David burst out of the car before it finished sliding to a halt and nearly forced a rear-end collision with the police diver, who was following in a Bronco. This particularly isolated bend in the road showed him nothing but the white banks, the less white road, and a black gash in the earth that held the sound of rushing water. Over the water hovered the hulking structure, enclosing the road as if swallowing it.
His flashlight threw a set of tire tracks into sharp relief. They ran along the right side of the road, moving in the same direction as him. He heard the snow crunching under Riley’s feet as his partner joined him. The silent night sat around them. He followed the tracks into the mouth of the bridge. The temperature had dropped another ten degrees in the past hour, a famous Cleveland trick.
“This could have been anyone,” Riley muttered. “Parks aren’t that deserted, even in winter.”
“I know.” David kept his head down like a bloodhound, watching the tracks, and stiffened when a distinct shoeprint suddenly blew into the circle of light on the ground. They stopped and let the light follow.
The shoeprints ran next to the tire tracks, from the other end of the bridge to just past the middle. Then they turned and went back.
David scanned the length of the bridge with the flashlight. Nothing but snow and tracks and rotting timbers. Only the water moved, filling the structure with an echo of thunder.
In the dark space beyond the reach of the flashlight stood a man.
“Freeze!” David shouted, reaching for his gun.
“Police!” Riley shouted, pulling his gun.
“Don’t shoot!” the man shouted, and stepped into the light. He wore some kind of uniform and he sure as hell wasn’t Max Chisholm.
“Who are you?” David asked.
“I’m Isaac,” he said. “Who’re you?”
Max landed on the sharp gravel with the dolly and Evelyn on top of him, and it did nothing for his mood. He wriggled out from under her immediately, so that one side of her head hit the gravel and the other wedged itself under the dolly handle. It did nothing for her mood, either.
“Fucking stop it!” he shouted, and kicked her in the kidney hard enough to bring tears.
She tried to protest but didn’t have the breath. Taking advantage of the lull and frenzied with anger, he jerked her body upright. None of the cement had spilled—it had hardened enough to stay in the bucket. Before she could catch her breath he wedged her onto the dolly.
Only ten feet separated the car from the sidewalk, but Max found it difficult to roll the heavy object over gravel. She caught a glimpse of stars as she rested for a moment while he struggled with the wheels. She had no opportunity to pitch herself to the ground again; he had one arm around her chest, holding her upward, and she could feel iron muscles through the light coat he wore. He was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked. He was also a hell of a lot crazier than he looked.
This is it, she thought. I’m going to die, trussed up like some bad Hannibal Lecter imitation. I’ll never see my daughter again.
I need help. I need David.
She turned her head slightly. The last fifteen feet of snow-covered sidewalk before the bridge represented her last chance.
She screamed. The sound echoed through the trees, sending a rush of owls into the night sky. A fox barked in sympathy, then the woods fell silent.
Max chuckled in between his labored panting. “Good one, Evelyn. Do you really think there’s anyone out here in this weather? We’re miles from the nearest house.”
“Crazy joggers,” she suggested.
“Are never around when you need them. And anyone driving through has the windows rolled up tight.”
“Unless they’re smoking,” she said, proud of herself for thinking of it.
“Let’s see.” He stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. They both faced the road, whose dark and deserted length robbed any hope she might have had. The frigid air bit her face. “Do you see any cars?” Max whispered in her ear, intimate as a lover. “I don’t see any cars. I don’t hear any cars, either. Oh, well, no rescue for you. Let’s go.”
“Wait.”
“Waiting is the one thing I can’t do.”
“But I hear something.”
“I can tell you what that is.” He pulled the dolly onto the sidewalk with a sickening lurch. “That’s your heart beating. Sounds loud, doesn’t it?”
“There’s a car coming.”
“Don’t you wish.”
“Why are you doing this, Max? Why?”
“Because I like you, Evelyn,” he panted, making slow progress, pulling the dolly with one hand and holding her still with the other. “I really like you. Besides, if I don’t, you’ll tell them I killed everyone and I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life. What do you expect me to do? And don’t tell me you won’t tell—that only insults my intelligence.”
“I have no intention of keeping any secret of yours.”
“Thank you.”
A picturesque trestle of wooden beams hemmed in the bridge, with a railing of rounded timbers. He simply stood her up against the railing and bent down to pick up the bucket. Once he hefted it over the side, nothing could stop her body from following.
She bent at the waist and slumped to the ground. Her right knee popped and protested and the impact sent a jarring thud through her skull to her brain.
Max swore, gathered her sweater at the throat and hauled her to her feet like a bag of laundry. She stayed limp so he had to support her entire weight, intending to make him work for every inch. But with adrenaline-induced strength he held her easily with one hand.
His face, only inches from hers, filled her field of vision. “You’re only ticking me off, Evelyn . . . and that’s not helping your case any.”
“Go to hell.”
“No,” he said. “You go.”
Before she could react, he hit her. His closed fist smashed into her jaw like a bullet, snapping her head back and knocking her mind clear. She floated at the edge of consciousness for a brief second, and in that time he pushed her back, grasped the handle of the bucket, and hauled it up to the rail. Her body lay perfectly balanced between life and death. All he had to do was let go.
Chapter 38
“NOW WHAT?” DAVID ASKED with an intensity that seemed to startle the young Ranger. “Where now?”
“The next bridge would be Hilliard Road.”
“Okay.”
“But that’s a major road—four lanes, well lit, lots of cars.”
David closed his eyes against the wave of hopelessness that stole through his body. He had failed. He had failed Evelyn and she was going to die because of it—if by some miracle she hadn’t already.
“Then there’s Christine Meadow, but that’s—”
David grabbed the kid by the shoulder, startling him further. “What was that?”
“There’s a bridge there that’s kind of off by itself. The road eventually dead-ends so there’s not much traffic.”
“And it’s called Christine—”
“Yeah, they named it after some little girl that—”
“Let’s go.” David gave Riley such a sharp jerk that the man dropped his cigarette. He didn’t protest.
She had stopped struggling. She had stopped moving altogether, as gravity had become her deadly enemy. The snow fell on her face, appearing from the night sky like magic. Beside her, his breath came in heavy gasps.
She scarcely dared breathe, only whispered, “Why Christine?”
It began with Christine, she thought. She’s his weak spot.
For a moment the falling snow made the only sound. Then he spoke almost conversationally. “Someone named Eaton Stannard Barret once wrote: ‘Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy; even love unreturned has its rainbow.’ ”
“And?”
“He lied,” Max said simply, and pushed her over.
“Why this place?” Riley asked as David slid rather than drove through the falling snow. The car hummed
with silence except for an occasional crackle of the police radio; the windows were closed against the cold and it sounded as if they were talking in a vacuum. Isaac drove in front of them in a Ford Bronco festooned with the ranger logo. With every turn he demonstrated the benefits of four-wheel drive. One of the police divers drove behind them. “What did that name mean?”
“The missing girls,” David explained. “Christine Sabian disappeared first. He worked with her at Kopecki’s. I saw him at Destiny’s funeral. If I’d gone deeper into Jimmy Neal’s life I could have put it together. If I had a few brain cells that worked, Jimmy would still be alive. And Evelyn . . .” He didn’t finish. He couldn’t finish.
“Sure you should have made the connection—if you were psychic. We can only hit the balls that come our way, kid.”
“Don’t comfort me,” David told him. “You make it sound like she’s already dead.”
At first Evelyn saw nothing but white underneath her, and thought her wish had come true. The river had frozen. But it was the white froth of rough water, churning and capping, and she plunged into it without hindrance.
The water tore at her body like a thousand freezing knives. The shock of it made her gasp and she took in a mouthful before her lungs instinctively closed. After that the staggering cold paralyzed her body and kept her from trying to breathe.
The pressure surprised her. The current pushed her like a bulldozer, slamming her body with a force that faded the deeper she got. As the pressure of the depth increased, her sinuses protested in pain.
And then she hit bottom.
She knew she had only a few minutes to live.
Isaac, David decided, wasted himself on the Rangers. He belonged in SWAT or the friggin’ FBI. When the convoy came upon Max’s car backing carefully out of the tiny lot, Isaac immediately blocked its exit, pulled his weapon, and ordered Max out of the car and on the ground before David crunched to a halt.
Max sprinted for the tree line.
David shot after him, slipping once on the wet snow before looking up to see Isaac flanking Max like a tiger, both nearly camouflaged against the dark trunks of the pines. Isaac gave one great burst of speed and crashed against the long legs of their killer.
David hauled Max to his feet with one hand, just as Max had hauled Evelyn only minutes before. The Homicide cop persona had fled, self-control forgotten.
“Where is she?” He shook the man. “Is she in the water?”
His face only vaguely visible in the dim light of the moon, Max stared at him as if David were speaking an unfamiliar but not very interesting language.
“Did you throw her in, you son of a bitch?”
Nothing. If Max were concerned about having been caught, he hid it well.
David dragged him toward the bridge. “Show me.”
Riley and the police diver met them. “She’s in the water, Jerry,” David said, his voice remarkably matter-of-fact when he felt as if his heart had just been cut from his body. “You’ll have to go in.”
“Damn.”
“Where did she go over?” David shouted at Max, still dragging him along like a rag doll, the man following without protest, and without answering.
“Let me make this clear,” Riley tried, falling into step beside them. “You’re looking at the electric chair. Help us save her and we’ll take the death penalty off the slate. You got one chance right now.”
Max gave the Homicide detective the same look he had given David, and they could hear nothing over the ever-moving water.
“If she dies, you fry,” David told him. “That is a promise. I will pull the switch myself.”
Max turned to him and smiled.
The smack echoed to the treetops as Riley hit Max, knocking him flat on the asphalt. Without stopping to rub his hand, Riley turned to the diver and he and David screamed in unison: “Go!”
Evelyn had never been able to hold her breath very long. She had never been much of a swimmer. No point to it anyway—the freezing water racked her with agony every split second, so she might as well just take a breath and end it . . . but she couldn’t make herself do that any more than she could sprout gills.
Her feet, as she had hoped, pulled out of the cement block with only a minor struggle, but the chains held her in place. She strained against them with pointless energy born of panic. The chains bit into her flesh, but the pain leaked away as the water numbed her skin.
A light appeared—she saw it gleam through her tightly clamped eyelids and opened them. The water of the Cuyahoga flowed dark green and murky, but she could see floating bits of sand, algae, and fish against the glow. It did nothing to comfort her since she was about to drown. Her mind had passed beyond thought.
Then something enveloped her, a tenacious being that forced an object into her mouth and pinched her nose. It seemed for a moment that the situation had progressed from worst to worser still, and then she felt a bubble against her tongue.
Oxygen.
She sucked in a mouthful of air as best she could. She brought in some water, choked, coughed, but kept her teeth clenched on the regulator and tried again. Whoever held her nose released it and she tried to breathe out through her nostrils.
Oxygen.
She could make it. Maybe she could make it. She was taking in as much water as oxygen but who cared? Her deadline had expired and still she lived. Maybe she could hang in for a few seconds more.
This angel in a wet suit helped her, though not gently. He pushed something between her legs—the oxygen tank, she realized. She held on to it with her knees; it slipped as her muscles convulsed with pain and cold, but she hung on. Her whole being focused on breathing the air in and forcing it out. In, out. The light went away.
Come back. Oh, God, please come back.
To be left in the black tomb was unbearable; only the physical work of breathing kept her sane. The flesh of her face had lost all sensation. She could not feel her lips and had no idea if they were secure around the regulator—probably not, because she pulled in water with each breath and her lungs were filling up, freezing from the inside out.
Max, the most comfortable of everyone at the scene, rested in the warm patrol car with his hands handcuffed behind him. He sat docilely, ignoring the incredulous stares of the two young police officers in the front seat.
David clung to the railing with both hands, and they were all that kept him from jumping over the side. His skin froze to the wet wood, but he didn’t know it. He felt like a side of beef, suspended, immobile, iced through and through, until the diver surfaced. He shouted something over the waves.
“What?”
“She’s in chains. I need a bolt cutter.”
“Oh, God,” David moaned. “Of course she is. How the hell are we—”
“Maybe our perp has—”
Isaac said, “I have one.”
They stared, but he was already trotting off to his Bronco. A horrible moment passed as David held his breath, Riley lit a cigarette without being aware of it, and the diver, Jerry, fought to keep the current from pushing him downriver, while all three waited for the young park ranger to rummage in his trunk. He returned promptly with a three-foot-long bolt cutter with red rubber handles and a rope and called to the diver. “Just let me tie this rope on—”
David shrugged out of his overcoat, pulled the cutters from Isaac’s hand, and vaulted over the wooden timbers into empty air before Riley could form the n in “No!”
The two men on the bridge gazed down.
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” the park ranger sighed. Riley said nothing.
As David met the water, he expected hideous cold. He expected icy knives. He expected paralyzing, arctic waves.
He hadn’t expected unbearable.
The water forced the air from his lungs, the strength from his muscles. If it weren’t for the cold he’d have been sweating from terror.
Evelyn can’t survive this. I can’t survive this.
A splash that wasn’t a w
ave sounded at his right, and he held out the bolt cutters to the scuba-suited Jerry. The diver, equipped with a strong flashlight on his hood, ripped them from David’s rictus grip and fought the current upstream. David followed, though his fingers could no longer cup the water. The current was strong but not overpowering. Cold remained the real enemy.
After an agonizing few moments, Jerry turned tail up and disappeared under the water. His trail of murky light shone a path to Evelyn. David took as deep a breath as his frozen chest would allow and plunged below the surface.
Algae and fleeing minnows stood out in sharp relief against the refracted light from Jerry’s lamp. Was Christine Sabian down here somewhere? David swam, aware of the killing weight of his sodden clothes, his shoes. He tried not to think, just act.
Then suddenly he saw Evelyn.
In the shifting light, his lungs already threatening to burst, he saw her dark figure swaying with the current as Jerry approached with the bolt cutters. The regulator stayed in her mouth with no indication that she used it. David saw no bubbles. Her hair obscured, then revealed her face. Unreasoning, he gripped her shoulders and pulled.
The chains held, but her eyes snapped open and for one instant they faced each other in their underwater graveyard. Her arms reached for him slowly, as if resigned to this inevitable resolution, to be bound together forever in an icy kiss.
Then the current pushed him and she moved as well. The chains were cut.
David kicked with every last molecule of energy he had, holding on to her with both hands. She came along but felt limp, yielding. The regulator slipped from her mouth and the heavy tank fell behind. He kicked.
In his whole frozen body, only his lungs felt warm, ready to explode in a fireball of pain. He had released breath to ease the pressure but that no longer sufficed. He had to take air in now. He had to, or his body would stop and die.
He kicked. Was she still alive? Even with his numb fingers he could detect no movement, not the slightest tensing of her muscles. She could be dead. Or she would be very soon.
Trace Evidence Page 27
