Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [101]
A shiver hurried through her body like a fever chill.
She hugged herself, rocking on her haunches as she crouched on the linoleum floor.
The round hole in the door was the room’s only window. She had no view of the outside world. She never saw daylight. There was no clock, and they had taken her wristwatch. Morning was when the attendant came with a breakfast tray, noon was the lunch tray, evening the dinner tray.
A single chair rested in a corner. It was plastic, with wobbly legs and no armrests and no seat cushion. Cray used the chair when he came for their therapy sessions once a day.
And that was it. That was all there was for her—the bed and the commode and the chair where Cray sat, and the tile floor that was cold against her bare feet.
She had kicked off her slippers, but she still wore the blue cotton outfit they’d dressed her in, the uniform of the condemned.
For the first day—Wednesday, it must have been, the day after her arrest—she had been strapped facedown to the bed, and when the sedative wore off and she started screaming, they had wedged a rubber throttle in her mouth.
Then there had been nothing she could do except lie motionless on the waterproof sheets, hearing the howls from down the hall, waiting for the nurse to enter with the syringe.
Injections every day. Always in her left arm, now purple with bruises. Medicine, they told her. She wondered.
Cray had visited her on that first day also, Cray who had shown such solicitous concern while the nurse was present, but when the nurse was gone and he was alone with Kaylie ...
Then it had been like last time, no difference at all, and she had known for sure that she was Kaylie again, Kaylie the scared teenager, Kaylie in pain.
Later, she had been set free.
A nurse and some orderlies had unstrapped her from the bed, leaving her at liberty within the room’s close confines.
She believed it was three or four days ago that this modest emancipation had occurred. She wasn’t certain, though. It might have been yesterday—or tomorrow. It might have been next month or a million years in the future.
You’re in sad shape, girl, a voice said.
Anson’s voice.
She’d been hearing him a lot lately. At first she had welcomed him. But now an unmistakable hostility had seeped into his speech, and he frightened her.
Everything frightened her.
The small room and the rubber bedding and the nurses with their needles and the screams from the far end of the ward and Cray, of course, always Cray, never forget Cray.
You won’t be wriggling out of this, Anson said. You’re a wily one, sure, kept the bloodhounds at bay for twelve years, but you’re done for now.
“Done for,” Kaylie murmured.
Got what you deserved, you vicious little bitch. Serves you right for killing my boy.
“Don’t say that.”
You killed my boy, and now you expect comfort from me? Rot in hell, whore. Better yet—rot just where you are.
Eyes shut, she drew her knees up against her chin and huddled in the tight knot of her pain.
If even Anson had turned against her, then there was no hope left.
45
Shepherd was at his desk, eating a chicken taco with too much sour cream, when his phone rang.
“Homicide,” he said through a mouthful of shredded lettuce and cheese.
“Roy?”
He recognized Undersheriff Wheelihan’s voice and took a swig of Diet Coke to clear his throat. “Chuck, what’s up?”
“Just wanted to tie a few loose ends into Boy Scout knots. We found Kaylie’s car, day before yesterday. It was parked on a fire road in the foothills near the hospital. Looks like she hiked to a ridge from there and scoped out Cray’s house. We found her shoe prints in the dirt, and a pair of cheap binoculars in the car.”
“What kind of car?” Shepherd asked, for no reason except curiosity.
“Chevy Chevette, real piece of crap, easily a couple hundred thousand miles on it. According to the registration, she bought it in Flagstaff two years