Oh, thank God, she thought. She unlocked the right handcuff and tossed them across the room. Then she quickly untied her feet.
Blake was starting to stir. She thought about kicking him again, but the overwhelming desire to get her gun won out and she bolted into the living room to get her purse. She dug inside for the gun but couldn’t find it. She yanked open the mouth of her purse, her hands and eyes desperately searching every nook and corner. It wasn’t there.
Fuck! She had a terrible feeling about the missing gun but couldn’t dwell on it now. She pulled out the only weapon she had left, the scalpel.
CLICK.
An unmistakable sound.
The sound of a gun being cocked.
Behind her.
She turned. Blake, blood pouring from the wounds on his face, stood in the kitchen, aiming the .25 at her.
She cocked her arm to throw the knife.
He fired.
FORTY-THREE
“I’m looking for Alice Waterman.”
“Alice, why Alice is my daughter, but she doesn’t live here,” Betty Waterman said from her doorway.
The drive down to Santa Ana had been tough on Syd. She’d spent the hour and fifteen minutes obsessing on Ryan and Anne, trying to convince herself not to jump to conclusions. Anne had practically forced him to kiss her. And just because he left the lounge with her, didn’t mean he was going to jump into bed with her.
Then Syd got pissed at herself for trying to excuse Ryan’s behavior. He was just another asshole with a cock attached and she berated herself for thinking Ryan was somehow different.
Finally, she refocused on the case and the looming possibility that she was about to meet the Lady in Red’s parents. And that thrilling prospect fueled the last, suddenly-hope-filled miles of her drive. So now, here goes…
“Alice lives in Hollywood,” Betty said. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. Come in, please.”
Syd walked in and was hit by a wave of déjà vu. The layout of the house was almost identical to her Mom’s house in Overland Park. Small living room with lace curtains draped across a narrow picture window, tiny dining room with red and orange paisley plastic tablecloth connected to the undersized kitchen by a swinging door.
“That hunk of blubber on the couch is my husband, Cliff. Cliff, this is a police Detective, Syd… what was your last name again?”
“Curtis. Syd Curtis.” Syd stepped forward, shook Cliff’s hand. He actually wasn’t a hunk of blubber; he had a bit of a beer belly, but there was a lot of muscle on his body, and steel in his handshake. He had a friendly face, with rosy cheeks and a full head of gray hair.
Betty was thin with reading glasses perched on her slender nose, and shoulder length chestnut brown hair. “She wants to talk to us about Alice.”
A frown creased Cliff’s face as he indicated for Syd to sit in one of the chairs. Cliff and Betty sat across from her on the couch. “What’d she do now?”
“Well, to be honest I’m not sure she’s done anything. I’d like to show you a picture.” Syd had brought her backpack into the house; she fished out the surveillance picture of the Lady in Red. She handed it to Betty. “Do you recognize this woman?”
Betty and Cliff looked at the photo. “It’s not a very good picture but that’s her, all right,” Cliff said, disapprovingly. “The new improved version, she calls it. Me, I think she looks like a slut.”
“Cliff!” Betty said.
“You don’t like it either, admit it.”
“No, but I’m not going to call my daughter a slut.”
Cliff looked like he was about to say something else, then his eyes cut to Syd, and he thought better of it and shut up.
“Have you seen the news today?” Syd asked.
“I never watch the news. It’s all way too depressing for my taste. Cliff watches the news sometimes, though.”
A light bulb seemed to go off in Cliff’s head. He took the picture from his wife, looked at it. “Oh, no… Is this that surveillance photo from TV? The Lady in Red, that’s what they called her, she’s killing people, right?”
“That’s right,” Syd said
“Dear God,” Betty said. “But I thought she was finally getting better. That the new therapy was working.”
Hallelujah, thought Syd. Now for some answers. “I know something happened to Alice in high school, something involving Colin Wood and Adam Devlin, both killed by the Lady in Red. And I know there was some kind of financial settlement handled by Zachary Stone. He also killed by the Lady in Red. What I don’t know is what happened. Could you tell me, please?”
Cliff’s face hardened at the memory and he leaned back on the couch, his body language shutting down. Tears ran down Betty’s face now and she turned away from Syd.
“I’m not here to judge,” Syd said. “For Alice to act the way she has after so many years is a testament to the horrible things that must have been done to her. I’m just trying to understand why she is doing what she is doing.”
Betty reached across her husband for the box of tissues. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose. Then her eyes met Syd’s. “Do you have children, Detective?”
“No.”
“There is no greater joy, or burden.”
“We got little of the former and a more than our share of the latter,” Cliff said.
Betty ignored her husband with practiced ease. “Alice was such a delightful child. We didn’t have much money when she was growing up, but we spent a lot of family time together. Cliff always wanted a son so Alice was raised a tomboy; she loved sports and they would go hunting together every fall. And she was smart. She got into Camden Hall on a full scholarship. We’d talk about how one day she’d go to an Ivy League college and make a name for herself in corporate America. She promised us a ride on her first corporate jet.
“But things started to change when she turned fourteen. Boys suddenly became very important to her and Alice became very critical of her own looks. To be honest, Alice took a while to get pretty. She was a bit heavy, a little awkward and just didn’t seem to fit in.”
“This country’s obsession with looks and sex is disgusting,” Cliff said. “You want to blame someone for all this, blame Britney Spears, blame Paris Hilton, blame Lindsey Lohan. Blame all those bubble-headed, big-boobed, empty-headed teen queens on the cover of all the magazines and flaunting their skinny asses on TV. How’s a normal girl supposed to compete with that?”
“Alice and I are about the same age,” Syd said. “And I know the feeling. I grew up in suburb of Kansas City but was nuked by the culture bomb, too.”
“Alice used sex,” Betty said. “That’s how she competed. I didn’t know at the time, but later she told me.”
“Do we have to talk about this?” Cliff asked, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation.
“The more I know, the better chance I have of helping her,” Syd said.
“You mean catching her, don’t you,” Cliff said. “You want to catch Alice and put her in jail.”
“She’s killed three men already; I’m trying to stop her before she kills anyone else.”
“Even if they deserved to die?” Cliff asked.
I’ve been asking myself that same question, Syd thought. But gave the answer she was trained to give. “That’s for a jury to decide. She’s also in danger. She could be hurt or killed. The sooner I catch her, the safer she’ll be.”
Cliff didn’t like it but he settled back in the couch, a scowl on his face.
Betty Waterman took that as permission to speak, and she did. “When Alice was fourteen, she discovered that giving boys sexual favors made her more popular. And if a boy paid attention to her, she flew to cloud nine, but the slightest inattention would send her spiraling down. In hindsight it was so clearly manic-depressive behavior, but kids act out, right? We now know she was sick, bi-polar the doctors say, but who imagines their little girl is mentally ill.”