CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (48 page)

"Like when you killed that old couple the night we lost you and lately when you killed three other women?" After waiting for the answer that did not come, she changed her questioning's direction. "You lost a lot of blood from that eye." This she said with some satisfaction. "Don't you realize you'll probably get an infection, maybe gangrene? You go off to hide out, and you might die."

"Not me." He slogged steadily forward, leading her farther into the twilight-shadowed woodland. "But if I do, you'll be free, won't you?"

"Why haven't you killed me yet, Lansing? You know if I get a chance I'm going to kill you. And if I don't do it, the police are going to track us down and do it for me." She was having to walk too fast and her breath was coming out in ragged little puffs now. All he had given her to drink was a cup of thick black coffee full of floating grounds before breaking camp. "They will," she persisted. "They'll shoot you down like a rabid dog. So why?"

"We have our reasons."

"We? Who's we, Lansing?"

She thought she heard him giggle mysteriously, and it made her skin crawl. "You're a crazy motherfucker, Lansing. You aren't even a human being. Maybe you never were."

"You ever made it with someone who wasn't human, Carla? Huh? Where's your big talk now? You want to see what it's like to fuck a crazy man?"

Carla ducked her chin to her chest as if in this way she could stop the filthy words from coming into her ears. Blood drummed louder and louder until she couldn't hear him anymore. Sexual talk surprised and frightened her. Although he had stripped her naked and tied her to the bed the night of the kidnapping, Lansing had never actually touched her. His madness seemed to be of an asexual nature, as if he were a eunuch, a man whose concern was solely involved in torture and death dealing. That he so casually threatened her with rape now confused her.

She watched her feet staggering one boot after another over forest debris and kudzu vines. At least, she thought, they were leaving some kind of trail for Sully to follow. But it was impossible to glean from Lansing where they were headed. How far? Which direction? Where to? She could not believe he lived through the ordeal of having one of his eyeballs ripped from his head without keeling over from pain or shock. Yet, what she told him was true; he was not like other humans. Not only were his values and desires warped beyond all reason, but he did not respond to what should have been unbelievable pain the way a man would respond.

When she'd opened her fingers for him to see with his one good eye what she had done to him, he carefully scooped the mess from her palm, hit her with his left fist to knock her unconscious, and then... Did he howl like a man on fire? Or did he, as she imagined, quietly clean and bandage the empty socket to still the flow of blood? When she woke her hands and feet were tied, and Lansing sat over a fire heating canned chili in a tin skillet as if they were partners on a camping trip. He showed absolutely no emotion over the mutilation she had done to his eye. All through the night he seemed immune to what must have been terrible repercussions in his nervous system.

He left her alone, bound to a tree, gagged with a soiled handkerchief that made her want to vomit. He returned shortly, unrolled the bedroll, lay down, and slept peacefully until dawn. Though the bark of the pine tree she was tied to scraped at her back through the brown shirt, and though the ropes on her hands, feet, and around her middle chafed her skin when she tried to free herself, she was finally forced to relinquish hope of escape and fell into long dreams of bulging, bloody eyes, dripping sockets, and faces half drenched with scarlet.

"I hope they string you up and flay your hide when they catch you!" she yelled at his back as he pulled her through a waist-high tangle of blackberry briers that left minute thorns in her clothes and skin. "I hope they roast you alive."

"Carla, Carla." He said her name with false exasperation and yanked her onto a clearer path free of the brambles.

"Fuck you." She could talk dirty and tough, too, if that's what he wanted.

"Save your wind," he said, forging ahead. "It's a long way, Carla. It's not safe here."

Safe.
Carla felt the urge to giggle as hysterically and maniacally as he had done earlier. He might drive her mad, infuse her with his own brand of insanity. But with him near, she could never think, even if she went crazy, that she would ever be
safe
.

CHAPTER 4

Sully did not, and had never, trusted the county sheriff, Eustus Banks, nor either one of his bumbling under-schooled deputies, Gordy Holcum and Deke Callman. He did not vote for Banks and had, in fact, campaigned against him.

Yet now he was reduced to showing the man the evidence he had found in the garden and hoping beyond hope something could be done for Carla before it was too late.

Banks sat on one of Sully's kitchen chairs, his wide buttocks overflowing and hanging off the edges. He kept Garrett snuff tucked in his bottom gum and carried a spit cup that was usually, as now, a Dixie paper cup stuffed with Kleenex, with him at all times as a portable spittoon. His brow was high, wide, and shiny, his eyes granite chips peeking out from roils of fat. His face was oafish and stupid looking.

He had not personally bungled the investigation of Martin Lansing four years earlier when Frannie was murdered, but his deputies had done so, and Sully still held him responsible. How could he live with himself after watching the case thrown out of court on a technicality that only hayseed fools would have perpetrated?

Gordy and Deke sat comfortably in the den questioning Janice while the sheriff sat with Sully in the kitchen. Banks spit a stream of brown-stained saliva into the Dixie cup and cleared his throat. "Guess we oughta get up a search team for 'em."

Sully held himself back from showing utter contempt. He wanted to hop to his feet and pound the table with his fists. He wanted to shout at this fat, indolent jerk that he was wasting precious time with his slow way of talking and his ponderous decisions.

"Well?" Sully pushed, "shouldn't you call some men, get them organized?"

Banks eyed him like a snake eying a sunning lizard. "That's what I'm gonna do, give me time. You sure this..." He pushed the malevolent flannel bundle on the table with his little finger extended. "...Is the girl's eye?"

Sully ran a hand over his face and fidgeted on the chair. Good Jesus, the son of a bitch was wasting time. "I can't be sure, can I? It's so goddamn bloody, it's hard to tell it is an eye. We can't even tell what color the eye was, but that wouldn't help anything. Carla and Lansing both have brown eyes."

Banks raised one brow. "You don't mean..."

"Look, you didn't even get a hint at how completely insane Lansing was when you had him in your jail before the trial? You don't think he's capable of leaving his own eye here to make me believe it was Carla's?"

"He's a bitter hickory nut, all right," Banks admitted. "Ordered tomato juice and fruit cocktail with his supper every night."

Sully wanted to snatch the old sheriff's shirtfront and shake him until he rattled. He tried to speak coolly, calmly.

"I showed you Carla's newspaper clippings. They cover three recent murders in the state of Georgia, and they're all stabbings with strips of skin sliced from the bodies. I think he did those killings. It's what he did to...to Frannie."

"Yeah, but you think this fella's nuts enough to tear out his own eye just to keep you from following him?"

"I don't know what I think. All I know is that we both agree it's a human eye and part of a lid." Sully knew one thing he could not think. He could not afford to think too closely about what was in the cloth on his table and whether it belonged to Carla. Pretty Carla, his little girl, the girl he had loved and raised to adulthood. If she had truly been harmed, he'd lose his mind. If that happened, he would be of no use in the search.

Banks spit again and rose sluggishly from the chair to motion his deputies to him. He held the Dixie cup in a fat, hairy fist.

"Gordy, you take the car and go back to the office. I want you to call in searchers. Radio Atlanta, tell 'em we need the loan of a helicopter and a fly-boy that can check out these woods. Tell 'em we need it today, before darkfall. You get that done, come on back out here." He waited for the young man to nod his assent before turning to the other deputy. "Okay, now, Deke, I want you to scare up some prime bloodhounds. Check with Harvey and Thomas, they got good trackers. Have 'em bring their dogs here, we're gonna need 'em. That done, you come back, too and don't forget to lock the office, you hear? We're gonna be out here maybe all night."

"What are you going to be doing, Sheriff?" Deke asked, squaring his shoulders and adjusting the gun holster at his waist with an air of self-importance.

"Me?" Banks spit into the cup, wiped his lips with the back of a hand where it left a brown streak. "I'm gonna organize the men when they get here, that's what I'm gonna do. Now, git on and don't lollygag around asking dumb questions. There's a girl missing, might be wounded or..." He stopped himself.

Sully had walked to the back door while listening to the sheriff's instructions. His fists were balled until the knuckles showed white. Janice came up beside him and linked an arm through his. "Sully? This is all we could do," she whispered. "Carla has more chance this way."

"Yeah." Sully's gaze never shifted from the heavily wooded rear of his property. "I guess so. About as much chance as Mike and Frannie had."

Noon came and went, the sun's zenith scorching Sully's trampled garden and drying the water from the cement birdbath. By one o'clock ten men, all townspeople known to Sully, milled in the backyard waiting to be split into groups and given instructions. Morry Thomas stood at the woods' edge, his best two bloodhounds straining at the leash. They had been given Carla's scent from a set of clothes from the dirty laundry basket and the pillowcase she had slept on the night before she disappeared.

Sully heard the flutter-roar of helicopter propellers as the Atlanta policeman-on-loan swooped over the housetop and sped toward the wooded area.

"I wish I could go along." Janice crushed Sully's arm close to her side. "It's going to be awful to wait."

Sully looked into her gray eyes and kissed her on the lips lightly. "I hope it won't be that long. Do me a favor. Call Flap and tell him what's happened. He's going to be pissed he wasn't asked to help out. Tell him if I'm not back by dark, to come find us. We'll need him."

"Okay, I'll call as soon as you're gone."

Banks raised both arms for attention and the men quieted. "All right, I don't want any of you using those guns of yours unless you're forced to it and you've got a clear shot. And don't pull the trigger at every bush rattle, or you'll wind up blowing one another's asses to hell and gone. Use your walkie-talkies, call in and let the rest of us know if you sight him. Have y'all seen the pictures we passed around of Lansing and the girl?"

Men nodded and shuffled their feet anxiously to be on the hunt.

"Okay, Gordy, you take your group of men west three miles then circle back. Deke, you take yours east the same distance. Harrison, you go south. Sully and me will track with Morry's dogs. We meet back here by sundown. Now has everyone got it?"

Men moved out into the woods silently to the accompaniment of helicopter rotor blades whirring in the distance. Sully waved once to Janice standing holding her arms around herself, and then they were gone.

At the stream called Mado's Creek, the bloodhounds went into a frenzy sniffing, dragging on the leashes, running up and down the sloping sides. Morry called over to Banks and Sully, "She's been here. Fact is, she must've been all over here. My dogs smell her."

Banks spit snuff juice into the sparkling water and walked around with his beady eyes trained on the ground. Sully crossed to the other side and did the same.

Suddenly the hounds, barking madly, circled once, and then hauled their master over the incline and into the woods again. Banks, sweating profusely so that his tan sheriff's uniform was stuck to his back and armpits, struggled up the incline to follow.

"She went into the bogland," Sully explained. "She told me that's where he was."

"Goddamned snakepit," Banks muttered before spitting another brown jetstream into the dirt. "Goddamned gators in there."

Sully marched past him and caught up with Morry. Banks had offered him a firearm and he had declined, claiming he was not a huntsman and did not know how to handle a peashooter, much less a shotgun. Since then Banks had treated him with unconcealed disdain. Coming up next to Morry, Sully asked, "Can they track her scent in the marshes?"

"Mr. Torrance, these hounds could track a wood tick through five feet of mud. Don't you worry none." The dogs jerked him ahead leaving Sully to follow.

Nothing that was happening reassured him. The dogs, the volunteer searchers with their varicolored gimme caps and their rifles perched over shoulders, the search and rescue helicopter from Atlanta. For one thing they had gotten such a late start. Lansing had hours on them. For another, the hours left until sundown were few and Lansing could be too many miles distant for them to capture. As for the helicopter, the timberland was too thickly populated with hundred-foot pines, soaring oaks, and, lower down, the cedar and poplar trees for visibility to be anything but disastrous.

Therefore, with a heavy leaden feeling weighing down his gut, and sandwiched between the racing Morry in front, the laboring, wheezing Banks behind, Sully bowed his head to concentrate on where he slogged through the undergrowth. Already he thought he had whiffed the aroma of bubbling, algae-laden marsh. Maybe he was wrong about the search party's chances. Maybe Lansing had not run, thinking the gruesome present he'd left in the garden sufficient reminder of what could happen to Carla if Sully followed.

Then they would have him. The hounds, the guns, and Sully's own raging, barely controlled fury would barrel over the monster like a sweeping tide to wipe him from the face of the earth forever.