Dark Lie (9781101607084)

by Springer, Nancy;

  Limping, aching in my joints and muscles almost as much as in my heart, I clambered out of the van and turned to close the door as loudly as I could.

  With His left hand He thrust me sprawling onto the gravel. If I lived to see daylight, I was going to find some truly impressive bruises on several parts of me. He slid the van door shut quite softly, closed the passenger door the same way.

  His voice issued dark out of the night: “You think you’re smart, don’t you, bitch? Get up.”

  I got up.

  “Stay in front of me where I can see you. Walk.”

  I walked. Slowly. Feeling my way with my sneakered feet on the gravel. How, in this gloom, could He see me? Or anything else? Was the man human, or some sort of jaguar black hunting cat?

  I could only dimly sense the old library, a huge looming shadow at my left shoulder. I couldn’t see the black letters spelling “CANDY GOT LAID HERE,” but I knew the stinging words were there. I knew I was walking close by them.

  There was a metallic wrenching sound, the garage-door sound I’d heard twice before. Then He, our captor, said, “Down here.”

  I opened my left hand, letting a little metal cylinder fall to the gravel, covering the sound with words. “Down where?” I couldn’t see a thing.

  He pushed me, and I fell hard and kept falling, down something that felt painfully like concrete steps. At the bottom, blackness awaited me.

  * * *

  Sam followed the young policewoman across the Phillipses’ expansive foyer to a formal dining room where men in suits sat around a table strewn with papers and what appeared to be communications equipment. Extension wires ran across thick cream-colored carpeting to the fax, the computer, and some high-tech components Sam couldn’t identify.

  Among the suits sat a single bulky uniform. Sam strode to it and marginally introduced himself. “Sam White.” He felt conscious of his scruffy appearance, no tie, no shave, his shirt collar getting limp and sweaty, yet he found himself holding his head up straight and his shoulders hard. He realized his manners were getting shorter by the minute, and dictated himself a cautionary mental memo: Stay cool.

  The bulky man in uniform nodded without standing up or offering to shake hands. “Bud Angstrom here.”

  Sam knew the name: Fulcrum chief of police. Big shot. Sam told him, “I want to see my wife’s car.”

  “And these other gentlemen are from the FBI,” said Bud Angstrom as if he hadn’t heard him.

  Sam gave them a glance and a nod. FBI meant nothing to him. The FBI was looking for the Phillips girl, not for Dorrie. “I want to see my wife’s car,” he repeated.

  “It’s in Appletree. Out of my jurisdiction. But there’s no reason the Appletree PD wouldn’t let you check it out.” Angstrom swiveled in his chair to face Sam with a sort of public-relations affability, light catching on his bald head fit to give him a halo. “Maybe you’ll spot something they missed.”

  Humoring me, Sam thought. He didn’t like it. But knowing himself to be not in the very best of moods, he said only, “You’ll inform the Appletree police I’m on my way?”

  “Sure. No problem.” The chief became expansive. “They tell us they found a shopping bag in the vehicle,” he said agreeably, “with a credit-card receipt that places your wife at the Fulcrum mall on the day of, and near the time of, the Juliet Phillips abduction.”

  Sam made himself take a long breath before replying. “Of course she was at the mall. She said she was going to the mall.”

  “Yes, but now we can prove that she was there. We also have a witness who spoke with your wife at the mall and says she was acting nervous, making inappropriate conversation, looking around like she was watching for someone, asking the time for no reason.”

  “Maybe she just wanted to know what time it was.”

  “Just the same, it’s an additional indication.”

  “Indication of what?”

  “That your wife, who had motive and opportunity, may have kidnapped the Phillips girl.”

  Sam breathed in, held it, and mentally counted to ten. Then, after exhaling, he said almost calmly, “Wait a minute. I thought I heard on the news you guys had a description of an SUV or a van or something.”

  “Oh, yeah. That.” Lazily the chief turned away from Sam and shifted his focus to the rookie cop. “Play it for him, Sissy.”

  Sissy?

  Without comment the young black officer walked around the table and pressed a button on one of the more obscure items of electrical equipment. Sam heard a rapid, stressed female voice saying, Juliet Phillips has been abducted from the mall parking lot by a man in a van.

  “But that’s Dorrie’s voice!” Sam blurted.

  Leaning back in his chair, the chief of police nodded without bothering to look at him. “We thought as much,” he said placidly.

  . . . Caucasian, maybe in his thirties or forties, not fat or anything, kind of average . . .

  Sam demanded, “Where’d she call from?”

  “Cell phone. We could only trace it to a tower not far from the mall.”

  “That’s it! She saw the girl being snatched and she took off after them!”

  The chief looked at Sam once more, and his voice turned pitying. “You really think your wife would do that, sir?”

  Sam yelped, “Well, what do you think?”

  “We think she made the call to put us on the wrong track. She doesn’t give any make or model or license number—”

  . . . kind of beige, or silver. A light silver brown. Kind of taupe. Actually, it’s the color of a Weimaraner.

  “Dorrie’s not observant of numbers,” Sam explained.

  Studying his own stubby spatulate fingernails, the chief drawled, “Well, she seems god-awful observant of other details.”

  . . . a wheel cover on back with a design that looks kind of like one of those diagrams in a doctor’s office of the female reproductive tract, you know, the ovaries and the uterus and—and stuff.

  Sam felt his eyes start to tear up at the sound of his wife’s earnest voice, and he had to blink hard. It was just like Dorrie to go after the exact color, the unique comparison.

  “She could have called back if she was really in pursuit,” Chief Angstrom pointed out without bothering to look up, “but we didn’t hear from her again.”

  Sam had to count to twenty this time before he spoke. “You won’t consider the possibility that she would take off after a criminal,” he argued slowly and clearly, “yet you will readily accept that she would plot and carry out a kidnapping?”

  “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it, that the missing girl is her illegitimate daughter?”

  Sam clenched his fists. Took a deep breath. Let it out again. Then asked, “What did she buy?”

  Chief Angstrom alerted sufficiently to raise his bald head and give Sam a puzzled glance. “Huh?”

  “My wife,” Sam said, one measured word at a time. “You said she bought something at the mall. What was it?”

  “Oh. Um, I’ve got that in a report here somewhere. . . .” Pawing at papers and manila folders on the table, the chief called, “Sissy . . .”

  Still standing, Officer Chappell supplied, “Wire mesh desk baskets and a packet of graph paper, sir.”

  Sam felt emotion grasp his throat and squeeze, making it difficult for him to speak a few words. “For my office.”

  From his chair, the chief of police frowned up at him from underneath eyebrows like scrub brushes. No hair loss there. “Graph paper means something to you, Mr. White?”

  Not the graph paper; it was the wire mesh baskets that had choked Sam up. But he passed over that point to make a far more important one. “Do you really think my wife would have bought office supplies for me if she was planning to kidnap the Phillips girl?”

  An unexpecte
d voice spoke in support. Sissy Chappell. “Sir,” she addressed her chief, “Mrs. White’s computer shows that she has been aware of Juliet Phillips for more than a year without making any attempt at contact. Why would she suddenly approach her now?”

  Chief Angstrom silenced Officer Chappell with a scowl, then peered at Sam to make his pronouncement, which took the form of a kind of verbal shrug. “The preponderance of the evidence points toward your wife’s involvement in the disappearance of Juliet Phillips,” he told Sam blandly, “and that is the paradigm we’re proceeding under at this point in time.”

  * * *

  If I was knocked out, it was only for a moment. I felt Juliet stumble over me, heard again the metallic clashing sound, and wondered momentarily whether I had been knocked blind; the darkness was so total. Then I felt a hard hand grasp my arm and lift. The guy was strong. Acted like He was going to pick me up by the arm. I don’t think He could have, but I floundered to my feet so He wouldn’t dislocate my shoulder. He pushed me in a direction, I stumbled forward so I wouldn’t fall again, and then He shoved me again, this way, that way, hauled me around a corner, and I heard a door shut behind me.

  Oh. No. Juliet. Where? Separated from me?

  Electric light blazed on.

  I blinked, barely able to see. I breathed out. With my coat wrapped around her like a mantle, Juliet stood in the room, dungeon, wherever we were, beside me.

  Then I gasped and struggled to breathe again, catching sight of—Him.

  He stood glaring at us both in the plain light of a 75-watt overhead bulb, and there was no way I could deny away the pain any longer.

  He—I still couldn’t bring myself to think of Him by name—the love of my life hadn’t changed much. He still affected the same black army boots, tight black jeans, tight black T-shirt showing off His narrow body, the gothic sort of clothing most people leave behind after adolescence. His face—life had added a few scars, as if He’d been in a fight or two. Somebody’s fist had flattened His nose and knocked it a bit crooked. Time had grayed His skin. But He was still average, ordinary looking, nothing to attract anyone’s attention—except when He spoke. Then, no one could ignore the authority of His voice and the vehemence of His stare.

  Or Pandora. No one, I think, could have ignored that wickedly curvaceous hunting knife in His hand. As for me, the sight of it nearly paralyzed me.

  Looking at the knife, then looking into His predatory, stony eyes, I knew. He was insane. He’d been crazy even back then, when we were kids, but I’d been too lonely and naive to realize. I had mistaken His predation for attraction, His irrationality for ardor, and now—years had passed, and He’d aged a little, yet He seemed not to have grown. Or grown up. At all.

  Except that He’d grown even more psycho.

  I stood gasping, sobbing, and I felt Juliet’s hand on my arm, her touch asking me to look at her, but I couldn’t—I didn’t—it was as if all my life I had been gazing at visions of angels, angels, angels, but now I was living an Escher, suddenly seeing that the angels were only empty white spaces between devils, devils, dark dark devils. Very real devils, while the angels had been white holes like the gaps in my daydreams. An illusion. A fantasy way to escape from the dismal reality of living with my parents. And after that, a dream of romance during my boring marriage to Sam—

  Poor ever-so-careful Sam. I wondered what he was doing right now. Worried about me. Frantic, probably. Unable to sleep. Pacing the floor with no idea what to do, as innocent as a newborn angel when it came to this kind of danger.

  While I stood there facing my very real, very personal devil incarnate.

  “You call the cops?” He demanded with cattle-prod voltage in His voice.

  I jumped as if I’d been hit. Crying too hard to speak, I shook my head.

  “Don’t lie to me, bitch!” Flick, a blur like a rattlesnake striking, and I found myself blinking cross-eyed at the wicked tip of His knife poised maybe two inches from my face. “That’s your car by the phone on the—”

  “It doesn’t work!” Wincing away from the knife, I babbled between sobs, “The phone is—dead, so—I couldn’t call.”

  “Phone’s dead, huh?”

  The way He said it tightened a noose around my throat. I couldn’t respond.

  “So you tried to steal my van instead.” An inch from my nose, Pandora quivered with rage. Light shimmered off the honed edge of her blade.

  I closed my eyes.

  “If either of you moves an inch, I’ll carve you both.” I heard booted footsteps heading someplace rapidly.

  I opened my eyes in time to see Him standing with His face to the room’s paneled outside wall. His back to us.

  But only for a second. As I watched, unmoving, uncomprehending, He turned and strode back to us.

  His mood seemed to have eased marginally. Thumbing the edge of His wicked knife, glaring at me, He barked out a flinty laugh. “Fat crying ugly woman,” He said. “I hate fat women.”

  When I was young, He had compared my eyes to the great limpid eyes of deer, to pools of deep water, to morning dew—but now He did not notice the same eyes dwarfed amid my blotched, puffy face.

  He barked, “I hate crying women. And most of all I hate ugly women. I’m going to enjoy killing you, bitch, as soon as I decide how.”

  I had loved Him. Loved Him. Dreamed of Him for years. And He didn’t even know me. He saw only a fat ugly crying woman, make that bitch. Didn’t recognize who I was. Or care. He had—

  Made love to me?

  No. Made use of me.

  Helped Himself to my virginity.

  In this very room.

  I knew. I just knew, even before I turned my head to look around. Yes, it was that same place. That high-ceilinged square room in the basement of the library, taller than it was wide or long. The same wormwork of pipes overhead, painted gray like the plaster. The same dark, cheaply paneled walls, the same ugly green and white checkerboard linoleum, the same dank subterranean smell, and—no, that couldn’t be the very same Kmart art on the wall over the sofa. But He had placed a similar mass-produced still life with pink peonies there.

  Just as He had arranged a similar sofa in the same position by the inner wall.

  Presumably for the same purpose.

  Remembering what had happened on a sofa in this room, I dried up instantly. Things were getting too bad for weeping; it was a waste of precious energy. All that mattered now was to save Juliet from Him.

  I blinked away my tears and turned to her. “You okay?” I asked her just to let her know I was still with her.

  “Shut up,” He snarled before she could answer. Then to Juliet He said tenderly, “Take your coat off, sweet sugar Candy, and sit down.” Even when His tone flipped like that, like a light switch, His flat eyes didn’t change at all. Neither did the wooden expression on His face. “Make yourself at home,” He told Juliet. “Candy. The sweetest Candy I’ve tasted yet. Welcome once again to my humble hideaway.”

  Shivering, she stood where she was and, if anything, she clutched my coat more tightly around her.

  He lifted His knife expressively. “Pandora says sit.”

  She backed a step away from Him.

  “Don’t be stupid. Whatever Pandora says, you do.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Sit down. Do it, or I’ll kill . . . you.” I think He had almost said “myself.”

  I interposed to distract Him. Once my tear glands had shut down, my mind had started to work again, thank God. In firm teacherly tones I inquired, “Who was Pandora?”

  He turned on me so sharply, knife trembling in air, that I thought He would slice me to pieces right there and then, neatly severing my joints like my mother cutting up a chicken. I felt my back tighten and my spine freeze in terror. But the question had done what it was supposed to. It h
ad distracted His focus from Juliet and riveted it on me.

  He barked, “I already told you. Pandora’s my knife. Pandora’s my twenty-four-hours-a-day sweetheart, only girlfriend I can count on, only real woman I ever met, my wife knife, and you shut up.”

  I could barely keep my mouth moving, but I had to. Had to keep His attention. Lips fumbling for the words, I asked, “All right, then, who was Candy?”

  He went white. White. Hoarsely He demanded, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I saw writing on the building, something about Candy, um, somebody named Candy.” I had to be careful not to know too much. “Now you keep calling this girl Candy, when I happen to know that her name is Juliet. Who was Candy?”

  “Shut up! You don’t get to say her name.” The blade of His uplifted knife shook and shimmered like a chill silver flame. “I can say Candy, Candy, Candy whenever I want, but you shut up. Shut up about her! I hate her! I hate her!” His wooden face cracked like a mask, showing some raw, red feeling both hurtful and ugly. Gripping His knife hard, He lunged and stabbed some ghost in the room. “I hate the dumb fuck!” His voice panted, ragged. “She didn’t give me a souvenir. Nothing! Not even a curly hair left behind. And I didn’t get to do everything I wanted. No goddamn Candy gets to leave me before I’m done with her.”

  “Oh.” Like Juliet, I took a step back, shaking. But forget terror; my job was to keep His attention away from her. I managed to say, “She, um, Candy, she left?”

  “She fucking disappeared.”

  She was disappeared by her parents, I thought, and for years afterward her—my—favorite folk ballad had been a sad song: “I wish I were a tiny sparrow, and I had wings and I could fly; I’d fly away to my own true lover—”

  This monster?

  “—and all he’d ask, I would deny.”

  I had never understood that vicious little thrust of anger at the end of the sweet lyric, but I had kept singing it; I had liked it.

  Now I understood why. Without knowing, I had known what He was.

  But He must never understand. The tiny sparrow swooped through my mind in the time it took for my mouth to fumble out, “She, um, Candy, maybe something happened to her.”