Die for Me

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sunday, January 21, 7:50

A.M.

Vito, come and check this out.” Nick motioned Vito back in the house. “Upstairs.”

From Selma Crane’s driveway, Vito watched the ambulance carrying Sophie pull away and squaring his shoulders, went inside to do his job. He got upstairs and took a slow turn, his eyes wide. “I suspect this was not the way Selma Crane left the place.”

“Um, no. But what you really need to see is over here.”

Simon Vartanian had made himself at home. Gone were all the interior walls on the upper floor. With the exception of a king-size bed in the far corner and a state-of-the-art computer station, the entire space was a huge studio. Vito joined Nick at the far wall and moved sideways, studying the macabre series of paintings.

For a very long moment, Vito could only stare and wonder at the mind that had been able to… create this. For they weren’t simply copies. Simon Vartanian had achieved something in his victim’s eyes. A light or maybe the extinguishing of a light. “The moment of death,” he murmured.

“He was experimenting with the stages of death by torture,” Nick said. “Claire Dies, Zachary Dies, Jared Dies, then series for Bill, Brittany, Warren, and Greg.”

“So our last victim is named Jared. It’s a start.”

“We might never know who he is. Simon might not have known more than the boy’s first name. He kept good records for all of his ‘models,’ but not Jared.” Nick motioned him to Simon’s computer, where a folder sat in the middle of a spotless desk. Nick put his hand on the folder when Vito reached for it. “Remember Sophie’s okay. All right?”

Vito nodded, then ground his teeth in new anger when he saw what was inside the folder. “Photos of Sophie’s Viking tour.” She stood in front of awestruck children, her expression intent as she held the battle-ax over her head. He closed the folder. “I’m just glad he didn’t see the Joan tour. That element of surprise saved her life.”

“Look at this.” It was a diagram linking Kyle Lombard to Clint Shafer and Clint to Sophie in a vertical line. Alan Brewster’s name was connected to all three.

“So Alan was involved,” Vito said.

“That would be my guess.”

Vito narrowed his eyes. “You found Brewster?”

“I think so. I did find out what the squeaking sound was on the tape.” He walked to the wall that ran along the staircase and opened a small door. “A dumbwaiter.”

Vito looked inside with a grimace. The man inside was nude and missing most of his head. “It almost looks like his head… exploded.” He leaned in to study the man’s hand. “His signet ring says AB, so I’d bet this was Brewster.”

“The dumbwaiter goes all the way down to the basement and also has a loading area on the first floor. It’s how Simon got his victims and heavy equipment downstairs. It looks like he might have even brought his dead victims up here to paint them.”

“That is so gross.”

“Well, yeah.” Nick reached into the shaft and tugged on the ropes, sending the platform and Alan Brewster halfway down to the next floor, then brought him back up. The squeaking echoed just as it had on the tape. “His time machine.”

Jen came over from Simon’s living corner where she’d been collecting samples. “What about the church?”

“It’s in the basement,” Vito said. “He partitioned part of the basement off to be the crypt. He’s got posters of stained-glass windows down there and everything.”

“So there was no church.” Jen sighed. “That was hours down the drain.”

“Jen, thank you,” Vito said and swallowed. “Thanks to both of you.”

“I’m glad she’s okay.” She cleared her throat. “I found what’s left of Simon’s lubricant. I’ll test it against what we found on Warren’s hands, but I’m sure it’ll match.”

“So what about the paintings?” Nick asked. “I mean, we’ll take them in as evidence, but what will the Vartanians ultimately want done with them?”

“Burn them,” Susannah Vartanian said from the stairs. “We want to destroy them.”

“We connected some dots of our own,” Daniel said, passing his sister on the stairs, then offering his hand to pull her the rest of the way up. “Our mother suspected our father had done some covering up of Simon’s sins, but she never believed he was alive. When Stacy Savard sent that picture to my father, my mother saw it and thought there had been a big mistake in identity, that Simon might not even know we’d thought he was dead. But when she and Dad got here, she started to put things together. The final straw was Dad trying to get information out of the old Russian man at the library.”

“She came to the same conclusion that Sophie did,” Susannah said. “She hired someone to watch my father. She realized he’d found Simon and never intended to tell her. She left us word that she planned to meet Simon to see for herself what had happened all those years ago. Her letter said if she never came back, that we had been right and Simon was as evil as we’d tried to get her to believe.”

“I’m sorry,” Vito said. “It’s too little, too late, and nobody wins.”

“Simon really is dead now. Who knows how much longer he would have gone on killing people.” Daniel looked at the paintings. “I mean, he’d been looking for that spark all his life. He finally found it, and he never would have let it go. He would have kept killing. So today, we all win.” He shook hands with the three of them, a forced smile on his face. “I’m going home and getting back to work. If you’re ever in Atlanta, holler.”

Susannah didn’t smile as she shook their hands. “Thank you. Daniel and I have been waiting for resolution nearly all our lives.”

Jen hesitated, then shrugged. “We found a bear trap, Daniel. We also found a drawing of you, stuck in it.”

Daniel nodded unsteadily. “So that was to have been my end. I’m not surprised.” He took his sister’s arm and started down the stairs.

“Wait,” Vito said. “I need to ask. Where will you bury Simon?”

“We won’t,” Daniel said. “We already decided that burying him will add to his notoriety. We don’t want hordes of serial killer aficionados descending on Dutton.”

Susannah nodded. “So we’re going to donate his body to the medical center in Atlanta. Maybe somebody can learn something useful.”

“Like about the brain of a sociopath?” Jen asked.

Daniel shrugged. “Perhaps. If nothing else, some med student can use him to learn how to save lives. We’re going to catch a ride back with one of the patrol cars, so don’t worry about driving us, Sergeant McFain.”

The Vartanians left. Gathered at the top of the stairs, Vito, Nick, and Jen could watch through the front door as the brother and sister stopped at the gurney that held Simon’s body. Susannah’s shoulders sagged and Daniel put his arm around her.

“This time, he’s really dead,” Vito said quietly. “And I’m glad he is.”

“Ahh, about that.” Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out three videocassettes. “Simon had the cameras on the whole time. You and Daniel did the right things, but…” He put the tapes in Vito’s hand. “You might want to keep these someplace safe.”

Vito started down the steps. “Thanks. Now, I’m going to get a shower, go back to the precinct to do the paperwork for shooting Simon, then buy six dozen roses.”

Jen’s jaw dropped. “Six dozen? Who for?”

“Sophie, Anna, Molly, Tess. And for my mom, because no matter how bad I ever thought she was, Sophie’s mother is a million times worse.”

“That’s only five dozen, Vito,” Jen said.

“The last dozen are for a grave.” He’d drive out to Jersey tomorrow, a week late, but it was the thought. Andrea would have understood that he’d had a busy week.

“Vito,” Nick sighed.

“It’s resolution, Nick,” Vito said. “And closure. But after that, I’m good.”

Sunday, January 21, 1:30

P.M.

“Harry, wake up.” Sophie shook his shoulder. He’d fallen asleep sitting up on the sofa in the little family room outside the cardiac care unit.

With a snap his eyes flew open. “Anna?”

“She’s sleeping. Go home for a while, Harry. You look beat.”

He tugged her down to sit on the arm of the sofa next to him. “So do you.”

“Just a few stitches.” It was more like fourteen stitches, and her side and tongue were sore as hell, but she was so happy to be alive that her words were barely a fib.

Harry rubbed his thumb over a bruise on Sophie’s face. “He hit you.”

“No, he didn’t. I did that diving for the sword. You should have seen me, Harry,” she added lightly. “It was the stuff of Errol Flynn. En garde.” She pretended to lunge.

Harry shuddered. “I’m imagining it just fine. I don’t ever want to see it.”

“Too bad. I understand there’s a tape. Maybe we can watch it together next time you have insomnia.” She grinned at him and he laughed in spite of himself.

“Sophie, you’re incorrigible.”

She sobered. “Go home, Harry. Stop hiding here.”

He sighed. “You don’t understand.”

At her own insistence, Harry had told her what had transpired between him and Freya. Sophie kissed the top of his bald head. “I understand you love me. And I understand you have a wife who you also love except for this one thing. I don’t need Freya to love me, Harry. It would be nice if she did, but if I were the cause of a rift between you two, I’d just die.” She winced. “Bad choice of words. So go home. Be with your family. Sleep in your easy chair, and if I need you, I know where to find you.”

He pressed his lips together. “It’s not right, Sophie. You didn’t do anything to her.”

“No, I didn’t, but I look at it this way: I have a dad and a mom-you and Katherine.”

“That’s not a real family, Sophie.”

She laughed softly. “Harry, my ‘real’ father was my grandmother’s lover and my ‘real’ mother is a thief. I’d rather have you and Katherine as parents any day of the week. Besides, I get to pick my family. How many people can say that?”

He put his arm around her, carefully hugging her to him. “I liked your detective.”

“I like him, too.”

“Maybe you’ll have a new family soon,” he said, wily again.

“Maybe. And I promise you’ll be the first to know.” She leaned close. “If I were you I’d be dusting off that tuxedo. You may need to be walking a girl down the aisle soon.”

Harry swallowed. “I always assumed it would be Alex. I guess now that he’s-”

“Sshh.” Tears sprang to Sophie’s eyes for the first time that day. “Harry, even if Alex were still alive, I still would have asked you. He knew that. I thought you did, too.” She pulled him to his feet and pushed him out the door. “Now go. I’ll stay with Anna a little longer, then I’m going home, too.”

“With Vito?” he asked cagily.

“You bet your Bette Davis collection.”

She waved him down the hall, then smiled. As Harry’s elevator closed, another opened and Vito stepped out, a dozen white roses in each arm. “Hi.”

He gave her that smile that turned him from magazine handsome to movie-star gorgeous and Sophie’s heart went pitter-pat. “You’re up,” he said.

“Treated and released,” she said and lifted her face for a kiss that made her sigh. “I don’t think they’ll let Anna have those roses in the cardiac ICU. I’m sorry.”

“Then I guess they’re all for you.” He put them on a table in the waiting room, then slipped his hands under her hair, searching her face. “Truth. How are you?”

“Fine.” She closed her eyes. “Physically anyway. I’ve had a few bad moments thinking about what might have happened if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled her close. “I know.”

She rested her cheek against his chest and listened to the soothing beat of his heart. It was exactly what she needed. “You never did tell me how you found me.”

“Hmm. Well, there was an old woman buried next to Claire Reynolds. She used the same investment brokers as the woman who’d once owned that field. We didn’t know her name, so we tracked brokerage clients who lived near quarries.”

She pulled back to stare up at him. “Quarries?”

“The fill dirt from the graves came from near a quarry. But we still had too many names and it was almost dawn. Katherine had learned that the unidentified woman had dental work that placed her in Germany before the 1960s, but none of our names were European. We didn’t want to risk calling the actual clients, because we were afraid Simon might pick up the phone. So we started calling the contact information on each person’s brokerage application until we found a woman whose father had been a diplomat in West Germany in the 1950s. Her name was Selma Crane.”

“So Simon’s house really belonged to Selma Crane. And Selma Crane is dead.”

“Simon found the perfect location and killed for it. He buried her next to Claire, then continued to pay Selma’s bills. He even sent out her Christmas cards for two years.”

“He told me he’d killed those people to watch them die.”

“And then he’d paint them. On canvas. He wanted to be famous in his own time.” He tipped her face up, and she saw the shadows in his eyes. “I watched the tape. You really should be an actress. The way you goaded him…”

She shuddered. “I was so scared, but I didn’t want him to see.”

“You said that the people he’d killed continued to scream and that I heard them.” He said it with a kind of wonder, and Sophie realized she’d paid him the highest compliment possible.

“And you always will.” She leaned up and kissed his mouth. “My white knight.”

He grimaced. “I don’t want to be a knight. How about I just be your cop?”

“What do I get to be of yours?”

He met her eyes and Sophie’s heart did a slow, delightful roll. “Ask me in a few months and I’ll say ‘my wife.’” He lifted a brow. “For now, my Boudiccea will do nicely.”

She smiled up at him, content. “You’re bad, Vito Ciccotelli, bad to the bone.”

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and led her toward her grandmother’s room. “You’re just saying that to be nice.”

She glared up at him as they were buzzed into the CCU. “You saw Simon say that on the tape didn’t you? You rat.”

He chuckled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

Sunday, January 21, 4:30

P.M.

Daniel stopped his rental car in front of the train station. “I wish you wouldn’t go, Suze.”

Her eyes were so sad. “I have a job, Daniel. And a home.”

Interesting, how she’d ordered the two. Job, then home. It was exactly how he ordered his priorities in his own mind. “I feel like I just found you again.”

“We’ll see each other next week.” At their parents’ funeral in Dutton.

“And after that? Will you visit?”

She swallowed hard. “Back home? No. After we bury Mom and Dad, I don’t ever want to go home again.”

His heart hurt just looking at her. “Suze, what did Simon do to you?”

She looked away. “Another time, Daniel. After everything that’s happened… I can’t.” She climbed from the car and ran toward the station, but he didn’t drive away. He waited, and when she got to the station door, she paused, turned, and watched him watching her. She looked fragile, but he knew that inside she was as strong as he was. Maybe stronger.

Finally she waved, just once, and she was gone, leaving him alone with all his memories. And all his regrets.

Then sitting there in the quiet of his car, he reached into the back seat for his laptop case. From inside he pulled a thick manila envelope. He slid the contents from the envelope and paged through the stack of pictures one at a time. He’d given Ciccotelli a copy, keeping the originals for himself. He forced himself to look at each snapshot, each woman. The pictures were real, just as he’d thought they were so long ago.

To each woman he made a silent vow to do what he should have done ten years before. One way or another, no matter how many years it took, he’d match these pictures with the victims. If Simon had perpetrated crimes against them, he could at least notify their families that justice had been done.

If someone else was responsible… I’ll find them. And I’ll make them pay.

And then maybe he’d finally find peace.