Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [125]
“I’ve seen the file.” Norton raised his head and looked Adam in the eye. “There’s nothing there to suggest that anyone else was in the house. He must have been very clever.”
“How were you able to—?” Adam started to inquire, then remembered that the man who sat before him was Philip D. Norton, Ph.D., a former White House press secretary with connections that reached all the way to the Bureau’s director, a man to whom many favors might be owed. No doubt, where his wife’s death had been concerned, he’d called in every one. “Never mind.”
“Did he, Zachary Smith, tell Kendra exactly how he’d managed to . . .” Even now, almost four years later, Norton could not say the words.
“I don’t know how much detail he gave her. But since he’s in custody, I expect that sooner or later we’ll get the whole story.”
“In custody, eh?” Dr. Philip Norton’s eyebrows raised with interest. “Your custody, Agent Stark?”
“Right now he’s in the custody of the New Jersey State Police. That’s subject to change, once the jurisdictional issues are ironed out,” Adam told him. “New Jersey isn’t the only state that will want a piece of Mr. Smith. I suspect that Washington, California, and Arizona will want to chat with him, after Pennsylvania and New Jersey, of course. And God knows who else. There are federal issues to be dealt with, as well. The killing of a United States senator . . .”
“Do we know what happened to Ian Smith?” Norton cut him off.
Adam brought him up to date on what had been found in a cave in the southern Arizona hills.
“What a terrible, terrible way to die.” Dr. Norton shook his head sadly. “And this fellow was, what, not even in his teens when he permitted his own cousin to go to a certain death? A pitiful start to what’s obviously been a pitiful life.”
“Kendra alluded that the ‘accidental’ death of Zach’s mother may not have been an accident, after all.”
“Good Lord,” Norton muttered. “His own mother. His cousin. His aunt.”
“And we’ve yet to tally up how many women he killed while trying to attract Kendra’s attention. Seven out here, and several . . . I’m not sure if anyone knows for certain how many out on the West Coast.”
“Trying to get Kendra’s attention? He told you that?” Norton appeared horrified.
“He told her that; I’ve yet to speak with him about it.” Adam nodded. “But apparently it was all part of some game he was playing with her.”
“To what end?”
“Does it matter? Regardless of whatever twisted explanation he gives, whatever excuse he offers, could what he did ever make sense, ever be justified?”
“Of course not.” Dr. Norton appeared surprised at the question. “Evil, like beauty, is its own excuse for being.”
The hospital corridors were quiet when John Mancini, head of the FBI’s special task force on abductions, stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor. One hand held a huge file tucked under his arm, the other hand held a worn brown leather briefcase that was bursting at the seams. He located the room he sought, nodded a silent greeting to the agent who sat outside, and stood in the doorway, his handsome face creased with concern as he stared at the young woman who lay on the bed with IVs in both arms and casts on her hands.
In the course of his career, he’d seen more than his share of violence. Its victims never failed to affect him.
The woman in the bed turned to the door and raised one casted hand.
“John,” she called to him in a low, raspy voice, “you looking for Adam?”
“No.” He forced a smile as he stepped into the room. “I was looking for you.”
“I got your flowers,” she said, pointing in the direction of a large spray of pink roses and blue hydrangeas that sat on the window ledge. “Thank you. That was so sweet.”
“Yeah, well, don’t let that get out.” He smiled again, genuinely this time. “And thank Genna when you see her. The flowers are her thing.”
“Well, then, I hope I do see her again so I can thank her in person,” Kendra said, fondly recalling her acquaintance with Genna Snow, an agent with whom she’d worked her first case, who just happened to be John Mancini