The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [173]
Robby spun, swinging his Glock in the direction of the voice—but an electric shock jolted him, like a lightning bolt attacking his muscles. He convulsed.
Pain shot through him. His arms spasmed, his body went numb, and his mind exploded into a mess of disorientation as he dropped to his knees.
“Thanks for coming,” Dead Eyes said. “How nice it is to kill you.”
eighty-six
What happened? Where am I? Who’s talking?
A voice, in the distance . . . and a feeling that something was terribly wrong.
“I’m saving you from the evil this bitch would’ve brought upon you, Detective. It’s an evil that’s generational, an evil that must be purged. An evil that spreads, invades, and infects. You’re infected . . . you must be killed like a germ.”
Robby’s muscular twitching and fatigue were still pervasive. The intense vertigo and numbness, however, were clearing and his senses were coming back to him: he smelled a rank odor . . . felt raw nerve pain flaring in his shoulder . . . saw a dark figure looming, leaning down toward him—
And heard a woman’s scream: “No!”
Robby instinctively threw up his arms to protect himself. But his movements were still slow and ineffective. The assailant brought his arm down—
—and then crumpled to the ground, beside Robby, atop Vail’s lap.
Standing there was Bledsoe, a thick two-by-four in his hands. “You okay?”
Robby’s eyes shifted to Vail, who just sat there, apparently lacking the strength to move. His twitching ceased, the pain subsided, and normal vision returned. “Karen. . . .” He rolled onto his side and clumsily pulled the handcuffs from his belt. He got them around the wrists of Dead Eyes and ratcheted them down. Bledsoe grabbed the offender’s torso and dragged the unconscious body toward the opening.
Robby removed his windbreaker, draped it around Vail’s shoulders, then drew her close. “I was afraid I was going to lose you.”
She squeezed him softly, with all her remaining strength. “That’s never gonna happen.”
eighty-seven
Karen Vail stood behind a large one-way mirror in the Special Needs cell block of the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. Chase Hancock had been found in New Jersey, laying low and looking for work. As for Vail, her wrists were wrapped in cock-up splints, and she was wearing a figure-eight support on her shoulders and a hinged metal brace on her left knee. High-dose Motrin floated in her bloodstream. The ER physician prescribed Vicodin, but she wanted to be lucid, in complete control of her surroundings.
It’s always about control, isn’t it?
Beside Vail stood Paul Bledsoe, along with Thomas Gifford and the rest of the task force squad. Vail was transfixed on the scene unfolding behind the glass, where Behavioral Science Unit criminologist Wayne Rudnick had begun questioning a shackled Dead Eyes killer. Normally, one or two task force members would be in the interview room with their quarry. That was just the way it was done: those who tracked and caught the killer were given the opportunity to interrogate. It was like the reward, the dessert for eating your vegetables. But due to the complexity of the offender’s psychological condition, Bledsoe had reluctantly deferred to the BSU specialist.
The Dead Eyes killer abruptly stood and shouted. “Get her in here! Fucking bitch. Where is she? I’ll kill her!”
“Sam,” Rudnick said, maintaining his calm, “Please relax. I need you to sit, Sam, so we can continue to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. All I want to do is kill her! Where is that bitch?” The chair went flying and the metal table overturned, knocking Rudnick to the floor. Four guards rushed the room, moving to restrain the killer—who was still fairly well contained by the shackles. But it was a raucous and adrenaline-spilling situation nonetheless.
“You okay?” a guard asked.
“I’m fine,” Rudnick said, his voice tinny through the speaker. Even through the one-way mirror, Vail could see Rudnick’s face was red from embarrassment. She watched him brush back his wild, tightly coiled hair and shrug his shoulders to reseat his worn, corduroy sport coat.
Upon Vail