Death Under the Lilacs (3 page)

Lyon had seen the two brothers-in-law in argument before. They often seemed on the verge of physical mayhem, but somehow one or the other, perhaps out of deference to Rocco's wife, always retreated from a final confrontation.

“I'll make up some sort of list of names I consider worthwhile following up on,” Lyon finally said to dissipate the tension in the room. He turned back to continue his examination of the map. The streets of Murphysville had been combed, searched, and researched. It was the hundreds of acres of state forest abutting the edge of town that concerned Lyon. It was an undeveloped recreational area with miles of unpaved roads, paths, and logging trails. Their search could only be perfunctory with the men available, and yet it was perhaps the most likely area.

He turned abruptly away from the map.

A cacophony of sound seemed to wash over him as if his ears had just become unblocked. In various parts of the living room and dining room, men and women manned phones and radios, their voices vying with each other as they made contact with search units both locally and at the state police barracks. They seemed to eddy in tight groups, as if each feared contamination from the other.

Rocco's men plotted local search routes and made marks on the map as outlying cruisers reported in. The state police monitored the house phone and had direct connections open with all state police barracks and the phone company switching terminal.

Two FBI agents, dressed in dark suits, sat stoically on the couch and seemed to observe everything with a certain silent disdain.

Society had armed itself, but could only wait until contact was made or Bea located; then other experts would replace those assembled here tonight.

The phone rang.

The room fell instantly silent. A state police corporal threw a switch on a recording device and looked up at Lyon expectantly. A woman officer spoke in a low voice to the telephone office.

The phone rang again, and Lyon tentatively picked up the receiver. His palms perspired. “Yes?” His voice was strange to his ears.

“The full resources of the state of Connecticut are behind you, Lyon.”

“Thank you, Ruth.”

A voice behind him whispered to another officer. “It's the governor.”

“I wish she'd get off the goddamn phone,” Rocco mumbled.

“I've been in contact with Major Drummond of the state police on this, Lyon,” the governor said. “I asked him what else we could do to help Senator Wentworth, and he suggested additional personnel for a search of the state forest in your area. I'm sending in a battalion of the National Guard tomorrow morning to conduct the search.”

Lyon's immediate impulse was to thank the governor, but do you thank someone who has just offered to help locate the body of your wife? If she were found in the state forest, she most surely would be dead. “That will help clear matters up, Ruth,” he finally said.

“Good! I'll get off the phone now. I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you.”

“Thank you.” He slowly replaced the receiver.

“We're going to get the bastard,” Rocco said.

“How?” Lyon retorted, allowing the bitterness he tasted to creep into his voice.

“When he tries to pick up the money,” Norbert snapped. “There's no way for him to pick up the ransom without our being there.”

“And then someone else kills her,” Lyon answered.

“We won't cuff him on the spot, Lyon,” Rocco replied. “We put a homing device on the package or we follow him with all sorts of indirect surveillance. Hell, those boys”—he gestured to the FBI contingent on the couch—“are experts on these matters.”

Lyon looked thoughtful. “The Amtrak line from New York to Boston runs for over 150 miles through this state. Suppose our mastermind has me ride the train prepared to throw off a valise of money when I receive some sort of light or other visual signal? You can't have men and cars posted along the whole route.”

“We'd use a homing device that emits a radio signal. They make them now the size of a medium coin,” Rocco said. “We would track the train with planes and helicopters from a suitable safe distance and have guys with you with radios. When the drop was made it would be an easy matter to follow the perp.”

“And if he suspects that scenario and changes containers?”

“We also use marked money,” Norbert said.

“And asks for tens and twenties equally distributed from several Federal Reserve districts? If he orders that the bills are to be old money and not in sequence?” Lyon suggested.

“They all make mistakes, Lyon,” Rocco insisted. “Somewhere along the line he or she will make a mistake and we'll get them.”

The phone sounded shrilly in the crowded room. They froze in position. Rocco arched his eyebrow toward Lyon and nodded toward the phone. Lyon took two hesitant steps and picked up the receiver.

“Wentworth here.”

“I've got her.”

The voice was inhuman in its pitch and tone. It resembled something manufactured as it spoke in a vibrato that only faintly resembled human speech.

“Who are you?” Lyon clenched the receiver. “Where is my wife, damn it!”

“Safe and sound for the time being, Wentworth. She'll live as long as you follow instructions.”

“What instructions? What do you want?”

“You'll find out. I just wanted you to know who has her.”

“Who?”

A laugh that sounded more like the whine of machinery. “I know you've called the cops, Wentworth, and it doesn't make any difference. Remember, follow the instructions or she dies … painfully.”

The phone clicked, and the dial tone hummed in Lyon's ear.

“Is that some sort of machine or what?” an incredulous voice asked from the rear of the room.

“What about the trace?” Rocco snapped.

“I'm getting it,” the officer with the earphones said as he talked in a low voice over his headset.

“Play that damn call back,” Norbert ordered the officer at the recorder.

“Yes, sir.” He rapidly pushed the “rewind” button and in a few seconds the “play” button. The hollow, inhuman voice began again.

“I've got her,” it repeated, and the short conversation continued until the sound of the dial tone again filled the room.

“How in the hell did he disguise his voice like that?” Norbert asked.

“A voice box,” Lyon said.

“A what?” Norbert asked impatiently.

“A voice box,” Lyon repeated. “I'm sure there's a scientific name for them. You've seen them. Cancer patients who have their vocal cords excised learn to speak with them.”

Several men in the room who had heard the devices in use nodded assent.

“We'll put a trace on that too,” Norbert said. “There can't be but a few medical supply houses who carry an item like that.”

“What about the damn trace?” Rocco asked.

“I've got it, sir. A pay telephone on Route 154 near the entrance to I-95.”

Norbert and Rocco jostled each other as they bent to examine the map and establish the exact location of the phone. Captain Norbert found it first and placed a finger on the spot, which was near the Connecticut shoreline. “Here it is. That's near the Westbrook Barracks. Get me a phone.”

A phone was thrust in the state police captain's hand. He spoke rapidly to the dispatcher at the barracks and handed the phone back to the technician.

“Well?” Rocco asked.

“They're on their way,” Norbie announced. “It's a silent run and they'll approach the box from two directions.”

“What about the highway?” Lyon asked.

“If he's already on the Interstate, there's nothing we can do to stop him without a vehicle or personal description. We can only hope that he hangs around the area of the phone booth for a few minutes.”

“How much time?” Rocco asked.

“We'll know something in five minutes.”

It was an interminable wait, and the room was silent except for an occasional cough or movement by one of the waiting officers. The room seemed frozen in a silent tableau, and only Lyon moved as he paced back and forth and finally walked out onto the patio.

The two conversing officers who had sat on the edge of the parapet earlier were now gone, and the patio was empty and dark under a leaden sky.

Lyon sat down heavily on the edge of the stone wall and tried to look down at the river that flowed below. It was a moonless night, and it seemed to enclose the lighted house in a cocoon of silence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rocco standing nearby with one foot propped on the wall, a long cigar in his hand.

“We know there's a good chance she's alive,” Rocco said. “We know it probably isn't some sex nut who kills wantonly.”

“I have the feeling that somehow he knows us, Rocco.”

Rocco turned to look at him with professional interest. “You recognized a voice through that damn machine?”

“No, not a particular voice. Perhaps it was a speech pattern, or something else that's subliminal. I just have this feeling that I know him—or did know him.”

“But nothing you can definitely place your finger on.”

“I wish to God I could.”

The phone rang in the living room and both men simultaneously turned and hurried inside. Norbert had the receiver in his hand, muttered an acknowledgment, and slowly hung up.

“They made the phone booth,” the state police captain said. “There wasn't a car or pedestrian in the vicinity.”

A sigh of disappointment filled the room.

“There was one thing,” the captain continued. “Whoever it is left a note.”

“A note? Ransom instructions?” one of the FBI agents asked with interest as his first comment of the evening.

“Not quite,” Norbert said as he glanced down at his note pad. “It reads, in sum total, ‘Ha-ha.'”

Bea Wentworth was more than frightened; dredged from some depth within her, originating in a primitive survival mechanism, was an all-consuming sense of terror.

She had awakened once in the van. She had involuntarily moaned when she found herself strapped to a board-like frame. The van had slowed, evidently pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, and the driver had thrown open the rear doors. The hand with the chloroform-soaked cheesecloth had descended once again.

She had writhed under the tight straps and turned her head violently back and forth. The cloth had pressed down over her mouth and nostrils and been held firmly until she gasped for breath and again drifted into unconsciousness.

It was dark. A deep, unrelieved darkness, and she felt chilled. There was a dank, musty smell to the place where she was confined, but outside of that there was nothing else to indicate where she was held. She strained against the straps that bound her, and although her wrists could lift two or three inches, her ankles were immobile. The surface she lay on was stiff and unyielding.

“Is there anyone there?” Her voice seemed to echo, but there was no response. “Please! Is there anyone there?”

She strained to hear, but a faint drip of water several feet away was the only thing she could hear. The darkness engulfed her without relief.

Where was she and why? She tried to overcome panic and think about what had befallen her. She forced herself to remember the final moments in the shopping-center lot. He had worn a ski mask, and they had fought until she had fallen unconscious. Nothing else; even her remembrance of his physical size was vague.

She had to control herself. She had to fight back the terror and hysteria that began to surface.

“Do not think about Wobblies,” she said aloud. And, of course, she did.

Two Wobblies, her husband's benign monsters that peopled his children's books, sat in the corner and observed her with fire-red eyes and slowly twitching tails. Their tongues lolled under long snouts, and their stubby bodies swayed in unison.

“It's all a nightmare, and I'm going to wake up in my bed at Nutmeg Hill, right, fellas?”

They shook their heads, and she knew they were telling the truth.

“It's all a horrible mistake, right?”

They wouldn't deceive her and shook their massive snouts again.

She continued talking to the Wobblies, and it helped dispel the terror until she fell into a fitful sleep. She dreamed of doors: doors that opened out of dark rooms that smelled of rotting things; doors that entered onto broad meadows with grass swaying gently in a soft breeze; doors that filled her with exultation when they swung open into a bright noonday sun.

The clank of metal against metal awakened Bea with a start. Terror and panic began to flood through her, but she fought it back with a massive exertion of will. She turned her head toward the sound and saw a sliver of light reach from floor to ceiling.

A flashlight beam bobbed a few feet from her, and then the beam swung rapidly around the room and landed with a blinding flash across her eyes. She squinted into the brightness, trying to make out who held the light.

A door was open behind the light, and she could see the lighter hues of gray in a night sky. Steps near her. The light left her eyes, and again metal clanked against metal. The beam swung across the room to stop at a Coleman lantern on a granite slab. A gloved hand reached for the lantern, pumped the primer a few times, and then lit it.

The gasoline lantern sputtered to life. The gloved hand adjusted the flame until a bright white glow filled the room.

The light hurt her eyes and she strained against the straps that bound her. Then an involuntary moan escaped her as her eyes adjusted and she saw the room that imprisoned her.

She was a prisoner in a crypt.

Three massive stone sarcophagi filled the small vault, and the board on which she was strapped was laid on a fourth.

The man by the lantern turned to face her. It was her attacker from the parking lot. The ski mask hid his face, and he wore the same dark, nondescript clothes. He switched off the flashlight and shifted the small portable cassette recorder he held in his other hand.