Attempted Matrimony Read online

  The woman in the picture was posed, one hand under her neck, the other between her thighs. No. No. No!

  The word screamed in Nicole’s head. This couldn’t be real. Only it was. She recognized the woman from the picture that had been in the paper—one of the serial killer’s victims. But there was one very big difference. When the newspaper photo had been taken, the woman had been clothed and alive. In this one she was naked—and dead.

  Nicole fought the nausea and forced herself to look at the other pictures, large and small. The subjects were all posed as if vamping it up for the camera. All dead.

  Dallas’s instincts had been right all along. Malcomb was the killer, and these were his souvenirs.

  A noise sounded at the door that led outside. She could hear the knob turning and then a squeak as the door opened. The distinctive smell of Malcomb’s aftershave filled the apartment. Her husband was home. And he would know that she knew.

  Fear swelled inside her like billows of poisonous gas, choking off her breath, making her numb. This was how his victims must have felt. Trapped. Doomed. Destined to die at the hands of a cold-blooded killer.

  Now her turn had come.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nicole tried to shove the photos back into the box, but her hands were shaking so badly the pictures became jumbled and sprayed from her hands, falling around her like a deck of mismatched playing cards. Malcomb stepped into the doorway, his frame filling it, sending a chilling message that there was no way out.

  The veins in his forehead were extended, his Adam’s apple working overtime, his muscles clenched into hard knots that pushed at the fabric of his shirt.

  “So you’re not only a whoring slut but also a snoop. What would your high-society friends say if they knew what you’re really like? Your uncle John and aunt Gloria would be shocked. Even Janice would be disappointed in you.”

  Nicole barely heard his words, didn’t care what he said about anything except her brother. “Where’s Ronnie?”

  “Waiting on you. He keeps asking for you and begging to go home.”

  “Where have you taken him? What have you done to him?”

  “What makes you think I’ve done anything to him? Do you take me for some kind of monster?”

  The visible signs of Malcomb’s fury had abated as quickly as they’d appeared. His face was taut and expressionless now, his voice void of emotion, his eyes as blank as those of a heartless robot.

  She kicked the pile of macabre photographs at her feet. “You killed those women, Malcomb. Why? Why did you do it?”

  “They were dispensable, and they didn’t deserve to live.”

  “They were human beings. Karen even trusted you.”

  “Not as much as she should have.”

  “Why was my phone number in her pocket?”

  “She was angry with me for not encouraging Jim to leave his wife for her and her bastard child. She threatened to tell you about my little photography club. Apparently, she was about to make good on the threat.”

  “So you killed her to quiet her?”

  “I killed the others, but I didn’t kill Karen. I merely planted the idea for her death in Jim Castle’s head. But he was too much of a coward to handle it right. He would have confessed everything and made an untidy mess of what I’d done so well, so I had to kill him, too. You see how it is, Nicole. I’m a master at what I do. That’s why no one will ever catch me, and especially not your poor bumbling lover.”

  Desperately, Nicole searched the room. Malcomb was crazy and he’d surely kill her and Ronnie unless she found some way to stop him. He was much larger than she was, and in great physical shape. She’d be no match against him in a physical struggle. What she needed was a weapon and the advantage of surprise. She scanned the room, noted a pair of shears in a wire holder on the shelf over her head, then quickly averted her glance.

  “Take me to Ronnie, Malcomb.”

  “By all means. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  He started toward her. She vaulted toward the shears, grabbed them in her right hand and started swinging. And that’s when she noticed the hypodermic needle clutched in Malcomb’s steady hand. She lunged at him with the pointed end of the shears, saw the quick squirt of blood, then felt the needle plunge into the muscles in her arm.

  She kept fighting, but it was no use. Malcomb’s wound was superficial. He pinned both of her arms behind her back and held her motionless while the drug surged through her system, weakening her reflexes, shutting down her ability to react.

  She dissolved into a limp heap on the floor, unable to stop him as he picked up the pictures and locked them away in his special hiding place where only he could find them. Only he missed one of the small ones. Barely able to move her hands, she managed to lift it and shove it into the pocket of her trousers while he was sliding the board back in place. But even though she had the incriminating snapshot, she knew she’d probably never live to show it to a single soul.

  When the room was back in order, Malcomb lifted her, then half led, half carried her down the back steps and toward the garage. Dallas would be looking for her, but she wouldn’t be here. Malcomb would kill her and Ronnie and get away with it just as he’d done so many times before. He was right. He was too smart for all of them and much too evil.

  The souvenirs were there, but no one would find them. Her hand brushed flaccidly across her legs, and calling on all her powers of coordination, she slipped her fingers into her pocket and pulled out the snapshot she’d secreted. Reaching behind her, she let the picture drop to the ground, praying Malcomb wouldn’t notice.

  For once, fate was on her side. Malcomb’s gaze was straight ahead. His first mistake. It was too late for her and for Ronnie, but the thought that Dallas would find the evidence to convict Malcomb gave her a measure of satisfaction.

  She’d married a murderous monster. But at least she would have a hand in stopping him before he added new victims to his list.

  Once inside the garage, he shoved her into the car. Her head fell against the side window with a dull thud. Her eyelids closed, and she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder. He was waiting for her. Her mother was, too. She could almost see them in the gauzy mist that seemed to be closing in on her.

  But she couldn’t go. Not yet. She hadn’t said goodbye to Ronnie—or to Dallas.

  DALLAS PACED THE CUBICLE he called an office, one phone at his ear, another in his hand. He couldn’t stand those squawky police radios. It was the twenty-first century and he was as dependent on cellular technology as he was on the Internet. The world at his fingertips, a dozen cops in a half-dozen squad cars at his command, and he couldn’t locate one missing autistic young man or one frigging demented surgeon.

  He broke the connection with one of his patrolmen involved in the search and grabbed the other ringing phone. “Wha’cha got?”

  “Is this Detective Mitchell?”

  “It is.”

  “This is Sally Ann Leiderman with the Monticello Police Department.”

  He’d been expecting a call about the search and it took a second for his brain to switch gears. “Good. What did you dig up for me?”

  “Unfortunately, not a lot that you didn’t already get from the police report. Apparently Tammy Sullivan had started classes at Centenary College in Shreveport and was working part-time for a local politician there.”

  “Do you have the name of the politician?”

  “Gerald Dalton. He was on the city council back then, though he was a U.S. senator at the time of his death a couple of years ago.”

  Dallas let out a low whistle. The more he discovered, the more entangled the web became. “How long had she worked for Dalton.”

  “A few months. There’s more. One of her classmates at Centenary claimed she was romantically involved with the senator.”

  “Wasn’t he a little old for her?”

  “He was thirty-eight. She was nineteen. It happens, and his wife had already been dead a year at the t
ime. Then again, it could have just been a youthful infatuation on her part. Like I said, he never admitted it, and she was dead.”

  “Was she dating anyone back in Monticello?”

  “Some high school kid. I’m sure he wasn’t as exciting as Gerald Dalton.”

  “And would this schoolboy have been Malcomb Lancaster?”

  “How did you know?”

  “A lucky guess.”

  “One of the cops who questioned him is still around. He remembers the Lancaster boy as being a strange kid, but really broken up. If he suspected that his girlfriend was involved with anyone else, he never admitted it.”

  Cold-blooded even then. “Thanks for digging this up for me. I appreciate the information, but I’m in the middle of coordinating a manhunt right now. Can I get back to you later on this?”

  “Sure thing.”

  He broke the connection and dialed Nicole’s number. Like it or not, he was picking her up and taking her to his apartment. If Ronnie was in a place where he could have called her, he’d have done it already. And Ronnie wasn’t just out roaming the neighborhood. They’d combed the area, knocked on doors and searched back alleys. It was almost a certainty that he’d been abducted, and Malcomb was behind it.

  The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity, and with each unanswered ring, Dallas’s dread multiplied exponentially. Nicole was waiting on a call from or about Ronnie. There was no way she’d let the phone ring more than once—unless…

  Sweat beaded his brow and was pooling in his armpits by the time the answering machine picked up. He didn’t leave a message. He was already in a dead heat, tearing down the steps and out of the building. And if he was too late, Malcomb would never go to jail. Dallas would kill him first, kill him with his bare hands and never feel the slightest pangs of guilt.

  NICOLE OPENED HER EYES and stared at the old beamed ceiling, where a bare lightbulb dangled from a chain. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. Her eyes were dry, too, as if she’d been in a sandstorm. She should get up, but…

  Her mind drifted, and she felt as if she were floating outside her body.

  “Time to rise and shine. Open your eyes. Time to rise and shine.”

  The fog lifted a little at the sound of Ronnie’s sluggish voice. He was repeating the phrase their dad had used with them while they were growing up. Slowly the room came fully into focus and the terrifying reality sank into her brain. Nicole turned and stared at Ronnie. He was on the floor, his hands tied behind his back, his feet bound at the ankles.

  She tried to get up and realized she couldn’t move. It wasn’t only the drugs that had rendered her immobile, but rough lengths of rope like the ones used on Ronnie. But she wasn’t on the floor. She was in a metal bed. Her wrists were tied to the headboard behind her. Her legs were spread apart, tied to the bedposts of the narrow twin bed. Thankfully, she was still fully dressed.

  “Ah, Sleeping Beauty is finally waking up.”

  She looked up and found Malcomb lounging in the doorway, a smile on his lips. He was wearing his white lab coat, and his stethoscope dangled from his neck as if he were making his routine rounds. The pockets of his coat bulged with silver, sharp-edged instruments. Surgery shears. A scalpel. And a sharply pointed tool she didn’t recognize.

  He walked over, spoke kindly to Ronnie, then plunged an injection into a vein in his arm.

  “You won’t get away with this, Malcomb.” Her tongue felt twice its normal size and uncooperative, and she had trouble making the sounds for the words.

  “Of course I’ll get away with it, sweetheart. I always get away with it. I’m a respected cardiothoracic surgeon. Who’d believe a man like me capable of murder?”

  “Dallas will. He knows all about you.”

  “No, my sweet. He knows all about you, your wanton needs and your glaring indiscretions. He knows my wife far too intimately.”

  Ronnie made a gurgling noise and kicked his bound feet against the floor. Nicole’s heart seemed to stop beating and not start again until she heard his rhythmic breathing and saw the movement of his chest.

  “Why did you marry me, Malcomb?”

  “You were the woman I wanted. I knew it from the moment you visited the senator in the hospital. The perfect payback for the sins of the father. But I might have learned to love you over time, Nicole, had you not taken up with that stupid detective and started snooping into things that didn’t concern you.”

  The sins of the father. She tried to make sense of his words, but they seemed to float in the fog that crept through her mind.

  “I know you’re going to kill me, Malcomb. But don’t hurt my brother. He’s never hurt anyone in his whole life. He never could.”

  “Your concern is touching. It doesn’t affect me, but it is touching.”

  “Then what are you waiting on? If you’re going to kill us, kill us now.”

  “I was waiting for you wake up, my sweet. I want you too sedated to fight me but alert enough to be aware of the sensations when I slide the pointed instruments inside you. I want to hear you cry out in pain. And then I want you to watch the blood as it spurts from your own neck. Your last moment of agony. Your last seconds of life.”

  Nicole trembled as Malcomb sat down on the bed beside her and ran his hand across her thighs. Then she felt the slick, cold metal slide between her legs, and for the first time understood that there were some things worse than death.

  DALLAS STOOD in the Lancaster backyard, holding the snapshot in his hand. He didn’t have to wonder what it meant. There was no time to waste on fury, no time for vengeance or gut-wrenching recriminations, either. But he felt them all.

  This wasn’t just another case. It was Nicole.

  He heard the engine of a car pulling up and stopping in the driveway. He rounded the corner of the garage and saw Janice climb from behind the wheel.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she quipped. “Is your only job ruining my cousin’s life?”

  “Cut it out, Janice. I don’t give a damn what you think about me right now or what you believe about Malcomb. The fact is he’s a killer and he’s taken Nicole and Ronnie and disappeared with them.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, then clamped it shut, evidently reading the panic in his voice and body language. “Oh, no!” She buried her head in her hands for half a second, then looked up and met his gaze. “Don’t just stand there, Dallas. You’re a cop. You have a gun. Go save them.”

  “I would if I knew where to go. Think of everything you know about Malcomb. Where would he take women to kill them?”

  “Women? As in plural?”

  “Right.”

  She muttered a curse and stood staring at the house. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you know her friend Matilda’s phone number?”

  “I have it in my purse, in my address book.”

  “Get it. And move like Nicole’s life depends on every second. Because it does.”

  A few heartbeats later, the number was in his hand. He dialed it, praying that Matilda was home and that she had the answer he needed. His heart beat wildly when she answered.

  “Listen, Matilda. I’m going to say this once and say it fast. I need to talk to Penny Washington. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “THE EFFECTS OF THE medicine are waning now,” Malcomb said. “Are you ready, my sweet, for our last time together?”

  The fragrance of his cologne gagged her as he reached behind her head and untied her arms. He massaged them slowly, and she felt the sting as the circulation increased. Then he untied her feet, bent over and picked her up as if she were a baby.

  “We’ll have to go outside now. The blood tends to squirt everywhere, and though my little cabin’s not much, I don’t like it to get all stained with blood.”

  He wrapped her in a blanket, carried her across the room and kicked open the door. The glare of the sun blinded her after so much time in the darkness, and she had to squint to see anything at all. It seemed wrong that it was so b
right outside, that birds were singing, that the breeze was whispering through the branches of the trees on the day she was going to die. She tried to move her arms, but they hung lifelessly at her side. She was able to think, but her muscles and coordination were lost to the power of the drugs.

  Malcomb laid her on a piece of plastic the size of a large quilt. She saw the blade in his hand, razor sharp, and she knew what would come. The torture and then the slicing of her artery, exsanguination within seconds.

  Her heart roared in her ears and the ground rumbled as if being shaken by an earthquake. She waited for the pain to hit, but instead, Malcomb jumped up as if he’d been stung by a hive of bees. The scalpel fell from his hand, slapping against her stomach and bouncing onto the plastic sheet.

  Malcomb started running. Something terrible must be wrong. She had to get up, had to go to Ronnie. Her body refused to move. But the ground was still rumbling, ready to swallow her up. She managed to focus on a black metal object. A car. The rumbling had been a car speeding down the dirt road. She had to go to Ronnie.

  “Help. Somebody, please help me.”

  DALLAS SLAMMED on the brakes and jumped from the car. Nicole was beneath the canopy of trees, clutching a worn blanket and staggering toward the cabin. He raced to her, gun in hand, ready to fire.

  “Not a good idea, Detective.”

  He skidded to a stop at the sound of Malcomb’s voice. It wasn’t calm this time, but high and shaky. The cold, heartless psychopath had finally broken. But he was holding a gun and it was pointed at Nicole.

  “Put the gun down, Malcomb. It’s all over. We know everything about the women you killed. We even know about Tammy and the fact that you think she was having an affair with Gerald Dalton.”

  “I don’t think she was having an affair. I know she was. She told me so. She knew I loved her and she told me how wonderful he was in bed. She deserved to die. And so did Gerald Dalton.”