The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 1-5 - Catherine Coulter [643]
She watched Savich bend down to unpin a note that was fastened to the front of Linda Cartwright’s bathrobe. She saw for the first time that the woman was heavy, just as Savich had read off her driver’s license. “Don’t let Becca come in here,” he said to Sherlock, not looking up as he read the note. “This is too much. Make sure she stays outside.”
“I’m already here,” Becca said, swallowing again and again against the nausea in her stomach, the vomit rising in her throat. “What is that note?”
“Becca—”
It was Adam and he was turning toward her. She put up her hands. “What is that note?” she asked again. “Read it, please.”
Savich paused, then read slowly, his voice firm and clear:
Hey, Rebecca, you can call her Gleason. Since she didn’t look like a dog, I had to smash her up a bit. Now she does. A dead dog. She’s nice and fat, though, just like Gleason, and that’s good. You killed her. You and no one else. Give her a good wake. This is all for you, Rebecca. I’ll see you soon and it’ll be you and me, from then to eternity.
Your Boyfriend
“He wrote it in black ink, a ballpoint,” Savich said, his voice flat, emotionless, as he carefully eased the paper into a plastic bag he pulled out of his pants pocket and closed the zipper. “It’s just a plain sheet of paper torn out of a notebook. Nothing at all unique about it.”
“Do you think he’s out of control?” Sherlock said to no one in particular. Her face was pale, the horror clear in her eyes.
“No,” Adam said. “I don’t think so. I think he’s really enjoying himself. I think at last he’s discovering who he really is and what he really likes. I can practically hear him thinking, ‘I want to scare Rebecca shitless, prove to her I’m so bad that when I call her again I won’t hear any more cockiness from her. No, I’ll hear fear in her voice, helplessness. Now, what can I do to really make this happen?’” Adam paused a moment, then said, “And so he decided to kill Linda Cartwright and make her into his fictional dog.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, “I think Adam is right. There’s nothing but control here. Too damned much of it.”
“I need to make some calls,” Savich said, but he didn’t move, just stared down at the note and at what had been Linda Cartwright.
There was silence in the small, bright kitchen and the harsh breathing of six men and two women, one of them drawing hard on a pipe that wasn’t lit. Then Becca broke free, ran out the back door, and fell to her knees, vomiting until her body was jerking and heaving and there was nothing more in her belly. Still she crouched there, holding her arms around herself, shuddering, wanting to die because she’d brought death to Linda Cartwright, just as she had to that poor old woman standing outside the Metropolitan Museum, just as she’d nearly brought death to the governor of New York. She felt him coming up behind her, knew it was Adam.
“Her face—he obliterated her face, Adam, for a sick joke that only he thought was funny. He murdered her and smashed her face so—”
“I know.” Adam fell to his knees behind her, pulling her back against his chest. “I know.”
She felt him begin to rock her, back and forth. “I know, Becca.”
“I’m responsible for her, Adam. If I hadn’t shot him, if I hadn’t—”
Adam pulled her around to face him. He handed her a handkerchief, waited for her to wipe her mouth, then said, “Now, you will listen up. If you feel any guilt about that poor woman, I’m going to deck you. None of this is your fault. He’s the evil one. This guy will do anything to terrorize you, to hear you whimper, beg, plead with him to stop. Anything.”
“He’s succeeded.”
“Yeah, you’ve got to stop that as well. You can’t let him crawl under your skin. That means he wins. That means he’s got the