RESORT TO MURDER (20 page)

Eric grabbed her arm. "Hold on...." and
Maggie turned to face him defiantly, to shake him off. Suddenly she
heard a sound behind her and her hopes leaped up that help had
come. She didn't have a chance to find out. The last things she saw
were Eric's eyes widening as he looked past her. Then something
rock-hard struck her head, lights exploded behind her eyes, and
everything went black.

***

Chapter 20

Consciousness surfaced for a moment, and
Maggie became aware of pain, motion, the musty smell of something
covering her, and murmuring voices. She struggled to stay on that
surface, to remember what had happened and think of where she was.
Then she began bouncing and rocking, her aching head bumping
against something hard, and blackness descended again.

When she next awoke, she was lying on
something hard and cold, the smelly cover was gone, and pain had
spread throughout her body. It was dark and still. She strained her
eyes and her ears. Slowly she made out outlines of a few large,
dark shapes. And she heard a faint hissing sound

She tried to move and found she couldn't.
Her hands were tied behind her back, and her ankles lashed
together. Trussed like a chicken, she thought, aware of the
ridiculousness, but she didn't feel much like laughing. She
struggled, however, to pull herself into a sitting position. It
took several minutes of effort, interrupted by waves of dizziness
and pain. Sweat broke out on her face which quickly evaporated into
the chill air. Maggie's stomach churned, adding to her misery, and
she took several deep breaths, trying to control it.

She sat up for several minutes, waiting for
the dizziness to gradually diminish, then concentrated on focusing
her eyes in the dark. Little by little she could see more of her
surroundings, and she realized she was in an old barn. She could
see slits of light, or rather of lesser darkness, between the
boards that formed the walls. She couldn't make out the large,
indistinct shapes around her. There were odors of moldy hay and
dampness, oil and old wood. She listened carefully and realized the
hissing sound she heard was rain. The storm she had seen coming had
arrived, covering any tracks of her abduction, she thought
dismally.

Something skittered against her leg, and she
jerked her feet back sharply, almost knocking herself off balance
and back down to a prone position. She fought hard to stay upright,
and also to keep down feelings of panic. Think, Maggie, think, she
ordered herself. Panic later, when there's time. You're alive, for
now. Concentrate on keeping yourself that way.

Easy for you to say, she answered herself.
But to fight the rising panic she started quietly reciting the
postulates of Euclid, something she had had her geometry students
do countless times. "Postulate one: It is possible to draw a
straight line from any point to any point. Postulate two: It is
possible...” It began to work. By the time she ran through them all
she had calmed down considerably and was able to focus her
thoughts.

How did I get here? was her first question.
She thought hard, remembering facing Eric on the path, then a sharp
blow on her head followed by blankness, broken briefly when she
heard voices and felt motion. I must have been riding in something
then, a truck, or a van. One of the blue vans?

But Eric wasn't the one who hit her, she
realized. She had been facing him when it happened and was hit from
behind. And he was looking past me, she remembered. He looked
surprised. So who came up behind me? And whose was the other voice
I heard later?

Could it have been Rob? she wondered, and
waves of a new kind of pain washed over her. Could Rob have been
working with Eric, stealing from the hotel, perhaps to raise money
for his own tennis operation? Or was talk of his future dream all
just a lie? Was the explanation of his fight with the former
girlfriend just another cover?

Maybe his anger and shouting at Eric had
been over stolen goods? Or maybe the anger was another cover-up?
Questions without answers raced through her mind. Something,
though, was missing. She couldn't seem to shake her head clear
enough to think of it right now. It hurt too much.

She didn't have the time to spend searching
for it either. She was here alone and alive, for now. That could
change at any moment. Obviously, the two who had put her here
planned to return, to dispose of her at a more convenient time
after alibis had been arranged. How soon that would be she had no
way of knowing and therefore needed to work on her escape
immediately.

Suddenly she remembered Dyna. Where was
Dyna! Had she been attacked as Maggie had? Was she alive?
Horrifying visions of her friend swirled before her eyes. Maggie
felt herself starting to lose it again and did another rapid
recitation. "Common notion 1: Things which are equal to the same
thing are also equal to one another.” By the time she got to "Five:
The whole is greater than the part," she was again calm. And
thinking more clearly.

It was possible, she now realized, that Dyna
hadn't written that note at all. Maggie could have been lured to
the woods by her attacker. Foolish as that made her feel, she
sincerely hoped that was true and that Dyna was safely in her room
right now, watching TV or sound asleep.

"Dyna?" Maggie whispered fearfully, then
raised her voice to call again. "Dyna? Are you here?” There was no
answer, and Maggie wasn't sure if that made her feel better or
worse.

She struggled with her bonds. They didn't
feel overly tight. Possibly whoever tied them was in a hurry or
thought she would stay unconscious. However, wiggling and twisting
her hands as much as she could still didn't loosen the ropes enough
to release her.

What were her chances of finding something
sharp to cut the ropes on, here in the dark? Memory of the skittery
thing came to her and the thought of sliding around touching
everything she came across brought shivers. However, thoughts of
the alternative, to sit and wait for someone to come back and kill
her moved her to action, and she struggled to get herself on her
feet.

She couldn't do it. The combination of the
ropes and her dizziness kept her from getting enough balance to
stand upright. She needed something to brace herself.

Maggie slid, inch by inch, along the packed
dirt floor as best she could, pushing with her feet and sliding
back with her hips. After several minutes and much effort she
managed to reach the closest wall, breathing heavily, and pushed
herself tightly against it. At first it seemed to take more
strength than she had, but slowly she got her feet under her, and
she started to rise up, bit by bit. She was almost halfway up when
her feet, still in the leather-soled flat shoes, slipped and flew
out from under her. She landed on her backside with a painful
thump. Her head swam and throbbed and she waited for it to clear,
fighting back tears of frustration.

She tried again. This time, by getting her
feet more firmly under her and digging the edges of her shoes into
the dirt, she managed to keep her footing, and in a few minutes she
was upright. Panting and sweating from the effort, she waited,
resting and thinking of what to do next.

She knew she couldn't leave the wall or
she'd fall. She decided to move along it, using a combination of
small foot movements and hops, aiming for the closest dark shape in
hopes it might be something with a sharp edge. She came to a
corner, and as she worked her way around, her face hit a large
cobweb. She let out a screech, jerking back, sputtering and rubbing
her face on her shoulders. Without hands she couldn't get it all
off, so she tried her best to forget it and not think about spiders
crawling in her hair.

She also hoped there was no one outside the
barn to hear her yelp. The rain made that less likely. If she were
being guarded, they would certainly be indoors, not out, she
thought, and would have made their presence known by now.

When she finally reached the dark shape she
had seen from her starting point, her disappointment was keen. It
was only an old wooden table. No pointed edges and no knives left
handily within reach. From the feel of the dust and grit on it, it
hadn't been touched by anyone for quite a while. This barn must be
forgotten and unused for years, she thought, an ideal place for
stashing inconveniently nosy investigators.

Joe was right. She should have left the
hotel right away. This wasn't at all like the things she used to
get into when they were kids. The combination of her disappointment
with the table and the thought of Joe brought tears to her eyes,
but she blinked them away and swallowed several times. No time for
that. Tears later, work now.

Maggie returned to her slow, painful inching
along the wall. She was just starting to get into a smooth rhythm
when something jabbed her leg. Something pointy, but not sharp
enough to break her skin. She bent down slowly to feel it with her
hands. It was the head of a large nail jutting out of a wooden barn
slat. She tugged at it, but it was seated firmly, perhaps about
half its length.

Maggie sank down on her knees, and moved her
ropes over the nail head. Perhaps she could loosen and untie the
knots by hooking it through them somehow? With her hands tied
behind her, it all had to be done by touch. She pictured her
abductors coming back for her and started to panic again, thinking
this was impossible, there wasn't enough time, then pushed those
thoughts away and concentrated on the task.

She tried it, over and over, feeling the
nail slide over the ropes, failing to catch a loop, controlling her
frustration. After dozens of attempts, close to giving up, finally
the nail caught. She could feel the knot slowly pull open, just a
little. The nail slipped out, but she was able to catch it back in
again. The loop grew bigger. Again and again she worked at it, and
gradually her efforts were rewarded. First one loop, then another,
and finally the ropes pulled loose from her wrists. She had done
it!

Maggie quickly turned to the ropes around
her ankles and had them untied in moments. She rubbed her ankles
and her wrists, exulting, then rose and crept to the door. All she
could hear was the soft, steady fall of rain. She peered through
several cracks and saw no truck or van, and no human shapes.

Maggie's impulse was to get out of there,
fast, but instead she turned back to the inside of the barn. She
had to make sure her friend really wasn't there before she
left.

She felt her way slowly around the remaining
walls and through the inner section of the barn, now able to use
her hands, checking carefully in the dark for a human shape,
listening for any human sound.

Maggie stumbled over bits of wood, and came
upon one large dark object she tentatively identified as a rusty
field tiller. She found a dried and crackling tarp which covered
nothing but dirt, and scraped her skin on a couple of old broken
barrels and baskets. She examined every inch of the place before
she returned to the door, satisfied finally that she was indeed
alone.

She checked the outdoor area again through
the cracks. There were no signs of life. Her eyes and ears told her
it was safe to venture out. But in her shaken state of mind it
still took all her courage to open the barn door and step outside.
She couldn't overcome the feeling that any moment something would
come crashing down on her head, or strong hands would grab her.

When they didn't, and she was outside of the
barn, rain falling on her face and only the dark shapes of trees to
be seen nearby, Maggie took a deep breath, turned towards the
trees, and ran.

She had been walking for hours, it seemed.
The barn she had escaped from was apparently out in the middle of
nowhere. She saw no lights, no houses, only endless fields and
trees. She had no way of knowing if she had been wandering in
circles, possibly missing a lifesaving road by only yards. At least
the rain had now stopped, but she was still soaked and shivering,
and she had more than once stepped out of one of her flat pumps as
it stuck in mud, having then to search for it in the dark.

She felt herself coming close to exhaustion,
and had to fight the impulse to curl up against a tree and sleep.
After the first thirty minutes or so, she had stopped looking back
fearfully for pursuers, stopped listening for running feet or the
sound of a motor. Her only concern now was finding help.

As she trudged, pushing herself step by step
over acres of field, she thought of Lori's murder, going over all
the information she had found out, and slowly discovering things
she had overlooked. Missing pieces became visible, one by one, and
a picture began to take shape in her mind. The moon slowly edged
out from behind concealing clouds, shining its light in hidden
corners and Maggie felt the truth edging out similarly, bit by
bit.

Gradually, she realized who it was that had
attacked her in the woods, and who had killed Lori and probably the
other two Highview workers. It was not with any feeling of triumph,
however, that she came to her conclusion, but rather with a feeling
of deep sadness. She almost wished she didn't know. Almost.

Maggie came to a cornfield, and skirting it,
found herself suddenly on a narrow road. Although her hopes rose
that she might now be able to flag down a motorist, none appeared,
and the only sound she heard was the chirp of crickets and tree
frogs.

She followed the road for a while, limping
now on sore, bleeding feet, hugging herself for warmth, when,
coming over a hill, she saw a small building up ahead, its white
walls reflecting the moonlight. Excitement leaped up until she
realized the building was totally dark, obviously vacant. Still,
something about it seemed hopeful as her memory stirred. Something
looked familiar.