Split Second

by Alex Kava

  He sensed her urgency and let his mouth replace his fingers, gently kissing her. He tugged open the rest of her shirt and his mouth wandered, taking his time moving down her body. Suddenly he stopped. Then she felt his fingertips on her stomach, lightly tracing the scar that ran across her abdomen. The hideous scar that Albert Stucky had left. How could she have forgotten it?

  She sat up abruptly and disentangled herself from the sleeping bag, escaping before Nick could react. In her rush, she almost tripped over poor Harvey. Now, she stood looking out over the backyard, the front of her shirt gathered into a fist. She heard him come up behind her. She realized she was shivering though she wasn’t cold. Nick wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into his warm body, resting her head back against his chest.

  “You gotta know by now, Maggie,” he whispered into her hair, “there isn’t anything you can say or show me that’s gonna scare me away.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “It’s just that he’s with me all the time, Nick. I should have known that there would be some way for him to ruin even this.”

  He tightened his hug. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to contradict her just to make her feel better. Instead, he just held her.

  58

  MAGGIE got up before dawn. She left Nick a scrawled note, apologizing and giving him instructions for setting the alarm. He had said he needed to get back to Boston to prepare for a trial, but she knew he was trying to figure a way out of it. She told him she didn’t want him to jeopardize his new job. What she left out was that she didn’t want him close by for Albert Stucky to hurt.

  She called Tully from the road, but when he answered his door he didn’t look as if he expected her. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt and was barefoot. He hadn’t shaved yet, and his short hair stuck up. He let her in without much of a greeting.

  “I’m brewing coffee. Would you like a cup?”

  “No, thanks.” Why did he not feel the same urgency she was feeling?

  He disappeared into what she thought must be the kitchen. Instead of following, she sat down on a stiff sofa that looked and smelled brand-new.

  A girl wandered into the room rubbing her eyes and not bothering to acknowledge Maggie. She wore only a short nightshirt and her steps were those of a sleepwalker. The girl plopped into an oversize chair, found a remote between the cushions and turned the TV on, flipping through the channels but not paying much attention. Maggie hated feeling that she had gotten the entire household out of bed.

  “Emma, shut the TV off, please,” Tully instructed after only a glance at the screen. “This is Special Agent Maggie O’Dell. Agent O’Dell, this is my ill-mannered daughter, Emma.”

  “Hi, Emma.”

  The girl looked up and manufactured a smile that looked neither genuine nor comfortable.

  “Emma, if you’re up for the morning, please put on some regular clothes.”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” She pulled herself out of the chair and wandered out.

  “Sorry about that,” he said while he skidded the chair Emma had vacated around to face Maggie rather than the TV. “Sometimes I feel like aliens abducted my real daughter and transplanted this impostor.”

  He sipped his coffee, wrapping both hands around the mug and taking his time. Then, as though he remembered why they were here in his living room on a Sunday morning, he stood up abruptly, set down the mug down and started digging through the piles on the coffee table. Maggie couldn’t help wondering if there was any part of Agent Tully’s life that he kept organized.

  He pulled out a map and started spreading it out.

  “From what you told me, I’m figuring this is the area we’re talking about.”

  She took a close look at the spot highlighted in fluorescent yellow.

  He continued, “If Rosen was lost, it’s hard telling exactly where he was, but if you cross the Potomac using this toll bridge, there is this piece of land about five miles wide and fifteen miles long that hangs out into the river. The bridge passes over the top half. The map shows no roads, not even unpaved ones down in the peninsula part. It looks like it’s all woods, rocks, probably ravines. In other words, a great place to hide.”

  “And a difficult place to escape from.” Maggie sat forward, hardly able to contain her excitement. “So when do we leave?”

  “Hold on.” Tully sat down. “We’re doing this by the book, O’Dell.”

  “Stucky strikes hard and fast and then disappears. He’s already killed three women and possibly kidnapped two others. And those are just the ones we know about.”

  “I know,” he said much too calmly.

  “He could pick up and leave any day, any minute. We can’t wait for court orders and county police cooperation or whatever the hell you think we need to wait for.”

  He sipped his coffee. “Are you finished?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and sat back. She should never have called Tully. She knew she could talk Rosen into assembling a search team, though the area was across the river, which meant not only a different jurisdiction but also a different state.

  “First of all, Assistant Director Cunningham is getting in touch with the Maryland officials.”

  “You called Cunningham? Oh, wonderful.”

  “I’ve been trying to find out who owns the property. It used to be the government, which may account for that weird chemical concoction in the dirt. Probably something they were testing. It was purchased by a private corporation about four years ago, something called WH Enterprises. I can’t find out anything about it, no managing CEO, no trustees, nothing.”

  “Since when does the FBI need permission to hunt down a serial killer?”

  “We can’t send in a SWAT team when we don’t know what’s there. Even the mud simply means that Stucky may have been in this area. Doesn’t prove he’s still there.”

  “Goddamn it, Tully! This is the only lead we have, and you need to analyze it to death!”

  “Don’t you want to know what you might be walking into this time, Agent O’Dell?” She knew he was referring to last August when she went running off to find Stucky in an abandoned Miami warehouse. She hadn’t told anyone else. She had been following up on a hunch then, too. Only Stucky had been waiting for her with a trap. Was it possible he’d be expecting her again?

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “We wait,” Tully said as though waiting was no big deal. “We find out what’s there. The Maryland authorities can fill us in. We find out who owns the property. Who knows? We certainly don’t want to go onto private property if there’s some white supremacist group holed up with an arsenal that could blow us off the planet.”

  “How long are we talking?”

  “A day. Two at the most.”

  “By now you should know what Stucky can do in a day or two.” She calmly walked to the door and left, allowing the slamming door to enunciate what she thought about waiting.

  Tully listened to O’Dell slam her car door and then gun the engine, squealing the tires—taking out her anger on his driveway. He could understand her frustration. He wanted Stucky caught just as badly as O’Dell. But he knew this was personal. Three women brutally murdered simply because they had met Maggie O’Dell.

  He got up and wandered over to the coffee table. He found the file folder and flipped it open: a police report, a copy from a DNA lab, a plastic bag with a pinch of metallic-flecked dirt stapled to an evidence document, a medical release form from Riley’s Veterinary Clinic.

  Last night Manx had given him the file marked Rachel Endicott. Now, from the looks of the evidence and a recent DNA lab report, even Manx had been able to figure out that Endicott might have indeed been kidnapped. After seeing how close to the edge O’Dell was this morning, Tully wondered whether or not he should show her the file. Because according to the DNA test, Albert Stucky had not only been in Rachel Endicott’s house, but he’d helped himself to a sandwich and several cand
y bars. And now there was no doubt in Tully’s mind that Stucky had also helped himself to Endicott.

  59

  TESS ran, her ankle throbbing. Her feet ached and were now bleeding despite her attempt to wrap them with what once were the sleeves of her blouse. She had no idea where she was headed. The sky had clouded up again, bulging gray and ready to burst. Twice she had come to a ledge overlooking water. If only she had learned to swim, she wouldn’t have cared how far away the other side appeared to be. Why couldn’t she escape this prison of trees and steep ridges?

  She had spent the morning eating wild strawberries. Then she drank from the muddy bank of the river, not caring what algae she also sipped. Her reflection had frightened her at first. The tangled hair, the shredded clothes, the scratches and cuts made her look like a madwoman. But wasn’t that exactly what she had been reduced to?

  She couldn’t be sure how much time had gone by while she cringed in the hole. She had cried and rocked, hugging herself with her forehead pressed against the wall of dirt. Then she had felt a presence, something rustling above at the ledge of the hole. She had expected to look up and see him, perched and ready to jump down on her. She hadn’t cared. She’d wanted it to end. But it hadn’t been the madman, or a predator. Instead, it had been a deer curiously staring down at her. And Tess had wondered how something so lovely and innocent could exist on this devil’s island.

  That was when she’d pulled herself together, when she’d decided that she would not die, not here. She had covered her temporary companion as best she could with branches from a pine tree, the soft needles like a blanket on the battered gray skin. And then she’d crawled out into the open. However, there had been no relief in leaving. Now, after running and walking for miles, she felt farther away from safety than she had felt inside that musty grave.

  Suddenly she saw something white up on the ridge. She climbed with new energy, pulling herself up with roots, ignoring the cuts in her palms that she hadn’t noticed before. Finally on level ground again, she was gasping for air, but she had a better view. Hidden by pine trees was a huge white, wooden-frame house.

  Tess’s pulse quickened. An incredible wave of relief swept over her as she noticed a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney. She could even smell the wood from the fire. Along the house, daffodils and tulips were in full bloom. She felt like Little Red Riding Hood finding her way through the woods to her grandmother’s warm and inviting house. Then she realized the analogy might prove more real than fantasy. An alarm seemed to go off in her head. Panic raced through her veins. She turned to run and slammed right into him. He gripped her wrists and smiled down at her, looking exactly like a wolf.

  “I was looking for you, Tess,” he said calmly while she twisted against his strength. “I’m so glad you found your way.”

  60

  MAGGIE couldn’t believe Cunningham had insisted she keep her Monday-morning appointment with Dr. Kernan. It was bad enough that they had to wait for some kind of permission from the Maryland authorities. If any of the information leaked, they wouldn’t need to worry about Stucky setting another trap. He’d be long gone.

  She had made the trip, angry and on edge—an hour’s drive in D.C.’s early-morning rush. And now she had to wait some more. Once again Kernan was late. He shuffled in, looking as though he had just crawled out of bed. His cheap brown suit was wrinkled, his shoes scuffed, with one shoestring dragging behind him.

  Again, he didn’t acknowledge her as he shifted and creaked in his chair until he decided he was comfortable. This time Maggie felt too restless and angry to be intimidated. Nothing Kernan could do would reduce the chaotic storm inside her chest.

  She tapped her foot and drummed her fingertips on the chair.

  He scowled at her over his thick glasses. He smacked his lips together in a “tis, tis,” as if to scold her. She continued to stare at him, letting him see her contempt, her anger, not giving a damn what he thought.

  “Are we in a hurry, Special Agent Margaret O’Dell?” he asked as he thumbed through a magazine.

  She caught a glimpse of the magazine’s cover. It was a copy of Vogue, for God’s sake.

  “Yes, I am in a hurry, Dr. Kernan. There’s an important investigation I’d like to get back to.”

  “So you think you’ve found him?”

  “We may have,” she said, careful not to reveal anything more.

  “But everyone is making you wait, is that it? Your partner, your supervisor, me. And we all know how much Margaret O’Dell hates to wait.”

  She didn’t have time for his stupid games.

  “Could we please just get on with this?”

  He looked up at her again over his glasses. “What would you like to get on with? Would you like some special absolution, perhaps? Some sort of permission to go racing after him?”

  He put the magazine aside, sat back and brought his hands together over his chest. He stared at her as if waiting for an answer, an explanation.

  “You’d like us all to get out of your way,” he continued. “Is that it?” He paused. She pursed her lips, denying him a response. “You want to go after him all by yourself again, because you’re the only one who can stop him. Perhaps you think stopping him will absolve you of his crimes?”

  “If I was looking for absolution, Dr. Kernan, I’d be in a church.”

  He smiled, a thin-lipped smile. “Will you be looking for absolution after you shoot Albert Stucky between the eyes?”

  “Maybe I’ve been around evil too long to care about what I need to do to destroy it.” She was no longer concerned with what she told him. No one could hurt her more than Stucky already had. “Maybe,” she continued, “maybe I need to be as evil as Stucky in order to stop him.”

  Would he have some smart-ass response? Would he try his reverse psychology? She wasn’t one of his naive students anymore. She could play at his game. After all, she had played with someone ten times as twisted. She stared him down, without flinching. Had she rendered the old man speechless?

  “You’re worried,” he began again, “that you may be capable of the same sort of evil Stucky is capable of.”

  “Aren’t we all, Dr. Kernan?”

  “I believe—” he hesitated to clear his throat “—I believe Jung said that evil is as essential a component of human behavior as good. That we must acknowledge that it exists within all of us. But, no, that doesn’t mean we’re all capable of the same kind of evil as someone like Albert Stucky. There’s a difference, my dear Agent O’Dell, between stepping into evil and getting your shoes muddy, and choosing to dive in and wallow in it.”

  “But how do you stop from falling in headfirst?” Her thoughts of revenge were black and evil and very real. Had she already dived in?

  “I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen very closely.” He leaned forward, his magnified eyes pinning her to the chair with their unfamiliar concern. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jung or Freud when it comes to this evil crap. Remember this, Margaret O’Dell. The decisions we make in a split second will always reveal our true nature. Whether we like it or not. When that split second comes, don’t think, don’t analyze, don’t feel and never second-guess—just react. Trust. Trust in yourself. You do that—just that—and I’m willing to bet you end up with nothing more than a little mud on your shoes.”

  61

  TULLY punched at the laptop’s keyboard. He hadn’t seen or talked to O’Dell since she had stormed out of his house yesterday. Cunningham had informed him that she would be spending the morning at a previously scheduled appointment. He didn’t elaborate, but Tully knew the appointment was with the psychologist. Maybe it would help calm her down. She needed to keep things in perspective. She couldn’t keep seeing the bogeyman in every corner and expect to handle it by running after him with guns blazing.

  Although, Tully had to admit, he was also having a tough time waiting. The Maryland authorities were hesitant to go storming onto private property without just cause
. And no government department seemed willing to confirm that the metallic mud could have come from the recently sold government property. All they had was Detective Rosen’s fishing story, and now that Tully had repeated it over and over to top officials it was beginning to sound more and more just like a fish story.

  It might be different if the property weren’t miles and miles of trees and rocks. They could drive down the road and check things out. But from what he understood, there was no road, at least not a public one. The only dirt road available included an electronic gate, a leftover from when the government had allowed no unauthorized access. So Tully searched for the new owners, hoping to find something that would tell him who or what WH Enterprises was.

  The phone rang. He wheeled his chair around and grabbed the receiver.

  “Agent Tully, this is Keith Ganza—over in Forensics. They told me Agent O’Dell was out this morning. Any chance I could get hold of her?”

  “Sounds important.”

  “Don’t really know for sure, but I figure that’s up to Maggie to determine.”

  Tully sat up straight. The fact that Ganza didn’t want to talk to him alarmed Tully. Had O’Dell and Ganza been onto something that she wasn’t letting him in on?

  “Does this have anything to do with the luminol tests you did? You know Agent O’Dell and I are working on the Stucky case together, Keith.”

  There was a pause.

  “Actually, it’s a couple of things,” he finally said. “I spent so much time analyzing the chemicals in the dirt and the fingerprints that, well, I’m just getting to that bag of trash you found.”