13 Stolen Girls (20 page)

The principle of transference—the idea that criminals always left something of themselves behind at the scene of a crime—had now taken on a digital aspect. Big data had detected a white 2005 GMC Canyon pickup truck, California license plate number 6FLP923, as present ITVO two separate disappearances. It could be a coincidence. But it was enough to send her flying along the Ventura Freeway at night.

She beat Brasov to the rendezvous point. As she sat parked on the shoulder of Mulholland Highway, she checked the criminal-records database for Lawrence Decker Close. His jacket popped up right away. He pulled a first jolt fifteen years back, when he was in his mid-thirties, a sixty-day stretch of “shock time” in San Bernardino County Central Detention Center. The crime was the theft of a six-thousand-dollar check from a grocery store.

The shock time didn't shock sufficiently. A decade later, Larry Close was back inside, sentenced under the Habitual Criminals Act, doing five to fourteen at Chino Men's for swindling investors in a partnership that had organized phony backache seminars.

Nothing violent. The guy was a con man, a scam artist. Digging a little deeper, though, Remington turned up a notation about a seventeen-year-old missing-persons investigation. Elizabeth Combe was the mother of an infant child who had vanished along with her. Larry Close had known the woman. Police on the case interviewed him. Official interest in his connection to the disappearance faded when he was imprisoned on the backache swindle.

Looks like our guy,
Remington thought, almost jumping out of her skin when she glanced up to see a white GMC Canyon pickup drive past her on Kanan Road. She couldn't scope the truck's license plate in time. Headlights off, she pulled onto its tail.

The driver followed Kanan Road, then branched off. Remington was scrambling with her cellphone, trying to alert Brasov. Something was wrong with the connection. She left a message but didn't know if it got through. Coverage in the canyons was always iffy. As she climbed the hills around Malibu Lake, cell service dropped out completely.

All right. Okay. Track the vehicle however far it would go, then circle back and connect with Brasov. Remington's standing in the sheriff's department was presently so funky that she didn't know what kind of reception she would get if she contacted dispatch. Maybe Brasov could alert her former cohorts in the LASD, inform the department that the two of them were going in on a bust.

The white GMC entered a little maze of lanes near the lake. Remington didn't feel that she could follow without giving herself away. She was unfamiliar with the neighborhood and couldn't be sure if there was another way out. Making an executive decision, she pulled to the side of the road and put the F-150 into the first leg of a Y-turn. Then the ruby brake lights of the truck she was following blinked on. Headlamps shone on a gated driveway a hundred yards up, where the single-lane back road dead-ended.

Make a first pass alone,
she decided. Even though her comms were down, it might be worth it so as not to lose the guy. Monitor the situation. Maybe the driver was in for the night, and she and Brasov could organize some deputies into a jump-out team.

She parked the Ford on the shoulder. After a weapons check of her daddy's Colt pistol, Remington moved forward in the dark. A cool fall night with a clouded-over crescent moon. It was so quiet that she could hear the lap of lake water from below.

The far-off whoop of a male's voice came from somewhere within the compound. She froze. She couldn't tell if it was a cry for help. The sound was loud enough to echo, but she clocked it from the direction of the driveway where the white GMC had disappeared. Holding her sidearm at the ready, she proceeded toward a collection of buildings that topped a small promontory.

The driver had left the pickup next to a barnlike structure, the truck's cooling engine ticking softly. The only light came from a small one-story house that appeared to be the property's main residence. Visible inside as Remington approached was a white male who fit the description of Larry Close. The man's face matched the mug shot she had just pulled up from the database of the California Department of Corrections.

Seeing him in the flesh, Remington realized that she had run into the guy before. He was the fool in the EMT windbreaker on the morning of the Malibu earthquake, the one who had tried to stop her from the climbing up to the landslide where she would discover the dead body of Tarin Mistry.

The little bungalow's screen door hung open. Close was rooting around in a toolbox with his back turned to her. Remington stepped quietly inside the house and trained her pistol at the guy's back. Ten feet separated them.

“Police!” she shouted, hoping to startle him into submission. He was heavyset and muscular. She didn't want him to come up out of the toolbox with a plumber's wrench. Or a gun.

“Down on the floor, on the floor, on the floor!” she yelled.

They were the last words she would be able to say for a while. A blunt object caught her with a vicious blow to the nape of the neck, and Remington was the one who went down.

The Ruger automatic Dixie had stolen from her uncle's ranch still lay at the bottom of her backpack. It gave off an oily smell. She knew the rule of thumb that the person most likely to get shot by your own gun was you. Riding on city buses, doing research at the West Valley library, heading into work at Terry's, she could have gotten busted at any time for carrying a concealed weapon. But the creeped-out-ness Dixie felt about her recent discoveries overwhelmed her common sense.

Late in the evening, Sunday. The document box she had swiped from the ranch office gave off the same evil energy that the pistol did. It was as if they were both calling her, messengers from the dark side. She had trouble sleeping because of them.

Uncle Monkey. Only Larry Close wasn't her uncle, not really. He wasn't blood at all. It bothered her, the vague childhood memories of him. The stuffed-monkey doll he had given his adopted niece was still back home in Dixie's Scottsdale bedroom. It appeared less innocent in the light of what she knew about the person who had presented it to her. The doll's face danced in her head, leering and demonic.

Unable to stop her racing thoughts, Dixie got up and retrieved her uncle's document box. She hadn't read all the clippings from start to finish, merely taken notes and organized them by date. Exhausted, her eyes burning from lack of sleep, she began at the beginning, with Elizabeth Combe.

She had missed something in her previous examinations of the oldest clips in the files, something important. The articles were not Xerox copies but originals from seventeen years ago. They were brittle and fragile, and the ink came off and dirtied her hands. She hadn't wanted to fool with them much.

Now, as she read, an awful realization formed in her mind. The nineteen-year-old Combe hadn't vanished alone. Elizabeth had an infant with her, month-old Victoria Combe. Dixie came across this passage deep in the body of one of the newspaper articles:

Miss Combe reportedly left her family's Culver City home with her baby. The fact that she had not taken along supplies such as extra diapers and formula was considered significant by police investigators, since it could indicate the woman was not planning to be gone from home for long.

Baby Victoria Michelle Combe was born on July 19, and no father's name was listed on the birth certificate.

Dixie's skin crawled.

“I went out to buy Huggies for you.”
That's what her aunt had said.

Suddenly wide awake, she read the passage over and over. With an increasing level of sick excitement, she paged through all the Combe material, searching for any mention of Victoria Combe.

July 19th had always been celebrated as Dixie's own birthday. It was the date that had been listed on her bogus birth certificate.

She
was the baby that had disappeared. Dixie Annette Close was Victoria Michelle Combe. Dixie was the baby who had been stolen, renamed and then given to Jerry and Sheila Close.

The Search was over. Dixie had finally found her birth mother: Elizabeth Combe, the first vanished girl in the clipping files of Larry Close. Had Jerry and Sheila known? Was Dixie's whole life some sort of bad joke of kidnapping, betrayal and secrecy?

“Victoria Michelle Combe,” Dixie whispered to herself, stunned. “I am Victoria Michelle Combe.”

Could it really be true? She wept. She paced the cramped patch of floor beside her bed. The apartment was dark. Her roommates were all asleep. She had an impulse to wake them and announce the dreadful, terrible, exhilarating news.
I know who I am
. They wouldn't care and would be all grouchy for having been awakened. Dixie was bursting with the news.
I know who I am!

At the same time, a boiling hatred rose within her. The moment felt biblical. She had tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it was bitter. Uncle Monkey? Uncle Shit Heel was more like it. What had he done with her mother?

Dixie didn't know what to do. Call the police? The story was too bizarre. But she was on fire to do something, anything. She dressed hastily, slipping on sweatpants and a T. Slinging on her backpack with the pistol still inside it, she left the bedroom for the living room. She saw a set of car keys among the beer-bottles-and-ashtrays clutter of the coffee table. The only one among her roomies who possessed wheels was Lindsey's boyfriend, Bryant Kay. The last time she wanted to use his van, Bryant had said no.

She wasn't going to ask this time. Dixie scooped up the keys. Then she left the apartment for the darkness outside.

Remington woke to absolute blackness. Waves of dizziness and nausea convinced her that she was conscious. Her state did not resemble being alive in any way to which she could relate. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She couldn't see. Her thoughts wouldn't come straight.

She could hear. Sounds were deadened but audible. A faint, faraway voice, mumbling and incoherent.

“It likes barrels. It shall have a barrel. Not one of its own, no. It has to share.”

Footsteps and a muffled noise of movement.

A leather hood or mask of some sort covered Remington's head. It had become partially filled with her own vomit. The real trouble was that she could not shift out of the way of the mess. She experienced terrific pain at the back of her neck. She was afraid that she was paralyzed. Her arms were pinned behind her. Her legs were bound and immovable. A gag closed off her mouth. She would die like a rock star, from aspirating her own puke.

What had happened? She searched among her roiling thoughts. The white GMC pickup. The little compound above Malibu Lake. Quietly stepping through the open screen door and entering the house. Then, lights out. Nothing after that.

She could not move, but someone moved her. New pain exploded behind Remington's eyes as she was lifted like a piece of baggage. She moaned and inhaled the bitter stench of stomach acid. A door opened and closed. Cooler outside air hit her. She realized then that someone had stripped off her clothes and sheathed her body in a black leather bondage rig.

Footsteps on gravel. Remington struggled to focus. She tried to count the steps, attempted to monitor her situation as a good detective should. But a vortex of dizziness and darkness took her. She passed out.

He woke her by sweeping off her filthy hood.

“You like barrels, Detective?” her captor shouted at her. The man roughly dug the toe of his boot into Remington's eye sockets, one after another, cleaning them of their crusted plugs of vomit. The scene in front of her cleared somewhat. The gag still blocked her mouth.

What she saw wasn't anything her bruised brain could rationally accept.

A blocky male figure outlined in the dark worked on an eighty-five-gallon drum with a crowbar. A screech of metal on metal sounded as he pried at the barrel's lid. It came open with a wheezing gasp.

The stench of death instantly obliterated every other sensation.

The figure stepped out of her line of sight. She heard the hiss of a butane lighter. A flare of light revealed the building's interior for the first time. Remington saw a line of steel drums beyond the newly opened one. She tried to count the number of barrels, but the flame from the lighter died.

A wheezing exhale behind her. An acrid smell mixed with the incredible stench of rotted flesh. Smoke from a crystal-meth pipe.

Another flare, another hit of meth.

Her captor leaned in close. “Upsy-daisy,” he said brightly.

He hefted Remington as if she were a rag doll. She again moaned in pain. She caught a glimpse of a bald-headed man with a wrestler's build. She wasn't allowed much more than a glimpse. The man flung her upside down and upended her over the open barrel. The maneuver put Remington face-to-face with a rotted human head that sagged above an equally decayed body.

The steel drum's current resident.

“How do you like my work, Detective?”

Remington screamed behind the ball gag in her mouth. She tried to thrash but was abruptly shoved downward next to the corpse. Her face wound up smeared in the fetid, rectified mess at the bottom of the barrel. Gagging and heaving, she tried to twist away.

The true terror was yet to come. The interior of the drum went dark as the barrel's lid slammed down and her captor hammered it home.

Only fear kept Remington from losing consciousness. She retched again. The steel drum tipped and crashed horizontal. Mucky human fluids washed over her. Her dead barrel mate flopped forward in a horrid embrace, thin, stinking arms clutching Remington's own.

The steel drum began rolling. As in some enormous cocktail shaker, the barrel's contents sloshed and mixed and combined. Remington lost all sense of up and down, left and right.

A brief, lurching halt. The world kept spinning even when the insane ride stopped. There was a series of shattering bangs as the crowbar pounded on the steel of her barrel prison.

Then, the blender.

The steel drum crashed down the hillside with Remington and the corpse slammed together inside. The pummeling trip ended with an enormous splash as the barrel hit the lake. It began to sink with the weight of the two human bodies inside.

She would die. She would drown. She lost consciousness.

Remington split in two. One part went insane. The other part cruised in for a bumpy landing in an alternate universe. Where the dead spoke.

Too close!
A nagging, insistent whisper.
Too close now! Too close!

No more blood rushed in Remington's veins. She was seized up, rusted, clotted. She couldn't breathe.

Comfy?
asked her barrel mate.

“No.” It felt unreal to say anything out loud. Had she spoken? The gag was still in place. The sound came out in a weak quaver. It gave birth to a tiny interior echo, which then died.

Neither am I. You're going to have to leave.

Laughter. From a corpse.

Remington had piteous thoughts of her dead mother. With a burst of hope, she fantasized that she was with her now. Mona Seeger Remington. Uttering the word like a prayer.

“Mama?”

Another dry, rattling laugh.
Guess again…

Remington was like a baby in a womb whose twin had died. Her partner in slime. She passed out again.

Wake up!

Blank silence. Then the nagging voice returned.

You can wriggle out of those cuffs, you know. Harry Houdini did it. We all did it. That stuff is called grave wax, adipocere. Makes everything real slippery.

No. Not happening. Couldn't possibly attempt it. Too broken.

Go ahead. I can wait
.

It took a while. But Remington first slipped out one hand, then the other. She stripped off the ball gag and sucked in deep, heaving breaths.

Hey! You'll use up all the air.

A joke. The corpse laughed once more.

Remington began a feverish exploration of the mucky cave in which she was confined. Feeling with the hands of a blind woman, she pawed at the scabby steel, the two circular ribs that ran along the barrel's circumference, the seams at its top and bottom rims, everything wet and greasy and rank. She had to reach past her ghastly twin in order to conduct her investigation.

She earned a sneer for her efforts:
There's no exit, fool.

Then, unexpectedly, a gentle dripping noise. Cold water leaked onto Remington's face. The droplets felt decidedly strange, out of place, like a baptism.

A baptism that meant she would die. Her barrel tomb was leaking.

Knock knock.

For pity's sake.

Knock knock.

“Who's there?” Feeling like a fool.

Dwayne.

“Dwayne who?”

Dwayne the fucking water before we both dwown!

The dead laughter was a long dry screech, fingernails on a blackboard.

Remington searched with raw fingers for the source of the drip. The leak meant a gap. A gap meant an opening. An opening meant life. Bracing her back against the side of the barrel, she tried to push upward. Her twin sagged beside her.

What you need is a can opener.

The spray turned into a hiss. Remington's choice seemed to be clear: rest easy and die, or work open the lid and drown.

A half foot of liquid had sloshed into the drum. She pressed at the barrel lid once more, trying, and failing, to force her release. In a fury she screamed and raged, rocking her tomb back and forth. The mix of water and sick and body fluid splashed into her eyes, her nostrils, her ears.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, cowgirl!

The barrel tipped and settled again. Okay. Okay. She needed…If only her tormentor had buried her with a crowbar.

If only he had put that crowbar in with us, right?

“Right,” Remington said.

Wait. Wait a minute. I happen to have a crowbar on me…right here.

A solid piece of bone bumped into Remington's hand.

Oh, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone…
A cracked singsong, off-key and ghostly.

The corpse in the drum had decayed to the degree that its flesh now hung loose on the bone. Remington fumbled in the dark.

What was the longest, strongest bone in the human body? Trailing her hands down along the disordered length of the corpse, she located its left thigh. Shutting her mind against what she was doing, she dug into the rot to grasp whatever she could.

Water coursed at her now, spilling into the drum, rendering every surface slippery and cold. Still Remington worked. She got a grip on the body's femur and worried it back and forth. Was she just thinking wishfully or did the bone yield? She jerked at it again.

What do you think you're doing? Leave me alone!

With a tremendous yank, the femur came loose.

She had her crowbar.

An inch-thick, foot-and-a-half-long shaft, splintered at the head. One end of the bone had snapped off, leaving a sharp, jagged blade. Remington jammed the blade into the gap in the barrel lid and pushed upward.