by Donna Ball
“Shall we do a layout meeting today or do you just want to sit and brood?”
Guy glanced up to see Ed Jenkins leaning against the frame of his open door. He frowned a little. “Yeah, I'm on my way.”
“So what's your lead?”
“They're paving the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly.”
Jenkins lifted an eyebrow. “I'll stop the presses.”
“Well, it's a lot more relevant to our readers than what we've been running all weekend. Personally, I want to know when the last three lanes of the parking lot are going to be closed so I can schedule my beer runs accordingly. Can you believe we live in a place where the feature story is accompanied by pictures of some teenage girl pushing her boobs into the camera for three days in a row?”
“I don't know about you, but that's why I live here. I'd take a guess that's why the photographer lives here, too.”
“Let's run the bridge construction story. If we do one more spring break headline, I'm going to quit.”
“Now that'd be a shame.” He waited as Guy lined up the stories and locked them in. Then he said, in a tone that was carefully casual, “So how's Carol holding up?”
“Great, just great. You ought to have us over to dinner some time.”
Jenkins nodded toward the machine attached to his telephone. “Look, nobody likes to ask but—”
“Yeah, I know.” Guy released a breath that was both frustrated and apologetic. “It's the waiting that's making me crazy. I'm starting to think the whole thing doesn't amount to anything.”
“That'd be good, right?”
“Right.” But Guy was frowning. “Wrong. Hell, I don't know.” He picked up his notebook and left the desk. “I just don't like unanswered questions, you know? I've got too many of them floating around in my head as it is.”
Ed nodded sympathetically, and turned away from the door just as Rachel was coming through it. She was carrying a colorful arrangement of pink and blue flowers.
Guy feigned delight, though not very well. “For me? Sweetie, I didn't know you cared.”
“I care all right,” Rachel retorted, and set the arrangement on his desk. “I care a lot about knowing who your new sweetheart is, and why she doesn't know any better than to make sure the florist doesn't send baby shower flowers to a gentleman. Or is there something you'd like to tell us?”
“Just what I need at eight o'clock on a Monday morning, a secretary with a sense of humor.” He took the card off its forked holder and read it. Ed came back into the office and waited, a half-curious, half-amused smile on his lips.
The card read: Just didn't want you to think you were forgotten. There was no signature.
He handed the card to Ed, and told Rachel in a carefully calm tone, “Why don't you give the florist a call and see who paid for these?”
“On it.” She left the office with a purposeful stride.
Ed handed the card back to Guy with a puzzled expression, but Guy didn't take it. He had just noticed the small stuffed lamb nestled at the base of the blossoms.
Guy picked up the toy and turned it over in his hand. He could feel the blood drain out of his face as he looked at it. “Oh, shit,” he said. His voice sounded weak and he felt sick inside.
He looked up at Ed slowly. “Jesus Christ, I know who it is,” he said. “I know who the son of a bitch is.”
~
Chapter Fifteen
She heard him arrive, but a long time passed before he came to her. Enough time so that anticipation turned to dread and dread turned to resignation and resignation turned to simple waiting. She could hear things from the dark place where she was: his muffled voice, the occasional thump. She didn't know what the sounds meant. Long ago she had learned it was best not to listen.
She heard the scrape of the key in the lock and he swung open the plank door. She lifted an arm to shield her eyes from the dim glow of the camping lantern he carried. He always held it high so that it shown in her eyes, hurting her, blinding her.
He said pleasantly, “Hello, lovely.”
She answered, because she knew what would happen if she didn't, “Hello.”
He smiled. Sometimes his smiles were cold, but this one was filled with genuine pleasure. And that pleasure terrified her.
“I brought you a present,” he said. But he stood blocking the door with the lantern held up so that she could see nothing but his face, his smile.
“Well, not a present, really,” he corrected himself. “An object lesson, really. But it's for your own good. Because you've been very naughty, haven't you, darling?”
She shook her head slowly, pressing back against the wall. “No,” she whispered, eyes wide and fixed on him. “No, I haven't done anything, I haven't.”
He smiled. “Oh, yes, you have. And you want to know something, little darling? I've thought about it a great deal and I've decided this is exactly why I love you so. Because you're always doing and saying the unpredictable. Because you're never boring. You're a challenge, love, and that's why I've kept you so long. Even though you make me very, very angry sometimes.”
With no warning, he grabbed the leather thong around her neck and jerked her out of the enclosure into the open room. Now his face was dark and tight; she read him well and let herself grow limp, offering no resistance. He jerked her upright and gave her a shake, startling a cry of pain from her.
“You took my telephone without permission, didn't you? You called that nice Mrs. Dennison, bothering her in the middle of the night, upsetting her so, getting her hopes up about her poor lost Kelly. That was a bad thing to do, wasn't it?” His fist tightened on the thong, cutting off her breath, and he shook her again. “Wasn't it?”
“Yes!” she gasped. “It was bad!”
He twisted his fist another turn, and two. The leather dug into her neck, spots of light danced before her eyes. “Do you know why it was bad?” he demanded.
She nodded wordlessly, eyes blurred with pain.
“Tell me!”
“Because,” she managed, gasping, “because—Kelly is dead!”
He released her so abruptly that she stumbled. Bright throbs of red-hot pain from newly awakened nerve endings burst through her neck and throat. Her lungs felt as though they would explode.
But that wasn't the worst. The worst was that when he released her, when he stepped away, and she saw what he had brought.
The girl was naked, blindfolded, and lashed with her hands tied behind her back to an upright post in the center of the room. One cheek was purple and swollen and her lip was split. She was drunk or drugged or simply unconscious. Her head lolled sideways on her shoulder.
He said, smiling, “She looks a little like you. Don't you think?”
“No,” she whispered. “No, please...”
He hooked his fingers over the leather-thong necklace he made her wear and jerked it over her head. She lost several strands of hair to the effort, but hardly felt the sting. She watched in horror as he went to the naked girl and dropped the necklace over her head.
“Stupid bitch,” he commented carelessly. “She lost the one I gave her.” Then, smiling, “Don't worry. I'll get you another.”
Then he took out the knife.
An involuntary moan was wrenched from her and she sank to her knees. She drew up her arms to cover her head, and the sounds she made were low and animal-like, helpless and terrified. “No. No, please don't make me watch, don't make me please...”
But he made her watch. He made her listen to the screams. And afterward he didn't lock her up. He left her in the big room with the telephone in plain view and waited to see if she would touch it.
She never did.
~
Chapter Sixteen
Living on the Gulf Coast, one got used to expecting every day to be perfect. It was always refreshing for full-time residents to discover Mother Nature still had a few tricks up her sleeve, and that some of them were reserved for St. Theresa-by-the-Sea ... yes, even during spring break.
She pulled the hood of her jacket over her head and walked down to the end of the boardwalk, frowning a little as she noticed that hers were not the only footprints that had disturbed the damp, filmy coating of sand over the boards. She hadn't been down to the beach in almost a week, which meant that sometime—probably over the weekend—someone had come up onto her private walk and had gone at least halfway to her door. Perhaps he had stood there, looking into her windows or, perhaps, in a drunken confusion, had stumbled all the way to her garage before he realized he had the wrong house.
That was far, far too close for comfort.
Carol tried not to make too much of it. Homeowners with beachfront boardwalks were constantly fending off tourists who mistook the private residence sign for a shortcut to the parking lot, even in this protected community. And with all the kids who had crowded the beaches that weekend, she was lucky she hadn't been disturbed by more than a few footprints. Still, it made her uneasy in a way it wouldn't have if Guy hadn't started making such a production over security.
Neither one of them had received any more phone calls. For Guy's part, that was good news. To Carol, it meant only heartbreak, anxiety, and sleeplessness.
She went down the steps and onto the soft sand. Her back had been helped by all the time she had spent sitting in her contour chair at the office that weekend, but she still wasn't strong enough to resume her morning run. Instead, she started down the beach at a moderate walking pace, seeking out the firm sand, stretching her legs. There were a few vague shapes far down the beach—intrepid spring breakers determined to get to the beach even if it was raining—but for all intents and purposes she was alone.
Or so she thought.
The sound of the surf was muffled by the fog, so that the thud of running footsteps, as they approached her from behind, were perfectly audible. Glancing over her shoulder, Carol had a glimpse of a tall man in a gray hooded sweatshirt and running shorts, his face lost in the mist and the folds of his hood. She stepped aside to let him past. He veered in her direction. Carol kept walking, faster now, moving into softer sand so that he could pass on the water side. He didn't.
Her stride was slowed by the heavy sand and she could hear his heavy breathing now. Her fists tightened at her sides and she thought, Damn you, Guy. Damn you for making me afraid.
She stopped and whirled around, her fists clenched and her heart pounding. He stopped, and pushed back his hood.
“Hi,” he said, smiling.
It was a moment before Carol could speak. “Mr. Carlton,” she said. “I mean—Ken.” She hoped he mistook her quickness of breath for the aftereffects of exertion. She felt like a fool, particularly since it took her so long to remember—”That's right, you're a full-time resident now.”
She had given him his key personally on Saturday, but the office had been so busy they had not had a chance to talk. She gestured around rather aimlessly. “So, how do you like it so far?”
He laughed. “The weather could use some improvement. Other than that, it's perfect.”
Now Carol laughed. “Obviously, you haven't been to town since you got here.”
“Do you mean the traffic problem?”
“I'd say having to park across the bridge to get to the post office constitutes a problem, yes.”
He grinned. “I live in Tallahassee, I'm used to it.” He gestured back toward her house. “That's yours, right?”
“That's right.”
“I thought I recognized it the first time I passed.”
Carol said cautiously, “The first time?” Had it been his footprints she had seen on the boardwalk? And if so, why hadn't he simply come up and rung the bell?
He nodded. “I've been running for an hour. It's an Adam Jackson design, isn't it?”
“Yes, it is,” Carol said, pleased and flattered as always when someone recognized her house.
“I think I might have seen it in Architectural Digest some years back.”
“It's been featured a couple of times.” They started walking up the beach, and Carol said, “Don't let me interrupt your run.”
He shook his head. “No, I'm cooling down.”
Carol found she was glad for the company, and was surprised at how much safer she felt in the company of a man, even on the beach—her own beach. She hated the fact that some unknown monster somewhere out there had that much power over her, robbing her of her security before she even knew it was gone.
They talked for a few minutes about her house, about architecture, about design in general, and she enjoyed it. It was good to think about something besides her troubles for a while, and Ken was an interesting and articulate companion.
He said, “So how far is it to the end of the beach?”
“To the Cut, you mean? Too far for me to walk. Maybe five miles.”
He considered that. “I guess I could walk down there okay. But I don't know how I'd get back.”
Carol laughed. “That's what a lot of people forget when they start out for that great camera shot of the lighthouse.”
“Too bad it's so foggy though. I'd like to drive down there. Good fishing?”
“My husband—ex-husband”—she hated it when she did that—”says it's the best. He used to fish right off the sea break. Marlin, grouper, sea bass—and an awful lot of sharks.” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess 'good fishing' is in the eye of the beholder.”
He chuckled. “Maybe I'll pass on the fishing. So listen, how soon do you think we could get together for a property tour?”
Carol didn't even hesitate. In matters of business, instinct took over. “How about today? The weather's too lousy to do much of anything else.”
“Sounds good. Maybe if the weather clears, we can see some of it by boat.”
“Nothing much to see except deserted islands,” she pointed out, “but I'm game.”
“Great. I'll just go change.”
She glanced at her watch. “Is an hour okay? I'll pick you up at your place.”
He grinned. “That's right, you know where I live. See you in an hour then.”
They parted with a wave, and Carol hurried back to her house.
The blinking light on the answering machine was still, and Carol was glad she was getting out of the house. She didn't know how much more of the waiting she could take.
Still, she didn't leave without transferring her calls to her cell.
~
Chapter Seventeen
Deputy Derrick Long knew that the Dennisons— particularly Carol Dennison—thought his interest in their case was purely perfunctory. They couldn't have been more wrong.
Since Friday afternoon he had patrolled the beachside streets of St. T. thirty-seven times. He had arrested twelve drunks—three of whom had thrown up in the back of his patrol car— four kids for lewd and lascivious behavior, six for possession of less than an ounce of a controlled substance, and two because he was just plain out of patience and they made him mad. He had issued forty-three traffic citations and sixty-two warnings. And he had accomplished all of that while spending what felt like half of his life caught in a slow-moving melange of honking horns, rebel yells, and scantily clad teenage girls hanging out of sun roofs. When the call from Guy Dennison was relayed to him, he had to restrain himself from falling to his knees and thanking God for deliverance.
“Richard Wakefield Saddler,” Long reported to the sheriff late that afternoon. It had taken disappointingly little time to run down the details. “A construction worker from
Fiddler's Cove, divorced, one son. He worked a circuit that took him just about all over the Panhandle—Tallahassee, Appalach, Panama City, Port St. Joe, the islands. And just about everywhere he went, there was one sad young lady left behind. In 1993, Guy Dennison was working as a crime reporter for that TV station in Tallahassee, and he latched on to the story about this thirteen-year-old girl that was assaulted in her house while her parents were out. He did the report from her room, where the attack supposedly took place. I haven't seen the tape yet, but apparently it was some powerful stuff. There was a collection of stuffed animals on a shelf over the bed, and at the end of the report, he took down a toy lamb and held it up to the camera, you know like reporters do when they want to tug at old ladies' heart strings, and he said something about lost innocence. I don't have a quote and he couldn't remember. Anyway, the girl's name was Mary Lynn White.”
“Mary had a little lamb,” Sheriff Case said softly. “This is one sick bastard.”
Long nodded. “Well, that report and the ones that followed ignited a real firestorm of public outrage, and eventually Saddler was tracked down and charged with that assault and linked to eight others around the Panhandle. I should mention, by the way, that little Mary was no lamb, if you know what I mean, but she was just thirteen years old and she claimed he raped her. Anyway, the prosecutor got over-zealous, tried to charge him with nine counts of rape and child molestation. The jury would only convict on one. He got out on early release last month, address 1482 Cherrybrook Drive, Gainesville. I called the sheriff's department over there and asked them to check it out for me. Turns out there's nothing at 1482 Cherrybrook but a car wash. Saddler's parole officer was real sad to hear that.”
