Her breath caught as she opened it. There were dozens of articles about her and the Ghost case. Her parents and their arrest. Hiram in shackles and chains as he’d been escorted into the courthouse to be arraigned. And pictures of the small graves where the girls had been found.
Below them, she discovered a series of crude sketches of women who’d been tied down and gagged, lying in the brush and wilderness. Women who looked as if they’d been beaten to death.
Another one was a close up of Ellie at Hiram’s arraignment. An X had been drawn across her face in blood-red lipstick.
Seventy
“He’s coming for me,” Ellie said, her voice riddled with contempt.
“That’s not going to happen,” Derrick assured her, his hands knotting into fists.
Ellie lifted a skeptical brow, and he grimaced, pushing a business card toward the director of the hospital. “Send Holcomb’s medical files to me.”
“We can’t do that without a warrant,” Hudson said.
“You’ll have one by the time you pull them together. What else you can tell me about Mr. Holcomb? Did he have visitors? Family?”
“His mother washed her hands of him when he was committed. Apparently, she’d been through years of trying to help him, but he’d go on and off his meds. When he’s off them, he’s psychotic and violent. His physical attack against her led him here.”
“Did he have contact with anyone outside the hospital, or perhaps a staff member who might have helped him escape?”
“My staff have been questioned and cleared. As far as mail and outside correspondence, Vinny didn’t receive any.”
“I assume you have surveillance cameras. Have you looked at those to determine if anyone approached him or came in and out of his room, someone suspicious?”
“One of our guards looked at them after he escaped,” the director said. “But he said he didn’t see anything.”
“Yet somehow Holcomb got hold of those newspaper articles,” Derrick pointed out. “And the ease with which we found them doesn’t say much for the thoroughness of your staff.”
An ashen look settled across the man’s face. “True.”
“I want to take a look.”
Ellie’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it. “The reporter,” she muttered, letting it go to voicemail. “While Special Agent Fox reviews the tapes, I’d like to speak to Holcomb’s therapist.”
“All right. But without a warrant, she can’t tell you much.”
“I still need to speak to her,” Ellie said firmly.
Derrick sent a quick text to his partner asking him to work on the warrants. “That warrant is coming forthwith,” he said. “Now show me the security tapes.”
The director led them down the hall, through the double doors and security checkpoints, to a cleaner section of the building which held offices and two large rooms that he explained were used for group therapy sessions.
He knocked on a door with a brass nameplate indicating it belonged to Grace Wiggins, Mental Health Counselor. A minute later, she invited them to come in.
While Ellie slipped inside to interview the therapist, the director escorted Derrick to the security office and introduced him to the chief of security, a frail-looking man named Roger who looked about ninety. The security system was old and outdated, the camera footage grainy and choppy.
Derrick spent the next half hour reviewing CCTV, focusing on Holcomb’s every movement. Although Roger looked feeble, he did know the names of all the employees and vouched for them.
As the footage from the night Holcomb escaped appeared, the old man adjusted his bifocals, then pulled at his chin. The camera revealed a man dressed in scrubs entering Holcomb’s room, but his boots didn’t match the clothing.
“Who is that?” Derrick asked.
Roger made a clicking sound with his teeth. “I don’t know. Can’t see his face.”
“That’s because he’d intentionally avoided the camera. I want to send this film to my people,” Derrick said. “Maybe they can do something to identify the man. He may have helped Holcomb escape.”
Seventy-One
Ellie scrutinized Grace Wiggins, the mental health counselor, as she seated herself in the office.
The middle-aged woman had choppy graying hair, tortoiseshell glasses and her stiff posture radiated a tough exterior that she no doubt had to possess to do her job. Yet when she spoke, her voice was as soft as butter.
“You’re here about Vinny Holcomb?”
“Yes, he’s a person of interest in a homicide investigation.” Ellie gave her a moment to absorb that information. “I need to know everything you can tell me about him.”
The woman’s fingers worried the pen she gripped in one hand. “I’m afraid HIPAA prohibits me from divulging a patient’s personal medical information.”
“Yes, I’m aware.” Ellie lifted her chin, determined to extract some information from her. “I’m not asking for his diagnosis or details of his treatment.” They would look at that when Derrick got the warrant for the man’s medical records. “But if you feel he’s a threat to himself or others, you have to talk to us. And we believe he may be the perpetrator we’re hunting in the Weekday Killer murders.”
Dr. Wiggins blinked as if to control her reaction and failed, nerves flashing in her eyes.
“The killer has texted me personally, taunting me about the murders,” Ellie continued. “The fact that we found articles about the Ghost in Vinny’s room raises suspicions. The director said Vinny was obsessed with that case. And the warden at the prison where Hiram is currently being held informed us that he tried to visit Hiram there.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Wiggins fidgeted with the pen again. “I didn’t assess Hiram, but he would have been allowed access to the solarium, under observation. He could have met Vinny there, or in the secure wing.”
“Hiram murdered those girls as a replacement for me, because I’m the one he wanted. Now I’m receiving texts from the Weekday Killer, and a mental patient who was obsessed with that case is on the loose.” She tilted her head, gauging the woman’s reaction. “You see where I’m going with this?”
The therapist sighed wearily. “Yes, I understand how you might make a connection.”
Laying her phone on the desk in front of the woman, Ellie scrolled through the photos of the victims. “Here are the faces of the women the Weekday Killer murdered. What I need to know is if you think Vinny Holcomb is capable of sadistically slashing these women’s throats and posing them in ritualistic fashion.”
Dr. Wiggins’ face whitened. Finally, she set the pen down and folded her hands on the desk. “We are speaking hypothetically, of course.”
“Of course,” Ellie replied, raising a brow.
Wiggins’ sigh hinted she wanted to say more than she could. As a patient in therapy, Ellie understood and appreciated patient–doctor privilege. But there were gray areas where a counsellor had to report a patient if they presented a danger to themselves or someone else.