The scalpel cut her wrist, blood seeping, making the zip ties sticky. She managed to get it between her wrists and tried to saw the plastic, but it was completely impossible. The blade wasn’t serrated and kept sliding across the plastic. She was too weak, the angle too awkward.
“Be careful with that—you might hurt yourself.”
He stood in the doorway, holding a long gray piece of cloth. She scrambled back, thrusting the scalpel in his direction.
He took a step inside the bathroom and kicked her in the face. The explosion of pain was worse than anything she’d ever experienced. She felt something crunch; the world blurred. The scalpel tumbled from her fingers, clattered to the floor.
He grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward him, dragging her across the floor, thrusting her on her stomach. Something tightened around her throat, the cloth, and she couldn’t breathe. She squirmed, trying to pull free, kicking at nothing, trying to scream, nothing coming out.
He yanked her torn pants to her knees, and his fingers roughly pawed at her, in her. The noose on her throat relented, letting her breathe, and she screamed into her gag. She shut her eyes, prayed for it to be over fast. His breathing became heavy, guttural. And then suddenly, the rough hands drew away.
She opened her eyes. He stared at her, red faced, eyes wide. Furious.
“It’s your fault! It’s because you’re so damn ugly!”
The noose tightened again. No air. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t whimper.
Her only consolation was that the pain wasn’t as bad as before. In fact, she hardly even felt it anymore.
CHAPTER 60
O’Donnell watched Swenson on the monitor. He was losing his patience, pacing in circles around the interrogation room. She hoped this wouldn’t be another dead end. She’d just finished interviewing the people from Zoe’s list. Sure, they’d been nervous, like anyone would be, but none of them had stood out.
“Is that Swenson?” Tatum joined her side.
“Yeah,” she said. “They picked him up just as he was leaving his house.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He said he was on his way to meet a friend.”
Tatum nodded. “Any luck with the search warrant?”
“Koch is working on it. I don’t know if we have enough.”
“Let’s try to give Koch something bigger to persuade the judge with,” Tatum suggested.
They stepped out to the hallway and began walking to the interrogation room. Then O’Donnell paused.
“Look who’s here,” she said.
Patrick Carpenter strode toward them, his face twisted in rage.
“Detective,” he shouted, still a few yards away. “Isn’t it enough that our congregation lost Catherine? People are still deep in mourning, and you keep harassing them, trying to pin this heinous crime on one of them?” His bulging eyes were bloodshot, his clothes disheveled. Was it because of Catherine’s loss? Or was it related to his wife’s pregnancy?
“We’re not trying to pin anything on—”
“Mr. Swenson called me to tell me you were interrogating him.”
O’Donnell raised an eyebrow. “I thought he called his lawyer.”
“Oh, I did contact a lawyer on his behalf, I assure you. And apparently he’s not the first person you’ve harassed this weekend? A few other members have sent me messages telling me they’ve been subjected to—”
“Mr. Carpenter, we are just trying to find the people responsible for Catherine’s death. I assume all the members of your church want that?”
“We want her killer brought to justice. We don’t want this . . . this . . . witch hunt. Picking up our members one by one, fishing for information—”
“As you already know,” Tatum said, “Daniel Moore, a member of your congregation, was actually Rod Glover, a killer on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. We believe—”
“You think Allen had anything to do with this? Did you even talk to the man? He’s one of the most amicable people I know.”
“Mr. Carpenter, please lower your voice, or I’ll have to—”
“Not to mention that he’s thin and quite frail. Do you really think he is capable of enacting those violent crimes alongside a dying man? Do you have anything to back those preposterous accusations with? Did you arrest Allen just because he and Daniel happened to be passing friends?”
O’Donnell’s brain sparked into high gear. Swenson and Glover were friends? She needed to keep Carpenter talking. “We believe Mr. Swenson has critical information about his friend. Surely you agree he should tell us anything he has.”
Patrick seemed to realize he’d given her too much. He suddenly paused, then, after a few seconds, hissed, “I can’t stay for long. My wife is being