Dangerous Attachments (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 1) (37 page)

"Did you have one of your dreams about the bad men?"

"I think so. One bad man came, and I got so scared I couldn't move. I froze."

"Why don't you tell me some more about the dream?"

"I want to read now."

Sylvia set the cocoa on the bed stand and adjusted the lamp. "Are we going for dinosaurs?"

"I think so."

Sylvia gave Jaspar a peck on the cheek and then she picked up two books for review. "This one?"

"Nope."

"How about this one?"

"Yep." He squirmed deeply under the duvet.

Sylvia opened the book jacket and began to read. She was four pages into the story when she heard a sharp, faint noise.

"What?" Jaspar asked sleepily, his eyes almost shut.

"Nothing," Sylvia said. She continued to read, but much of her attention was straining outward, waiting for the sound to recur. For a moment, she had been sure it was Rocko's bark in the distance, in the storm.

A
CCOMPANYING
E
LMER AND
Colonel Gonzales down the hall, Rosie wondered once again how they could encounter so few correctional officers. They had been walking for several minutes, and she'd used her keys to open two manual grills. Once, passing the cell blocks, someone had laughed. After that, it had been too quiet. Their shadows bounced off the walls of the deserted hall.

Elmer turned and entered the cavernous area of the cafeteria. Rosie could smell turkey and canned peas. The colonel switched on a flashlight. Chairs, tables, a drinking fountain emerged in garish light.

The kitchen was a gleaming space of stainless steel and tile. Great kettles, cans, and double boilers stood mute watch. Rosie saw that the jackal had suddenly covered his eyes.

His voice was barely audible as he recited the words like a litany: "Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine."

Rosie froze in her tracks when something streaked by. Elmer sucked in oxygen beside her as a dark form shot across his path. A cat. Colonel Gonzales let the flashlight beam play over the institutional surface, but could not find the stray trespasser. They continued toward the bowels of the kitchen, the giant walk-in freezers.

Rosie had to try twelve keys before she found the cut that fit the padlock. The great door swung open and the overpowering smell of Freon filled her nostrils. Elmer sneezed. When Rosie looked up, he was already inside and headed toward the back of the freezer, shuffling past crates of frozen corn and hunks of meat. She flashed her beam so it hit the wall fifteen feet away. Elmer motioned to her from the corner; childhood fears of hell and death in tight spaces washed over Rosie. She prayed softly and entered, followed by the colonel.

"Here," Elmer said when she stood by his side. He seemed very much at home as he pointed to a lumpy, undefined mass wrapped in white freezer paper. Rosie
swallowed hard. Her throat hurt. She ran through a mental checklist of possible body parts that might match the size and shape of the package. "What is it?" she asked wearily.

Elmer began to unwrap. The paper fell off piece by piece. Although logically there would not be much odor, Rosie held her breath as the paper cracked open.

She paused for a moment to see if the uneasiness in her stomach would become more violent, but she managed to examine the object before her with clinical detachment. It was a leg, or more exactly half a leg. She was staring at a slice of human thigh, scorched and scarred with deep burn marks, the flesh turned greenish-black from time and decay. Rosie swallowed quickly to force down the bile rising in her throat.

"Elmer?" Her voice sounded surprisingly normal. "The head. Do you have it?"

Elmer nodded and set down his precious thigh carefully. He began to rewrap and Rosie spoke quickly. "Could we see the head first?"

Elmer considered the question. "That's irregular," he said finally.

"I know. But this is an emergency."

Elmer struggled to lift a wrapped sphere from a fruit crate. Rosie tried halfheartedly to help, but he wouldn't let her near. Again, he went through the painstaking procedure of unwrapping the parcel. This time, the inner layers of wrapping were stained with blood and the seepage of other bodily fluids. There was an unmistakable odor of flesh. A sheet of paper crumpled away and a cloudy fishlike eye stared up at Rosie. She put her
sleeve in front of her mouth and motioned for Elmer to remove the rest of the covering.

The head was really a pulpy brain mass, no longer round, no longer contained by bone structure. The hair and scalp were singed to charcoal and the throat blackened by the flame of the blowtorch used to sever head from body.

Rosie realized her eyes were six inches from the skull and the mouth that gaped open in a rictus grin. There was no gold cap covering either canine. In a raspy voice she whispered, "Juan Gabaldon."

S
YLVIA WATCHED
J
ASPAR
sleep until her own breathing matched his. The dinosaur book had fallen to the floor. The boy clutched a fabric cat next to his chest When she stood, carefully so he wouldn't wake, her muscles ached from the effort. She picked up the cup of cocoa and walked back to the kitchen. As she washed the liquid down the sink, again she heard the distant cry.

She flung open the door and stood listening. After a few seconds, the sound rose once more, a piercing howl.

"Rocko," Sylvia said under her breath. A faint streak of lightning illuminated the sky, and the ridge gleamed like a great fossil animal. She stepped outside and bitter flakes of snow burned her face and hands.

"Rocko!"

The dog's cries were steady now, coming from a place halfway up the ridge. She could reach him quickly if she ran. She found a flashlight under the kitchen sink and started back to the bedroom to wake Jaspar when she realized that didn't make sense; if Rocko was badly injured, she didn't want Jaspar to know.

Her windbreaker was draped over a chair, her keys in
the pocket, but she couldn't remember where she'd left her gloves. She closed the kitchen door and stumbled as she began the run up the rocky hillside.

Bolts of electricity brightened the sky every thirty seconds, but not every one was intense enough to illuminate the path. Flashlight in hand, she groped her way over ice and shale.

After three or four minutes she stopped abruptly and shone her light on the large pile of boulders thirty feet ahead. Shadows danced against rock.

She moved in bursts and fits, calling and listening, gaining ground. Her chest burned with every inhalation. "Rocko!"

After each stroke of lightning, the night seemed darker and more silent. Sylvia used her hands, fingers numb with cold, to feel her way along the path.

The soles of her shoes were slick. She felt her shin crack soundly into a ridge of granite and she went down, tumbling five feet over rock. When she stood again, her ankle ached and she was disoriented. She closed her eyes and strained to hear Rocko once more.

This time the cry seemed close, coming from behind a boulder roughly eight feet away. She skirted a skeleton of cholla and limped to the rock. Her hands slid over the porous surface, she stumbled around the ledge, and choked off a sound when she saw him.

Rocko stared up at her, wet, shivering, his back leg abnormally twisted. When she knelt down, the dog moaned and his tongue came out automatically to lick her hand.

There was blood on his head, over much of his coat. Rocko whimpered, and Sylvia bit her lip as she scooped her wounded dog in both arms.

The storm was almost on top of them now. Electric streaks of light and color came so fast the effect was one of implosion. Wind whipped her hair in her eyes, and the cold was wearing on her body.

She was a third of the way down when she saw her house illuminated by the soft glow of lights. The man cast a deep shadow as he entered through the kitchen door. Moments later a shotgun blast echoed off the ridge.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T
HE SHOTGUN WAS
gone. Lucas Watson had taken it from the top shelf of the linen closet. The ammo box was on the floor, shells scattered underfoot. There was no way of knowing how many loads he had.

The phone was dead; it had been blasted to pieces, the wires blown out of the wall. The house was empty. She left Rocko bundled on the bed and stepped outside. There was one set of footprints in the fresh snow.

She moved quickly past the Volvo—its hood gaped open. Moonlight made it easy to follow his trail. At the road, the tracks continued directly toward the creek.

When she reached the barbed fence that kept strays off the road, Sylvia saw a child's footprints scattered next to a man's shoe print. They'd gone under the wire.

It took her two minutes to reach the icy creek; it felt like ten. There was a footbridge a quarter mile upstream, but the tracks did not veer, they led straight into the water. She slid over rocks and
stumbled up the opposite bank where the snow gave way to sheltered earth and clumps of weed. She'd lost their trail.

Across the field, to the northeast, the Calidros' house was dark. Straight in front of Sylvia, roughly an eighth of a mile away, stood the rotted wooden frame of the old windmill. She caught her breath—they were in the windmill.

The electrical storm had blown itself south, and distant lightning zigzagged across the sky. A soft, steady snow had begun to fall on Santa Fe.

Her pace quickened until she was ten feet from the windmill and then she stopped. The silence was broken only by the distant drone of a jet. The hum of great engines increased and then faded away.

She froze when the tip of the shotgun jabbed her spine.

"You came." Lucas Watson's voice was cold and flat. "I knew you would come."

He was behind her, maybe three feet away. She saw no sign of Jaspar.
God, let him be alive and unhurt
.

"Put your arms behind your back."

She followed his orders slowly and deliberately.

He yanked her windbreaker from her shoulders and twisted the slick fabric into a makeshift knot around her hands. She swallowed; her tongue felt swollen. "Lucas," she began.

"Shut up." He thrust the shotgun into her side, right above her kidney. She groaned in pain and stumbled forward.

She whispered, "Where's Jaspar?"

A small voice reached her from inside the wooden structure. "Sylvia?"

Lucas jerked her back by her hair. He put his mouth to her ear and spoke softly. "Shut up and walk."

She stumbled over a wooden doorway; inside, the floor was uneven, half dirt, half rotted planks. The air was sour with the smell of wet ashes. Between slats and missing boards, moonlight poured into the windmill. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the milky light and shadows became a bale of straw, a pile of boards, a child.

Jaspar whimpered. He couldn't move; he was terrified.

Sylvia fought back tears.

The child watched her, then his eyes shifted. Sylvia felt Lucas directly behind her. He said, "Sit right where you are. Get back against the wall."

When she had done what he asked, she looked up at him. He stood in the center of the floor with the shotgun clutched in his right hand. There was a festering wound where his thumb had been. His face was gaunt and yellowed, and his skull was covered with thick, dark scabs. His cloudy eyes had gone almost white.

Jaspar whispered, "The bad man came."

Sylvia locked eyes with Jaspar and saw his courage and his will to survive. She felt oddly reassured.

Lucas moved in front of her and blocked the moonlight with his shoulders. He gazed down at her without emotion. "Tell me what happened. The night she died. Help me wash away the badness."

This was what he'd wanted all along—to know the truth about his mother's death. "I can't do that, Lucas. I wasn't there."

Lucas smiled and tipped the shotgun toward Jaspar. "Talk to me or I'll kill him."

She took a breath, and part of her detached itself from the darkness, the horror, and began the job of gathering details from memory. She knew enough about Lily's death to begin the story. But the details were hers—not his—and the wrong cue could be fatal.

When she saw his finger tighten on the trigger, she began to speak woodenly, forcing the words out. "Your mother was home that night. And so were you. Billy went to stay with your housekeeper, with Ramona."

"Why?" Lucas insisted.

Jaspar tried to change position; his arms were thrust painfully together behind his back.

Sylvia kept her eyes on Lucas, alert for any reaction. "Because your mother—"

"Lily!"

"Because Lily was drinking too much, so Ramona took your brother away. But you didn't go."

"Why didn't I?"

Sylvia thought he sounded tortured and desperate. For an instant, her mind went blank, and she panicked. Then the picture began to coalesce in her mind. She took a guess. "You were working up to one of your tantrums."

Lucas nodded. "I hid her pills. I should be punished. I was born bad."

Sylvia said, "You were afraid you'd lose your mother."

"I wanted to stay with her."

Sylvia spoke slowly, waiting for Lucas to finish the story on his own. "So you went to get the pills. . ."

"That's right," he whispered. "I sat and cried in a corner. I watched her, and the pills and the bourbon did
what they always did—they made her go to sleep." He stopped speaking. Anger and confusion flashed across his face.

At that instant, Sylvia had a sickening realization—Duke had not been in the house when Lily died.

Lucas sighed. "I wanted to punish her . . . and my daddy taught me how. I took the High Standard, the .22." His eyes glazed over and he disappeared inside himself. "I walked back to Lily's room, and I stood by her bed. She smelled bad from the nasty drink . . . but her hair was so pretty. I put the .22 against her head, and I pulled the trigger."

Sylvia fought to hide her shock—Lucas had murdered his mother.

Behind her back, she worked one hand free of her jacket.

Tears streamed down Lucas's face. "I took her ring . . . and then I lay down beside her . . . Will you help me, Mama?" he asked in a child's voice.