20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(77)

She managed to get a couple of fingers against his wrist. His pulse was slow. His breathing was shallow. She knew what dying looked like. Dave Channing was on his way out.

She said, “I’m getting the painting now, Dave. And thanks for that. I forgive your jackassery. Have a good trip.”

Atkins got out of the passenger seat and walked around to the rear doors of the panel truck, hoping to find them unlocked. They were.

She felt a little dizzy as she twisted the handle, pulling the doors open. That was from the wine. She focused on a pile of quilted mover’s blankets on the floor of the cargo compartment. She didn’t see a crate or a mailing tube or any kind of box at all.

Had Dave’s last act been to prank her?

She got into the rear compartment on her hands and knees and felt along the back wall. Nothing. That son of a bitch. She backed out of the van, cursing. Had he forgotten to put the crate in the van? Or had he been so stoned he couldn’t lift it?

Getting out of the van was proving to be harder than getting in. There was no light back there, and now she was feeling nauseous. She’d left the papers in the front seat. She had to get them. She carefully backed out of the rear compartment, made for the front door, passenger side—and gasped. Something hard had poked her in the back and was pressing against her spine.

It could only be a gun.

A man’s voice said, “Put your hands behind you, Ms. Atkins. I’m taking you into custody.”

She recognized the voice but still turned her head to check. It was Dave’s friend. Joe something. He was strong. A former football player. She couldn’t outrun him, but maybe she could talk him down.

“Dave said he left something for me in the back. You should call an ambulance. He took all of his father’s pills. I wanted to call 911, but he wouldn’t let me.”

Atkins continued to look at the man who was threatening her with a gun. “I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ll see the papers. Dave decided to commit suicide. He wrote it all down.”

Carolee Atkins planned her next move. She would leave the papers and just start walking toward the office. It was only thirty yards to the door. Her key card was in her bag inside the van, but people leaving the building would let her in. Even now the parking lot was coming to life. The sounds of electronic locks opening. Headlights coming on. She heard the purr of a motor. She was taking a chance, but she didn’t believe that this Joe guy would shoot her in the back.

She’d taken a few steps toward the medical building when Dave came around the side of the van, maneuvering his chair so that whichever way she walked, he blocked her way.

What was going on? He looked wide awake and fully cognizant. And he, too, held a gun on her. He had his phone in his lap, and he lifted it, pressed a button.

She heard her own voice saying, “Your father had been sedated, Dave. They’re all sedated. I put a little something in the drip line. They’re already asleep and they’re asleep when they die. Ray felt nothing. He didn’t have to suffer like you.”

Then Dave’s voice: “You do that. For them?”

“I’m a helper. Someone has to do it, and I know how.”





CHAPTER 113





THE GROUND WAS swimming.

Atkins said to Dave, “What? What’s in the wine?”

“Napa Valley’s best Cabernet. Nothing more.”

Joe Something said, “Do what I told you to do, Ms. Atkins. Put your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest.”

It was coming to her now. She’d been tricked. Dave had feigned his suicide, every bit of it. And now she was filled with rage. It wasn’t legal to tape people without telling them.

She said to Joe, “Arresting me? By what authority, mister?”

“My authority as a citizen. It’s quite legal. And if you’re thinking a taped telephone conversation can’t be used in court, the confession you made to Dave, in person, is allowable, and strong evidence.”

Joe forced her arms back and cuffed her wrists. Then he picked her up and gently laid her in the back of the van on the nest of quilted mover’s blankets.

“Next stop, police station,” Dave called in to her. “We can all give our statements. That goes for Mr. Archer and Mr. Horowitz, who’ll meet us there. They saw and heard you in the rooms of the deceased. They know what you did.”

“Don’t you understand?” she shouted, her voice echoing lazily against the inside walls of the van. “I was doing a good. A good thing. I’m a helper. I was helping people.”

Joe said, “You’re a serial killer, Carolee. But tell your story to the police. And then you can tell it to the FBI.”

He slammed the rear doors shut and locked them. Then he said to Dave, “The SFPD and the Napa sheriff have an arrangement on cases involving the DEA. He’ll be handing her off to SFPD.”

Dave was grinning so hard it hurt.

“My God, Joe. We did it. We did it.”

“We sure did,” Joe said.

The two friends grinned and exchanged a high five, a low five. The kicking from the rear of the van stopped. Joe said, “So what was in the wine?”

“Grapes. But I took a couple of Dad’s pills, beta-blockers, to lower my blood pressure, slow down my heart. I needed to make her believe I was checking out. But then she got greedy for our Private Reserve Cab. She’s just tipsy.”