Deadly Impulse

By Olga Bicos

Famed nature photographer Clayton Chase survived alightning strikeonly to discover his wife brutally slain.Clay can recall nothing of that fateful night. But whenan autopsy revealed that his wife was pregnant withanother man’s child, the headlines screamed that he gotaway with murder. Now a second trial is looming and,more than ever, he needs to remember.

Piper Jordan has a personaland tragicunderstandingof the natural but deadly phenomenon. And now, in herrole as a therapist specializing in victims of lightningstrikes, she agrees to help Clay. Despite the rumorsthat he killed his wife, Piper sees only a man fightinghis demons. But as the mystery behind his wife’sdeath unfolds, she must face a startling possibility:could she be passion’s next victim?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781460364024

Book preview

Prologue

Cheaters never prosper. Crazy how simple that sounds. Maybe too simple.

Simple isn’t interesting. It’s not…entertaining.

Here’s entertaining: On a dark and stormy night while taking one of his award-winning photographs, Clayton Chase survived a lightning strike. It was as if the hand of God reached from the heavens and singled him out.

He woke up several hours later beside the body of his dead wife. He was covered in her blood. He claims to have absolutely no memory of what happened or how he got there. Now those are some shocking facts. Fascinating facts…and very entertaining.

Clayton Chase wants to entertain you, to make you believe he cheated death.

Unfortunately, his wife didn’t. Jillian Chase was executed by someone she knew, someone she trusted. He stepped up close and shot her in the back without hesitation or second thought.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Jillian Chase will never give birth to the child she carried, a baby the defendant claims he knew nothing about, a child who did not belong to the defendant. Another man’s son.

So now he wants you to believe he’s innocent, the real victim of the story. His attorney entertains you with smoke and mirrors. Hold up, he says, not so fast. This is no simple tale: a jilted husband murdering his rich wife.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jillian Chase was in love with another man. You’ve heard witnesses testify that Jillian was on the verge of filing for divorce, a divorce that would have left the defendant with very little under the prenuptial agreement he’d signed. Ballistics prove that the gun found in a Dumpster two blocks from the defendant’s South Beach home killed Jillian. Fingerprints found on the gun belong to the defendant. The gun was registered to his father.

This isn’t a movie. This isn’t Steven Spielberg and his special-effects team making the incredible seem possible. This is murder, pure and simple.

Clayton Chase killed his wife.

Don’t let him get away with it.

The State of Florida v. Chase; excerpt, state attorney’s closing argument.

1

Piper Jordan sat up in bed, suddenly awake. The client files she’d fallen asleep reading tumbled to the floor as she slumped forward, knees to chest, catching her breath. Lightning flashed against the windowpane, briefly setting a match to the room as the patter of rain turned into a harsh, pitting hail.

As if it were a message from her dreams, Piper knew something was wrong.

Simon, she whispered, shoving aside the covers.

Piper Jordan realized what silence might mean in her house during a storm.

She ran down the stairs, the floorboards biting cold. A camera flash of lightning flickered, making the portraits in the hall light up like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.

Don’t panic. Don’t let him see you freaked out.

Only hours ago, she’d tucked Winnie the Pooh covers under her son’s chin and set the snooze function on the VCR to say good-night. She’d kissed her daughter and cleared the floor of Mandy’s report due next week, stacking the note cards and books on her desk.

He’ll be there. Simon’s fine.

Down the hall, the door to her son’s room stood ajar. The light from the hallway bled inside, Simon’s version of a night light. Or, more likely, he wanted the connection to Piper sleeping down the artery of the hall. In either case, it seemed suddenly not enough…the room too far, her son too alone. She wanted more than anything to tuck him in bed beside her and fall asleep to the sound of his breathing.

Another flash of lightning painted Simon’s room a near-white. The hall lights flickered—the house went dark. A blackout.

That’s how she felt seeing Simon’s empty bed, the covers puddled on the floor. Blackout.

Mom!

Piper turned to see her daughter. She almost collided with Mandy, then followed her frantic hand-waving down the stairs.

Around the corner, she saw the large oak door swinging open with the wind. Rain splattered on the tile inside.

She thought she would have heard something—the bolt on the front door, snap, click—his tiny bare feet on the floor. Anything.

By the time she reached the tiled entry, she knew her son had long since slipped over the threshold.

Standing in the rain, she screamed his name. The sky lit up, brilliant. At the end of the street, a palm tree blazed with fire from a direct strike as rain poured—a fire engine’s siren wailed in the distance. Her heart pounding, she ran up and down the street, searching.

Please, please, let me find him!

In Piper’s experience, it was when things seemed most urgent that the world had a trick of slowing down. The night Kevin had died, as she’d listened on her cell phone to Mandy crying, Piper had raced her Suburban through the storm to reach the house. She couldn’t make the car drive fast enough. Couldn’t click her heels and wish herself at her husband’s side. She’d arrived too late, finding only the pulsing red of the ambulance light beating against the door.

Tonight felt the same. Slow motion. Piper turned in a circle, round and round, the fire engine flashing the same ugly red as she searched the manicured lawns and neatly trimmed yards of the cul-de-sac for her son…and found him.

He stood just down the street, his small body almost vanishing into the embrace of a man kneeling over him. Piper stepped forward, her heart suddenly too big for her chest. She couldn’t see who it was—a neighbor, a stranger—only that Simon clung to him, his little arms tight around the man’s neck.

Lightning like a flare overhead ignited the street. The man turned to look at her.

Some images don’t make sense right away. They catch you by surprise so that you have to squint and wonder what’s wrong or off or just plain impossible. You have to consider why the puzzle pieces don’t fit. Like Clayton Chase holding her son in the middle of a rainstorm, some things just can’t be….

Simon!

She rushed forward, the asphalt ripping into her feet, the rain dousing her soaked cotton-knit pajamas, none of which mattered to Piper. She could only think about Simon standing alone in the rain with Clayton Chase.

Clayton Chase. One of the names printed on the patient files Piper usually kept downstairs in her office—the very same folders that now lay scattered across the floor in her bedroom. Just that afternoon, Clay had been here at her home office for his session.

Reaching her son, she acted more out of instinct than smarts. She scooped the eight-year-old up in her arms and took several steps back. Standing there in the cozy, middle-class suburb, frozen and silent, she thought: Clayton Chase has come sneaking around my house in the middle of the night.

But Clay appeared just as surprised as Piper by the situation. Battered by the driving rain, he looked like something out of an old-time horror movie, Dr. Jekyll facing the fruits of his nightly escapade. His eyes grew wider at the sight of her, his shoulder-length hair soaked and slick against the collar of his bomber jacket.

She considered the possibility that Mr. Chase had come to her door by coincidence. She almost smiled at him, inviting an explanation, which from experience she knew would be a long time in coming. His last two months of sessions with Piper had been more perfunctory than insightful, making her wonder at times why he bothered to come at all.

For his part, Simon stretched his hand toward Clay, not in the least intimidated by a man rumored to have gotten away with murder—a tabloid bad boy famous enough to earn her small practice a mention in the papers. Caught off guard by her son’s smile, she watched his tiny fingers disappear into the other’s grasp.

She heard Clay say gently, I got you, big guy.

For the last two years, Simon had lived in morbid fear of lightning. Half a dozen times he’d woken from a deep sleep to race screaming into the mouth of the squall where Piper would find him staring at the sky, half defiant, half frozen in fear. But now, lightning arced and branded the blackness overhead and she couldn’t feel so much as a shudder from her son.

The three of them stood in the rain, a tableau. The palm tree still ablaze, a fire truck throbbed its beat as firemen hustled to douse the flames before the fire spread to the adjoining homes. She didn’t know what to say, adrenaline zinging through her veins, her amazement at odds with her confusion.

Clay shrugged off his coat. He angled his athlete’s body so that he managed to shelter both her and Simon from the rain as he wrapped the bomber jacket around them.

To Simon in her arms, he whispered, I think maybe you scared your mom, running out like that. Time to let her tuck you in and do all that good stuff moms like so much.

Her son took her face in both hands, turning her head so that she looked right at him. He didn’t say a word, but in his eyes she could see what he wanted to tell her: I’m not scared.

Clay touched the boy’s shoulder to get his attention and then raised his hand for a high five. Simon complied. Just remember what I told you, okay? Clay said.

He shouldered the bomber jacket like a superhero’s cape, never acknowledging his strange appearance as he walked away. As if the whole exchange might have been commonplace. Just stopped by to say, Hey.

In the middle of the night. In the middle of a storm.

Mandy stepped up behind her, taking Simon from Piper’s arms. She had no idea how long her daughter had been standing there, watching.

Who is that? she asked.

In eight out of ten lightning strikes, the victim dies. Kevin, her husband, hadn’t beaten the odds. But the aftereffects of lightning injury could be almost as devastating, enough that survivors like Clay didn’t always count themselves lucky.

That’s when Piper stepped in. Since Kevin’s death, her children and her practice counseling lightning victims had been her reasons for getting out of bed in the morning.

Clayton Chase hadn’t been the worst case she’d come across, but he’d been bad enough. He begrudgingly admitted to migraines and insomnia, though nothing more concrete. She suspected he suffered from more than the usual post-traumatic stress, given his wife’s death and the murder trial. Twice a week, they met for an hour as part of a recovery program she’d designed. Sixty minutes he’d made clear were a complete waste of his time.

And here he is outside my door.

Mom? Mandy prompted. Is everything okay?

Take your brother inside.

Piper stood in the rain in her pajamas, chaos unfolding around her, transfixed by the sight of Clay disappearing into the night.

She wasn’t quite sure when she started after him, but at some point she figured she might as well try and catch up. She started running, a full-out sprint barefoot in the rain. She passed neighbors in their bathrobes peering out from the safety of their front steps, lured by the commotion of the fire engine. Coming up behind him, she grabbed his arm and, panting for breath, she screamed over the sirens and the storm, What are you doing here?

You should go back, he said. You’re cold.

She wore only thin cotton pajamas. The top now plastered to her breasts was most likely transparent. She noticed he didn’t offer his jacket this time, but she gave him credit for keeping his eyes on her face.

She crossed her arms over her chest. I think I deserve an explanation.

She bit her tongue even as the words tumbled out. For goodness sake, she was his therapist…and everything she was saying and doing was completely wrong.

Maybe we should go inside, she said, sounding too tentative. I can call someone, she added with more confidence.

You want to call someone? He gave a lazy smile. Like maybe the cops?

Is that what you think?

Come on, doc. I show up here in the middle of the night, and you find me with your kid. If that doesn’t qualify as a 911, what does?

He had a point. And still, she couldn’t forget the sight of her son’s tiny hand curled in his.

Simon ran outside because he was scared, she said, telling him what she thought had happened. You were standing here already. You saw him and came to help.

The few who still braved the storm kept a safe distance from the firemen at work, the flames no threat to the Spanish tile roofs of the cookie-cutter homes lining the cul-de-sac. She and Clay stood alone, their conversation unnoticed.

His smile disappeared. He tilted his head so that his collar-length hair hid most of his face. He gave a low whistle. Very impressive, doc. ESP must come in handy talking to us nut jobs.

If I remember correctly, we don’t do a lot of that during our sessions. Talking, that is. She was almost shouting over the storm. The mind reading, of course, I throw in to keep myself amused.

Clay had a way of looking at people, as if he were watching them through the lens of his camera. She imagined his hazel eyes would change color with his mood—not that she’d seen much emotion during their sessions. Add the vintage clothes and the careless hairstyle he favored, and he became the perfect image of a famous artist. That photographer’s focus was almost too much. As if all the energy from the strike could still be there, lying in wait for the unsuspecting, ready to take his shot.

He didn’t so much as blink as he asked, So what’s wrong with your kid?

Wrong?

His question brought her up short. Wrong was a word she’d grown to hate. She’d heard it too often from teachers and her mother-in-law—from perfect strangers in the grocery store or the zoo.

She told him, I’m your therapist, Clay. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to discuss the details of my life.

Again, that look. As if he were framing her for the camera.

Why, doc, he said almost gently. I believe you just did.

Lightning granted an eerie light to the horizon as he turned and walked away. He seemed almost to challenge the storm…or perhaps he believed that nature had long since done its worst. Piper squinted against the rain as the image of him strolling into the distance slowly grew smaller.

She’d never had a patient come to her house like this. She didn’t fear the people she counseled; in fact, quite the opposite. Even a man accused of killing his wife—front-page news for the tabloids placing odds on whether or not he’d gotten away with murder—hadn’t given her a moment’s pause.

She considered herself a haven for people like Clayton Chase, a fringe member of an exclusive club of survivors. She’d made a promise to herself after Kevin had died that she would always believe the people who came to her for help, no matter how bizarre or absurd the case might sound to someone who hadn’t been touched by their kind of tragedy. That’s why she’d taken on Clayton’s case despite everyone’s fears. He killed his wife….

Inside the house, she could hear the blow-dryer in Mandy’s room. She checked to see that Mandy had changed clothes and dressed her brother. With the electricity back, life appeared almost normal, but Piper still felt off balance.

She grabbed a terry-cloth robe from the bathroom upstairs. The light from the fire truck pulsed through the window and occasional thunder rattled the panes. In her mind, she could still see Clayton Chase standing in the street, staring down at her. Now she was the one being examined and judged.

Back in Mandy’s room, she found Simon huddled in his sister’s bed. Mandy was humming to him softly, brushing the chestnut wisp of hair from his forehead.

Amazing, isn’t it? she told Piper.

Since Kevin’s death, Simon had never slept through a storm.

He looks so peaceful. Mandy leaned over to kiss her sleeping brother on his forehead.

Emotion constricted Piper’s throat. That familiar vise around her chest when she looked at Simon happened too often these days, as if she could no longer swallow her frustration. Two years she’d lived a roller-coaster existence with her son since Kevin’s death. What followed was a deathly fear of storms and an increasing inability to speak. Her son had retreated into himself. She’d tried to trick herself into believing in hope, that one day Simon would smile at her and rattle off all those words he’d been storing up inside himself for two years. The garbled speech he parceled out so stingily in embarrassment would be gone, his silent vigil ended. But she’d been fooled before in seeing progress…only to have her son shut down.

She didn’t want to believe it could be this simple. That a stranger could walk into their lives one night and make all the nightmares go away. She didn’t want to trust that kind of magic.

And still, she knew that this night something fundamental had changed for her son.

She touched Simon’s hand. Even in sleep, his tiny fingers curled around hers.

Clay stood in the storm. He’d kept walking until he was sure she couldn’t see him.

Great. Now, he’d always remember her like that. Staring at him as if he were some sort of ax murderer.

As if their sessions weren’t difficult enough, he told himself. As if she weren’t already staring at him with those big blue eyes of hers, wondering why he wasn’t fixed yet. He could see the doc liked things a little more efficient.

He patted his pockets, hoping he’d find his car keys. He did—inside pocket of his jacket. That made him breathe a little easier. Especially when he saw the Jeep just ahead. Everything’s gonna be fine, he told himself.

Only, he knew that too was a lie.

Opening the car door, he stopped long enough to glance in the car’s side mirror.

There, just down the street, a silver sedan waited.

The guy didn’t bother hiding anymore. Clay figured that was part of it. Letting him know he was being watched 24-7. A way of twisting the knife.

Ironic really. Because sometimes, just knowing the guy was there keeping tabs wasn’t painful at all.

It was a relief.

2

Piper considered the possibility that she was dreaming, sleepwalking so that, like an episode of some soap opera, she would open the shower door and discover the last two years had been make-believe. Kevin would still be alive, a doctor with a thriving practice. She would be a stay-at-home mom, baking cookies, volunteering at school. Wake up, Piper!

Thunder rattled the windowpane, a familiar, painful sound. Her hands shaking from an overload of adrenaline, she opened the drawer of the bedside table where she kept a bottle of tranquilizers. She fumbled with the childproof cap.

The ancients believed lightning was a curse, marking those it touched for condemnation. Primitive cultures denied its victims burial rites, and even Neolithic drawings depicted lightning as an ill omen. Prophets and priests became effective weathermen, predicting the doom and gloom of battles and politics.

Piper had spent the last two years convincing herself those prophets were wrong. Her family hadn’t been singled out by cosmic forces. They would get through the tragedy of Kevin’s death and Simon’s disability.

I’m not cursed, she told herself.

Piper gave up on the bottle and shut the drawer, reaching for her anger instead of the pills. She sat on her empty bed, glanced at the folders littering the floor beside it. She picked up the one with the name Clayton Chase typed on the label.

As shocking as the sight of him had been tonight, she suspected she knew exactly what had brought him to her door. Their session earlier today had been a doozy. She should never have asked him to bring his camera.

She closed her eyes and pictured him sitting on the sofa in her office, his legs pumping, the Nikon front and center on the coffee table between them. Past sessions had been marked by a cool indifference on his part. He was a man with better things to do than talk about his feelings. So she’d asked that he bring his camera, hoping to pry loose whatever it was he’d buried so deep inside he came diligently each week to her door to hide from it.

Piper practiced cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. Her treatment goal was to assist clients in adapting to any disability or trauma suffered. The first twelve months after injury were crucial to the recovery process for the victims of lightning injury. Counseling at the outset to explain complications and reassure patients could head off problems down the line.

Unfortunately, Clay had had little or no counseling in the time leading up to the trial for his wife’s murder, contributing to what she thought might be a panic disorder. He’d come to see Piper immediately after the court declared a mistrial, a man shadowed by the media and hounded by doubts. In the first few visits, she’d hit a wall with Clay, who swore he didn’t need her help…even as he showed up without fail for each and every appointment. They’d met twice a week for the last two months without any sign of progress or change.

But that afternoon had been different. Suddenly, he’d fit the profile of a lightning-strike victim. Irritable, lacking focus, looking everywhere but at the camera on the table between them.

So she’d tried pushing a little.

She knew from reading court papers that hand tremors prevented him from holding his camera, putting an end to his career as a nature photographer. During their sessions together, he’d complained only of headaches and insomnia, avoiding the central issues of his wife’s death, the trial and his failed career.

All he wanted was to sleep, he’d told her. His words: to sleep like the dead.

So she’d asked him to bring his camera, looking to jar loose those emotions cemented inside.

The session had started gently enough. She told him to pick up the Nikon, only that. Baby steps. When he hesitated, she reached for the camera herself.

Only to have him grab her hand.

Don’t, he told her.

She’d never been afraid of Clayton Chase. The newspaper clippings her sister sent her outlining the more sensational aspects of his trial for murder struck her as tabloid journalism at its worst, even though they were published in the local paper. Piper didn’t fear the people who came to her for help.

Suddenly, that had changed.

Why do you fight me, Clay?

I got blasted by a few thousand volts of electricity. In my book, that’s not exactly a psychological problem, so pardon me if I haven’t been accommodating.

Then why come at all?

Look, doc. Give me a pill, strap me to some machine—yeah sure. I get the connection. But put a box of Kleenex on my lap and wait for me to cry? Now that’s what I call a waste of oxygen.

So it’s my methods you object to?

And then some.

She’d been staring at his hand around her wrist, thinking, be careful, when his fingers began to shake.

He let go immediately, as surprised as she by his reaction.

She’d reminded herself that lightning victims often suffered severe personality changes, becoming fragile, irritable and angry when experiencing even mild stress. Don’t push, Piper.

But that afternoon was the first show of emotion she’d seen from Clay, the kind of breakthrough she’d been hoping for.

So she picked up the camera and held it out to him.

With his collar-length hair and long sideburns, Clay really did look like a Renaissance man, as one newspaper had dubbed him. He stood to face her, at the same time using his hair like a shield, the bangs hiding his face. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants.

Don’t.

What are you afraid of Clay?

You’re the professional. You tell me.

In two months of coming here, you haven’t said a word about anything that matters. How could I possibly know what you’re feeling right now?

She remembered a change coming over him then, emotion rising to the surface in stages like the photographs he’d once developed. Slowly, he pushed his bangs back and cocked his head to look at her. His mouth hardened into a smile. He had an angular face, the kind that caught the shadows. Standing there, he appeared incredibly intense. Cold and focused.

He stepped closer, his hands no longer hidden.

So you think I’m afraid, he told her.

Within the rarefied group of individuals who survived a lightning strike, there existed vigorous independent risk-seekers—people whose career or recreation choice had put them in harm’s way. Men like Clay tended to resist treatment efforts, intensifying the cycle of frustration and decline.

And still, she told him, I think you’re scared silly.

At that moment, he grabbed the camera from her and lifted the Nikon, taking her photograph, the motion smooth and effortless. For the first time, she caught a glimpse of the man he’d been before the strike. There wasn’t anything indifferent about him. He was engaged and in control as he circled, coming closer, focusing between clicks.

Tell me what scares you, Piper? he asked, snapping his photographs.

She couldn’t remember a time when someone had taken photographs of her. Not like this. One after the other as if she were a model on a photo shoot. Still, she couldn’t imagine why it should make her feel so vulnerable. Exposed.

And then she knew.

Laughing with Kevin as they shoved wedding cake in each other’s mouths. She and Mandy building a sandcastle on the beach. Simon’s birth…Disney World with the kids and Kevin wearing that enormous Goofy hat with the flapping black ears.

The last time she’d been the object of a camera’s lens, her husband had been very much alive.

She remembered holding up her hand, covering her face. She imagined how she must have appeared. A starlet avoiding the paparazzi.

You didn’t answer my question, he said, still snapping his photographs, stepping closer until only the camera kept them apart.

He whispered, I think I know what scares you, Piper. I scare you. I scare you to death.

That’s when he dropped the camera to his side. They both stood staring at each other.

Session over, he said.

That had been earlier today. Less than ten hours later, she’d found him standing in the middle of her cul-de-sac, comforting her son as he held him in his arms during a storm.

She wouldn’t attribute cosmic powers to those touched by lightning. Just as she refused to believe them cursed, she didn’t think them blessed with special abilities. Like healing her son.

With the storm still raging outside, she pulled out one of the articles her sister had given her from the Chase folder. The reporter alluded to the possibility that the lightning strike of the famed photographer could have been staged. Much had been made of the fact that Clay had no visible burns or injuries, relying on the popular crispy critter myth to cast doubt on his credibility. But Piper knew that, in reality, lightning could flash over the body, sometimes blowing off clothes and leaving no external signs.

The article suggested Clay had never been struck at all, explaining away the fact that the zipper to his jeans had been blown off and Clay knocked out of one of his shoes. The reporter tossed the question to the reader: Why only one and not both shoes?

The paper went on to describe a ground-current event. Lightning hits the earth, and rather than becoming grounded, as was the popular belief, it spread along the surface, dirt making a fairly good conductor. When the current came in contact with a fence, or water, or in Clay’s case, the human body, the electricity could surge to strike whatever was closest, sometimes jumping several feet to make its connection.

She flipped through the pages, ignoring the highlighted words her sister, a journalist, had marked for easy reading. Piper stopped at the passage quoting the state attorney’s theory about the case, the words convenient amnesia underlined twice by her sister.

There were aspects of Clay’s case that defied conventional wisdom. Although physical and cognitive complaints from lightning injury could be vague, after listening to victims and their stories these past two years, Piper had discovered a consistent pattern. The fact that Clay had taken a string of photographs in her office was just another indication to Piper that all was not as it seemed with Clayton Chase.

She stared at her notes. All along she’d been unsure whether his symptoms were due directly to lightning injury or were the result of some other trauma.

Like killing his wife, she said out loud.

There was a real possibility that Clay’s amnesia could be reactive. If he had killed his wife…he might