Chapter 7
Ressler opened the door, but only part of the way. He put his foot behind the door to brace it so it couldn't be easily pushed open further. "What do you want, Reddington?"
"I know Lizzie is here."
"What did you do? Implant a tracker in her?"
"No." Reddington admitted. "I took a chance. Lizzie doesn't have very many friends. I bluffed and you just confirmed it."
"Maybe she'd have more friends if you stopped shooting them."
Reddington almost looked pained at the barb but Donald wasn't buying it. "What kind of a man shoots a seventy something year old lady – an unarmed seventy something year old lady?"
"Not a good man." Reddington admitted before changing the subject. "Now are you going to send Lizzie out or are we coming in to get her?"
"She just finally cried herself to sleep – and by the looks of her it's the first sleep she's gotten in weeks. I'm not waking her up!"
"Donald, I'm not leaving Lizzie here. It's not safe."
"Keen is safer here with me than she is with you."
"Donald, I am through arguing with you and I am not leaving Lizzie here unprotected."
Reaching into a bowl by the door, Donald grabbed a set of keys and threw them to Reddington. "Across the hall."
Before closing the door in Reddington's face, Donald ordered him. "Feed the fish."
OOO
"Is he gone?"
Donald nodded.
"Thank you."
"Believe me, getting rid of Reddington was my pleasure. I should get you something to sleep in."
Not ready for him to leave yet – not even for the next room, Liz reached out and grabbed his hand to stop him. "Not just for that. For everything. For listening to the whole story about Reddington and Mr Kaplan and Vanessa. For not being angry – or at least not as angry as everyone else with me."
Sitting back down, he stroked her arm. "Hey, it's better than the alternative. Besides, it's not exactly like it's the first time Mr. Kaplan faked your death."
She put her head back on his shoulder where it had been before Reddington's interruption. "Yes, but at least that time the whole team was in on it."
He didn't say anything and Liz caught it. Picking up her head, she turned to look at him. "What?"
He admitted. "I was on Capitol Hill testifying. They couldn't get a message to me before the story broke."
Lizzie was horrified. "Oh Donald!"
"Hey, it's like I already said -" Ressler's expression froze.
"What?" Liz asked again.
Ressler's brow creased. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Liz stared at him, not following.
"This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. Kirk is dead. Agnes is missing. Cruz claims she didn't take Agnes and you said you believed her. Cruz also said Mr. Kaplan has Agnes but Reddington says that's not possible because he killed Mr. Kaplan."
Liz nodded. "Where are you going with this?"
"What if everyone is telling the truth or what they think to be the truth?"
Donald moistened his lips. "Mr. Kaplan seems pretty good at faking people's deaths. She knows what Reddington is like. She knew what was coming." Donald paused before suggesting. "Could Mr. Kaplan have done something to Reddington's gun? Altered it somehow? I don't know, put blanks in it?"
Liz was skeptical. "You really think Mr. Kaplan faked her own death?"
"What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?"
Donald raised a finger and threw out another idea. "Or maybe Reddington tried and something went wrong - somehow, she survived. Maybe Reddington missed the shot – I've got a scar on my leg from our run in with Anslo Garrick that says Reddington isn't the crack shot that he thinks he is."
Donald pointed something else out. "You said that before Vanessa threw the acid at him she said an eye for an eye."
"Yes." Liz agreed. "And she said it again later when I was taking to her."
"You're the hot shot profiler – or at least you were before Reddington came along. Profile what Vanessa did."
When Liz just stared at him and didn't say anything, he prompted her. "Think about it. You said she didn't come at him with a gun or a knife. Going after someone with acid ..."
Liz took over. "Vanessa wasn't trying to kill Reddington ... "
OOO
Liz pounded on Donald's neighbor's door.
As soon as Dembe opened it, she brushed past him into the room to confront Reddington.
"Mr. Kaplan has Agnes."
Reddington looked more sad and frustrated than angry. "Don't start that again."
"She does." Liz insisted.
"I told you – Mr. Kaplan is dead."
"No, she's not. Cruz saw her. Cruz saw her after you shot her."
Reddington shook his head. "That's not possible."
Glaring at the scratches on Reddington's face, Liz asked. "Where did you shoot her?"
"I told you, I brought her into the woods. Into the middle of nowhere."
"No, I mean ... where on her did you shoot her?"
Reddington refused to answer.
Head down, his brow furrowed, Dembe confirmed what Liz had started to suspect. "He shot Kate in the face with the Browning."
Looking and sounding if possible even more distraught than earlier, Reddington cried out. "I told you to wait at the car."
Solemnly Dembe answered. "I did."
"Vanessa didn't come at you with a gun or a knife. She wasn't trying to kill you. She was trying to disfigure you. That's what Vanessa meant when she said 'an eye for an eye'. Mr. Kaplan is alive."
Shaking his head, Reddington looked stunned. "I shot her from less than ten feet away."
"Did you check her?" Liz asked taunting him. "Did you put a few extra slugs in her to make sure she was dead?"
Reddington didn't answer. Quietly, Dembe did. "Elizabeth, Kate is dead."
Dembe wouldn't look at Reddington. "A few days later, after I left Raymond at the church – I went back for Kate. To bury her."
"No!" Elizabeth didn't want to give up this last bit of renewed hope for Agnes … or Mr. Kaplan. "I want to see! Take me there! Now!"
OOOOOO
Elizabeth found it unnerving to be back here standing over her own grave.
Reddington hadn't helped to bury Mr. Kaplan and he didn't help to unbury her.
Together, Dembe and Ressler worked quickly to remove the first few feet of dirt, but more slowly, more carefully as they got deeper.
Reddington wouldn't even watch. He was just standing off to the side staring at the adjacent grave markers.
"She's still here." Having unearthed her, Dembe had reached his limit. Leaving her wrapped, Dembe and Ressler climbed out of the grave.
Burying her, the careful wrapping, those were signs of remorse. Dembe's remorse. Not Reddington's.
Donald touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Liz. It was a stupid idea. I shouldn't have gotten your hopes up."
Tears beginning to silently stream down her face, Liz looked at Ressler pleadingly. "I have to see."
"Don't." Dembe warned her.
But Liz told Donald. "I have to."
With a hangdog look, he climbed back down into the hole.
Getting a good look once Donald had unwrapped the shroud, Elizabeth turned to vomit and sob.
Mr. Kaplan's face was gone. She was recognizable only by her clothes and her haircut.
Ressler waited until she stopped retching to ask. "What do you want to do, Liz? Do you want me to rebury her here or bring her somewhere else? Just tell me what you want."
His tone pleading. Dembe objected to the idea of moving Mr. Kaplan. "No. Leave her here. I brought Kate here for a reason. This is where she belongs."
Turning to glare at Reddington, Liz found him still staring at the statues on the other nearby graves. "What I want is for him to look at her."
Ignoring her, Reddington just kept staring at the two angels – one big and one small.
"Look at her!" Liz demanded.
When Reddington shook his head, Liz lunged at him. She grabbed his already injured face and tried to make him look.
Dembe didn't try to stop her.
Climbing back out, Donald was the one that grabbed her. He held her as she sobbed and glared at Reddington.
"Look at Mr. Kaplan! I'm not leaving here until you do!"
Reddington met Liz's eyes. He nodded.
He looked down at the open grave. His face was almost, but not quite expressionless. He stared for a full minute and then he tilted his head. He stared another minute before he put his hands over his eyes and made a sound like a laugh – maybe it even was a laugh.
Liz felt physically repulsed.
Removing his hands from his eyes, he sighed and his expression brightened as though a tremendous burden had just been lifted.
"Oh my dear, dear Mr. Kaplan."
Liz and the others just looked at him in horror as he started one of his soliloquies.
"It's an old wives tale that a person's hair and nails continue to grow after they are dead. They don't. Kate explained it to me once. What happens is that the skin recedes making more of the hair and nails visible.
"She's about the right height and weight and this is the outfit she was wearing but …" Reddington cocked his head to the side. " … Since when was Kate a blond?"
"What?" Stomach turning, Liz forced herself to look again. There was maybe a quarter, not even a half inch of hair at the roots that wasn't brown. "It's white."
"Is it? Is it white?" Reddington asked peering down. His smile momentarily faltered.
Liz dismissed Reddington's comments. "Mr. Kaplan colored her hair. Her roots are showing."
Reddington stared another minute with that faltered look before jumping down into the grave himself.
"What are you doing?" Liz cried out as Reddington untied Mr. Kaplan's scarf and began undoing the buttons of her jacket. "Stop that!"
"Raymond!" Even Dembe protested as Reddington moved on to unbuttoning her blouse.
"I do at times use hollow point bullets and I told Dembe to wait at the car so he would have no way of knowing, but I didn't use the hollow points on Kate."
Aghast, Liz again asked. "What are you doing?"
Pulling open Mr. Kaplan's blouse, Reddington checked her side. The skin was mottled but Dembe had wrapped her so tightly that the decay and insect activity were still relatively minimal. "There should be an old bullet scar here. The first time I met Mr. Kaplan, someone had just shot her in the side."
He tugged the fabric down her shoulder. "I tried to finish her off. I only managed to graze her before she got the upper hand, but I definitely left a scar."
Reddington sounded manic as he picked up Mr. Kaplan's wrist and tugged up the cuff of that sleeve. "There's no scar here! There should be a scar here. Mr. Kaplan always wore long sleeves - even in the summer - to hide it but I've seen it."
"So? She went to your buddy Abraham to have cosmetic surgery to lessen the scars." Liz reasoned.
Reddington continued to undress her. "There should be a scar here. Kate was admitted to the hospital in preterm labor. The doctors were able to stop the contractions, but they kept Mr. Kaplan there at the hospital on bedrest for the rest of the pregnancy. I think that's when she – understandably – developed her aversion to hospitals.
"A girl her age, unmarried, with no parents she would speak of, the hospital director must have thought Mr. Kaplan would be easy pickings. He had promised a wealthy donor a healthy, white newborn for his wife.
"The couple had a six week holiday to Europe planned. They wanted a newborn – not a two week old or a four week old when they came back. The baby still wasn't full term, but the day before they were scheduled to leave, the director performed an unnecessary c-section on Kate. He cut the baby right out of her to give to them."
Liz couldn't keep it together anymore listening to the litany of scars detailing brutal acts committed against Mr. Kaplan – brutal acts that had culminated in one final act perpetrated by her supposed longtime friend.
"The police found the bodies, but it was before DNA. Dom and Mr. Brimley had taken a couple of baseball bats to them. At the inquest, the coroner admitted that he ended up tossing a coin to decide which one to release as the husband and which as the hospital director."
Liz recognized one name, but not the other.
"And there should be another bullet scar somewhere in here. I'm just not sure where." He began running his fingers through Mr. Kaplan's hair, lifting it up in sections to examine her scalp. "When I saw her to return Annie's ring, they had her whole head shaved and bandaged. The next time I saw her, her hair had grown back in."
Not content with his current vantage point, Reddington pulled Mr. Kaplan to a sitting position and stepped into the space he had made behind her.
He rambled as he crouched down and searched the back of her head. "Katarina blamed herself, but it was my fault. They were looking for Annie to send me a message, but Kate and Annie were a package deal."
There might not be the scars that Reddington was expecting, but there were other marks. Bite marks. Some kind of animal must have been at Mr. Kaplan's body before Dembe had buried it.
"I always said to Kate that I would believe she was actually going straight when she stopped carrying around the Smith and Wesson that she stole from Dom."
Liz was just having trouble putting together why Mr. Kaplan's clothing hadn't looked disturbed before Reddington got to her. Dembe might have tried to fix her up after finding her, but shouldn't there have been scratches and tears in the material?
"Most criminals can't stop. Whatever reason they start, they can't stop. They can't help themselves. They get addicted to the excitement, the thrill. That's how I knew you and Tom could never work out. Because he would never be able to give up the life he always knew to settle down."
Dembe must have changed her outfit – but no, Reddington said that that was the outfit she had been wearing.
"Kate was a rare bird. She said she would stop and she actually did."
Liz didn't bother to point out that whatever missing scar Reddington was looking for on Mr. Kaplan's head was probably on the piece of the back of her skull that he had blown off when he shot her in the face.
Giving up his search, Reddington let Mr. Kaplan's hair fall back in place.
Reddington didn't seem to notice the macabre spectacle he made as he let the dead woman's body lean against him. "They were calling for a white Christmas that year. Annie didn't do well in the cold anymore because of her arthritis. Mr. Kaplan wanted to get out before the storm so we had an early Christmas. So that Carla and the girls wouldn't see it, Kate put the 586 in with the god awful sweater Annie picked out for me.
"They shot two unarmed women in the head to let me know that they were serious about wanting the fulcrum."
Carefully returning the body to a reclining position, Reddington seemed to regain his earlier pep as he addressed the mottled coloring on the torso and neck. "And where is all this bruising coming from? Kate hit Mato with the car, she didn't get hit by one."
Reddington shook his head. "Given the circumstances, I can understand Dembe not realizing, but this isn't Mr. Kaplan. This isn't even Mr. Kaplan's work. This is too sloppy."
Donald asked. "If that's not Mr. Kaplan, who is that?"
"That ..." Reddington shook his head. "... I don't know."
Ressler pointed out a troubling fact. "Look at the edges of the gunshot wound. Whoever this was, this was done while they were alive."
That put a damper on Reddington's new found joie de vivre. "That's not Kate's style."
OOO
He never asked her name.
Little girl. Pretty lady. Sweetheart. City mouse.
There were things that he did ask her.
"Won't your mister be worrying about you. Wondering where you are?"
Following his gaze to the band on the ring finger of her left hand Mr. Kaplan answered truthfully. "No. I have been on my own for a long time now."
Uneasy with his continued focus on her ring, she repositioned her hands to rest on her lap with her right hand covering the gold band.
"Children?"
"No." Mr. Kaplan looked away. "Not anymore."
tbc
