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Carl shook his head, ran a hand through his thinning hair.
Sighed.
"Not so good. I gave her something to help her sleep. She blames herself. She figures if she’d insisted on staying with Ellen, this wouldn’t have happened."

"If she’d insisted on staying with Ellen," Mike said soberly, "we might very well be looking for Myra, too." He didn’t add that they probably would have found her—at least enough of her to bury. Shame instantly followed a twinge of envy Mike felt because the woman Carl Thompson loved was upstairs, safe in her bed.

While Ellen—where was Ellen?

~ * ~

Carl was pouring himself a cup of coffee when Myra came into the kitchen, her eyes quietly questioning. "I thought you were asleep, honey," he said, automatically reaching into the cupboard for another cup. "Lieutenant Oldfield was here. He asked about you."

"I thought I heard someone talking. Anything...?"

"He brought out a new composite. It was the same guy I saw at Anderson’s Insurance selling paintings."

"Oh." She looked frightened. "Carl, let’s go and get the boys from your mother’s. I want them with me."

"Why?" He set their cups of coffee on the table. "Myra, they’re fine where they are. They’ll be home Sunday."

"Carl, you don’t understand. I—"

"Myra, listen to me." He placed both hands on her shoulders, leveled his gaze at her. "You don’t need any more to cope with," he said gently, "and this is definitely not the best place for the kids right now."

Knowing his wife, he waited for further argument, but her face seemed to crumble before him in defeat, and she moved into his arms, laying her head wearily against his chest. "You’re right, Carl. Of course you’re right. I just feel so scared.
So damned helpless."

He stroked her hair. "I know you do, honey. We all do."

After a moment, she asked, "Where do you think she is right now, Carl? Where do you think he’s taken her?"

Carl didn’t answer.

Myra didn’t really expect him to.

Forty-four

When Ellen was fairly certain that he had really gone, she tried to calmly assess her injuries. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut. Her face felt as if it had met dead on with a Mack truck. She could taste blood inside her mouth. But the real pain was centered in her left cheekbone. She knew it was broken.

She attempted to make a fist with her right hand, remembering trying to grab the knife off the floor and his boot coming down. She winced as scalding pain shot up her arm. Waiting a few seconds, she breathed deeply, and repeated the action.
Then again.
Badly bruised, she concluded, but probably not broken.

Now her legs.
They were bound at the ankles. She inched them toward her along the floor, and out again. Other than the fact that her feet felt as though they were encased in blocks of ice, her legs seemed to be working properly. But then again, she hadn’t tried to stand on them.

There was probably not a square inch of her upper torso that wasn’t covered with bruises, but Ellen didn’t think anything else was broken, but she couldn’t be certain of that. For all she knew, she might very well be bleeding to death internally even as she lay there. Well, there was not much she could do about it, if she was.

Except to try and get away—to find help for
herself
.

Think
, she commanded herself
. Think
.

Okay. He’s tied me so I can’t escape, but he didn’t tape my mouth which has to mean he’s not worried about anyone hearing me if I should try to call for help—or if I scream. And since the walls don’t seem to be insulated and I would certainly be heard, there must not be any nearby neighbors.

She tested the strength of the ropes binding her hands. Though the pain in her right hand punished her, it was not so bad that she couldn’t stand it.

Her hands stilled as she heard his footsteps returning. Moments later, she felt him kneeling beside her in the darkness, smelled him the way one might smell a beast in the instant before you saw it. Feeling his hands sliding down her arms, her entire body and soul recoiled from his touch. Cringing inside herself, bracing for some new assault, Ellen went limp with relief when she felt him untying her hands as he’d promised.

"Do you want me to help you undo your jeans, Ellen?"

"What? No-I-you said—" she stammered.

"You thought I was going to take you out of here, didn’t you? No, I don’t think that will be necessary. I’ve brought you a bedpan. It belonged to my Aunt Mattie, but she won’t
be needing
it anymore. I’ve even warmed it for you. And there’s a roll of tissue on the floor beside you."

"Please, I—"

"There’s no need to feel embarrassed, Ellen. I’m used to this sort of thing. I took care of my aunt’s more ‘delicate’ needs for a long time."

"It-it’s not you," she said, trying to speak clearly through barely parted lips. "It’s me. I don’t think I could go if you were standing here."

For a long moment, he didn’t speak, and Ellen was terrified that she’d angered him.
Then, "Very well, Ellen.
If you think you’d be uncomfortable with me here, then of course, I’ll leave you."

"Thank you."

"You won’t try to get away, will you?"

"No. No, I promise." Her voice sounded almost childlike.

"Good. Because if you did, I’d have to hurt you some more," he said with chilling softness. "And I don’t think you’d like that."

It was next to impossible to maneuver in the darkness, first with her bad hand and then her ankles bound. But finally Ellen managed to wriggle her jeans and panties down. Lifting herself onto the bedpan, she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out against the knives of pain that attacked her body from every direction. When the pain leveled off a little, she forced herself into a sitting position. Despite the cold, the effort left her bathed in a clammy sweat, her heart racing wildly in her throat. She was sure she was going to be sick, but thankfully, after taking a couple of deep, slow breaths, the feeling passed.

It was humiliating to have to pee with him listening, but he might not oblige her by untying her hands next time, and she did have to go.
Badly.

To hell with modesty.

~ * ~

He seemed to sense when she’d righted herself, or else he could see in the dark, which wouldn’t have surprised her.

"Okay?" he said, his voice coming from a few feet away.

"Yes.
Except I’m freezing."
Exhausted, Ellen was more than willing to lay her head back down. She needed to rest. She needed to feel stronger so she could escape this madman.

Taking the bedpan away, he returned shortly to cover her with blankets. As he tucked them around her, his hands lingered momentarily on her thighs. Ellen held her breath, letting it out again when he took his hands away.

"Comfy?"

"Yes, thank you." She was too grateful for the warmth the blankets provided to worry about their disgusting smell.

"I used to do this for my mother," he said, almost fondly. "Sometimes she’d wake up in the morning with a bad hangover and I’d cover her up and bring her aspirin. Later, she’d call for her tea and cigarettes. She’d smile at me when I took them in to her. Sometimes, she’d take me into her bed."

Ellen thought the safest comment was none at all.

"I know what you’re thinking," he said sharply, "but it wasn’t like that. I was just a kid. She was my mother. We didn’t do anything."

"No, of course you didn’t," she said quickly. "I know that. It was just that I was thinking of my own mother, and how I used to do the same thing for her. That can be a lot of responsibility when you’re young.
A lot of unfair responsibility.
It can make you feel resentful." Perhaps, she thought, if she could establish a common bond between them, he would feel more favorably toward her and let down his guard. Then she would have a better chance of getting away.

"Did you?" he asked.

Encouraged, Ellen replied, "Yes.
Lots of times."

He laughed.
An ugly sound.
"You think you know what
it’s
like to be me?" he said, yanking her arms hard behind her, retying her hands. He gave the rope a final jerk so that it dug into her flesh. "You uppity bitches don’t know anything. You need to be taught."

"Are you going to kill me?" Her voice was childlike, barely audible. She knew the very question might set him off, but the not knowing, the wondering when his damn chain would snap, was worse.
Why had be brought her here? Why hadn’t he just killed her back at the house?

When he answered, his tone was back to being perfectly reasonable, almost pleasant. "No, of course I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to do anything at all to you—unless you misbehave.
Now.
You must be hungry, Ellen. I’ll make you some lunch.
How about some nice, hot soup?"

"That would be fine. Thank you. Please, can’t you loosen the ropes just a little? They’re cutting into me. I can hardly feel my fingers."

Giving a mock sigh of exasperation, he said, "You’re getting spoiled, Ellen. You girls do tend to spoil easily. But all right, just a little."

While he was busily granting her request, she ventured into a little deeper water. "Can you tell me where we are? Where you’ve taken me?"

His hands stilled momentarily on the ropes, and she tensed. But there was only the slightest hesitation before he answered.
"Why not?
It’s not like you’re going to tell anyone, is it? You’re in a home for wayward girls. You’ve been a very bad girl, Ellen."

And then she felt the slightest tug on her scalp and heard the snip of the scissors as he cut off a large chunk of her hair.

Forty-five

Every available man was working double-time trying to find out who belonged to the van Officer Gabe Levine had seen coming from the direction of Cutter’s Road just minutes after Ellen was taken. Artie had narrowed the list of possible vans in and around the area to forty-seven. After dividing said list between several officers and handing out copies of the new composite, Mike took off for Anderson Insurance.

It was close to noon when he returned with a unanimous "yes." The man in the sketch was indeed the same one who had been in there selling paintings just a couple of days before Cindy Miller
was
reported missing.

No one had anything new or helpful to report. He managed to engender a few shrugs and some stupefied looks. It was as though they’d hit an invisible wall. Mike wished to hell solving a case could be as easy as they made it look on television. In fact, police work came down to slogging through endless details, talking to endless people, paperwork.
Sometimes you got lucky.

This didn’t seem to be one of those times.

The day dragged on. The odd phone call was still trickling in—drying up quickly. Mike’s frustration grew.

At least getting around wasn’t going to be a problem. They’d gotten a few inches of snow during the night, but nothing like what had been forecast. All he’d needed was a major storm to shut the town down.

At three in the afternoon FBI agent Frank Burgess arrived on the scene. Wearing horn-rimmed glasses and dressed like an ad for Brooks Brothers, he looked more like a Wall Street broker than a detective.

He seemed a decent enough sort, though, not at all heavy, which Mike had half-expected. Mike filled him in on what they had so far.

"‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead’," Frank Burgess repeated, gazing at the ceiling. "That’s from
Sleeping Beauty
, isn’t it?"

"
The Wizard of Oz
," Mike said. "My daughter had a small role in the school musical last year. Do you think it contains some sort of code—a riddle?"

"It’s possible, but I doubt it.
Probably no more complicated than that it just popped into his head, struck his fancy.
Hard to believe, isn’t it, that raving psychotics were kids once, too? I don’t think he’s killed her yet, either, though I know that’s what the message implies."