“God, I’m dying,” he moaned behind her.
“I wish,” she muttered. Taking out her cell, she punched in a number and walked out onto the bridge to look up at the night sky. The wind had died down, but the stars remained obscured by the clouds.
It rang once before Garcia picked up. “Cat? Where are you? What the hell is going—”
“Did she make it?”
“She’s going to live.”
“Thank God.” She glanced over at the man down in the tower and turned back around. “I shot the bastard, but he’s going to make it, too.”
“The cops are crawling all over the West Side. Where are you?”
“Those green steps on Prospect Boulevard. Top of the green stairs, on the bluff.”
“I’ll send an ambulance.”
“Tony, he says he killed twins. I hope to God he’s—” She heard a scuffling noise and a chilling wail. For an instant, everything in front of her went black. She gasped.
“Cat!” Garcia yelled from the cell. “What is it?”
“Charles,” she breathed, and lowered the phone. Turning around, she looked at the tower platform. Empty. She ran across the walkway and looked down. He’d crawled to the edge and slipped between the bars. By the glow of the streetlamps, she could see his lifeless body sprawled on the sidewalk at the foot of the tower.
Had it been a desperate attempt to escape, or an effort to end his life his way? She didn’t want to weigh the third possibility: that her emotions had for once taken over his psyche, making her death wish for him become a reality.
Chapter 41
YELLOW POLICE TAPE and flashing squad lights took over the neighborhood at the top of the tower, as well as the sidewalks and street at the bottom. A few people were roused from their beds by the sirens, throwing on coats and jackets over their pajamas to go outside and check out the ruckus. Half an hour after the body was taken away by the ME’s hearse, a television news van pulled up and then promptly departed. There were no photographers, reporters, or news helicopters anywhere in sight.
Bernadette and Garcia sat in the front seat of his car. Every once in a while, he thumped the steering wheel with his fist to punctuate a point. Her gloves were off and in her lap, and she fiddled with them as he spoke. Her jean jacket had been bagged, and she never wanted to see it again. It was covered with Charles’s blood and some of hers. Another article of outerwear lost to this case. The cuts on her face and fingers hurt, but the paramedics had taped her up.
A couple of blocks away, yellow tape also trapped Charles’s house. Bernadette and Garcia had gotten there just in time. Regina Ordstruman had nearly bled to death in Araignee’s elegant claw-foot tub. She was a University of Minnesota senior with a major in American studies and double minors in anorexia and depression. She’d never been a patient at the VonHader clinic, but Regina had tried to commit suicide twice before her twentieth birthday. She’d met Charles through the Suicide Stop Line that he’d so enthusiastically staffed as a regular volunteer—the number provided by the unknowing but ever-helpful Professor Wakefielder.
The tub and river drownings would all be examined to see how Charles Araignee had first come in contact with his victims. Recent drowning cases in Minnesota and Wisconsin would have to be resurrected to see if any were the twins Charles had tried to use as a bargaining chip. The murderer himself would be studied postmortem to see how one man’s childhood obsession could turn into a killing spree spanning two states.
Because her death didn’t match the pattern, the toughest loose end could be Zoe Cameron. Even if her autopsy showed she’d died of an overdose rather than her eating disorder, Bernadette was uncertain of Charles’s complicity. Araignee could have talked her into suicide while the girl sat in that oppressive waiting room, or Cameron could have done it all on her own—the tragic timing wreaking havoc with the investigation into Wakefielder. The prof’s lawyer would probably sue everyone in sight, but Bernadette figured no one owed Wakefielder anything. He purposely and habitually surrounded himself with unstable women half his age. Maybe this mess would convince him to stop offering classes that attracted basket cases.
Bernadette wasn’t at all certain she would be entrusted with tying up the loose ends, or be allowed to take credit for cracking the cases in the first place. Even if she and Garcia managed to keep the use of her sight out of the reports, there would be other questions raised about how she’d conducted her investigation. For starters, the cops and the ME were asking how her suspect, though shot through the gut, could have managed to crawl out of the tower and fall to his death.
“He was alive when I called you,” she told Garcia for the fourth time. “I did not push him. He jumped. Crawled, actually.”
“After you shot him.”
“Yes.” She glanced through the window, at the tower across the street. “What else do you want from me?”
“Your gun’s been turned over. His revolver’s been recovered. We’ll have to wait for ballistics. The crime scene crew is crawling all over the shooting gallery that used to be his kitchen.” He paused. “I have to ask …”
“What?”
“Do you need some more time on the gun range or what? Why couldn’t you hit him the first twenty times?”
She flexed her injured hand, a reminder of all the weirdness that had taken place while she and Garcia were stalking their prey in the house. “I was afraid if I shot him, I would also be …” Her voice trailed off.
“Let’s keep that out of the reports, shall we?”
“Good idea.” She looked over at all the blue uniforms mingling with the black FBI jackets. “Who from St. Paul Homicide—”
“Ed has it all under control.”
“Your cousin drew the short straw on this?” She sank back against the car seat. “I suppose he’s got questions about this tower thing, too.”
Garcia rubbed his face with his hand. “You could say that.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry if I’ve put you in an uncomfortable position.”
“I want you to go home and get some sleep.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Please stay put, Cat.”
“I will.”
“I mean it. This is serious now.”
“I know it is,” she said.
“Don’t leave the house without talking to me first.”
“I won’t go anywhere.”
“Don’t even go downstairs to collect your mail without calling me.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“I’ve gotta hang around,” he said tiredly. “I’ll have one of our folks take you home.”
“Not Thorsson,” she said. “He’ll lose me.”
Garcia’s face lightened for the first time since they got in the car. “Not Thorsson.”
EVEN THOUGH she felt as if she’d been trapped in Garcia’s car forever, dawn was still a couple of hours away by the time she got dropped at home. She was pretty sure Charles’s suicide had happened after the papers’ deadlines, but there’d be something on the TV news later in the morning. She made a mental note to leave the television off for the day and stay away from newspapers for the rest of the week. She walked into the bathroom, flipped on the lights, and peeled off her clothes. She activated the shower and hopped in the tub. The hot water felt good. She heard her phone ringing and ignored it.
Tired and aching, she threw on a bathrobe and hobbled into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. The phone again. She picked it up off the counter. “What?”
Garcia said, “Did you see the morning paper?”
“You told me not to pick up the mail.”
“Meet me at the VonHader place. Don’t go in. Wait for me.”
“Both men are in jail,” she said. “There’s no one there.”