“It was your letter, of course, in your boyfriend’s mailbox. That was the first piece of mail he’d received in a week, so I figured there was a good chance that it was from you. The postmark gave me the city, and you said you were on the fourteenth floor, which narrowed down the number of hotels I had to check before I found a family that got all their meals through room service.”
“What are you planning to do with us?” Lorelei asked him. “There can’t be any reason to harm my granddaughter.”
“She’s served her purpose,” Vamp said. “She brought me here. Her only use to me now is as a hostage. Family men like Corrigan turn into pussycats when they hear their beloved children pleading and crying.”
“I told you, Dad’s gone,” I said. “We don’t know where.”
“That’s quite all right,” said Vamp. “I don’t mind waiting.”
“For all we know, he may not be coming back here!”
“I think he will.” He gave me his tight-lipped smile. “This is his nest, and he’s bound to return eventually.”
“This is insane!” I cried. “Dad doesn’t know anything! He never had evidence against anybody but Loftin!”
“The people I work for don’t take chances,” said the hit man. “Too many lives are involved and too much is at stake. I’m going to have to stash you ladies somewhere. April, you’re familiar with the house. Why don’t you take your grandma and me on a tour of it?”
So we walked down the hall together, with stupid Porky romping ahead of us, still wagging his tail. I’d passed the point of fear and had settled into numbness, as though I had no connection with what was happening. Visions of people I loved leapt into my mind as if each one had come to bid me good-bye. I saw Dad’s gentle smile and hopeful expression as he suggested our ill-fated trip to Disney World. I saw Mom at the typewriter, lost in a world of her own creation, and my brother, his small face radiant after riding in a teacup. I saw Steve and Jodi and Sherry, and I even saw Jim Peterson with his craggy face and his arms piled high with packages.
Jim, I whispered silently, Jim, I’m so sorry! I’m the one who did it, I called in the vampire. I was stupid and selfish and caused a tragedy to happen, and now, god help me, I’ve done the same thing again.
It was dumb, Jim had said, and I actually heard his voice as clear and kind as though he were walking beside me. You’re a kid from the reality TV generation, April. You can’t believe real-life stories don’t always have happy endings. You were dumb, all right, but dumb’s not the same as stupid. You’ve got a brain, so get on the ball and use it.
Our tour was abruptly over at the end of the hallway.
“I don’t care which room you lock us in,” I said dully. “A bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you do, though, please don’t make it a closet. I can’t stand being shut in a place without windows.”
“I’m afraid you won’t have much of a choice,” Vamp said. I didn’t need to look to know he was smiling. “I’m going to have to barricade the door, and only the closets have doors that open outward.”
We ended up in the walk-in closet in my parents’ room, jabbed by hangers and nearly smothered by clothing. As we heard the sound of the dresser being shoved against the door, Lorelei said bitterly, “He took such joy in doing this. You should never have told him you have claustrophobia. This is a man who gets pleasure from making people suffer.”
“I know,” I said. “But things aren’t as bad as they might be. Brer Fox doesn’t know it yet, but he’s thrown us in the briar patch.”
CHAPTER 18
I reached up and groped for the string that triggered the closet light. It took me a while to find it, and I was beginning to panic at the thought that it might have broken or come loose from the overhead fixture when it suddenly brushed my hand like the edge of a cobweb, and I grabbed it and pulled.
The bulb went on, and my grandmother’s face appeared inches from my own, taut with a combination of fear and exhaustion. Still, she managed to ask calmly, “What are you talking about? Why did you want that man to shut us in a closet?”
“Because the closets in this house have escape hatches,” I said, pointing at the ceiling directly above us, where a rectangular piece of plywood was set into the plaster.
“I see,” she murmured thoughtfully. “A trapdoor to the attic. But what possible good will it do us for you to climb up there? Won’t that be exchanging one prison for another?”
“There’s a door in the closet in Jas—Bram’s room too,” I told her, remembering she wouldn’t know his new name. “He and his friends climb up and use the attic for a hideout. If I canget across and climb down into his room, I may be able to escape from the house and get help.”
“Are you going to be able to get up there?” Lorelei asked doubtfully. “There’s nothing in the closet you can use for a stepladder, and with my arm like it is, I can’t even give you a boost.”
“That won’t be a problem,” I said. “Getting up will be easy. The part I’m worried about is getting back down.”
I made a hasty survey of the contents of the closet. As Lorelei said, it contained nothing but clothing, but the clothes bar was firmly attached to supports behind the walls and appeared to be sturdy enough to bear my weight. Taking a pair of Dad’s trousers down from their hanger, I slung them across the bar so they straddled it with one of the legs hanging down on either side. Then I knotted the cuffs together to form a loop and inserted my foot as though I were mounting a horse. Catching hold of the edge of the shelf at the top of the closet, I straightened until I was standing upright in the stirrup with my shoulders braced against the trapdoor above me. When I shoved against the partition, it lifted easily, and within minutes I had hauled myself up into the attic.
Heat and dampness poured over me like a tidal wave, along with the pungent odors of bananas and peanut butter. The open trapdoor allowed enough light to filter up from the closet so I could see for several feet, but beyond that limited area there was absolute blackness.
Lorelei called up to me softly, “Is everything all right?”
“There’s not as much room as I’d hoped there would be,” I told her. “I thought it would be a full attic that you could stand up in, but at this end, at least, it’s not much more than a crawl space. I can’t understand why the boys like to play up here.”
I stared into the darkness, trying to get oriented. I knew the general direction of Jason’s room, but without any landmarks to guide me, it was hard to gauge distance. To make matters worse, the floor wasn’t boarded over, but was composed of narrow beams connected by sheets of plywood so flimsy I was afraid to put my weight on them. It was hard to imagine how my brother and his friends had managed to play there without crashing down through the ceiling to land on top of us.
I drew a deep breath and, praying I could keep from falling, began to inch my way along the network of planking on my hands and knees. My chief concern was to move as silently as possible. I tried to visualize the pattern of the rooms beneath me—my parents’ bedroom, the hallway, the bathroom, and Jason’s room. Where in the house would Vamp be now? I asked myself, and decided he was probably in the living room, since from there he would be able to watch from the window and see the lights of a car pulling into the driveway.
The roof peaked at the center of the attic, allowing me enough head space so I could stand up and walk. That proved harder than crawling, however, since I had to bend double at the waist, which made it almost impossible to keep my balance on the beams. Regretfully, I returned to my hands and knees and continued on in that manner until I felt the ceiling brush the top of my head at the exact same angle it had above my parents’ closet. Since Jason’s room was the mirror image of theirs, I could only assume his closet lay just ahead of me.
I crawled on for several more feet but couldn’t find the door. I ran my hands across the plywood sheeting between the support planks, but found neither cracks nor any indication of a handle. What I did come in contact with
was an open-face peanut butter sandwich that stuck to my hand as though it were spread with glue, and next to that, a bunch of overripe bananas and a Ziploc bag that had evidently once contained cookies.
The fact that I’d come upon the boys’ stash of food supplies gave me hope that I was not too far from the door. I continued to fumble around in all directions, but all I had to show for my efforts were splinters. Then my knuckles bumped against something metallic. I slid my hand across the cylindrical object, and my heart gave a leap as my thumb encountered a button. It was like being handed an unexpected present. My brother had left me the best gift of all, a flashlight.
I pressed the switch, and the world jumped into place. The trap door I was searching for was diagonally across from me, just far enough away so I hadn’t been able to locate it. A nail had been driven partway into it to form a handle, and when I gripped it and pulled, the door swung easily upward. Although the closet light wasn’t on, the rectangular opening was illuminated by a faint yellow glow, and when I leaned over to peer down into it, I saw that both the closet and bedroom doors were open and the darkness was being diluted by light from the hall.
Perched on the beam that ran parallel to the opening, I let my legs dangle down into the space below me. Then, lowering myself until I was partially supported by the clothes bar, I allowed myself to drop the rest of the way to the floor.
Because I was wearing tennis shoes, I landed softly, like a cat dropping out of a tree onto a cushion of grass. When I emerged from the closet into my brother’s room, my first choice would have been to escape through the window, but Jason’s window was as small as the one in my room, and even he could not have squeezed through it.
That left me no alternative but to leave by a door. If, as I assumed, Mike Vamp had positioned himself by the window at the front of the house, the only escape route left to me was through the kitchen. Turning off the flashlight, but still gripping it tightly, I crept across the room to the doorway and stood there listening for sounds from the living room. When I didn’t hear any, I thrust a tentative foot out into the hall and paused again, more nervous than ever from the oppressive silence. Cautiously I eased my way into the hall, hating the thought of being so exposed and vulnerable. A floorboard creaked, and I almost jumped through the ceiling, but to my relief there was still no response from the living room. It was as though I were being granted some special dispensation that permitted me to move through the house unnoticed.
Creeping down the hall, I slipped into the kitchen. The overhead light was still on, and on the floor at the base of the counter lay the phone I had dropped when I’d seen the face at the window. The receiver was off the hook and beeping urgently like a small, dependent child torn away from its mother. The sound seemed to bounce off the walls and echo through the house. It was hard to imagine how anyone could ignore it.
When I crossed the room to the back door, I was momentarily disconcerted to find that it was no longer locked, but I didn’t give myself time to absorb the significance of that fact. The exciting knowledge that freedom was that close was so intoxicating it dulled my ability to reason. Lulled into a sense of security by my luck so far, I yanked open the door and stepped out into the yard.
At some point since our arrival, the rain had stopped. Like most Florida storms, this one had ended abruptly, leaving in its wake a calm, wet world, filled with the song of frogs cavorting in puddles and the high-pitched sawing of crickets hidden in the underbrush. High in the sky a thin, bleached moon peeped shyly out through a hole in the clouds, slimmer than it had been the night of Amy’s party and guarded on either side by an entourage of stars.
I was halfway down the steps when Porky started barking. My first reaction was to wonder what could have triggered him. If he hadn’t heard me drop down into Jason’s closet, it seemed strange that he would react to my slipping from the house. It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t inside and the barking was coming, instead, from the yard to my left. An instant later, I saw a pale blur streaking toward me, yipping in delight at the momentous discovery that I was no longer sealed away in a closet but was now available to join in a game of tag.
Which was just what it must have seemed when I started running. Even before I heard Mike Vamp behind me, I was racing across the yard and around the corner of the porch. And it was no wonder I hadn’t been detected when I crept down the hall! No wonder the house had seemed so improbably quiet! I hadn’t been heard because there had been no one to hear me. Vamp had not been waiting for my parents in the living room; instead, he had been lying in wait for them in the yard.
At the end of the drive, Lorelei’s car lights seemed to beckon to me. In my rush to reassure myself that the car in the ditch was unoccupied, I had neglected to turn off the headlights of the Porsche, and they now blazed forth like twin beacons in a low-set lighthouse. With those to guide me, I increased my speed as I ran, terribly conscious of the pounding footsteps behind me. I had in my favor the fact that I knew the terrain, the location of all the shrubbery, trees, and potholes. I easily skirted the bushes that lined the driveway and could tell by his curses that my pursuer had collided with them.
Porky was still barking gleefully as he scampered along behind me, having fun with this new game. Then I heard a yelp and a thud and another burst of swearing and realized that Vamp had stumbled over the dog, giving me a chance to increase the distance between us.
I reached the car, hurled myself into it, and slammed the door, punching the lock button a split second before Vamp’s hand struck the handle. I reached frantically down to see if the key was in the ignition. To my relief, it was, and I gave it a savage twist, rewarded by a guttural rumble of protest. I tried again, and this time was greeted by silence. Even to someone who knew as little about cars as I did, it was obvious that the lights had run down the battery.
The muzzle of a pistol was now pressed to the window.
“Unlock that door and get out of the car,” Vamp shouted, his gentlemanly facade a thing of the past. “Your father’s the one I want, not you or your grandma. When my job here is done, the rest of the family can go.”
He made it sound so inevitable; as if my father’s murder were a foregone conclusion.
Staring out through the window into the face of death, I wondered if those strange eyes had ever held light, even when they belonged to a newborn baby. Jim had been right when he’d said happy endings weren’t mandatory. This was no scripted TV show, it was hard-core reality. I had been the creator of this true-life drama, and I was the one responsible for its ending.
What I did next wasn’t planned, it simply happened. Without shifting my gaze from Vamp’s, I slid my right arm between the bucket seats and groped until my hand closed upon the handle of my tennis racket. Then I switched off the headlights, and the yard went black. The thin slip of moon was once again shrouded in clouds, and the lighted front window of the house was shielded by bushes. With my left hand I picked up the flashlight, my thumb on the switch.
“You win,” I said. “I’ll get out,” and I opened the door.
If I’d had more time to think, I might not have done it. I’d been raised by gentle parents, and my only exposure to violence had been at the movies and from watching TV. To keep myself from panicking, I blocked out the present and pictured myself on a tennis court in the early morning with cocky, self-assured Larry standing across from me.
“You’re pretty good for a girl!” I imagined him calling tauntingly, and I willed myself to respond with exaggerated anger. Sliding out of the car, I turned on the flashlight and directed the beam into the startled eyes of the hit man. The sudden, blinding glare caught him unawares, and I didn’t pause to find out how he was going to react to it. With my right hand gripping the racket handle and my legs widespread for balance, I swung my serving arm up and over my head. I told myself the pale oval was a tennis ball and this was the serve that was going to decide the match. It seemed as though I was moving very slowly, but actually it all happened in a m
atter of seconds. With my arm stretched high in the air, I turned the racket on edge and brought it slicing down with all my strength directly into the face of the man in front of me.
The blow landed so hard that the racket flew out of my hand, and the hit man went staggering back to the edge of the ditch. For a moment he teetered there like a circus performer gone out of control on a high-wire, spotlighted by the cruel white beam of the flashlight. Then his eyes rolled back and his legs crumbled under him, and as I stood there motionless, paralyzed with horror, he went plunging backward over the edge of the embankment.
The soul-chilling sound of the splash snapped me back into motion. With a few swift strides I was at the edge of the drainage ditch, staring down into what was now a fast-flowing river. The beam of the flashlight played across the surface, but there was no sign of either a man or a vampire.
The hit man was gone, as though he had never existed. And perhaps he hadn’t, I thought. Had he ever been real? Perhaps he was just a figment of a fever dream. Perhaps I would wake in the morning in Princess April’s Chamber and smile at the silly nightmare that had seemed so real to me. But even as I tried to make myself believe that, I was sliding down the embankment into the ditch, preparing to undertake the most gruesome search of my life. I walked that portion of ditch at least three dozen times that night, feeling around with my feet for what I didn’t want to find.
When I was finally able to concede it was hopeless, I didn’t have enough strength left to climb back out again. I don’t knowhow long I stood there in water up to my rib cage, fighting the pull of the current and waiting for morning. It might have been hours, it might have been only minutes, but that was where it was that my family found me when Tom Geist drove the three of them home from the hospital.
It was my father who climbed into the ditch to get me, and carried me in his arms back up to the house. Tom remained to continue the search for the body, which he found wedged between the front wheels of the Plymouth and the culvert. Then, as the sky in the east began to grow light and the branches of the trees filled with riotous birdsong, we gathered in our living room to compose the final chapter of the Weber family story.