“Should have knocked Him out,” I panted as we darted to the other end of the hallway.
Should have kicked Him unconscious, was what I should have done. Kicked Him in the chin. Or better yet, grabbed the heavy cover off a toilet tank and clobbered Him. Why had I lacked the good sense to beat His evil head in?
“. . . way we came in,” Juliet gasped over her shoulder, veering right as we came to the door of the room in which we’d been imprisoned.
Another dark, shabby hallway ran that way for maybe ten feet.
“It doesn’t . . .” I was just about to say it didn’t go anywhere when Juliet thudded around a corner into darkness.
“Damn!” she wailed as she banged up against another barrier. “Where’s the knob?”
A door. Right. We’d come in this way. Through a door.
But it didn’t feel like a door. It felt like a wall. A steely cold metal wall, impermeable, impregnable. I ran my hands all over it, standing on tiptoe, then crouching to the ground, and felt nothing except Juliet’s searching hands bumping against mine. That, and the stark smooth metal under our fingertips, our palms.
In the bathroom, not nearly far enough away, our enemy’s clamor changed shape, hardened like a flexed muscle, and focused into a single percussive blow. Rigid, I listened. There was a gathering silence, then another even harder WHAM, like a cannon firing.
“He’s trying to kick the door down! Come on.” Clutching at Juliet, I ran back into the hateful room we’d started from. I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it, blinking in the blaze of the electric light. Thank God He hadn’t turned it off. Maybe too enraged to think of it. Or maybe the control was somewhere here in this room?
“Lock it!” Juliet cried. “Lock the door!”
“I don’t know how. He’s got it on some kind of remote control.” I limped a few steps and grabbed one end of the sofa. “Help me wedge this in front of it.”
Instantly she ran to the other end, put her shoulder to the sofa and heaved for all she was worth. She shoved that heavy thing in front of the door almost entirely by herself. My daughter. So quick, so strong.
Not like me. My strength had lasted only a moment. Now I felt as weak as the third cup of tea.
With the sofa in place, we stood panting and listening. Silence. Not a nice silence. Then WHAM down the hallway, and I heard the sound of shattering glass.
“He broke the transom!”
“The what?”
“The window thing over the—”
My flailing, drowning mind grabbed hold of something, I couldn’t yet tell what, and I stood there with my mouth open.
“The bathroom window?” Juliet cried. “It’s boarded over, and anyhow it’s way too high to get out. Why did they have to make everything so tall?”
Window.
That was the mental flotsam I was trying to grab.
I lurched into action, ordering, “Table. Quick!”
“Huh?”
“Table over there. Hurry.” I pointed toward the wall opposite the door, then found some strength again; I shoved the table there myself without waiting for her to help. I rammed it against the wall beneath the peephole.
I still didn’t fully understand, but the peephole had to be connected to the hidden window somehow. I knew there used to be a window. Light in my face, affronting my guilty eyes as I lay on the sofa. Feet passing in the parking lot. I remembered now.
“Up,” I told Juliet. “On the table.” No way my disabled bulk could climb up there. “Hurry!”
Looking totally bewildered, my daughter climbed onto the table. As she knelt on top of it, I snatched the clunky shoes off her feet and handed one of them to her.
“Stand up, use that like a hammer—”
“Stinking bitches!” roared a crazed male voice right outside our door. “Dumb sluts! Pandora’s going to butcher you!” Something, probably His foot, crashed against the wood. “Pandora’s going to cut you bloody wide open and carve the dog parts out of you!”
Juliet went pale. “He’s out,” she whispered.
“Listen to me,” I told her fiercely. “Hammer the paneling up there in the corner.”
As I pointed, the room light went out, leaving us in darkness thicker than fudge.
Juliet shrieked, then began to sob.
“Do it, girl!” I ordered, making my voice as commanding as I could. “Reach as high as you can and hit the wall as hard as you can. Now!”
She sure did. I heard that heavy clunky-heeled shoe whack like an ax, and with a stab of hope in my heart I heard wood splinter. The cheap paneling caved in. Daylight poured through the breach.
“Oh!” Juliet cried.
“Break through and get out.” I limped to the fridge, opened it, and grabbed a gun.
Whack, whack—I heard Juliet striking at the paneling. Hurry, my mind prayed, but I couldn’t spare time to glance back and see how she was doing. As I lifted the gun, the room’s door opened a crack, pressing against the sofa, inching it forward.
With the pistol heavy and alien in my hand I flung my considerable weight against the sofa, trying to force the door closed again.
And I did it. Strength of panic. Safe. Safe for a moment. Door closed, blocked. Panting, I braced myself against the sofa, the gun I had appropriated sagging at my side as I swiveled, trying to face the enemy.
Whack behind me, and a sound like angel bells, beautiful, glorious, the tinkle of glass breaking. Juliet had broken through the window—
Without even a yell or a curse for warning, the top of the door exploded in, shards of wood flying like bomb shrapnel. Over the top of the sofa my dream nightmare man came flying, shoulders first, smashing into me—incidentally, I think, because I happened to be in the way. I landed butt first on my back, my breath knocked out, seeing without quite understanding as He somersaulted to His feet, lunged at Juliet, grabbed her by the ankles, and flung her off the table.
She hit the floor headfirst.
I staggered to my feet and pointed my gun at Him. “Stop it!” I yelled.
He gave me that wooden look. “Dumb fuck,” He said, striding toward me, “you don’t know how to use that.”
He was right, of course. My hand shook so badly I was afraid I’d hit Juliet if I fired at Him. But on TV guns were magic, right? Shoot one and everybody got scared and scuttled away except the police, who came running. I pointed the pistol in a vaguely upward direction, closed my eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
Click. Nothing happened.
I opened my eyes to find His face inches from mine, His glare freezing me witless. He grabbed the pistol by the barrel and wrenched it away from me. In the same swift movement He clobbered me on the head with the handle. Hard. Knocked me out.
* * *
“I’m sorry I dragged you out here,” Sam said as he and the craggy old cop walked back toward the parking lot where they’d left the Silverado. “I don’t know what I expected to prove.”
The old guy gave him a wry look. “Nobody expects you to prove a thing. That’s the FBI’s job.”
“Just the same, I’m wasting your time.”
“What else would I be doing, making coffee?”
Sam sensed that the safest response would be not to respond. In silence he and the gray-haired officer crunched across the gravel back to the pickup truck.
Opening the passenger’s-side door, Sam got in. Outside the day was turning sunny and fine, but in Sam’s mind the weather was a snowing, freezing blank. He couldn’t see farther than his next step—the old cop would drive him back to the Appletree police station, and after that, he just wanted to lie down and give in. Escape from this all-too-real nightmare. Sleep and never wake up.
As he sat in the car, blearily gazing at the hulking derelict that had once been a nice solid
brick building, his glance caught once again on the graffiti. Too tired and discouraged to turn away, he automatically read:
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
Sam sat bolt upright, all thoughts of stopping, rest, and sleep forgotten. “Officer Bert,” he whispered to the man getting into the driver’s seat next to him.
“Just call me Bert. I’m no proper cop anymore.”
CANDY GOT LAID HERE. That was what it said. Sam’s nightmare had just worsened in a way, but in another way things were turning around. He had something solid to grab hold of now.
“Officer Bert,” he repeated without taking in a word the other man was saying, “who wrote that?”
“Who wrote what?”
Sam pointed. “Candy got . . .” He couldn’t say the rest of it.
“Now, that’s interesting.” Bert settled behind the steering wheel with the air of a man in no hurry. “That there particular message,” he drawled in his gravelly baritone, “has been in place for close to twenty years. The library staff scrubbed it off and within a day somebody painted it back on. They painted over it, painted the whole damn foundation, and within a couple days again somebody wrote it back on. They painted over it again and hired a guard and still somebody wrote it back on. And so it went for five, ten years. The library board won’t admit it, but the scuttlebutt around town is that graffiti drove them out of this building.”
“But—who—”
“Nobody knows who put it there or who keeps putting it there and nobody has a clue who Candy is or—”
Sam whispered, “My wife.”
“—or was—” Bert stopped short, gawking at Sam.
Only marginally aware of the old cop’s surprise, Sam found himself stumbling out of the pickup. As if drawn by a skewed gravitational force, he trudged past the few other vehicles parked in the lot, stopping when he reached the looming brick building. Almost close enough to spit on it, he took in the basement wall’s message again, letter by letter.
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
Mostly numb, Sam began to feel anger stirring like molten lava in his core. At first he didn’t recognize the fiery earthquake feeling, for Sam seldom became angry, and never had he felt such marrow-deep wrath at anyone. Then he comprehended, and focused: What bastard had written this thing? How could the man be human? How could anyone of humankind have done this to Dorrie? Okay, he knew now that Dorrie hadn’t been a virgin when he’d married her, and he knew that, given some time to chew on the facts and swallow them and digest them, he could accept that some boy had made love to Dorrie and given her a baby. Heck, every boy who’d ever known Dorrie should have fallen in love with her.
Or—suppose it wasn’t love. Okay, Sam considered that, again, given time, he could probably even accept—no, not accept really, but understand—if some young Romeo had found Dorrie physically attractive and had persuaded her to have casual sex with him. A teenager, either gender, is pretty much a mess of hormones sneaking around on uncertain feet. Nobody could blame Dorrie for wanting to find out what it was all about. With some boy, okay, Sam could handle that concept.
But this . . . this indecent braggadocio . . .
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
“What did you say?” asked a hushed, gravelly voice by Sam’s side.
Sam had to shut his eyes for a moment before he managed to voice it again, rather harshly. “I said, my wife.”
* * *
“. . . now my whole freaking day is freaking ruined. It was supposed to be perfect, don’t you understand, Candy baby. First the sugar and then the strawberries and then the cherry and finally the chocolate and the red red syrup running together, perfect and beautiful and tragic like in a movie, but the silly Candy girl had to go and break my lightproofing and my spy periscope and my window and now the way things are supposed to go is just all freaking fucked-up and little baby Candy has to sit in the corner while I get rid of dumb-ass Marie, it’s all her fault. My sweet Candy girl wouldn’t have done a single bad thing to my spy periscope if that ugly bitch hadn’t butted her fat nose in. Now, silly Candy girl, just sit back and take a rest, hold still . . .”
I heard His nattering voice, a knife-edge of saccharine near-hysteria in His tone, as I regained consciousness. Without opening my eyes, I lay leaden still, listening. To say I was playing possum would be a lie. I’d given up. Didn’t feel as if I could move ever again. Down-and-out, flattened, exhausted, every part of my body moaning in pain and fever from lupus, while my heart and soul were harrowed by misery, and—and what could I do? What could I possibly do? This madman who broke down doors, He would break me in half to have whatever He wanted.
“. . . hold still and give me a nice deep juicy sweet kiss the way I taught you.”
Without turning my head, I opened my eyes. Even that slight movement hurt. Peripherally I could see that He had Juliet sitting in one of the aluminum chairs. The overhead light remained turned off, but rays of sunshine sifted down from the high window she had mostly uncovered. I saw Him, backlit like an angel and dark as a devil, bending over her. He’d ripped my coat off her; it lay beside her chair like something dead. At first I thought the glinty gray stuff obscuring her wrists was part of the chair; then I saw that He had duct-taped her hands behind her, arms wrenched around the chairback. And He’d duct-taped her feet to the chair legs.
“C’mon, Candy. Give me a kiss and I’ll put this on your mouth nice and easy.”
Bending over her, He held a rectangle of duct tape in one hand, His ever-loving knife in the other. I couldn’t see Juliet’s face. She had twisted her head to the side.
“No, silly little girl, don’t turn away or Pandora will cut right into your pretty cheek.” With His knife hand He forced her to face Him. She looked sick.
With that shiny bright edge in His voice He told her, “See, I’m stronger. The man is supposed to be stronger. That’s the poetry of it. Now give me a deep, deep, sweet suck-your-candy kiss.”
His mouth locked over hers.
God fry His soul, that pervert would have to kill me before I let Him do that to my daughter. Gathering all the slight strength I had left in me, I lifted my head to start struggling to get up.
At the same time I saw defiance flash in Juliet’s eyes. I saw muscle ripple in her jaw.
With a choked scream He jerked away from her. Blood thinned by saliva seeped from His mouth. His face clenched stone white. “Bitch!” He slapped her hard across the face; then in almost the same movement, as if He’d had practice, He smacked the duct tape onto her mouth.
Out of the deepest anger I’d ever experienced, a blast of energy erupted, volcanic, within me to hoist me to my feet.
I knew what I had to do.
I flung myself over the back of the sofa and out through what was left of the door.
* * *
“Last I heard, her name was Dorrie Birch White.”
“She goes by Dorrie. Her proper name is Candor.”
“Candor . . . When she was a kid they called her Candy?”
Only one person that Sam knew of. But at the thought of the love letters he’d found under the mattress—Dearest Candy, My Very Own Candy, Sweet Sweet Candy—his teeth clenched so tight he couldn’t speak.
“Well,” said old Bert gruffly after a pause, “if your wife saw this, it explains what might have made her lose control of her car and run it up over the curb—”
“But where is she!” Sam wanted to shout it, but the words came out choked and low.
“Depends on why she came here, I guess.”
Why. Why? His brain hazed by worry and lack of sleep and, face it, hurt feelings, Sam couldn’t begin to think—
Had to think.
Look. I’m a businessman. All the time I deal with people’s motives, people’s hidden agendas. Every day I’ve got to figure someone out.
But he’d never really tried to figure out Dorrie. His own wife.
I’ve been scared to.
Scared, not knowing why, even though Dorrie was a good woman. Loyal. Honorable.
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
Bert said, “Maybe she’s been getting funny feelings the way women do sometimes, and she took a notion to head back home, you know, just to think things over.”
Sam broke his gaze away from “CANDY GOT LAID HERE.” He shook his head. Clenched his fists. Swung around to face the old cop and almost shouted, “She was at the mall. She saw the Phillips girl get abducted. She phoned in a description of the vehicle. A van—”
Sam found himself looking straight at it.
There it sat. Parked behind the old man.
Speechless for a moment, gawking, Sam pointed.
“Huh?” Bert turned.
Sam found his voice and spoke, although not very cogently. “It’s exactly the color of a Weimaraner.”
* * *
After landing on the hard floor outside that awful room, I couldn’t quite get myself standing upright, but crawling was not a good option when there was a long skirt in the way. Somehow, half-standing, hanging on to the wall, a crippled mother hen, I hitched down the hallway.
He would come after me. He would leave Juliet alone to come after me. He had to come after me. He knew by now that He’d have to kill me before He could do a thing to her.
I made it past detritus lying on the threadbare carpet outside the bathroom—shattered glass, shards of wood, a heavy porcelain cover off a toilet tank. Maybe He had used it to shatter the transom. What did it matter? My mind had no time or strength to spare for what had already happened. Every thought had to be focused on what to do now.
I tottered onward to the end of the hallway, as far as possible from Juliet. When I could go no farther, I turned. Back against the wall. Literally. I needed to lean against that crude wooden barrier for support.
As I turned, I saw that, yes, He had followed me. The man of my lifelong dreams and my current nightmare stood halfway down the hallway, watching me struggle. He knew I couldn’t go far, and I felt that He was amused, probably, or gloating, although the flat wooden look on His face hadn’t changed.
Dark Lie (9781101607084) Page 16
