Never Fear (30 page)

“They're both gone,” I said.

My stomach began to turn with the realization that something I had said put them at risk.

“We'll need pictures of them both,” I said. “See if you can find her purse or wallet.”

Harrison nodded and left, and I walked over to the bed and sat down. The bedspread was a print of a rain forest with animals hanging from the trees. A pair of sneakers lay on the floor next to the bed, exactly as his mother had done in her room. A T-shirt had been tossed on the end of the bed and I reached over, picked it up, and held it to my face, taking in the sweet scent of a little boy.

As I set the shirt back on the bed I looked across the room and my eye stopped on a section of wall painted to look like a bear. In the center of the bear's paw was the doorknob for the closet. The air in the room seemed to vanish as I took a breath. I rose and walked over to the closet.

“Peter,” I said softly.

I reached out and closed my fingers around the knob, turned it until the bolt cleared the jamb, then slowly opened it. I watched the line of light from the room slice across the darkness on the floor of the closet, stopping on two small sock-clad feet that flinched as the light touched them.

“It's all right, Peter, I'm a police officer,” I said as gently as I could.

The feet drew back from the light, trying to cling to the darkness in the corner. I slowly knelt down in the doorway as Harrison stepped back into the room. I motioned with my hand for him to call for help and he silently stepped back out.

In the back corner of the closet a small hand reached out of the darkness and pulled a foot out of the light. From the darkness I heard him fighting to quiet his breathing.

“You're safe there,” I said softly. “I won't move. I'll stay right here until you say it's okay.”

I waited for a response but none came.

“If you run your hand along the edge of the light, you'll see it's still safe.”

A moment later his small fingers emerged slowly from the darkness and moved along the edge of light as if testing its strength.

“You see, just like before, no one can see you, or hurt you there. . . . I know about this because I'm a police officer. It'll be our secret, we won't tell anyone.”

The sound of his breathing began to slow.

“Promise,” came out of the darkness.

“I promise,” I said.

Slowly a hand crept out into the light, a little bit at a time, until his entire hand was visible.

“Your mom was making macaroni and cheese. You like macaroni and cheese?”

His fingers withdrew into the darkness for a moment, then came back to the light, where he began to run them back and forth over the floor of the closet.

“Yeah,” Peter said.

Harrison stepped to the doorway and nodded that help was on the way.

“Did your mom ask you to stay in here until she got back?” I asked.

His other hand tested the light, but he didn't answer. I glanced at my watch to try to estimate how long it had been since whatever happened to his mother had taken place. We couldn't have missed it by more than half an hour.

“Is your mom in a secret place, too, or can you tell me where she is?”

The top of his blond head became visible as he leaned into the light and rocked back and forth.

“She went with the man.”

Each passing second began to sound in my head like a clock picking up speed. And with each click she was slipping farther away.

“What man, Peter?”

His little hands tightened into fists and withdrew into the shadows. How far had he taken her in just these few seconds?

“What man?”

“The man who came to the door,” he whispered.

I reached out and placed my hand a few inches from the edge of the light. “And that's when you came to hide here?”

“Yeah,” he said, but it was little more than a squeak. Then his hand slipped back into the light and his fingers stretched out until they just touched mine.

41

We were driving west on Mulholland as I checked my watch. Another unit had arrived five minutes after Harrison's call. Seven minutes after that Peter slipped out of the darkness of the closet and I held him long enough for his grip to relax on my arm.

How many minutes had it taken to get here? Another ten? I hadn't looked when we left the house. Each second that passed became a heartbeat pumping blood out of an open wound.

As we rounded a curve, the dark line of the ocean became visible in the distance and we pulled to a stop at the top of a gravel road that disappeared down the valley side through thick vegetation. A short driveway led to a house on the right, which appeared to have lost power. Cross's home was the only other one on the street, another hundred yards out of sight around a corner in complete darkness.

I eased my foot off the brake and coasted until we reached the turn. Twenty yards ahead, surrounded by large oaks and chaparral, was the house. The headlights lit a tall brick wall topped with metal spikes that appeared to wrap around the property.

“A fortress,” Harrison said.

I shut off the car, stepped out, and started walking down the gravel road until the driveway came into view.

“It's not a fortress anymore,” I said.

The iron gate that stretched across the driveway had been smashed. The ornate scrollwork and bars looked as if a tank had driven through it. I looked around the corner of the wall into the courtyard. A large white sedan was parked inside.

“It's a Buick,” Harrison said.

“The car that followed my brother.”

He nodded. “If this belongs to Cross, he killed John.”

We rushed up to the Buick. Its front end was undamaged.

“This didn't drive through that gate. Someone else was here,” Harrison said.

I looked in the car, and sitting on the front seat were several long coils of yellow cord.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, and then began running across the courtyard toward the front door. The entry was nearly hidden in shadow, but I could see that the front door was partly open. I swept the windows facing the entrance with my weapon—nothing moved inside. It was like looking into the lifeless eyes of a corpse.

“Go,” I said, and Harrison was through the door.

“It smells like the ocean,” Harrison said.

Broken glass, sand, and water covered the floor where an aquarium had been smashed. A three-foot-long yellow eel as thick as my fist was moving slowly across the gray slate tile, slapping its tail, opening and closing its mouth as it gasped for water that was no longer there.

“Cross,” I yelled.

Not a sound came back. The kitchen was to the left, past the fireplace; a hallway led to the right and the bedrooms. I stepped into the living room. I motioned toward the hallway and Harrison nodded. I took three steps and stopped, my stomach in my throat.

“Jesus,” Harrison said.

A clump of long, sandy brown hair was lying on the floor. I walked over. The hair looked to be eight or ten inches long.

“Just under shoulder-length,” I said. “Candice Fleming.”

I knelt down and examined it. “Pulled out at the roots.”

Down the hallway was another clump of hair in front of a closed door. I pushed the door open, then swung around, raising the Glock. Inside, the coffee table and couch had been pushed back, creating an open space on the rug large enough for a person to lie down. A sheet of heavy clear plastic had been laid down.

I walked over and looked down at it, playing out what I was seeing in my head.

“He put the plastic down to keep any rug fibers from sticking to her clothes, and to catch any blood or bodily fluids.”

Harrison knelt down and examined it. “It's clean. It hasn't been used.”

I looked over to the broken window.

“He either took her somewhere else in the house, or . . .”

“Someone stopped him,” I said.

“She could still be alive.”

“Then what happened to Cross?”

We ran back outside and looked at the smashed gate and then back at the house.

“What does this look like to you?” I asked.

Harrison's eyes moved across the grounds, stopping and taking in details.

“The gate is crashed, then two entries are made into the house—the window and the door. This wasn't the work of a single person.”

“Something a tactical squad would do in a rescue,” I said.

“Or a killing.”

I looked at Harrison. “We have to find Hazzard.”

42

What I had learned since finding Danny's message on the door of my refrigerator was that my father did not kill Victoria Fisher. But the door to that nightmare hadn't been closed. Two young women had still been murdered by the River Killer, and whether by design or actual circumstance, my father was connected to them.

Harrison had hit it on the head at the theater when he called my father's assaults on the two students dress rehearsals for a full performance. Was it part of this? Or did this chain of violence end with Cross and Hazzard? Which of my father's roles had returned from the past?

A large silver pickup that I didn't remember seeing before was parked in Hazzard's driveway. I drove slowly to the end of the cul-de-sac past his house. No lights appeared to be on. Nothing was visible in any of the windows.

I pulled to a stop behind the pickup and stepped out. For an instant the wind held the scent of a rosebush, but then it shifted and the bitter remains of destroyed homes replaced the sweet, pungent air.

“Look under the truck,” Harrison said.

There was a puddle under the front of the truck, and a dark line of fluid running down the driveway to the curb. I walked around the side of the pickup. The front grill had been heavily damaged. The pattern of the denting matched the contours and lines of the gate at Cross's house.

“Call for backup,” I said, and Harrison took out his phone.

Inside the cab a bone-handled hunting knife lay on the passenger seat. On the floor were small pieces of yellow cord. I pulled out my Glock, stepped up to the corner of the garage, and looked around to the front windows. In the dark interior of the living room something was there. Not visible, but there just the same.

“There's movement,” I said.

The blackness appeared to be shifting in and out like a tide, but whatever I had seen was already gone.

“The back,” I said, but we were already moving, nearly there. A bonfire in the middle of the yard illuminated the back of the house with a warm glow.

“His things,” I said.

Hazzard had emptied his house of his prized signed hockey sticks and jerseys and balls and bats and set everything on fire.

“He's burning his bridges,” Harrison said.

A figure was standing at a bedroom window on the second floor, in the darkness. His face appeared more like a mask than that of a living, breathing soul. Circles of shadow surrounded his eyes, the set of his jaw as rigid as if it were carved of wood or bone. I could see his mouth moving ever so slightly, as if he were whispering a secret to someone just behind him in the darkness.

I heard myself say, “The house,” but I was already running to the back door as Harrison kicked it open. Somewhere inside music was playing.

“The Stones,” Harrison said. “He's playing the Rolling Stones.”

A stack of unwashed plates filled one of the sinks. The odor of fried food and spilled beer hung heavily in the air.

“He's falling apart,” I said.

We moved across the kitchen to the living room.

“The music's coming from the second floor,” Harrison said, but I didn't hear a word. Candice Fleming was crawling across the carpet, short lengths of yellow cord dangling from her wrists.

I rushed across the living room and knelt next to her as Harrison covered the stairs.

“You're all right now,” I said.

She didn't react to the sound of my voice, just continued to crawl, her eyes fixed on the door and her escape. I reached over and placed my hand on hers. “Your son is fine. I found him.”

She stopped moving, her fingers digging into the carpet as if it were soil in a garden.

“Peter stayed right where you told him to. You did the right thing,” I said.

“Peter,” she whispered.

I nodded.

She started to reach out toward me, then saw the cord dangling from her wrists and I could see panic beginning to return in her eyes. I took her hand and tried to pull her back.

“We're going to take those off you. It's over.”

She shook her head.

“Yes it is, but we have to get you outside. Can you walk?”

Fleming looked at me, her eyes still partially in the nightmare inflicted on her.

“Delillo,” she whispered.

“That's right.”

I got Fleming to her feet and walked her to the front door.

“Run to my car. Other policemen are coming; they'll take care of you.”

The panic in her eyes vanished and she stared at me with unmistakable clarity.

“He was a policeman,” she whispered.

She turned and ran into the night as I rushed back to the stairs where Harrison waited. A half dozen steps led to the second floor. I eased up the stairs until the hallway came completely into view. It looked as if a windstorm had blown through it. Shattered glass littered the floor, strands of wire and pieces of broken picture frames hung on the walls where pieces of his collection had been.

The music was coming from the room at the end of the hallway fifteen feet away. A faint light was visible along the bottom of the door. There were two other doors, one on either side between where we stood and the far end.