Chapter 11 #3
Carter opened the hotel room door, and Lincoln couldn’t stop his body’s instinctive reaction as he got his first live look at Stacy Weathers.
Or rather dead. It only took a second to make that assessment: the blood, the eyes, the lack of chest movement, the smell.
He turned his face away and swallowed hard, forcing down the rising bile.
But unlike earlier at the church, and unlike all those years ago at Fame High, the queasy feeling receded quickly as his other skills—the ones he’d spent the past fifteen years honing—charged to the forefront.
For the first time since Beverley appeared in his classroom, Lincoln felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, fully back in his element. This was a stage he was comfortable on.
O’Shea cleared his throat. “I’m gonna go notify the front desk and check in with ERT. See how far out they are. You two good?”
Carter mumbled something in response and tossed him the key he’d gotten from the desk clerk.
Lincoln turned his attention back to the scene and began cataloging the things wrong with this picture.
The blood pooling on the bedsheets beneath Stacy’s bound hands and sliced forearms was more red than brown and some of it still dripped from her mangled wrists.
And from where Lincoln stood just inside the door, he observed only the initial signs of rigor—a few fingers curled on each hand and Stacy’s jaw clenched loosely around the gag.
A pair of booties was shoved into his hand, and Lincoln put them on, steadying himself against Carter. “The clerk didn’t see anyone come or go from the room?”
He returned the steadying favor as Carter did the same.
“Nothing,” Carter said. “Stacy paid the clerk extra when she checked in. Asked for a room on the backside here and not to be bothered.” Gloves came next.
“Got the impression it’s a regular request. Transients, junkies, and the like.
Security cameras don’t work either. Just for show. ”
They quickly discussed how best to get a closer look without disturbing evidence, then, game plan decided—Lincoln would examine the body, Carter would sweep the room—Lincoln waited for Carter to snap a few scene pictures with his phone before approaching the closest side of the bed.
“Drug paraphernalia on the chest of drawers,” Carter said as he rounded the end of the bed. “Unused. Directly in her line of sight. Ditto the mirror.”
From his crouch beside the bed, Lincoln glanced over his shoulder, taking in Stacy Weathers’s deathbed view—her own self, bound, beaten and tortured, and the drugs that had ruined her life.
Likely led her here? He turned back to the body, away from the reflection, before the disassociation from the immediate scene brought back the bile.
Avoiding the dripping blood, he laid two fingers against her neck.
No pulse. He added two more fingers, feeling for temp.
Warm. He reached up and lifted one eye, then the other. Minor corneal clouding.
“How long?” Carter asked.
Lincoln withdrew his hand and straightened.
“We need liver temp to be sure, but no more than six hours. There’s minor rigor and corneal clouding, so probably more than three.
Given the worsening weather, there’s no way our copycat made it out here and back to DC in that time window, not if he intends to keep to Dr. Fear’s clock. ”
“Because our copycat didn’t kill her.”
Lincoln’s gaze shot up and across the bed to where Carter stood next to the opposite bedside table. “What?”
“Come take a look at this,” he said, not lifting his eyes from the table.
Lincoln carefully made his way around the bed and teetered to a halt as soon as he glimpsed the handwriting on the outside of the folded sheet of paper propped on the table. Dr. Monroe, in a script he’d recognize anywhere. “Get pictures before I move it,” he told Carter.
Carter snapped more shots, and Lincoln eyed the surrounding area for gray hairs.
Anything to avoid contemplating his name, in Dr. Fear’s handwriting, on the outside of that note.
No gray strands that he saw but they’d have to alert ERT to the possibility.
The likelihood? Could he say that much with certainty yet?
No, but it was the best hypothesis they had.
Whether or not it applied to the copycat might not matter much longer, but this wasn’t the copycat’s kill.
“All right,” Carter said, stepping aside so Lincoln could scoot in front of him in the narrow space between the bed and wall. “You’re good. I’m going to keep snapping pictures over your shoulder.”
Lincoln picked up the note with surprisingly steady hands and found not one but two sheets of paper. He unfolded them, but before flipping them over, held them up to the light beside the bed.
“Letter Elegant,” Lincoln said. “Batch 302.”
“Fuck,” Carter murmured. “It was him.”
“Them.”
“His clock. That’s what the copycat said.”
Lincoln lowered the sheets and turned them over. The first was Stacy Weathers’s diagnosis. “Fear the drugs would kill her.”
“They did,” Carter said, gesturing at the unused paraphernalia on the table. “They were bait. The copycat probably used them to lure her.”
“And Dr. Fear wouldn’t have had time to stalk her. To learn if she had any real—or rather, clinically diagnosable—phobias.”
“I suspect it was real enough for her. I infiltrated a heroin cartel once with this ATF agent out of San Francisco. Addicts know the drugs will kill them one day. They fear that—it’s not a good death—but the fear of going without, of withdrawal, of facing reality is more powerful.”
Lincoln glanced from the note to Stacy to the gashes carved into her arms. And gasped, the realization setting in now that he had the added context of Dr. Fear’s diagnosis. “Look at the cuts, where they’re located.”
Carter tilted sideways, peering closer, then whipped back upright, horrified gaze turned to Lincoln. “Did he connect the track marks?”
Lincoln nodded. “I think so.”
Carter’s eyes flickered to the notes. “What’s on the second sheet?”
Bile crept up Lincoln’s throat again. On it, a wave of fear that the second sheet might be his own diagnosis.
Or Carter’s. More likely his, as it had been addressed to him.
He flipped it over—and slowly breathed out through his nose, careful not to heavy sigh particulates onto the paper. Another diagnosis of the copycat.
Except it was evolving. “He scratched out fear of anonymity,” Lincoln said. “Idolatry as a diagnosis, along with a fear of disappointment and the truth. Fuck, they know each other. And Dr. Fear realizes it now too. It’s not just a random copycat trying to steal his notoriety.”
“Which is why he intervened in the copycat’s kill.” Carter gestured at Stacy. “Tit for tat. He’s escalating.”