No one was waiting outside for her. The hallway was unlit like the basement. She came to the door and tried the knob. It turned.
“Sherry,” she called, her voice lost in another report of thunder. She pushed the door open and saw a blur; a hail of needles took her legs out from under her.
Strong hands gripped her arms and pulled her inside. The door closed behind her. Fire pulsed through every pore of her skin, burning her like a billion pinched nerves. She could not move or breathe. She could not see what was going on behind her. Had she been struck by lightning?
Raw heat began to build under her skin; white-hot pain filled the void behind her eyes. She began to lose consciousness.
Suddenly she was flung on her back and someone was standing over her, something dark in his hand, his face going in and out of her badly impaired vision.
A figure of a man began to form, a leering man with an ugly scar that divided his chin and ran across his Adam’s apple into his collar. Something dark was sticking out behind his right ear. He was the man from the Public Works’ parking lot—the one who looked in her car window! The man in Sherry’s vision. The last person Susan and Andrew Markey ever saw alive.
Another burst of light illuminated the deck outside the window, followed by a boom that rattled the dishes in the cabinets. She caught an eerie negative of the man in the light, then nausea struck her stomach and she tasted bile.
His face descended like an apparition. His hands touched her body, taking her gun, putting it into his waistband. She felt nothing. He left her there, moving around the room, returning, straddling her, something gray in his hands, a roll of duct tape. Yoland had been duct taped to the piling! Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she speak? What was making her burn so badly?
The face dropped to within inches of hers. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said. “We meet at last.” The scar on his neck slid to one side of his throat.
“Just a little jab, Lieutenant. Won’t keep you down for long.” He was kneeling now, fooling around with something on the carpet. She heard tape ripping. “I’ve got your little blind friend, too,” he said, cutting the tape off with his teeth. “You’ll get to see her real soon.” He put the tape over her mouth.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about you, Lieutenant.” He laid the roll of tape down beside her and undid the top two buttons of her blouse, slipping his hand beneath her bra. “You know why?”
She just looked at him, every inch of her paralyzed.
“Of course you don’t, so let’s just say you can thank your daddy for that. Your daddy and me went back a long way.”
He squeezed her breast hard, then removed his hand and got to his feet, spreading a tarp on the floor next to her. He picked up the tape and bound her ankles and wrists in front of her.
“I was disappointed about your daddy’s heart attack. I was hoping to see him again. But things seem to have a way of working out, don’t they?”
O’Shaughnessy’s mind raced to Tim, then to the girls. She wanted them to know how much she loved them. She wanted Tim to know she had never stopped loving him.
“I had to park on a side street so you wouldn’t see the truck; you were the only one who would have understood its significance. So you wait right here like a good little girl and I’ll be back in a minute.”
The door closed; O’Shaughnessy tried to move, but nothing happened.
Oh, my God! She fought to gain a breath of air, the first conscious breath she’d taken since she’d come through the door. She tried her right hand and then her feet. Nothing. Her entire central nervous system was scrambled, the muscles silenced. He had shot her with a stun gun.
She lay there for what seemed an hour but was only a few minutes. The door opened. She tried her left finger again and then her arm and this time it moved. The effects of the stun gun were wearing off, but much too slowly to help her. Now he was back. She exercised the fingers back and forth, took a slow deep breath, finding that the burning was receding behind her eyes as well.
She felt something against her side—a knee? A man was bending over her. Detective Payne!
31
SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 10:50 P.M.
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
McGuire walked into the detectives’ office, shaking his umbrella as Randall was hanging up the phone. Another line lit up and he punched the button.
“Sarge,” he yelled a minute later. “Lieu said to tell you she’ll be back in ten, and someone on the phone wants to talk to whoever is in charge.”
McGuire turned and started walking. “I’ll take it in my office.”
Chance Haverly put her head against the back of her chair. There was a cardboard box on the floor stacked with pictures and plaques. She would be forty-eight next month—forty-eight and childless. Her husband made more money than either of them could spend in a lifetime and she hadn’t done so badly herself.
She swiveled in the chair and stared at the file in front of her. Then she looked at the wall clock. It was almost eleven on the East Coast.
A voice came across the speakerphone. “Sergeant McGuire speaking, how can I help you?”
“Sergeant, I’ve been reading your crime reports in Cape May County. You have two young women missing in Wildwood.”
“May I ask who is calling?”
“My name is not important, Sergeant. Only what I have to tell you.”
McGuire sat rigid at his desk, still trying to assemble what he’d heard on the phone. The name Earl Sykes had come up on the list of drivers from the Public Works department, but where in the hell was Blackswamp?
He punched the intercom for Randall’s desk. “Randall, I need to know where every junkyard is or ever was within twenty miles of Wildwood, and I want to know where anything that has ever been called Blackswamp is supposed to be. Within the hour!”
McGuire was just beginning to enter Sykes’s name into the computer when the door to his office flew open.
“You know where she is?”
McGuire looked up at Chief Loudon, who was shaking a sheet of paper in his face.
He shrugged. “Randall said she’ll be back in ten.”
“Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?” The chief tossed the paper on his desk. It was a copy of the sketch that he and Detective Payne had been showing around town.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you know who this is?”
McGuire looked down at the wild-looking youth, then back up at the chief, his eyes widening in astonishment.
“You mean you do?”
11:00 P.M.
O’Shaughnessy’s eyes were screaming up at Detective Payne, but she still couldn’t speak. He was working on the tape around her wrists. “Are you alone?” he whispered. He had come around and was kneeling, facing the door in order to study her face.
Her eyes moved up and down. “Sherry, where is she? Sherry—where is she, Lieu?” Her eyes remained still.
The door flew open and shots rang out. Payne leaped to cover O’Shaughnessy as tufts of material blew out the back of his jacket. His chin hit the floor next to O’Shaughnessy’s chest; she felt his arms slide down next to her sides to prop himself up. His elbow bucked against her right side when he fired his gun, and Sykes’s pistol crashed to the floor as a 40-caliber bullet struck the base of its grip, propelling lead splinters into the palm of his hand.
Payne’s whole body slumped to the floor. Sykes stared at the mess that was his hand, kicked the door closed with his foot, and staggered toward them. Pink foam frothed on Payne’s white shirt. Payne was looking up at Sykes, but his gun lay motionless in his hand. Sykes got to his knees and pulled a pillow off the couch, put it over the detective’s head, and with his left hand picked up the gun and pulled the trigger. O’Shaughnessy closed her eyes in horror.
You son of a bitch! You goddamned son of a bitch!
Sykes knelt there a moment, squeezing his hand against his chest. Then he managed to get himself to his feet and to the kitchen, where h
e bound the bloody hand in a towel. He could no longer close his fist the whole way; fragments of the bullet had severed the nerves along the thumb.
But that had to wait. Sykes tucked O’Shaughnessy’s Glock back in his belt and rolled her onto the tarp. He needed to move now and fast. He couldn’t know if someone had heard the gunshots and didn’t want anyone to see the sanitation truck near the scene. But first he had to clean up his own blood.
32
SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 11:00 P.M.
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
Janet had complimented Jeremy’s hair again this morning; he was glad she couldn’t see him now, though. He’d lost his hat in the winds and his wet hair was plastered around his face. He’d spent the morning chasing papers and cans, but it had only been raining then, no lightning. When Jeremy saw the first sizzling bolts strike the ocean, he crawled as far under the boardwalk as he could get.
The winds kept changing and sand pelted his face. Paper and cans and cartons rose and spiraled in the air. He saw one of the orange Public Works trucks with its flashing lights pull into a nearby garage. He ran out into the street and toward the structure before it went away, but by the time he reached it, the cab was empty. It was a dump truck with a tarp over the back, just like Mr. Johnson’s truck, only bigger.
Jeremy took his spear and his sack and pulled himself up into the back, then crawled under the tarp past the heap of children’s toys and picket fencing, just like he did when Mr. Johnson picked him up after work. He heard the elevator doors open just about the same time he realized he was not lying alone. Something was in the bed next to him and it had moved!
Jeremy started to crawl back out, but then he heard more noises: something was being dragged across the floor. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten into the back of the truck after all. Maybe whoever was driving it would be mad at him and tell Mr. Johnson what he did. He drew his knees into his chest and hugged himself in a fetal position. Maybe if he just hid there long enough, no one would see him. He could wait until the truck got to wherever it was going and sneak back out. Then after the rain stopped he could go back and clean the rest of the beach like he was supposed to.
The hydraulic tailgate began to whine as it was being lowered. Something was rolled under the tarp, striking the bottom of his boot. The hydraulics groaned again as the tailgate ascended and an ear-shattering clank indicated the gate was closing. The truck bounced as someone entered the cab. The engine turned over, and the vehicle lurched forward.
33
SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 11:25 P.M.
BLACKSWAMP
Sykes put a match to the lantern and looked at Marcia Schmidt on the mattress; she was still covered with the tarp, one hand and one elbow exposed, just the way he had left her. He dropped Sherry Moore’s body on the floor of the bus next to her, ankles taped and bent awkwardly beneath her, wrists bound in front. Then he went out in the storm to get O’Shaughnessy, hauling her in last.
The bus was illuminated by the tiny flame in a kerosene lantern. O’Shaughnessy could make out Sherry sitting by a dark flat form in the back on the floor. Sykes dragged her roughly with his left hand to mid-bus and dropped her next to a sheet of plywood. The fumes around it seared her throat and burned her eyes.
The skies opened up, rain hammering the roof like millions of falling beads. Sykes looked down at the policewoman and swallowed. A wave of pain passed through him, creasing his brow as he knelt in front of her. He pinched her cheeks with one hand and forced her to look up at him. “You were just a little cunt back then, all proud of your daddy in his uniform.”
He picked up the plywood and leaned it against the wall; then he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to the edge of the hole. Rancid odors rising from the pit nearly caused her to puke.
“This is your fate, down there in the shit and bones. Down there with all my other cunts.” He grabbed the back of her head and pushed her face into it. “This is where you’ll spend eternity, you and your little blind friend. This is how it ends.”
He looked past her, into the blackness, mindful that the hole was responsible for his own end as well, that death had risen out of it and invaded his very being. In a sudden burst of despair he backhanded O’Shaughnessy with his good hand, slamming her head against the wall of the bus.
Things would get hot for a while. The police would go over the truck again and one day they would bring him in for questioning. He’d need a lawyer when they linked the truck to the girl on the parkway, but without a witness and a body their case would be circumstantial. No one had seen his truck on the road. No one could say that he had been driving it when that woman’s hair had gotten caught in the window. And anyone with access to the keys could have taken the truck out after he went off duty. Who could say any different? Not the night supervisor, who stayed in his office staring at his computer screen.
As for tonight, he’d only been out doing his job. He’d been seen picking up trash and he’d been heard on the Public Works radio. He’d need to deal with his injured hand. But that could wait. He wore gloves every day. All the workers did. No one would ever have to know.
No, he would have his year of life and he would have his revenge. And tomorrow morning, when the cops were combing the state for the man who had shot a cop and kidnapped a police lieutenant, he would be sitting right here, drinking a beer and watching O’Shaughnessy dance, three short miles from Wildwood, three short feet from eternity.
He thought about the police hat and shoes he’d taken from her house. She’d resist at first, but then he’d throw the bitch on the mattress into the hole and the other two would do anything he asked to save their own asses. They always did.
Sykes stood and walked to the front of the bus, took one last look, and stepped outside. Now he had to make sure he was seen at the sanitation yard, dumping his storm debris, disinfecting the bed. He’d be back in Blackswamp in less than an hour.
He found a pair of gloves beneath the seat, put the truck into gear and looped back onto the path, missing sight of the shaking man in a filthy raincoat cowering at the foot of a tree.
O’Shaughnessy managed to kneel in front of Sherry and pull the tape from one side of her mouth. The blind woman’s face was covered with crusty blood, distorted by her broken nose. She gagged and spat.
“You okay?”
Sherry nodded, taking big gulps of air. “What do we do?”
“Can you move?”
“Yes.” She opened and closed her hands into fists.
O’Shaughnessy thought she looked awful. She’d really bungled it. She’d put all of her chips on Sandy Lyons and was wrong. She should have paid more attention to the other drivers. She should have known something was wrong when that man looked in her car in the sanitation lot.
“I’ll cut you loose,” a voice hissed from the mattress in the corner.
Both women turned toward the lump in the back of the bus. “Bring me your hands,” Marcia whispered. “I have a knife.”
O’Shaughnessy watched as a small hand pulled aside a tarp and a young woman’s face appeared. She could see now that one of the woman’s wrists and both ankles were bound to the frame of a mattress. The other hand did indeed hold a knife.
“Hurry,” the woman coaxed. “Give me your hands.”
Sherry started sliding herself across the floor in the direction of the woman.
“No. Wait,” O’Shaughnessy commanded. She was familiar with the heavy-gauge Flexi-Cuffs used to shackle the woman to the bed. Without wire cutters they would not be able to set her free. If they cut their own bindings, they would still have to stay and protect her, and O’Shaughnessy wasn’t sure they were in any condition to do that. Not as long as Sykes was armed.
“What’s your name?”
“Marcia.”
“Listen to me, Marcia. The first thing he’ll do when he gets back is check our wrists. How strong are your legs, Sherry? Can you move your legs?”
“Yes,” Sherry answered tentatively.
“Okay
. I’ve got an idea.” O’Shaughnessy took a breath, a long one. “But you’ve got to be ready, Sherry. If anything happens to me, you’ve got to get back to Marcia and the knife. You got it?”
Sherry nodded tentatively.
“Marcia?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Got it.”
“Okay, let me tell you about his hand.”
34
SUNDAY, JUNE 5
WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
Chief Loudon was notified that a “shots fired” call had come in to 911 at 11:10 P.M. Officers responding to the area of Atlantic and Third located Lieutenant O’Shaughnessy’s empty car in the basement lot of the Driftwood condominiums. Everyone was aware that she kept a unit there, but there was no answer at her door and the patrol officer guarding her house on Third Avenue confirmed she had not returned to that address, either. They decided to break down the door.
An ambulance and several other cars were already in the garage by the time Chief Loudon and McGuire arrived; all was dark but for their blue strobes and the flashlights of police officers and medics on foot.
Puddles rippled in the wind, reflecting lights continued to amass as cars arrived on the scene. Radios crackled everywhere; first units on the scene found a body in O’Shaughnessy’s condo. It had a Philadelphia PD detective’s shield on it.
“Sarge,” said a uniformed officer, holding up his radio. “It’s Randall. He says he’s got something for you.”
McGuire took the radio and turned his back to the crowd. A moment later he put it away and started jogging toward his car.
“They found Blackswamp, Chief.”
O’Shaughnessy used her shoulder to guide Sherry closer to the center of the bus, placed her back against a wall, feet facing the hole. She positioned herself between Sherry and the pit and told her to pay attention to two things: the location of Sykes’s voice and her signal. Marcia Schmidt replaced the knife, dislocated her thumb, and slipped her hand back in the Flexi-Cuff.
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