Mac shook his head. “But then our guy covered up what he’d painted. Probably thinking we’d never know the image was there.”
“He even fucking signed it.” Cain didn’t realize until the words exited his mouth that he had seen a signature.
“He put his name on it?”
“Not his name. A symbol.” Cain wiped his hands harder on the towel, then dropped it on the floor. He yanked his cell from his back pocket and tapped on the ArtPad app. The white light from the phone lasered into his skull. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open and not groan out loud. He drew a Christian cross, then put a hook on the bottom of it that looked like an upside-down question mark. “You’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this before.”
He showed the image to Mac and watched the guy’s face turn pink, then tomato with recognition.
“Yeah.” Cain voice was straight as a line. “It’s from my father’s last kill. But he didn’t do this. Not unless Petesville Super Max allows weekend furloughs.”
Mac snorted. “Only way he’s getting out of there is in a body bag.”
Couldn’t happen soon enough. His father was a stain on humanity. “So we know he didn’t do this.”
“But…” Mac’s words disappeared for eight thumps of Cain’s brain. “The girl—Mercy Ledger—made that mark on the wall as she was bleeding out from your father cutting…from her throat being cut. It didn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Didn’t mean anything until today. That symbol was at that scene twenty years ago, and it’s here now.”
Mac shook his head slowly, like an old dog with neck problems. “No one ever questioned her about it. The prints on the wall were hers. Jesus, we need to find Mercy Ledger.”
Mac didn’t say it, but Cain knew how the man’s brain worked. Mac thought Mercy must’ve done this. “She didn’t do this. She’s been locked down in the Center of Balance and Wellness for the past few years.” The words popped out of Cain’s mouth before he censored them. And he really should’ve censored them.
He lifted his arm, pressed his eyes against a clean patch of material near his shoulder, and spoke without looking at Mac. “I…” Yeah. Just what was he going to say? It wasn’t like he could confess that he’d been checking up on Mercy Ledger for the past twenty years. That would make him sound like a damned stalker. And stalking was considered the gateway drug to killing. “Liz told me.” Bold-faced, flat-out, flaming-bright lie. And Mac would know it. The guy was trained to spot a lie at thirty paces. And yet Cain would rather endure the cost of the lie than spend the truth. Call him chickenshit—he would own it. He kept his eyes closed against his shoulder.
“Isn’t that a violation of confidentiality or something?” Mac worded it as a question, but it sounded like a statement. “Liz could lose her nursing license.”
But Liz hadn’t actually told him. He’d guessed. He’d known Liz long before he’d met Mac. In those dark days of childhood, his father had forced Cain to work with him at the Center. Liz had been a night nurse and the only person ever to show kindness to him. Even after his father had been caught, she’d remained a part of Cain’s life—babysitting him when Mac was away for work. She was one of the few people Cain considered a friend and the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother. And now he’d tossed her in front of the bus because he was a pussy.
The quiet closed in around him. His head felt like it was about to burst off his shoulders. His stomach started rolling.
“The Center?” Mac finally broke the quiet. “That’s a horrible irony.”
And it was. That Mercy Ledger had lived the past few years of her life among the same hallways his father had roamed as a janitor was beyond irony. It was downright wrong.
Chapter 2
In a recent online auction, the knife Adam Killion used in the Ledger family murders sold for a record-breaking $2.3 million. The Son of Sam law prohibits convicted felons from profiting from their crimes, but someone just made a fortune.
—J. C. Brown, www.criminalnewsinvestigations.com
Mercy Ledger sat in the therapy circle with eleven other crazies from Ward B. The pungent funk of unwashed bodies and rotting chicken—thanks to Bo Coray and his chicken fetish—hung heavy in the air. The suicidal, homicidal, or just plain psychotic didn’t care about trivial things like hygiene.
Dr. Payne wore his usual attire—three-hundred-dollar shirt, perfectly tailored pants, and shoes so shiny that when he stepped in front of her, she could see her reflection in them. He looked too GQ to be a psychiatrist in this underfunded, overpopulated dump of a mental hospital.
He handed her a sheet of paper. In what had once been bold letters, but now were more in the realm of fuzzy gray from over-photocopying, it read:
GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Practice an attitude of gratitude!
List three things you are grateful for today!
Gratitude? Seriously? After two years on Ward B, there wasn’t a whole lot to be thankful for.
Dr. Payne held out the box of crayons to her. They didn’t trust the residents of Ward B with pens or pencils. Guess no one had ever gotten shanked with a Crayola. “What color are you going to choose?” His words themselves were benign, but each syllable was threaded with judgment.
Her pulse pounded in her veins, her face got hot, and her hand holding the paper began to shake.