36

Alvarez and the two beat cops entered the room slowly, taking in the damage.

“Looks like a goddamn tornado hit the place,” Leo Galston said.

“More like a hurricane.” Shepherd shrugged. “Hurricane Kaylie.”

“You think she’s cleared out for good?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah.”

“But she left her stuff.”

“She was in a hurry. She must’ve sprinted out of here. Left the door wide open.”

“Why would she trash the place and run?”

“Way I see it, she realized she’d made a lot of noise, and somebody might call the manager about it. She didn’t want a confrontation, so she panicked and fled.”

Alvarez frowned. “That doesn’t explain why she made all this mess in the first place.”

Shepherd didn’t answer. He was staring at an item he’d overlooked earlier, a crumpled newspaper on the floor near the bed.

Carefully he picked it up in a gloved hand. It was today’s edition of the Tucson Citizen, open to the Tucson & Arizona section.

The page had been partially shredded. It appeared Kaylie had made a furious effort to obliterate an offending article. But the headline, at least, was still intact.

“Here’s your answer,” he told Alvarez. “About why she trashed the room. She’s still upset about the White Mountains case. She went nuts—more nuts than usual—when she read this story.”

Galston asked, “What story?”

“It’s got to be the retraction of the false lead that went out over the radio. She must have heard there was a breakthrough as a result of a nine-one tip. She got all excited. She thought we’d bought her story, arrested Cray. That’s what she wants. She hates him. Then she reads this, finds out it was all a mistake, Cray’s not under arrest, there are no breaks, no suspects, nothing—and she loses it.”

“And we lose her,” Galston said grimly.

“Looks that way.”

“How about her car?” Alvarez asked. “Did the manager see it?”

“Not that I know, but we can run it down easily enough. It’s registered to Elizabeth Palmer.” He found the birth certificate in the sheaf of papers. “That’s one of her three fake I.D.’s—the current one, I think.”

Bane, the rookie, asked how Shepherd knew it was current.

“Because the documentation she kept on the other two includes her driver’s license and Social Security card. Those items are missing for the Elizabeth Palmer alias.” Bane still looked puzzled, so Shepherd spelled it out. “She’s carrying them in her purse.”

“If we know what I.D. she’s using, and we know what she’s driving,” Alvarez said, “then she won’t get far.”

Shepherd sighed. “Sure she will, Hector. It’s a big country. Plenty of places to hide. And she’s been on the run for years. She’s damn good at it. She can run and hide ... if she wants to.”

“But you don’t think she does.”

“No.”

“What else would she do?”

“I don’t know. But she’s gone over the edge, that’s for sure. Cray said psychotics go through cycles, phases. He said Kaylie was in the acute phase now. Maybe it’s been building for the last twelve years. Like a volcano—more and more pressure—then bang. Eruption.”

“You sound worried,” Alvarez said.

“I am.”

Galston tried to shrug it off. “She was just a little bit of a thing. She didn’t look so dangerous.”

“Tim Fries didn’t look so dangerous, either,” Shepherd snapped, not quite realizing the words were spoken aloud until he heard their echo in the room.

Bane asked who Tim Fries was. Alvarez and Galston both knew, and they both shushed him, Galston with a clamp on his arm, Alvarez with a look.

Then there was silence. Shepherd was thinking.

“She’ll go after Cray,” he said.

Alvarez said she already had. But that wasn’t what Shepherd meant.

“I’m not saying she’ll stalk him or wreck his car. She’ll go after him personally.”

“Try to take him out, you think?”

Shepherd’s shoulders lifted. “She shot her husband. Why not Cray? She seems to think he’s a serial killer. In her mind, she’ll be performing a public service.”

“Graham County Sheriff’s will have to handle it,” Alvarez said. “Patrol the area near the hospital. Get Cray to lie low for a few days. Maybe he’ll even leave town.”

“I doubt it. He’s stubborn.”

“Well, it’s their problem, not ours.”

Shepherd didn’t respond directly. He scanned the mess in the room—the scatter of clothes, the broken TV, the shards of glass in the bathroom, the blood spots on the floor. He thought of the frantic voice on the 911 tape, accusing Cray of murder, saying he entrapped his victims and hunted them like animals in the moonlit wilderness.

He couldn’t walk away from this. Ginnie’s ghost would never forgive him.

“So,” Alvarez said, “you’re gonna call Graham County. Right?”

Slowly Shepherd nodded. “I’ll call that guy Kroft knows—Chuck Wheelihan—the one who was promoted to undersheriff.”

“I don’t think you need to talk to the undersheriff.”

“Oh, yeah.” Shepherd smiled, a secret smile that puzzled the two patrol cops and worried Alvarez. “Yeah, I think I do. But first I need to get in touch with somebody else.”

“Who?”

“Cray.”

The phone in the room might have Kaylie’s prints on it, so Shepherd used his cell phone instead. He stood outside for a clearer transmission and found the number he needed in his memo pad.

There were four rings at the other end of the line, and then a receptionist—no doubt the woman in the lobby who’d been bent over her computer keyboard, the woman who’d reminded him briefly of Ginnie at her desk—answered. “Hawk Ridge Institute.”

He identified himself. His call was transferred to Cray’s secretary, then to Cray himself.

“Yes, Detective?” The man sounded harried and tired. “How may I help you?”

“We just had a close encounter with your former patient.”

“With Kaylie?” Instantly the weariness was gone from Cray’s voice. “Is she under arrest?”

“I’m afraid not. She eluded us, but just barely. Before she left, she did a lot of damage to her motel room.”

“Damage?”

Cray seemed surprised by the news. Distantly Shepherd found this odd. The man knew what Kaylie had done to his Lexus, after all.

“She messed up the place pretty badly,” he said. “Apparently she’s still in a violent frame of mind.”

“I see.” Peculiar hesitation there. “Well, I suppose you intend to warn me again that I need to watch out for her. I do appreciate your concern—”

“Actually, I’m calling for a slightly different reason.” It was Shepherd’s turn to hesitate. “I want to ask you for help.”

“Help?”

“In apprehending this woman. Tonight.”

“You want my assistance ... in catching her. I see.”

There was something new in Cray’s tone, something Shepherd could not quite define. Under other circumstances, he might have thought it was a note of sly amusement. But the cell phone’s reception was muddy, and he was sure he’d misinterpreted what he heard.

“It may entail some risk,” Shepherd said, choosing his words with care. “And I haven’t contacted the sheriff’s department to work things out with them. But if I can get their cooperation, can I count on yours, as well?”

He waited. On the other end of the line, Cray exhaled a long, slow breath.

“Detective,” Cray said, “when it comes to putting Kaylie safely in custody where she belongs, I assure you I’ll do everything I can.”