“Oh, and Charley?”
She looks at him.
“In another few hours, Frederick Pemberton is going to tell a very strange story to the authorities. We’ll do everything we can to make sure they don’t believe it. But I wouldn’t stick around if I were you.”
She wants to ask him more questions, but she doubts he’ll give her the whole truth.
“You and Dylan make a great couple,” she says. “It’s a shame you want him dead.”
No sooner has she stepped from the helicopter than Baker slides the door shut behind her, and suddenly it’s lifting into the air over her head, the downdraft plastering her hair to one side of her face. But of course her grip, magnified by Zypraxon, is more than enough to keep the contents of the file from blowing out of her hand. In time with the helicopter’s departure, the two SUVs speed back onto the service road, leaving Luke’s Jeep all by itself several yards away, its doors standing open.
Luke is walking toward her. Too fast.
“Wait,” she says.
“No,” he says.
Suddenly his arms are around her.
“If you can’t hug me without crushing my spine, then just don’t hug back,” he whispers.
She leaves her arms at her sides. She leans into him. She can do that, right? Just a little lean. A little movement that allows her to shift some of the weight off her heels and onto the balls of her feet, to breathe deeply for the first time in hours.
For the first time in days.
For the first time in weeks.
She blinks against his chest, sees the rest of the group headed toward her.
“I’m gonna wait if that’s all right, darlin’,” Marty says, “maybe another hour and a half or so. I’m not quite as brave as him.”
She smiles, nods against Luke’s chest. She’s allowed her eyes to drift shut again when she hears one of the other guys say, “We need to get her some new jeans.”
IV
It’s been two weeks, and this is what the world thinks happened that night.
They think the Mask Maker, aka Frederick Pemberton, was rearranging equipment in his surgical lab of horrors when he accidentally pushed one of the operating tables into the vacuum pump chamber he used to create his masks, knocking the giant chamber onto its side. They think he almost pinned himself underneath it, breaking several bones in the process. They think he was so afraid a trip to the hospital would expose the source of his injuries, he chose instead to inject himself with a powerful pain medication until he could figure out what to do. And because he was in so much pain, he made the mistake of dosing himself with one of the tranquilizers he used to subdue his victims, knocking himself unconscious in the process.
After he passed out, his dogs escaped through a driveway gate he’d failed to close all the way behind himself earlier that evening. Given their reputation as fearsome beasts, it took only one or two sightings of the dogs running along Pala Temecula Road before neighbors placed concerned calls to local law enforcement. A little while later, a routine door knock ended up unmasking one of the most sadistic serial killers in American history.
Since then cable news has been filled with criminal justice and forensics experts who can’t get enough of this story. Of its crazy irony. The killer being brought down by the implements of his crimes. None of them have paused to wonder if it’s all too neat. If perhaps the whole thing was staged.
Maybe they do, just during commercial breaks.
If Cole Graydon’s men left behind any evidence that a combat-ready team of soldiers had practically blown the place apart in the minutes before I was triggered, local law enforcement hasn’t found any of it.
As for Pemberton, the contents of his confession have not yet been made public, aside from the fact that it’s most definitely a confession. What other choice did he have? the experts ask. Was he really going to insist that the entire contents of his lab, right down to the three faceless corpses in his refrigerator, were somehow carted in and staged there while he slept on the floor? How would he explain the fact that all of it was slathered with his fingerprints? Maybe he’s told them some crazy story about one of his victims overpowering him, but if he has, the police sure aren’t acting on it. I’m sure I have Cole Graydon and his men to thank for that.
Defeat.
That’s how, in the eyes of the world, the story of the Mask Maker has ended. Total, pathetic defeat.
And I’m not going to lie.
This satisfies me.
It does more than that, to be honest.
It makes me very happy.
So happy that I’m not afraid to admit to myself—and to Luke and to Marty—that my memory of the fear in his eyes, the pain in his expression as I snapped his wrist, does not fill me with guilt. Every now and then I feel like it might. But then I close my eyes and try to imagine the faces of the women whose lives I probably saved, going about their daily business. Laughing. Loving. Crying over silly movies. Future victims of the Mask Maker who might have looked away too quickly from Frederick Pemberton’s unusual features.
I removed from the world the hours of agony and torment and terror Pemberton’s next victims would have suffered at his hands. Save the world? Maybe not. Make it a better place? I think so.
It took me about three days to realize this.
You could say I was in shock. But it wasn’t the kind of shock I’ve heard described by car accident victims. I wasn’t speechless or paralyzed. It was like I was skating across the surface of what had happened. Like if I just didn’t talk about everything I’d done, it would eventually seem perfectly normal. So I went about my days at Marty’s house, then at Luke’s, because his place was bigger, showering, eating, and watching cable news coverage of Pemberton’s arrest.
It was strange, logging in to my e-mail, but it didn’t bring me back to reality the way I expected. The messages waiting there just seemed like terse dispatches from a life that wasn’t mine anymore, most of them inquiries from the travel agency I worked for. The first message was politely curious, the second, concerned. The third, arriving after I’d missed my second shift in a row, was all disciplinary talk of probation. In the fourth, I was fired.
And then there were the voice mails on my cell phone. Several from the Scarlet Police Department, from one of the cops I’d met when I went to register my alarm. Poor guy, he’d sounded so halting and nervous. Probably overwhelmed by federal agents. I thought I could hear some of them talking in the background.
He just wanted to know if I was out there, is all. They’d tried knocking, ringing my buzzer. There’d been a big mess out in the desert nearby, if I hadn’t heard. Could I get back to them as soon as I could?
Five calls over the course of two days. Then they’d stopped altogether as the attention of the federal agencies involved was directed to other sources by an invisible, powerful hand.
Thanks, Cole.
Did he call politician friends and get them to look away? Did he blackmail federal agents into extending their investigation south toward Scarlet and not north toward my house? I’m in no mood to ask the guy. If I ask him anything, I’ll be required to answer his question first, and I’m not ready for that. Not yet.
Around sunset one night, Luke drove me out to the beach and Bayard Rock. He told me it was where he used to bring Bailey when their mom was sick.
Bailey’s got no interest in coming home, apparently. This has hurt Luke’s feelings all over again. Apparently the fact that we’ve made powerful new friends who could probably get Bailey back in the country, maybe even keep the FBI off his back, means nothing to him. Wherever he is, whoever he’s working with, he’s happy there. And it’s hard for Luke to argue with him. Because wherever Bailey is, whoever he’s working with, allowed us to take a vicious monster out of circulation. So can we really complain?
There are already construction vehicles out at the old resort. Clearing out debris. Getting ready to pick up where they left off. There are advertisements for job fairs in town
. Mostly construction stuff, but they’re also interviewing for positions at the hotel once it opens. Kitchen staff, housekeeping. Stuff like that. It makes me dizzy to think all that might go away if I turn down Cole’s offer.
For a while Luke and I sat watching the sunset. I’ve taken his physical affection for granted these past few days. At first it just seemed like a natural outgrowth of what we’d been through. Now it’s constant. And welcome. And so when I rested my head against his shoulder as we sat together on the sand, it didn’t seem like a big deal. And when he took my hand in his and held it against his chest, it didn’t seem like a big deal, either.
When our lips finally met, it felt necessary. Essential. Not the forceful, desperate thing I’d seen in movies, and nothing like the hesitant, exploratory hour I’d spent with that guy I met on my road trip. It felt like an extension of what we’d been through. To kiss him. To get as close to his woodsy smell as I possibly could. To learn that his lower lip is sensitive, and if I lift my hands to the sides of his neck and just graze my fingers gently across the muscle there, he gets shivers all over his body. He doesn’t just laugh. He giggles, and then he gets embarrassed that he’s giggling, tries to turn it into a manly laugh, and ends up coughing. Which I really like. A lot.
I never anticipated that just kissing someone could be an event. With different stages and acts. The slow approach. The commitment. The taste. The smell. The withdrawal and then going back in for a second taste, a deeper one. It’s happened three times, and we haven’t had some big talk about it. We haven’t named it. And we haven’t tried to get each other’s clothes off. For now it’s just something we need, even though it’s brief. Even though it’s nameless.
For now.
We’re together right now as I write this, on a plane headed for Atlanta.
The e-mails from Cole have been pretty steady the past two weeks. They all say the same thing: “Ready to hear your decision when you’ve made it. —C.”
But there’s only been one e-mail from Dylan and it arrived yesterday: “Let’s meet. So much to discuss, it seems. —D.”
Followed by a screen cap of a Google map of an area I knew all too well.
Marty offered to go with me, but I could tell he was at risk of losing several jobs given how much time he’d spent away. Luke had put in regular shifts ever since we got back, and he’d told Mona a good enough cover story to explain his absence.
Twenty-four hours. That’s how long we’ve scheduled this trip for. Twenty-four hours that could decide my fate.
And Dylan’s.
It seems insane to be writing in this notebook again.
What if I dropped it or lost it? Whoever picked it up would probably think it was someone’s idea of a novel, that’s what.
Maybe it’s as simple as I can’t really think of anything else to do with my hands right now. It’s a long flight, SFO to Atlanta. About four hours. And Luke’s only pretending to watch the movie on his phone; I can tell.
Still, it’s comforting to have him next to me. It’s comforting to know he watched me do what I did in Pemberton’s basement and he doesn’t recoil from me. He isn’t afraid of me. He doesn’t believe some incurable darkness has been unleashed in me. He looks at me with a protectiveness and steadiness I’ve never seen in the eyes of another man. It’s not like the way Marty looks at me, with a lot of smiles and winks to hide how worried he is. Luke is there. Present. Constant. Ready.
Which is good.
Because I need him.
I need this journal, too. I need these words. They’re mine. They exist between all the other versions of my life that have been forced on me over the years. They exist outside the terrible choice Cole Graydon has given me.
Maybe this really will be the last chapter of the story that began with my mother’s murder. Maybe I really will walk away, no matter what that entails.
If I do, does this mean I should keep this book, or burn it?
Cole sent me another e-mail this morning. I got it as we were boarding: “Hope you have a productive meeting. I look forward to seeing your decision. —C.”
I showed it to Luke. “Seeing,” he said back to me. So I wasn’t the only one who noticed the unusual wording.
“So they’re gonna be watching us,” he said.
I nodded. Watching us today.
And maybe always.
If that’s the price of being able to bring Pemberton’s madness to an end, of saving the lives of his future victims, is it worth it?
If I had an answer, I wouldn’t be asking you, journal.
41
Her arrival at the farm is relatively painless at first because she doesn’t recognize anything. It’s all so overgrown. On the drive in from Atlanta, the seas of rolling green mountains reminded her more of the grave-site tour she took right before she moved to Arizona than it did her fragmented recollections of early childhood.
By the time she and Luke reach the old chain where the entrance to the access road used to be, they’ve been trespassing for about twenty minutes. But she figures if the owners of the farm that bought up all the Bannings’ property years ago come bursting out of the trees with shotguns raised, Cole will somehow intervene.
What tipped him off? she wonders. Was it that they booked their airline tickets in their own names? Or has he been tracking Dylan’s e-mails? She figures it’s the latter.
It’s cold at this altitude, colder than it was in Atlanta. Their breath fogs the air. Luke pushes brush back with gloved hands. Someone, probably morbid hikers, and if the rumors are true, the owners of the property who lead them on guided hikes here, have beaten a trail through the brush to the front steps, where she used to sit with Abigail and watch for birds. She and Luke follow it now.
They’re several yards from the house when someone steps out onto the porch.
Dylan’s dressed like a preppy backpacker; a new-looking waffle-print coat, lightly scuffed jeans, and shiny black boots. This is how Dylan Thorpe, the privileged but kindhearted therapist she knew in Arizona would dress if he took off on a hike in a colder climate. She reminds herself not be fooled by the outfit. By the look.
He’s not Dylan Thorpe, she thinks as they stare at each other. He’s not even Dylan Cody. He’s Noah Turlington. Think of him that way, and it will be easier not to hate him. Or at the least your hatred won’t show.
He gestures for them to follow him inside.
When she first spotted the remains of the farmhouse, she assumed it had been through several fires. Now that she’s inside, she can see it’s time and weather that have eaten away at its roof and walls, leaving holes so large they look like evidence of cannon blasts. The fireplace has been conquered by a blend of vines and weeds, watered, it looks like, by a steady diet of rain. The center of the brick mantel gave way a long time ago. Below, the bricks sit where they landed, black as coal where they aren’t covered by leaves.
One entire corner of the house, including the large window from which she used to watch snow fall and birds congregate at the feeder outside, has collapsed, flooding the interior with sunlight that exposes the morbid graffiti along the walls. It’s the same bargain-basement poseur satanist crap she’s seen in pictures of the place online. Skulls, upside-down stars, crude outlines of heads she only realizes are supposed to be the devil when she finally sees the crooked horns on top. At floor level tiny altars left by the visitors line the walls. Defaced stuffed animals, some of them tied to black pillar candles. Like so many of the tributes to the Bannings that persist on the Internet, the offerings here are a crazy mishmash of grief for the victims and a perverse celebration of their killers. As if her mother and Noah’s mother weren’t claimed by maniacs, but by a dark god who demands constant reverence. She can imagine Jason Briffel crouching down in these shadows, maybe with some of his letters from Abigail tucked in his pocket, lighting one of the intact candles. This would be his church.
For her, this house, the fields outside, the entire property, is a gory delivery room whe
re her true self was yanked from the womb by a well-armed SWAT team acting as OB-GYNs.
But what is it for Dylan?
For Noah, she corrects herself.
There are maps online that claim to show the locations where each body was buried before her rescue, so maybe he spent some time standing over his mother’s first, forced grave. If the victims were taken from an isolated location like her mother, their car was buried here, too. Even today, the most popular crime scene photos are aerial shots of the so-called automobile graveyard, where the rusted skeletons of the freshly unearthed cars looked like fossils emerging from the sands of history.
Has he never been here before?
Was he saving it for their reunion?
As they stand together inside this crumbling ruin, she feels exactly the type of kinship with him she had hoped to avoid. It’s the expression on his face as he studies these walls, she thinks. Unguarded, wide-eyed. Free of anything that looks like calculation.
Behind her, Luke stands just inside the front door, watching Dylan’s every move.
“I have something for you,” Dylan finally says.
When he extends one hand toward her, Luke takes a step, boards creaking underfoot. A link of shiny gold dangles from Dylan’s outstretched fist. She recognizes it instantly, extends her hand, gesturing with the other for Luke to stay back.
Jason Briffel’s necklace, the one he wore to her house, drops into her palm. Most of it is blackened from intense fire, the ends melted from the heat. The sight of the tiny medallion of flames, now soot covered, makes Jason’s break-in seem like minutes and not weeks ago.
“I would never have let him hurt you.”
She looks at him in disbelief. Not because she thinks he’s lying. Because she didn’t expect his candor.
“So you were outside the whole time?” she asks. “You followed me home?”
He nods.
Without thinking, she tosses the necklace toward the nearest grim altar. When his gift lands atop a rotting pile of burned offerings, Dylan flinches.
Bone Music Page 39
