The Day Room.
She’d taken his photo in there, the one that now hung over his bed.
Moving down the hall, he passed through the doorway into a cavernous room lined with high, wire-mesh windows, moonlight slanting toward its center, illuminating a grouping of dilapidated tables and chairs, each of them bolted to the floor.
A small figure was huddled near the foot of one of the tables, half hidden in the shadows.
Abby.
Tolan stopped, the sight of her riveting him to the spot.
Sensing his presence, she turned, looking up at him with wet, lucid eyes. “Michael?”
At the sound of her voice, Tolan felt something loosen inside his chest, a flood of emotion washing through him.
Rising, Abby held out her arms to him, opening them wide.
“It’s me, Michael. I’ve come back to you.”
And then he was across the room and in her arms, pulling her close, holding her so tight he thought she might break, but she didn’t seem to mind, the tears coming again, and he was crying too, unable to contain himself.
“It took me so long to get here,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to get here. I thought I was too late.”
“It’s all right, Abby. You’re here now. You’re with me.”
They held each other for a long moment, Tolan overcome by joy and guilt, not wanting to think about what he’d done to her. The savagery.
“I won’t lie to you,” she said finally, as if she knew exactly what was going through his mind. “You hurt me, Michael. So many times in those last few days. And then that night…”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, squeezing her tighter, fighting his tears.
“But that’s not why I’m here,” she continued. “None of that matters. Not now. Not anymore.”
He pulled away from her, surprised. “How can you say that? What I did to you is unforgivable.”
“No, Michael—”
“—I don’t even remember it. I don’t want to remember.” He closed his eyes, hearing Lisa’s voice in his head. “But she told me what she saw. She saw it all.”
“What are you talking about? Who?”
“Lisa. She was there that night. And she told me more than I wanted to know.”
Abby frowned. “What did she tell you?”
“Everything. Everything that happened. The fight. The knife in my hand. The blood…” More tears filled his eyes. “I never wanted to hurt you, Abby. Never. Please believe that.”
Abby just stared at him for a moment, as if she wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say. Then sudden realization set in and she pulled him toward her. “Oh, my God, Michael, no… Don’t blame yourself for this. It isn’t your fault.”
Tolan pulled away from her again. “… What?”
“I can’t believe she’s got you thinking this way. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t you at all.”
Tolan was confused. “What are saying?”
“Lisa’s lying to you. Everything about her is a lie. That’s why I came back. To warn you about her.”
“Warn me?”
“You can’t trust anything she tells you,” Abby said. “You weren’t the one holding the knife. She was.”
And as Tolan tried to process these words, Lisa stepped into the doorway and pointed Blackburn’s gun directly at Abby’s chest.
“I think it’s time for you to go now.”
58
Blackburn was halfway up the stairs when he heard the echo of voices.
For a moment he thought they might be the voices inside his own head, the way everything was so jangled up in there. He felt dizzy and nauseous and wished he could just lie down and sleep for a long, long time.
But when you’re on a mission, there’s no time for sleep. When you’re on a mission, you keep climbing, keep walking, keep going until you reach your stated objective, no matter how difficult that may be.
And while Blackburn’s objective at this particular moment was not noble, not smart, and most decidedly not danger-free — especially when you considered the fact that his Glock had been stolen from him — it was all he had to keep him upright.
The thing that drove him.
Ever since he’d seen that ruby earring, then the bloody blanket in the trunk of the BMW, the sense of loss he’d felt, the sense of finality, the realization that he would never again see Sue Carmody alive, told him exactly what that objective needed to be.
He was no longer looking to catch a killer.
He was looking to kill one.
Funny thing was, the man he’d initially suspected was no longer the one he was after. When he stood with Clayton Simm in the forest, looking down at the newspaper photo of those fresh-faced college kids, he was shocked to realize that the only one who wasn’t smiling, the only one who wasn’t looking directly at the camera—
— was Nurse Lisa Paymer.
A much younger Lisa, to be sure, but it was unmistakably her, as unmistakable as the barely disguised scowl on her face.
And instead of smiling for the camera, she was looking directly at the victim.
At Anna Marie Colson.
And in that moment, Blackburn realized his mistake. Unlike Tolan, he was no expert on the inner workings of the human mind, but that one look into Paymer’s soul put it all in perspective for him. What he was dealing with here was a classic obsessive psychotic, and the old, stale proverb rang especially true:
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
When Anna Marie Colson messed with Paymer’s man, Paymer had gunned her down. Then, when history repeated itself fourteen years later, Paymer had taken a knife, a PowerBlast cauterizing tool, and had gone to work again.
Her only mistake had been Todd Hastert and Carl Janovic.
Blackburn couldn’t give you the wheres and the whys of her introduction to Hastert, but Paymer herself had told him she’d worked at County General, and he was sure that the crucial information about Vincent Van Gogh had been passed along to her there.
A look at Paymer’s bank records would undoubtedly yield some interesting activity.
The wild card, of course, was the evidence he’d found in Tolan’s house, but he hadn’t abandoned his theory that Tolan may have been set up.
Yet none of that really interested Blackburn right now.
For him it was all Paymer, all the time.
And she wouldn’t make it through the night.
As Blackburn reached the end of a long hallway, the voices grew louder and more distinct.
“Don’t you listen to her, Michael. She’s a freak of nature. A goddamn demon.”
“Put it down, Lisa. Nobody needs to get hurt.”
Blackburn picked up speed — or at least the best approximation of speed he could muster in his condition — and rounded a corner, finding himself in another long hallway, a wide doorway at the far end.
Standing in the room beyond, in a pool of pale moonlight, were three familiar figures: Tolan, Psycho Bitch, and Paymer.
Paymer was holding the gun. His gun.
Stopping short, Blackburn quickly ducked into a darkened dooway. His Mag-Lite had disappeared along with his Glock, and he needed a weapon of some kind, something heavy to wield.
It was dark, but he could see that there were several loose chunks of cement on the floor — reminding him of the one Psycho Bitch had tried to use on him this morning. But they’d be too awkward to deal with.
He needed a pipe. A piece of two-by-four.
He wished he’d had enough sense to get the crowbar from that trunk.
Scanning the darkness, he saw nothing he could use and was about to step outside again when he instinctively stopped, sensing a presence behind him.