Jacob rose to standing, stubbed out his cigarette.
“You know things now,” he informed me. “Got your hands dirty yourself. No matter what happens. You’re now one of us. Welcome to the club.”
Chapter 36
MY THIN PINE SHARD, meticulously peeled down to slip into the doorjamb, splinters the second I try to use it to jimmy the door latch. I sit back on my heels in the dark, holding the remnants in my hand. I could try again, but what would be the point? The pine is soft and thin. The door is solid and heavy. Using one to pry open the other is never gonna happen.
Behind me, the girl whimpers. I track the sound to the far left corner.
“Yeah, I know,” I say out loud, encouraging contact. I can’t see her in the dark, which makes sound more important. Like mine, her hands are now free, her arms unrestricted. God only knows what she’ll do next. Jump me from behind. Go for my throat. Just because she’s a victim doesn’t mean she’s innocent. I know that well enough.
Survivors do what survivors must do in order to survive.
“Shut up, Samuel,” I mutter out loud, which makes the girl whimper again.
I rise to standing, stretching out my arms, flexing my wrists, which feels good. Then I contemplate my options.
No sound from outside. No shadowy movements in the viewing window. So far, the girl and I have been unshackled for at least thirty minutes, and there’s been no response from the peanut gallery. Evil Kidnapper doesn’t realize we’re on the loose yet? Or doesn’t care?
How did he get pine coffins in here without me ever waking?
How did he snatch me out of my own apartment without me ever fighting?
“Stop it,” I order myself. Now is not the time to analyze the past. Now is the time to move forward.
“Who’s out there?” I ask the girl as I roam our dark prison, searching for anything that might make a better crowbar than slivers of cheap wood.
She doesn’t talk.
“Did you know Devon?” I ask. It takes me a minute to remember his full name, told to me forever ago while I was sitting in the back of a patrol car. “Devon Goulding. Bartender. Amazing pecs. Works at Tonic. Did you know him?”
No more whimper. A sharp inhale. Recognition. I would swear it.
“I killed him,” I say, my voice just as conversational. “I tossed antifreeze and potassium permanganate onto his head and shoulders. Chemical fire. Burned him alive.”
Another shocked inhale.
“Does that make you happy? To know that he suffered. That he’s dead. Or do you miss him?”
I don’t mean for my voice to sound understanding, even wistful. But these things happen.
“The man’s dead?” Her voice sounds hoarse, but at least she’s finally talking to me.
“I didn’t kidnap you,” I say.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know what happened to you?”
She doesn’t answer. I should’ve stuck with understanding. Compassion is not my strong suit.
“Tonic nightclub. Downtown Boston. Ring a bell?” I’ve come to the plastic bucket. I pick it up, heft it for weight. A metal handle would’ve been nice. Even a plastic one might’ve worked. But I’m not that lucky. Which means there’s nothing to harvest as a pry bar. What if I threw the bucket at the viewing window, went for shattering glass? I twist the bucket in my hands, already skeptical. It’s too light, the one-way mirror no doubt being heavy-duty. I keep the bucket with me for now, however. If the girl rushes me, I can always use it to conk her over the head, Three Stooges style.
“Tonic,” the girl whispers, as if recalling a name from another lifetime ago.
“Black walls, blue lights, killer bands,” I begin, then halt myself. Black walls. Unbidden, I cross to the right until I hit one of the walls in question. Floor, wall, ceiling, windows all covered in black paint. Could that be coincidence?
Devon Goulding surprised me Friday night. The bartender with the amazing pecs suddenly appearing and taking out my initial target. And yet, regaining consciousness in his garage . . . He felt arrogant and inexperienced to me. A predator, sure, but this kind of predator?
With a blacked-out room, penchant for silk nighties, and elaborate shackle system?
Not to mention, I took him down, and yet here I am.
And yet, and yet . . . A nightclub famous for its blacked-out bar. And a room now covered entirely in black paint. Could that really be a coincidence? Which makes me wonder what else I’d missed Friday night.
Several of Stacey’s friends had said they frequented Tonic as well as Birches. Not to mention the staff at both places were friendly with one another, getting off duty at one club to go grab drinks at the other, given the close proximity. In my mind, that made it worth checking out. After all, the staff at Birches had been cleared in Stacey’s disappearance, but what about the folks down the street at Tonic?
Long shot, maybe, but apparently closer than I’d thought.
“Birches,” I say out loud, just to see what kind of reaction I can get from my cell mate.
She inhales again, her official sound of recognition.
“Stacey Summers,” I state.
She doesn’t reply as much as she whimpers. Affirmation, denial? What I’d give for the tiniest beam of light.
“Last thing you remember?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer. I search my brain for a better approach. What did I remember in the beginning? Or perhaps, more accurately, what did I allow myself to still know? Because it’s not like you magically forget your entire life, identity, the people who loved you. It’s more like you box them up, put the images away. Because thinking of such things, knowing such things, is simply too hard. Those memories make you human, which is inconsistent with your current role as an inanimate object.
And just because the police one day spring through the door, black armored beetles toting weapons and shouting orders, doesn’t magically open up the mental attic. If anything, I locked down harder, as disoriented by freedom as I’d once been by life in a coffin-shaped box.
I’ve found the girl. Stumbled upon her, quite literally, in my search for resources. She is curled up in the corner, my foot having tripped over her own. She flinches at the contact. I can feel her recoil, then, when there’s no place for her to retreat, make herself smaller.
It tugs at me. Another response I know too well. Tried so many times myself. Except it never worked. Jacob always got his way in the end.
Until that very last moment, his brains and blood in my hair . . .
I kneel down. I keep my voice soft.
“I dreamed of foxes,” I whisper to this girl in the dark. “I dreamed I ran with them through the woods. I dreamed I was wild and free. And though I always woke up again, it felt good to dream.”
She doesn’t answer.
“It’s okay, you know. Survivors do what survivors have to do. Samuel told me that. When we get out of here, I’ll introduce you to him. You’d like him.”
Then, when she still doesn’t respond:
“You’ll have bad nights after this. It’s funny. You escape, but you never really get away. You don’t realize what a comfort it is to go through life thinking, that will never happen to me, until, of course, that assurance is gone. And every story in the news, every article you read in the paper . . . all you can think is that could be you. I studied. That’s what I did. I learned self-defense so next time a fat, sweaty piece of shit couldn’t snatch me off the beach. I learned to pick locks so I would never be shackled again.” I rub my wrists, smile ruefully in the dark. “At least that part worked. What I’m trying to say is, the fear never really goes away, but there are options. You can build a life. You can be a person again. Look at Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard. There are success stories.”
I’m just not one of t
hem. I don’t say that. I don’t want to demoralize her. And my failings don’t have to be her own.
My goal, my one mission in life, certainly isn’t the stuff of happily-ever-afters.
I only spoke it out loud once, five years ago. I leaned down and whispered my promise in Jacob’s ear. I told him exactly what I was going to do one day. Right before I placed the barrel of the gun against the top of his head and pulled the trigger.
His blood and brains in my hair.
Not all of my dreams are nightmares.
“Devon Goulding is dead.” I test the waters one last time. “I know. I personally killed him.”
The girl finally speaks. “You don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to.”
“You shouldn’t have hurt him.”
“Had to. It was Friday night.”
“Now, it will be worse.”
“What will be worse?”
“Whatever happens next,” she says quietly, “it will be much, much worse.”
* * *
I LEAVE HER IN THE CORNER. I’m tired of doom and gloom. What I want is escape. I return to the mattress, encountering the spring coil I bent into my makeshift lock pick. I’ve been picturing in my head a long, flat object to jimmy open the door. Now, I switch gears. Maybe a mattress coil would work. It’s stiffer than the pine. And if I curved the end into the shape of a spoon, or one of those things used to dip hard-boiled eggs into coffee mugs of colored Easter dye . . .
I’ve got nothing better to try.
I wrestle with the mattress again, removing piles of foam and stuffing with my hands, releasing more musty, herbal smells. I sneeze several times but soldier on. The coils are tied together. I can’t see how in the dark, so I have to poke, prod, twist, and turn, with fingertips that are already shredded and bloody. Converting the top of one coil into a lock pick was a far easier operation. This, trying to remove an entire spring, proves nearly impossible. Again, my kingdom for a single beam of light. If I could just see what I was doing . . .
My bruised fingers start to feel heavy, numb. I’m tired. So very tired. I just want to lie down, get some sleep. I find my eyes dragging shut, have to force them open. The stress is catching up with me. I’m hungry again but, without any sense of time, have no idea how long it’s been since I last ate.
Hungry. Thirsty. Water somewhere. I should take a nap. Except, of course, I still have to extract the damn coil.
My eyes drifting closed . . .
Fingers latching on to my shoulders, suddenly digging in.
I jolt awake, twisting frantically, tossing back an elbow. But the girl, having finally roused herself, is surprisingly strong.
“The mattress,” she’s saying. “You have to get away from the mattress. Away. Away.”
I try to pull free, but my movements are too sluggish. Then, just as suddenly as she grabbed me, she lets me go. I collapse back, an ungainly beetle with my arms and legs in the air.
I have to blink my eyes, concentrate to right myself. Even then, I feel groggy and I still want to sleep.
“It’s in the mattress,” she says.
“What’s in the mattress?” I mutter.
“I don’t know. But the mattress . . . You’ll sleep. It makes you sleep.”
The mattress is drugged, or contaminated or laced with something. That’s what she’s trying to tell me.
I’d been right in the beginning. The room is booby-trapped, except it’s not sleeping powder in the bottled water or some kind of knockout gas in the ventilation system. It’s the mattress.
“We need the mattress spring,” I hear myself. “I got it out. Must be someplace near the top. We need it.”
The girl doesn’t answer. She moves, dragging her feet in the dark. Her side, of course. She’s still injured and walking must be painful. But she doesn’t complain as she shuffles back to the mattress, feels around with her hand.
Then she’s back. I feel the wire pressed against my arm.
“I don’t understand who you are,” she says.
“A girl, just like you. Except once upon a time, I escaped from the dark.”
“You can get us out of here?”
“Yes.”
“Far, far away? I don’t want to ever come back.”
“You’re a survivor,” I tell her, tell myself. “You can do anything.”
“I want to go home.”
“Tell me your name. You want to get out of here? You have to remember who you really are.”
It takes her a bit. I understand. I know how these things work. I’ve been there myself.
Because it’s one thing to survive. It is much, much harder to truly live.
“My name is Stacey Summers,” she whispers. “And I just want to see my parents again.”
I can’t comment. My throat has closed up. There are too many things I want to say, and none of them are enough.
Instead, I pick up the mattress coil. I work it with my poor bloody fingers, looping it around, folding it in on itself, until it’s a stiffer, spoonier version of itself. Then I find the door again.
It takes me a bit to wiggle out the pieces of broken wood. Then the edge is cleared, and it’s just me, a jury-rigged mattress spring, and two girls’ wildest dreams. Poke, wiggle, push, shimmy. Again, and again.
And suddenly, almost imperceptibly, I can hear it. The tiniest, softest click of the latch suppressing in the lock plate.
I push. Very gently. Almost timidly.
The door moves. The door opens.
I have no idea what will happen next.
Chapter 37
WE FOUND KRISTY KILKER,” D.D. informed her boss, Cal Horgan.
“How certain?”
“Ninety percent. Ben identified a butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder blade. Mother confirmed Kristy has the same. Dental records will be the slam dunk. But we’re fairly confident the remains are Kristy Kilker.”
“What about Stacey Summers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wasn’t there a second girl? Another license you found in the Goulding kid’s bedroom?”
“Natalie Draga from Alabama. Don’t know about her either.”
“Flora Dane?” Horgan asked.
“So,” D.D. reported, “we found Kristy Kilker.”
“And one out of four ain’t bad?” Horgan arched a brow at her. She scowled. Her boss switched gears: “Any theories of the crime?”
“The perpetrator favors glittered hair gel.”
“Seriously?”
“Actually, I have no idea. We’re still waiting for the lab reports on our various samples. But we found gold glitter outside Flora’s apartment, as well as on Kristy’s hair, as well as in the bathroom at the nightclub Tonic.”
“Tonic?”
“Devon Goulding worked there. Same with Natalie Draga until her own disappearance. As for the other missing persons, they have frequented the nightclub, including Stacey Summers. Her friends confirmed they went there on occasion. And two of them shared that information with Flora Dane.”
Horgan folded his hands across his stomach. “Which would seem to confirm that Devon Goulding was behind all the girls’ disappearances, including Stacey Summers’s.”
D.D. hesitated.
“Spit it out, Detective.”
“We didn’t find anything in Goulding’s place to tie him to Stacey Summers. Why keep trophies of two victims but not the third?”
“She was higher profile. And he was caught on tape abducting her. That might have spooked him.”
“I don’t think that’s how these guys work. I think trophies fall under the compulsive part of their behavior. Plus, where’s Stacey’s body? Where’s Natalie’s body? Why did we find one but not the other two?”
Horgan studied her.
“Then, of
course, there’s the matter of Flora Dane,” D.D. continued, “who disappeared after Goulding died. Except in her case . . . We don’t even know that she was abducted. It’s possible she simply walked away. Not probable, but possible.”
“What do you know again?” her boss asked her.
“Good news, sir. We found Kristy Kilker’s body.”
* * *
D.D. WAS HAVING THAT KIND OF DAY. That kind of case, really. She retreated to her office and the growing pile of paperwork stacking up on her desk. She stared at the reports, tried to tell herself to be a good restricted duty sergeant. Sit. Read. Dot i’s, cross t’s. Manage. Perhaps somewhere in that mound of files, the next clue awaited. But she didn’t believe it. This case didn’t give up information; it took away common sense.
Knocking. She looked up from her desk to discover Keynes standing in her doorway, impeccably clad as always and bearing a burnished brown leather attaché. She would never call it a murse. At least not to his face.
“Where’s Rosa?” D.D. asked.
“If I were a betting man, I’d say in a kitchen somewhere, baking. Have you allowed her access yet to Flora’s apartment?”
“She paid a visit this morning, as I’m sure you know, but crime scene techs aren’t ready to release the scene.”
Keynes nodded, moved into her office. He was wearing his cashmere coat. She should stand, take it from him, offer a glass of water. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything. She simply sat there, waiting.
“It’s the nightclub Tonic,” she stated abruptly. “Whatever happened to those girls, Tonic had something to do with it. And Devon Goulding. Which reminds me: I’m really angry with Flora. I was peeved when I first arrived at the Goulding crime scene, now I’m pissed. She never should’ve killed him. Devon alive could answer all of our questions. Devon dead, completely worthless. When we find Flora, I plan on charging her with at least half a dozen offenses, just to feel better.”
Keynes removed his coat. Hung it on the coatrack in the corner. Took a seat.