Fixing Perfect (24 page)

Of course, that had all worked out, because it gave the cops even more of a reason to look at Sam. That, and the way he found the baby within minutes of Donovan dropping her off. Sam had almost caught him then, almost ruined the plan, but that had worked out, too. Donovan was glad. He wouldn't want a baby's death on his conscience.

Now everything had worked out again. Everyone would be out looking for Kerry. Especially Sam. Robin couldn't search, so she'd be home praying. Alone. Maybe her grandmother would be there. Donovan frowned. But she was old, she couldn't do anything to stop the plans.

Yes. Everything had worked out right. The plan was back on track. He'd have Robin, the kidnappings and killings would stop, just like she'd been praying for, so she'd be happy.

Oh, yes. God must be smiling.

 



 

Robin hung up and dialed the detective's number. It went to voicemail.

“Sam is up at Donovan's, and he says it looks suspicious. He's sure the kids are there—all three of them, and he wants you to send some men out there. Now. Please.” She added the last, and wondered if it would sound as wimpy to him as it did to her.

Bricker's number gave her the same option. She left Donovan's address that time, but didn't have any more hope. After speaking to the police dispatcher, who promised to contact “all officers involved,” she dialed Sam. His phone went to voicemail as well. “No one answers tonight. Not even you. I don't think they'll show up to help but I left messages. Oh, Sam, I'm scared!”

After she hung up, she wished she hadn't mentioned her fear. He didn't need to worry about her on top of everything else.

This waiting would drive her nuts. She'd experienced plenty of times in her life where she longed to have working-order legs, longed to be able to do what everyone else did with so much ease, with so little thought. Tonight, though, that longing twisted inside and left her almost in tears. She couldn't go after Kerry. She couldn't do a thing to back up Sam. She could sit in her room, safe in her own little house, and worry. That's all she was good for.

Except prayer.

Prayer. Probably the best thing she could do. And not just her, not just gimpy Robin, but anybody—the best thing anyone could do.

She'd just reached for her Bible when a rustle outside her window made her jump and turn. Something flickered beyond the curtains of blue beads and was gone. Why would Sam come to the window rather than the front door? She'd given him a key. Why would anyone?

She crawled off her bed, fitted her crutches over her hands, turned off the light next to her bed, and limped to the window. The beads stirred as she brushed them away, clacking and shushing as they slid around her shoulders.

She put her face to the glass, peering into the darkness.

Another face grinned back, and she screamed.

 



 

“I can't walk without my brace,” Kerry said. “Don't break it, ‘K?”

Jake looked up, his brows wrinkled in concentration. “I'll try. It's not plastic, so it'll hold up better than all the stuff we broke. But we have to get out. You get that, right?” His hand tightened on the metal pole. “If we don't get out, that guy is gonna kill all three of us and go after Robin.” He shoved the end of the brace back into the hole. “And then it won't matter if you can walk or not.”

“Yeah.” Kerry's face crumpled, and Becca knelt next to him and patted his shoulder. She'd never met someone bigger than her who cried more. But she still liked him.

“Mr. Bird talked about Robin all the time,” she said. Kerry just turned to look at her. “He really likes her. He said she has black feathers and pretty blue eyes. I never knew a bird who had blue eyes.”

Kerry laughed. “Not feathers, silly. She's not a bird. She's a person. She has black hair. It's real long and when we play baseball she has to put it in her hat, or tie it up.”

“Does Mr. Bird play baseball with you?”

“No. He watches and takes pictures.” He leaned forward to see what Jake was doing. “That's a big hole.”

“Yeah, and we don't want him to know it's here. So we hide it. Don't tell him if he comes back, OK?”

“‘K.” Kerry scooted off the mattress and crawled, like a crab on its back, toward Becca's mattress. “Can I help?”

“You are helping. You're letting me use this.” Jake sat back, panting, and waved the brace. Already the end of it was covered with white dust. “I'm making the hole really big, all the way through to the outside, and then I'm gonna try to break some of the wood with this.”

After that, Becca and Kerry didn't talk much. Neither did Jake, although he grunted a lot every time he shoved the pole of the brace between the strips of wood and pulled. After a couple minutes, one piece of wood cracked, splintered, and fell onto Becca's pillow. Jake shouted, not with any words, but with triumph, and jammed the pole in again. The next board broke, and the brace pole came away bent.

Becca glanced at Kerry. He frowned hard at Jake, but he didn't say anything.

After the third strip of wood broke, Jake turned the brace around and jammed it into the outside of the wall.

It took a lot longer than Becca thought it had to. She started to count, first in her head, but it wasn't enough and she had to count out loud. And when she got to six and couldn't remember how to go any higher, Kerry kept on counting for her.

He got up to twenty-two when Jake let out another shout. After that, things got crazy. Jake threw the bent up brace behind him and got right down on the floor. He punched at the wall, and for the first time in weeks, Becca smelled outside air.

She wanted to put her face right up to it and breathe, because it smelled so much better than the trash and dirty bathroom smells from inside the room. There wasn't any sun, though. She'd missed the sun so much, and now it was still gone. Maybe Mr. Bird had made it go away forever.

“Hey!” Jake screamed, with his face right up to the hole. “Hey, we're in here! Let us out! The new kid's here, too, that Kerry! Let us out!” He stopped yelling and waited.

No one answered.

Jake jumped up. “Becca, you gotta squeeze through the hole and find someone to help us. I'll keep trying to break through the wall, but I can't fit right now. I think you can.”

Becca dropped to her knees next to him. Now that she had to try to crawl through, the hole looked tiny.

Jake said, “I'm gonna hold the back of your head so nothing pulls your hair, OK?” He squatted next to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “You can do it, right? You can get out. And you gotta run as fast as you can and get somebody to come here. Don't call him Mr. Bird, either. Call him Donovan. No one out there knows who Mr. Bird is.”

Something inside her chest kept banging. She was so scared. That was her heart, right? She'd never remember what Jake told her. But he didn't give her a chance to ask him to say it all over again, so she could get it right.

He pulled her toward the hole, and punched at the wall a few more times. His hands were covered with white dust, mixed with blood. She didn't want to bleed to get out of the room, but maybe she had to. Maybe it was OK, anyway. After all, Jake was bleeding to get her out, wasn't he?

Just before she lay down to wriggle through, she remembered something. She grabbed Jake's face. “See? I
told
you God would get us out. I told you He'd send someone to help us. And He did! He sent us Kerry!”

Becca made herself as skinny as a snake, and stuck her head through the hole in the wall.

 



 

Glass shattered and spilled over the sill. Some of it sparkled toward the floor, and Robin flailed back, nearly falling. She only caught herself up by grabbing onto the sewing table.

A second later Donovan jerked the window open.

Robin screamed again and stumbled away from him, whacking her legs with the crutches, trying to angle toward her bed, where her cell phone lay open.

“I don't think so.” Donovan darted past her and snatched it up. After a quick check, he stuffed it in his pocket. “It's OK, though, Robin. You don't have to be scared. Sam called me and told me to come over.” He nodded, smirking. Something in his ice blue eyes glowed, and she wondered that she'd never seen a hint of insanity before. Now she couldn't see anything else.

“He didn't call you. He wouldn't ask you to come here.” Even fisted around her crutches, her hands tensed more.
God, help me, because I can't help myself.

Donovan shook his head and moved closer. The frantic stare in his eyes changed to amusement, and something gentle that she would never again believe in. “Yeah, yeah. He did, really. He wants me to take care of you. Protect you from Danny. Coach Danny, remember? Remember we said he's the killer? And Sam wants me to get you fixed up.” He reached out to run a hand along one strand of hair and set off a chain reaction of horrified chills. “That's what he said. He called me, just a little while ago. He said you're all worried over Kerry, and he's going after Danny to get him back, and you want me to fix everything.”

All that talk of fixing. He'd mentioned fixing her before. How many times? And she'd never felt the alarms that filled her now, only anger. Why not? Why hadn't she seen? Why hadn't anyone else?

But she had to focus. “Where is Kerry?”

“He's safe. No, really. He's safe. Sam is going to get him from Danny.” Donovan glanced toward the living room where the only light in the house glowed. “Your grandmother in there?”

Robin shook her head. “She heard me scream. She went for the cops.”

“No, she didn't. I bet she's upstairs.” Donovan chuckled. “That's gonna be pretty funny. She's gonna come down tomorrow and find you and me all fixed up. Perfect. She's gonna be really happy.”

And what could she say?
Grams likes me just the way I am. I don't need to be fixed up. Whatever you do to me, she's not going to be happy about it
…but the words choked her, and they wouldn't make any more difference said that they did right now, silent in her mouth.

Donovan moved closer.

Robin scrambled away as far as she could until she felt the blankets with the backs of her knees. She wouldn't go any farther. She didn't want to end up on the bed in front of him.

He stroked her hair again and she pulled away, angrily, tossing her head like a skittish horse.

“You're so beautiful, Robin. We're going to be so beautiful together. I wish I could see the pictures. I always take pictures, you know.” His voice went higher than normal, as though it, along with his sanity, had slipped away from him. His hands shook as he leaned close to Robin.

“Everyone knows you take pictures.” But nausea filled the back of her throat. What kind of pictures was the man talking about? What kind would a maniac take and talk about with such love and pride?

Then she remembered Sam's descriptions of the first victim, how Lehanie had been posed, how, after they found Kaitlyn with crutches and more dyed black hair, everyone realized the killer had fixated on Robin.

And now she knew. If only someone had thought to look for pictures before now.

“Those aren't the pictures I'm talking about.” He giggled and seemed to hear the irrationality in his voice and got a grip on himself. He shook his head, and his voice lowered an octave. “No one's ever going to see these. I can't post them in any gallery. I wish I could. I wish I could show them to you. I'd love to see your face when you looked at them.” He swung his arm, his eyes alight again, and terrifying. “These are my special pictures. All kinds of my sweet, little Robins. Oh, and there was the one with Sam. Did you like that? You didn't see the pictures, though. Not the good ones. Maybe you saw the police ones, maybe Sam showed you those. You were so beautiful, dancing in the waves. I didn't think they'd pick on Sam for that one, but I'm glad they did. It gave me more time.”

“You're sick.” She flinched; sure he would retaliate for that remark.

But he only smiled. “You don't understand. Not yet. I'm a photographer. I like things to be perfect. Perfectly beautiful. Don't worry.” Again, he reached for her. His hand, stroking her cheek, coming to rest on her shoulder, made bile rise in the back of her mouth. “When we're done, you're going to be all fixed up, and no one will ever think you're not perfect again.”

She took a deep breath. “You're not going to touch me.”

“You're just like Kerry. That was so funny. There you were telling him not to trust anyone. And you meant Danny, and he had no idea. No one did.” His giggle surfaced for a moment before he repressed it again. “Now, it's just you and me. Just the two of us.”

Had those ice blue eyes always been so unfocused?

“People are looking for him.”

“Oh, sure they are. Sam is. He told me all about it. But they'll find him soon enough. You don't have to worry about Kerry.”

Confusion drowned under new understanding. And she'd doubted Sam. “What about Becca and Jake?”

“Is that the kid's name? I kept forgetting.” He shrugged. “He's a little punk anyway. Who cares what happens to him? He's not the kind of kid I'd ever want. Becca now, she's perfect, except for her hair.” He frowned. “I never got time to fix her hair. That kid kept yelling at me, getting me all mixed up.”

“You said Coach Danny had him.”

Donovan giggled and shrugged again, giving her an arch lift of his brows, as though he were as young as the children he'd taken. “You know where they are.”

“No, I don't.”

“Don't be silly. Sam figured it out, didn't he? You know why I'm here. It's nearly over. But it's been beautiful, hasn't it?”