Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [69]
“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. 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 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 really good, 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 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 much of it.”
“I need to make some calls,” Savich said, but he didn’t move, 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, as she had to that poor old woman standing outside the Metropolitan Museum, 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 control, he’s got the power. Do you understand me?”
She pulled away from him and began kneading his arms with her hands, not even realizing what she was doing. “It’s hard, Adam. I know he’s evil. I know there must be a reason he’s doing all this, a reason that makes perfect sense to him, but in my gut, it feels like I smashed in that poor woman’s face. If only I hadn’t fired at him, hit him—”
“Stop it,” he said and shook her good. “Now, here’s the bottom line. We’re going to leave her as she is in the kitchen and make an anonymous call. No, don’t argue.” He lightly tapped his fingers