by Brian Harper
“Yeah, it’s nice. A lot like some places I’ve seen in L.A.”
“L.A.”
“You know. Bel-Air, Beverly Hills. Ed and I were just talking about that. About how things are in L.A.”
What the hell
“Play that part again,” Ed said.
The clerk rotated a dial to the left, backing up the tape.
“-lot like some places I’ve seen in L.A.”
“L.A.”
“You know. Bel-Air, Beverly Hills. Ed and I were just talking about that. About how things are in L.A.”
“Again,” he told the clerk.
Squeal of tape through the pinch rollers.
“-seen in L.A.”
“L.A.”
“You know. Bel-Air, Beverly Hills. Ed and I were just talking about that. About how things are in L.A.”
How things are in L.A.
Things are in L.A.
In L.A.
“Christ,” he whispered, remembering.
Roll call. She’d been late. He’d read her the riot act.
Now, down in L.A. it’s a different story. LA.’s got two thousand homicides a year. That’s where all the crazies are.
His usual spiel. The only words pertaining to Los Angeles he’d ever spoken in her presence.
Homicides. Crazies.
A clue.
The poor scared kid had tried delivering a clue.
Ed left the bewildered clerk and barged through the connecting doorway into the dispatchers’ room. Lou’s cubicle was nearer.
She opened her mouth to ask a question. He cut her off.
“The Kent estate-what’s the address”
“Twenty-five hundred Skylark.”
“Send all available units, code two high.” He caught his breath. “We got ourselves a ten-ninety-nine.”
Lou’s eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them. Ten-ninety-nine was the code for an emergency-an officer down.
She visibly collected herself. “Right. Code two high, you said” Normally an officer-needs-help call would justify going code three, sirens screaming.
Ed nodded. “Right. Could be a dicey situation. We don’t want to announce … Hold on.” Whoever had Robinson’s radio would be monitoring the police bands. “On second thought, I’ll give the order. Have everybody meet me on tac three.”
A tactical frequency, operating in the simplex mode. Its limited range would enable him to contact the patrol units without being overheard by anyone at the Kent house.
Sheriff’s department too-better call the substation on his cell phone-might need SWAT-and an ambulance …
“Ed!” Lou’s shout stopped him halfway to the door. “What’s this all about”
“I think we misjudged Robinson.” He fumbled for the keys to his squad car. “Looks like she’s not a slacker after all.”
71
It took all of Trish’s strength to limp along the dirt path in the cold starlight.
Cain was directly behind her, Tyler farther back. She’d cut him pretty badly. The wound might prove fatal if untreated.
Of course her own situation was looking fairly terminal as well.
She didn’t want to think about Ally. Lilith must have found her by now. Killed her, perhaps-or captured her alive.
Trish wasn’t sure which prospect was worse.
“I almost didn’t do her,” Cain said abruptly.
Momentarily confused, Trish thought he meant Ally, then realized it was Marta he was thinking of.
“Why not” she gasped without turning.
“Because of you. I knew you could describe me to the police. Did you”
She covered another yard, suffered another spear of agony through her leg. “Yes.”
“And”
“Nothing.” Each word, like each step, was an effort. “No computerized searches back then. And …” She sucked air, blew hard. “And I didn’t get the license plate.”
A grunt of humor. “Not real observant for a cop.”
“Wasn’t a cop. I was … nine years old.”
They marched higher up the trail. Black oaks formed an irregular colonnade on either side, silhouetted trunks standing out like bands of India ink against the faintly glowing mist.
“I should’ve taken you when I took her.” Cain again, remorselessly worrying the open wound of their shared past. “Should’ve grabbed you and pulled you into the car.”
“Why didn’t you”
“You never got quite close enough. You were just out of reach. One more step, and I would’ve had you. Then I wouldn’t have had to worry about the police.”
“If you were so worried, why’d you go through with it at all”
“Some things you just don’t pass up.”
Although she couldn’t see him, she knew a cruel and hungry leer had spread across his face.
“Your little friend was so cute, so cuddly.” He made a lip-smacking sound that sickened her. “I like ‘em young, you know. The younger, the better. Marta was real good, Trish. A man would pay serious money for a taste of what she had.”
The ache in her leg was worse, but it couldn’t compete with the sudden furious throbbing of her skull.
She saw it again: Marta in the weeds, a roach crawling on her unblinking eye. Heard her own voice keening: I told you. Marta, I told you …
“You didn’t just want her,” she whispered. “You needed her. You had to have her.”
“Just like I gotta have you, blue eyes.”
“It’s a compulsion with you-killing young girls.”
“Sort of a bad habit I’ve never been able to shake.”
“How many have there been”
“Believe it or not, I’ve lost count. Maybe … couple dozen.”
Couple dozen. She shut her eyes.
It was only a number, but behind it lay suffering impossible to calculate. The agony of victims, the grief of parents, the hurt of friends.
And all because of this one man, roaming the back roads, passing uninvited from town to town, stringing his daisy chain of corpses through a line of weedy fields.
“Did one of them give you that scar” she hissed, hoping the answer was yes.
“My little beauty mark No, that’s a souvenir from prison.”
“At least you can’t pick up schoolgirls anymore.” Anger made her harsh. “Not with that face.”
He merely laughed. “There are other girls. Runaways. Underage hookers. They’re not too particular about their escorts.”
“So you still do it”
“Every now and then. Got this trailer, real isolated, soundproofed.” Chuckle. “You’ll be seeing it soon.”
I’ll bet, she thought, acid trickling in her belly.
“There was one girl,” he went on, “cadging quarters at an interstate rest stop. All of thirteen years old. I took her back to my place for the usual treatment. But this girl, well, she liked pain. She got off on it. So I let her live.”
“Lilith,” Trish breathed.
“You catch on quick. Officer. Maybe you’ll make detective someday.”
The path grew steeper. Her wounded leg wobbled. She knew what would happen if she fell. Cain would sling her over his shoulder like a sack of garbage … but first he would blow out both her knees with Black Talon rounds.
Or maybe he would decide carrying her wasn’t worth the trouble, and simply end her life with a bullet to the brain.
That way would be better-quicker-than what she had in store at that trailer of his.
No medals for quitters. She kept going.
“You know, it’s funny.” Cain’s words, low and thoughtful. “Back then you tried to talk Marta out of going with me. Tonight you nearly shot down this whole operation. Every time we get together, you mess with my plans. You’re like a bad penny, Robinson. You just keep turning up.”
“You’re the bad penny,” she whispered, jaws clenched.
“Maybe so.” A pleasant laugh. “But you’re the one who’s being taken out of circulatio
n.”
She crested the rise and found herself at a parking lot, empty save for a dark van and the Porsche she’d seen in the Kents’ driveway earlier.
Lilith stood near the Porsche. For a frightened moment Trish didn’t see Ally.
Was she dead
Then her wavering gaze fastened on a white dress, a pale face-Ally, alive, seated on the passenger side of the Porsche.
“Go.” Cain gave her a shove, and she stumbled forward.
Lilith, fists on hips, drilled a cold stare into Cain. “Why didn’t you ice her”
“Turns out she’s an old friend.” Cain’s voice was merry. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Trish hobbled alongside the Porsche. Through the open window Ally gazed up at her. She was buckled into her seat, hands bound with what looked like a cut-off segment of the shoulder harness. Despair shadowed her face.
Meeting her eyes, Trish mouthed three words: There’s always hope.
The same words she’d said in the cellar. She wondered if Ally would remember.
She did. A faint smile flickered on the girl’s lips.
Then the car was behind her, Cain steering her to the van. Automatically she tried to identify the make and model. Either a Chevy Astro or a GMC Safari. Three or four years old. Black or dark green. California tags.
Couldn’t read the plate, but she supposed it didn’t matter.
Cain slid open the door panel on the passenger side. A dome light winked on, illuminating a cloth-upholstered bench seat.
“In,” he ordered.
She paused, unsure she could manage the upward step into the rear compartment, and unwilling to leave the open air, the smell of woods, the lake breeze, all the things she might never know again.
“Do it, Trish,” Cain said softly. “This is one ride you’re not turning down.”
72
With a groan of protest, the four-by-eight panel finally came free, opening an exit in the closet wall.
“Did it,” Philip gasped, blinking perspiration away.
Only the drywall remained, the last barrier. Barbara, guiding the work by flashlight, pulled off her left pump and handed it to Philip. “Use this.”
The two-inch heel made a serviceable tool. Crouching low, Philip attacked the bottom portion of the drywall.
Each tap was loud. Charles might have been right, Barbara reflected nervously. The noise could draw the killers.
It took Philip less than a minute to break open an irregular hole two feet wide, bracketed by wooden studs.
“Okay,” he said without bravado, “I’m going through.”
Charles stood up. “Just you Alone”
There was something odd about the way he said it, as if he felt threatened by the prospect.
Philip shook his head. “We’ve got to stick together.”
“Right.” Charles nodded, manic intensity gleaming in his eyes. “We stick together. Nobody goes anywhere alone.”
Barbara wondered if her husband was having a breakdown.
Philip crawled into the linen closet, then pushed on the door. It groaned-the explosion must have warped the frame-but yielded to his pressure.
When it was fully open he scrambled out. A whisper: “Coast is clear.”
Barbara looked at Judy, who took the flash and waved her on. “You next.”
On hands and knees Barbara squeezed through the hole, splinters and bent screws clutching at her dress and hair. Her head bumped against the linen closet’s bottom shelf. Philip helped her to her feet, then knelt to assist his wife.
Blinking, Barbara looked around at the master bath. The medicine cabinets, unlatched, had spilled their contents on the marble countertop and in the porcelain basin and across the tile floor. Above the sink, twin sconces still glowed, the bulbs unbroken, but the mirror had shattered, as had the skylight over the Roman tub.
Her mind barely registered the damage. The important thing was that the killers had not come. And in the darkened bedroom just beyond the doorway, there ought to be a telephone.
Stick together, Philip had said. But Judy was taking forever to struggle through the gap. Charles would follow. Philip was preoccupied with helping. Another minute would pass before all four of them were out.
She couldn’t wait that long.
Kicking off her other pump, she moved to the doorway and cast a sidelong glance down the hall.
Dark. Silent. She didn’t think anyone was there.
A breath of courage, and she left the bathroom. Barefoot, she crossed the suite, staying close to the spill of light from the bathroom, avoiding broken glass and fallen plaster.
Quickly around the nearest bed. A frightened pause: Was that a footstep in the hall
No, nothing. Get to the phone. Hurry.
Normally it rested on the nightstand next to her favorite lamp, the one with the seashell shade. Now lamp and phone were a spray of ceramic shards and a tangle of wires on the floor.
She stooped, groping in the shadows for the handset, but it had been ripped from the base and discarded somewhere, and she couldn’t find it.
When she stood, she saw Judy and the two men gathered in the bathroom doorway. She held up the useless base unit in explanation.
“Where are your other phones” Philip whispered as Barbara rejoined the group.
He could have asked Charles, of course. But judging by the glazed vacancy of his stare, Barbara doubted her husband would have answered.
“Ally’s room,” she said. “Just down the hall.”
Philip hesitated. “You don’t happen to keep a gun around”
“Sorry.”
“Maybe we won’t need it. Place is pretty quiet. They may have left.”
Charles flinched at the words. Barbara wondered why.
Single file they crept down the lightless hall to the first door on the right.
Ally’s room-but the doorway had collapsed. The gap between the warped frame and the door, wedged ajar by debris, was too narrow to permit entry.
Barbara peered inside, her gaze roving over a shadowed waste of toppled bookcases and fallen curtains and broken glass, hunting fearfully for some sign of her daughter.
If Ally was in there, she was hidden in the wreckage. And making no sound. No sound at all.
Trembling, she turned away and caught Philip’s interrogative glance. With effort she focused on the immediate problem.
A telephone. Where
“Kitchen,” she said, her voice hushed. “Or we could go out the back door, circle around to the garage, use the car phone.”
Philip thought for a moment, his eyes cutting toward the far end of the hallway with the eerie regularity of a metronome.
“Safer to stay inside,” he decided. “Doesn’t sound like they’re in the house, but they may be patrolling the yard.”
“Why would they” Judy asked.
Philip shrugged. “Why would they do any of this”
Charles looked away.
Quickly to the end of the hall, Philip in the lead. He pivoted into the dining area, then motioned for the others to follow.
Into the kitchen, the only part of the house still brightly lit. Barbara blinked in astonishment at the scorched ruins of the cellar doorway, then reached for the cordless phone.
But there was no phone-no handset, no base unit, only the bracket sagging from the wall on loosened screws.
Damn.
“Our other phone’s in the den,” she said, answering Philip’s unspoken question. “Across from the foyer.”
She was moving toward the kitchen doorway when she noticed Charles, half hidden behind the central island, stooping low.
He felt her stare and straightened instantly, a hand on his lapel. “Some of their equipment,” he whispered.
Barbara glanced over the island and saw a black duffel bag, its contents strewn across the floor.
“Thought there might be something useful-a cell phone or a radio.” Charles frowned. “No luck.”
“How abo
ut a gun” Philip asked.
“No luck, I said.”
“Well”-Philip shrugged-“it was worth a look.”
They left the kitchen, Philip still the leader, Barbara second in line.
Distantly she was glad Charles had searched the bag, even though he’d found nothing of value. At least he was trying.
Really, it was the first positive thing her husband had done all night.
73
Cain beckoned to Lilith and Tyler, then followed Trish inside the van. Roughly he pushed her into the bench seat. She huddled there, panting, while he stared down thoughtfully at the dirty mop of her hair.
Even handcuffed, she couldn’t be trusted. She’d already demonstrated considerable talent as an escape artist. Getting out of a locked trunk underwater was a stunt worthy of Houdini.
But Houdini himself couldn’t shed a pair of cuffs if his hands were in plain sight.
Cain surveyed the rear compartment. Bolted to the doorframe was a padded grab bar. He tested the mounting. Secure.
Groping in his pocket, he produced the key set taken from Officer Wald’s belt. From the slight widening of Trish’s eyes, he could see she recognized the item.
“Every time a bell rings,” Cain whispered, “an angel earns his wings.” He jingled the keys. “Sounds like your partner’s flying right now.”
She didn’t answer.
The van rocked on its springs as Lilith hopped into the rear compartment.
“Got to uncuff the Mouseketeer for a second,” Cain said. “If she moves … if she even breathes too hard… grease her.”
Lilith unholstered her Glock, the silencer already discarded, and touched the muzzle to Trish’s cheek.
Bending low, Cain reached behind the cop and jerked her wrists sideways. With Wald’s handcuff key he unlocked the left cuff. Trish offered no resistance as he pulled her right arm forward and up, bringing her wrist alongside the grab bar.
The open handcuff dangled on its short chain. Deftly he threaded it under the bar, then raised her left arm and snapped the cuff over her wrist again.
She was manacled to the doorframe, her hands at eye level.
Perfect.
“You wanted me, boss” Tyler, peering in through the side doorway.
Cain studied him. The younger man looked pale, his eyes glazed. “Feel okay to drive” he asked dubiously.
