But there was nothing, only the blackness of the night and silence.
Where were Hank and the men he’d said would be there?
She gazed around her again, more carefully, and this time, over to her left and through the birch trees, she was able to make out a light. It seemed to be coming from the church. Of course. They were all at the church, doing damage control.
She started the car up again, carefully backed it down the driveway and drove up to the church. Hank’s truck was there, parked under an overhang.
Kayla exited her car, dashed through the rain, got to the thick wooden church door and pulled it open. There were no lights on in the interior, but a thin stream of illumination came from under the small door that led to the basement.
Dripping with rainwater, she headed straight for the light.
Paul was frantic. After Kayla had driven away, he’d walked the streets of the neighborhood for a while, not quite sure what had happened and not quite sure what to do next. She’d been so upset. That look on her face—she’d been scared of him! Downright terrified! He couldn’t get the picture of her, cowering at her car door, trying to disappear into herself to avoid harm, out of his head.
She needed time alone, he knew that, knew he ought to give it to her. But he needed to talk to her, to explain himself, to let her know that he would die before he’d cause her pain. He just had to find her.
He borrowed Brian’s car and headed back to the hotel, hoping to find her there. All her stuff was in the room, but she wasn’t. He gazed around him, trying to think of where she might have gone. To Joe and Terri’s? He tried to get their number, but it was unlisted. Would the lawyer know? Maybe. But Paul didn’t know his name.
Paul didn’t know a damn thing.
Agitated and heartsick, he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He ought to be rejoicing. Jay Goodall had confessed, in front of witnesses, that he’d lied on the stand. Paul’s one goal after getting out of jail had become reality; he was well on the road to clearing his name.
But all he could focus on was Kayla and what he’d done to her. Filled with self-loathing, he tried to get his mind to work on where he might find her. Where would she, in a highly emotional state, go? Maybe somewhere to be alone—she sought the quiet, she’d told him. Or maybe she’d turn to a friend.
Lou? Of course. Lou was her very best friend.
He picked up the phone, found the number of Lou’s clinic in Susanville. When he was connected to the receptionist, he was told that Dr. Lou wasn’t there. However, Kayla had called, not five minutes ago, and had left word that the doctor could reach her at home.
Home. What home? The one she’d shared with Walter in Albany? Or her other home, the one up the mountain, in Cragsmont? It was the one place, she’d told him, where she felt safe.
He nodded. It felt right. Kayla would go home, up to the mountain.
Alone.
He tried to assure himself that if she went there, she’d probably be all right. There were men guarding the house. Hank was going to arrange it.
Then why was Paul feeling increasingly uneasy about that house? The same eerie feeling he’d had about the place before he and Kayla had left hit him again now, hard. That sense of being manipulated, of all the moves up to now having been choreographed.
Frustrated, he rose from the bed and paced the hotel room. Dammit, he had to figure this out. The sense of urgency was growing in him; he had to take some kind of action, and soon.
Okay, okay, he told himself. Think! The attacks on Kayla, all the things that had happened to her—there was a pattern there, but where was it? Sure, all the moves had been designed to terrorize her, but to what purpose? His racing mind came up with several answers.
Just to be malicious, to get some kind of sick kick out of inflicting emotional pain on her.
To get revenge, for some past real or perceived injustice.
To drive Kayla away. To get her to leave.
He stopped pacing. To get her to leave. That must be it. Someone wanted Kayla—and by extension, him—to abandon the house, and had set up a series of increasingly threatening attacks to make that happen. Why, he had no idea, but that could wait for a moment. He had to get to who.
His head cleared for the first time since his run-in with Jay, as faces, odd moments, out-of-step images flashed in Paul’s mind. Pieces of the puzzle, posed as questions, presented themselves.
Who knew Kayla would be up at the house alone? Whoever she’d told, of course, with the Thorne family at the top of the list.
Who knew she was deathly afraid of snakes? Her brother, for sure. All her brothers.
As there had been no sign of a break-in, who had a key to the house? The Thornes again. Who else? Who else usually had a key to someone’s place? A neighbor, for emergencies. A housekeeper. Maybe workmen.
Workmen.
He paused in his rapid-fire associations and considered this. Workmen. Workman. One workman.
Who had heard her say she was terrified of snakes?
Who had been doing work for the Thorne family for years and most probably had his own key?
Who, from the beginning of last week, had been urging her to leave the property?
Who had seemed displeased when Paul announced he was going to stay on the premises with her?
And when Kayla had finally decided to leave, who had encouraged Paul, pushed him, to leave with her?
It all boiled down to one name.
Hank.
It was the only name that made sense, although it made no sense at all. But that was only because Paul was missing some of the pieces. Deep in his cop’s gut, he knew he had the answer.
And if he was right, Hank was up there now, with the place finally all to himself.
And Kayla was, most probably, headed there.
If for every moment of four years in prison Paul had experienced a steady diet of hot fear and icy dread of the unknown, that was nothing compared to what he was feeling now. His heart raced frantically, his throat was dry, he could barely catch his breath.
Kayla was in danger, and if anything happened to her, he’d die.
He had to stop her.
Jaw muscles working overtime, he considered his next move. He didn’t have her cell phone number, so he called Brian to see if he still had it from the trace on Jay, but Brian wasn’t in. He could call 911, but what would he say? That his gut sensed the woman he loved was heading into a trap? They would laugh him off the planet.
He glanced at his watch. Between his walk, getting Brian to agree to lend him his car and his trip back here to the hotel, she had about twenty minutes to a half-hour head start.
At warp speed, Paul dashed out of the room, leaped into Brian’s car, found the portable emergency light and placed it on the roof, then gunned the engine and took off. He ignored the rain, broke speed laws. Tires swerving on the slick, wet highway, he urged all eight cylinders on.
He had to get to the mountain.
Kayla poked her head in the basement door. She heard the sound of a shovel clanking on concrete, coming from the bottom of the stairs. “Hank?” she called out.
The shovel stopped, but there was no answer. “Hank?” she called again.
Then there was the sound of tools clattering, followed by heavy feet climbing up the stairs. Hank appeared. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt. His face and hands were streaked with dirt and sweat. “Miz Thorne? What are you doing here?”
He looked different, somehow. Not just the unkempt appearance, but his face. It could have been her imagination, but it seemed to have lost its usual good-natured expression. Gone was kind old Hank with the gold-toothed grin; in its place were flat eyes in a hard, cold mask.
“I got back early,” she told him. “Where are the men?”
“The men?”
“The ones who were going to guard the place? You know, like you told me.”
“Oh, yes. They’ll be here soon. The rain held them up.” He scratched his thinning scal
p. “Paul with you?”
“No.” She was starting to feel nervous again. “It’s just me.” As soon as it was out of her mouth, she wondered if she should have lied.
“Oh, well, come on down, see what I’m up to.” He turned his back on her, headed down the stairs.
She hesitated, a shiver of unease skimming along her spine. It was that scene in the movie again. No, you idiot! Don’t go there!
Nonsense. She was being silly, she told herself. This was Hank. Walter had trusted him. So had she. So had Paul. Her imagination had gone haywire. The scene with Paul, the rain, Melinda and her bones. She was letting all of it get to her.
She followed Hank down the stairs, where she found him waiting for her at the bottom step.
He’d been digging a hole in the concrete floor, a fairly good-size one, at least two feet deep. Surrounding the hole lay chunks of gray concrete, a large pile of dirt, several tools, including a drill, a pickax and a shovel, and a lit lantern. The overhead lights were also turned on, but there were shadowy corners that weren’t illuminated.
Kayla drew closer, gazed at the hole.
And what was next to it.
Bones.
Skeleton bones. Dirt-encrusted, but white underneath. A femur. A hand. Part of a skull. A human skull.
She raised her gaze to see Hank staring at her, the look in his eyes part regret, part madness. Oh, no. She was an idiot.
She whirled around, headed back up the stairs. But before she got very far, something hard hit her on the back of the head, and she tumbled back down the stairs while darkness enveloped her.
When she opened her eyes again, she was lying in the hole, Hank crouched on his haunches at the edge, looking down on her. Moist brown earth surrounded her. Her head throbbed. The rain pounded at the narrow basement windows. Hank’s image doubled, then became one again.
“I’m so sorry, Miz Thorne,” he said, regret in his voice. “I always liked you.”
She sat up, rubbed the back of her head. She was still groggy, but not groggy enough to prevent the fear from slicing through her like a laser. When she was able to speak, she said, “What’s going on, Hank?” It took all her effort to keep her tone conversational.
“You shouldn’t of come back,” he said, shaking his head. “You shoulda stayed in Albany. Two days was all I needed. Why couldn’t you stay away for two days?”
“Two days. For what?”
“To dig up the bones.”
“Yes. How silly of me. Whose bones are they?”
At first she thought he might not answer her, but then he offered a sad smile. “My wife. And her lover.”
“Really?” Keep him talking, Kayla told herself. Give yourself time to think of something.
“Yeah. Sheila. Back when I got out of jail, I came home, all eager to see her again, and I found her in bed with him. He was some kind of traveling salesman. When I saw them two together, well—” he shrugged “—I lost it.”
“Of course you did. Anyone would.”
He nodded, pleased that she understood. “I stabbed them both while they was sleeping. And then I knew I had to bury them somewhere safe, where they would never be found. Not the woods. Too many animals digging around in the woods. Back then, the church wasn’t in great shape. Mr. Thorne hadn’t taken it upon himself to fix it up yet. So I buried them both down here—it was all dirt, you see. Then, when I volunteered to pour a new concrete floor in the church basement, everyone thought I was being real generous. So that’s what I did.”
“That’s very clever.” She moved her legs, got her knees under her, slowly, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
Hank was lost in reverie by then. “Now, I don’t want you to think I didn’t feel bad, Miz Thorne, because I did. Real bad. Yeah. Afterward, I sat up there in the church and I thought about it. I knew I had to pay some kind of penance. And just sitting up there in God’s house, I understood what I had to do. I had to make up for taking lives by doing good deeds for others. I would give ex-cons just like me a new start in life.”
He grinned then, reminding her briefly of the old Hank. How had he fooled her—fooled everyone—for so long? Why had she not seen that underneath his amiable facade and easy grin was a man with a deep, dark secret, one having to do with the blackest of black deeds.
Murder.
“So that’s just what I did,” he continued, pride in his voice. “All these years I been helping them, hundreds of them. Got an award from the governor once. And I nearly forgot about my wife and her salesman.”
Now his expression lost its self-satisfied smugness and turned dark. “And then you came up here and you noticed a leak. I told you I’d fix it, but you wouldn’t trust me to do the job. No, you had to bring in outsiders. I had to get to the bones before they did.”
She nodded her head, worked to get both feet under her. “I understand.”
“Do you? Then why didn’t you let me do the repairs?”
She shrugged, made herself plaster an understanding smile on her face. “It was in the will, Hank, remember? Mr. Thorne’s will?”
He turned his head and spat onto the concrete, then turned back to her. “Yeah, well, will or not, you should have let me.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“From the first, I tried to get you to leave, so I could get down here.”
“So you’re the one who put the chicken bones in the compost heap. What was that about?”
“I knew the forest animals would come sniffing. You’re a city girl, I figured that would run you off. I needed you to go away, give me a couple of days to dig up the bones. Just two days.” He scowled again. “But you refused to leave. Damned stubborn woman.”
Paul had called her that, too. What she wouldn’t give now to have Paul here. “So it was all you. The noises.”
“Yes.”
“The rat on the porch.”
“Thought you would have hightailed it out of there that day.”
“What about Bailey? Did you have to hurt him?”
He turned his head and spat again. “He was in the way.”
“The snake?”
A corner of his mouth turned up. “Worked real hard on that one. Mailed it from the city, timed it just right. Hell, it was only a little black snake. Might bite, but wouldn’t of killed you. I never intended to kill you, Miz Thorne,” he said reasonably. “I was even happy when you got involved with Paul. But you wouldn’t go away. You just wouldn’t leave.”
She had both feet under her now. Her head was throbbing, but she knew she had to fight for her life.
He heaved a big sigh, rose and grabbed the shovel. “I’m really sorry, but I got to do this.”
He swung the shovel toward her head, but she’d been prepared. She managed to duck, then grabbed his ankle, pulling him into the hole with her. While he was trying to regain his balance, she scrambled out of the hole and headed for the stairs as though a whole nest of snakes were chasing her.
As she reached the stairs, she could hear Hank cursing, then the sound of his heavy boots coming after her. At the top of the stairs, she heard a man’s voice calling from the interior of the church. “Kayla?”
“Paul! Down here,” she yelled, pulling at the door just as Hank caught up with her. It was stuck. “Paul!” she screamed.
He jiggled at the door handle, then burst through the door, shoulder first, knocking both her and Hank to the ground. Quickly, Paul helped her up.
She pointed to Hank. “He’s the one, Paul. He tried to kill me! He’s a murderer!”
“Go,” Paul told her. “Call 911.”
She lost no time doing exactly as he’d told her to do, running through the church to her car and the cell phone.
Hank lay sprawled across the top two steps. Paul stood over him, looking down. It was true, then. Hank was the one. The creep who’d made Kayla’s life a living hell this past week. Who’d reduced her to terror and helplessness.
His vision blurred as blind, searing rage took him over. He pick
ed the other man up by his belt buckle, leaped down the stairs and threw him into the hole he’d obviously been digging in the concrete. Hank lay there, dazed. Paul jumped into the hole with him and stood over him, his entire body shaking with fury.
Hank stared up at him, terror in his eyes. For a brief moment, Paul remembered that this was the man who had offered him a job and a place to live when he’d been released. This was a man who had done a lot of good in the community.
But, although Paul didn’t know the whole story, this sorry excuse for a man was also responsible for threatening Kayla’s life. A murderer, she’d called him. That was enough for him. Slipping out of control, Paul made a fist and prepared to smash it into Hank’s face.
But something stopped his hand.
That look in Hank’s eyes—there was something familiar about that look….
It was the same look Kayla’s brother had had earlier that day, the look of a weak, defeated animal facing a much stronger one set on destroying him.
Paul heard Kayla screaming at him to stop. He whipped his head around, but she wasn’t there. It, too, was an echo of what had happened outside the precinct. The voice was pleading with him, telling him he didn’t need to punish this man—or any other.
Because he’d already won.
Which was the plain truth. Hank was no match for him.
He didn’t have to take out his rage on him. It was over. Kayla was safe; by now she’d have summoned help. The authorities would be here soon, they would take Hank away. He’d get his punishment from them—Paul didn’t need to add to it.
“Okay,” he said to Hank, straddling his body so he couldn’t get up. “Talk to me. I won’t hurt you if you tell me all about it.”
Relieved to be let off the hook physically, Hank lay on the ground and proceeded to explain it all to him, making his case, one full of justification and self-pity. As Paul gazed down on him, listening, he shook his head, amazed at the lengths people went to in order to excuse their baser impulses.
Whispers in the Night Page 23
