Trapped (A Jenny Watkins Mystery Book 5) Read online

  Tate continued, “And I want to be assured I won’t get the death penalty.”

  Jenny felt sickened by the irony of that statement. For a man who was so quick to impose death on others, he sure was acting like a coward when the tables had turned.

  At that moment the cat discovered Jenny in the kitchen. It rounded the corner, approaching Jenny without hesitation. For a moment Jenny considered the elaborate cat tower, the gourmet cat food all in a row and the profiler’s description of Tate as being socially awkward. Perhaps this cat was his life. Maybe she should appear in the living room holding the cat, threatening it with harm if he was to hurt Ingunn. She looked at the cat’s adorable face and thought better of that plan. She’d be bluffing, and there was a good chance Tate wasn’t. Besides, if she actually touched the cat there’d be a distinct possibility that she’d have a full-fledged asthma attack, so she knew she needed to reconsider. Pushing the cat away with her foot, she tried to come up with better options.

  “There are more, you know,” Tate said, “and if you don’t meet my demands, you’ll never find out where they are.”

  Jenny covered her face with her hands. Was that a bluff? She certainly hoped so.

  Feeling the need to stay focused, she looked up at the ceiling for some divine intervention, hoping his previous victims could provide her with some guidance. And there she saw it, as if presented to her by the women themselves.

  Her weapon of choice.

  Slowly she stood, determined not to make any noise. Once upright she reached up and carefully began to remove a heavy iron skillet from the rack that hung from the ceiling. The process took forever—one misstep threatened to be very loud and very costly. With surgical precision she freed the handle from the hook, bringing the pan slowly down to her side.

  And now all she needed was the right moment.

  “I’ll think about it,” Tate muttered before hanging up the phone. “You,” he continued, “I don’t like your presence here. You go outside.”

  “I’m not leaving without her,” Zack replied.

  “Well,” Tate explained, “you either leave and she stays alive, or you stay and she ends up dead. Your choice.”

  “She’s your leverage,” Zack argued. “You wouldn’t kill her.”

  “I have other leverage,” Tate replied. “There are six other bodies they don’t know about. That’s all the leverage I need.”

  “Go ahead and be safe,” Ingunn said. “You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  Jenny began to tiptoe toward the living room.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Tate posed. “Do I have to kill her or what?”

  Slowly Jenny approached the doorway, pressing her body against the wall, peeking around as much as she could without compromising her position. She was able to see Zack with his back toward her, which presumably meant that Tate would have been facing her. At a snail’s pace she withdrew, making sure she couldn’t be seen from anywhere in the living room.

  “Go,” she heard Ingunn say. “Please.”

  Jenny looked down at the phone that remained in her left hand. Silently tucking the skillet under her arm, she shot Howell a text. Get Tate to look out the window for a long time.

  Zack let out a frustrated sigh. “I’ll go, but if you do anything to hurt her, I swear to God I’ll find you and kill you myself.”

  Tate laughed. “Yeah, that’s a viable threat.”

  The phone rang again, once again causing Jenny to jump.

  Tate answered by saying, “What now?” After a long pause he said, “The man is on his way out, and if he doesn’t hurry, the woman’s going to pay for that.”

  Jenny heard the front door open and close again.

  Her thumbs worked the keyboard. Is he looking out the window?

  Another eternity passed before Howell responded. Yes.

  Jenny wriggled her fingers around the handle of the skillet as she peeked around the corner, this time noticing Tate’s back was toward her. He had his arm wrapped around Ingunn, who stood in front of him as he looked out the window.

  Knowing there was no time to waste, Jenny stepped quietly into the room where she saw the back of Tate’s twisted and arrogant head. She could feel the anger and hatred of thirteen different women filling her body as she raised the skillet overhead. This was the man. This was the man that the others couldn’t fight. This was the man who had rendered the others helpless and did as he pleased. This was the man who squeezed the life out of the other women as they lay chained to a wall. Drawing strength from every one of those women, Jenny threw her arm downward, landing the pan squarely on the back of Tate’s head. She distinctly heard the disturbing crunch of metal hitting bone.

  Tate and Ingunn both screamed as they fell together to the floor. Jenny immediately noticed the pool of blood forming around Tate’s head; she was unsure if she had killed him.

  Policemen in full body armor came bursting through the front door as others filled the room from the direction of the kitchen. Before Jenny knew it she was being swept away by two men who had each grabbed an arm. “My grandmother,” she said to them. “I need to know if my grandmother is okay.”

  The men said nothing as they carried her off.

  Jenny was immediately ushered outside into the bright sunlight, down the front yard and beyond her car to the awaiting emergency vehicles on the street. Only then did they let go of her.

  Zack rushed over and threw his arms around her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” Jenny felt herself shaking all over. “I’m just not sure about Amma.”

  He held her close as they both turned their faces toward the front door, trying to grasp what was going on. Officers swarmed from every direction, but for the longest time there was no sign of Ingunn. Finally, two policemen rounded the corner with Ingunn between them, escorting her slowly and gently out the front door.

  Jenny began to run toward the house, but Zack held her back. “We’re not allowed up there,” he explained. “We need to wait for her to come to us.”

  Looking her grandmother up and down as she walked, Jenny tried to determine the extent of Ingunn’s injuries. She appeared to be unharmed, although she was walking slower than Jenny had ever seen. Eventually Ingunn came within earshot.

  “Are you okay, Amma?” Jenny shouted to her.

  “I’m okay,” Ingunn replied. “I already told you; I’m a tough old bird.”

  Jenny hung her head with relief as tears made their way to the surface. For the first time since they entered the house she could fully relax, and the flood of emotion was overwhelming.

  Ingunn soon was close enough for Jenny to hug her, and she wasted no time in doing so. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Jenny said in near-sobs. “I would have felt horrible if anything happened to you.”

  “It wouldn’t have been your fault,” Ingunn assured her. “It was that lunatic.” Ingunn initiated the release of their embrace. “And by the way, what exactly did you do to him?”

  Jenny laughed through her tears as she remembered her past conversation with her grandmother. “I hit him over the head with a frying pan.”

  “Did you now?” Ingunn said with pride in her eyes. “Well I’ll be damned.”

  The wait outside was painful as Jenny watched the flurry of activity without knowing the well-being of the people involved. She was still unsure if she had killed Tate, a concept she could intellectually accept but would inevitably bother her emotionally. Running her hands up and down her arms, she considered his comment that there had been other victims. If that had really been the case, Tate’s death would have been horribly unfortunate for those families who would never know the fates of their loved ones. Jenny shook her head to clear the thought; speculation would get her nowhere.

  Two paramedics carried a stretcher down the front steps, lowering the wheels once they reached the bottom. Jenny noted the victim had long curly hair and a battered face, but her condition was not immediately obvious as
she lay motionless on the platform. Curiosity got the better of Jenny, who walked over to the paramedics as they rolled the stretcher toward the back of one of two ambulances that had arrived at the scene. “Excuse me,” Jenny interjected. “How is she doing?”

  “Vitals are fine,” one of the paramedics replied, “but they’ll have to do a full work-up on her at the hospital.”

  Jenny looked at Erin, who met her gaze. Erin reached out her hand, despite the IV injected into the back of it, and Jenny gently touched her fingers. Although she said nothing, Erin had spoken a million words with that single gesture. They put her into the back of the ambulance and closed the door behind her.

  Jenny turned to the paramedic. “What about the other guy?”

  The paramedic shrugged. “I didn’t work on him. They were trying to stabilize him when we left.”

  With that he disappeared into the ambulance.

  Jenny jumped when she felt a hand rest on the back of her shoulder. “Whoa,” a familiar voice said. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Laughing with relief when she realized it was only Howell, Jenny replied, “I’m just a little edgy, that’s all.”

  “Well, that’s understandable considering everything you’ve been through,” Howell noted. He pointed to the ambulance as it started to drive away. “Rumor has it she’s going to be okay.”

  Tears once again rose to the surface, but Jenny blinked them away. “I’m glad.” She braced herself as she posed, “What about Tate?”

  “Haven’t heard,” Howell replied. “But speaking of Tate, I’d like to have a word with you about what went on in there. Just what the hell were you doing in his house?”

  Jenny bit her lip as she recognized how similar this question was to one she had heard in the past. Somehow she kept getting herself into jams that were way over her head. With a sigh she admitted, “There was just too much fear emanating from this house. Bad things had to have happened there. My grandmother felt it, too.” She hung her head. “I guess we both kind of knew Erin…or Michelle…was in there, and we had to do something about it.”

  “You’re just lucky she was. You’d have a lot of explaining to do if you broke into an innocent man’s house. You could have gone to jail for that.”

  Feeling emotionally drained, Jenny said, “It wasn’t luck. We were directed there.”

  “All the more reason it was crazy of you to break in like that,” Howell replied.

  “Well, we tried the proper channels first.” She looked up at him. “And it didn’t work.”

  Apparently her point had been taken; Howell said nothing more about it.

  After an awkward silence, a second stretcher emerged from the house. Jenny’s heart skipped a beat as she looked to see if Tate’s head had been covered, indicating he was deceased. She was relieved to see that his head was exposed, although it was wrapped with bloody bandages. At the very least, he appeared to be alive.

  The paramedics wheeled the stretcher toward Jenny, who still stood next to where the ambulances had been parked. She looked at Tate as he grew closer; she had nearly taken his life, a concept which she found impossible to believe. All of the friends he’d ever had, all of his family members, all of his co-workers…they’d all come very close to losing someone from their lives, and it would have been because of her.

  She wondered if that was the type of power that sick bastards like Tate craved. Perhaps he felt God-like when he took a life—like he had just done something that mattered to people. Something people would remember. She shook her head as she contemplated the demented train of thought. No one should be motivated to do such a thing, for any reason.

  The paramedics wheeled Tate past Jenny. “Is he going to be okay?” she posed.

  One of the ambulance workers flashed a sly smile. “If you were trying to kill him, you would have needed to hit him a little bit harder.”

  Relief washed over Jenny. Feeling immediately lighter, she was able to return the smile. “So I guess I’m a lousy murderer?”

  He lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. “Yes,” he said with a strain, “but you make one hell of a mean housewife.”

  The sound of the ambulance door shutting almost sounded like music to her ears. As horrifying as the last hour had been, this scenario had worked out in the best possible way. Jenny glanced up at the sky, wondering if the victims had anything to do with the way the events had unfolded. Had they kept Jenny safe? Did they make sure she felt inclined to go upstairs in time to see Tate’s car pull in the driveway? She couldn’t help but feel that they did.

  She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face, taking a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of being alive. She felt the silent approval of the women who had lost their lives at this house; the fear was gone, replaced by a delightful sense of serenity that was long overdue. Opening her eyes Jenny smiled at the clouds, knowing the victims were now free to go and enjoy the wonders that awaited them on the other side. She knew that one day she would meet them, and when she did they would be beautiful and free—not imprisoned and tormented like they had been here on earth. In a strange way she looked forward to that day, although she knew she had more to accomplish before that happened. More souls needed resolution. More killers like Tate needed to be exposed.

  And she had a baby to raise.

  Chapter 21

  Jenny’s allergy symptoms were starting to subside as she sat at the table in the lobby of the Heritage Inn, although she still longed for a pill. The tall glass of water in front of her was her only source of relief, and it was minimal at best.

  “Here’s one that leaves tomorrow, but it’s pretty early,” Zack said as he referred to his computer. “Although, it’s a direct flight.”

  “Book it,” Ingunn said. “I hate those landings. I only want one.”

  With a few more keystrokes, Zack said, “…and, done.”

  Jenny smiled at her grandmother. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? Or at least to a doctor?”

  “Nah,” she said gruffly with a wave of her hand. “Nothing hurts.”

  Jenny had to admit she would miss her grandmother’s curtness. “Okay,” she conceded, “but be aware that sometimes injuries don’t make themselves known until the next day.”

  “Then I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow, but right now I don’t need one.”

  At that point Jessica approached the trio. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  Zack used his foot under the table to push out a chair, silently inviting her to take a seat. She obliged, folding her hands on the table. “I just spoke to the archaeologist; he said he was able to remove Samuel’s remains…well, I assume they’re Samuel’s remains. He said they belonged to a child, roughly between seven and ten years old. I can’t imagine who else it would be.”

  “Did he say how long it would take for him to get a positive identification?” Jenny asked before letting out a wheezy cough.

  “He didn’t say,” Jessica admitted. “But then again, I didn’t ask either.” She looked at Jenny with a raised eyebrow. “However, what I do know is that he took some soil samples from the area you had pointed out to him. There does appear to be a disturbance which would indicate there could be something beneath the surface.” She smiled at Jenny. “Although, he did say you were about fifteen feet off.”

  Jenny remained expressionless. “That man thinks I’m a lunatic.”

  “I don’t think he does anymore. But, I can promise you that if you come back next year at this time, that area will be well-manicured and fenced off, complete with as many headstones and memorials as necessary. And,” she added with emphasis, “both the slave painting and the painting of the Davies family will be proudly on display above the fireplace.”

  With as much of a smile as Jenny’s allergies would permit, she said, “I’m glad.”

  “Well, this whole episode has taught me that I’ve been neglecting a very important part of the inn’s history. I can assure you that will
be different going forward.”

  Zack leaned back in his chair. “That’s because of us meddling kids.”

  Jenny playfully smacked her forehead. “Speaking of the dog,” she said, turning to Zack, “how’s he doing?”

  “I’ve got his vet appointment rescheduled for later this afternoon. I should be able to tell you more later, but he seems to be fine.” Zack beamed with pride.

  Jenny’s phone rang, and with a quick glance she saw it was her father calling. “Ooh,” she said, “this should be good.” She stepped away from the table and put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Pop.”

  “Are you okay?” he demanded immediately. Jenny had left a message giving a brief overview of the day’s events, which admittedly would have been a frightening thing to hear.

  “Yes, we’re fine,” she assured him. “Although, Amma refuses to go to a doctor. I do wish she’d at least get checked out.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Tate was holding her when I hit him with the frying pan. She fell to the ground with him, but she claims to have landed softly.”

  “My God,” Rod replied. “She’s in her seventies.”

  “I know,” Jenny said. “She could have been very hurt, and I’ve tried to convince her to get checked out. But have you ever tried to convince your mother to do something she didn’t want to do?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Rod said with defeat. “It’s wasted breath.”

  Jenny filled him in on the details of the afternoon, defending herself when he scolded her for breaking into the house. “Um…are you really getting on my case about that?”

  “I know,” he replied. “I don’t have a leg to stand on there. I’m just glad you’re okay. I hate the thought of you putting your life in danger.”

  “I understand,” Jenny said. “I hated putting Amma’s life in danger, so I get it. But,” she added, “were you able to get that reading I asked for?” Jenny hadn’t informed him about the discovery in the woods, but she did send him a picture of Samuel’s image on the painting in hopes that Rod would be able to get an idea of what he was feeling.