Sleep Tight

Chapter 21

"He's breathing on his own."

The emergency room doctor made the announcement to the group of police and agents in the waiting room. Then he succinctly filled them in on details. "The patient rated a fourteen on the Glasgow Coma Scale. He was lucky-at twelve we usually intubate. Unfortunately, we had to give him another injection of naloxone, which has been associated with seizures. With Mr. Hitchcock's history of epilepsy, we'll have to monitor him closely for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours."

"Can we speak with him?" Anthony asked.

"Two people for not more than ten minutes. And I mean speak to him. No interrogation."

It was decided that Gillian and Detective Wakefield would conduct the brief interview, even though Mary offered to go in Gillian's place. They followed the doctor down a long hallway with mint green walls and a cracked linoleum floor that had turned yellow. The fluorescent lights were unnaturally bright, and no one cast a shadow.

Gavin had been put in a private room. Outside, two policemen, a man and woman, stood guard.

Gavin was lying on a gurney, an IV drip in his arm and oxygen tubes in his nostrils. A heart monitor beeped near his head. His eyes were closed, and his lips were still blue.

Gillian slowly approached the bed. She felt a wave of heat wash over her. Her ears started to ring. She was angry. Angry with herself for not seeing Gavin for what he was, angry with Gavin for tricking her for so many years.

Be professional, she told herself. Be a cop.

Wakefield moved to the opposite side of the bed, facing the door. He nodded at her to proceed.

"Gavin?" Gillian said.

Gavin heard Gillian's voice and relief washed over him. After a bleary struggle, he opened his eyes.

"Gillian?…" He lifted a hand to reach for her. She remained beyond his grasp.

"C-mere," he said thickly.

She didn't move any closer. "Gavin, this is Detective Wakefield of the Minneapolis Police Department. We're here to ask you some questions."

The curt tone of her voice made him retreat. "Sleep," he mumbled. "Wanna sleep." His eyes drifted shut.

"You can sleep later. We want to talk to you now."

He opened his eyes again.

The detective turned on a microcassette recorder and spoke into it, listing stuff like the date and time, location. Then he started with the questions, asking Gavin where he'd been last night.

Gavin wouldn't have answered-he was so fucking tired and his head hurt like hell-but Gillian was there, watching him. He wanted to be good for her. He'd always wanted to be good for her. So he told the guy about his evening, about how he'd ended up running into the chick they were asking him about. Guess he finally knew her name. Cammie.

"Where did you meet Cammie Curtis?" Wakefield asked.

"A bar. A bar on the U campus."

"Did you approach her, or did she approach you?"

"D-don't remember."

"Did you ask her if she wanted to go for a ride?"

"I asked her… if she wanted to come home with me," Gavin said. "She said yes."

"And you took her to your house?" Wakefield asked.

"Yeah."

"Did you have sex with her?"

Gavin looked at Gillian. Shit. Why was he asking those kinds of questions in front of her? He should know better than that.

"Answer the question," she said sternly.

So he answered the question. What else could he do? "Yeah."

"Consensual?" the detective asked.

"Huh?"

"Did she also want to have sex with you?"

Oh, consensual. They thought he was dumb, but he just hadn't heard right. "I think so."

"She claims that you raped her. Did you rape Cammie Curtis?"

Rape? Had he raped her? "I'm not sure."

"Did you tie her to your bed?"

Again, he looked at Gillian. Tell the truth, her body language seemed to say.

"She sure as hell didn't do it herself."

"Is that a yes?" the guy asked. "Are you saying you tied her to the bed?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"The occasion just seemed to call for it."

"Did you rape her?"

He was confused.

His brain was mush.

Were they supposed to be asking him questions when his brain was mush? Should he wait for a lawyer? Did it matter?

"Gavin?" Gillian prodded.

If she thought he needed a lawyer, she would have said so.

"Answer the question. Did you rape Cammie Curtis?"

Had he raped her? She'd wanted it, hadn't she? At least he thought she'd wanted it, but then he'd thought Gillian had wanted it too. "I don't know about the rape stuff." He thought about the knife-a knife that looked like the knife that had killed his grandmother. He thought about the huge rock that had crushed Fiona Portman's skull. "Is she dead?"

"Who?" the detective asked.

"That Cammie chick. 'Cause all I remember is that I was gonna kill her."

That shut them both up. Gillian and the detective looked at each other; then they looked at Gavin.

"Gavin, listen to me," Gillian said with insistence.

He complied, the way he always complied.

"Did you abduct Charlotte Henning?"

There was something odd about Gillian. She seemed like somebody else. "You're different," he stated.

She put a hand to her hair.

"Not your hair," he said. "You. You're different."

"Answer the question, Gavin." That command came from Wakefield.

Gavin continued to stare at her. "What was the question?" His mind had floated away.

"Did you abduct Charlotte Henning?"

He could see that Gillian wanted him to say yes.

He could see that she believed he'd done it, and if she believed it, then it must be true. His head hurt, and he wanted to sleep. "Yes," he said.

"Did you smother her-on purpose or by accident?"

"Yes."

Wakefield moved his palm-size recorder nearer, while Gavin continued to stare at Gillian.

"Did you throw her body in the river?" Gillian asked.

"Yes."

"Did you abduct Holly Lindstrom?"

"Yes."

The door opened. "Time's up," a male voice said. "No more questions."

"We've got enough for now." The detective sounded pretty damn satisfied. "Gavin Hitchcock, you're under arrest for the rape of Cammie Curtis, the murder of Charlotte Henning, and the abduction of Holly Lindstrom." He read him his rights, then shut off the recorder.

The detective and Gillian were stepping out the door when Gavin called her name.

She stopped and turned.

"Why didn't you let me die?"

For a moment he caught a flash of the old Gillian, the Gillian who had liked him and believed in him.

"Couldn't you see I wanted to die?" His voice was a rough, aching whisper.

Her only response was to leave the room.

Gavin heard the click of the closing door, heard the detective telling the officers that the patient was under arrest and would be transported to jail as soon as medically possible.

He'd be going back to prison. That was okay. Things were better in prison.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to forget the way Gillian had looked at him. Everything was so hard, too hard.

She was all he'd ever had, all he'd ever wanted, and now she hated him. His fault. Completely his fault. He was bad. Very bad.

He wanted to tell her he was sorry, tell her how much she meant to him, tell her he was glad she'd been a part of his life.

He pulled out the oxygen tubes, ripped out his IV, shoved himself to his feet, and staggered to the door, pulling it open.

"GILLIAN!" he shouted before the guards grabbed him and dragged him back into the room. "GILLIAN!" It didn't matter. She was gone. His body stiffened. His head flew back. "He's seizing!" somebody shouted before oblivion came.

Holly was putting on makeup when Gillian returned to the house.

Upon leaving the hospital, Gillian had had to fight the urge to drive straight home. She wanted to be alone, but Holly was waiting. In the hospital hallway Mary had tried to stop her, concern on her face, but Gillian had barged past, afraid that any weakening, any personal contact-especially from her sister-would cause her to fall apart.

Why didn't you let me die?

She had to be tough; she had to be strong. And the only way to do that was to shut herself off, at least temporarily. Not like Mary, not for a lifetime, but for a few hours, maybe even a few days.

"Let her go," Wakefield had told Mary, his voice seeming to come from another dimension.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Mary had asked, worried.

"We got a confession."

We got a confession.

"Did you find your friend?" Holly asked, leaning close to the vanity mirror, a mascara wand in her hand, her mouth open as she concentrated on her reflection.

"Yeah. Yeah, I did." Gillian paced. She picked up a stuffed animal. She put it down. "I need to talk to you."

Holly swung around, her expression going from bored distraction to frightened in less than a second. "What happened?"

"The guy who abducted you-he's been arrested."

"Oh my God! Is it the Lucia Killer?"

"So far he's confessed to one of the murders. I'm sure the others will follow."

There was a long pause as Holly absorbed the information. She plopped down on her bed, as if suddenly too weak to stand. "Does this mean you're going to leave?"

Instead of being relieved, as Gillian would have expected, Holly sounded upset. "We have him in custody," Gillian explained. "There's no reason for me to continue to work undercover."

Holly hung her head and stared intently at the floor. "W-what should I tell the kids at school?"

"Tell them I patched things up with my parents and went back home."

Gillian heard a sniffle, followed by another-and realized it was the news of her departure that Holly was finding difficult to deal with. Poor thing. She'd been through so much. Her emotions were brittle right now, the shift too abrupt. She'd just gotten used to the idea of Gillian spending almost every moment with her; now she was leaving.

The mental distance Gillian had been trying to maintain fell away. "Don't cry," she pleaded, sitting down and putting an arm around her. "We'll still see each other."

"It won't be the same. You won't be my cousin. I know you haven't even been here a whole week, but it was starting to be so much fun,"

Gillian held her as her shoulders quaked. "We can still have fun together. I'm not really that much older than you. Look-" She jumped up, grabbed pen and paper, and wrote down her address and home number. Holly already had her pager number. "Call me anytime you feel like it. In the middle of the night-if you need to talk to somebody-call me." She tucked the paper in the frame of the vanity mirror. "Maybe you can stay over sometime. We can rent movies and make popcorn."

Finally Holly raised her head and looked at Gillian, her face wet with tears. "What will happen to him?"

"He'll go to prison."

"For how long?"

"He's already done time, so he'll get a severe sentence," Gillian said sadly. "Probably life." An hour ago, she'd hated Gavin. Now she felt like crying for him.

Couldn't you see I wanted to die?

"I'm still afraid," Holly confessed, sounding surprised. "I thought when he was caught, I wouldn't be afraid anymore. But I don't feel any different. I still have this knot right here." She pressed a hand to her stomach.

"I'm sorry." Gillian wished she could assure her that the fear would subside quickly, but she would be lying.

"What was he in for before?" "I don't think you need to know. Not right now." "It'll be in the papers and on TV. Tell me." "Killing a sixteen-year-old girl." For the first time, Gillian spoke the words without a shadow of doubt.