by Ray Backley
She was pretty sure that even a video chat call was traceable. Dan was occasionally involved in computer networking and had told her anything that connected to the internet had a digital address that could be traced, and every email and video chat and post would leave a trail giving that digital address. So, this might turn out to be her only chance to get her family back. Still, she found it hard to carry on, and closing the chat session would have been the easiest thing in the world. She told herself to stay strong.
“Hey, Karen? You hear me?”
She gulped breathlessly. “Yeah.”
“Sorry for screwing you around with the Chloe1990 thing, but I’m guessing I’d be traced if I called your cell.”
“You contacted me. That’s the main thing.”
“It is, Karen, it is. Say, did you know that internet cafés insist on ID these days?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Something I missed out on while I was inside. Just one more reminder of how long I was locked up. Back in the day it was a free for all, like the Wild West: pay your money, access whatever takes your fancy. Now they need to know who you are, what you’re doing, your shoe size, your best buddy’s dog’s name. Takes all the fun out of it. Had to try about a dozen around LA before I found one that would overlook that requirement for a small fee. Still, point is that I’m in a café and I won’t come here again. You get me?”
She did. Untraceable. She just nodded.
“Anyway, I’m told you’ve been stalking me, asking about me. Did you want to speak to me?”
No. She didn’t want to speak to him; she had to.
“You know what I want, Vinnie. I want my family back.”
There. Now her nerves were starting to settle. Be strong, Cath. Be strong.
“Well, I guess I want my thirteen years back. But that’s not gonna happen, is it?”
Cath wanted to tell him that he deserved to have those years taken away from him because of what he’d taken away from her and many more girls, let alone what he’d done to Jose. It took grit to keep the words inside.
“Tell me something, Karen.” His smile fell away, his head dipped to the side a little. “Are you starting to understand the way I feel? Are you getting some of my sense of loss?”
“I miss my husband and children, if that’s what you mean.”
“I know, but, you see, my lost years are gone forever. Your dumb husband and your annoying kids are still alive – well, for the time being, until I decide to get rid of them. I mean, if that happened, if they went away forever, how would that make you feel?”
He paused for Cath to answer, but she started to fume inside and struggled to hide it.
“I mean, how would you cope if I told you that you’d never see them again, not even if you lived to be a hundred?”
She gulped and drew breath, snapping out, “What are you going to do with them?”
“Oh, they’re safe and they’re being well looked after, I promise. I’m a changed man. I’m not the man you knew way back. You have to believe that. I haven’t laid a finger on any of them, and I don’t want any harm to come to them. All that stuff I just said about you never seeing them again was just kind of . . . hypothetical.”
“Does that mean you’re going to let them go?”
Only a pensive sigh came from her laptop speakers.
“You have to free them. You have to let them go.”
“Hmm, well, I probably will. Someday. But I like to think I’ve made my point. I felt like shit in prison, just like you do now. Difference is, of course, that I had thirteen long years to tick off. You only have three things.”
“Why did you call me, Vinnie?”
“Because I knew you were looking for me.”
Cath took a swallow to lubricate her dry throat. It was time for a gamble.
“You didn’t have to call me, but you did. You must have some idea of what you want from me. Give it to me straight, no more bullshit, what’s your price for my family’s freedom?”
“I, uh . . .”
“What is it, Vinnie?”
“I guess I, uh . . . well, this is gonna sound dumb, but I miss the old days. With you.”
“With me?”
“You’re misjudging me, Karen. And the law didn’t understand me all those years ago. Yes, I did some terrible things, but I genuinely did love you, and, uh . . .”
“And you still do?”
“I’m glad you said that, lollipop. It’s hard for me to say it out loud. Sounds stupid considering my past. But it’s true.”
Cath, her gut now twisting, nodded. “Oh-kay.”
“And I’m getting old, too, as you can see. I guess . . . I guess I want to move on from my past life and settle down with someone.”
Ice tracked up Cath’s spine at the words. Her whole body was telling her that something here was very wrong, but her mind was saying that he seemed serious. Was this some huge, elaborate bluff? The one thing she knew for certain was that she was in a nightmare – one in which the madman held all the cards. She told herself to stay calm, to agree to anything he suggested. It was the only chance to get what she wanted. But he said nothing for a while, so she decided it was up to her to push things on. She cleared her throat and said, “Do you wanna . . . I mean, could we get together and talk about it?”
Now he tilted his head left and right, weighing things up. For Cath, it was a bullet from the past; it was how he used to behave when he was stressed. She almost spoke again, but it wasn’t the moment for her to push things along; she had to sit back, relax, and wait for him to play his hand.
“Would you like to do that?” he eventually said.
Be calm, Cath. Don’t overreact.
“Uh . . . sure. Why not?”
“You realize that if you tell the cops this time, if you’re not alone, then . . . well, you know what’ll happen to your family, don’t you?”
“I know, Vinnie. But please trust me. I’ll be on my own.” She almost added that she was desperate and had nothing to lose. But for now it was more important to keep the tone of the conversation positive. “We could talk about those old times.”
“That’d be good. There wasn’t much time to talk when we met at the diner. Cops kind of interrupted us.”
“That’s not going to happen again. I promise. So, are we good?”
“Mmm . . . I guess so.”
“Where should we meet?”
“We could meet at my mom and dad’s old place.”
“Did they pass on?”
He nodded. “Four years ago. When I was inside. Within three months of each other.”
“Oh, I’m sorry about that, Vinnie. Would you like to give me the address?”
Now he leaned forward, the webcam lens distorting his face. “As long as you know two things, Karen. First, your husband and kids aren’t there; I put them somewhere a little more out of the way, safe and sound. Second, if I see any cops or other people or if I think something funny’s going on, I can promise you they’ll all die like trapped rats and you’ll never see them again, and you won’t even get the chance to bury them properly. You got that?”
“Oh, sure. I understand. But that’s not going to happen. I’ll be alone. I just need to talk.”
“Awesome.”
A minute later, the address scribbled down, she closed the video chat call and jumped up out of her seat, almost dancing around the room. She’d done it.
She’d done it!
She had an address for him. Okay, so he’d said Dan, Phoebe, and Benjie weren’t there, but that could have been bullshit. And even if they weren’t there, meeting up was her best chance of finding them. She had to have faith that he would lead her to them. A slim chance was better than no chance.
She told herself not to tempt fate by daring to believe, but she wasn’t strong enough to hold back. No way.
She sat and cried at the thought of seeing them again.
Dan’s tears had turned to salt tracks by the time he heard Vinnie’s footsteps
above him again.
He’d decided there would be no more crying, no more trying to make deals. The only way out was to wait patiently for Vinnie to release him – if only to use the bucket – and then jump at him and kick and punch for all he was worth. He’d tried to weigh Vinnie up, telling himself that although the guy was probably a couple of inches taller and a little heavier, Dan was fitter, younger, and had taken a few boxercise classes in his time. He concluded that none of that mattered; he was going to attack with all he had.
He shouted Vinnie’s name again and again, hoping to give the impression he wouldn’t stop until Vinnie came down to see them. But Phoebe started to cry, so he broke off to tell her it was okay, that he wasn’t angry, that he was only playing a trick on the nasty man. He drew breath to start shouting again, but heard the screech of the door bolts sliding to the side. Success.
“What’s all the hollering about?” Vinnie shouted across as he turned the light on.
“I need to piss.”
“Use your pants,” Vinnie replied as he casually descended the steps.
Dan watched Vinnie stroll over and release the padlock on the toolbox. It made him just a little more nervous, but he managed to say, “I’ll be two minutes, that’s all.”
Vinnie said nothing, just took a couple of items from the toolbox.
“My children need to pee too.”
Dan could now see the two items in Vinnie’s hands: a thick screw about eight or ten inches long with a metal eye on the end, and a short metal bar. The thought of the purpose of these two items diverted his attention for a minute. He watched Vinnie shove the point of the screw into a hole in the wall about two yards to his side, place the metal bar through the eye, and start twisting it.
“Are you listening to me?” he said to Vinnie.
“I need to pee again,” Phoebe said.
Dan wasn’t sure whether she was just trying to help, but it did seem to put Vinnie off. He cursed and stood up, and now Dan could see what he’d been doing: in another few turns of the screw, there would be a fourth metal eye poking out of the wall. Clearly, three prisoners were about to become four.
Vinnie started poking around in his toolbox.
“You have Cath now?” Dan asked.
Vinnie pulled something else from his toolbox and stepped over to Dan, crouching down in front of him. Dan could see: it was the roll of duct tape.
“Don’t you get it, pussy hands? I don’t give a shit about you or your two brats. I don’t give a shit about what you have to say. I don’t even care if I come down here tomorrow to find you’ve all died in your sleep and the local rats are feasting on your corpses. I just don’t want you making any noise.”
Dan still eyed the tape. “Okay, okay. We’ll be quiet.”
“Too late.” Vinnie ripped off a section of duct tape and slapped it over Dan’s mouth, holding the back of his head while he firmed the tape down over his stubble.
Dan watched Vinnie tape up Phoebe’s mouth too, unable to offer her any words of comfort, only able to watch her futile struggle and hear her screams being stifled. Before poor little Benjie realized what was happening, he too was silenced.
“Just tired of hearing your damn voices is all,” Vinnie said, returning the tape to the toolbox and grabbing a handful of some black material. “Might as well use these too.” He stood over Dan, flapped a piece of the material, and Dan had a half second to recognize it as a blindfold bag just before his world went dark. He heard the muffled screams from Phoebe and Benjie, knowing bags had been put over their heads too, and then heard grunting from his side as Vinnie finished the job of easing the fourth metal eye into the wall. Finally, he heard footsteps and the door closing again.
Dan so desperately wanted to be reunited with Cath, but not like this. In the darkness, accompanied only by the sound his children whimpering, he started going over the different ways he would torture Vinnie. He stopped pretty soon. He was a logical kind of guy. There was a time for dreaming and a time for honesty. He’d read and seen enough real-life stories of people being imprisoned by mad sons of bitches.
Unlike in the movies, it was rarely a happy ending for those who were tied up and helpless.
Chapter 30
Cath set off eight minutes after talking to Vinnie.
She hadn’t told the cops what she was doing. She considered leaving a sealed “open this if you don’t hear from me within a week” letter in the apartment for Susan Jones to find, but there seemed little point. As far as she was concerned it had reached the kill or be killed stage. She was going to see Dan and Phoebe and little Benjie again or she was going to die trying.
There was also the thought of stopping off somewhere to buy a gun, but there just wasn’t the time to go through all the checks and paperwork, so she grabbed the next best thing: the retractable craft knife she’d bought – effectively a surgeon’s scalpel on steroids – and taped it to her ankle.
She followed Vinnie’s directions, and a couple of hours later, someplace east of Bakersfield, she pulled off the highway onto a deserted, die-straight blacktop road, eventually reaching her destination: Wilby Cross Farm.
She slowed up as she peered all around her. It wasn’t what she expected. Wilby Cross Farm was no farm, merely the remains of a settlement, nothing more than a deserted old gas station at a crossroads. If it was hardly a farm, it was hardly a crossroads either: blacktop stretched ahead and behind her, but left and right were dusty gravel roads that gave the impression they led to nowhere important.
She pulled onto the gas station forecourt, leaving the engine running, her foot tickling the gas pedal.
Was she a fly heading straight for a venomous spider’s web? For sure. Was she making a dumb mistake? Quite possibly. And did she now regret not taking the time to get a handgun, legal or otherwise? Definitely.
And then he appeared. From where, she didn’t know. She heard no door open, just was aware of him walking toward her car. He looked casual: jeans, dirty tan leather shoes, loose black shirt with only a couple of buttons done up, all topped off with a dark blue baseball cap. She fought the urge to drive off. She hadn’t come all this way to desert her family at the crucial moment.
And he seemed harmless – friendly, even. He approached the car but held back, pulling one hand out of his pocket and holding up his palm like a welcome sign.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “You’re probably asking the same question I did.”
Cath opened the door, engine still running, and said, “What question’s that?”
He cast his hand toward the desolate station building. “Not so much why it closed down, more like why it ever opened.”
Cath took a breath. Kill or be killed. This was it. She switched the engine off and got out, taking a few confident strides to stand closer to him. “Your mom and dad ran this place?”
He nodded. “They tried. You can understand how I turned out a little odd though, can’t you?”
Cath looked around again at the claustrophobic emptiness. She could well understand how he’d turned bad, but told herself to keep her mind on the job; this wasn’t about Vinnie’s upbringing. She just nodded.
He gave her another one of his endearing smiles and nodded toward the door for them to walk together. She did as requested, noticing the store window was full of cards for special offers on windshield washer fluid and engine oil, but also noticing that the cards were all faded and curled up at the corners. Had this place been repurposed as a home or just abandoned?
And then, just as they reached the point where one of them would naturally pull the door handle, when it became apparent to Cath that the insides of the place looked unkempt and uninhabited, Vinnie turned to her, pulled a pistol from the small of his back, and pointed it at her head.
“You didn’t really think I was gonna tell you where I lived, did you?”
“You piece of shit, Vinnie.”
He glanced furtively left and right. But this road appeared to be one that had a vehic
le an hour at most. “Relax, lollipop. Just taking precautions. Hands up.”
“This isn’t where your parents lived at all, is it? You lied about your dead parents.”
“They wouldn’t give a damn, never did. Now get your hands up, for Christ’s sake.”
She did as he requested. He started frisking her.
“Just need to make sure you’re not wired or armed.” He reached her jeans pocket and felt her cell phone. Six seconds later he’d taken the battery out and dropped it onto the ground. A second after that, a bullet turned it off for good. “Don’t want anyone tracing you.”
Now he crouched down, his head level with her belly. She stepped back and said, “Don’t you trust me, Vinnie?”
“I won’t hurt you. C’mon. Step closer.”
She did. He found the retractable knife strapped to her ankle and ripped it off, making her flinch.
“I hope one day to be able to trust you, lollipop, but after our meeting at the diner, I can’t do that, not yet anyhow. I’m sure you understand my concern for my own safety.”
“And you think I’m not concerned for my safety?”
“Hands behind your back.”
She did nothing.
“I said, hands behind your back.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll make you.”
“What happened to ‘I won’t hurt you’?”
“I won’t hurt you; not so long as you do as I say.” He reached down to a sheaf of zip ties poking from his pocket and pulled one out. “Don’t make this hard, lollipop. I just need to think about my own safety here.”
She looked along the roads in all directions, willing a vehicle to drive by. She could run, but then she wouldn’t find out where Dan and Phoebe and Benjie were. She put her hands behind her back and he pulled the zip tie tight around her wrists. He grabbed her by the elbow and led her around to the rear of the property, where a battered old white sedan was waiting.
Then the world went dark. Vinnie had obviously put a bag or a blindfold on her. Her heartbeat went into overdrive, and she half-expected to hear the click of a handgun close to her ear. Instead, she heard a hinge squeaking, then felt herself being lifted up and dropped down onto something hard, but rocking ever so slightly. She heard the same squeak again and a solid thunk. Stuffy air that reeked of gasoline filled her nostrils. She was in the trunk of his car.
