Strangers

by Mary Anna Evans

  Unfortunately, he’d known at the time that Faye was the size of a hummingbird. No amount of leveraging one’s weight was going to do much good when one weighed a hundred pounds on a good day. And Suzanne was tall, but she wasn’t any more muscular than Faye.

  Joe was twice Suzanne’s size. He had her pinned so thoroughly that she wasn’t going anywhere, not an inch in any direction. He leaned down, preparing to state firmly and clearly that, until she agreed to free Magda, Glynis, and Rachel, his intentions were assuredly not good.

  He pulled his hand from her face and said, “Keep talking. And whisper while you’re doing it.”

  Her whisper was as intense as any shriek. “I knew it was you! You showed up here, and poor Glynis disappeared. And Lex…even Lex didn’t deserve to have you slice his throat with…one of those.” She shrank from the stone knife in Joe’s hand and dissolved into sobs. “Please don’t hurt me, too.”

  Joe had been poised on the balls of his feet, ready for action. At Suzanne’s words, he rocked back onto his heels, needing a minute to process what he’d just heard. His grip slackened slightly, so she tried her self-defense sequence again, but the effort was as futile as it had been the first time.

  Joe’s intuitive nature told him that Suzanne was telling the truth, but he wasn’t so foolish as to let her go.

  “You’re telling me that you didn’t kidnap Glynis or kill Lex? What about your husband?”

  She was shaking her head, refusing to speak, and he could see hysteria setting in. He closed his hands on her arms one degree tighter and gave her a single small shake. Joe had always known that he would stink as an interrogator, but he just didn’t want to hurt this woman whose emotions had always seemed even frailer than her body. He would have to rely on the intimidation inherent in his sheer size. He leaned down, way down, and put his mouth next to her ear.

  In a low, quiet voice, he murmured, “Where…are…Magda…and…Rachel?”

  He was unprepared for the whipped-up frenzy that this question provoked in Suzanne. “Where are they?” she hissed. “What do you mean asking ‘Where are they?’ That little girl and her mother are in the back yard right now. The mother’s working and the child is just…being a child. Aren’t they?”

  Joe’s belief that Suzanne was telling the truth grew stronger. No actress was this good.

  He watched her a moment, unsure that she could stand to hear the truth. Because if Faye was right, it was very likely that Suzanne’s husband was the person who had interrupted Rachel in the act of just being a child.

  “Aren’t they?”

  Suzanne’s legs had collapsed under her, and Joe was now hefting her entire weight, which wasn’t much.

  She’d given up on whispering, no matter what Joe said. Her voice rose into a low, groaning monotone, and it seemed that she was talking to herself more than Joe. “Did someone take that mother and child? Did they take Glynis? Did somebody do to them what was done to Lex? Oh God, you can’t let someone hurt that baby girl. Oh…Annie.”

  Joe lowered Suzanne to the couch, where she curled into a tiny ball and wept, repeating the word, “Annie…” with every breath.

  Joe wondered what he would do if Faye were ever in this much pain. He wouldn’t kill someone, or harm them physically. He knew that. He wouldn’t steal someone’s child, or imprison anyone against their will. But he might be capable of almost anything else, if it would make Faye happy and whole again. Watching Suzanne’s agony and remembering Daniel’s devotion to her, Joe knew in his soul that Faye had been right.

  Glynis and Magda had indeed been taken by someone who wanted a child enough to kill for one. Suzanne was the one with the crazy aunt, so Faye had leapt to the conclusion that she was insane enough to act on those urges. But having insanity in the family didn’t necessarily make a person insane. And even a person with a Norman Rockwell family could be crazy as hell. Was that person Daniel?

  Joe was good at asking himself these questions, but Faye was the one who was good at answering them.

  Joe’s intuition said that Daniel had taken Glynis and Magda, out of a twisted belief that stealing their children would salve his wife’s pain. Now what? Joe needed to get Suzanne to tell him everything she knew, and he needed to get out of this apartment pronto, because Daniel did not need to know that anybody was onto him.

  He helped Suzanne to her feet and said, “Ma’am, I hate to say this about your husband, but I’m not a hundred percent sure you’re safe here. And I know I’m not. Let’s go someplace where we can think…someplace where we can talk to somebody lots smarter than me. Let’s go find Faye.”

  Suzanne went with him without arguing. Not, it seemed, because she agreed with him that her husband was a kidnapper and a killer, but because she’d dropped into an agony of grief that didn’t let her argue.

  In seconds, they were at the elevator, which moved so slowly that Joe thought it was lowering them a millimeter at a time, stopping frequently to decide whether they actually deserved to reach the first floor. If they could have taken the stairs without being seen by anyone in the atrium, he’d have thrown Suzanne over his shoulder and taken them three at the time. Traveling at Joe’s top speed, they could have been down the street and in Victor’s shack quicker than this damn elevator could lower them fifteen short feet.

  But, finally, it finished its task and Joe guided Suzanne out of Dunkirk Manor, whispering words of comfort in her ear all the while.

  He gave himself some words of comfort, as well.

  Everything will be okay in just a minute. Faye will know what we need to do.

  ***

  “What do you think he’ll do?”

  Glynis’ voice was thready and weak. Perspiration was beading on her forehead and running through her once-glorious hair. The morning was passing and the angle of the sun shining through the windows above them was slowly changing. It was certainly warming up their prison cell, but not enough to account for the sweat flowing out of Glynis’ elegant body. Faye laid her hand on her forehead again, checking for fever, but she just couldn’t tell.

  What would it do to a human body to be battered and menaced, then to be thrown on a cold prison floor? And how much worse would it be for a woman in the early stages of pregnancy?

  Daniel had brought blankets into the cell to cushion Glynis where she lay, but Faye was sitting beside her on those blankets right now, and her own hipbones were digging into the hard concrete. This was not a fit bed for a woman who needed to heal. If a princess could feel a pea through a mountain of mattresses, then Glynis must be suffering terribly. And every breath disturbed her broken ribs. Days spent lying on this damp floor, taking one shallow breath after another to avoid that pain, might well have brought her to the brink of pneumonia.

  “What do you think he’ll do?” Glynis asked again. “After the baby comes, I mean.”

  The still air in the turret soaked up the terror in her words. Glynis had spent days in here, absorbing the idea that she would be here for nine months and then…what? How could Daniel possibly let her go? He would have to kill her, just like he killed Lex.

  Glynis would find out her fate sooner than that. Faye would cease to be useful in just a month, when her own baby came. And Magda was useless now, except for the fact that her presence kept Rachel calm. When Glynis saw what happened to them, then she would know what was coming for her.

  Faye was settling her mind into the horror of her situation.

  A month in here. Childbirth without the help of a doctor. And then…

  She jerked herself off the edge of that precipice.

  “Glynis, he comes every midnight? Right?”

  The silvery head nodded.

  “Does he come in? Or does he just shove your food through the door and leave?”

  “He comes in. He takes out my…that thing…and brings me a fresh one.” She nodded at a bedpan near her bed. It was early in the day and Glynis wasn’t eating or drinking much, so it was still empty. Faye couldn’t imagine what it took
out of Glynis, in terms of pain and effort and humiliation, to make use of it.

  Faye had been studiously avoiding the thought of bathroom necessities.

  “On the second day, I tried to crawl around him and get through the door while it was still open. He grabbed me by the arm and just that little tug twisted my ribs. I screamed. I couldn’t help myself. And I saw that the door was still open a bit and I thought the noise might get out. So I screamed and screamed, long after the door closed off the chance that somebody might hear. But the door closed and then he cried, because he saw that he’d hurt me.”

  “What a prince,” Magda mumbled.

  “He started thinking out loud about how maybe he should gag me, but that I’d have to wear the gag twenty-four hours a day, just to keep me quiet for those seconds that the door was opening and closing. He looked deep in my eyes and explained things to me.”

  As Glynis spoke, she stared high into the turret, where the ceiling should be. “Since it would hurt him to think of me bound and gagged around the clock, he was just going to start carrying a knife. ‘Just so we understand each other,’ he said, ‘my first priority has got to be the baby. If you scream when I come through that door, I can’t afford to kill you, but I will hurt you. Think about this rationally. There’s nobody outside that door. Everyone is asleep on the far side of this big house. It’s not possible for someone to hear you scream, but if you try, I will cut you. If you scream again, I’ll do it again. Do you really want that?’ Since then, he’s always got a butcher knife in his hand when he comes here.”

  Faye thought of the hole in Lex’s throat. However mildly Daniel had behaved in his role as Glynis’ jailer, none of them needed to forget that the man’s madness could cross the line into murderous violence. It had happened before. If they tried to escape and failed, then it could happen again.

  Her eyes landed on Magda, sitting with her arms curled around her child. Faye, Glynis, Rachel—they all enjoyed some immunity from Daniel’s madness, because they all gave Daniel the ability to give his wife the child she craved.

  Magda, on the other hand…Faye figured that Daniel had only taken her so that Rachel would go quietly.

  Magda was expendable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Joe looked Suzanne up and down and decided that the best way to escort her down the street was to simply walk very closely at her side. Throwing her over his shoulder would have attracted attention. Even guiding her with a hand on her waist ran the risk of looking inappropriate. If Suzanne decided to run, Joe knew that his long arms and lightning reflexes wouldn’t fail him. But she didn’t.

  They walked to the end of the street, so slowly that it twanged Joe’s nerves to a high-pitched hum, but they got there. Victor, sitting in his customary watchdog position at the window, rushed out to meet them, burbling words of welcome.

  Joe cut him off. “I need to talk to Faye.”

  “Ah, Faye, she’s so lovely. What a beautiful mother she will make—”

  “Where is she?” Joe stood in the doorway of Victor’s home, looking at its single empty room.

  Victor’s face was utterly vacant. There was no information there about Faye, no information about where she was, no information on whether she was okay, no information on whether she was even…

  Joe reached out and grabbed Victor’s shoulders. The urge to shake the truth out of the old man was so strong, but he remained in control. There was no one home behind Victor’s sad eyes. Or, if there was anyone remaining in that feeble brain, there was only a little boy who could not be blamed for any looming disaster.

  “Where is she?” Victor asked, but Joe couldn’t tell whether he was asking the question or just echoing the last thing he’d heard.

  Joe whipped his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Overstreet. He said “Do you know where Faye is?” instead of saying hello.

  The rising tones of Overstreet’s questions mirrored Joe’s skyrocketing worry.

  The officer’s first response was “No, I don’t. Should I know where she is?”

  His second response was, “What do you mean she dialed 911? From Dunkirk Manor? If there’s trouble there and nobody’s called me, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  And his concerned tone reached its peak with “Why did she call 911? Faye wouldn’t do that without a serious reason. And when did she call? Is anybody there yet?”

  Time expanded and contracted for Joe. The first slow elevator ride. The search of the room where he’d thought he’d find Magda. The encounter with Suzanne. The second slow elevator ride down. The slow walk down the street. The interminable moment spent looking in Victor’s eyes, knowing that the addled old man could do nothing to help him find the woman that he loved. The mother of his child…

  He couldn’t get his brain around how long any of these things had taken. He just didn’t know.

  “I don’t know how long it’s been since she called to report Magda missing. Fifteen minutes, easy. Maybe half an hour. Maybe more.”

  “Then nobody called 911, or they’d be there already. I’ll double-check on my way over and I’ll get the emergency vehicles over there. Now.”

  “No. Wait.”

  Joe wished for Faye to be here, with her sober and flawless logic. But she was not. All Joe had on his side was his own hunter’s intuition.

  Joe knew predators. He knew how their minds worked. It was time to put that knowledge to work.

  “Maybe we don’t want a bunch of sirens surrounding the house just yet. Not until we know where Faye is. And the other women. Faye has to be in Dunkirk Manor, or on the grounds somewhere. Unless she got out the front door and someone kidnapped her on the street.” He refused to voice the possibility that she had gone over the garden wall and into the river. He clung to the hope that, in mid-morning, someone would have seen it happening and stopped it.

  Joe looked at Victor, who shook his head. “No cars on the street this morning except the cook and maids coming to work. They drove into the parking lot. Nobody’s came out of the house at all. Nobody’s drove away.” His ancient vocal cords gave the words a shrieking, grinding sound, like failing brakes on a collision-bound car.

  “Then Faye’s still in the house. Magda and Rachel are still in there, too,” Joe said.

  “Considering how much time Victor spends looking down this street,” Overstreet offered, “Glynis is more than likely still in there, too.”

  Joe turned to Victor. “You never saw her leave, did you?”

  Victor shook his head hard.

  “We can’t go in that house looking for them until we’ve got Daniel under control.” Joe found that he was thinking of Daniel as he would think of a mother bear, who might turn and make a stand before letting anyone take her cubs.

  “We don’t want to scare him into hurting them, or holing up with them in whatever secret places he’s got them hidden.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Joe,” Overstreet said. “Are you absolutely sure Daniel did this? We don’t have many other plausible in-house suspects, but there are the two men who work for you. And the household staff. And the guests. We need to get them all out of the house, not just Daniel. Ask Suzanne where they keep their evacuation plan.”

  Joe asked her.

  “There’s a copy in my desk. Another posted by the kitchen door and by the emergency exits in the guest wing.”

  Joe felt the plan unfold in his head. As it did, he told Overstreet how things were going to go. If this irritated the policeman’s professional sensibilities, then that was just too bad.

  “Okay, here’s how we do this. You get your people in place, but don’t let Daniel know. He could take hostages. He’s already got hostages. We have to get him out of the house before he takes more, and we need people with rifles hidden all around the house in case we don’t manage it. But he can’t know they’re there.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You and I can go into the house, because we have an excuse to be there. But nobody else. We don’t w
ant to tip him off.”

  “Also agreed.”

  Victor had shyly taken Suzanne by the hand and taken her into a corner of the room to look at his collection of silver dimes. Joe was okay with this, because he was standing between them and the door, but he kept an eye on them both.

  At the same time, he was still spinning his plan for Overstreet to hear. “Next, we get Daniel away from everybody else and out of there, before he has a chance to disappear to wherever he has the women hidden. Can you ask him to go with you to the station or something like that?”

  “I’ll tell him that we’ve…um…constructed a timeline of Glynis’ activities during the week before she was taken. I’ll say that, as her employer, we need him to come downtown to check it over and see whether he thinks it’s accurate.”

  “That’ll work. Once he’s gone, I guess I’ll pull the fire alarm and get everyone else out of the house. If he gives us any trouble, well…we have the snipers. And the women will be out of his reach, once he’s outside. Then we can search the place from top to bottom. If you people at the police department can get hold of some equipment that can detect secret rooms, it would help. I don’t know…x-ray, maybe…”

  “No.” Suzanne looked up from Victor’s coin collection. “Nobody’s pulling the fire alarm and throwing my guests into a panic. I’ll tell the staff that we’re doing a fire drill. They’ll get everyone out of the house and gather them up so that we’ll know exactly where they all are, but they’ll be very clear that it’s just a drill. I’m not willing to risk the safety of my guests, not when there’s a way to get them out of the house that’s just as efficient as your way. A lot of them are old. They’ll get hurt or have heart attacks or…no. I’m not willing to risk anyone else’s safety because of what my husband has done.”

  Joe looked at the slim woman. The events of the morning had left her swaying on her feet. This actually wasn’t a bad plan, but could she be trusted? Was she stable enough to do this, and had she really been so easily convinced of Daniel’s guilt? Was she willing to lay a trap for her own husband?