Chapter 43 #2
Felicity called me twenty-five minutes ago, having just discovered the short in the barn that kept the jammer from charging. According to Pell, Overton’s 911 call came in nine minutes ago. The police and I arrived four minutes ago.
Was that enough time for her to make it to safety? Assuming she wasn’t injured in the fight. Assuming her car was nearby. Assuming she isn’t on the floor of that upstairs room, her face pale, her lips blue, her—
I shake my head, rejecting the idea of a world without her in it.
One more delay now that they’re inside. That’s what I can do for her right now. Thirty more seconds to get out if she’s running. Thirty more seconds from help if she’s not.
Those are the only options I allow myself to consider as I keep my feet planted on the Overtons’ welcome mat and lean the cardigan-clad half of my body into the foyer. Time for one more bit of playacting to champion poor Lindsay, who’s already beyond help.
“You know, Officer Azad,” I shout, “it occurs to me that a crisis responder might be useful here.”
As expected, two pairs of feet come rushing back to the entryway, with a livid Azad in the lead and a sweaty, huffing Roberts several steps behind.
“Dammit, Dr. Mohr—” she starts, but I roll right over her.
“It’s just, you’ve got a domestic violence survivor in there with her abuser,” I say, delivering the most cluelessly sincere performance of my life in the middle of the sharpest terror I’ve ever experienced. “I could help you with—”
“Get the fuck out!” Roberts roars.
I raise my hands in meek surrender. “I’m, uh, technically not inside the house.” I point at my feet, then adjust my glasses with a nervous smile.
Azad looks ready to slap cuffs on me, but she contains herself to a clipped, “You and I are going to talk later.” Then she snaps at Roberts and gestures toward the stairs.
Once they’re out of sight, I allow myself to sag against the house’s exterior, doubling over and resting my hands on my knees as snow drifts around me.
Fuck, baby, please be okay.
What seems like an eternity later, a police radio squawks.
“We’ve got a body,” I hear Azad tell dispatch. “Multiple stab wounds.”
My knees hit cold concrete.
A body.
Delay and she dies.
Activity swirls around me. Running. Shouting. Someone brushing past me.
Me, who stalled the cops while she was bleeding, dying—
“Dr. Mohr?”
I lift my head to see Azad standing over me, her expression unreadable. “Can you please come with me?”
I nod jerkily and climb to my feet. I can do this.
My dread grows with each step I take into the house, up the stairs, toward that well-lit room. Death can leave a charge in the air, a sense of wrongness that cops and killers recognize. I feel it before I hit the landing. I’m sure Azad did too.
She ushers me into Overton’s bedroom, and I have to lock my knees to keep them from buckling a second time.
A body is sprawled on the floor.
It’s Overton.
Delay and she gets away.
My eyes lift to the window opposite us. It’s open, allowing cold air and gusts of snow to drift in. The sill is covered in blood.
“You had a recent altercation with Ray Overton, did you not, Dr. Mohr?”
I nod and point to the pink, shiny line on my forehead, although I can’t drag my eyes from that bloody line of wood under the window. “He’s dangerous.”
She glances at my scar before returning her gaze to Overton. “Not anymore.”
She tilts her head, taking in the ragged cut in his neck, the multiple bleeding wounds on his trunk, the snarl permanently affixed to his ashen face. “Guys like this throw their weight around, bully people they think are weaker, cry crocodile tears, and promise to change.”
“But they don’t,” I say faintly.
“They don’t,” she agrees, turning to face me. Framing me in the center of her body cam. “Lindsay is dead. I’m sorry.”
I blink, not shocked by the news but shocked that she told me so bluntly.
“What?” I ask, hoping it’s convincing. Aware that I’ve made myself a suspect by turning up here.
Not like I’d be anywhere else tonight.
Azad’s still looking at me. “Were you two involved?”
“What?” I’m certainly not faking that one.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she says with a small laugh. “Would it break confidentiality to tell me if you can think of anyone who might want to kill Ray? Other than, well, you?”
My answering laugh is strained. “Sounds like it’s good you saw me drive up tonight.”
“Yep.” She walks to the open window, and I join her.
Up close, there’s too much blood for me to bear.
Looking down at the long drop to the stone terrace below doesn’t help.
The scuffs in the snow underneath us are already filling in, although streaks of blood stand out in the floodlights.
I silently urge the wind to blow harder as Roberts and two newly arrived officers fan out, one taking pictures of the depressions and the other following Roberts toward the back of the property.
Please be okay, baby.
“You’ll give your statement to the detective when he arrives.” Azad isn’t asking me, but I nod woodenly anyway, spinning away from the window to look at Overton again. I decided a divorce lawyer and a video would stop him. I decided to let him live so I could keep Rue. And Lindsay died.
“I just wanted her to be okay.” I tell Azad the unvarnished truth. “I wanted her to get away from him.”
Azad sighs. “I would’ve liked that too.”
My drive home takes longer than nineteen minutes.
I obey every traffic law, aware that I’m on Dianne Azad’s radar even after giving a bullshit but vaguely verifiable statement to the detective who arrived at the house around three in the morning.
My cell phone location data puts me at home during Overton’s 911 call, too far away for me to have held the knife.
Still, no serial killer likes a cop asking him to stay available for more questions.
Rue hasn’t called. Not me, and not Felicity.
Neither of us knows where she’s gone, and neither of us knows how badly she’s hurt.
I just know the blood I saw on the window, on the ground, in the snow.
Felicity’s on her way to the farmhouse, and I’m driving past Rue’s new goddamn house, then calling every hospital in the area after that if I have to.
Saint Olga heard my prayer, but she only gave me a partial answer.
It’s more than I deserve, I suppose. So I continue driving in the swirling snow, unsure if I’m grateful it helped cover her tracks or devastated that it wiped away the last trace of her I might ever see.