“I won't—I promise.”
“Keep in mind, Irene, I don't have anything to lose. If they catch me, they're already going to execute me for Paula Ann. So what are they going to do, give me two lethal injections? One in each arm? I think not.”
Max sat back, leaned even closer to Barbara. “Just in case Irene does anything stupid, you might want to get some last words ready. And try to do better than ‘Oh.’ ”
He stroked her side with the flat of the blade. “You could try something funny—you know, like, ‘You can't say I don't have any guts.’ Or something nice and chilling. You know what my favorite last words are?”
Neither woman responded.
“They were from a girl who was dragged out of her tent by a grizzly in Yellowstone twenty years ago. It was in the paper—I was fascinated by that sort of thing when I was a kid. Her last words, as the grizzly's dragging her off into the bushes to eat her, she calls out, ‘I'm dead.’ Not ‘Help,’ or ‘Ouch,’ just, ‘I'm dead.’ Has quite a ring to it, don't you think?”
Again, no response. He jabbed Barbara with the tip of the knife, not quite hard enough to break the skin. “I said: quite a ring to it, don't you think, Babs?”
“Quite a ring,” Irene answered hurriedly for her friend, who appeared to have gone into shock.
The pit stop passed without incident. Maxwell lay across the backseat with his head in Barbara's lap and the knife between her legs. Irene used Terry's credit card at the pump. No bells or whistles went off, but Max knew a record of the purchase would show up on the Visa computer.
But he still needed one more dot for the cops to connect, one more clue that would point them south, away from Scorned Ridge. When Barbara started blubbering again as they pulled away from the gas station, he decided to kill two birds with one stone. Leave the superfluous brunette behind. Someplace where she would be found—but not right away.
Max tried to think back. Christopher, then Ish, had been driving, so Max had only a vague memory of the route. He closed his eyes and brought Mose up to co-consciousness. Together they studied the roadside as Mose recalled it from traveling north with Paula Ann Wisniewski a month ago.
The turn-off. What marked it?
Sign: a flame with a bar through it.
But we're approaching from the opposite direction. What's north of the turn-off?
Mose narrated the scene for Max. Girl in the front seat crying. Ish driving. To the highway. Wait for a white van to pass, pull out behind it. Landslide cleared to the right—bulldozer tracks. Steep chalk cliff on the right. Caltrans porta-potty across the road on the left.
Good man, Mose. That'll do. Max opened his eyes, leaned forward. “When you see a yellow porta-potty on the right, Irene, slow down and get ready to hang a left across the highway.”
29
“THIS IS SPECIAL AGENT PENDER. Let me speak to— Yes, I am well aware that everybody and his grandmother has been looking for me. Who's around from the Casey task force? . . . Okay, lemme speak to Special Agent Walters. . . . Walters, this is Pender. . . . Yeah, I know—I'll get it handled. Listen, you have a BOLO out for Casey, right? Okay, he's probably driving a green Volvo station wagon with California plates. I don't have the plate or VIN numbers, but if the DMV shows a Volvo registered to either Aletha Winkle, W I N K L E, or Terry Jervis, that's the vehicle he's in. Also, his hair color has changed—he's blond now. . . . Yeah, I'll wait while you put it out.”
If the system worked the way it was supposed to, within minutes every law enforcement official in California would have access to the BOLO; it would actually appear on the screens of the onboard computers in the CHP cruisers.
“Yeah, I'm still here. Here's the next thing: you still have the ERT down here?” Evidence Response Team. “Who's the criminalist? She any good?
“Because I'm on the scene of a double homicide, that's why. Jervis was Casey's arresting officer—looks like he took out both her and her roommate Winkle. . . . Yeah. . . . No, I'm alone at the crime scene. It's extra-virgin—I thought we might like to get our people here first for a change. . . . Don't worry about the jurisdiction. . . . Look, do you want it or not . . . ? Good choice. But for shit's sake keep this off the air or we'll have every Barney Fife in the county trampling over our nice fresh scene. . . . Yeah, I'll be here. Wild horses couldn't drag me.”
After giving Agent Walters the address, Pender hit the kill switch, then a programmed number—Steve McDougal's directdial extension at FBI headquarters—and reached McDougal's fierce and faithful secretary.
“Hi, Cynthia. This is Ed. Steve around? Yes, extremely urgent. . . . Hey, Steve, it's Ed. Can you get everybody off my back? I want to stick with this case. . . . Don't laugh, I'm dead serious. I've got two more corpses here—the arresting officer and her, uh, significant other. Sex torture. He's killing cops and their families now—we have to get this guy off the street. . . .
“Yeah, well, Pastor's an asshole. I know it's my responsibility— that's why I want to work this one. Besides, from what I've seen of this guy, he'd have gotten out of there sooner or later—he had a handcuff key—and the jail was a fucking sieve. They were supposed to close it down years ago. . . .
“Steve . . . Steve . . . Steve, I—Yes, but—Okay, are you done now? Excellent. Now listen to me: I will work this case. I give you my word it'll be my last one—I'll send you an undated letter of resignation, you can fill in the date yourself when it's over. But in the meantime, I'm calling in all my chips—and I do mean all, including the fact that we sat on this Casey investigation all those goddamn years without even trying to warn the public about—The hell I wouldn't. . . .
“Blackmail's an ugly word, Steve. And you know I'd never intentionally do anything to cause embarrassment to you or the bureau. Unless of course my back was to the wall. . . . I'm sorry you see it that way. But that should give you some idea just how goddamn serious I am. Now, can you get Pastor off my back, and cover my ass with OPR this one last time? I should say, will you—I already know you can.
“Excellent. Steven P. McDougal, you're a prince among men. I'll keep you informed.”
Pender folded his flip phone and slipped it back into his pocket. Having spent an hour inside the house, he had some idea of what the women had gone through before they died. Casey had had himself quite a party. A costume party: intimate apparel, lingerie in both women's sizes, negligees, bras, panties, much of it stained with blood and/or semen, strewn all over the bedroom.
Judging by the various ligature marks on Terry's wrists and ankles, she'd been tied, cuffed, strapped, and bound a number of times, in a number of positions. Aletha hadn't been—from the lack of ligature marks, the amount of blood in the kitchen, and the severity of the wound to the back of Aletha's skull, Pender doubted she'd even been conscious.
Not that that had spared her Casey's attentions—as best as Pender could tell without disturbing the bodies, he'd molested both women repeatedly, growing more and more frenzied, at times using their own sex toys, some of which were also scattered around the bedroom.
Nor had they been spared one final indignity, the tableau in which Casey left the bodies to be discovered. The two were propped up in bed naked, side by side, the sheet pulled up to their waists. They were posed leaning against each other, each with an arm draped companionably across the other's shoulder, their faces turned sideways to each other as if for one last, never-ending kiss.
It hadn't been enough for him to torment them while they lived, thought Pender angrily—he had to humiliate them after they were dead.
I'll get him for this, gals, Pender said to himself as he heard the first Bu-cars pulling up outside the house. I swear by everything that's holy I'll get him.
30
A SOFT CARPET OF FALLEN needles in the clearing under the redwoods. Overhead a lacy pattern of green boughs and blue sky. The cheerful, human-sounding babble of a nearby stream freshened by late spring rains. In the distance, the sound of waves crashing along the rocky coast.
Irene and Barbara lay next to each other on their backs. After draping a car blanket over them to hide the fact that Irene's left ankle was cuffed to Barbara's right, Maxwell had cleared the redwood needles from a patch of ground nearby and was sitting in the dirt, having Mose memorize the AAA maps of central and northern California he'd found in the glove compartment of the Volvo, then burning them.
“How are you doing?” whispered Irene. Maxwell had given them each an apple and a bottle of springwater to share, then allowed each woman to urinate in relative privacy in the low brush.
“ ‘I'm dead,’ ” Barbara whispered back, in what may have been a stab at black humor. Her panic attack had passed. As long as that knife was out of sight—and as long as she didn't think about Sam and the boys—she thought she could maintain for a little while longer.
“Not necessarily.” Irene was feeling better too—even hopeful. “Think about it—he didn't kill that girl until he was about to be captured. And why would he have gone to all that trouble to kidnap us, if he didn't want us alive?”
“You, not us. You're the one he came after. I'm extra baggage.”
“That can work in our favor. I'm sure I can make him understand that whatever he wants from me, he won't get it if he harms you.”
Barbara tried to roll onto her side, but the cuff was fastened too tightly around her ankle; she turned her head instead. “I have a feeling that whatever he wants, he takes,” she whispered into Irene's ear.
“I think this alter is intelligent and rational enough to understand that there are some things that can't be taken. If he wants to kill both of us, there's not much we can do about it, but if he wants my cooperation, he'll have to let you go first.”
“I won't go—I won't leave you alone with him.”
“Of course you will. And when you get back, you'll give Sam and the boys a big kiss for me. I'll be all right—he didn't go to all this trouble just to kill me.”
“But why did he go to all this trouble? What do you think he wants from you?”
Irene turned her head, looked into Barbara's eyes, so dark they were almost black in the dappled shade under the trees. “Help,” she said softly. “I think he wants help.”
“And if you're wrong?”
“Then you can say a kiddush for me.”
“That's kaddish,” said Barbara, smiling in spite of herself. “Kiddush is the blessing over wine.”
“So I'm a shiksa,” said Irene. “So sue me.”
It wasn't easy memorizing maps. Just glancing at them didn't work—Mose couldn't visualize later what wasn't captured visually now. He had to scan the big sheets slowly, left to right, then top to bottom. When he finished one map he'd test himself before burning it and moving on to the next—once the information was fixed in Mose's memory, it would always be available.
When the last map was in ashes, and the ashes ground into the dirt, and the redwood needles scuffed back over the ashes, Max took over and pondered his next problem, how to get rid of Barbara without alienating Irene.
He weighed the pros and cons of letting Barbara live. Pro: not only would Irene be grateful, she'd have more incentive for cooperating with him in the future. Con: Barbara would be able to tell the cops about the pink jogging suit, the blond hair, and the green Volvo.
But dead or alive, she would still serve to point the cops southward. And once the bodies in Prunedale were discovered and the house searched, he'd have to ditch the car anyway, so why not do it sooner rather than later? No sense taking chances. As for clothes, and a hat to disguise the hair, he'd pick them up along with his next car—once he turned north again, he'd need to be less conspicuous anyway.
He felt himself leaning toward letting the chubby brunette live. The only joker in the pack was Kinch. He would be mightily pissed off—maybe even pissed off enough to try to take control himself. And once Kinch got going, there was no stopping him—Max might lose Irene along with Barbara.
So whom should he try to please, Kinch or Irene?
Sometimes having a dissociated identity was no frigging picnic.
31
AFTERNOON IN THE LOWER CASCADES. The sky is high and sparkling blue above the ridge, and the air so clean and clear you want to sip it like water from a mountain spring.
For the woman in the green dress and mask, however, summer afternoons at an elevation of a thousand feet are a little too warm for comfort. In her case, the delicate thermal equilibrium of the warm-blooded mammal has been disturbed by the loss of roughly one-third of the body's two to three million exocrine sweat glands: she can't afford to let herself get overheated.
So after feeding the dogs and the chickens (she estimates there's less than a week's worth of food remaining for the animals; after that she could buy herself a little more time by feeding the chickens to the dogs) and scratching around in the garden for an hour, the woman retires to her air-conditioned bedroom for a nap.
But instead of sleep, come visions. The nearly empty feed bins. The drying shed she hasn't visited in days. And most important, the six morphine ampoules in the vegetable bin of the refrigerator. Though the Percodans she takes for pain are sufficient unto the day, she doesn't think she can make it through the night without her morphine. Which means in less than a week she'll have to take some kind of action.
The woman considers her options. There is no telephone on the ridge. There are half a dozen vehicles in the barn, but only two of them, Donna Hughes's Lexus and their own Grand Cherokee, are operable. She can't drive the latter, and won't drive the former for fear of discovery. Which leaves what? The mailbox at the bottom of the ridge. It's a long hike down the hill, but she can manage it, at least during the cool of the evening. Then a letter to her lawyer. At the prices he charges, he'd be delighted to make whatever arrangements she deems necessary.
Necessary—that's the key word. Once she asks for help, a chain of events will be set in motion. Her peaceful solitude will be broken, and for the first time since she had the boy released from Juvenile Hall, there will be strangers on the ridge. Strangers with staring eyes, pitying eyes, prying eyes. Strangers to be kept away from the drying shed and out of the basement. No sense opening up that can of worms.
So the timing will be absolutely critical. She glances at the complimentary calendar from the Old Umpqua Pharmacy on the wall over her writing table. Today is Friday. She'll give him the weekend, but if there's no sign of the boy by Monday, she will post a letter to her attorney in Umpqua City. He'll have it by Tuesday; help will be on the way by Wednesday.
But the worms, once loosed, will never fit back into the can.
Damn that boy—where can he be?
32
WHEN MICHAEL KLOPFMAN'S mother failed to pick him up at the Pacific Grove golf links at two-thirty that afternoon to drive him to a Pony League game, he paged his older brother Doug, who was just about to head for the beach with some friends to catch the high tide.
Grumbling, Doug agreed to chauffeur his brother to Jack's Field in Monterey, then meet his friends at Asilomar. On his way back from Monterey he stopped by his house to pick up his board and wet suit. His mother's car was still in the driveway; her purse was on the table by the front door.
Alarmed, he checked her bedroom to see if she were ill, then called his father at work. Sam, who knew about the jogging date, called Irene. When she failed to answer either her private or business lines, he left an urgent message on her machine, then called the Pacific Grove police.
Upon learning that Barbara Klopfman had been out jogging with Dr. Cogan of recent notoriety, and that both women were missing, the PG police immediately contacted the sheriff's department and the FBI. An updated BOLO was issued within minutes, and by four o'clock the hunt for the fugitive had been upgraded to a potential kidnapping/hostage situation.
Two hours later, Motorcycle Officer Fred Otto of the California Highway Patrol was cruising north on Highway 1 when he sighted what appeared to be a body wrapped like a mummy lying on its back in the dirt
at the entrance to one of the fire trails leading into the Lucia Mountains.
As he pulled over to investigate, Officer Otto was surprised to see the mummy raise its knees, dig its heels into the dirt, and shove itself another foot or so closer to the highway. He called in his location and requested an ambulance, then hurried over.
“Hang on,” he said, kneeling by the side of the mummy, which was wrapped in a cocoon of filthy gauze bandages and adhesive tape from head to foot, legs together, arms inside, with only a fleshy nose protruding from the front and a shock of dark hair sticking out from the top. “Just hang on there, you're gonna be okay now.”
He used his jackknife to cut through the layer of adhesive tape securing the top of the gauze, then, cradling the head in his left arm, he began to unwind the bandages. A pair of dark brown eyes opened, blinked shut against the light, then opened again warily.
“I made it,” she said, when he'd freed her mouth—it was as much a question as a statement.
“Do you have any injuries under there?”
“I don't think so. I'm just sore all over—I've been crawling for hours.”
“What happened?”
“I was kidnapped by the man who escaped from jail in Salinas. He has my friend Irene.”
Otto had received the latest BOLO over the radio. “Are they still in the green Volvo?”
“They were when they left.”
“Let me call it in, then we'll get you loose. There's an ambulance on the way.”
“Have them call my husband.”
“Of course.”
And so the BOLO was updated again: a blond man in a pink jogging suit and a blond woman in white running shorts and tank top, heading south in a green Volvo station wagon.
The Girls He Adored Page 13
