The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller

“So what do you say, Pat?” She leaned forward, a slight grin. “Team player or free agent? Which do you want to be?”

I wrestled against my thoughts. CJ was right, there was no love for me here. Baker, Lindsay, and the creepy messages at the hotel had all made that painfully obvious. Then I thought about Dennis Kingsley. The moment I mentioned CJ’s name his whole attitude changed, and the wall between us fell. Suddenly, he trusted me and opened up.

But could I trust her? I wanted to, but trust and me, well, we’re not the best of friends. There were those old demons…I was used to working by myself. I was used to being by myself. It was lonely, but it was familiar. And safe.

“Hello? Still with me there, Pat?”

I brought my focus back to her. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“How we doing on that decision? Make any progress yet?”

Take the leap, Patrick. For once in your life, stop being afraid of everyone, and just do it.

I looked into her eyes for a moment longer, studying her eager expression. “Okay. But I need to know something, first.”

“Name it.”

“Are you willing to throw out everything you believed to be true about this case? To entertain new possibilities? Ones you never thought existed?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Of course.”

“Okay,” I said, and took a breath. “I’ve found some things that could potentially blow the case wide open.”

She leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “Hit me.”

“I don’t think Lucas kidnapped and murdered Nathan Kingsley.”

Her expression fell, her jaw, too. “What the…are you serious?”

“I think he was wrongly convicted and sent to the electric chair, needlessly.”

CJ fell back in her seat and stared at me for a good five seconds, and then, “That’s crazy…where the hell are you getting this?”

“I assure you I’m not just throwing out theories with nothing to back them up. Since I got to town I’ve interviewed people extensively, read through scores of records, gathered quite a bit of information, and my gut tells me they got the wrong guy.”

“What kind of information?”

I pulled out a copy of Lucas’s alibi note from my pocket and slid it across the table, keeping my eyes on her.

She reached for it, held my gaze for a moment, then read it. The farther down she got, the wider her eyes grew. When she was done, she let it drop onto the table and stared at it. Then she looked back up at me. “Where did you get this?”

“From Nissie Lambert. Lucas’s sister.” I told her the story, watching her face become stricken as I described Ronald Lucas’s choice to protect his daughter instead of himself. Then after I finished, said, “And that’s not all. I also think Jean Kingsley was murdered.”

“She committed suicide.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But she hanged—”

“Staged,” I said. “Made to look that way.”

“You’ve got to be kidding…”

“I’m not.”

“But why? And by whom?”

“Remember that name I asked you about? Michael Samuels?”

She nodded.

“I came across something interesting—and disturbing—while going through the visitation logs at Glenview. There was a guy lurking around the place while Jean was a patient. Signed in under that name claiming to be her nephew. Jean didn’t have a nephew, and the D.L. number Samuels left in the guest log comes up as a fake.”

“And you think he killed her?”

“The hospital records put him there, and so does an employee statement.”

“Who? And what did they say?”

“Can’t say who. I promised confidentiality.” Then I told her about the stained gown, how it got dumped, and about the missing guest log from the night Jean died.

“But you have no idea who Samuels is…or even why he did it?”

“That’s the part I can’t figure out.”

“What about Nathan? Do you think this Samuels guy also killed him?”

I let in some air, blew it out quickly. “There’s a chance.”

“Wow,” she said, now staring vacantly across the restaurant. “Just wow.”

“I know.”

She looked back at me. “But why would he have wanted them both dead?”

“Good question. I don’t know.”

“And how did Lucas get drawn into all this?”

“I think he was a pawn.”

“But whose?”

“Can’t figure that one out, either. But if I had to guess…someone with an awful lot of power. Someone with the ability to manipulate the system.”

I had an idea who that might be.

Chapter Thirty-One

The rest of dinner was very quiet.

CJ appeared deep in thought, probably trying to make sense of what I’d just told her, and by the look on her face, without much luck. For me, the reality of my mother’s and Warren’s involvement was setting in.

I drove CJ to the Observer to pick up her car. For a long while neither of us spoke. Finally she shifted in the seat so her whole body faced me and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if it turns out Lucas was innocent. I don’t know if I can deal with that.”

I kept my eyes on the road and nodded, not knowing what to say. There wasn’t an easy answer.

“Even if we clear his name,” she continued, “it doesn’t seem like that would be enough. It would be way too little, way too late. He’s dead.”

“If we find the person who really killed Nathan, it’ll make a difference.”

She answered with silence, staring out her window, slowly shaking her head.

It was quite a change from the salty reporter I’d come to know, the one who just earlier had been trying to corner me. CJ Norris may have had a tough exterior, but I was discovering that the inside was very different. For the first time, she seemed vulnerable and uncertain. I thought about the contrast, the complexity, wondering why I found it so appealing. Was I attracted to her? Of course, but I had a rule I’d never broken and didn’t intend to now: I don’t date other reporters. Ever. I have a hard enough time holding on to women with normal lives; being with one of my own would only complicate matters to the nth degree. And with CJ, our strong personalities together would be like adding gasoline to a fire.

CJ screamed.

I turned to her and saw a large SUV outside the window just before it rammed us hard, sending us careening onto the shoulder. I overcorrected, tried to aim the car back toward the asphalt, but the SUV rammed us again, this time from behind. The impact threw the car forward and jerked us like a pair of floppy rag dolls.

u spy now u die

The words flashed through my mind like a grenade explosion.