The Prettiest One: A Thriller

by James Hankins

  She had been on the verge of another fugue state, she realized, yet she had fought it off this time. She knew who she was. A hand pushed her through a doorway, into a living room, and she suddenly remembered exactly where she was . . . and then she saw him there, in the flesh, after so many years and so many nightmares, and wondered if she would have been better off if she had just let herself slip away.

  Sitting in a La-Z-Boy was Darryl Bookerman.

  There was no doubt about it. He looked like his sons. He looked like the Bogeyman from decades of nightmares. Bald, lumpy head. Deathly pale. Disturbing little doll eyes spread too wide on his skinny face. Though he was instantly recognizable, he looked older now, far older than could be accounted for by the twenty-two years that had passed since he had burned his image into Caitlin’s five-year-old mind. He had always been skinny, but he was even skinnier now, almost impossibly so. The years hadn’t been kind to him, for which Caitlin was unable to work up any sympathy. Prison probably hadn’t done him any favors, either. And it was plain that God or Nature or whoever was running the big show had probably been the cruelest of all to him. A plastic tube ran under his nose and over each ear, then down to an oxygen tank on the floor beside his chair. His face, which had always been thin, was caving in on itself. His cheeks were hollow. His eyes were black pits. And they were studying her. After several long seconds, he managed a smile. It turned Caitlin’s stomach.

  “It’s you, isn’t it,” Bookerman said in a wet, sickly voice. “It’s really you. The one that got away from me so long ago. My pretty little one. And now I have you back.”

  He slid a dry tongue over cracked lips.

  “You were right, George,” Bookerman said. “This is a nice surprise. It doesn’t make up for Mikey, of course, but it’s nice anyway.”

  His dead little eyes were still fixed on Caitlin. He just stared at her, looking her up and down. Gooseflesh rose on her skin. She felt small and naked. After he’d had his fill of gazing at her, after he’d feasted on the sight of her, he said, “It’s been twenty-two years, Caitlin. Like what you see?” He paused. “Yes, I’m dying. Unfortunately for you, though, I’m not dying fast enough, because I don’t need long with you. The docs say I’ve got maybe three months left. More than enough time, don’t you think? All I need are a few good minutes and I can die happy.”

  The man who had identified himself as Chops, but whom his father had called George, said, “Don’t talk like that, Dad.”

  “Shut up, George. I’m dying, and I’m dying hard. This cancer is a bitch. An hour ago, I was bitter as hell. I felt cheated. But now that my little Caitlin is here, somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s prettier than ever. Totally worth the wait. You have no idea how happy you’ve made me, George. And you, too, Caitlin. Come closer.”

  Caitlin didn’t move until Chops pushed her. She took a few steps forward, then Bookerman said, “Stop there. I want to be able to see all of you. I want to take you all in before . . .” He trailed off. It looked to Caitlin like he had become lost in a reverie. Finally, he said, “You killed my son Mikey?”

  Caitlin said nothing.

  Bookerman frowned. “This isn’t going to be a pleasant night for you, pretty Caitlin, but it will be a lot less pleasant if you don’t start getting with the goddamn program, understand?” He coughed and hacked and raised a paper cup and spit something thick into it. “Now answer me,” he said.

  Caitlin took a deep breath, then regretted it. The air tasted like sickness and decay. She said, “He was about to rape a woman and take a video of himself doing it.”

  “Sounds like Mikey.”

  “He tried to abduct me seven months ago.”

  “I know. He did that for me.” Bookerman’s mouth contorted into something resembling a grin, though it bore a greater resemblance to the grimace of a long-dead corpse. “I thought of you every day, Caitlin. Every day I was in prison. Maybe even every hour. For twenty-two years. I dreamed about you every night. My pretty one. The one who got away before I got the chance to . . .”

  Caitlin was relieved that he didn’t finish the thought. She couldn’t help but see the terrible synchronicity. While Bookerman was dreaming of her every night for all those years, she was having nightmares about him.

  “I asked Mikey to find you, to keep track of you. When I got out of prison, I asked him to bring you to me. He told me that he tried but somehow you escaped from him. But then you just disappeared, Mikey said. Even the cops didn’t know where you were.” Bookerman shook his head. “I have to admit, that was a bad time for me. I thought you were gone for good, that I’d never see you again. How the hell did you end up here?”

  “No,” Caitlin said, “how did you end up here? Didn’t they sentence you to thirty years? Without a possibility of parole, I thought. So why aren’t you dying in prison where you belong instead of dying a free man? Did you escape?”

  Bookerman stared hard at her for a moment. She thought he might have been angry, but it was hard to tell because his eyes were so emotionless. The eyes of a mannequin. Or a shark. Finally, he said, “In a manner of speaking, I guess. Worked out a deal.”

  “What kind of a deal would they give a murdering pedophile?”

  He stared again but said, “There was never any evidence that I killed that little girl.”

  “How about the pedophile part, then?” Caitlin asked.

  Bookerman nodded. “That one’s tougher to argue with.”

  “So why would they cut you a deal? How long have you been out?”

  “Ten months,” Bookerman said. And then he told her how it happened. Several factors had contributed to an agreement for his release. First, he had been a model prisoner. He never even retaliated whenever other prisoners or the occasional guard abused him, sexually or otherwise. Second, and far more importantly, he had learned valuable information from a fellow prisoner, a kindred spirit—the whereabouts of the body of a missing boy who happened to be the son of a senator. Bookerman had nothing to do with that crime, but he knew enough of the details to convince the authorities that he could help them find the boy’s remains, which he eventually did. Third, he was dying now and dying fast. He was deemed to no longer be a threat to society . . . or at least, he wouldn’t be for long. And besides, the senator really, really wanted closure. So knowing that he had but months to live, and given that he had agreed to spend the rest of his life in the house his son from California would buy for him, and that he agreed to wear an ankle bracelet that would alert the cops if he stepped one foot outside of it, the authorities agreed to his release in exchange for the information they sought. Of course, the good guys must not have been terribly proud of their deal because they kept it all very quiet. And the second he was free, Darryl Bookerman instructed his son Mikey to bring Caitlin Sommers to him.

  “And here you are,” Bookerman said, smiling that terrible smile again, though it ended at his thin lips and never came close to touching his eyes. He coughed and spit into his cup. “Thanks to my sons. They’re good boys.”

  “The hell they are,” Caitlin said.

  “Well, they’ve been good to me. George bought me this house. It’s crappy, but it’s home. And he flew out from LA just to see if Mikey was okay. And Mikey . . . he brought me food and stuff I needed, twice a week. Called me every night . . . right up until the day you killed him.”

  Bookerman’s eyes were still dead, still emotionless, even when he talked about his son’s murder.

  “Dad,” George said, “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m not sure how long you have.”

  “Three months at the most,” Bookerman said. “We’ve been through this.”

  “No, I mean tonight. With her. I doubt the guys she was with will find this house, but you never know. And maybe they’ll call the cops and the cops will find us somehow.”

  “They won’t call the cops,” Bookerman said. “This girl here’s a killer. The last thing they’ll want is to bring in the cops, right? So I’m not worried about them. An
d I’m not worried about any guys she was with, either, because you’re here, George, and if they show up, you’ll take care of them.”

  George nodded.

  “And now, Caitlin,” Bookerman said with another flick of his tongue across his bottom lip, “it’s time for me to show you some of the things I’ve been thinking about doing for the last twenty-two years.”

  Bix killed the headlights and slowed the Explorer to a stop at the end of the driveway of 1320 Linden Road. It looked a lot like the driveway to Mike Bookerman’s house—long, winding, leading to a secluded house. It was a perfect place for doing bad things if you wanted privacy.

  Bix reached over in front of Josh, opened the glove compartment, and removed a 9mm handgun. He checked the magazine, then locked it back in place. Reaching up, he switched off the truck’s dome light so it wouldn’t turn on when the doors opened. He doubted anyone was watching—he didn’t think Bookerman, aka George Maggert, expected them to find this house—but it would have been stupid not to be careful. After walking for a few yards, they came to the first gentle bend in the driveway and saw the house . . . and the dark sedan parked in front of it. The ranch house sat on maybe half an acre of scraggly grass, with the yard surrounded by trees. They decided to circle around the building at a distance, along the edges of the dark yard, and approach it from the back. Bix silently thanked the thin crescent moon and gray clouds enshrouding it.

  There was a light on in two windows on the near side of the house, and Bix made straight for them rather than continue around back. He knew how difficult it was to see out into darkness from inside a lighted room. To anyone inside, the windows would look like black squares. Bix didn’t think they’d be seen unless they put their faces right up to the glass. And as it turned out, they didn’t need to. They were still fifteen feet away when Bix saw very clearly into the living room, where George Maggert/Bookerman was sitting on a sofa beside Caitlin. He had a knife against her throat. They were both looking straight ahead of them. Then someone else walked into Bix’s view. Someone thin and tall but stooped by age, and possibly more than merely age because he carried an oxygen tank in his hand as he shuffled slowly toward Caitlin.

  Josh said, “My God, is that . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” Bix said. “I don’t know how the hell it’s possible, but Darryl Bookerman has Katie again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CAITLIN FELT THE KNIFE AGAINST her throat. She felt the tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt fear and despair. She felt sad that her life would end in this terrible way, at the hands of a pathetic, twisted old man. She felt a searing hatred for Darryl Bookerman . . . for what he had done to the little girl he had abused decades ago, and to Kathryn Southern, who was never found. She hated him for supplying his sons with the defective DNA that made them grow up into soulless creatures like him. Or maybe they’d been adopted long ago by a decent family and had been given every chance to lead normal lives one day, but their father’s legacy had been impossible for them to escape. Either way, Caitlin blamed Darryl Bookerman for what his sons became. But she also hated the sons for what they had done for their father. She wondered if Darryl had abused them. If so, that was sad, but it didn’t excuse their behavior.

  Mostly, she hated Darryl Bookerman simply for being a monster.

  And that monster was shambling toward her on his long, weak, stick-figure legs, carrying an oxygen tank in a hand so thin the veins stuck out like blue interstate lines on a map, wheezing as he came, grinning as he came, looking at her with eyes as dull and black as empty windows.

  “Don’t worry, my pretty little one,” Bookerman said. “George isn’t here to participate. I didn’t wait all those years to share you with someone else.”

  “He’s just here to watch, then?” Caitlin asked. “You must be so proud.”

  “Well, he can watch if he wants, but no, he’s here to hold the knife. To keep you under control. You may have noticed that I’m not quite the man I used to be.”

  “You’re not a man at all,” Caitlin said.

  “Well, we’ll see about that, I guess,” Bookerman replied as he lowered himself to the couch beside her, putting a hand high up on her leg for support and leaving it there.

  Caitlin was trapped. A sociopath to her right. A sick, murdering pedophile to her left. A knife at her throat. A bony hand on her thigh, moving higher . . .

  She closed her eyes and again regretted having willed herself earlier not to fade away into another identity, another person, someone who might not remember this one day.

  But who was she kidding? She wouldn’t be alive long enough to remember this anyway.

  Hunnsaker was getting close to the address on Linden Road. Two black-and-whites weren’t far behind. She had learned that the house belonged to a George Maggert, which was interesting because the house from which Padilla had just called was in the name of a Michael Maggert, who had owned the place right up until someone had shot him to death recently . . . though apparently not as recently as the one-eyed man who someone had gutted and left lying next to Maggert. Forgetting about the guy with one eye for a moment, that left them with two houses and two Maggerts. Interesting. Also interesting was what Padilla found in Michael Maggert’s house. Apparently, the man had been stalking Caitlin Sommers. He had photos on the wall and a file of information on her. When the police eventually combed through that house, they were bound to find a lot of answers. And as Hunnsaker sped toward George Maggert’s house, she knew that even more answers awaited her there. She just hoped that Caitlin Sommers would be alive to provide them.

  Chops had no desire to watch his father do whatever the hell he was planning to do to Caitlin Sommers, but he liked seeing the old man so excited and animated. He’d had a rough time of it for so long now. Twenty-two hard years in prison. On top of that, he’d been in nearly constant pain for almost a year, so much so that he kept saying he was looking forward to death. But now, at least for the moment, he was happy. So Chops could look away while his father sucked a bit of joy from what little time he had left to him.

  When he turned his head, his eyes drifted to the window . . . where he saw a flash of movement, something less dark than the deeper darkness around it. It was fleeting, but it was there, and then it was gone.

  Instinct and the quick glimpse he’d caught told him it wasn’t the cops out there. The guys who had been running around with Caitlin must have somehow found this place after all. Chops thought for a moment, then remembered that he hadn’t locked the front door.

  What to do? He knew he couldn’t give his father the knife and hope he’d be able to keep Caitlin in check. He could barely lift his own arms; he couldn’t be expected to hold a healthy young woman captive with a knife. No, Chops had to keep Caitlin with him.

  “Hang on a sec, Dad,” he said. He stood and yanked Caitlin to her feet.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Bookerman asked. “I finally have my—”

  “Shhhh.”

  Keeping the knife at Caitlin’s throat, Chops dragged her across the living room, over to a short stretch of wall beside the wide doorway between the hall and the living room. They’d be coming through here. They had no choice. It was the only entrance to the room. They were obviously hoping they still had surprise on their side. They didn’t.

  Chops hugged Caitlin tightly from behind. He clamped one hand over her mouth. With the other, he held his knife against her neck. He heard her moan as the barest tip of it pierced her skin. He put his mouth right beside her ear and whispered, “Not a sound or I’ll rape you after my father does, and your men will watch it all, then I’ll carve them up and make them swallow the pieces until there’s nothing left of either of them. Understand?”

  She nodded.

  Chops waited.

  The faintest footfall in the hall.

  Then a sudden rush of movement and Caitlin grunted loudly in warning, goddamn it, and the men must have heard her because the one who came through the doorway ducked suddenly, and the
knife Chops had taken from Caitlin’s throat and swung neck-high at him sliced through the air an inch above his head. The man’s momentum carried him to the center of the room, where he spun and pointed a gun at Chops.

  Damn.

  Chops hugged Caitlin even more tightly and held the tip of his knife against the soft skin of her neck again.

  “Let her go,” the man with the gun said.

  “No,” Chops said.

  “I have a gun.”

  “And I have a knife at your girl’s throat. I promise you, if you shoot me, unless you can put a bullet in my brain in a place that instantly stops all motor activity, I’ll be able to jam this knife through her neck before I die. Count on it. Where’s the other guy?”

  “What other guy?”

  Rather than play that game, Chops sliced downward with the knife, opening a painful but nonlethal slice vertically between her larynx and her carotid artery. Caitlin cried out.

  “Don’t make me ask you again,” Chops said.

  The barrel of the handgun never wavered as the man said, “Come on in, Josh.”

  An unarmed man stepped slowly into the room. He looked from the guy with the gun, to Chops’s father on the sofa, and finally to Chops and Caitlin. When he saw the blood on Caitlin’s neck, his eyes widened.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded very carefully, which was smart when she had a knife at her throat.

  “Drop the gun,” Chops said.

  “No chance,” the gunman said. “Drop the knife.”

  “I don’t think so. You can’t hit me without hitting her at this range. I don’t know you, but I know you aren’t that good.”

  “I’ll shoot,” the man warned.

  Chops just laughed. Then he tugged Caitlin with him as he walked slowly sideways, his eyes never leaving the barrel of the gun, until he was standing in front of his father. The man with the gun turned slowly, tracking their movement, but he didn’t pull the trigger.