Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [124]
“We’ll be here when they’re done with you, Zach,” Adam told him as they wheeled him away. “The chief and I will be waiting.”
“What do you think you have to hold me on?”
“We can start with the attempted murder of your cousin,” Adam said calmly.
“She told you I tried to kill her?” Zach yelled.
“No, but I’m betting she will.”
“And it’s Ian. She’s my sister.” He tried to sit up. “And I want to press charges against her. For assault.”
“Save it,” Adam muttered in disgust.
“He’s been insisting since minute one that he’s Ian,” one of the police officers noted.
“His name is Zachary Smith. He’s the son of Sierra Smith, who was the sister of Kendra’s father. We know he tried to kill her.” Adam watched the gurney disappear behind the curtains of one of the examining rooms. “We’re also going to want to question him about seven recent murders in Pennsylvania. And God knows what else he’s done.”
“We’ll keep an eye on him,” the chief nodded.
“Mr. Stark, if you’re ready.” Dr. Brady dropped some paperwork off at the receptionist’s desk. “I’ll take you back to Ms. Smith now.”
“How is she?” Chief Logan asked.
“I guess I’m about to find out,” Adam told him as he followed the doctor to the door of the fourth examining room on the right.
Adam stood in the doorway and looked at the figure that lay upon the bed. Most of the blood had been washed from her face and her bloody clothes had been exchanged for a worn blue-and-white hospital gown. She rested back against the pillows, an IV drip in her right arm, her eyes half-closed.
“I heard him,” she said without opening her eyes. “He’s here. Zach . . .”
“Yes, he’s here.” Adam pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. She looked so small and so pale, so . . . wounded. The sight of her wrenched his insides.
“He did it all,” she murmured. “You were right. Miranda was right. He killed those women.”
“Did he tell you that?”
She nodded.
“He wanted to see if I could sketch him. If I’d know him.” She swallowed hard, her throat tight and raw. “It was all just a game. Just to see if I’d know him. All those lives ruined, all those beautiful young women dead . . . how sick do you have to be to do such things?”
“Or how evil.” Adam wanted to take her hands in his own, to give her some small comfort, but both were heavily bandaged. He rested a hand gently on her forearm, to touch, to reassure. To make some contact, however slight.
“And Ian . . . he let him die. Call Sheriff Gamble. Webster. . . . they’ll have to let him go. . . .”
Her voice was so faint now that he could barely make them out. “Sierra. Not an accident.”
She partially opened her eyes, and he was surprised to find the faintest trace of light, a smile.
“Adam, she didn’t do it,” Kendra murmured. “She didn’t do it. I knew she didn’t do it . . . told you she wouldn’t.”
“Who?” Adam leaned forward, wondering if they’d given her medication for pain, and if it had confused her. “Who are you talking about?”
“My mother,” she said, only the very corners of her mouth curving into the barest hint of a smile. “Didn’t kill herself.”
“She didn’t?”
“No,” she sighed as she drifted off to sleep. “Zach did.”
Chapter
Twenty-four
While Kendra slept, Adam made phone calls. The first was to her stepfather, Philip Norton. The second was to John Mancini.
Philip Norton had been the first to arrive. Adam sat with him in the lounge and drank several cups of terrible coffee from the vending machine while he related to the widower of Senator Elisa Smith-Norton what Kendra had told him about her mother’s death.
“Yes.” The tall man with the New England accent had nodded his graying head, and wept openly. “Yes. It would have had to have been like that. My wife would not have left her daughter in such a way . . . wouldn’t have left me. Kendra and I have never believed for one second that Elisa had taken her own life, regardless of the evidence, of the official reports.”
“I’ve already spoken with the Bureau and requested a copy of the files on the senator’s case. I want to see what they had, how they could have missed that