Death's Door (39 page)

“It was venom from a rare Australian blue-ringed octopus. It immobilizes every muscle in the body.”

Something clicked deep in Paul’s brain. His mind replayed Garrison Holbrook blabbing on and on about the secrets of the
sea. Paul slammed his fist down on the table and silently cursed himself. How had he not seen what had been right under his nose? Kicking himself mentally, he wondered why he was a detective. He’d certainly flubbed it this time.

“What’s the matter?” his father asked when Paul hit the table again.

“It’s Garrison Holbrook,” Paul told his father and Trey at the same time.

“You sure?” Trey asked.

“You’re kidding,” his father said.

“Why would Garrison kill all those people?” Paul asked.

“Wait a minute,” his father replied. “What makes you think he did?”

Paul shrugged, not knowing how to put his gut reaction into words. “Garrison is an expert on the sea and he would have access to a rare venom like that. The average person wouldn’t.”

“True,” Mike Tanner responded, “but why…”

“I’m not sure about his motive,” Paul conceded. “Maybe it had something to do with his father not backing him with his early discovery. Or who knows? This guy is clearly a nutcase.”

“He seems so…normal,” his father said.

“That’s what they said about Ted Bundy. Handsome, charming. What does a serial killer look like?”

“Normal enough that most people don’t notice them.” His father studied Paul. “You’re sure about this?”

“Positive—and Garrison is in the same building with Madison. If he wants, he’ll have the chance to kill her.” Just putting his thoughts into words sickened Paul in a way that the most gruesome homicide never had. This was Madison, the woman he loved, and she was side by side with a killer because he hadn’t been perceptive enough to see what was happening. “We’ve got to get Madison out of there.”

It took Paul less than five minutes to find out Madison had disappeared from her office in Holbrook Pharmaceuticals. No one could locate Garrison, either. A call to CNBF’s news crew
staking out the front of the office assured Paul that neither Madison nor Garrison had left through the front door. Only one crew had covered the exit from the underground garage. They hadn’t taken any film but reported a black SUV with tinted windows had left the building around eleven.

“She’s in that SUV, or he’s killed her and dumped her body somewhere in the office building.” Paul suddenly felt weak and helpless.

His father was talking on his phone, giving directions to his men to search unlikely places. “Holbrook’s security people and my guards are going over the building, room by room.”

“He took her away in that SUV. Where would he go?” Paul told himself to think—not to let his emotions override his training as a detective. “Not to Corona del Mar. Garrison has a place somewhere in the Keys.”

He reached Rose Marie Nesbit because Wyatt and Tobias were at some meeting in Fort Lauderdale with their cell phones off. She gave him the information they needed. “Thanks.”

His father put his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, son.”

“I have an idea,” Paul told him. “It’s wild, but it just might work.”

What is prosopagnosia?

M
ADISON OPENED
her eyes slowly. The lids seemed unusually heavy, as if they’d been glued shut. Her throat was parched and her tongue was like a wad of cotton. What was wrong?

She slowly became aware she was in a dark room. Then she remembered being in the subterranean garage at Holbrook Pharmaceuticals with Garrison. She’d smelled something funny, slightly sweet. Suddenly a rag covered her face and she’d melted into a soft blackness.

Oh my God! Garrison had done something to her. She realized her ankles and wrists were bound with tape. A wave of panic swept through her and left her trembling. Her heart kicked strong and fast but she was almost breathless.

Where was she? In the building somewhere? Her terrified brain tried to think but it was difficult. No. Garrison must have taken her somewhere. That’s why he’d lured her to the garage.

Unless she could pull off a miracle, she was as good as dead. Icy fear gripped her. Paul. Her mother. She loved them so much. She didn’t want to die. Tears stung her eyes as terrified images of the ways Erin and the other donor-conceived children had died filled her brain.
Get a grip. Don’t you dare cry. It won’t help.

Suddenly, light flooded the room, blinding her. She squinted and through the slits of her eyes saw Garrison coming toward
her. The smile that had deceived her so often was plastered across his face, bigger than ever. A Cheshire cat grin. She choked back a frightened cry, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how terrified she was.

“Nice nap?”

“Where am I?”

“My place in the Keys.” He stood over Madison, studying her as if she were some rare specimen. “I told you I wanted to show you an experiment. Well, it’s here, not in the lab at Holbrook Pharmaceuticals.” He took a pocketknife and slit through the duct tape around her ankles, then yanked it off. He snapped the knife shut and returned it to his perfectly creased linen trousers.

The skin on her ankles burned, but that was the least of her problems. “Why? Why?”

“You really want to know?”

“Of course I do.” Madison swung her legs to the floor so she could sit up. She hated having him loom over her. She tried to appear calm but a spasmodic trembling in her chest made her feel weak. If she could get him talking, she might think of something or Paul might discover she was missing and start a search. A long shot, she decided. She’d told Rose Marie that she would be gone four hours. A quick glance at her watch told her it was one-thirty. No one would miss her until around three, if then.

She noticed her purse was on the nightstand, but there wasn’t anything in it that could save her. She couldn’t get to it anyway with bound hands. Her cell phone was off, otherwise it would send a signal and Paul could locate her using those radio waves. Assuming he was looking.

“You want answers? You got it. My father is a piece of shit. He never paid any attention to me or Savannah. Then I discovered the surgical glue. Did he help his only son? Hell, no. He stole my idea and made millions.

“He neglected his family like you wouldn’t believe. My mother had her charity work and Savannah but I had no one. No one. It wasn’t until my father became an old man that he spent time with us. Well, by then it was too late. Savannah had her own life, her own business, and I had mine.”

The bitterness in Garrison’s voice surprised her. He’d skillfully concealed his feelings with a caring tone all the other times he’d talked about his father. She’d foolishly believed Garrison loved his father the way she’d loved hers.

“I thought Wyatt backed another scientist who was further along with the surgical glue. It would have taken you years.” Why was she discussing this with a lunatic? To buy time; it was the only chance she had.

“If he’d thrown his resources behind me, my glue would have been ready in no time. Trust me, Wyatt Holbrook thinks only of himself.” Anger flared in Garrison’s eyes. “When my father became ill, I wasn’t one bit sorry. And I damn sure wasn’t sorry that my liver wasn’t compatible with his. What did he do when neither of his children were suitable donors? He went after the donor-conceived children. He never cared one bit about them until they were of use to him.”

“I can’t help your father. I’m not related. There’s no reason for you to do this.” She hated the pleading tone in her voice and doubted it would do any good with such an insane man, but her life was at stake.

“True, and that
almost
saved you.”

“Almost?”

“You had to wheedle the position at the foundation out of my father, didn’t you? You took my office on the executive floor. Did you really think I wanted to be shuffled aside to the lab?”

His sinister laugh caused a knot to instantly form in her chest. How could she have thought Garrison to be a kind man who loved his father? Was she so easily deceived?

“I didn’t wheedle anything. It was his idea, not mine.”

“If you say so. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Did you kill Erin Wycoff?” If she was going to die, she wanted to know the truth about her best friend.

“Bingo.” He pointed a finger like a gun at her and fired. “She was a tough one. She put up a fight, but I finished her off. Keith Brooks Smith was another fighter. I hit him with a dose of chloroform the way I did you. He thrashed and kicked the wall. Damn near got me caught, but in the end, I prevailed.”

She was going to have to fight, too. That was her only option. Her eyes darted around the room. A guest bedroom, apparently. The mirrored closet doors reflected her image. Her lime-green linen dress appeared to have been wadded up like a ball of paper then smoothed out. It was hopelessly wrinkled. Her hair, always unruly, looked as if she’d been in a wind tunnel. She didn’t recognize the face in the mirror. It was almost as if she had prosopagnosia, a rare condition where a person didn’t recognize their own reflection. But this wasn’t a rare condition; it was fear.

Garrison had said something about showing her an experiment. That must mean he wasn’t going to kill her right here. She had some time and needed to think clearly.
Don’t allow panic to muddle your brain.

“Come on.” He grabbed her arm. “You don’t want to miss my experiment, do you?”

She lashed out to kick him in the groin with both feet. She was unsteady and he was too quick. His hand clamped around her still-sore ankles and he yanked her off the bed. She landed on the wood floor, striking her tailbone. Pain shot up her spine and stars exploded in her head.

“You won’t get away with this.” Her voice cracked from the pain. “Paul will track you down. I promise.”

“He isn’t that smart.” He roughly hauled her to her feet. “Let’s go. The lab is in the garage.”

She screamed, screeching at the top of her lungs.

“Shut the fuck up. There’s no one to hear. Don’t you think I would put tape on your mouth if I had neighbors nearby? How stupid are you?”

Plenty stupid, she thought or she would have caught on to him.

P
AUL SAT
beside his father in the helicopter they’d rented and prayed his instincts were correct. His father had put together a backpack for each of them with a variety of supplies, while Paul had changed into spare jeans and a T-shirt that his father kept at the office. He’d needed tennis shoes. On the way to the airport, they’d stopped by a store, dashed in and bought shoes in Paul’s size without trying them on first.

“That’s Big Pine Key ahead,” the pilot told them through the headsets.

Almost to Key West,
Paul thought,
where my mother lives. Please, God,
he silently prayed,
don’t let me find my mother just to lose the woman I love. Don’t let me have guessed wrong about this
.

Big Pine Key was one of the larger islands in the chain of small keys that trailed off the tip of the Florida peninsula from Key Largo to Key West. It had a few homes on it but it was mostly a wilderness of scrub pines and gumbo-limbo trees. Thickets of mangroves lined the banks of the island. Crocodiles preyed on the otters and raccoons. Occasionally, they downed a key deer. The miniature deer had become such a tourist attraction that when one appeared along the side of the road, people stopped to take pictures and traffic backed up for miles.

An aerial shot of Big Pine Key on Google Earth had shown them exactly where Garrison’s home was located. It was right on the water with a boat dock nearby. It wasn’t large. Three bedrooms and an oversize garage connected to the house. Paul’s father thought that might be where his laboratory was. If the asswipe even had a lab. Who knew what he really did out here?

His father tapped his shoulder and pointed to the laptop he’d brought with him. Paul couldn’t talk to his father over the noise of the engine. His headset only allowed communication with the pilot. The satellite that updated Google Earth had passed over the area again since they’d last looked. Now there was a black SUV parked in front of Garrison’s home.

Yes!
Paul thought, silently congratulating himself. He’d been right. The maniac had brought her here for some reason that made sense to a deranged mind. But was she still alive?

A wave of apprehension coursed through him. What would he do if Madison was dead? His stomach clenched tight. He’d tear that bastard Garrison Holbrook apart with his bare hands.

They’d instructed the pilot to drop them off some distance from the house and not to fly anywhere near it. They didn’t want to alert Garrison. The chopper touched down, spooking a flock of birds that exploded out of the mangroves into the afternoon sky.

They hopped out and waved the pilot away. The chopper rose upward, leaving a swirl of dust in its wake. The put on their backpacks and ran through the thicket toward Garrison’s house.

“T
HIS IS MY LAB
,” Garrison said, and there was no mistaking the pride in his voice.

The room had been converted from a four-car garage. It appeared to be as up-to-date as Holbrook Pharmaceuticals. Several computers lined the counter. One screen was running, numbers scrolling down with amazing speed. In one corner was a stainless-steel vat the size and shape of a bathtub. A faintly metallic smell hung in the air.

“I’m running a computer trial on a sea fungus I discovered,” he told Madison when he saw her looking at the computer. “It’s a fungus that could kill cancer in humans.”

“What about that bat saliva? Were you making it up?”

He smiled. Why hadn’t she detected the evil lurking behind
his smile? “No, but you don’t know shit about science. You aren’t qualified to head a foundation. The saliva is already in advanced trials in Germany. It should be on the market next year.”

“Your father said neither you nor Savannah wanted to run the foundation.”

“The bastard never asked me.” Pure venom dripped from every word. “He assumed I wanted to continue with my own work. I do, but I intend to head that foundation. The prick wants to hand the foundation over to a half sibling who turns out not even to be related to him?” He shook his fist in her face. “Know how that makes me feel?”

“Why not just kill him? What on earth did you gain by killing innocent people?”

Again the twisted smile. “I like watching dear old Dad die day by day. Hope springs eternal, you know. He hoped you would be able to save him. Know what he told me? The old fart thought he saw himself in you. He was oh, so positive you were his child. I actually thought I had the biggest thrill when you told him that you weren’t his child. I believed it was better than killing you. Then you went after the job.”

“I swear I didn’t.” She barely recognized her own desperate voice.

“Doesn’t matter. Know what I learned about myself?”

She couldn’t imagine, didn’t want to know but if she stood a chance of surviving, she had to stall for as long as possible. She had absolute faith that Paul would figure this out and come after her. “What did you learn?”

He touched her chin with his index finger. “I enjoy killing. It’s a high that makes sex seem ordinary. Devising different ways of murdering people to elude the police gives me a major charge.”

Oh my God!
She could only imagine what he had in store for her.

He nudged Madison forward. “Here’s what I wanted to show you. A very promising experiment.”

She took baby steps but soon she was standing in front of the stainless-steel tub. The metallic smell was wafting up from the red liquid. Beneath the surface was a stainless-steel mesh net. Her skin crawled as she looked at it. There was a piece of something submerged, just visible on the stainless netting.

“This is an enzyme made from the red tide. My discovery. It’s one hundred times more powerful than any man-made acid.” He pointed to the small black piece on the net. “Yesterday that was a hundred-and-twenty-pound German shepherd. Great dog. Adopted him from the pound.”

Her stomach, already churning with anxiety, heaved. She saw a dog like Aspen in the vat of something more powerful than—she wasn’t up on acids—lye. Tears stung her eyes until the vat swam through her field of vision.

“In another hour there will be nothing left. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Amazing thing about Neptune’s Treasure Chest, it keeps on surprising me. This solution dissolves everything—even teeth. There won’t be one trace of you left for your beloved Paul to find.”

Madison gagged on her own bile and brought her bound hands up to her face. She couldn’t imagine a more horrible death. Drowning in acid, then dissolving. Why hadn’t she told Paul she loved him when she had the chance? All the things she should have said streamed through her mind.

“The only things I’ve discovered that the red tide acid doesn’t destroy are stainless steel and Vaseline. Some things take time for it to dissolve, but it loves to eat people. Takes no time at all.”

“You don’t think I’m just getting in there, do you?”

“Of course not. I’m going to dose you with more chloroform and put you in the vat myself. I put you in the SUV, then hauled you into the house. No problem. But first I have to put on a full
hazmat suit in case you splash. One drop of that acid will burn a hole in my clothes, my skin.”