The ramp was about two hundred yards down the beach from my stairs. I walked as slowly as he would allow, darting my eyes back and forth in the hope that someone would be out with their dog or looking through a window at the storm. No luck. I was soaking wet by the time we got to the gravel driveway; all I was wearing was my turtleneck and jeans. At least I still had my hiking boots on; if I did somehow manage to escape I’d be able to run.
A darkish sedan was parked facing out by the boat ramp, close to the bluff on the side. The car I’d seen by the Mayflower II. The man put a key in the trunk and popped the lid. He tied a knot in the garbage bag with Pepper and put him against the side of the trunk. Then he leaned down and wrapped duct tape around my feet, holding his gun against my kneecap. No way now to run. I stared up at the house perched on the bluff. The windows were completely dark. Weekenders. Then he shoved me down into the trunk, arranged my legs and softly closed the lid.
He got into the car; my head sank and then rose with the motion. The door closed. The engine turned over and we began to move. I squirmed around, trying to position my face toward the bag that held Pepper. If I could somehow bite a hole in the bag at least he’d be able to breathe. I got my face turned up against the plastic and worked my jaw up and down. The gag was tight, pressing down on the back of my tongue. I felt like I was choking. But I could still clench my teeth; I worked my jaw up and down furiously, fighting my gag reflex, trying to stretch the tape. If I vomited now I would almost certainly asphyxiate. I got a bit of the plastic in my mouth and pulled, tearing a small hole. Panting, I did it again twice, making the hole bigger each time. Pepper was growling and squirming but I thought he’d have enough air now.
My neck was cramped from the effort; I turned my head back and bent my chin down toward my chest to ease the ache. He’d put me in the trunk facing away from the opening. I craned my neck, searching in vain for a release; in newer cars there’s a glow-in-the-dark handle that will open the trunk. Nothing. He was surely insane, but the guy wasn’t stupid.
If I could get myself rolled over, maybe I could get the brake or taillight wires in my mouth and yank them out. I felt around with my hands first; blindly, I moved my arms away from my back in search of a wire, any wire, to pull. I could feel the smooth metal and felt the occasional hole or protrusion, but there was nothing I could grab. I tried to roll over but it was too shallow and I couldn’t straighten my legs enough. Finally, I lay still, fighting to catch my breath.
I was blind inside the dark trunk; my hair was plastered to my head and getting in my eyes. I was shivering from the cold and wet. Think, Sam. Think! I kicked back with my feet, hoping vainly that I might get lucky and kick out the brake light. I struggled for a few more minutes, then lay still again. It was difficult to breathe through my nose and not gag.
We’d been driving for about ten minutes. Only twice did I hear the sound of a passing car. Late on a miserable, wet, mid-week night, there wouldn’t be a lot of traffic.
Pepper was quiet. We were both accepting the futility of struggle. The rain beat on the roof of the trunk, teasing me, as if someone were out there knocking. A few more surges of adrenaline, a few more moments where I thrashed and kicked and banged my head against the roof. For my efforts, I had sharp pains on the side of my head and knees. I was bound and bruised and helpless.
Chapter 33
The car slowed and turned sharply. The crunch and vibration of gravel rose from the tires below. We were travelling slowly, down a driveway or a secondary road. After several minutes, we rolled to a stop. I heard his car door open. Steps on the gravel. A key in the lock. Then the trunk lid popped open. I blinked.
The man’s dark figure was silhouetted; a bright light shone from somewhere and it wasn’t the dark sky. I felt a surge of hope; maybe we were somewhere near civilization. Near people. I wondered if Dennis or Milo had tried to reach me or gone by my house.
He pulled me up by my shoulders, lifted me out of the trunk, and stood me against it. I was unsteady on my feet, but I managed to stay upright. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that we were parked close to a very large home, a McMansion. In front of me was one of Plymouth’s large ponds. My money was on the Billington Sea. That’s good. There should be extra patrols. I looked to my side, but all I could see beyond the home was heavy forest. The driveway was long. My hopeful thoughts flitted away.
He picked me up and flung me over his shoulder, then grabbed the bag with Pepper, who yowled loudly and thrashed about inside the bag. He carried us easily; the man was strong. He was also tall; not as tall as Milo, but I figured six foot. He stepped onto a dock and walked quickly to the end, where he dropped Pepper and then roughly dumped me into a canoe. He turned around and went back up to his car. I struggled to sit up. I could see the back of the large house, no doubt a summer retreat for wealthy Bostonians. The man was pulling a large duffel bag out of the sedan. His ropes.
Shit! Shit! Shit! I considered throwing myself out of the canoe, into the water. I could probably hold enough air in my lungs to float. But then he’d either pull me back out or shoot me. There was no way I could get far enough away from him with my hands and feet bound. The rain was stinging my eyes as I looked around frantically for a way to escape.
A moment later he was back on the pier. As he approached, he chuckled. He dropped his duffel bag into the canoe, untied the small craft from the dock, and climbed in. He pulled an oar out of the bottom and began to row. Still chortling.
“I do so appreciate irony,” he said. “The road that brought us to this lovely estate? It’s called Black Cat Road.” He laughed loudly, a warm, melodious laugh. “It’s just so fitting, isn’t it?” His voice was deep; it had a radio announcer’s warm tone. It wasn’t Charles Smit or John Clarkson. And I now knew that it wasn’t Zeke Bradley. He continued to chuckle as he worked the oar. We were gliding rapidly across the surface. I was shaking from the cold.
“Do you know the story of the Billington Sea, Ms. Warren?” he asked a few minutes later. I just stared at him. The ski mask hid his features; the eyes that peered out were dark. We’d left behind the glow of the outside lights that surrounded the home on shore; I couldn’t make out the color of his eyes.
“Young Francis Billington was exploring in the early days of Plymouth Colony; just a month after the Mayflower arrived. He climbed a tree, the story goes, and saw a great body of water surrounded by thick forest. They actually thought it might be a passage to the Pacific. That’s why they called it a ‘sea.’ Of course, some days later, Francis and a shipmate came and found it was just a pond.” He paused and glanced around. The cold rain seemed to have no effect on him. He was wearing rain gear.
“Imagine. Four hundred years ago, this pond looked much as it does now, absent the summer homes and cabins.” He continued rowing, staring at me as if he expected me to reply. Oh yes, it’s a lovely spot, Mr. Murderer.
I was already shivering violently, but again, I considered throwing myself out of the canoe. We were far from the shore now and the night was dark. It would be more difficult for him to shoot me. But not impossible. Not nearly as impossible as it would be for me to reach land before drowning. Tears joined the raindrops on my face. A minute later I grew angry. I screamed, making as much noise as I could through the gag. I thrashed around, lurching from side to side in the canoe. I didn’t care now if we capsized. I screamed until I was choking; I gasped and sobbed a few times, caught my breath and then started up again.
The man didn’t react and he didn’t pause; he rowed steadily. We were several hundred yards from the home on the shore now. A few lights flickered around the pond, but they were all quite far away. After a couple more minutes, the canoe scraped sand and we came to a stop.
He climbed out of the canoe and dragged it up on the shore. He lifted out his duffel bag and put his arms through the handles and shrugged it up onto his shoulders. Next he leaned down, grabbed me from behind and dragged me out onto the ground. He left me lying on my back amid the brush. I t
urned my head back and forth, but I could see little and rain was pelting my face. He left my field of vision for a few seconds, and then he was back holding the bag with Pepper in it. Pepper wasn’t moving anymore. Was he unconscious? Or worse? I wasn’t sure if I’d made the hole in the bag large enough. I screamed again through the duct tape, the rain and my tears blinding me. He picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and climbed into the woods.
We were on Seymour’s Island, I was nearly certain. It was small; maybe four hundred feet across at its widest point. I’d walked it once, as a teenager, when friends and I were boating on the pond. With his duffel bag in my face I couldn’t breathe; I struggled to turn my head the other way. I could barely make out the trunks of the trees as he walked through the forest, but the dark didn’t seem to bother him. He continued briskly for about two minutes and then stopped, dropped me and Pepper to the ground and shrugged off his duffel bag.
Chapter 34
“Did you know, Ms. Warren, that after Margaret Jones was hanged, a brutal storm ensued? The sky filled with great bouts of thunder and lightning; trees fell and the people believed that God was pleased.”
Who the fuck is Margaret Jones?
The man stood staring at the sky for a moment. “It really is perfect,” he added. With that, he took the roll of duct tape out of his pocket, turned me on my side and jerked my feet up behind me. I struggled briefly, but it was useless; I was numb with the cold and had no strength left. He wrapped more tape around the bindings, connecting my feet to my wrists the same way he’d done to the other victims. I was stretched backwards; the right side of my face was lying in soaking wet pine needles. When he released me and stood, I struggled not to roll all the way over onto my face. I strained in the dark with my left eye to see what he was doing, but only when he moved right by my face could I see anything at all.
Hope was seeping out of me like the last few grains of sand in an hourglass. Four women had been in this position before me; four women had died in this position. I whimpered, quietly now. I could only hope that the wet cold would fully numb me to the pain. Maybe I would even lose consciousness; it was below thirty degrees and I was soaked to my skin. By my head, I felt Pepper move in the garbage bag and felt a moment of relief—until I realized that it might have been kinder if he’d suffocated.
A couple of minutes later the man’s legs came into view again. He’d changed out of his rubber waders and was now wearing tall black leather boots with light colored laces. Strapped to the boot near my face was a metal spike that glowed in the dim light. He leaned over, picked up something that I couldn’t see and walked away. He spoke again.
“Yes, they said Ms. Jones had two nipples hidden near her womanly parts. They believed she used them to suckle her familiars. She was put to death long before the Salem witch trials. Of course, here in Plymouth our forefathers were rather more lenient with witches. But no matter.” Now I understood why he’d brought Pepper.
I heard scraping on tree bark. He was climbing the tree, carrying his rope up to the branch from which I would hang. For a couple of minutes, all was quiet. Now he would be making my noose.
I was entering a fugue. It was like watching a movie. A really bad B-rated movie where you knew right from the start that the heroine is doomed, only this time I was the stupid bimbo who hadn’t locked her doors.
In the tree somewhere above me I heard more shuffling. I was growing sleepy, but I was no longer cold. I no longer felt the pain of my bruises or the discomfort of my contorted limbs. I wondered where Milo was and hoped that Laura was responding to her medication. I nuzzled deeper into the pine needles; they felt soft and comfortable and warm now. The man said something else above me, but I could no longer understand his words. So this is how it feels to die. Not so bad, really.
Minutes passed; I didn’t know how many. Then, abruptly, the man lifted me up into his arms and we were running. Or rather, he was running, clutching me awkwardly. I felt myself slipping and he stopped, adjusted my weight and then took off again. That didn’t make sense; I struggled to think clearly. The jarring motion was bringing me back to consciousness, but I was confused. Why is he running?
“No, no, no,” he was mumbling. I felt him stumble and then we were moving again. Just a few seconds later, I was launched into the air. I braced for impact, but when I hit the surface I continued to descend. He’d thrown me into the water.
I was sinking quickly; I’d had no time to prepare or take a deep breath. The water was freezing. I clamped my lips around the duct tape but already my lungs were screaming for air. I squirmed and looked frantically around, but everything was black. My chin and stomach hit the bottom, hard, and my mouth opened. Ice cold water filled my throat. I was going to die, hog-tied and face-planted at the bottom of the Billington Sea.
“Get her clothes off!”
I heard the voice from far away. I sensed motion all around me. Something cold touched my skin near my waist; I heard more than felt my jeans being cut away. Did I have nice panties on? What felt like more than one pair of hands was rubbing my chest, my stomach and my sides. Slowly, I opened my eyes.
I was in an ambulance; three men in navy blue jackets moved rapidly in and out of my line of sight. Rough hands still massaged my torso, but now a blanket was covering me.
“She’s awake!” one of them shouted, and a red-faced man with sandy hair came into view. “Can you hear me, honey?” he asked. I tried to speak, but my throat was raw. I nodded. Someone pulled a warm hat over my head.
“Can you drink something?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I could, but I nodded again and he smiled.
“Get me some coffee out of that thermos,” he yelled. I heard a flurry of activity and then he was holding a plastic thermos lid cup in front of me. From behind me, someone eased me up until I was at enough of an angle to drink. The ambulance was moving, but he managed to give me a sip without spilling it all over. The hot coffee burned as it went down.
“A little more,” he said. I drank some more. The coffee was strong and had too much sugar in it, but the warmth felt good. I took another sip, and Sandy Hair said, “Good girl.” I smiled faintly and I was eased back down. The activity continued; I was massaged from all sides and something warm was laid on my stomach. Slowly, I drifted away.
Chapter 35
I was floating, drifting, surrounded by blackness. I moved my hands and feet—they were no longer bound. I flailed wildly, felt a sensation of falling, and then, with a jerk, I was awake. “Pepper?” I struggled to sit up.
Next to me, Milo jumped up and clutched my arms. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He leaned over me, slid his hands up to my shoulders and eased me back onto my pillow. He gazed into my eyes with a small smile and smoothed back my hair.
“He’s safe, Sam. You’re at Jordan. Pepper’s safe at Turk’s condo.”
I searched his eyes, those wonderful, chocolate fondue eyes. “He was in a garbage bag.”
“And Dennis found him, and they took him to the vet this morning, and he’s fine. Promise.” Milo sat back down and stroked the palm of my hand.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation for a few minutes. Then I reopened them and turned to Milo. “Did they get—”
Milo’s smile disappeared. “No. They were busy saving you—thank God—but he got away. They think he swam to Morton Park. In fact, I should call Dennis now.” He stood. “You want some water?”
I nodded. He took a plastic cup with a straw from the nightstand and held it to my lips. It hurt to swallow, and as I leaned up I felt pain in my shoulders and my knees. My head was pounding. Slowly, I lowered myself back.
“They got the guy’s car and his bag from the crime scene and the forensics guys are going over them,” Milo said. “Dennis asked me to call as soon as you woke up. Do you feel up to talking?”
I shook my head ‘no’ and said, “Sure. But how—”
“Let me call him and tell him you’re awake and then I’ll tell you what I know.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and then looked back at me. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said. “Don’t ever do that again.” He turned around and faced the window as he dialed.
I’ll try to keep that in mind the next time a masked gunman comes into my house.
Milo spoke into the phone briefly and then came and sat back down next to me. The door opened and a smiling nurse with long straight blonde hair and small round glasses walked in. Marcia Brady meets John Lennon. Her scrubs were tie-dyed. Behind her I could see a uniformed cop standing outside my door.
“Are we ready for some good drugs?” she asked. “The doctor said you’d be pretty sore once you thawed out.” She handed me some pills.
“Thanks,” I said. “He wasn’t kidding.”
“Well, nothing’s broken, but they want to keep you one more night.” She brought the water cup to my lips and I swallowed the pills. “Just wanna make sure your heartbeat’s regular. You had a pretty close call last night,” she added.
You have no idea.
She fussed around the monitors for a bit and finally left my room, closing the door behind her.
I looked at Milo. “So what happened? How did they find me?”
He sighed. “Turk gets the credit. The one night I leave you alone.” He took my hand again and looked down at his lap for a minute. Finally his eyes met mine. “Around twelve, I texted you and you didn’t reply, so then I called, like four times. When you didn’t answer, I got worried. I started over to your house and on the way I called Dennis. He didn’t know anything. I told him I was going to your house to check on you. I thought maybe you fell asleep and left your phone downstairs.
“So then I get there and you’re not there but your car and your phone and your backpack are. I called Dennis back, but he says they think they got the killer on a security video, out by Billington Sea. He and his teams are on the way there, he can’t talk. I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t know you were the one with the killer. I called Middleboro to see if Tommy was still locked up, but he is. So then I called Dennis again, but this time he didn’t answer. I went next door and woke Mrs. Trimble up, but of course she didn’t know anything either.
Saints & Strangers (A Sam Warren Mystery) Page 19
