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The horses were still restless.
Ashley stood in the near darkness when she felt the tremor of her phone. She had just about thought that she had seen a figure growing from the shadows.
“Damn it!” she swore. She glanced at the caller ID. “Beth!”
“What is it, where the hell are you that this number keeps going dead?” she said aloud. She punched the return key.
This time, there was a click.
“Beth, damn! This has been driving me crazy. Where are you? Are you having fun in the city?” she said, realizing she was speaking in a rush.
There was silence at the other end, and then the sound of breathing.
“Beth?”
A throaty, masculine voice came to her—not Beth’s.
“Ashley. ”
“Who is this? Where is Beth?”
The chuckle that sounded in her ears seemed barely human. She shook her head. There was no devil on the other end of the line. There was a human monster, and she had to be very careful now.
“What do you want? Who is this? Where is Beth?” she asked again.
“Beth is still alive. ”
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“I can see you,” the voice said.
She froze. “If you can see me, where am I?” she demanded.
Her heart was racing; she wanted to find Angela and the others, but she was afraid that he really did see her.
And that he really had Beth.
The chuckle came to her again; the chuckle that seemed to make her heart stop and her blood turn to ice.
“You’re in the attic,” he said.
It was dark here; he couldn’t possibly see her now.
“No, I’m not. Actually, I’m in the parlor, and everyone around me can hear the call,” she said.
The laugh—more irritated now. “You’re in the attic, and if you talk to any of the people in that house with you, Beth is going to die. You know that I’ll do it. And you know that I don’t care how. I can cut her, I can shoot her…drown her. She’s going to die, and it will be all your fault. ”
She tried to control her sense of raw panic and fear. She had to be sensible. There was a chance that Beth was already dead.
“You know that I have her. I have her phone,” he said.
“I still don’t know what you want. ”
“What I want? Well, at this point, that should be obvious, Ashley. I want you. So listen to me, and listen to me good. Do exactly as I say. If you come out, I’ll let Beth go. Even trade. You for her. ”
“How do I know that you’ll let her live?”
“I can’t exactly sign a contract, can I? What if I were to swear to God? Hmm, I don’t believe in any God, other than myself, really. So, here it is. You meet me in the cemetery, or I kill Beth. I’ll string her up on a tomb, just like good old Charles Osgood. ”
“The cemetery?” she said. “You know that the group inside is watching screens. They’ll see what I’m doing. ”
“They will, but they won’t think anything of it, because you’re going to bring a dish of food out to Cliff. ” He started to laugh. “Oh, yeah, you’re going to bring a bowl of food out to Cliff! And then, Ashley, I’ll take it from there. I see you heading across the yard to the stables in three minutes precisely, or Beth dies. ”
The phone line died in her hand.
Interlude
Good God, who had ever expected such a windfall to come directly into his hands?
This was it—the pinnacle!
He frowned for a minute; it had actually come so quickly and so easily.
To really savor this, he had to take his time.
How much time did he have? He had to make sure that they all wound up shooting one another when the going got rough. But he knew how to do that; he knew how to accomplish exactly what he wanted. Ashley wasn’t stupid; she would know that he meant to kill her.
But she was too good a person to risk the life of a friend when she just might save it.
She would come; she would come.
And when she did, he was prepared.
Truly, tonight could be a wonderful bloodbath.
14
Jake chafed, growing restless. They’d had to make a detour to the coroner’s office; Augie had called Jackson.
The facilities here were state-of-the-art. He’d been to the morgues plenty of times before—just the way that his life had gone—and he was impressed with the shiny steel gurneys and sinks and equipment, and the sterility of the place.
Too many times when he had been involved with death, the morgue had been an empty building somewhere, and the rats had already become kings.
Bright lights were now on over the bodies of Marty Dean and Toby Keaton; they had been cleaned up, and with the sheets partially covering their torsos, they looked far better than they had when he had last seen them.
Augie, in green scrubs, a cap and mask, held a chart in front of him and rattled off the amount of drugs that had been found in both bodies.
Jake wanted to grab the chart; it didn’t matter how much—the drugs had been present. And the two on the tables, though looking better, were still corpses.
“Here’s what’s interesting,” Augie said, using a gloved finger to point out Marty Dean’s lips. “Marty was drowned. Her lungs were full of water, and you can see the blue coloration around her neck. Toby Keaton, on the other hand, was strangled. ” He looked at them over his mask. “Despite the fact that they were drugged, I think you’ll realize what this means. ”
“He had to change tactics?” Jake asked. “What do you think happened?”
“It looks as if the two struggled. There were tufts of some kind of black material, which I’ve sent to the lab, caught up in Toby Keaton’s clothing—hard to find, I assure you, when everything is the color black,” Augie told him. He smiled grimly. “Our lab is good. The tufts are not the same fabric as the jacket Toby was wearing. ”
“Ashley did see someone else that night. She climbed up that tree to escape him,” Jake said.
His feeling of urgency and restlessness was growing. He needed to escape the morgue. He didn’t give a damn how many times he had been in one. There was still the smell. The smell of chemicals. And death.
“We believe we’ve narrowed the field to three suspects,” Jake said. “Ramsay Clayton, Griffin Grant and Hank Trebly. ”
“And Cliff Boudreaux,” Jackson said. “We can’t eliminate him yet. He’s had access, he’s on the property—”
“He was at the stables when I rushed out to find Ashley,” Jake reminded him.
“Yes, and he could have circled those woods around just about anyone. He has lived on that property all his life,” Jackson said.
“The police searched his apartment with his full cooperation,” Jake said, stating the fact.
“We still can’t eliminate him—he knows the property like the back of his hand,” Jackson reminded him.
Jake didn’t argue.
“Well, gentlemen, here’s why I brought you in here,” Augie said. “Look at Toby’s neck there. ”
They both studied the neck. There was heavy bruising and signs of fingers having pressed in.
“He was strangled by hand, wouldn’t you agree?
There are no ligature marks,” Augie said.
They both looked at him.
“Well,” he said, exasperated. “I can guarantee you, you’re down one suspect. Hank Trebly didn’t do this. ”
“How do you know?”
“He had surgery in his left wrist about six months ago. I know, because we discussed it at an Elks meeting the other month. He wouldn’t have been able to use both hands as they were used on this victim. So, you see, if you’re right, you are down to three men—Ramsay Clayton, Griffin Grant, or Cliff Boudreaux. ”
When they left the morgue, they were no more
than a twenty-minute ride away from the house, but the compulsion Jake felt—the mounting pressure—did not let up. He called Ashley; when he got her voice mail, he nearly drove off the road.
“She’s not answering!” he told Jackson.
“I’ll call Angela,” Jackson said calmly.
He smiled at Jake when Angela answered her phone. “Jake is in a dither. He just called Ashley, and she didn’t answer. ”
“I see. No, we’re almost there,” he said. “Fifteen minutes or so. ”
He hung up.
“So, where’s Ashley?” Jake demanded.
“It’s all right. Angela said that she’s up with Frazier. She just brought him some tea, and she was sitting with him. She said that they’ve been following computer trails all day, but that going from site to site is about to make them all buggy. They’re anxious to see you. ”
“I’m anxious to see them,” Jake said.
He stepped on the gas.
“Hey, let’s arrive alive!” Jackson said.
“Call Angela back,” he said. “Please, have her get Ashley to her phone. ”
Jackson sighed, and called back.
This time, there was no answer on Angela’s phone.
Ashley carried a big bowl of gumbo in her hand. She looked up to see that Angela had followed her into the kitchen.
“What’s up?” Angela asked.
“Cliff just called. He’s hungry. ”
“He should come to the house. ”
“It’s no bother, and he knows you all are watching the grounds,” Ashley said.
“Jake called a few minutes ago. Hon, where did I leave my phone after that? Oh, hell, I have no idea. Anyway, they’re almost back. ”
“Thank God!” Ashley said.
“I’ll reserve one camera to watch you walk over. ”
“It’s all right. Really, please. ”
Angela wasn’t stupid. She could see something in Ashley’s eyes.
“All right. ” Ashley let out a sigh. She wasn’t alone; Ashley knew that she didn’t dare do anything other than what she was doing.