Field of Graves(82)
She swung her head around frantically, trying to find some way out of the room he’d been keeping her prisoner in. The door was open, and she lunged for it, but he was quicker and threw her back on the bed.
“No, no, no, not like that. You need to stay here with me, love. I need to take care of you and our son. I’ve put everything in motion and done all I know to secure his way.”
She continued to squirm, and he screamed, “You must listen to me. Listen!”
“No. Let me out of here, Gabriel. Let me out of here right now, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.” Her venomous threat made him laugh. He knelt on her chest, threw her hands over her head and secured them with handcuffs. He slid down her body till he was off the bed, then took each of her thrashing legs and tied them to the foot of the antique bed frame.
“Jilly. My beautiful, lovely girl, don’t you see? You can’t escape me. You can’t escape our destiny. You were given to me to bear me a son. You are carrying the Messiah.”
“Gabriel, let me go. Undo these handcuffs!”
Gabriel just smiled serenely and reached for her arm. She felt the prick of the needle and started becoming woozy. Gabriel patted her on the head and started out the door.
“God damn you, Gabriel!”
He was back to the bed in a shot and slapped her across the face, hard enough she felt blood filling her mouth.
He spoke quietly, gently. “Don’t ever say that again, Jilly. God will not damn me. He will welcome me to heaven with open arms, thankful that I have given His Son back to the world. I will be rewarded, Jill, not damned. I will be His righteous angel, and I will watch by His side as His Son, our son, saves the world. Do you not understand?”
He left the room and locked the door behind him, ignoring Jill’s shrieks of protest. She heard the phone ringing in the background, but before she could summon the energy to scream, her mind swirled into a blank, and she fell back into the pillows.
69
Price motioned Taylor and Baldwin into his office. “What do you have? Lincoln told me he’s looking for property records for a professor who didn’t make the initial list.”
Taylor threw herself in the chair. “His name is Gabriel Lucas. Professor of the classics at Vandy. He wasn’t on the list because he’s taken a sabbatical. The dean told us he has brain cancer.”
Marcus came into the office. “And pretty bad brain cancer. The doctor at Vandy? Hoyt? He didn’t want to give up any information, doctor-patient confidentiality. I showed him the warrant and threatened him with an accomplice-to-murder charge. He started talking.”
He looked at his notes. “Lucas, Gabriel, forty-eight. 3802 West End Avenue. Presented eight months ago with headaches he thought were migraines. A neurologist did an MRI, which showed a large tumor in his brain stem, something called brain stem glioma. Pretty heavy-duty cancer. The neurologist sent him to Dr. Hoyt, but it was too late. The tumor was inoperable, and a biopsy showed it was stage four, as bad as it gets. The cancer was already moving into other parts of his brain. Because of the size of the tumor and the location, there was nothing that they could do. They offered to try radiation and chemo, but Lucas decided he didn’t want to go through all of the motions with such a small chance of it actually working. They gave him prescriptions for pain medication, which he has been filling; they had to renew the prescription last month. Publix Pharmacy in Bellevue.
“Dr. Hoyt was surprised that he’s made it this long. He gave Lucas an optimistic estimate of six months, and didn’t think he’d make it over four. He’s living on borrowed time.”
Baldwin was fascinated. “A tumor like that, in that position, could easily alter his personality, his speech. Hell, it could make him a completely different person. He could go off the deep end. Whether he already had a propensity toward violence, and the tumor brought it to the surface, or he was a genuinely good guy and it’s altered him into madness, we may never know. But I’m willing to put money down this is our guy. I need to go look some stuff up. Before I go, did Hoyt give you any DNA samples?”
Marcus beamed. “Yep. He had pathology pull the slides from the biopsy. I called Sam, and she met me at Private Match. She and Simon are going to try and match it to the semen we found on Shelby.”
“Brilliant job, Marcus. Okay, I’ll be back in a minute.” He raced off.
Taylor watched Baldwin’s back disappear out the door. “We need to get a team over to the address from the prescription refills right now. If we—”
“Taylor, I’ve got the address.” Lincoln came into the room, waving a piece of paper over his head. “Lucas has a house on Granny White Pike, right near the Lipscomb Drive crossroads. Got it off the voter registration rolls. A good old-fashioned registered Democrat. Bought the house in 1996.”
Taylor reached for the sheet of paper. “Wait a minute. The doctor’s office had him living on West End. What the hell?” Her cell phone rang, and she looked at it. Vandy, she mouthed to Price as she picked it up. “This is Lieutenant Jackson. Yes, Janet, thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Okay, let me write that down. 6002 Hillsboro Road? That’s his new address? Do you have a record of the old address? Ah, 3802 West End. Okay, I’ve got it. Thanks.” She hung up and looked at Price.
“Looks like he moved from West End to Hillsboro recently.”