“A pretty blonde. Yeah,” he said. He’d remembered Lori and Jan right away. “The dark-haired woman went to the rest room, and I didn’t see her come back. Then there was a call, for Lori Kelly. I remember because she said that she was Lori and had been Kelly. She talked, and she looked real sick and upset. After the call she was white as a ghost.”
Listening, Sean gripped the bar tightly. “The lady paid with a twenty for a ten-dollar check and left the change. Hey, buddy, watch it. Man, I’m sorry. There was some broken glass there. You just cut your hand—”
Sean looked at his hand. Yeah, he’d cut it, it was bleeding, and he hadn’t felt a thing. He shook his head, absently wrapping a cocktail napkin around the injury.
“What then?”
“Hey, buddy, that looks bad, you may need stitches—”
“What happened to the blonde?”
“She hurried out.”
“Which direction?”
“Uh, toward the parking lot across the street.”
“Jesus!” Brad breathed at his side.
“Thanks,” Sean told the bartender.
“Sure. Anything else I can do?”
Sean shook his head. He followed Brad, who was already halfway toward the door.
“Wait!” Sean said. “Jan—let’s check the ladies’ room.”
It was empty.
Outside, they sprinted for the parking lot but stopped cold at the sound of a faint moaning, coming from behind a dumpster. They immediately went to investigate.
There lay Jan on the ground.
“Jesus!” Brad breathed, hunkering down to her.
“She’s all right, breathing, pulse steady,” Sean said, joining him. Brad lifted Jan.
“Sweetheart?” He patted her cheek lightly with his hand. “Baby, what happened? Where’s Tina, Lori… Brendan?”
Jan’s eyes opened. She stared at Brad, then at Sean, blinking. “Sweet… something sweet… Oh, God, did you hear about Muffy? What am I doing here? Where’s Lori? Wait a minute. The kids, Brad, where are the kids?”
“Weren’t the kids with you?” Brad said.
“They went walking.”
“Where?”
“Around, just on the main streets, around Cocowalk and Mayfair,” Jan said. “What’s wrong. Oh, God, we have to find the kids—”
Brad’s cell phone started to ring. He answered it quickly. “Hello?”
Sean could hear Tina’s voice, she was speaking so loudly, so tearfully, and in such distress. “Daddy? I’m scared! I’m so scared.”
“Jesus, Tina, where are you?”
“At the sub shop. But, Daddy, I can’t find Mom or Lori, and, Daddy… I think he took Brendan.”
“He who?” Brad demanded.
“He… oh, God, the guy in the van!” Tina wailed.
“Oh…” Jan breathed.
Sean grabbed the phone. “Tina, did you see anything?”
“No… but Brendan was with me, and then he wasn’t. I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared.”
“You’re okay. Your folks will be right with you.” Sean handed the phone back to Brad.
“Get Jan and Tina home, Brad,” he said, and left them. He started shouting Lori’s name, racing up and down the rows of cars. On the ground in the third row, there was a lump. Sean bent down.
Lori’s big black purse.
There were tire marks on the road beside it, as if a vehicle had quickly peeled rubber to make a speedy escape. Lori—and Brendan—had been taken away, he was convinced of it.
He closed his eyes tightly. The killer. The killer had her and their son. Desperate, and more cocky, because he thought he was invisible and invincible, he had taken mother and son.
Mandy was dead, then Ellie, Muffy, probably Sue. Only one real clue, under Muffy’s fingernails, a gritty kind of sand…
He stood up, frowning as he realized that Brad had followed him to the parking lot. “I told you to get your family home.”
“Jan’s all right; she’s headed over to get Tina. I called 911; the cops will be with them soon. Jan is really all right; she told me to stay with you, to help you hunt out here for Lori…”
Sean looked at Brad. His old high school friend, his old buddy, chum, pal.
Brad, here with him.
Now. Here with him now.
Could Brad have taken Lori and Brendan away somewhere, and come back? He’d been near the Grove, on a cell phone.
Sean closed his eyes and pictured the sand, the grit, that had been in Muffy’s fingernails. He’d been right; it all related back to the past. The killer murdered his victims one place, and dumped them in the swamp. Killers, Arnie had taught him, often really did return to the scene of the crime.
He knew. He wasn’t just guessing. He knew.
“The rock pit,” Sean said slowly. “The rock pit. The goddamned rock pit!”
“I’ll get my car; it’s fastest,” Brad said.
“Catch me outside the bar; I’ll call the cops.”
“No need!” He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed Sean his cell phone.
Sean started to dial 911, and stopped. If he called 911, the cops would head out for the rock pit with their sirens blaring. If the killer heard sirens, he might butcher Lori and Brendan in a frenzy. He couldn’t call 911.
He had a direct number for Lieutenant Trent. He dialed it, reached a machine, and left a message. He hesitated, gritting his teeth.
He dialed Ricky’s direct line. A woman picked up.
“Ricky Garcia, please.”
“He’s out of the office right now. He calls in every fifteen minutes. Can I give him a message?”
Sean hesitated. Jesus Christ, what if Ricky was the killer?
“Tell him to come to the rock pit.”
“What rock pit?”
Sean stared at the phone. They were all suspect, he reminded himself. “He’ll know,” he told the woman quietly. “He’ll know.”
22
Her head hurt.
At first when Lori woke, her head hurt so badly that she could feel nothing else. But then the pain subsided to a dull throb, and she became aware of other sensations. She was seated. Streaks of pain propelled up and down her back; she could feel something scratchy against her skin.
Dirt beneath her legs.
And a tree.
Her back and her arms hurt because she was tied to a skinny tree. She was alive. For how long? Naturally, she was alive. He would want her wide awake when he tortured her to death. Panic seized her, and she tugged wildly at her arms, thinking that she was about to die, and she still didn’t know who intended to kill her.
Her movement triggered a reaction. A groan, a tug in return. She froze, and realized that she was tied with Brendan on the other side of the tree.
She twisted around, straining to see.
Her heart catapulted in terror. Then she reminded herself that he was still alive.
Where was the killer?
Leading his normal life somewhere? Anticipating what he would do when he returned for the two of them?
“No, no, no, no, no!” Lori breathed aloud, struggling furiously against the ties that bound her. They were tight; the rope was thick. She went still. “Brendan, Brendan, baby, wake up, please, wake up, we’ve got to get out of this!”
Brendan didn’t answer.
The ropes, she had to escape from the ropes. What did she have on her? Nothing, she had dropped her purse. Her pockets… empty. Empty, dammit! Oh, God…
Brendan’s pockets. His key chain. Keys to the house, to her car… and the little pocketknife that Sean had given him.
She let out a strangled sob. Knife, little knife…
Sean had given him a little knife.
She struggled, pressing against the tree the best she possibly could, reaching, stretching. She groaned with the effort, her arms feeling as if they would pop out of the sockets. She found Brendan with her fingertips… his pocket. She had to get deeper, just a little deeper. She twisted. Her
fingers touched…
A pen.
A quarter.
His pocketknife.
She managed to get the knife out… then dropped it. She fumbled in the dirt with her fingertips. How much time did she have? Where was the killer?
“Brendan, wake up, please, Brendan…”
She felt the ropes ripping her flesh, and she strained even harder to find the knife again. Finally… her fingers closed around it.
Her hand cramped as she tried to locate the catch and flick it open. Yet finally, she did it. She tried not to sob aloud as she twisted and turned again in an effort to saw the ropes— and not her hands or Brendan’s—with the sharp side of the knife.
It had grown dark, night had come, but a three-quarter moon illuminated the pines and scruff foliage and rocky flooring of the area surrounding the dug-out pit with a strange, misted glow. Low ground fog had set in with the night. Staring straight ahead, constantly searching the swirling, silver-tinted mist in terror, Lori kept sawing. In the dead quiet of the night, she could hear the knife moving against the rope. And then, the miracle she had prayed for occurred. The rope gave.
Trying not to shout out with her sense of pure triumph, Lori wrenched at her wrists, managing to nearly dislocate her shoulder, and drawing another groan from Brendan. She tugged more carefully, allowing the severed piece of rope to disentangle the rest, then she leapt to her feet, rushing around to her son. Untied, he had slumped down to the ground. She grabbed his wrist, scared to death that he had been overdosed with whatever had knocked them out. But his pulse was strong. He simply wasn’t waking up.
She looked around wildly, certain that they had to hide. She didn’t know how much time had passed since she’d been brought here. She pocketed Brendan’s knife, and caught him by the shoulders, dragging him from the tree and into an area of denser foliage. How did she get out of here? In the distance through the trees, she could see a glinting, and she realized with a sinking heart that the whole area of the rock pit was now surrounded by a high wire fence. The city had probably ordered the place fenced to keep from losing another child to the dangerous water. “How am I going to get you out of here, baby?” she whispered desperately.
Then she froze. She heard her name, called through the night. The sound seemed to come from everywhere.
“Lori!” From the west?
“Lori, Lori!’’From the east?
“Loriiiiiii!” From the south…?
She listened to the disembodied voices.
Sean? Brad?
Her brother, Andrew? Josh… Someone else? She couldn’t tell, the sound was so distorted by the fog and the echo off the rocks.
How many men were at the rock pit? For a moment she had a horrible vision of them all being in it together, a team of homicidal maniacs, all ready to rip out her throat.
No! It could only be one madman. And help was out there.
She opened her mouth to answer, but then caught herself. They were not all homicidal maniacs, and they weren’t all part of a killer cult. Someone out there had surely come to rescue her.
But one of them was a killer.
She heard thrashing in the foliage, and a sense of overwhelming panic descended upon her. She quickly dragged Brendan more deeply into the bushes. Hunched down in the foliage, she saw Sean appear at the spot where she and Brendan had been tied to the tree, and she breathed a sigh of relief, about to leap back out into the clearing, calling his name.
But then she saw the…
Blood.
His hand was dripping with it. He was carrying a man’s utility knife, a bigger version of the one he had given Brendan, and his hand, and the knife, were dripping with blood.
No!
The pain and disbelief inside her nearly crippled her. She bent over as she watched him bend low, finding the ropes she had severed. He stood, tense, jaw locked, blue eyes ebony in the darkness and shadows. His head fell back. “Lori!” he shouted, “Lori, for the love of God…”
Hands and knees on the ground, she tried to breathe, closing her eyes tightly. She looked up. He had moved away. Sean. She closed her eyes, shaking, her mouth dead dry.
What was she doing? She believed in him. She’d said that she believed in him. She should have run to him, despite the blood…
But what if he had just butchered someone… one of the men out to rescue her? He was carrying a knife. Blood dripped from his hand. She couldn’t see him clearly, but she could see the blade glinting in the moonlight, she could see blood, dripping…
It was a pocketknife that he carried. A Swiss army knife, a utility piece.
But not a butcher knife, or a long knife, or the kind of weapon that could easily be used to maim and rip…
Still, there had been blood all over his hand. Was she in love, and therefore blind?
“Lori!”
“Lori!”
“Loriiii!”
Her name was shouted again and again, in the darkness and shadows and eerie streaks of moonlight, and it seemed again that the sound was coming from everywhere, from out of the darkness, out of the fog. A rustling from her left drove her to her feet, and she turned around quickly, trying to discover from where the danger was coming. Taking a single step backward, she crashed into a pair of arms. She spun around.
Brad. With a look of tension on his handsome face, he drew a finger quickly to his lips, warning her that they were in danger.
“Hold still! Hold still!” he whispered.
She was very still, listening. Waiting. Seconds ticked by. The place had been alive with shouting and now…
No shouts. No footfalls. Silence.
Just Brad behind her. Brad, holding her too tightly.
“Brad…”
“Shh!”
“Who—”
“I don’t know!”
His arms around her hurt. She started to struggle. “Lori, don’t, you’re making it so hard—”
Making it so hard! For him to kill her?
She elbowed him for all she was worth, slamming into his ribs. She turned around and kicked him with her boot. He gasped with pain, the air sucked out of him. Unable to speak, he fell to his knees. She turned and started to run.
“Sean!” she shrieked his name in the night. Oh, God, she had to find him fast, get back, before Brad could find Brendan, hurt him, oh, God, what had Brad done to his own daughter, his wife…
“Lori, here!”
She stopped, looking around wildly. She breathed a sigh of relief when Jeff Olin suddenly stepped from the trees. “Lori, poor Lori, come here, we’ll find him…”
“Oh, God, Jeff! What are you doing here, how can you be here—”
“Sean called us all for help,” he told her, flashing his spectacular smile. He smoothed back his rich auburn hair, and his brown eyes touched hers with a relieved look. “I was hoping so badly I’d find you first.”
He stepped forward. Then she saw that he, too, carried a knife.
A real knife, with a slim, stiletto-sharp blade, at least six inches in length.
She had hidden from Sean. She had crippled Brad. And now Jeff Olin was going to kill her. “Jeff!” she breathed, staring at him.
He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have come back home, Lori. New York was a lot better for your health.”
“Jeff! You… you did it? You killed those women—”
“Yes, of course. Sue, too. She was such a fool, such a poor desperate fool, too damned eager for any man. She just walked hand in hand with me, too stupid to realize until she was bleeding.”
Lori swallowed, fighting a terrible feeling of nausea. She felt a sense of fatality, a numbness. She was praying, but praying more than anything that someone would find Brendan before Jeff did.
“Jeff, I—I can’t believe this. Did you kill Mandy? How could you—she was your sister.”
“Mandy was a whore. A cunt. I can’t begin to tell you what it was like being her brother. She went after men, hell, she went after me. My old man didn’t help—
I think he was the first one to stick it to her. You never knew Mandy. I’m not even sure that I meant to kill her when I did, but there she was, underwater, and there I was, and the vine… first, I just thought it would be funny to pay her back for all the prick-teasing she did… then I saw her face, and I realized, wow, Mandy was in my power and she could die, and that sure as hell would get her, especially with me there, watching. So she died. And old Sean got the blame for it, which was good, because she was better about being such a bitch when she was with him, because she knew that he wouldn’t have it, except that—he’d quit caring. It was because of you, wasn’t it? The kid is Sean’s, huh, not Brad’s. You were a slimy little snake, not miss goody two shoes at all. Kind of makes it a nice justice that you’re going to die here. I wanted you to be last, but old Sean has just about moved in these days, so I thought I should strike while I had the chance. Jan’s girl was damned tempting… I almost snagged her tonight instead. I’ll have to wait until I can have lots and lots of time with her. Too bad, I’m going to have to kill you quicker than I wanted. I really wanted to play with you, Lori. Pretty, pretty, Lori. So untouchable. Well, baby, you’re going to be touched. And I’m going to have to kill your son quickly, too. He knows who I am.”
Lori desperately fought a rising sense of pure terror. He moved the knife in his hand as he spoke to her, wielding it almost absently. He could step forward and kill her in a split second, long before a scream ever left her lips. She had to stall for time, pray that someone would come.
“Jeff, don’t be an ass. Everyone will know who you are, you idiot! You’re going to be caught!”
He shook his head. “Me, never. I’m the caring friend. I had a very reliable company install an alarm for you today. I’m a respected lawyer, a man who suffered terrible tragedy, and made the most of his life despite that fact.”
She shook her head. “Jeff, you’re here now, they’ll figure it out. You will be caught, and you won’t find Brendan.”
“Why?”
“He’s gone.”
Jeff grinned. It was frightening to see how handsome he was when he grinned. How… Drop dead gorgeous.