A Raging Dawn (6 page)

Her severed tongue nailed to the wall beside the door.

Devon hauled me back, out into the hallway. His arms squeezed the breath from me when he saw what was left of Tymara. My mind filled with blurred sounds, as if in a tunnel: Devon’s curses, voices of neighbors, Devon shouting at them to get back inside, call 911, and my heart roaring, howling that this could not be happening.

I’m not sure how much time passed before he released me. I slumped against the wall, sweat pouring from me, swallowing hard to keep from vomiting.

“I’ll kill the sons of bitches,” Devon muttered as he turned his back on the sight of Tymara’s body. His voice was hoarse, tight. Which made it all the more deadly. “They’re going to wish they’d never been born.”

“It’s my fault,” I whispered, gagging on my tears. “She didn’t want to testify. I talked her into it. Told her it was the right thing to do, that it would keep her safe.”

I slapped my palm against the wall, the sting burning through my shock, the violent motion pushing me upright.

“Did you see?” I asked him, although I knew the answer. “Did you see what those animals did to her?”

Devon had a good poker face, but he wasn’t using it now, not with me. The honesty of his rage burned in his eyes. “I saw.”

“They won’t get away with it,” I said, spacing my words, taking care with each one. “I’m not going to let them.”

“Leave them to me.” He leaned in close, so close his face blocked the rest of the world from my view. “Get Eugene Littleton off. I’ll get him to talk. No one comes into my Tower and does this to my people.”

Vigilante justice. Street justice. Surely Tymara deserved more. Hadn’t I promised her more?

“No. We do this my way. She came to the Advocacy Center for justice, and I’ll get it for her.” It wasn’t Devon I was making my vow to, not any unseen deity either. It was Tymara. “I promise.”

He opened his mouth, ready to argue, but the elevator doors chimed. He glanced down the hall, saw the shine of uniforms and badges, and frowned. Time wasted with the police was time better served hunting Tymara’s killers.

“You got this?”

I nodded, and he vanished down the hall.

Leaving me to wrestle with my conscience and what my good intentions had brought Tymara.

IT DIDN’T TAKE
long for the police to finish with me once the detectives arrived. The first officers had escorted me away from the crime scene to the empty manager’s office on the first floor. The room was small, windowless, overcrowded with men, and stifling.

Shivering with shock, I sat on a cheap office chair, unable to resist a compulsion to pick at a wad of foam that had escaped through a split in the vinyl arm. Anything to avoid thinking of Tymara.

It didn’t work.

At least eight uniformed and suited policemen asked me questions.

Did you touch anything?

Nothing but the doorknob.

Did you go inside the apartment?

No.

Is there anyone she was fearful of? Did she mention anything unusual?

And so it went. My answers emerged by rote, mechanical. My teeth chattered. Until, finally, it was my turn to ask a question:
What time did she die?

I didn’t get an answer. Not that I needed one. The math was painfully obvious.

After I was dismissed, I pushed through the throng of curious onlookers, mainly kids off from school who crowded the Tower’s front stoop, squinting at the Medical Examiner’s van.

Once I was released from the confines of the Tower, my chills turned into a fever sweat.

Not sure where to go next, I stumbled back to the swings where Devon and I had sat earlier.

This time, I walked through the snow bank, inviting the wet chill that came with it. I shed my coat and held it in my lap. I felt queasy, sick. I’d seen my fair share of violence, but nothing like what I’d just witnessed.

No. That was wrong. I
had
seen something like this before.

Last month, when Leo Kingston was close to death, I’d entered his mind via the bizarre symptom-gift-curse of my fatal insomnia. Despite what Louise said, there was no way in hell—and I mean that literally—I could ever create any delusion or hallucination as warped as what Leo had done to the women he’d tortured and killed.

The memory overwhelmed what little control I had left. My body went slack, sending the swing spinning, only my arms wrapped around the chains preventing me from falling.

A dissonant chorus of women screaming filled my entire body, every cell shrinking from the noise; blood painting my vision.

One of my fugues.

As blood raged around me, my body frozen, I was unable to halt the awful visions that played out in exquisite, horrifying detail. Not delusions or hallucinations.
Memories
. Not mine. Leo Kingston’s.

My eyes stared, unblinking, at the snow, and drool slid from my mouth as my fugue forced me to relive Leo’s memories. I tried to fight them, shove them behind a locked door in my brain, better yet, bury them sixty feet deep, but they were too overwhelming. And vivid, so very vivid.

Not the victims’ pain. I think I could have handled that, or at least comprehended it. But these were Leo’s memories, so what I felt wasn’t pain but…
glee
was the best word to describe it. The glee of a child pulling wings off a butterfly coupled with an insatiable thirst for more, more, more…

I fought to banish Leo and his horrors. Desperate to escape, I turned to my own life, to the people and times when I’d felt comfort: my dad launching me into the air before catching me in his arms; practicing my fiddle with him, my fingers so small they fumbled across the strings; playing in the band with Jacob, the music filling me with confidence; being in Ryder’s arms, so warm, so strong…

All of it ammunition against a madman’s memories.

Finally, I was able to break free of the fugue, my body slowly returning to my control. I wiped my mouth, tasting bile and wishing I could vomit, simply to purge myself of what I’d just lived through.

Because that was the thing. When I touch the mind of someone not-quite-dead, I don’t simply visit and have a chat like in real life. Rather, I experience what they experience. Everything. A lifetime’s worth of memories, dumped into my mind.

Every time I’ve done it, the person died soon after. They were all dying anyway, but I couldn’t help but wonder if my touching their minds hastened their deaths.

Not to mention the healthy dose of fear for my own sanity. How many memories could I hold in my own brain without losing myself?

I wrapped my arms around the swing’s chains, embracing the bite of the cold metal. Shoving my emotions behind sealed mental doors, I focused on the sunbeams glinting across the snow, the bruised shadows stretching out from the buildings surrounding me. I’d failed Tymara. I couldn’t change that. But could I still see Eugene Littleton brought to justice?

“Hear you’ve had a rough morning,” a friendly voice called from the sidewalk. Ryder. My knight in tarnished armor. As usual, his timing was impeccable.

He was tall enough that he could have easily stepped over the snow bank. Instead, he tramped down a path anyone could follow, ignoring the snow gathering in his pant cuffs. He joined me on the swings. I’d chosen to sit with my back to St. Tim’s, facing the Tower. Ryder sat so he faced the church.

Of course he did. He still believed, had faith. Not me. I’d left the church and the capricious God who ruled it after my father died. Turned my back on it, just as I had so many things during that time. As painful as it was to have my family treat me as a scapegoat for their grief—after all, they couldn’t blame God, right?—I’d accepted the role with the sullen fury of a twelve-year-old.

“I’m sorry about Tymara,” Ryder said, his voice so gentle it made me blink. Thankfully, it was too cold for tears. Unlike Devon, he didn’t twist and spin or play on the swings. Instead, he closed the space between us and took my hand in his.

“Are you okay?” he asked. The question had many layers, like the man himself. He’d been a detective with the Major Case squad before being demoted to work Advocacy Center cases. Only, Ryder didn’t consider it a demotion.

“I need—” I broke off, no words to encompass all I needed.

He filled the void my silence left in its wake. “How about if I drive you home?”

Without me answering, Ryder guided me to my feet and helped me into my coat. Good thing, because now that my fugue had passed, I was suddenly shivering.

“Not home,” I said as we walked toward his car, a city-owned gray Taurus parked in front of St. Timothy’s, where it wouldn’t block the official vehicles clustered at the opposite end of the block around the Tower. I stared at the Tower, counting down from the rooftop where I’d killed Leo last month, to the floor where Tymara lived. My insides twisted, and my mouth went dry. Where Tymara died. “To court.”

“Court? The case is over without your witness.”

“Maybe not. I need to talk to Manny Cruz. He’s the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case.” I could have called Manny, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t approve of the faint inkling of a plan that I was formulating. Maybe I should go straight to the judge? I wasn’t sure if that was against the rules or not; honestly I didn’t have enough energy to care.

We arrived at Ryder’s car. He opened the door for me. For a moment as I settled into the seat, I was looking up at his face, his eyes a shade darker than the sky behind him, his expression one of warm concern. “Sure you’re okay?”

My jaw clenched, and I couldn’t answer. Everything hit me at once. Louise’s diagnosis; seeing Tymara, so young, her life full of promise, turned into a thing, an object, something less than human. Anger shook through me, an invisible earthquake, fierce and hot, unstable.

Ryder surprised me. I thought I was so good at containing my emotions, locking them into invisible Pandora’s boxes, showing the world only what I wanted it to see. But I couldn’t hide from Ryder. He crouched inside the open car door and bundled me into his arms, holding me so tightly that the strangled feeling in my chest finally eased and I could breathe again.

He knew better than to offer empty platitudes or promises destined to be broken. Instead, he simply held me, shielding me from any prying eyes, giving me time to glue together the pieces of my shattered facade.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “Just tell me what you need.”

I needed him. A desperate need that shamed me with its intensity. But as my plan crystallized, I pulled away, took a deep breath to prove to myself that I could, that I was in control. Of something. Anything.

“I need to see Eugene Littleton and his partners fry in Hell,” I told him.

Ryder squinted at me, assessing more than my words, then nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s see what we can do about that.”

JACOB VOORSANGER GLANCED
at his watch. Ten thirteen. Something was wrong.

He and his client, Eugene Littleton, waited at the defense table in Judge Shaw’s courtroom. The courtroom, with its high-arched ceiling crisscrossed by thick wooden beams, lit from overhead by a century-old, cobwebbed chandelier and from the sides by stained-glass windows depicting Justice in all her glory, reminded him of a European cathedral.

Cathedral of justice. Jacob liked that. Liked the way the air, despite the many drafts, felt different inside the courtroom. Not just this courtroom, any courtroom. Heavier, filled with gravitas. Life-and-death decisions weighed in the balance.

Sometimes, when the reality of the law with its wheeling and dealing and hairsplitting grew too stressful, Jacob liked to come into an empty courtroom like this one and simply sit in silence, breathe the air, and watch the dust motes glint as they settled to the ground. Justice was blind, but she also carried a sword, skewering deceit as she fought for truth.

Jacob glanced at his client. Little chance for any truth from him.

Eugene Littleton was relaxed, lounging in his seat, fiddling with his ill-fitting suit as he ogled the others in the courtroom: a bailiff standing in front of the door to the judge’s chambers; the court stenographer; and the judge’s clerk, a woman in her thirties upon whom Eugene fixed his gaze.

Jacob nudged his client and shook his head. Eugene rolled his eyes and pouted. Jacob glanced over at the empty prosecution table, the table that had been his until last month. That was when he’d been transferred to the public defender’s office after crying foul about corruption in the DA’s office.

Justice was justice, Jacob told himself. The system worked only if both sides fought with vigor and might. Anything less, and they’d have chaos.

Ten fourteen. For Judge Shaw, being fourteen minutes late was the equivalent of chaos. While she prided herself on being a legal maverick, someone who loved teasing out new interpretations of the law and finding its edges, she also was a martinet when it came to her schedule. Her court began on time, did not run late, and God help the lawyer who dawdled in presenting their case.

Where was Manny? Jacob wondered, staring at the door to the judge’s chambers. Judge Shaw would never condone any
ex parte
communication.