all heard her. She sounds like she’s in good hands. I’ll go check on her when I get a chance. But right now, I want to finish out this case.”
“All right,” Paker said, her tone softer than it was prior to the call from Lemmon. “Here’s what I can offer you: two hours. You have until 4:30 to disprove Mitchell Vaughn as our killer. No later. I’m going to tell Chief Decker he can schedule his news conference for that time. If you don’t have anything conclusive by then, he names Vaughn. Fair?”
Jessie didn’t know if Parker was making the concession because she had some doubt about Vaughn’s guilt or merely out of pity because her psychiatrist had nearly been killed. Either way, she’d take it.
“Fair,” she said.
“Thanks, Captain,” Ryan added.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Parker warned. “The clock is ticking. I suggest you get a move on.”
Then she hung up. Jessie didn’t mind the abruptness this time. They were going to need every second. She had just over two hours to decide if they had a serial killer in custody or if the person poisoning all these women was still out there.