The Death at Yew Corner (25 page)

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.

“I demand that you unstrap me at once!” Bea said.

“You aren't in any position to demand anything, lady.”

“Who are you?”

“Just call me a friend.”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

“If you're wearing a mask I must know you. Do I know you?”

Her abductor turned and walked to the door. Bea saw that at the entrance there was a barred grille that was ordinarily chained to a heavy hasp by the crypt entrance. A foot before the heavy metal bars was a massive arched metal door leading into the interior. He carefully pulled the door shut and returned carrying a large cardboard box which he placed on one of the stone sarcophagi. He methodically began to unpack items from the container and align them neatly on the stone surface. She watched in detachment as he placed everything in precise rows: several plastic water bottles, canned meats and bread, and a length of chain to which was welded a pair of handcuffs.

He turned to face her, holding the chain in both hands.

“What's that for?”

“To make you more comfortable.” He stepped toward the sarcophagus on which she lay. He snapped one handcuff over her right wrist and ran the chain over to the wall, where he padlocked it to a metal ring embedded in the masonry.

He unstrapped her feet and hands and stepped quickly away to the far side of the narrow vault.

Bea swung her feet to the floor and tried to stand. She had to grab for the edge of the sarcophagus in order to keep her balance. She felt light-headed and dizzy.

“Now, isn't that better?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Please. Not the same questions over and over again. Are you ready to make a recording for me?”

“On a cold day in hell!” she said as she massaged her legs. The chain clanked as she moved her right hand.

“Then you'll die,” he said mildly as he unloaded the last of the food containers.

“I suppose you want money?”

“That's the general idea.”

“Where am I?”

“From the looks of it, it would seem that you are chained in a tomb.” He began to stuff batteries into the small cassette player.

Bea wondered what she could hit him with. Perhaps she could loop part of the chain over his neck and … She would have to wait and bide her time. He was not a large man; she judged him to be about five foot nine and weighing around 150 pounds. He seemed to be in shape. He would be stronger than she.

He finished adjusting the small recorder, inserted a small microphone cord into its receptacle, and placed the unit down on the sarcophagus. “I would like you to say a few innocuous words to prove that you are alive and well. Then I shall make my presentation to your husband.”

“I've got a few words for you, and they all have four letters.”

“I'm not in the least interested in your opinion of me, Senator Wentworth; only in your value to your husband.” He held the small microphone toward her. “Talk to your beloved,” he commanded.

Bea spoke directly into the microphone. “Some creep's got me, Lyon. He's holding me in a crypt, probably somewhere in the state. It's an old place, at least over a hundred years old, and that should narrow it down. The creep wears a mask, but he's about five foot …”

Her abductor turned away, took two quick steps to the tape player, and withdrew the cassette. He threw the small reel across the room, where it fell against the wall and clattered to the floor.

“What do you take me for? This isn't a damn telephone you're talking into, it's a tape. Quit with the information and tell him how scared you are.”

Bea sat down heavily on the edge of the stone sarcophagus. She had to think. She had to insert something into her short message that would give Lyon a lead. What? And there was so little time.

He turned back to her after reloading the recorder. “Let's get it right this time, little lady. No travelogues. Just tell him how mean I am and how frightened you are. Got that?”

“Yes, I think I do,” she said in a low voice.

3

The men in camouflage suits, combat boots, and fatigue caps were stretched along the tree line in a skirmishers' formation. Sergeants and junior officers behind the long line urged them forward in hoarse voices. The commands echoed from the hills and forced Lyon Wentworth into a rigid posture.

“Spread out! Spread out! Ten feet between each man.”

“Watch for newly turned dirt or any article of clothing.”

The major standing next to the jeep wore knife-edged fatigues starched in stiff folds. He swung his binoculars rapidly across the moving formation. “I've got some of our Recon people rappeling down the cliffs along the riverbank, Mr. Wentworth. The police are using a boat with grapples to search the water along the edge.”

“Sounds thorough,” Lyon was finally able to mutter.

“If she's here, we'll find her,” the major said with a touch of pride in his voice.

The line of National Guard troops was soon lost from view in a heavy stand of pine. Occasionally a shouted command would reach Lyon, and he came to fear the hearing, for the next shout from the searching men could mean that Bea's body had been located. He kept assuring himself that she was alive, that the phone call from the man with the voice box was valid, and that she was being held somewhere.

He turned away from the self-satisfied Guard major and looked down the dirt logging road to their rear. A police cruiser, its dome light flickering, was jouncing in the ruts as it sped toward them at a pace too fast for the road's poor condition. The Murphysville cruiser swerved to a stop a few feet from the jeep.

Rocco Herbert and Captain Norbert erupted from the car.

Lyon watched his friend and the state police officer hurry toward him. Again the fear. Its tentacles sapped the strength of his legs. Behind him he heard the men searching in the woods and the voices of command reverberating through the forest. He searched Rocco's face for a sign.

“Any news?” Lyon asked softly.

“That goddamn postmaster is going to be up on charges!” Norbert snapped. “As soon as I can think of the right ones.”

“What?” Lyon looked perplexed as he swiveled his gaze from one man to the other.

“We have a man at the post office,” Rocco said quickly. “We were waiting for the morning mail, and when yours was sorted, our guy tried to take it.”

“Goddamn officious bureaucrat,” Norbert mumbled.

“As you can gather, the postmaster wouldn't give us your mail without a court order,” Rocco said.