“You’re right,” Mackenzie said, getting to her feet. “It was wrong. And given everything that’s happened—”

  “That’s not who I am anymore! I’m done! I’m clean of it and that’s NOT ME!”

  He screamed it, the words as sudden as a bomb. It startled Mackenzie and had her reaching for her sidearm. At the same time, in a nearly comedic moment, Windham threw the can of soda at her. It struck her in the head and, because it was half-empty at that point, only pissed her off, stupefied her for about two seconds, and got the side of her face wet and sticky with cola.

  “Mr. Windham,” she said, “you’re making this so much worse than it has to be. Just stop right there and—”

  “It’s not me! I’m not like that anymore!”

  And before she knew it, he was rushing at her. He did it with such speed and surprise that she barely had time to even reach for her gun. He tried punching her in the face, but she blocked it. He then slapped her hard in the side of the face and tried throwing a knee up, which she also blocked.

  While blocking his knee, she grabbed his leg, cupped her hands under it, and leaned down. She then pulled up on his leg and sent him sprawling to the floor. As he went, he flailed for the table. Mackenzie realized a bit too late that it wasn’t to grasp for balance. He had grabbed a decorative bowl.

  She realized this only after it smashed into the side of her head. It was heavy and thick and sent black trails of stars rocketing across her vision. She scrambled to keep purchase of him but he was off of her in a flash. She went for her Glock, blinking away those black stars, but Windham was already out of the back door by the fridge.

  Well, that escalated quickly, she thought in a dizzy sort of confusion.

  She got to her feet, her head still reeling. She took a moment to steady herself against the refrigerator and then followed him outside. She drew her Glock as she walked out onto a tiny back porch. She saw a small shed at the far end of his yard, the doors slamming shut. She went down the porch steps and into the yard as her head finally started to clear up. The heat pressed down on her, radiating so intensely that she thought she could feel the waves of it as the sun blazed its angry eye at this side of the world.

  Ellington would have gotten a kick out of this, she thought, wiping soda away from her face. She could smell its sweetness in the heat soaked into the collar of her shirt.

  She stopped before she reached the shed. She couldn’t react on her anger and embarrassment alone. Without Ellington, she had to take a different approach here. Going in alone could cause more problems. Who knew what a man that unbalanced might have in his shed?

  Still…she was pissed. And when she got good and angry, she was rarely able to contain it. A stream of curse words buzzed in her head like hornets as her knuckles tightened around the Glock.

  “Damn,” she muttered, pulling out her phone while keeping her eyes glued to the shed.

  Before she had time to come up with a plan of attack, she heard something that was the last thing she’d expected: an engine, revving from inside the shed.

  “Hold it right there!” she screamed, training her gun at the shed doors.

  One of the doors popped open as the engine noise increased.

  What is that? A motorcycle?

  She got her answer two seconds later as Windham came barreling out of the shed on an old Harley. The bike was in bad shape and as Windham directed out of the shed with speed, it wobbled. But the fucking thing was coming right at her. The scene was so surreal that Mackenzie was slow to react.

  No other choice, she thought.

  She fired off a shot as Windham guided the bike directly toward her.

  She heard a clang over the roar of the engine as her shot hit the bike and ricocheted elsewhere. Then the bike was past her, headed for the road.

  He wasn’t trying to run me down, she thought. The bastard is trying to escape.

  Luckily, he wasn’t going quite as fast as he wanted, as the bike was still wobbling a bit as he tried getting around the house in a panic.

  Mackenzie took off after him, seeing a window of opportunity that didn’t end with her having to explain a dead civilian to McGrath.

  She sprinted as quickly as her stunned legs would allow, her head once again deciding that it was in pain from the blow from the bowl. When she was close enough to the bike to worry that the back tire would strike her knee, she lunged out and to the left.

  Her feet left the ground and both hands landed on Windham’s shoulders. They both went to the ground in a heap, but her hands never left Windham’s shoulders. She struck her side, sending the air out of her, but she still pushed him hard into the ground. With his back to her, she delivered a hard knee into his ribs and then pulled his arms behind his back.

  Her heart was slamming in her chest and she could literally taste the adrenaline, salty and like a chemical in her throat. Despite this, her muscles were calm and steady as she slapped her handcuffs around his wrists

  Keeping her gun trained on him and not yet speaking directly to him, she pulled her phone out and gave a voice command to call the Bedford Police Department.

  She heard Windham whimpering from the ground. He’d gone limp and was starting to break…his whimpers becoming choked sobs.

  Her gun remained aimed on him as her phone started to ring in her ear.

  ***

  Mackenzie was calm and collected by the time the two patrol cars came screeching to a stop in front of Carl Windham’s house. Her head ached and her left side was sore, but it had been worth it. She was pretty damned sure she had her man, still sobbing at her feet with his hands cuffed behind his back.

  After a brief line of questions from the three officers that showed up, Mackenzie walked up onto the back porch, wanting to look around inside the house. Honestly, the whole thing felt anticlimactic…even after she had been nearly run down by an aged Harley Davidson (which had coasted into the street and struck the neighbor’s mailbox before clattering to the pavement).

  As she watched the cops haul Windham up to his feet and out of the yard, Mackenzie found herself wishing that Ellington was there. Everything within her told her that Windham lined up—he fit what they were looking for and, after all, he had reacted in a way that was guilty, though not in the textbook way she had been looking for. Still…she couldn’t help but feel that it had been too easy…like it had practically fallen into her lap. There was something about Windham that didn’t quite jive with the three murders and the attack on Cleo Colegrove.

  It made her think he had something to hide—if not several murders, then certainly something. It would be nice to share the victory with Ellington.

  “So we’ll haul his ass down to the PD,” one of the cops said as they walked around the side of the house. “There’ll be some paperwork for you. And of course, you get first swing at questioning him.”

  Mackenzie nodded. “I appreciate it. I’ll be a few minutes behind you. I want to check out his house to see if there’s anything worth finding.”

  “Sure,” the cop said. “And hey…awesome job.”

  “Thanks,” she said absently as she headed back up the porch stairs and into the house.

  She entered through the kitchen, eyeing the soda can that he had thrown at her. The remainder of its contents had spilled out onto the linoleum floor. She stepped past this and walked down a thin hallway. She skipped the living room, assuming that anything incriminating would not be in the house’s central room.

  Along the hallway, she found a bathroom, a bedroom, and a smaller bedroom that served as a small office of sorts. She entered the office and found a laptop, opened and powered up on the desk. When she clicked the mouse to make the sleep screen vanish, she couldn’t believe her luck. Not only did the laptop not require a password to resume the previous sessions after it had gone to sleep, but Windham had apparently been checking his email when she had come knocking.

  She looked through the mails in his Gmail account, looking through the inbox as well as his sent mails. She then found a categories label for Guiding Sight. Most of them were harmless emails, detailing visits he would be making to Wakeman and the Mary Denbridge Home. They were all from several months ago and there was no email evidence that he had visited anytime recently.

  She also found a few emails from Kate Briggs, dated several months ago as well. Some of them were promiscuous in nature, hinting at future dates they were going to meet as well as referring to previous trysts. One of the emails contained an attachment of a picture of Kate Briggs in bed, in a compromising position and wearing hardly anything.

  She clicked away from the picture quickly and then pulled up the laptop’s file directory. Windham kept a tidy laptop, everything tucked away in its own folders. A quick search showed nothing incriminating. She then looked in the desk drawers and found them just as tidy. That was how she was able to find the memory stick so quickly. It was the only one in sight, making it that much more interesting.

  She plugged it into the laptop, opened the disc contents, and found a series of documents not filed away in folders. When she saw that the documents were movie files, she was pretty sure she might be on to something.

  Let’s just hope it’s not more lurid content featuring Kate Briggs, she thought.

  There were eleven files. She opened only one before she realized what she had stumbled upon. Thirty seconds of the first one was all she needed.

  She saw a familiar room. And a familiar woman.

  Ellis Ridgeway…

  Disgust washed over her as she closed the files and closed the laptop. She unhooked the computer, pocketed the memory stick, and carried them both out of the office with her.

  Behind the disgust came something else: uncertainty. Based on what she had seen on the laptop, maybe Windham wasn’t the killer.

  But even if he wasn’t, he might potentially be something almost as bad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Mackenzie was drinking coffee and feeling a little irritated. Without Ellington by her side, she had no real interest in getting to know the officers that were sitting at the small conference table with her. Two of the three who had showed up at Windham’s house were there—named Smith and Burke—as was the sheriff of Bedford.

  She and the sheriff—a rotund man with the last name of Robinson on the nameplate on his chest—had watched snippets of the videos only after she had requested they do it in private, without any other officers. After watching enough (more than enough, if Mackenzie was being honest), she had called McGrath and told her what she had found. He seemed pleased and, given the nature of what was on the laptop, felt certain that once again, Mackenzie White had found her man. He then requested a full update after she interrogated him.

  As she, Robinson, Smith, and Burke discussed the afternoon’s events and what was on the movie files on the memory stick, she noticed that Sheriff Robinson looked pale. Like his officers, he wasn’t really used to this sort of a mess, either. And while she knew that Clarke back in Stateton probably hadn’t dealt with this sort of thing either, she found herself wishing this could have all plated out in Stateton. She felt like a nomad and it was wearing on her. She did her best not to let it show when she interacted with these new policemen, but she was pretty sure she was failing.

  What she had discovered on the memory stick wasn’t helping, either.

  While she had wished for no more lurid content involving Kate Briggs, that wish had not been granted. Two of the movie files were home sex films, both featuring Kate. They were shot at a strange angle, fairly close to the bed. She assumed they had been filmed on Windham’s phone and without Kate’s knowledge.

  That left nine movie files and they only got worse from there.

  Seven of them showed footage from sterile-looking rooms. It wasn’t until she saw the third one that Mackenzie recognized one of the resident rooms from the Wakeman Home for the Blind. More than that, she had also recognized the woman in the footage as Ellis Ridgeway.

  Like the sex films, the footage had been filmed from inconspicuous angles. It was evident that the women in the footage had no idea they were being filmed. The quality of the films also made it clear that they had been edited. Windham had erased footage that was boring to him, keeping only footage that showed Ellis and four other women at four other locations, in various stages of undress. One of the films featured a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, who seemed to be doing a bit of self-exploring as she lay in bed.

  The third piece of footage was of Ellis Ridgeway, from Wakeman.

  She was pretty sure the fifth was one of the rooms at the Mary Denbridge Home for the Blind in Richmond.

  While she did not recognize the other women in the movies, she thought the pattern was clear. With the exception of the sex films with Kate Briggs, these were all women living in assisted homes for the blind.

  “Ever seen anything like it before?” Robinson asked.

  “Not quite like this, no,” she answered. She was still a bit pissed from what she had discovered on the USB and that was bringing up the old anger of nearly being run down with a motorcycle. She was in a rotten mood and she was doing everything she could to remain professional.

  “You think he’s the one you’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Mackenzie said, answering honestly. “I’ll know after I talk to him, though.”

  “Well, he’s all yours as far as I’m concerned,” Robinson said, letting his disgust show clearly through.

  Yes, he is, Mackenzie thought, equally disgusted.

  And with that, she left the conference room and headed for the small interrogation room where Carl Windham had been waiting for the better part of an hour.

  ***

  Windham still looked like the tormented man who had nearly crumpled in his kitchen, but Mackenzie could also see hints of the pushed-too-far man who had nearly put tire tracks between her eyes. The two sides of him seemed to be fighting for dominance as she entered the room. This time, the obstacle of the eye patch did not stop her from gauging his mood at all.

  He looked annoyed when she entered the room and took the seat across from him at the wooden table near the back of the room.

  “Why don’t you tell me about the videos we found on a USB stick in your desk?” she asked.

  He didn’t flinch. She supposed he had assumed they’d find it. Still, he looked down to the table, a clear sign of shame. “They speak for themselves, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do. And between you and me, you can talk about it with the police here in Bedford and some other agent at some point, I’d think. However, those videos and your past transgressions are not why I’m here. That’s not why I came to speak with you.”

  “I know,” he snapped. “You already told me that. You said Ellis Ridgeway is dead…that someone was targeting blind people. But that’s not me.”

  She believed him, though not completely. There was something truly wrong with Carl Windham and she knew it would be foolish to dismiss him. But voyeurism did not always tie so neatly with the same sort of mental state that would lead someone to kill—especially blind people.

  “I almost believe you,” she said. “And for the sake of this conversation, let’s just pretend that I believe you one hundred percent. You’re guilty of secretly filming these defenseless blind women in their rooms and residences, but you’re not a killer. Let’s start from that playing field. That okay with you?”

  He nodded, still finding it hard to look at her.

  “One of the rooms I saw in your files looked very much like one of the resident room at the Mary Denbridge home in Chesterfield. Who is the woman in the video?”

  “Vicki Connor,” he said. “She’s forty. Been blind all her life.”

  Mackenzie nodded and pulled out her phone. She texted Harrison a quick message that read: Call Mary Denbridge Home ASAP. Make sure Vicki Connor is okay.

  “Did you read to her?”

  “Yes. Sometimes. She enjoyed hearing the trashy stories in the tabloids. No books or anything like that.”

  “Did you have relationships with anyone else at the Mary Denbridge Home?”

  “No. Just her.”

  “Did you come to know any of the residents in passing?”

  “Not really.”

  “Does the name Wayne Nevins sound familiar to you?”

  When he hesitated to think about it, Mackenzie was fairly certain that he was actually rummaging through a mental Rolodex. After a few seconds, he shook his head and looked up at Mackenzie finally.

  “Is he another one?” he asked. “Another victim?”

  “He is,” she said. “There have been three so far, with a fourth attempted. So any information you can give me will help. And while I honestly doubt it can do much to sway law enforcement, it may help when your trial comes around.”

  She hated to use that ploy because, truth be told, she hoped Carl Windham got every solitary second of jail time due to him for what he had done to those poor women.

  “What about Wakeman?” she asked. The anger was starting to flare back up and, quite frankly, she didn’t want to push it down this time. “Did you read to more than one person there?”

  “A few, actually,” he said. “There was one named Becky Tosh. And another older woman named Nina Brady. And, of course, there was Ellis.”

  Well, I know for a fact that Nina Brady is alive and in no danger right now, she thought. Unless he is the killer and he’s marked her for later.

  “During your time as a volunteer with Guiding Sight, did you ever cross paths with any other volunteers?”

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  “Anyone that stood out to you?”

  He shook his head and looked back down at the table. “I never really tried getting to know them. I was too busy trying to hide what I was doing. I…I’m sorry, you know?”

 

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