by Amy Valenti
"Got it,” Layton confirmed, and I hung up, frustration seething through my blood.
Faye was out there somewhere—terrified, hurt, I hoped to God not dead—and if I'd got my team working forensically and digitally on the threats I'd received a month ago, she might have been safe now.
Then again, she could have been dead. I couldn't afford to second-guess myself, not until I had her home again.
Santoro departed for the precinct, and I opened the small evidence collection kit we kept in the sedan for emergencies. Erica Beaumont grabbed the black light and Luminol as I began to collect stray hairs from the floor. Even if it came to nothing, it was something to do while I waited for developments.
At Beaumont's indrawn breath, I glanced over sharply, to find her holding the black light over a spot on the varnished wood of the floor. The ultraviolet glow illuminated a small patch of fluid that shone white against the purple, and when Beaumont looked up at me, her eyes were full of dread.
"Blood."
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Faye
The first sense I regained was my hearing. Though I was still awash in numb darkness, there was a persistent ringing in my ears that led to one confused thought—I really should stop listening to my mp3 player so loud.
Then the pain hit and I groaned, blinking bright spots from my vision as I opened my eyes.
My fogged mind was slow to interpret what I saw, but when I put it all together a belated surge of terror overcame me. An abandoned building. Me, tied to a chair. A man I didn't recognise calmly reading a newspaper a little way away.
He wasn't wearing a mask or trying to hide his identity in any way, which meant he wasn't planning to tell me his life story and send me back home with a basketful of cookies. I was so screwed.
Then again, I guessed I could count myself lucky I hadn't just been murdered on the spot.
My captor's attention was elsewhere, and I used that fact to try to orient myself, flexing my fingers and toes, testing the ropes with slow, smooth movements so as not to catch his eye. Over the past two years, Pierce had tied me up with bondage rope more times than I could count, and I knew as soon as I began to pull at my restraints that these knots would hold.
Now what?
My captor turned the page, his paper rustling, and I cringed, expecting him to glance up at any second and find me awake. He seemed absorbed in his task, however, and I forced myself to take a good look at him while I was still relatively calm. He was in his early forties at my best guess, and his chestnut hair was in a classic Marine crew cut. His long legs were propped up casually on a discarded office desk as he read, and I was reminded of Santoro's tendency to do exactly the same thing.
I looked around the room, taking in my surroundings. Escape routes, potential weapons, places to hide...assuming I could manoeuvre my way out of the damn chair I was tied to, of course.
When I noticed the open toolbox by the desk, my breath caught. So many times over the course of my career I'd pulled DNA and fingerprints from bloodied screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, saws... I'd have loved to imagine the presence of those very implements here was a coincidence, but I knew I'd be fooling myself.
Taking slow, deep breaths, I forced my gaze away from the toolbox, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for my head to stop spinning. The voice of my tormentor cut through the silence, and I flinched.
"I know you're awake."
Swallowing past the dryness in my mouth, I stared at him.
"Who are you?"
The man set down his paper, his mouth twisted in a humourless half-smile.
"Does it matter?"
I decided not to push it—provoking him didn't seem like the brightest of ideas. My silence seemed to coax him into speaking, however.
"Does the name ‘Tyler Aldridge’ mean anything to you?"
"You were on Pierce's list of suspects,” I said, feeling a tiny spark of hope ignite within me. At least I knew Pierce would have some idea of who had abducted me.
That answer seemed to please Aldridge. “At least I know the bastard didn't forget what he did to me,” he said, sitting forward in his chair. “I'm guessing he didn't tell you, though?"
I shook my head mutely, and Aldridge gave a cold, mercenary grin.
"Then allow me."
When he stood up, I shrank back against the chair, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. He was taller than I'd thought, and he dragged the chair closer before sitting down opposite me, leaning forward to stare into my face.
"Your Pierce...he's not the saint you think he is."
I didn't dare to speak in case I provoked him, so I just waited, every muscle tense, for him to go on. Up close, I could see his eyes were brown, his teeth were nicotine-stained and there were scars on his forehead.
"I first met him here, in this very building. Just through that door."
He indicated carelessly, and I looked in the direction he pointed, seeing what looked like a bar through the half-open door. We were in the back room of some sort of drinking establishment, then.
"We met by coincidence—he was waiting for a friend, and so was I. We got to talking to pass the time, mostly about the military. It was only a few days until we were both being sent out to Desert Storm—it was my first deployment, and I had a few questions.
"At one point, he went over to the payphone to call and say goodnight to his sister. Told me how much he loved that kid. Then the guy he was waiting for showed up and they headed out not long after. I doubted I'd see him again—there were a lot of Marines sent out to Desert Storm that week—but surprise, surprise, it turned out he was my staff sergeant."
The bitterness on his face spoke of experiences he had yet to relate, and I tried to imagine what Pierce could possibly have done to him that the horrors of war hadn't. Pierce himself never talked about his days in the Marine Corps, and no one had ever been brave enough to ask him, not even me.
"I wasn't the only one serving under Pierce. My entire life, I'd lived next door to the same family. They had a son my age. His name was James, James Buckley. Sound familiar?"
"No,” I whispered, and Aldridge's face twisted with rage, his hands balling into fists as he surged to his feet so abruptly his chair overbalanced. My stomach lurching, I flinched back from him, but he only began to pace back and forth, his fury evident in his tone.
"That name should be written on his conscience forever! We grew up together—we did everything together. Took the same classes, played on the same teams, got wasted together, got tattoos together... When my parents died in a car crash, his parents took me in. We were like brothers. We were family. And your precious Pierce murdered him."
I closed my eyes, trying to shut out Aldridge's anger and pain as I struggled to deal with it all. I had to defuse the situation, but how?
The only thing I could think of was to keep him talking, to buy myself as much time as possible. I knew there was no way Pierce could be guilty of murdering an innocent man—I believed it with every fibre of my soul.
Even so, I forced myself to ask, “What happened?"
At first I thought my voice was too weak for him to hear me, but after a few seconds Aldridge picked up the chair and sat back down, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on my face. “Your Pierce"—he spat the name venomously—"ordered a tactical retreat. Fall back, regroup, and go at them better prepared. I made it back okay, but James and one of the others, Murphy, got hit. Not life-threatening injuries, but enough that they fell behind. Pierce went back out to retrieve them and managed to get Murphy to safety—a bullet had hit him in the knee and shattered it.
"The next thing I knew, James was screaming for help—he'd been shot in the thigh and was trying to make it back, but his foot got caught in a root or something, and he couldn't get free. I tried to go to him, but Pierce pulled rank on me and went out himself. He got halfway there, then turned and fucking retreated again, and James got mown down by enemy fire."
His lips were almost white, his
nostrils flared with rage, his breathing heavy, and I felt numb with terror. I'd never seen anyone this mad before, let alone had that directed at me.
"He sacrificed my friend, my brother, to save his own skin. And I swore right then I'd see his family dead, just like mine was. His precious sister—I swore I'd kill her as soon as we reached shore."
I gasped, a miasma of dread enfolding me. “Did you...?"
Aldridge snorted dismissively. “No. As luck would have it, she died in a car crash a week later. I figured it was karmic payback. And I watched as he came rushing out of the CO's tent, crying and screaming, and ran straight out into no-man's-land. He went down just like James did. Shame it didn't kill the bastard."
The satisfaction on his face curdled my stomach, and I swallowed hard, repressing the urge to throw up.
"Then why are you taking this out on me?"
Aldridge reached down into the toolbox beside him and took out a claw hammer, toying idly with it. I couldn't take my eyes off it, my mind filled with images of those claws buried in my skull, tearing flesh, fracturing bone.
"I've been checking back on Pierce every few years, just to make sure he's still feeling his loss the same way I am. And he always has been, without fail. Until now."
I blinked, uncomprehending, and Aldridge elaborated. “I saw him with you, and I could tell he was putting his guilt behind him, moving on with his life. And I won't allow that to happen."
Pierce
"Tech's here, boss."
I glanced up from staring at the handwriting below the Polaroid of Faye, taking a welcome break from trying to link it to either of my suspects. The original photograph was down in the lab, but a digital image was up on the computer screen, and analysing it had so far done nothing but intensify my headache.
Santoro nodded curtly when he knew he'd got my attention, then turned and headed back towards the rear elevator. I followed, leaving Layton and Beaumont to continue their investigation into my two suspects. An elevator confrontation was clearly on the cards, and I preferred to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
Once we were sealed inside, Santoro broke the silence.
"Shoulda come to us, Pierce."
I was just about at breaking point, and I balled my hands into fists to resist the urge to slug him in the face.
"Yeah, Santoro? And then have this on our hands a month sooner, with around fifteen extra suspects?"
My ex play partner didn't back down—he and Faye still had a strong bond, and he was livid.
"We coulda protected her."
"Did you even see the photos?” I demanded of him, my mind once again calling up the image of Faye surrounded by my entire team, still in the sniper's rifle sight. “He would have taken her out as soon as he got a clear shot."
"We could have kept her in the interrogation room,” he shot back, getting in my personal space just as I was getting in his. “Under guard at all times. She woulda been safe!"
I had thought the same thing, initially. It had seemed like the only viable option until one important detail had occurred to me.
"And if the culprit was a precinct employee, Santoro? Would you really wanna take that chance?"
With a defeated scowl, my second-in-command stepped back as the doors opened, backing off to return to the squad room, and I stalked out into the too-quiet lab. Whenever Faye was working, she always had music playing, or at the least radio talk shows.
"Detective Pierce.” A female voice pulled my attention over to the mass spectrometer, where a petite blonde woman barely in her mid-twenties was powering up the machine. “I'm so sorry this is happening..."
I nodded acknowledgement, biting down on my impatience at the useless platitude.
"Hannah. Got anything for me yet?"
I could tell I intimidated her a little, but she hid it well, only the tension in her shoulders betraying her. Faye had been the same all those years ago, and I felt a momentary urge to massage the forensic temp's shoulders before reminding myself that she wasn't Faye, no matter how much I might have wanted her to be.
Her brow furrowed in concentration, Hannah brought up a familiar search window—AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
"I've just started the trace evidence running through the machines, and I'm moving on to prints now. I lifted a great one from the Polaroid—excellent ridge detail, lots for AFIS to work with. I just gotta start it running..."
Watching her work through the system, I asked, “Were Faye's prints on the Polaroid?"
Hannah hesitated before nodding. “Yeah. They were,” she said, and I gritted my teeth. Faye had comprehended just how much danger she was in moments before she'd been taken—for some illogical reason that made everything worse.
"Done,” Hannah announced as a series of fingerprint images began to flicker lightning-fast across one side of the screen, each one contemplated and discarded by the system.
I nodded, telling her, “New search. Run the print you found against two names in particular."
As Hannah complied, I supplied her with first Danforth's, then Aldridge's details. Danforth came up with nothing, and I waited while she reset and resubmitted the query, my entire body tight with tension. If Aldridge wasn't the culprit, the search for Faye would be set back hours, maybe days. I wasn't prepared to give the sick bastard a second more with Faye than I absolutely had to.
The computer blinked up with a result almost instantly, flashing green, and I expelled a relieved breath.
"Good job,” I told Hannah, meeting her eyes without caring that she could see the emotion in them. All that mattered was finding Faye.
Heading for the door, I called upstairs—it was faster than going up there.
"Layton. Danforth's in the clear. Concentrate all your efforts on tracking down Aldridge—I wanna know if he's so much as moved in the past month."
"On it, boss,” Layton said, and I could hear the clicking of his keyboard as he typed. “Where are you?"
"Still in the building,” I said, pushing the button for the elevator. “Just need to stop by the profilers’ office."
Before Layton could respond, I ended the call.
Faye
Aldridge was looking through his toolbox in earnest now, and I held my breath against the urge to hyperventilate. The more scared I acted, the more satisfaction he'd get from this.
But I was terrified, so victimised by the power of my own imagination I felt almost lightheaded. I didn't know yet if Aldridge planned to kill me or just leave me horribly mutilated, and I was trying not to think about it.
Images kept tumbling into my brain, though. My hands, so steady around the scientific chemicals I used every day, could be pierced by the claw of the hammer, the bones and cartilage of my joints smashed by a heavy mallet-blow. My eyes, a clear, sharp green I'd always kinda loved, could be destroyed, the soft jelly pierced by a well-placed jab from a screwdriver. My eardrums could be perforated just as easily with the same tool, and I'd be plunged into silence forever. No more music. That was something I feared more than anything.
"Please..."
The word tore from my throat—ragged, grating, desperate. I hadn't meant for it to escape, but now I couldn't take it back.
Aldridge glanced over at me, setting aside a plastic container full of nails and picking up a pair of pliers. My heart seized for a second as I clamped my mouth shut, trying not to imagine what the everyday instrument could do to my teeth, my fingernails...
His attention slid back to the toolbox, and I breathed a momentary sigh of relief as he put down the pliers.
When he picked up the thin, deadly utility knife with its scalpel-sharp blade, however, my mind screamed out in alarm. And when he rose from his crouch and turned towards me, fresh adrenaline surged through my trembling limbs. I struggled frantically against the secure bonds, gasping out a whispered plea that I could hardly hear over the ringing in my ears.
Pain sliced into my flesh, sharp and immediate, and I clamped my jaw
shut to suppress my whimper. I was no stranger to discomfort, but this went beyond that. The pain I felt at Pierce's hands—though sometimes almost too much—was safe, controlled, something to be experienced, analysed and cherished.
The searing agony I was feeling then, as the utility knife split the skin of my upper arm, was a sensation no safe word could stop. No matter how many times I pleaded, no matter how much of my blood trickled down my arm and soaked into the rope restraining my wrists, Aldridge would not have mercy.
Silent tears streamed down my face, but I didn't give him the satisfaction of begging.
I won't.
It was strange how calm I felt. Sure, I was terrified, but my thoughts were slow, clear and utterly detached from the situation. The first thing I thought was that he was only cutting shallowly, because deep cuts didn't hurt this much. Bill had told me that once.
Something about nerve endings, or... I can't remember. But, hey—at least the damage is superficial for now...
My second thought seemed a little ridiculous under the circumstances, but it grew and burnt in my mind until it was driving me crazy. Had the utility knife—the box-cutter—that was slicing my arm been sterilised? Would my wounds get infected?
It was the stupidest thing to worry about—I knew the answer, I was losing blood, and an armed man obviously meant to inflict the maximum possible amount of suffering on me before he allowed me to die—but I had to focus on something.
Aldridge finished with my left arm and moved around to the other side. I craned my neck to try to look at the damage he'd wrought, but the tears obscured my vision, and all I could see was a blurred series of crimson streaks. Between my own ragged breaths and the calm inhalations of my captor, I heard a slow tap, tap, tap, almost inaudible.
No, not tap. Drip. Drip, drip, drip. How much blood in the human body, Bill?
My ears began to ring again as my upper right arm flared with pain. Slightly less than the first arm. Maybe because the endorphins were dulling it, or maybe because he was cutting deeper.
