Mr. Webster delivered.
Bower—from Old English būr, from Proto-Germanic *būraz. Cognate with German bauer “birdcage,” Old Norse bar (Danish bur, Swedish bur “cage”).
Noun bower (plural bowers)
1. A bedroom or private apartments, especially for a woman in a medieval castle.
2. (Ornithology) A large structure made of glass and bright objects, used by the bower bird during courtship displays.
Verb bower (third person singular simple present bowers, present participle bowering, simple past and past participle bowered, obsolete embower)
1.To enclose.
Caitlin closed the dictionary. “Son of a bitch.”
Branford’s chosen identity was a man who enclosed women in cages. How long did kept animals survive? How long had Angela? They found Paige Lauffer twelve days after her disappearance.
Embower had held Caitlin for five days. She didn’t want to know what he’d try once her monthly visitor left town.
She slid Shakespeare back in place, started at the far left of the bookshelf.
What else did Chapman try?
Caitlin spent the next three hours going book by book, page by page.
CHAPTER
70
RATHER THAN FACE a restless night in Bloomington’s cheapest hotel room, Mike followed the nameless female detective’s advice and filled Mary and Lakshmi in on his interactions with the BPD. The trio convened in Lakshmi’s apartment and spent Saturday night into Sunday morning behind computer keyboards. By nine AM, the Daily Student’s online edition had published one article under the headline “Famous Reporter Goes Missing in Bloomington” and another titled “Did BPD Drop the Ball?” By noon, both stories had been picked up by the Associated Press, and the student paper was fielding calls from national broadcast outlets.
At four o’clock that afternoon, Mike woke on the couch, with Lakshmi standing over him. “Caitlin called when I was asleep.”
He sat up, saw Mary stretching through a yawn nearby, and took the phone from Lakshmi’s hand. “Slow down. What am I looking at?”
“The call history,” Lakshmi said. “I had my ringer off, and the phone was on the charger. I didn’t look until now.”
Mike scrolled through the list. The last incoming call came from a local number at 12:37 PM. He handed the phone back. “Three hours and twenty-three minutes ago. How do you know it was Caitlin?”
Lakshmi told them how Caitlin had given her the number before they’d called the Bro-duce farm for the first time. “I’m not sure if she used it for anything else. She told me she’d only use it when her main phone’s battery was dead.”
“No voicemail?”
The girl shook her head. “I tried calling the number back, but she didn’t pick up, and there’s no mailbox.”
Mike took his own phone out, tried the number, but got no answer.
“I never turn my ringer off,” Lakshmi said, lowering her head.
Mary put her arm around the girl. “Everybody has to sleep.”
“But why would she call and not talk right after both stories went out on the wire services?” Lakshmi said. “Is this Caitlin’s way of telling us to lay off the Bro-duce coverage, let her work undercover?”
Mary laughed. “Too late for that. You went national, girl.”
Lakshmi’s hand went to her mouth. “Ohmigod. Will they have to print retractions? Is this her getting back at me?”
Mary cornered the pacing girl. “For what, trying to help?”
“She was so angry when she left—at both of us. Would she do this just to ruin my future? Or make the BPD look stupid? Or the FBI?”
The professor laughed, but Mike saw something in her eyes, something unsure. Both women turned his way.
He grabbed the keys to his rental. “Bergman’s got her own kind of code, but she wouldn’t mess with a story. First things first: we find out where she called from. Let’s go see Greenwood.”
They moved toward the door but didn’t get far. A black FBI SUV blocked Roman’s rental in the parking lot.
* * *
“I don’t know how else I can tell you go to hell, Roman.” Back in the BPD conference room an hour later, Agent Foreman gestured at the image frozen onscreen. “That is Caitlin Bergman walking through a metal detector at Miami Correctional Facility, five short hours ago.”
He slammed his hand down on the table. Mary and Lakshmi jumped. Mike shifted uncomfortably. Chief Renton, behind them with arms crossed, laughed.
“Here’s a copy of the visitor log complete with time stamp, a copy of her driver’s license, and her signature.” Foreman grabbed a stapled stack of pages. “Here are the GPS pings from her burner phone, showing her location directly outside the prison complex at the same time she called Lakshmi Anjale’s phone. And yes, in case you were wondering, we knew about her second phone since it was one of the many numbers we discovered and traced back from the Bro-duce farm’s records. I don’t know what you’ve read in the local press, but we’re taking both the Bro-duce bust and Caitlin’s disappearance seriously.”
He tossed the pages, grabbed another sheet, held up a printed image. “Last but not least, here she is in the visitation room, speaking to a prisoner. Caitlin Bergman is not missing—she just doesn’t want to be found. If you continue to waste the time of the BPD, the FBI, or myself, I will destroy all three of you. Do you understand me?”
Mary and Lakshmi promised to print retractions in the Daily Student, spin the story as a misunderstanding.
Chief Renton approached with a smile. “Mr. Roman, you’re awfully quiet.”
Mike kept mum. He could understand Caitlin cold-shouldering Lubbers and Anjale, but he hadn’t done anything wrong—not this time at least.
Eating that much crow turned his stomach. “Sorry to waste everyone’s time.”
CHAPTER
71
“CAITLIN.” EMBOWER APPEARED on the TV once again, his face freshly scrubbed and pink. “Put the bag on.”
Caitlin left the couch, found the bag, and pulled it over her head. She’d spent three unsupervised hours going through books, then God knows how long napping. She hadn’t even considered poking eyeholes through the thick muslin. Dumbass.
“Stay where you are.” She heard him push his chair back.
After a ten count, she reached for the bag. No televised voice told her to stop. His kitchen was up at least one floor, but it wouldn’t take long for him to reach her.
She worked the fabric. Her nails didn’t catch. She pulled the bag back over her head, caught the cloth in her teeth, and started grinding. A pinhole of light appeared through the wet spot.
“Caitlin.” His voice returned through the wall speaker. “Clasp your fingers behind you.”
The locks turned, the door opened, the cuffs went on.
“Come.”
He tugged her backward. She aligned an eye with the hole, saw the bright image of the kitchen on the TV screen.
“Step down,” he said.
They moved into the hall. Past the open door to her bedroom, the hallway veered left. Pale blue light came from the right.
“Walk.”
He marched her back to the bedroom, sat her down, strapped her in, unlocked the handcuffs, removed the bag, then set up his folding chair and sat across from her. A pizza box waited on top of the table.
“Which do you want first? Dinner or story?”
“What’s so great about this story?”
He wrote the headline with his hands, excited. “ ‘Missing Reporter Alive and Well.’ ”
Caitlin felt her chest tighten. “Better eat first.”
He opened the box and slid two pieces onto Caitlin’s plate. “Fine. I have other news. I’m making improvements to your room.”
“Like a tunnel out?”
“In a way. You’re getting a drain. That may not seem important now, but this rainy season has been unpredictable. There used to be carpet in here.”
“Hence the smell.” Caitlin
forced a mouthful of pizza down.
Embower looked pleased. “That brings me to the other improvement. I’m going to reduce the usage of drugs.”
“How?”
“You’ll see tomorrow. Be prepared to spend most of the day in the playroom.”
Caitlin shrugged. “Bigger in there anyway.”
He stood, put the pizza aside, then reached under the covers of Caitlin’s bed. His hand came up with her laptop. He placed the computer in front of her, powered up and waiting for a password.
Caitlin’s fingertips met the keys like a lover. “Why are you giving me my laptop?”
“In case you wish to take notes.”
She remembered the camera in the corner, covered each hand with the other as she typed her password. No Wi-Fi networks available. No Bluetooth either.
“Ready for story time, Caitlin?”
She met his eyes. “Knock yourself out.”
He paced as he dictated. “ ‘At twelve thirty-seven, Caitlin Bergman called Lakshmi Anjale from an unlisted cell phone outside the Miami Correctional Facility in Kokomo, Indiana.’ ”
Caitlin typed along, but her words had nothing to do with his showboating.
If you’re reading this, you’ve found the place of my death. The man who calls himself Embower, known locally as Chad Branford, is responsible for the deaths of Angela Chapman, Paige Lauffer, and myself.
She copied the date and time from the desktop calendar.
Sunday night, 8:53 PM, the fifth day of her captivity, her twenty-fourth day in Bloomington.
Something he said stopped her typing. “Wait, what?”
Embower nodded his head. “That’s right. Woods said he was ashamed for what he’d done to you.”
She tried to process the fragment of his story her subconscious had retained. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“He was sorry. Those were his words.”
“Wait.” Caitlin shut the laptop. When she’d seen him in the hall that morning, she’d assumed the wig was part of his kink. “You dressed like me?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Impressed?”
Impressed wasn’t the word. “You dressed like me, visited a men’s prison in drag, and met with Troy Woods?”
He tilted his head to one side. “I like to think I became you—”
Caitlin threw her hands up. “Bullshit.”
Embower smiled, reached into his pocket, swiped at a phone, then showed Caitlin a photo of herself, taken from the back of Fallen Angels.
“Before,” he said, then swiped again. “And after.”
The second photo resembled her back cover shot in both framing and wardrobe. Taken as a selfie, the woman in the photo wore a black sport coat and a white collared shirt. Her hair, brown, straight, and chin-length, looked beauty-parlor good, and better than Caitlin’s real hair any day of the week. More makeup than she’d ever owned coated the face, completely balanced and Photoshop-quality flawless. Even the lips were done. The second face didn’t look like Caitlin necessarily, but the whole package resembled a real-life woman. At least, a woman dressed for a male-dominated industry where sexuality was a weakness.
“Jesus, what the hell’s wrong with you?”
“All it takes is practice and an airbrush.” He put the phone away, smug. “I can’t say I came close to your natural beauty, but I did convince a room full of strangers. And Woods, of course.”
Blood rushed to her cheeks. Caitlin shook her head, violated. She’d known some of the best drag queens in West Hollywood, so it wasn’t the proficiency of the disguise that pissed her off, or the assholes who fell for it. Embower had done much worse. He’d taken her identity and presented himself to the man who’d scarred her for life. “You saw him? Talked to Troy Woods?”
He nodded. “Sat in the chair with the phone and the glass and everything. At first I was surprised he couldn’t tell, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? He didn’t see you as a woman then. Why should he now?”
Caitlin fought back a scream. A scream could get her hit or worse. She grabbed the thumb of her left hand with the fingers of her right and squeezed. “And you do, Embower? You see me as a woman?”
“Such a woman, Caitlin. A strong, intelligent woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
She shook out her hands and met his eyes. “I thought I needed to be saved.”
His smile dropped instantly. “From yourself, yes. The things you do and say.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, anything to slow down the eruption. This wouldn’t be a panic attack. This was pure rage. “And what did you say to Woods as me?”
Embower set his feet shoulder-width apart, looked down to the floor, then raised his head with both altered posture and voice.
“ ‘I don’t accept your apology, Troy, nor do I need it.’ ”
“I don’t sound like that.”
He continued, “ ‘You may have taken my body, robbed me of my halcyon days at IU—’ ”
Caitlin hated the word halcyon. Hated.
“ ‘—but you didn’t take anything I couldn’t replace. While your life spiraled out of control, I built a career.’ ” One hand went to his hip, the other punctuated his words. “ ‘While doors locked you away, I broke through walls, soared through the sky.’ ” His voice thundered. “ ‘I do not need your apology, just as the world does not need you. Your crime, inconsequential; your mark on the world, invisible. I am Caitlin Bergman. Who the fuck are you?’ ”
Embower hung up an invisible phone, dropped his hands to his sides, and raised his eyebrows.
Caitlin looked down at her hands, both white-knuckled from squeezing the tabletop.
“I didn’t expect applause,” he said, leaning down over the table, “but not even a smile?”
If he came a foot closer, even bound to the chair, she could strangle him or gouge out his eyes or pull the tongue out of his sick fucking mouth. “Are you that delusional, Branford?”
His expression darkened. “That’s not my name.”
She leaned forward, straining against her straps. “Do you really think I’m over what Woods did to me?”
“You’re a strong woman, Caitlin,” he said, as if that would put out the fire in her chest.
“Do you know what it meant to leave everything I cared about, to be ashamed of who I was”—the straps moaned under her movement, and her voice left the volume of polite conversation—“to be afraid to tell my father why I left college weeks before graduation?”
“Caitlin, you’re upset, but you shouldn’t raise your voice at me.”
She couldn’t hold back anymore, wouldn’t even try. “I couldn’t have sex for years after that. I couldn’t even masturbate without crying. I tried to kill myself twice, chickened out at the last second. And now, twenty years later, every time I have sex, I flash back to that afternoon with that asshole on top of me. I have to fight through that memory every time a man touches me. Every damned time.”
Embower pulled Caitlin’s laptop out of her reach and raised his hand. “Stop talking.”
“But I’m a strong woman,” she yelled. “Strong women yell, and they swear and they fuck and drink and get high, and yes, they cry and sweat and grow hair everywhere, and that’s totally up to them. But every day, some asshole tries to change that because that’s not his idea of what a strong woman is.” She leaned her face as far forward as she could. “Hit me—I don’t care. You want me to live in your bullshit dollhouse? Fine, but I’m not going to follow your script.”
He slapped her hard.
Her head flew back. A mixture of blood and snot flooded her sinuses. She blew a pink bubble out a nostril and laughed. “Is that all you’ve got?”
He pulled back again but stopped mid-swing, composing himself. “You’re upset. You don’t mean what you’re saying.” He nodded, apparently in agreement with himself. “You’ll be happier when you see the changes.”
He picked up the laptop and walked out. Caitlin heard the fan above come to life.
So much for cutting down on the drugs.
CHAPTER
72
CAITLIN’S FACE FELT raw, maybe from last night’s slap, maybe from the pattern of the playroom couch she woke on. The TV showed the outside world, overcast but sunny.
He’d left breakfast on the steel table once again. Still in last night’s pajamas, she shuffled over, found a note in a paper bowl next to a single-serving box of cereal.
I don’t want to lose you the way I lost Paige, so I’ll give you a day to consider your situation. I think you’ll enjoy the changes.
She crumpled the note and opened the cereal. A sound stopped her, the first she’d ever heard in the room that hadn’t come from the TV or the wall speaker. It sounded like a muffled jackhammer.
Something else was new. He’d cut a rectangle into the door, like a mail slot, but for putting on handcuffs.
She inspected the foot-wide, six-inch-high panel. A metal slab filled the gap from the hallway side. She poked the steel, sensed a little give. Her finger caught the cooler air of the hallway.
The sound returned. Definitely a jackhammer. A drain, he’d said. Not just an evil genius, but handy too.
She took breakfast back to the couch, went to the bookcase, grabbed the Riverside Shakespeare. She could always count on Bill Shakespeare for a tale of revenge, and a pound of Embower’s flesh sounded like the perfect inspiration. The table of contents remained intact on a wispy page preceding the missing block, but all of the comedies and the first three histories had fallen victim to the great removal. She double-checked the first page after the gap.
709.
She stared at the number with the eye that didn’t hurt. “Hold on.”
She looked back at the table of contents. Richard III started at 708. Yesterday, the first page she’d seen had footnotes for Henry VI, Part 3. Now, she looked at 709, the second page of Richard III.
Someone had ripped out page 707–708.
Someone had ripped it out last night.
But why would Embower do it? The page hadn’t showed any notes from Chapman.
Caitlin shut the book and looked around the room with fresh eyes. Two beanbag chairs sat near the door. Maybe in some twisted reality she and Embower were supposed to sit and read to each other. But why were there two laundry baskets?
Come and Get Me Page 28
