Whispers of the Dead - Страница 56

‘No one would have believed it.’

‘No?’ he spat. ‘They believed the photographs I left at his house! They believed everything else I wanted them to!’

A pulse had started to beat in my temple at the mention of Sam. ‘And if they had, what then? Murder more pregnant women?’

‘I wouldn’t have had to! Avery’s wife was so full of life! She was the one. I could feel it!’

‘Like you could feel it with all the others? Like you did with Summer?’ I yelled, forgetting myself.

‘She was Lieberman’s pet!’

‘She liked you!’

‘She liked Irving more!’

That shocked me to silence. We’d all assumed that Irving had been targeted because of the TV interview. But Kyle had been present that day in the morgue when the profiler had flirted with Summer. The next day Irving had gone missing.

And now Summer was lying in the dark as well.

She only smiled back at him. That was all. For Kyle’s ego it had obviously been enough.

I felt sick. But Kyle had become distracted enough to relax his grip on Gardner. I saw the TBI agent’s eyelids start to twitch open, and said the first thing that came into my mind.

‘What had you got against Tom? Was he such a threat?’

‘He was a fraud!’ Kyle’s face twisted in a spasm. ‘The big forensic anthropologist, the expert! Basking in the glory, playing jazz while he worked, like he was in some pizza bar! Hicks was just an asshole, but Lieberman thought he was something special! The greatest mystery in the universe right under his nose, and he didn’t have the imagination to look beyond the rot!’

‘Tom knew better than to waste time searching for answers he couldn’t find.’ I could hear Gardner wheezing again now, but I daren’t spare him a glance. ‘You don’t even know what it is you’re looking for, do you? All the people you’ve killed, these bodies you’ve… you’ve hoarded, and what for? There’s no purpose to any of it. You’re like a kid prodding something dead with a stick—’

‘Shut up!’ Spittle sprayed from his mouth.

‘Do you even know how many lives you’ve wasted?’ I shouted. ‘And why? So you can take photographs? You think that’s going to show you anything?’

‘Yes! The right one can!’ His mouth curled. ‘You’re as bad as Lieberman, you only see the dead meat. But there’s more than that! I’m more than that! Life’s binary, it’s on or off! I’ve stared into people’s eyes and watched it go out of them, like nicking a switch! So where’s it go? Something happens, right then, at that moment! I’ve seen it!’

He sounded desperate. And suddenly I realized that’s exactly what he was. That was what this was all about. We’d been wrong about the killer’s identity, but Jacobsen had been right about everything else. Kyle was obsessed with his own mortality. No, not obsessed, I realized, looking at him.

Terrified.

‘How’s your hand, Kyle?’ I asked. ‘I’m guessing you only pretended you’d stabbed it on the needle. Tom thought he was doing you a favour asking you to help Summer, but you were only hanging round hoping to see one of us get stuck, weren’t you? What happened, did you lose your nerve?’

‘Shut up!’

‘The thing is, if you were just pretending, how come you went so white? It was when I asked about your shots, wasn’t it? You’d not thought about infections from any of the people you’d killed until then, had you?’

‘I told you to shut up!’

‘Noah Harper’s tested positive for Hepatitis C. Did you know that, Kyle?’

‘Liar!’

‘It’s true. You should have taken up the hospital’s offer of post-exposure treatment. Even though you didn’t prick yourself on one of the needles, it was still an open wound. And there was all that gore on your glove. But then you weren’t planning on staying around, were you? Much easier to stick your head in the sand than accept you might be infected by one of your own victims.’

His face had paled even more. He jerked his head towards the treatment room. ‘Last time! Get in there, now!’

But I didn’t move. Each minute I kept him talking was a minute closer to help arriving. And looking at his pallor, the ragged way he was breathing, I’d started to think about something else. Why had he chosen to hide, gambling everything on being able to slip out while we were distracted with York, instead of making a run for it while he had the chance? Perhaps for the same reason he hadn’t killed Sam. The same reason he hadn’t already choked the life out of Gardner and overpowered me.

Because he couldn’t.

‘You took quite a knock in the crash, didn’t you?’ I said, trying to keep my tone conversational. He regarded me with a hunted expression, his chest rising and falling unevenly. ‘I saw the steering wheel in the ambulance. Must have given your ribs a hell of a crack. Did you know that’s one of the most common causes of death in car crashes? The ribs splinter and pierce the lungs. Or the heart. How many times have you seen injuries like that in the morgue?’

‘Shut up.’

‘That sharp, stabbing pain you feel every time you draw a breath? That’s the bone splinters lacerating your lung tissue. It’s hard to breathe, isn’t it? And it’s going to get a lot harder, because your lungs are filling up with blood. You’re dying, Kyle.’

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’ he screamed.

‘If you don’t believe me, take a look at yourself.’ I gestured to the broken mirror on the wall. ‘See how pale you are? That’s because you’re haemorrhaging. If you don’t get medical help soon you’re going to either bleed to death or drown in your own blood.’

His mouth worked as he stared at his shattered reflection. I’d no idea how badly hurt he really was, but I’d just fed his imagination. To someone as self-obsessed as Kyle that would be enough.

He’d all but forgotten about Gardner. The TBI agent was blinking now as consciousness returned. I thought I saw him shift slightly, as though he were testing the chokehold. No, not now. Please, just stay still.

‘Give yourself up,’ I went on quickly.

‘I’m warning you…’

‘Save yourself, Kyle. If you give yourself up now you can get medical attention.’

He didn’t speak for a moment. I realized with a shock he was crying.

‘They’ll kill me anyway.’

‘No, they won’t. That’s what lawyers are for. And trials take years.’

‘I can’t go to jail!’

‘Would you rather die?’

He was snuffling back tears. I tried to keep the sudden hope from my face as I saw the tension begin to go out of him.

Then Gardner’s hand began inching towards his gun.

Kyle saw what he was doing. ‘Shit!’ He wrenched hard on Gardner’s throat. The agent gave a choked gasp and pawed feebly at his belt as Kyle grabbed with his free hand for the weapon. I lunged towards them, knowing I wasn’t going to reach them in time.

There was a sound from the doorway.

Jacobsen stood framed in it, her face blank with shock. Then her hand swept aside her jacket as she went for her own gun.

‘Leave it!’ Kyle yelled, twisting so Gardner was between them.

She stopped, hand resting on the pistol grip. Kyle had Gardner’s gun partway out of its clip, but he had to reach at an awkward angle round the agent’s body. The silence was broken only by his ragged breathing. Gardner was no longer moving at all. He hung from the chokehold like a sack, his face darker than ever.

Kyle licked his lips, his eyes going to Jacobsen’s belt clip.

‘Hand away from the gun and let him go!’ she said, but for all her authority there was still a quiver to her voice.

Kyle heard it. Adrenaline had given him a new strength. The moon face moved from side to side as he shook his head and smiled. He was back in control. Enjoying himself.

‘Oh, I don’t think so. I think you need to put your gun down.’

‘That’s not going to happen. Last chance—’

‘Shh.’ He cocked his head towards Gardner, as though he were listening. ‘I can hardly feel your partner’s heartbeat. It’s getting weaker. Slowing… slowing…’

‘If you kill him there’s nothing to stop me shooting you.’

Kyle’s smugness vanished. The pink tongue darted out to moisten his lips again, and at that moment there was the thump of footsteps from the floor above. Kyle’s eyes widened, and as Jacobsen’s attention wavered he snatched the gun from Gardner’s belt and fired.

I saw Jacobsen stagger, but she’d already drawn and fired herself. As Kyle let Gardner fall there were two more cracks and a section of mirror by my head exploded, spraying me with splinters. Then Kyle’s gun clattered to the floor and he dropped as though his strings had been cut.

My ears rang for the second time that afternoon as I rushed to Jacobsen. She was slumped against the doorway, her gun still rigidly levelled at where Kyle lay. Her face was chalk white, in stark contrast to the spreading dark stain on her jacket. It was on her left side, a glistening wet patch between her neck and her shoulder that grew bigger as I looked.

She blinked. ‘I’m… I think…’

‘Sit down. Don’t try to talk.’

I spared a quick glance at Gardner’s unmoving form as I tore open her jacket. I couldn’t see if he was breathing, but Jacobsen’s situation was more urgent: if the bullet had hit an artery she could bleed out in seconds. Feet were clattering down the stairs and along the corridor but I barely heard. I’d pulled her jacket from her injured shoulder, my breath catching at how her white shirt was soaked with blood, when figures burst through the doorway. Suddenly the chamber was filled with shouting.