by David Archer
He stopped where I was standing beside the table and pulled me close, kissing me hard. I decided that kissing with the mask on wasn’t all that bad, but I still liked it better when his lips were touching my own. That made me wonder if he liked the mask, if maybe it made me more desirable to him. I started to ask, but I didn’t get the chance. He pulled away from the kiss and looked at me, and then he leaned down to my right ear.
“I think it’s starting to come off a little bit,” he whispered. “Up around your hairline in front, and a little bit down the middle of your forehead and your nose. The edges seem to be peeling up just a bit.” He kissed the tip of my nose, then leaned back by my ear again. “I don’t know about you, but I’ll be glad when you get to take that thing off and put it away again. It’s not bad, but it just isn’t the real you.”
He pulled back and gave me another quick kiss, then turned and walked out the apartment door. I stood where I was for another fifteen seconds or so, trying to slow the beating of my heart. Hearing him utter those words, just at the moment when I most needed to hear them…
Oh, crap, I thought. I don’t have time to fall in love, not now!
I shoved all such thoughts aside and went into the bathroom. I had the mask kit hidden under the vanity, and I pulled it out in a hurry. Whenever the mask started to peel off, it was necessary to completely redo the procedure. I peeled it off gently and laid it in the box, then used the cleanser to wash away the glue residue, both from my skin and from the inside of the mask.
A half-hour later, with the mask back in place and the makeup redone, I went into the bedroom and dressed myself for another day in the order picking room. I didn’t have to leave just yet, but I wanted to be dressed and ready before I made my next call to Stan the Strangler.
SEVENTEEN
I dialed the number, and he answered on the second ring. “Harvest of Hope hotline. How can I help you today?”
I had already done everything necessary to prepare myself to go into my act, making sure to breathe from down in my diaphragm so that my voice would go up an octave. I allowed myself a smile, then spoke into the phone.
“Hi, again,” I said. “This is Emily.”
“Emily,” he said, and I could hear pleasure in his voice. “I was truly hoping you would call back. How are you this morning?”
“Oh, I’m good. I guess I did a good enough job on dinner last night, because Darrell didn’t complain that much. Not that I would have cared if he did.” I giggled with the last few words. There’s the bait, I thought. Come and get it, Stan.
“Now, why is that? Has something changed?”
“Maybe,” I said flirtatiously. “Maybe I just don’t feel like I need to care what he thinks so much anymore. I mean, maybe I should be with somebody who isn’t like him, somebody who would like to make me happy.”
He laughed. Even as I pretended to be delighted, I could sense something terribly evil in that laughter.
“Well, whoever that might be, I have to think he would be a very lucky man. Can I make a confession to you?”
“A confession? Um, okay, sure.”
“I came by your place yesterday, your apartment building. I pulled up across the street and watched for you to come home, I was going to come up and say hello—but I’m afraid I chickened out.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Why? I’d love to meet you.”
“And I’d love to meet you,” he said, “but—you see, Emily, I’m a little bit older than you. Well, actually I’m more than a little bit older. I’m almost 40 years old.”
I filed that away in my mind, just in case it might be useful at some point. “So? I’ll tell you something my dad used to say. He said numbers don’t count and figures don’t lie, but a lot of liars count on figures. I’m not entirely sure what it really means, but it always made me think about things like this. I don’t care how old you are, that’s not why I like you. I like you because you’re nice, and because you make me feel good, and because you said you want to make me happy. It doesn’t matter how old you are. I wish you had come up, so I could have met you face-to-face.”
“Well, I was going to, but then I saw you pull in. I think it was you, you were in a green Toyota?”
“Yes! Yes, that was me. Oh, I wish I’d seen you.”
“Well, you see, that’s why I didn’t come up. I got one look at how beautiful you are, and I just—I guess I panicked. I was afraid you’d get one look at me and start laughing, because I’m so much older.”
“That would never happen, I promise you. When could we try again? I really, really want to meet you. Maybe then you could even tell me your name.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m afraid I’m busy today,” he said. “Tomorrow is Saturday, are you working tomorrow?”
“No, I’m off tomorrow and Sunday.”
“So am I,” he said. “What about Darrell? Will he be home tomorrow?”
“No, he has to work. He’ll be gone all day tomorrow.” I thought quickly, trying to pin down a time for him to make his move. In all the other abductions, the women had been away from home, so I needed to give him a shot at me. “Oh, but I do have a couple of errands I have to run tomorrow. I have to go out to get a few things, but if I knew when you were coming, I could wait.”
“Emily, are you really sure you want me to come?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I don’t know what it is about you, maybe it’s just something in your voice, but I been thinking about you since we talked yesterday. I mean, it’s like I can’t think of anything else. I was at work yesterday, and all I could do was think about how nice you seem to be. And I—okay, can I make a little confession now?”
He chuckled. “Of course you can.”
“Okay, well, I said I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and that’s true. Like, all day yesterday and all night last night. And I, well, I thought about how nice it might be if we, you know—maybe got together. Like, maybe in the bedroom.”
“Oh, really? Emily, I don’t know what to say. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I naturally find the idea very appealing, especially after seeing how beautiful you are, but I wouldn’t want you to do something you might regret later.”
“I don’t think I’d regret it,” I said softly. “To be honest, I think maybe it would give me the strength I need to just say I’ve had enough, here. Maybe, if I knew there was a man who honestly cared about me, I could just walk away, you know what I mean?”
“Oh, Emily,” he said. “You give an old man hope for happiness.”
“Oh, stop that,” I said. “You are not that old. You’re not even twenty years older than me. If we did end up together, we could have a good life. Oh, come on, come and see me tomorrow. Just tell me what time, and I’ll make sure I’m home.”
“Well,” he seemed to hesitate for a moment. “How about if we shoot for in the morning? You said Darrell leaves around seven? How about if I come by about eight o’clock? Would that be too early?”
I giggled, trying to show him how delighted it would make me. “That would be perfect,” I said. “Only, you might catch me still in my nightgown. Is that okay?”
“Emily, sweetheart, if it’s okay with you, it’s perfectly fine with me. Oh, listen, I need to go. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, I can’t wait.”
The line went dead instantly. I looked at the phone for a moment and then got up from the table. I quickly did the dishes and put them away, then went and got my coat and that god-awful turtle and headed out to go to work.
Once again, I carefully watched for more than a mile to make sure I wasn’t being followed, and then I took out my phone and called Dex. I told him about the conversation I just had, including the part about how Stan the Strangler was talking about coming by the following morning.
“I’ll be there, somewhere,” Dex said. “Just in case anything goes wrong, I want to be close by.”
“Dex, he’s not really going to come to the apartment,” I said. “This guy is smart, smart enough th
at he’s gotten away with this in three other cities. There’s no way he’s going to show up at a time and place that someone might be able to keep surveillance on. I think he’s just playing hard to get, setting me up for little disappointments so he can dangle the bait of something bigger. When he doesn’t show up tomorrow, he knows I’ll try to call again. I probably won’t be able to reach him until Monday, and that’s probably when the real countdown will begin. That will be the point where he starts planning how he’s going to take me. I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about at the moment.”
I could hear Dex grumbling through the phone. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “At the same time, I hope the guy gets spooked and disappears. I know you’re tough and I know I’ve got your back and so do the police, but this guy is dangerous, Cassie. I don’t like the idea of him getting hold of you and taking you out of my sight.”
“It’s all part of the plan, Dex,” I said. “The only hope we’ve got of catching these guys and saving those women is to make them lead us right to them. The only reason they might do that is if they’re taking me to where they hold them. I’ll keep the turtle inside my clothes, so they’ll never even see it unless they strip me down, and I’ll guarantee you I’m going to put up one hell of a fight if it gets to that point.”
I did my best to reassure him, but Dex is a worrier. I got off that call and dialed Alicia to bring her up to speed. She agreed with me that Stan would never keep an actual appointment, just because there was always the chance the police would be waiting for him. Her take on it, though, almost made me a little uneasy.
“If he’s setting an appointment with you that we both know he’s not going to keep,” she said, “then I think he’s stepping up his timetable. He wants you a little frustrated with him, and I think that might be so that you will be distracted while you’re doing other things. You said you told him you have to go out on some errands tomorrow, right? He might try to grab you then. All he’d have to do is park somewhere near your building and follow you when you leave. Wait till you stop somewhere at least mostly deserted, then he and his partner grab you and it’s over.”
“I guess that’s possible,” I said. “Still, it’s exactly what we want him to do. Grab me and take me to wherever it is he’s keeping his captives. The turtle will lead you guys straight to me, then.”
“I certainly hope so,” Alicia said. “Let me call Niles and fill him in on all of this. Somehow I don’t think he’s going to be any happier about it than I am.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way to work, so I’ll talk to you later.”
I made it to work and went inside, going right to the picking room and grabbing my first stack of orders. I took the cart and the box that I needed and started weaving through the aisles. The work was easy, and allowed me to think about everything that was going on.
Strangely enough, the thing that kept popping up in my thoughts was my mental blooper about me and Dex. I still couldn’t figure out why I had thought of us as a couple, when I knew that we weren’t. Was I subconsciously wishing that we were?
Hey! Aren’t you the one with the psychology degree? If this was someone else you were talking to, what would you tell them?
Shut up, Abby, I thought, but what her voice had said was right. If I looked at it from the point of view of the psychologist talking to a client, then I would almost certainly come to the conclusion that my client was falling in love, or had already fallen.
So. On the one hand, I had the fact that Dex seemed to be falling in love with me. On the other hand, it seems like I’m already in love with him. Now throw in the fact that he and I both agreed, months ago, that neither of us wanted any long-term relationships. We wanted to keep it very simple and uncluttered, friends with benefits and nothing more. That way, when either one of us wanted out, there weren’t any messy legal problems to deal with. Why did we come to such an agreement if we were going to have real feelings for one another?
Well, I could answer that we might have made that kind of agreement without knowing that the future would hold something like this, or I could say that we made the agreement so that when this happened in the future, we would know better than to pursue it to its end. We both claim not to be the kind that gets married and lives happily ever after. Why on Earth would we want to inflict ourselves on each other for anything more than an occasional pleasurable evening?
I didn’t find an answer in the aisles, but I didn’t really expect to. It was just an opportunity to let my brain nibble on the problem, but the nibble turned out to be more like a feast.
Lunchtime came, and the girls invited me to sit with them again. I made a show of putting eyedrops in my eye before I started eating, and I noticed Rachel was no longer watching me suspiciously. In fact, she became quite vocal that day, even friendly. She and I exchanged some of the most ribald jokes we’d ever heard, and both of us had been to college. College may be where you are supposed to get a higher education, but what you get most of is lessons on extremely titillating humor. By the time lunch was over, all of the girls were blushing over my King Arthur jokes. And no, I won’t tell you what they are.
The day wore on and finally ended, and I went back to the apartment. A part of me was hoping to spot Stan sitting somewhere nearby, watching me and planning for the snatch, but there wasn’t another car in sight that was actually capable of running. The only ones around the area that were sitting still were up on blocks, and there was nobody in any of them as far as I could tell.
On the other hand, he didn’t have to be in a car. There were a number of evergreen bushes around the area, plenty big enough for someone to hide in, and there were undoubtedly other places from which I could be observed. Just because I couldn’t see him didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
I got out of the car and walked into the building, then made my way up to the apartment. I got in without seeing Donna or anyone else, closed the door behind me, and called Dex to let him know I was back.
“Hey,” he answered. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, no problems. I just wanted to let you know I’m home—well, back in the apartment, anyway. No sign of my secret admirer, so far, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. How’s your day going?”
“Boring. Alfie has a tendency to get lost in his computers, so I’ve been sitting here watching YouTube on my phone.” He covered the mouthpiece for a second, then came back. “Hey, Alfie says he’s got something for you. Hang on, I’m handing him the phone.”
“Okay,” I said, and then I heard some rustling sounds for a second before Alfie’s voice came on the line.
“Hey, Princess,” he said. “I wanted to tell you what I found on that Ronald Orloff.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering that I’d asked him to find the guy. “What is it?”
“He’s dead.”
My eye popped open wide. “What? Like, since he left Tucson?”
“No, like since before he ever got there. Ronald Orloff’s body was found outside of Provo, Utah almost four months ago, but it took them a while to get an identification because he’d been gnawed on by a lot of wild animals. He’d been dead for at least a year; the guy who went to Tucson using his name and identity is someone else entirely, but I was able to find a photo of him by hacking the security cameras at the local Walmart, where he always cashed his paychecks. I ran the photo through facial recognition, with a silent thank you to our friends at the FBI, and he seems to be one Michael Rawlings. Michael Rawlings, you’ll find it interesting to note, spent a year in the Utah State Corrections System for assaulting a woman back around the time the abduction case was going on there, but the police decided it wasn’t related and so he wasn’t charged with anything more serious. Also interesting is that the abductions ended after his arrest, and it was a month later that the police were told where to locate the bodies. Rawlings was released about a month before the abductions started in Tucson.”
“Oh, my God,” I said.
“He worked at one of the hotlines in Tucson, the one that was tied to most of the women who were taken. That would explain how they were targeted; all he had to do was make a list!”
“Dear Santa,” Alfie said, “all I want for Christmas is a dozen blonde ladies weeping.”
I rolled my eye. “You’re snarky,” I said, “but that’s probably closer to correct than I’d care to admit. You got anything on him now?”
“Not yet. I’m running a facial recog of my own against the Oklahoma driver’s license database. If he’s got a local license, I’ll find it, but it’ll take a little while.”
“Okay, but this time it seems to be St. Mary’s that’s being targeted,” I said, “but we haven’t hired any new phone counselors since I’ve been there, and that’s more than three months.”
“Good point. Let me look at something...” He disappeared into the ether for a couple of minutes, though I could hear him mumbling now and then. I sat there and tried to think of any new faces, particularly male faces, around the counseling centers and shelters in town, but the only one I could come up with was Mitch from New Beginnings, and he grew up in Tulsa. Dex even remembered him from high school, though Mitch was a couple years ahead.
Alfie suddenly came back. “Nope. No joy,” he said. “I just checked all of the local shelters and hotlines, and no one has hired anybody matching his description in the past four months. I’ll keep looking for him in the driver’s license system.”
“Okay, let me know if you get anything. I’m gonna let Niles and Alicia know that he might be in the area. Can you send me a picture of him?”
“On its way to your email, from your friendly anonymous hacker. Here’s Dex.”
He handed the phone back and Dex said, “About time. I was dozing off.”
I grinned. “That’s because you’re not here. All this cloak and dagger stuff gets me feeling hot.”
Alfie’s voice came through loud and clear. “You’re on speakerphone, you know.”
