The Fourth Victim (16 page)

Cave
Sunday, December 5, 2010

C
lay knelt, grabbing the duffels' straps, shoving them toward the door. I realized our departure was imminent—and was petrified to move. To go out there, where danger waited for me. My confinement had become my safety. It was all I knew in this frightening new world.

I was outside myself looking in. Sitting in a chair in my office. I'd describe this to my clients as distancing. Taking a step back so I could better handle a situation that was threatening my emotional equilibrium.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“Of course. What do you need?”

“Just a pen and some paper. I think best when I can write.” That, at least, hadn't changed.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his notepad, ripped out the used pages, which he stuffed back in his pocket, and handed me the notebook. There was a small pen attached.

The pen looked so…normal. I was afraid to touch it.

“Something wrong?”

“I…chew on pens. I'm trying to break the habit, but…”
I was trying to find the courage to crawl out into the night and face whatever the next days would bring.

Clay shrugged and said, “You chew on it. It's yours.”

Cave
Sunday, December 5, 2010

“Time to go.”

I'd been waiting for the words. Dreading them. “The hardest part is getting started,” I said aloud, caught in a fog of panic.

Logically, I understood what was going on. But that wasn't helping.

“Getting started?” Clay Thatcher sat there looking at me as though we had all the time in the world to embark on the Sunday stroll ahead of us.

“I'm scared.” There. I'd admitted it.

“You should be.”

No. No, I shouldn't be. The only thing to fear was fear itself. I knew that. I…

“Fear keeps you aware of danger. It keeps you safe.”

Was he blaming me for my predicament? “Is that your way of telling me that if I'd had enough sense to be afraid of skating alone on a deserted path I wouldn't be in danger now?”

“Absolutely not! Whoever grabbed you was determined. And patient. If he hadn't had a chance to take you while you were skating he'd have found another way.”

My stomach calmed a bit as I listened to him.

And then a new churning began.
He
could ease my emotional distress but I couldn't?

That was a new one.

One I didn't like.

At all.

 

They had to get out of there. Dawn was approaching and Clay wanted Kelly Chapman safely ensconced in his home before daylight.

“Ready?” he asked, on all fours as he faced the opening that led out into the night. She was right behind him, also on hands and knees.

“Yes.” Her answer was firm. Definite. Or would have been if her voice hadn't wavered.

“Just remember what I told you.” He moved forward a couple of inches and then paused. “I go out first. When I turn back for you, get yourself up to the ground as quickly as possible. Stand behind the tree trunk while I close up the cave and then we walk briskly to my car.”

“Got it.” Her voice was stronger. “And once we get in the car, I lie down on the floor behind the front seat until we're in your garage. I'm planning to sleep.”

He moved forward a little more and then stopped. “It's okay to be afraid, you know.”

“I know.”

“It's okay to show that you're afraid.”

She looked as though she was about to speak and then her mouth stiffened. Her entire body stiffened. “Can we go?”

He was worried about her. And she wasn't asking for his pity or compassion at all. She wasn't asking for anything from him. She was asking way too much of herself.

“You sure you're feeling okay?”

“I'm a little dizzy, headachy, but I'm fine. I'm not going to be if I have to sit here on my hands and knees much longer. My arms are shaky.”

With that, Clay got his butt—and hers—out of there.

 

Maggie didn't sleep much. She couldn't. Life was just too awful. And every time she tried to make it better, it got worse.

She'd lied to Samantha. And Kyle, too, for that matter, but that didn't bother her quite as much as lying to Samantha.

Mac hadn't come for her yet. Hadn't sent a signal.

But he'd been there. He'd moved the flower. That was to let her know he'd gotten her call for help. He'd take care of her. He'd promised. He loved her.

And as soon as he found a way to contact her, she'd tell him her plan.

They had to leave the country. Go to one of those places she'd learned about on the internet where they allowed older men to marry younger girls.

And as soon as they were gone and Mac was safe from all the lies, she'd let Samantha know that she was afraid her mother knew who'd taken Kelly.

She'd probably burn in hell for ratting on her own mother, especially since Mom had sacrificed her whole life for Maggie.

Maggie hated that she was the kind of person who'd turn on one of her own.

It would look like she was choosing Kelly over her mom. She loved Kelly so much. But she loved Mom just as much. Just…differently.

No, she wasn't choosing between Mom and Kelly. She was choosing between right and wrong.

Bike Trail
Sunday, December 5, 2010

The night air was freezing. Clay had wrapped the blanket around me, and I held it in place with one hand while I hurried beside him to his car. Everything about me ached. Every step I took.

I didn't look to either side. I tried not to see anything at all. I focused on my goal.

The back of Clay's dark sedan. Getting there alive.

We didn't speak. And when we reached his car, he opened the front door and the back at the same time, ushering me in under his arm and into position without a word.

The car light was on for a brief second, before Clay shut it off, but that second was long enough for me to notice my picture stuck to the front dash.

The sight unnerved me.

A lot.

 

Two thousand utility carts of the model used by the path maintenance team had been purchased over the past six months in a fifty-mile radius of Chandler. The number increased exponentially when the search was expanded.

And those were only sales of
new
vehicles.

They were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The city itself had sold part of their working fleet of utility carts over the past year after employee cutbacks, but each of those sales had been checked out and the new, private owners had alibis.

City-worker uniforms were a standard issue sold at every farm supply store in the tri-state area.

Clay had Greg following up, searching through thousands of sales receipts, looking for any of the names on their lists, making calls. A job that could take the next month to get through.

But they might get lucky. The first or fifth or twenty-fifth call might be the one.

Seven utility carts had been reported stolen in the past month within a two-hundred-mile radius of Chandler and Brookwood. Barry looked into those. And turned up nothing.

Clay checked on the property where he'd found Kelly's
cave. It was public land. He searched maps of the area on the internet and found one that had been produced by the Fort County Historical Society. It depicted known pre-Civil War slave hideaways. Clay printed out the map and compared it to the one he'd used that night on the path. Kelly's prison was on both.

So far, no Ezekial Greene had shown up anywhere in Tennessee or Ohio. Not with the Department of Motor Vehicles in either state. Not with arrest warrants or in police databases or mortgage loan requests. Nor had he filed taxes in the past twenty years or applied for a marriage license. At least, not under the name Kelly knew.

The man existed. He'd visited Kelly as recently as the previous month. But he lived his life completely and totally under the radar.

For the record, Clay had claimed he'd gotten the man's name from a copy of Kelly's birth certificate. And he'd said that as a precaution, Barry should look for any identifiers they could find on the man. Anyone who knew him. Who could describe him. Barry had connections among some of the homeless guys downtown. Two-bit drug users. Maybe they'd know something.

The agents and volunteers who spent the morning out on the bike path had no luck. That was one negative report Clay was happy to get. He'd removed Kelly Chapman from the scene without leaving any evidence.

No one knew he had her.

She was still sleeping. She'd been ready to drop by the time they'd arrived just before five that morning. He'd ushered her into his home, an arm around her back, steadying her, and taken her straight back to the spare bedroom across the hall from his master suite. Her room wasn't much—a queen mattress on a frame. And four empty, unmatched dressers lining the walls, brought from bedrooms
in his parents' home. They were probably antiques, but Clay hadn't bothered to check that out.

The room Clay had to offer Kelly bore no resemblance whatsoever to the warm, decorated and peaceful haven she had at home, but there were sheets on the bed and, through another door, she had her own bathroom.

He'd stood outside the door of that bath while she'd showered, leaving her some modesty, but ready to take charge at the first indication that she was in trouble.

She'd come out ten minutes later, dressed in the gray sweats and Boston Red Sox T-shirt he'd given her, her hair wet and sticking up. She'd apologized for being so needy and asked if he minded if she got some sleep.

He'd been dismissed.

And he hadn't heard a sound from her since.

Sometime shortly after noon, Clay made another trek down the hall to the closed door of his temporary housemate's room. When there was still no sign of life from inside, he quietly turned the knob and looked in on her. She was a small lump under his grandmother's quilt, curled up, her face to the wall.

Her hair had dried.

He swallowed and closed the door. Left a note on the kitchen counter—the table was covered with files and reports and lists—and made a quick run to a Wal-Mart about half a mile from his house.

Not wanting to be gone long, Clay got a cart and threw in toothpaste, toothbrush, hairbrush and comb. And then, as he passed by, he grabbed some feminine-looking shampoo, figuring one was pretty much like another. In the deodorant aisle, he wasn't as sure. Should he get antiperspirant and deodorant combined, like he did for himself? Or was just deodorant enough? After a second of indecision, he chose one of each.

Clothes were next. Something to get her by for a day or
two. He grabbed the first packet of women's underwear he came across, looking at them only long enough to find an
S
on the package. Kelly Chapman was a small woman.

Bras didn't come in packages. Clay stood in front of the wall with rods of hanging straps. He'd have been more comfortable facing a gun.

He couldn't do it. He turned away. And thought of the woman in his home braless.

He couldn't do that, either.

What the hell was the matter with him? He was on a
case.
A woman's life was at stake, and he was thinking about her breasts?

On a rack behind the wall were packages of sports bras. Clay guessed at her size, grabbed one and ran.

He snatched three pairs of jeans as he walked past them—three sizes in the same style—and a black fleece top, then strode back to find the tennis shoes. He added a few pairs to his cart.

He'd donate whatever didn't fit to a women's shelter.

On his way from the shoes to the checkout, Clay passed the beauty aisle.

In the picture of Kelly Chapman that he'd quickly pulled from his dash after he'd helped her into his car early that morning, she'd appeared natural—as though she wore little makeup.

But wasn't that the point of makeup? To make a woman look natural? Who knew what it took to create that effect?

He'd never lived with a woman other than his mother. And her life hadn't required artfully applied cosmetics. Or any cosmetics. She'd been too busy coping with arthritic joints—and needing his father's attention every minute of every day—to care about how she looked.

Three minutes had passed while Clay stood there staring. Impatient with himself, he got one of everything in
a brand whose name he recognized. With a last-minute vision of the soda in Kelly Chapman's fridge, he grabbed some Diet Coke. Then he hurried to the checkout, paid with cash and got back home before he had to acknowledge that he'd lost his mind.

He'd just pulled in the drive when his cell rang and JoAnne's number flashed on the display.

“He called again. Still couldn't get a trace.” His second-in-command cut right to the chase.

“What'd he say?” Sitting in the garage, the automatic door closing behind him, Clay had to remember to play the game from both sides—with what he actually knew and what he was supposed to know.

“That we're to put the money inside a blue backpack and leave it under the slide at the old elementary school playground in Chandler.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning—11:45. He said that as soon as he's safely away with the money, he'll tell us where we can find Dr. Chapman. If he's detained, the bomb attached to her stomach will detonate.”

It was all going to be over in less than twenty-four hours.

“Does he know he's talking to a cop?” Sam was answering Kelly's phone. She could be anybody.

“I don't think so, but he didn't seem all that concerned one way or the other. He didn't issue an order for no police.”

Ordinarily that would be a problem. For once, Clay wasn't concerned about the immediate safety of his victim.

Eleven forty-five. What was particular about that time? Transportation to catch?