Pretty Girls Dancing(110)
The door to the master bedroom was ajar. David paused outside it, steeling himself to deal with his wife before pushing it wide. And stopped in his tracks. “Claire. What are you doing?”
Suitcases were everywhere. Both garment bags laid across the bed, bulging and neatly zipped. Claire was crouched beside one bag, but at his arrival, she stood. Still in her pajamas, he noted dimly. “Packing.”
He took a deep breath. Reached for reason. “You’re emotional. We all are. But it’s not a good time to be making decisions like this. Besides, where would you go?”
She walked toward him, stopping a few feet away. With more life in her voice than he’d heard in a long time, she said, “I’m not going anywhere, David. You’re moving out.”
Special Agent Mark Foster
November 21
1:00 p.m.
“You’re a busy woman to get in to see.” Mark followed the nurse pushing Betsy Graves’s wheelchair down the hallway and into her hospital room. Betsy smiled up at him, and he was struck by how much younger she seemed in the last few days, despite the long dyed-gray hair framing her face. Freedom probably had that effect on people.
“Looks like your dad and sister must have gone out for a bite,” the nurse said chattily as she wheeled the woman to the side of the hospital bed and helped her into it. “That’s the last test for the day, although the gal will be around in an hour or so for more bloodwork.”
Betsy rolled her eyes and nodded, reaching for the iPad sitting on the table. Her family had brought it with them when they’d arrived the afternoon after her rescue. It had been an invaluable method of communication, as the woman had laboriously typed a statement and all her answers to their interview questions. She’d never speak again, her doctors had agreed. Luther Sims had almost killed her when he’d come home one day and heard her shouting for help. Her vocal cords were crushed.
Someone—probably her sister—had brought her pink silky pajamas to wear instead of the patient gown. Maybe she’d understood what a luxury they would be to a woman who had been relegated to wearing only the garments her kidnapper chose.
Betsy typed something painstakingly on the tablet and then handed it to him.
Where’s your sidekick?
He grinned and pulled up a chair. “Agent Medford headed back to London this morning. I have a few more loose ends to tie up.” Sloane had left before Mark had spoken to Whitney. The girl’s revelation about Sims’s statements when he’d attempted to strangle her had lent a whole different slant to the man’s past, and things had been moving at warp speed since, especially for a weekend. He’d been on the phone half a dozen times with the BCI profiler, Greg Larsen, and SAC Bennett.
“Your statements have given us real insight into Luther Sims.” Her expression darkened at the name of her former captor, like a light abruptly extinguished. “They’ve actually driven our investigation into his history.” He’d forwarded copies of Betsy’s statements to Larsen. They made for difficult reading. Decades of emotional and physical abuse as Sims’s “wife.” She’d faced numerous surgeries on her hands and feet, which had borne the brunt of his torture. And it was after years of his failed attempts to impregnate Betsy that the next kidnapping had occurred, starting the longest string of serial homicides in Ohio’s history.
It was all tied up in the man’s warped idea of family, Mark had told Larsen. But whether the man was re-creating something he’d lost or something he’d never had remained unanswered.
Until he’d spoken to Whitney this morning. Now he was here, seeking verification. “I need to ask you one last question. At least for now.”
Betsy nodded grimly, her mouth a firm straight line.
“I want you to remember back to a difficult time. When Luther Sims choked you and nearly killed you. Do you remember him saying anything as he did so?”
In what seemed to be an unconscious movement, one of her hands moved to her throat. Her lips quivered, and she bowed her head. Her fingers remained motionless on the keyboard. But just when he thought she wouldn’t answer, she began to type slowly, one key at a time. When she was done, she held the tablet out to him.
Damn you, Margaret! Always you disappoint.
The quick lick of adrenaline up his spine was tempered by the haunted look in Betsy’s eyes. “I know that was hard,” he told her. “But with your help, we’re going to put him away for the rest of his miserable life.”
Mark stepped into an empty hospital waiting room to take the incoming call. “Where are you?” SAC Todd Bennet demanded.
“Still at the hospital. Betsy Graves just verified Whitney DeVries’s story. Sims said much the same thing when he attacked her, calling her Margaret.”
“Called them both by his sister’s name. Have you shared that with Larsen yet?”
It sounded like a lumber wagon was going by the room. Mark checked the window to see an orderly pushing an overloaded laundry cart. “I just texted him. Any updates since the last time we talked?”
Bennett gave him a rundown of the events of the last few hours, ending with, “Sims is being transferred Monday.”
That was news to Mark. The plan had always been to move Sims to a more secure jail location in Franklin County with in-house medical care, but from the way the man’s doctors had talked a couple of days ago, that time was at least a week away. “That’s a welcome development.”