Hide & Seek - James Patterson [57]
Suzanne grinned and reached for him. “Now that's the proper spirit. Your room or mine?”
“Yours,” he said. “We'll use your toys.”
Suzanne Purcell had no idea how she had gotten herself into this mess. She felt as though she were having an out-of-body experience.
The moment she'd stepped into her hotel room, Will had hit her from behind. Not that she could tell what had happened at first. She'd felt a hard wallop between her shoulder blades. Then the blue shag rug seemed to be rushing up at her face. She hit the floor hard, and lost consciousness.
And she awoke like this.
He'd tied her with jump ropes that she used as part of her exercise routine. He'd gagged her with her own bra, and more rope.
Then he'd put her in the bathtub.
That was when it started to get bad, unbelievably bad.
He cut both her wrists and watched her blood flow into the tub and down the drain.
He just sat there and watched her bleed.
Suzanne struggled wildly against the ropes, and made strange, muffled sounds.
She had tried to scream, but the gag was too tight. Finally, she decided to plead with Will—using her eyes.
“Oh, I see,” he finally spoke to her. “Now you want to talk things through. You probably even want to take back some of those nasty remarks you made outside? Am I right, Suzy? You see, I have a brain too.”
She nodded her head as best she could. She was losing a lot of blood, and she was starting to feel woozy—as if she might pass out.
“I know this isn't an authentic suicide, but it's like one. The next best thing,” Will said. “It's fascinating to watch someone die. You can't imagine. Your eyes are amazing to watch right now. About a thousand thoughts coursing through your brain, right? You can't believe that you, the great Suzanne Purcell, are about to die. It's too weird, right? Your life can't just end like this, right? It's all in your eyes, Suzanne. Extraordinary.”
Will suddenly stopped talking.
He just watched her—bleed. It was definitely like a suicide. Like his father's.
When Michael Caputo came to Suzanne's hotel the following morning, he wanted to wish her a safe trip home, and thought, maybe, he might get lucky. Suzanne didn't answer the house phone or respond to his knock.
He finally got the manager to open her door. Drugs, he thought. Damn her. Why did nearly every beautiful woman have to be a head case?
He found Suzanne naked and badly cut, unconscious but still alive. She was handcuffed to the hotel bed. It would be half a year before she could act in another movie, and her close-ups would never be the same.
Suzanne swore to Caputo, and then to the police, that it hadn't been Will. She would say no more than that. She wouldn't press charges.
Not a word to anybody.
He had scared her that badly. She believed that Will was capable of murder, of anything.
BOOK FOUR
Dark Side of the Moon
CHAPTER 65
I AM NOT a murderer.
I never murdered anyone. Or so I've begun to tell myself, over and over again.
As we entered the courthouse everyone was staring at me, and I couldn't catch my breath. I felt I must be going mad. Maybe I am.
Policemen from the prison, as well as my faithful cadre of expensive lawyers, had me surrounded, penned in, claustrophobic. I remembered how it had been in the crawl space under the house at West Point. All the horror stories seemed to be coming together.
It was pouring, and hundreds of people, mostly with black umbrellas, but a few with blue and red ones, had turned out to catch a glimpse of the so-called famous murderess.
It destroyed me to know that my children would see me like this—in handcuffs, wearing my scarlet M.
We marched into the courthouse and upstairs to a room where Judge Andrew Sussman was waiting. The judge was a large man, about six foot six, with a salt-and-pepper beard that he allowed to grow in wild and bushy. He was probably in his mid-forties, and reminded me of a rabbi. That was a good sign; it made me think that he would be just and fair. That was all I wanted.
Justice. Fairness. The American