Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (76 page)

Taylor and Baldwin made their way back to the car. Taylor lit a cigarette, a grimace on her face.

“Smarmy old dope. He gave me the creeps.”

Baldwin started laughing. “Gave you the creeps, huh? He wasn’t the friendliest person I’ve ever met.”

“Ick. Didn’t you love his quick CYA? Always gotta cover your ass.” She picked up her phone and called in to the office. “Hey, it’s me. Is Lincoln there?” She waited a moment. “Link, I need you to do your magic. Get a number and address on Gabriel Lucas…Right…Cool. Let me talk to Marcus…Hey, puppy, how ya holdin’ up…Oh, you poor baby. Do me a favor. Get on the phone with a doctor named Steven Hoyt. He’ll be with the oncology unit at Vanderbilt. We need all the records he has regarding treatment of Gabriel Lucas. Brain cancer. See if he has anything we can use for DNA. Yeah, we have a live one. Thanks.” She hung up and lit another cigarette.

“Lincoln will get the records a sight faster than Miss Mouse back there. Hopefully Marcus can find this Dr. Hoyt. Let’s get back over there and see what we can find out.” She realized she was walking alone. Baldwin was standing stock still ten feet behind her.

“Baldwin? What’s wrong?”

He gave her a look, his eyes shining. “I think I know what’s going on.”

Sixty-Six

“Wake up, love. That’s right. Sit up a little now. You need to drink this.”

The cool water slid down the back of her throat. Jill realized she was awake, and felt Gabriel’s arm around her shoulders. She tried to gulp, she was thirsty, so thirsty, and choked on the water. Sputtering, she opened her eyes.

Gabriel was sitting next to her. She saw he had brought some food, and realized she was starving. She reached out for the tray, but he grabbed her hand gently and set it back in her lap.

“No, my darling, let me.” He reached for the plate, broke off a piece of bread and gave it to her. She took it and started chewing.

“Gabriel, what is going on?” she mumbled through the bread in her mouth.

He just looked at her, got off the bed and picked up a sheet of paper. Clearing his throat like an actor on the stage preparing for a great soliloquy, he began reading aloud. “ ‘A Call to Arms’ by Jill Gates.”

Thoughts thrash and tumble

like lions crashing

through the cresting waves.

No movement, no action

lost in the abyss they call my mind,

Fleeing like sandpipers

chasing ghost crabs

on the milky white powder expanse.

A calm breeze blows harmless

smiles and stabbing glares

wash away the tumult

And I lie

in dreamless death,

suspended in my cage
.

He finished with a flourish, bowing to his audience. Jill put the bread back on the plate, staring at him. He was absolutely crazy. She could see it in his eyes. And he looked sick, pale and drawn. She had a vague memory, some rumor about him leaving school because he was sick. But that couldn’t be. He was writing a book. She tried to access the memory, but her mind was so muddled up from all the drugs and she just couldn’t grasp the memory. And now he was reading her old poetry?

“What, you don’t remember this glorious ode? You wrote it for me. For me. When I read it, I knew. I knew you would be the one. You would never betray me, Jilly. I knew it in my heart that we would be together forever. ‘
And I lie in dreamless death, suspended in my cage
?’ When I read this, I wept. I knew I had found you, the one who could help me become immortal. I knew you would bear a child, a son, who will live on forever. A son who will be strong enough to lead all of us into the afterlife, who will bless us and make us pure.”

Jill was crawling backward on the bed. This man in front of her was not Gabriel. This was not the wonderful, seductive professor she had found so incredibly attractive. This man was a raving lunatic. She hadn’t written the poem for him; it was an assignment from another teacher in another class. She couldn’t even remember showing it to him, which meant he must have gone through all of her old things. But how…oh, that was it. She remembered asking him if she could store some old boxes of work in his attic months ago, after their affair began.

“Oh, God, what have I done?” she groaned aloud. It had seemed so simple, so fun. An older professor, so smart and sexy. He had shown so much interest in her from the minute she met him, always wanted to hear her thoughts and opinions. Remarks she made to the boys her age in class were often met by blank stares or derisive giggles. They weren’t interested in talking about philosophy and religion. They just wanted to get in her pants.

But Gabriel, oh, he was so different. He encouraged her crazy questions, made her feel so intelligent. He’d treated her like an equal from the day she met him, pushed her to think about the world in ways she’d never dreamed possible. And when they’d finally consummated their intellectual courtship, she’d never felt anything had been so right in the world. She didn’t think for a minute that she was the only woman he was sleeping with, but it didn’t matter to her. He was sharing his life with her, and when she became pregnant he was overwhelmed with joy, promised to take care of her and the baby forever. No, this wild-eyed thing was not the man she’d known. The man she knew.

She swung her head around frantically, trying to find some way out of the room he’d been keeping her prisoner in. The door was open, and she lunged for it, but he was quicker and threw her back on the bed.

“No, no, no, not like that. You need to stay here with me, love. I need to take care of you and our son. I’ve put everything in motion and done all I know to secure his way.”

She continued to squirm, and he screamed, “You must listen to me. Listen!”

“No. Let me out of here, Gabriel. Let me out of here right now, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.” Her venomous threat made him laugh. He knelt on her chest, threw her hands over her arms and secured them with handcuffs. He slid down her body till he was off the bed, then took each of her thrashing legs and tied them to the foot of the antique bedpost.

“Jilly. My beautiful, lovely girl, don’t you see? You can’t escape me. You can’t escape our destiny. You were given to me to bear me a son. You are carrying the Messiah.”

“Gabriel, let me go. Undo these handcuffs!”

Gabriel just smiled serenely and reached for her arm. She felt the prick of the needle and started becoming woozy. Gabriel patted her on the head and started out the door.

“God damn you, Gabriel!”

He was back to the bed in a shot and slapped her across the face, hard enough she felt blood filling her mouth.

He spoke quietly, gently. “Don’t ever say that again, Jilly. God will not damn me. He will welcome me to heaven with open arms, thankful that I have given His Son back to the world. I will be rewarded, Jill, not damned. I will be His angel, and I will watch by His side as His Son, our son, saves the world. Do you not understand?”

He left the room and locked the door behind him, ignoring Jill’s shrieks of protest. She heard the phone ringing in the background, but before she could summon the energy to scream, her mind swirled into a blank, and she fell back into the pillows.

Sixty-Seven

Price motioned Taylor and Baldwin into his office. “What do you have? Lincoln told me he’s looking for property records for a professor who didn’t make the initial list.”

Taylor threw herself in the chair. “His name is Gabriel Lucas. Professor of the Classics at Vandy. He wasn’t on the list because he’s taken a sabbatical. The dean told us he has brain cancer.”

Marcus came into the office. “And pretty bad brain cancer. The doctor at Vandy? Hoyt? He didn’t want to give up any information, doctor-patient confidentiality. I showed him the warrant and threatened him with an accomplice to murder charge. He started talking.”

He looked at his notes. “Lucas, Gabriel, forty-eight. 3802 West End Avenue. Presented eight months ago with headaches he thought were migraines. A neurologist did an MRI which showed a large tumor in his brain stem, something called brainstem glioma. Pretty heavy-duty cancer. The neurologist sent him to Dr. Hoyt, but it was too late. The tumor was inoperable and a biopsy showed it was stage four, as bad as it gets. The cancer was already moving into other parts of his brain. Because of the size of the tumor and the location, there was nothing that they could do. They offered to try radiation and chemo, but Lucas decided he didn’t want to go through all of the motions with such a small chance of it actually working. They gave him prescriptions for pain medication, which he has been filling; they had to renew the prescription last month. Publix pharmacy in Bellevue.

“Dr. Hoyt was surprised that he’s made it this long. He gave Lucas an optimistic estimate of six months, and didn’t think he’d make it over four. He’s living on borrowed time.”

Baldwin was fascinated. “A tumor like that, in that position, could easily alter his personality, his speech. Hell, it could make him a completely different person. He could go off the deep end. Whether he already had a propensity toward violence, and the tumor brought it to the surface, or he was a genuinely good guy and it’s altered him into madness, we may never know. But I’m willing to put money down this is our guy. I need to go look some stuff up. Before I go, did he give you any DNA samples?”

Marcus beamed. “Yep. He had pathology pull the slides from the biopsy. I called Sam and she met me at Private Match. She and Simon are going to try and match it to the semen we found on Shelby.”

“Brilliant job, Marcus. Okay, I’ll be back in a minute.” He raced off.

Taylor watched Baldwin’s back disappear out the door. “We need to get a team over to the address from the prescription refills right now. If we—”

“Taylor, I’ve got the address.” Lincoln came into the room, waving a piece of paper over his head. “Lucas has a house on Granny White Pike, right near the Lipscomb Drive crossroads. Got it off the voter registration rolls. A good old fashioned registered Democrat. Bought the house in 1996.”

Taylor reached for the sheet of paper. “Wait a minute. The doctor’s office had him living on West End. What the hell?” Her cell phone rang and she looked at it. 
Vandy
, she mouthed to Price as she picked it up. “This is Lieutenant Jackson. Yes, Janet, thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Okay, let me write that down. 6002 Hillsboro Pike? That’s his new address? Do you have a record of the old address? Ah, 3802 West End. Okay, I’ve got it. Thanks.” She hung up and looked at Price.

“Looks like he moved from West End to Hillsboro recently.”

“How recently?”

“Six months ago.”

“So what’s with the Granny White address?”

“Hell if I know, Taylor said, “He had multiple addresses—one listed for the school, one for the doc, and one for the state.”

“How does a professor, on a professor’s salary, end up owning three houses?”

“An excellent question. Who needs three houses in one town?”

Price twisted the ends of his mustache, thinking. “One to live in, one to kill in and one to hold his victims?”

Taylor was on her feet. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter what he’s doing with his finances. We need to get teams to all three of these houses. Can you call in Officer Bob Miller and Officer Keith Wills? They’re SWAT trained, so they can take Granny White. Fitz and Marcus can take West End, and Baldwin and I will hit Hillsboro.”

“Good plan. Let me make the calls.” Price disappeared into his office.

“Damn, this just couldn’t be easy, could it? Oh, wait a second. Marcus, call the pharmacy in Bellevue. Confirm what address he has on his prescription, and see if they’ll tell you what it’s for too.”

Marcus grabbed the phone and called information for the number. They sat and watched while he dialed. Taylor was tapping her foot nervously against the corner of her desk drawer. Lincoln noticed and reached over, grabbing her knee and stilling the shakes. “We’re cool, T. We’ve got him. We just need to find out where he is, and we’ve got three places to look. Relax.”

She gave him a grateful smile and winked. He was right—they had him. Now all they needed was Sam’s DNA match and the right address, and maybe, God willing, they would find Jill Gates alive. She looked over her shoulder. Where the hell was Baldwin?

Marcus hung up the phone and nodded. “The pharmacy has the Hillsboro address, and he’s taking injectable morphine. They filled the prescription for the drugs and syringes a few weeks ago.”

Fitz strolled in. “Got us a real live suspect?”

Taylor smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Think so. He has three addresses, but one of them, a house on Hillsboro, has come up twice.  Marcus here earned his pay and threatened to arrest a doctor at Vandy if he wouldn’t give up the info.”

Marcus sat with a Cheshire cat grin. Fitz looked at him and couldn’t help but laugh. “Good job, son. There’s more good news, if you want to call it that.”

“What?” Taylor asked, shoving her chair over to make room for Fitz’s paunch to fit into Price’s office.

“Three things. Arrested the father of your seventeen-year-old suicide. Though as you suspected, he wasn’t a suicide.”

Taylor’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding? What happened?”

“Guy waltzed in here this afternoon and announced he did it. It was just like you thought, LT. They were fighting, he was drunk, and when the kid got up to leave, he grabbed the gun and shot him. The guilt finally got to him. Got him down in night court being booked right now, and he’s got company.”

“Who?”

“Little Man Graft. Big bad Little Man. Your kid gave a statement. His mama found a job out of state, so they packed up all their stuff and stopped by the station on their way out of town. Kid gave me the whole story. He saw Little Man shoot Lashon Hall, no question about it. I videotaped a statement and let his mom take him. She gave me a cell phone number where I can reach her if we need him again. Then the planets aligned. Central sector called to say they’d picked up Terrence Norton after they’d gotten reports he was involved in a shooting on Charlotte Pike. Seems he took a shot at one of the homeless guys who’ve been breaking into cars down by the Exxon station.