No Grace, page 16
The chase continued up the fire escape, each flight of stairs bringing them closer to the building's roof. Madeleine, driven by fear and desperation, kept a steady lead ahead of Charlie, moving with menace and lightning precision. But she was tiring, her movements suddenly becoming more labored and uncoordinated.
Finally, they reached the roof, and Madeleine stumbled onto the flat, gravel-covered surface. The wind had picked up, and it howled around them as they faced each other, both breathing heavily from the exertion of the chase.
"You can't run anymore, Madeleine," Charlie shouted over the wind, his gun trained on her. "It's over."
But Madeleine was relentless. With a wild, desperate look in her eyes, she bolted toward the edge of the roof, preparing to leap to the next building. Charlie fired two shots, which zipped past her. He knew that if she made that jump, there was a chance she could slip away. He couldn't let that happen.
As Madeleine leaped, soaring through the air toward the adjacent rooftop, Charlie couldn't help but be amazed at her athleticism, especially considering her age. He pushed the thought aside and sprinted after her, his blood pounding in his chest. As he reached the edge, he launched himself into the air, feeling the wind whip around him as he barely landed on the next roof.
He could see Madeleine ahead of him, and she continued to vault over pipes and other obstacles, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, her desperation propelling her forward. Charlie followed, his resolve unyielding, as they navigated the treacherous skyline.
As they reached the last rooftop, Madeleine stumbled, her legs giving out beneath her. Charlie took advantage of her momentary weakness and closed the distance between them.
As she rushed towards the roof’s edge, one final time trying to make it to the roof of another building, Charlie saw her left leg jut to the side. He heard a crack and knew immediately that she had blown out her knee.
She let out an agonizing scream, but still pushed on and leaped over the gap between the two buildings. But the injury to her leg had slowed her momentum. Charlie watched in horror. She wasn't going to make it. She was going to plunge to her death. Charlie dug down deep, found every last ounce of strength left in him, and lunged forward, managing to grab onto her arm just as she started to descend. They both teetered on the edge of the rooftop, their balance precarious. Charlie tightened his grip, refusing to let her fall. And yet she struggled, trying to yank herself free, even if it meant death.
"Madeleine!" he yelled. "Please, don't do this. It doesn't need to end like this."
For a moment, it seemed as if she might listen, her eyes locking with his, the wild desperation fading. But then, as if a switch had been flipped, her gaze hardened, and she tried to wrench herself free.
"Let go!" she screamed. "I won't go back!"
With a sudden burst of strength, Madeleine tried to free herself from Charlie's grip by clawing at his face, but he held on tightly, unwilling to let her slip away despite feeling her draw blood.
"Madeleine, please!" Charlie implored, his voice strained. "We can help you. You can live."
Her eyes filled with tears and the fight seemed to drain out of her. She slumped against Charlie, her body heavy with exhaustion and defeat.
Charlie used the last of his strength and pulled her completely onto the roof, and then took the opportunity to secure his hold on her, pulling her up and away from the edge of the rooftop. As he guided her to a safer spot on the roof, he glanced around, searching for a way back to the ground.
As he searched, he saw Valerie appear on the adjacent rooftop, having found her way up from the window she had jumped through. She rushed over to the edge and called out to them.
"Charlie! Are you okay? Do you have her?"
"Yeah," Charlie called back, relief evident in his exhausted voice. "We got her."
Valerie nodded, a mixture of relief and determination on her face. "I'll find a way over to you. We need to get her into custody."
As Charlie held onto Madeleine, he couldn't help but feel a strange sense of pity for the woman. She had become so consumed by her need for vengeance that she had lost herself in the process. He just hoped that now the families of the victims could get closure, and others connected to Milton Hospital could feel safe again.
But for now, he had a job to do. He needed to bring Madeleine in, and ensure that she faced justice for the lives she had taken.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Valerie felt like she was home, the only home that kept her away from her personal troubles.
Valerie, Will, and Charlie returned to the Mesmer Building, the FBI headquarters in Quantico, exhausted from the day's events. The three of them made their way to the briefing room for the Criminal Psychopathy Unit, settling into their usual seats.
Outside, the world had gone dark, most of it sleeping.
Charlie pulled out a half bottle of bourbon from his inside pocket. "Celebratory drink, anyone?"
"Heinlein would flip if he knew you'd brought that in here," Valerie said. "So let's do it."
"It's not scotch, but it will suffice," Will said, grabbing three coffee cups from next to the coffee machine.
Charlie poured them all a belt. "To the CPU," Charlie said.
"The CPU," Valerie and Will replied.
Valerie took a sip, the bourbon feeling good on the back of her throat. But she couldn't entirely enjoy it. On her way there, she'd seen that she had several missed calls from Tom throughout the day. The last was a voicemail saying he was feeling like Valerie had been drifting away again. All he wanted was a text to know she was okay.
He said he'd be staying at his friend's house that night.
Then her mind went into overdrive, thinking through possible outcomes. In her tired, fragile state, her mind lurched to the worst possible meaning behind it all.
Although Valerie knew Tom wasn't the type, she couldn't help but worry he had met someone else.
She tried her best to beat the insidious image away, but the mere thought of Tom drifting away with someone else made her head pound.
"Alright, let's go over what we say to Heinlein tomorrow about Madeleine Archer," Charlie said, his voice tired but determined.
Valerie snapped out of her worries, but they lay there, active and menacing in the background of her mind. She felt like they were beginning to bore a hole inside of her.
“Okay,” she said, trying to engage with Charlie's request.
They began discussing Madeleine, the woman they were certain was the killer they'd been chasing. Madeleine was currently in surgery for the leg injury she had sustained during the rooftop chase.
"We'll have to wait until the morning to interview her," Will mentioned, rubbing his eyes. "But the evidence we found in her apartment – newspaper clippings about the Milton Hospital scandal and the reported murders that week – is pretty damning."
Valerie nodded in agreement, adding, "Not to mention the two tasers we found, one of which was highly illegal and capable of delivering a lethal shock. And I have a working theory behind her motivations. Madeleine has been killing her mother over and over again, but she has escalated over time as each kill fails to quench her anger. She needed it to be the real thing, but that wasn't possible."
As they talked, Will and Charlie both yawned, the weariness of the day catching up to them. Will glanced at Valerie, concern in his eyes.
"I am beat," Charlie said. "I think I'll go home and annoy my wife."
"Are you not tired of annoying people?" Will asked. "You really do get your fair share of it with us each day. Give the poor woman a break."
Charlie let out a bellowing laugh.
"Remember we're here if you want to talk about what's going on with Richard," Will said.
"I know," Charlie said, sighing. "I just hope I can guide my son away from being so afraid of the world that he ends up bitter. Bitterness goes a long way."
"You will," Valerie said with a smile.
"What about you and that envelope," Charlie said. "Have you decided what you're going to do?"
"Yes," Will declared. "I am going to write to the parole board with a persuasive argument why Damian Skorzeny should never be allowed to leave prison."
"What made your mind up?" Valerie asked.
"George Darin's body in the swimming pool," he said, gravely. "Some people are so twisted, I think it's far too dangerous to even bet that they'll be able to be in society again. And..." he trailed off.
"What's wrong?" Charlie asked.
"I have to say," Will said. "If he ever were released, I think I would fear him turning up at my door. Not that this changed my mind. But I do worry about it."
"Anyone comes for you," Charlie said. "They gotta go through us, first. Isn't that right, Val?"
"Absolutely," Valerie said with a yawn.
"Val, you should get some sleep too. You look like you could use it," Will suggested gently.
Valerie hesitated, then shook her head. "I appreciate your concern, but I have some things to take care of first," she replied.
"Can't it wait until morning? We're worried about you," Charlie said.
Valerie smiled. She was so glad to have Will and Charlie in her life.
"I'm sorry if things got tense before. I just want you both to know how proud I am to call you my partners and friends," she said sincerely.
Will and Charlie exchanged glances, their expressions softening. "We're proud to work with you too, Val," Charlie said warmly. "Just make sure you take care of yourself, okay?"
Valerie nodded, touched by their words. "I promise, I'll be alright."
With that, Will and Charlie smiled, said their goodnights, and left the room, leaving Valerie alone with her thoughts and the case files that still demanded her attention.
Valerie returned to her computer, her eyes still red from her earlier conversation with Charlie and Will. She noticed an unread email from Dr. Robertson, the psychiatrist overseeing her mother's treatment. She waited for a moment, afraid of what the message might say.
"Valerie, I tried to contact you today. Two FBI agents were allowed access to your mother earlier. Unfortunately, her condition has worsened significantly since their visit. She experienced a total regressive breakdown, and I fear she may be beyond our reach now. Please call me as soon as possible."
Tears streamed down Valerie's face as she tried to process the information. Her mother had been through so much, and now this.
She thought of herself as a child, playing with her mom before she got sick. She remembered a beach that they used to visit together, running along it. She imagined being there, and then something interrupted the daydream. An image of running along the beach and lightning arching across the sky.
A grave doubt started to build in her veins. It was the memory that had caused it.
Her thoughts turned to the connection between mothers and their children, a theme that seemed to run through the case they were working on.
That's when it hit her. The killer had targeted grown-up children of the people who had worked at Milton Hospital in the 1960s. What if the killer was a child of someone from the hospital, too? Madeleine Archer, the woman they had in custody, was the daughter of the woman who ran the hospital. But was she really the killer?
Madeleine was in surgery, so they hadn't had a chance to cross examine her yet. Despite her seeming to fit everything they'd learned, Valerie felt there was more to uncover.
She looked through their case files and found images recently uploaded of the taser found in Madeleine's apartment. There was something about it that made Valerie doubt herself. She looked at the prongs, then, as she brought up an image of James Asper's body. She could see the pronged marks on his spine where he had been shocked with a taser.
They don't match, Valerie thought. The prongs were a different size and closer together than the taser used to shock James Asper.
Her mind darted quickly back to the question of children. Yes, Madeleine was the daughter of the woman who ran the institute, but what if the killer was actually a child of a patient that had been mistreated there?
A horrible thought then crossed her mind. She began to search through the scanned records for Milton Hospital on her computer, looking for anything that might confirm or refute her suspicions. What she found made her pulse quicken. A woman who had been pregnant at the time of the hospital's closure had undergone multiple rounds of electroconvulsive therapy just before the fire.
Valerie's hands typed fervently and with purpose as she continued to dig into the records.
There was no information about the pregnant woman, as the rest of her records had been destroyed in the fire, but the name of the doctor who treated her stood out. It was there.
The sins of the father, Valerie thought with unease. That sentiment had come from a sermon a religious aunt had taken her to as a kid. The preacher had tried to teach her and the other children that just because a child did something bad, it didn't mean the parents were bad, too. And this was a two-way street. You couldn't blame a child for the sins of their elders.
But some people had the twisted idea that if a person did wrong, that sin could taint the offspring in some fashion. A killer might think that way. A killer might just want to punish the children of those guilty of abhorrent acts.
A killer looking for revenge would have to target the children of the guilty, if the guilty were already dead! Valerie felt unnerved by the idea.
“No...” she whispered with disquiet. She felt she was onto something, even though she hoped she was wrong and that they already had the killer in custody..
She quickly searched the FBI database and discovered that the doctor had a son who lived in Tramford town, only a 15-minute drive from Quantico.
Her instincts told her there was something to this lead, something that couldn't wait until morning.
Valerie wiped her tears and steeled herself for what was to come. She grabbed her jacket and headed out of the Mesmer Building, determined to pay the doctor's son a visit to see if he was in danger.
She hoped she was wrong about the entire thing, but a shadow had fallen across her mood. She was seeing flashes of things in her peripheral vision as she marched out of the building, but she tried her best to ignore the hallucinations. They didn't matter when someone's life was on the line.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
The killer crouched in the shadows, eyes locked on Wade Harrelson's home. Her thoughts raced with anticipation, a twisted satisfaction coiling in her gut. She couldn't wait to end him. This was the moment she had been waiting for.
As she watched in the darkness from the bushes, her thoughts swirled with the memories of a family blighted by mental illness. Her grandmother had suffered, and then her mother. The pain and torment of their lives had weighed on her, a heavy burden she carried throughout her own life. Her mother's recent suicide had been the breaking point.
“It's their fault,” she whispered with spite.
She blamed the staff involved in giving her grandmother ECT at Milton Hospital back in the '60s. They had barbarically done it while she was pregnant. The killer's mother was in the womb. And now the killer believed that those treatments had led to her mother's illness and her eventual suicide decades later.
The hospital murdered Mom! She thought, still staring at the house before her.
To the killer, it was a slow, agonizing death that had spanned years of mental decline for her mother.
She had a memory now of finding her mother, dead, having taken her own life. Tears welled up in her eyes in the darkness. She wiped them. Then a glaze of cold, bitter revenge washed over her, boiling away the pain and reducing her back to a singular desire: to kill.
The killer had snapped weeks ago, her rage and grief propelling her on a dark mission of vengeance. She decided to murder everyone connected with the ECT treatments at Milton Hospital. Most of them were already dead, so she focused on killing their children or grandchildren.
She saw the poetry in that, being offspring of that place herself.
Through the dimly lit window now in front of her, she could see that Wade Harrelson, the grandson of Doctor Thomas Harrelson - the man who personally oversaw her grandmother's ECT - was home alone. A sinister grin spread across her face, knowing that soon he would feel the same burning electricity pulsing through his body.
She imagined the shock and terror on his face, the pain that would surge through him as she enacted her revenge. For the first time in her life, she felt a sense of control, a way to fight back against the darkness that had consumed her family.
The killer's thoughts were a twisted whirlpool of anger and satisfaction, her determination fueled by the belief that she was righting a terrible wrong. As she stared at Wade's home, she steeled herself for the moment she would finally confront him, ready to make him pay for the pain that had been inflicted upon her family.
Little did she know that someone else, someone who had been hunting her just as relentlessly as she had been hunting her victims, was closing in on her trail.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Valerie wondered if she was being overly paranoid about the case as she parked her car a couple of houses down from Wade Harrelson's residence, the headlights of her vehicle casting eerie shadows on the dark street.
The house sat alone, its windows like empty eye sockets, silently watching her approach. As she drew nearer, she noticed the front door hanging open like a broken jaw.
No one leaves their door open like that in the middle of the night, she thought.
Her fingers raced as she quickly messaged Charlie with her location and a very brief reason why. Then, she hit the panic button on her FBI issue phone to alert local law enforcement. Looking around at the lonely house, sitting on the outskirts of Tramford town, Valerie knew that help would take some time to arrive.
_preview.jpg)
