CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (47 page)

The entire left side of his head pounded. It was an anvil walloped with a ball peen hammer. It didn't hurt when he relegated the pain to a far region, where it belonged, but now and then the wound, packed with iodine-soaked cotton and bandaged tightly, erupted into savage fire that made him faint and weak-kneed with torment.

Now as he watched Sully's anxious movements inside the house, he visualized the hammer pain in his left eye socket evaporating along with the fog into the humid, flower-scented night air. He mentally forced the hurt away from him, forced it to divorce itself from his body as if it were a gossamer shawl he could throw off.

Once he had the pain under control, he let his mind fill with riotous images of bloody death and destruction. He imagined buildings falling, crushing a thousand people fleeing in open-mouthed terror; he conjured hooded executioners and had them chop off the heads of a dozen simpering, wailing victims who begged for mercy; he replayed his own murderous attacks and celebrated the heat of a victim's spurting blood and roiling intestines that steamed as they were exposed to the air through knife slits... That these were abnormal meditations hardly impinged on his mind. He knew they were, but had agreed with his subconscious not to care.

He sank to his haunches as he saw Sully near the screendoor and pressing his face against it, peer into the deep green recesses of the yard. A cough tried to squeeze its way past his tickling throat, but Lansing withheld it, swallowing against the urge to ease the tension of his neck and chest muscles. Finally, Sully shook his head and wandered away from the door, the frame of his shadow lost in the interior of the den.

Lansing waited for lights to go on there for a few seconds, and when they did not, he braced himself for a fresh onslaught of pain to racket down from the damaged eye.

Go away
, he told the stabbing jolts that shot through the empty socket and into his brain like steel splinters.

Go away to the other side of me, I don't feel it, I don't feel anything, I am a rock, I am a block of solid ice, freezing cold, immovable, I am an ice mountain, a glacier inching across white plains. This is my world and I control it. You have no place in my world.

When the pain surge passed, Lansing moved stealthily into Sully's garden, his shoes crushing carrot stalks and knocking aside bean trellises. He stopped in the garden's heart and deposited the thing he had brought for Sully. Beneath it he carefully stuck the scrawled note and weighed it with a small stone he thought to bring with him from the creek.

Smiling, he straightened and left the yard. Now he felt not a trace of pain. He could go on forever. He could endure any amount of suffering and survive it.

He was the ice, the flame's blue hot center, the rock's bold exterior, the earth's immutable core. Nothing could defeat him now.

CHAPTER 2

Sully turned on all the lights in the house until it was blazing, spilling white rectangles onto the grounds outside. He bit at a hangnail, paced, drank coffee by the pot. At nine o'clock he called Janice Rider, Mike Dalamas' girlfriend--now, more properly--she was Sully's girlfriend, though the name tag for the role she played in their relationship sounded too sophomoric to suit him.
Girlfriend
. A silly word connoting nothing, signifying less than what he felt.

After Mike's death Sully met with Janice a few times over coffee at the White Haven Cafe in Jamison. He understood what grief was doing to her, and he hoped by their conversation that he could help mitigate the length, if not the depth, of her suffering. Slowly their feelings for each other moved up a notch to a totally new level of meaning, and he was no longer just a shoulder to cry on, he was a lover. Sully wanted to tell Carla about Janice when she mentioned he should be seeing someone, but the time did not seem right. He also discovered how difficult it was to admit he might be considering another woman to take Frannie's place in his life. He still loved Frannie. He would always love her. This was something Janice understood, for she would always love Mike. Their love for the dead served to cement the growing feelings they felt for each other.

"Janice? Can you come over? It's Carla, she's disappeared."

Before Janice appeared half an hour later, Sully had graduated from coffee to Irish whiskey. He was chain-smoking, his feet propped up on the coffee table, a tumbler in his fist.

Janice let herself in without knocking, as was her custom. She crossed the den until she stood before him. She was nothing at all like Frannie, Sully decided. No one could accuse him of requiring an imitation of his late wife, of trying to completely replace her. Janice was older than him by two years and had been married twice before to men who had not appreciated her. Gray peppered her black hair at the top, where she brushed its thickness away from a smooth, high forehead. She was bigger than Frannie had been--taller, fuller, more robust. Middle age settled flesh around her hips and gave her a motherly look, though she had never borne children. She worked as Mike's secretary until his death and afterward worked for his replacement. Janice was proud without touching on haughtiness, dependable and loyal to a fault, and she possessed a sex drive that would put many a younger woman to shame. Sully adored her. Together they threw sparks, not only in bed, but also in conversation. They did not always agree, which Sully found interesting, for he never liked women who were dependent on his opinion for a view of the world.

"What do you mean, Carla disappeared?" Her voice was strained and breathy from the quick drive to his house.

"She was gone this morning when I got up. I checked her room and she'd made the bed. Yesterday she told me she suspected Lansing was out there..." He pointed toward the French doors. "She's gone after him. She hasn't come back and it's"--he consulted his wristwatch--"nine forty-seven."

Janice circled the coffee table between them and sat on the sofa. She took his glass and drank from it. She winced as the smooth, hot liquid rolled down her throat like an oil slick on fire. "Do you think Lansing's back?"

"I didn't before, but I can't think why Carla's not here yet unless something...something happened."

Janice stood and left the den for the front of the house.

Sully called, "Where are you going?"

"I left the door unlocked. I'm going to check all the doors."

"Carla thinks that won't deter anyone," Sully muttered into his glass. He listened to the dead bolts shooting home. He would have to remember to engage the alarm system himself. Janice had never figured out how to make the damn thing work.

She returned, checked the French doors, and satisfied they were secure, poured herself a glass of whiskey from the decanter. "I saw the reward in the paper." She looked at Sully as if it were his fault.

"Carla wouldn't listen. She said it would bring him back here. She might have been right, for all I know."

"She might have hurt herself out there in the woods."

She turned to look out the opaque door glass. "It's not that late yet."

Sully shook his head, but Janice didn't see. He patted the sofa. "Come sit with me. I don't like any of this."

Janice did as she was asked. "Did you look over the clippings Carla saved?"

"Yeah. They sounded like he could have done them. They were his M.O., as they say. He's been busy. Three homicides in six weeks."

"What did she think she could accomplish going into the woods to look for him?"

Sully polished off the whiskey in his tumbler, grimaced at the strong taste. His stomach was empty. Drinking was making him queasy. Maybe he could warm supper, invite Janice to share it. "She intends to kill him."

"With what? She's just a kid. Up against him she's like tissue paper in a tornado."

"She had...a few weapons she took with her this morning."

A puzzled frown punctuated Janice's unlined face. "What weapons, Sully? The gun didn't get either one of you anywhere."

"She had a crossbow. And an axe. A sling..." His voice trailed off at how ridiculous the words sounded when it was remembered Carla meant to use the weapons against a man like Martin Lansing.

"You are kidding me." Janice turned his face to her by catching his stubbled chin and swiveling him around to look into her eyes. "Aren't you?"

Sully's eyes hooded and he could not raise his gaze to meet hers. His hands closed over her fingers. "I thought it was harmless. She was so determined, I thought..."

Janice sighed tiredly, and then sipped from her glass. "If he's out there like Carla thinks, she doesn't have a 'coon's chance of coming back to this house alive. Have you faced that yet, Sully? Did both of you forget about the night Mike died? Did you forget the way Lansing killed your Frannie?"

"I didn't forget. Carla thought she was right. She's strong, Janice, and she's smart. She may have more chance than we think. At least, pray God, I hope she does."

"Are you calling in the sheriff?"

"Not yet. We should wait. You know how I hate that son of a bitch. Besides, she might be lost in the woods. She went into the marsh, way over north. She might be having trouble finding her way out if she stayed past sundown. I don't see what good it would do right now to call in our illustrious law enforcement."

Janice set her glass next to Sully's and took his hand. She stood, pulling him to his feet. "I bet you didn't eat. I saw the cloth covering the table. Let's go. That whiskey could burn a hole through your gut."

Sully hugged her to him. Over her shoulder he stared at the French doors. He swallowed noisily and let Janice lead him by the hand to the kitchen. He doubted he could eat. The thought of food conjured an image of rocks, hard and tasteless stuff that would sit in his mouth until he spit them out.

Carla where are you?

CHAPTER 3

Sully dozed throughout the night, Janice at his side on the sofa. He woke feeling washed out and achy, a cramp in the middle of his shoulders. Janice woke at his touch, jumping slightly, her eyes snapping open wide with question. "What time is it?" she asked, yawning once she recognized Sully.

He looked at his watch. "It's eight-thirty." He stood from the sofa, stretching the muscles in his neck and back as he walked to the glass doors to look at the sunny morning illuminating his lawn, the woods thrown into relief behind it. "She didn't come back," he remarked, knowing the observation was redundant. He went through all the rooms turning off the lights. At the kitchen he went to the back door and unlocked it. He stood at the screen door, his hands braced on the frame. Janice came up behind him and encircled his waist with her arms.

"Sully, it's serious now. You need to call in help."

Sully went to the sink to run water in an aluminum percolator for coffee. When he didn't answer Janice, she let herself out onto the back steps. He went to join her while the water heated.

She stepped to the lawn and moved forward. She had not gone far when she halted, and he saw her from the back, trembling. "What is it?" He came to her side.

She stood at the left edge of his huge garden. Immediately Sully saw something wrong. The chicken wire fence he had put up as precaution against small animals raiding his produce was down, smashed into the earth. He stepped nearer, his hand gesturing for Janice to stay back.

"What did that?" she asked. "It looks like a bear got in here."

Sully stepped gingerly over the downed fence, following the destructive path mowed through his vegetable rows. Lettuce and radishes were stomped flat and now wilting in the early sun. His bean trellises, so carefully set and tended, leaned every which way, some of them fallen completely over to crush a bed of asparagus just beginning to sprout.

"It must have been a damned bear to do this," Janice said from right behind him where she had followed. "Christ, Sully, I'm sorry. I know how much you've put into your garden."

As Sully's sad gaze roamed over the crazy demolished state of his hard work, it was snagged by a bright bit of cloth on the ground between rows. He went to the oddity, stooped, and poked at it with one finger.

"What did you find?" Janice asked, leaning over his shoulder to better see for herself.

"I don't know..."

He turned his head to the side to block the bright sun. The object, foreign to his garden, appeared to be a swatch of flannel shirting, tied to make a small bundle. From beneath it a white slip of paper showed from between clods of dirt. Sully lifted the tiny bundle and placed it in his left hand. The bottom felt slimy, sticky wet. He drew out the stained paper slip with his free hand, unfolded it, and to his growing horror read: "This won't be all she's missing if you try to follow us."

Janice, peering over him at the barely legible scrawled note, let out a little gasp. "Is that...? Could that be...from...?"

Sully, his hands palsied and shaking now, lowered the flannel-wrapped bundle to the ground, dropped the note, and began fumbling at the knot holding the cloth together at the top. When he folded back the two tie ends and saw the punctured, bloody remains of flesh soaking through the cloth, he stood abruptly and backed away, Janice having already turned in the row, hand over her mouth.

"The son of a bitch, the son of a bitch, the insane son of a bitch," Sully muttered. He stumbled to the house, grabbed the wall telephone extension in shaking hands, and dialed the county sheriff's office. "This is Sullivan Torrance. I want someone out here," he said haltingly to the dispatcher. Water boiled over onto the stove, hissing and spitting. "I want the sheriff out here
now
."

#

"Come on, Carla, we've got a long way to go." Lansing had all his camping paraphernalia stowed away in the duffel bag. He now hoisted his prisoner to her feet and started from the clearing in a northwest direction.

"Where are we going?" Carla ground out the words as she stumbled and hurried behind him to keep the rope binding her hands in front from cutting her wrists into half.

"I've got a place."

"More hideouts, more lean-tos?"

He laughed deep in his throat and did not lessen his pace through the underbrush. The rope length holding Carla fast was draped over one shoulder as he forced her along behind him. "Better than that," he said. "It's a place I use for resting when the cops get hot after me."