The Soul Catcher - Alex Kava [141]
The elevator opened at the fifteenth floor and Caldwell hesitated. Agents Rizzo and Markham gave him a shove, not even bothering to wait for Tully’s instructions. They were pissed, too. None of them had to say a word to one another to know something was not quite right.
Caldwell hesitated again at the hotel room door, and Tully noticed the man’s hand tremble as he missed the slot for the card key twice. Finally the door unlocked.
Rizzo and Markham had their weapons drawn but at their sides. Tully gave Caldwell another shove for the man to go in ahead of them. He could see the perspiration glistening on his forehead, but Caldwell opened the door and entered.
Caldwell came to an abrupt halt, and Tully could see he was just as surprised as the rest of them. In the center of the room, Reverend Everett sat in a chair, his wrists handcuffed, his mouth taped shut and his dead eyes staring directly at them. Tully didn’t need a medical examiner for this one. He recognized the pinkish tint to the skin and would need only one guess. Cause of death would be cyanide poisoning.
CHAPTER 78
“Just let her go,” Maggie said, not flinching, keeping the gun pointed directly at Garrison’s head.
“You have the fucking book, don’t you?” His eyes held hers while his hand tightened the noose around the old woman’s neck. Maggie heard her sputter, and out of the corner of her eye she could see her bent and misshapen fingers clawing at the clothesline, clawing at her own neck.
“Yes, I have it.” She wouldn’t move, even to give him the book. “Let her go and I’ll give it to you.”
“Oh, right!” He laughed, but it was a nervous, angry laugh. “I let her go, you give me the book and we both just go our separate ways. What do you think! I’m some fucking idiot?”
“Of course not.” A few more minutes and none of it would matter. The old woman was gasping, her fingers making a pathetic attempt. Maggie knew she could take him but it would need to be a head shot and there could be no missing. But then they’d never have all the answers.
“It makes sense now,” she told him instead, hoping to distract him. “Everett’s your father. That’s why you wanted to destroy him.”
“Not my father. Just a sperm donor,” he said. Suddenly he yanked the woman up in front of him, as if only now realizing he needed a shield and taking away Maggie’s clean head shot. “I can’t do anything about biology, but I could make sure that fucker paid for what he did to my mother.”
“And all those women,” Maggie said calmly. “Why did they have to pay? Why did they have to die?”
“Oh, that.” He laughed again and got a better twist on the clothesline. “It was a study, an experiment…an assignment. You might say for the greater good.”
“Like father, like son?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Everett stole lost souls. You wanted to capture them, too. Only on film.”
“We are nothing alike,” he insisted, a rash of red spreading across his face and betraying his calm. She had struck a nerve.
“You’re more alike than you want to believe.” Maggie watched closely as he listened, his fingers forgetting as he did so. “Even your DNA was close enough to throw us off. We thought Everett killed those girls.”
He smiled, pleased by this. “I really did have everyone fooled, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, playing along. “You certainly did.”
“And I have photos of his unfortunate demise. Just got back from Cleveland with the exclusive.” He waved a free hand at the duffel bag on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.
He pulled the old woman with him, getting