Kearns bit his lip. He hadn’t bothered to close his office door and some of the cops in the next room were doing their best not to appear to be listening. For everyone’s benefit, Kearns raised his voice another notch. “Look, Kid. This is a major fuck-up. When you walk into this building, you leave your personal problems outside the door.”
“Yes, L.T. Sorry, L.T.”
“You’ll be sorrier if my friend doesn’t turn up. Bet your last dollar on it. Now get out of here so I can find out what the hell is going on.”
Weems spun around and made a clumsy exit, smashing his hip against the door jamb.
“Goddammit,” Kearns muttered after Weems had gone.
Kearns’s midnight call to Jordan Bailey nearly gave the poor bastard a coronary.
“Beth!”
“No, Bailey, it’s Lieutenant Kearns.”
“Have you found her? Where is she?”
The panic in Bailey’s voice made his own heart quicken. “Take it easy. What the hell happened?”
“I went to pick her up at seven. She never showed. And I sent flowers. To her store. They’re still in the doorway, wrapped up. Beth never opened for business this morning, Lieutenant.”
Kearns didn’t like the sound of that. Saturday was Beth’s busiest day. “Let’s rule out a few things before we go jumping the gun. Family emergency?”
“No. Ginny called Beth’s parents. Everything’s fine at their end.”
“We’re not dealing with anything like a lover’s spat, are we?”
“So she leaves her car at the store? Come on, Lieutenant. You know Beth. She’d call someone.”
If she could. The pilot was right. Something wasn’t adding up.
“Get some sleep, Bailey. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Just find her, Lieutenant. Please.”
The second Bailey had hung up, Kearns vaulted into action. Two members of his team were dispatched to check out Beth’s house in the Marina; another pair combed the coffee shops along Chestnut Street.
Kearns drove to Beth’s store, worry gnawing at his insides. It could be nothing, he tried to tell himself. A sick friend, he imagined. There could be a dozen logical explanations, yet Kearns couldn’t ignore the shooting pains in his stomach, nor could he get the voice of Jordan Bailey out of his mind. Days ago, Kearns had been prepared to hate him and was ready to arrest the guy if he so much as crossed his eyes. But tonight, hearing the emotion in his voice that was barely concealed by a slight cough, Kearns was drawn into an allegiance with the pilot.
At Personal Touch, Kearns shone his flashlight through the storefront window, though nothing within the showroom appeared suspicious. The white roses were where Bailey said they were, just inside the doorway, untouched.
The sight of Beth’s Audi, the only vehicle in the rear lot, sent a wave of sadness through him for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. The beam of his flashlight revealed what Bailey had already told him — the car was empty, and though he flattened his palm against the hood, he knew what he would discover. The engine was cold.
Kearns went to his car, grabbed a tire iron, and punched the Audi’s trunk lock, just in case. He let out a relieved sigh when the trunk hinged open, revealing nothing more than a gym bag and a folded beach chair.
Two windows flanked the store’s service entrance, both shielded by wrought iron cages. Kearns jammed his flashlight between the bars of each window, but there was no sign of Beth at the back of the store either. The door’s lock hadn’t been tampered with.
The tire iron was put to use a second time, and Kearns entered the store, but the flashlight revealed what he already knew — Beth wasn’t there.
Five years ago, when Mary was threatening to walk, Kearns made a bargain with God — no more booze, he promised. Just let me keep my wife. He’d lost out big on that one. Luckily, he hadn’t burned any religious bridges. Perhaps he could still strike another deal, although he wondered what he had left to trade to ensure Beth’s safe return.
Anything, he suddenly realized. I’ll give you anything, sweet Jesus. Just bring Beth back.
He checked his watch. 1:30. He called the station, saying he needed two officers to take his place at Beth’s store in case she returned for her car. He asked Anscombe to look up Rex McKenna and find out what he knew, and no, he didn’t give a shit what time it was.
Anscombe told Kearns that Jordan Bailey had called his office twice.
“There’s nothing here, Bailey,” Kearns said after he dialed the pilot’s number. The man was a basket case. “It pretty much looks like she locked up on Friday night and someone picked her up after work. You call me if you hear from her, and I’ll do the same.” Then he added, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too, Lieutenant. Me too.”
In spite of mobilizing half his task force to search for Beth, he felt useless. His friend needed help, and he knew it, marrow-deep. Kearns was barely conscious of traffic signs or other vehicles as he steered through the quiet streets, his vision clouded by the recurring image of a dozen wilted roses.
60
With Brad gone from the room, Beth expected to feel relief. Instead, she felt worse. She would never know what he was thinking, yet while he was with her, she could monitor his facial expressions, gauge his reactions to her spoken words, and perhaps learn something that might save her. Left on his own, she knew how dangerous Brad was.
It was pointless to worry about it. Second-guessing every word she uttered was a waste of energy and time, and her body was telling her she didn’t have much left of either. Her stomach was beginning to cramp. She contracted her sphincter, knowing that bloody diarrhea would be the next indignity. She gazed at her left wrist, the one Brad said he wouldn’t carve. It appeared yellower now, with a faint white band where her watch had been.
Minutes, or perhaps hours later, Brad appeared in the doorway to his darkroom. He had changed his clothes. His white shirt looked crisply starched. He was clean-shaven, and a trace of his citrusy aftershave wafted across the room. This was all part of the torture, Beth knew, a physical reminder that Brad’s life would go on, that he, in this freshly groomed state, was superior while she grew more pathetic, more hopeless.
Brad hesitated on the threshold, then came over to her carrying a glass of orange juice and a pair of handcuffs. “Tit for tat,” he said, and set the juice glass on the table between her thighs.
Beth tensed her muscles, the proximity of his hand to her vulva evoking a new set of fears.
“You drink this, and I’ll give you the grand tour.”
She knew what was in the glass. It wouldn’t poison her if she drank it, but it would kill her just the same. “I’m not very thirsty right now,” she answered, the tremor in her voice revealing the fear she had tried so hard to control.
Gently, Brad lay the handcuffs across her bare abdomen, the bracelets arranged in perfect symmetry on either side of her navel. From the back pocket of his trousers, he produced a knife, its pure white blade glinting obscenely in the light of the flood lamp. He let it hover over her, caressed it with his gaze, then moved it slowly in the air, watching the light play off its surface.
In one swift move, it was against her throat. “We can get this over with right now,” he whispered. “Is that what you want?”
“I thought you said I was different,” she babbled, the press of the blade insistent at her neck. “You said you wouldn’t cut me.”
He shrugged. “This wouldn’t be the first time something hadn’t gone according to plan. I could just start here —” the tip of the knife pressed at the base of her throat “— and work my way down to here —” He traced a line between her breasts, continued downward past the handcuffs until the knife poised above her pubic hair. “I’d hide your body, too. Your family wouldn’t know what had become of you. Your beloved Jordan would be heartsick, maybe spend years searching for you, waiting for you to come home. The police wouldn’t have a clue that you’d ever met their Spiderman.”
Please, s
he thought. Let this be quick. If she had to die, she didn’t want to see it coming. One swift plunge of that white blade, and it would be over. She closed her eyes.
His breath was close to her face now. Time stretched until she felt herself strain toward the knife, each minute she was alive becoming not the gift she had hoped for, but excruciating agony. But the blade didn’t enter her, and she couldn’t sense where it was. There was only his breath, crawling over her like an army of ants, and the damnable smell of his cologne.
She opened her eyes and glanced at her body. The knife hadn’t pierced her skin.
Brad held it over her abdomen and playfully flicked the blade with his thumb. He grinned. “You want to die now, don’t you,” he crooned. “You’re like a little bird that’s flown against a window. You can’t move, and being alive is torture.”
“You said I was different,” she cried out, the last trace of composure gone from her voice.
A derisive laugh escaped from his mouth, and he shrugged again. “There’s plenty more where you came from. Now, did you say you were thirsty?” He removed the glass from its resting place between her legs and lay the knife in its place.
When Brad raised the glass to her lips, she drank. Though she tried to swallow slowly, the liquid flowed down her throat. She clamped her lips against the glass, hoping some of the juice would dribble from the corners of her mouth. Brad’s free hand reached for the knife.
In the end, she drained the contents of the glass, expecting the mixture to taste foul, bitter, to give some indication of the damage it was meant to do. It tasted like orange juice.
“I’ll show you how different you are,” he announced and turned toward the two-tiered trolley in the corner. Seconds later, he wheeled the trolley beside the table, then held his right palm outstretched. On it rested a small box.
“Straight pins,” she whispered. “No.”
He nodded, and explained the inevitable. “You’ll be my human sieve. My fountain of blood.” He placed the box on her belly.
Her last shred of strength evaporated, and the tears came, flowing freely from the corners of her eyes, dripping into her ears. “Please.” She heard herself whimper, “No.” She hated herself but couldn’t stop.
Brad scooped up a camera from the trolley and took her picture. Then a dozen more. He moved around the table, capturing her suffering from every conceivable angle.
She lashed her head from side to side, trying to avoid the sickening flash. “Please,” she sobbed. He zoomed in close, clicked off three more shots. “Brad, I don’t want to die.”
“There, there,” he trilled. “Not time yet. I promised you a tour, remember?” He produced a pristine white handkerchief from his pants pocket and dabbed at her eyes. His touch was gentle, almost paternal, as he wiped her temples, the surface of her ears, the flesh of her cheeks.
“Before we go,” he said, leaning closer, “tell me what you were doing at the Good Shepherd in Ventura.”
“You followed me?”
He smiled, then folded the handkerchief into a perfect square and returned it to his pocket.
Her mind raced for an answer, but whatever drugs he had given her had made it sluggish. “I was checking you out,” she said. “I was attracted to you at the party, but when I spoke to one of your former teachers, he said you were bad news. Nothing could be proven, but he warned me to stay away from you anyway.”
“Really?” he said with a hint of a sneer.
Beth kept going. “And I told Lieutenant Kearns about you, that you fit the profile of the man the police are looking for.”
Brad examined her face, studying her like a laboratory specimen. She held her breath as he drew closer. His lips touched her ear. “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met.”
“No, I —”
He shook his head. “There’s an art to lying, you know. If you interject enough truth into your story, that’s when lies become believable. You’re nowhere near mastering the craft. My former teachers have never heard of Brad Petersen. You really went to my alma mater to check out your boyfriend, am I right? Yes, of course you did, especially after I happened to mention a certain flight attendant he used to date.”
He played me, Beth thought, from the moment he met me. And I was fool enough to let him.
“Good old Jordan. I remember him from school, you know. Helluva basketball player in those days. I admired that about him. Of course, being a few years older, he never gave me the time of day. Mind you, the tables have turned now, haven’t they? Your Jordan just can’t seem to hang on to a girlfriend. And his squash game is mediocre.” He stared deep into her eyes and added, “Just doesn’t have the killer instinct.”
She felt one of the handcuffs encircle her left wrist, then Brad attached the other bracelet to his own wrist. He reached down and knifed through the tape binding her feet, freed the bonds across her hips, then her chest and arms. He allowed her to swing her legs around and slip down from the table. She wobbled unsteadily, the cement floor cold on her bare feet. Her nose was bleeding again.
“Come into my parlour,” the Spiderman said.
61
By 2:00 a.m. on Monday, Jordan was past the point of questioning his own sanity, aware that much earlier, he had crossed over the threshold into the realm of madness.
He removed his shoes, his feet swollen from having paced the kitchen tiles for the better part of Sunday, and brewed a second pot of coffee. He was still wearing the same T-shirt and track pants he had on yesterday. He didn’t dare shower, wouldn’t risk the sound of running water drowning out the phone’s ring. His normally clean-shaven face was itchy with razor stubble, and there were spots on both cheeks he had scratched bloody.
He poured a mug of coffee and watched it get cold.
He had known such impotence only once before. The memory of standing in his mother’s bedroom doorway, in his best clothes, watching her earning her living in her naked glory paralleled how he felt now, paralyzed by the fear of what he had learned and powerless to change it.
Machines were easy, a 747 to him nothing more complicated than a car. It was people he had trouble with, and it had been much easier to bury his emotions where they couldn’t find him, couldn’t hurt him.
Beth had changed all that. The two of them, wounded by their past, had found peace in each other, and more quickly than he thought possible. Being with Beth was both exhilarating and calming, and he felt liberated by her, unaware until he’d met her that he required liberation.
He had to find her. He called Kearns’s work number and discovered the lieutenant was still there. Jolted by caffeine and desperation, he bolted up the stairs, grabbed a hooded sweatshirt, then threw on a pale yellow windbreaker. The brunette on the weather channel was predicting rain. In less than an hour, Jordan had Ginny replacing him by his kitchen telephone, and he was on his way downtown.
The lieutenant was reorganizing his desk, shuffling file folders from one pile to another. Jordan looked at his pressed shirt, the smooth skin, and felt a pang of empathy. Though Kearns had gone through the motions of freshening up, there was a defeated look in the man’s eyes that a shower and a change of clothes would not mask.
Kearns looked up. “You couldn’t sleep either?”
“No sign of her?” Jordan asked.
Kearns shook his head. “Nothing.” He motioned to a vacant chair. “Coffee?”
“No thanks. I’m already fuelled for lift-off,” Jordan said. “We’ve got to do something.”
“Listen,” Kearns said, “I have my crew looking everywhere, but they’ve turned up squat. And Bailey, I’ve got leads to follow up on. I’ve still got to find this lunatic before Sondra Devereaux, the mayor, and the rest of the city lynches me. More importantly, I just can’t look at another corpse.”
“That’s why Beth’s absence has me crazy. What if the Spiderman has her? Are you any closer to finding the killer?”
Kearns snorted. “Well, we know it isn’t you. You had my vote for a while. Any id
ea how closely you fit the profile?”
“Look at this face, lieutenant,” he tried to joke, the sound of his voice hollow. “Is this the face of a killer?”
“No, and this guy doesn’t look like one either,” Kearns replied, shoving a photocopied sheet across the desk, “but he’s probably our man anyway. Face of an angel, if only we could find him.”
Jordan took the paper and stared at the photograph. It was a copy of a picture taken nearly twenty years ago, judging from the hairstyle. The blazer with its trademark crest and piped lapels drew Jordan’s gaze closer. “This is the Spiderman? This guy went to the same school as me.”
“See what I mean about the profile? Don’t suppose you recognize him?”
Jordan shook his head. “I didn’t mix much during my school days. Kept my nose in the books. Played basketball because of my height, but this guy wasn’t on the team, I know that. Wasn’t in any of my classes either. What’s his name?”
“William Prescott. Ring a bell?”
Jordan paused for a moment, feeling a slight niggling thought. He tried to concentrate. “No,” he said at last. “I thought there might be something, but it’s no good forcing it. If there’s something for me to remember, it’ll come. But I’m not much for memories of that time. I never even bought the yearbook.”
“That picture came courtesy of Father Daniel Fortescue. Here’s the only other picture we have of the guy.”
Jordan took the sheet. It was a blown-up copy of a sports page from the Good Shepherd’s yearbook, a messy collage of geometric cutouts showing various athletes in action. Jordan was able to pick out one of himself going for a lay-up shot, though due to the enlargement process, some of the details had become blurred. “Father Daniel sent you pictures? Why?”
“When I have an hour, I’ll tell you.”
The photo of William Prescott had been circled with red felt-tip pen. It showed a taut, muscular body, angled mid-air, rigid right arm extended, a badminton racquet poised to make a tough return. The face was locked in a grimace of athletic effort. An alarm went off in Jordan’s head.
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