He kept the gun trained on me with one hand while using the other to pull a walkie-talkie off his belt. Bringing it to his mouth, he prepared to call in some backup. With the gun pointing at my chest, there wasn’t much I could do to stop him.
Thankfully, Whisper and I hadn’t come alone.
“You might want to look behind you,” I said calmly.
The security guard scoffed. “Keep your mouth shut, asshole, or I’ll shut it for you.” He thumbed the switch on his radio and brought it up to his mouth.
Whatever he was going to say never made it past his lips as Scream chose that moment to make his presence known.
If Whisper was my angel, then Scream was my devil incarnate, all rage and mayhem bound up in human form. At just a hair above seven feet, even in death he was a towering giant of a man. His fists were like sledgehammers, his legs as thick as oaks, and he had the disposition of a junkyard bulldog that had been kicked one too many times and now intended to take the leg off the next person who came too close.
Of course, the guard couldn’t see him, not the way I could. But Scream has his own unique way of letting you know he is there, filling the space around him with a sense of fear, doubt, and apprehension that follows him like a cloud. Being in his general vicinity makes most people uncomfortable; being right beside him could make you literally sick with fear. I’ve never experienced it myself, for whatever reason I seem to be immune, but I’ve been told that it is like living through all your very worst fears at the same moment: the things that haunt your psyche in the deepest dark of the dead of night; the things that no matter how hard you try you can never seem to get away from.
Scream swam into view behind the security guard like a hazy mirage, insubstantial at first and then with increasing solidity until we were staring at each over the guard’s shoulder.
Imagine a face that is all harsh planes and sharp angles. Now hollow out the cheeks and sink the eyes deep into their sockets. Add the gaping hole of a gunshot wound above the left eye and a shock of white hair, and you’ll have a close approximation of what Scream looks like to me when he graces us with his presence.
I nodded in his direction.
Of course, the guard couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel Scream’s sudden presence. As I watched, the guard glanced down at his arm—the one holding the gun—and his eyes widened noticeably. Suddenly he began shrieking at the top of his lungs.
“Get it off! Get it off me!” he screamed, flailing about, the gun in his hand completely forgotten as he sought to dislodge with his free hand whatever phantom creature he was seeing in his mind’s eye.
I moved to one side, out of what I hoped was the line of fire, and waited for it to end.
Apparently the guard was seeing more of them now, for he cast his gun aside and with both hands began frantically to brush at his arms, face, and chest. He was breathing heavily, practically hyperventilating, and an eerie keening sound was coming from his mouth. As I watched, he turned and ran for the doorway, desperate to escape.
He was so distraught that he missed the opening by a good two inches, running directly into the doorjamb at full speed, his forehead slamming into the unyielding wood surface with a loud thud, knocking him senseless.
I moved in quickly, snatched his weapon from the floor, and then secured him with his own handcuffs. From the size of the knot already forming on his forehead it looked like he’d be out for a good long while.
With that taken care of, the two ghosts and I quickly made our way back through the apartment and up to the second-floor bedroom where Marshall’s ghost had made its appearance earlier that afternoon.
It was dark enough now that I could see fairly well on my own. The body was gone, moved to its temporary home in a steel drawer at the county morgue. The holes in the floor where the spikes had been driven into the polished hardwood were visible, dark shadows on the glossy surface. I wondered if Marshall was still alive when those spikes had been used and then decided that I didn’t really want to know. Some details were better left unknown.
I went directly to the wall Marshall’s ghost had pointed at and began to search. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I figured I’d recognize it when I found it.
Fifteen minutes later, I was still looking.
I moved back a few steps and sat on the floor, staring at the wall. My head was starting to hurt from all the time I’d spent looking through Whisper’s eyes today, and my frustration was building by the minute. What the hell was I missing? What had Marshall been trying to tell me?
My attention kept coming back to that wall and the nagging suspicion that something about it just wasn’t right. I sat and stared at it for a while. I got up, paced around, and stared some more.
It was the pacing that did it.
A suspicion blossomed in the back of my mind and grew with each step I took. To test it, I went back down to the lower floor and paced off the room directly below. Forty-eight steps from one side to the other. Returning to the upper floor, I did the same thing.
Thirty-six steps.
It was a false wall.
My subconscious recognized the differences in the room sizes even if my conscious mind had not. That was what had been bothering me. It was also what Marshall had been trying to make me see.
Once I knew what to look for, I found it quickly enough. The switch was along the floor seam, right where it could be nudged with one foot while standing in front of the wall. When tripped, it made a soft click and a door gently slid open in front of me.
Seeing what lay on the other side, I could only stand there, gaping in astonishment.
Before me was a grove of white birch trees. The full moon in the sky above gently splashed the grove in its silvery light and I could hear the leaves whispering together in a gentle wind. Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that it was too cloudy to see the moon tonight, but since that was the least of the inconsistencies that I was looking at, I just let it go with nothing more than a mental shrug.
Clearly, this shouldn’t be possible and yet there it was.
The surface of the gravel path that led from the door deeper into the grove was splashed with something dark just a few feet in, and the sight of it drew me like a magnet. When I knelt next to it, the pungent smell of blood met my nostrils. It didn’t take a blood splatter expert to understand I was looking at that place where Marshall had met his end; there was too much blood for it to have been anything else. It was splashed across the trail in a wide pool and had dried into a thick stain.
At the very edge, something glowed with a faint luminescence.
If I had been looking at it with ordinary eyesight, I never would have seen it, but in the strange wavelength that was Whisper’s ghostsight it stood out like a beggar at a yacht club. I moved closer and got down on my hands and knees to take a look.
It was roughly five inches across and just this side of translucent, like the skin of a snake after it has been shed. Even as I watched, the aura about it slowly faded, until if I hadn’t known where it was already I never would have been able to pick it out against the stony background. Afraid I might lose it, I gently lifted it off the ground and slid it into an envelope from my pocket.
Instinctively, I knew that this must be what Marshall had wanted me to find.
I stood up, staring down the gravel path to where it disappeared into the trees and the darkness up ahead. I wondered where it led. Maybe that was how Marshall’s killer had gotten out of the apartment, I thought.
As I headed in that direction, though, Scream materialized directly in front of me. His massive arms were held across his chest and with a shake of his head he made it plain that I was to go no farther.
“Screw that,” I said, and tried to go around him.
Without a change of expression, Scream picked me up and tossed me back through the open doorway into the apartment proper.
I bounced once when I hit the floor and then slid for a few feet before com
ing to rest against the opposite wall. My arms burned where Scream had touched me, the type of burn you get from touching something intensely cold, and I lay there, astounded that he’d been able to affect the corporeal world in such a fashion.
Apparently there was more to Scream than I had ever imagined.
My connection to Whisper had been cut off when he’d separated us, but I didn’t need my sight to recognize the click of the latch as Scream closed the door to the hidden room and disappeared along with it.
Okay, I can take a hint. No grove exploring for me.
I gave myself a moment to catch my breath and then moved to get back up on my feet. As I put my hand on the floor to steady myself, I encountered something small and metallic. I scooped it up and brought it close to my face to take a look.
It was a tiny figure, maybe a dog or even a pony. Something with four legs at least.
I didn’t need to see it to know it was another charm like the one that had been left at the Connolly crime scene.
Except this time, with a jolt every bit as shocking as having a needle jammed unexpectedly into my eye, I recognized it!
21
NOW
I have to get home.
The thought kept repeating itself over and over again in my mind as I left the crime scene behind and frantically tried to flag down a cab on the street outside.
I have to get home.
The proof I needed was there, in the long-unused jewelry box on the bureau in my missing daughter’s bedroom.
I have to get home and I have to get there NOW.
The cab ride seemed to take forever, and I know I didn’t make a new friend by constantly haranguing the cabbie to drive faster. I didn’t care. All that mattered was what I would find when I got home.
For the first time in almost five years, I thought I had a solid lead on those who had taken my daughter from me and nothing was going to stand in my way of proving it, one way or another.
After what seemed like forever, we reached the top of my street. I broke my usual rule and directed the cabbie right to my front gate. I didn’t even wait for him to tell me the fare, just dropped a handful of bills in his lap as I got out of the car and dashed for my front door.
In the house.
Through the living room.
Up the stairs and down the hallway to the last room on the left.
The pair of bracelets had been a birthday gift from Anne and me when Elizabeth had turned seven. They’d been designed to our specifications by a local artist named Jean Luc Lafayette, making them a one-of-a-kind gift. He’d cast the figurines in pewter and carved the same trademark mandala design into the base of each.
Elizabeth had been wearing only one of the bracelets on the day she’d vanished.
The other still rested inside the cedar jewelry box she’d purchased to store them in.
I burst through her bedroom door and hurriedly crossed the room to where her dresser stood against the far wall. I snatched the container off the top, my hands shaking as they upended the contents of the box onto the top of her bureau.
It took only a matter of seconds for me to find the matching bracelet and to examine the design carved into the base of the figurines.
I slid to the floor, my legs no longer able to support my weight as the full impact of what I’d just discovered washed over me.
The designs were the same!
There was no doubt about it. The charms I’d discovered at the crime scenes had come from the bracelet Elizabeth was wearing the day she’d disappeared. Either the killer had crossed paths with Elizabeth or he was the abductor himself.
Vertigo gripped me, and it took me a moment to regain control. For the first time in five years, I was looking at a solid lead.
I needed to get the police on this right away. They had the manpower and resources to deal with it swiftly and effectively. I snatched up the phone, punched in Stanton’s cell number, and …
… hung up before it could ring.
Excitement warred with trepidation in my heart. This was the first piece of evidence that had surfaced in literally years of searching, the first tangible clue to what had happened to my daughter.
A clue tied directly to a cold-blooded killer.
That didn’t bode well, and it meant that I had to approach this with more than a bit of caution. Think before you act, Hunt. Think.
What, exactly, had the police done for Elizabeth over the last five years?
Sure, they’d come out to the house at first, done the usual canvass of the neighborhood and such. But even then they hadn’t been convinced that she’d been abducted. Even then their questions had been closer to insinuations: Had she ever run away before? Was there a reason she might have run away? How was I getting along with her in the days before she disappeared?
And then there had been that business about her being seen with me hours after I’d reported her missing, the need for them to “take every lead into consideration.” The trip to the police station and the polite questions in the interview room, as if I had something to do with it.
It hadn’t taken them long to give up on her, either, just a few short months before her file was moved to the cold case unit, just another example of a runaway who hadn’t come home.
Except my daughter hadn’t run away.
She’d been taken.
The charm in my hand was proof of that.
I realized that I’d long ago lost any confidence in the idea that the police were going to be able to help find my daughter. Wasn’t that why I’d taken the search into my own hands? Why should I think that things would be any different now?
The cops were after a killer; they wouldn’t be looking out for my little girl.
I thought back to Stanton’s demeanor at the first crime scene. He’d been agitated, clearly upset with the direction the investigation was going. He’d called me in to give him that little extra edge he needed to solve the case quickly, and I had a hunch that it hadn’t been my expertise in ancient languages that he’d wanted, either.
The investigation had been only a few hours old when he’d called me in. Stanton couldn’t have even talked to all the neighbors yet, never mind thoroughly examined the crime scene. He’d taken one look at that body and immediately asked for my help.
Suddenly, I wanted to know why.
What did he know that I didn’t?
It was like a puzzle with too many missing pieces. I knew it all went together somehow, but I didn’t have any idea what it was supposed to look like, let alone where to begin.
One thing was certain.
I wasn’t ready to trust Stanton or the police with what I had discovered just yet.
Come morning, it would be time to do a little investigating of my own.
22
THEN
In hindsight, Anne’s leaving saved me from myself. Without her as a crutch to lean on, I was forced to pay attention to life around me again. She’d been buying the groceries, paying the bills, washing the clothes. With her gone, I had no choice but to do these things for myself and it was that return to routine that kept me from falling over the edge of the cliff into despair.
The crazy-eyed lunatic raving about saving his daughter disappeared. His replacement was a man driven by ice-cold focus and a determination that nothing would get in his way.
Or so I thought.
My next run-in with the police told me I didn’t have everything as together as I thought I did.
I had gone into the city to follow up on a tip about some street kids living inside the Callohan Tunnel, thinking Elizabeth might be among them, and was tired from dodging traffic all day while searching for their hiding place. The fumes from the rush-hour traffic were getting to me, and I’d decided to call it a day when the car carrying Elizabeth drove right past me.
I saw her, plain as day, from my position on the access ramp at the mouth of the tunnel. She was sitting in the back seat of a white Mercedes in the far lane, on the opposite side of the h
ighway from where I stood. She was staring out the window, lost in thought, and I saw her face clearly as she drove past.
“Elizabeth!” I shouted, dashing out into traffic without thought for my personal safety.
Horns blared, brakes squealed, and it was only the heaviness of the traffic that kept me from getting killed.
That or the fact that God keeps a special eye out for crazy people.
“Elizabeth!”
Traffic had slowed and I caught up with the car pretty quickly. I bent over and peered into the window.
“Elizabeth! It’s Daddy, Elizabeth! It’s Daddy!”
The girl inside recoiled.
“No, honey, it’s me. It’s Daddy.” I knew I didn’t look like I had when she’d been taken, so I frantically tried to comb down my long hair and turned sideways to let her see my profile so she could recognize me.
The car pulled ahead suddenly.
“No! You’re not taking her away from me again!”
I ran to catch up. “Give me my daughter, you son of a bitch!” I screamed, as I yanked on the door handle while banging on the window with my other hand.
The driver, a wimpy-looking guy in a three-piece suit, tried to speed up, tried to get away, but I’d be damned if I was going to let that happen. I’d found her and no one was taking her away from me again. Never again!
I pumped my legs and hung on for dear life. Thankfully the traffic ahead had become backed up again and the driver had no choice but to slow down. When he did, I threw myself across his windshield, trying to block his view of the road ahead and prevent him from moving forward.
“Give me my daughter! Elizabeth!”
Unknown to me, one of the cars I’d raced out in front of had been a Metro police cruiser. The cop inside had watched everything unfold and had quickly turned his vehicle sideways, blocking off traffic from closing in behind us, and had then exited his vehicle, racing to catch up with us.
Eyes to See Page 11
