The Morning After (50 page)

She should try to fight, to scream. She was going to be buried alive. That part she remembered. She had to do something fast. But still her mind was like molasses, the drug she’d been given pulling her under again. She tried to scream, but couldn’t. It was as if she were slogging through quicksand and her mind wouldn’t clear. She remembered the needle and blacking out.

Maybe this was all just a dream, a really bad dream. She tried to grasp onto conscious thought, but the drug in her system kept working on her, dragging her back into the blissful blackness…and with terror lurking in the dark corners of her consciousness, she quit fighting and let go, slipping once again into the void.

The bitch had hurt him. His crotch still throbbed where she’d nailed him in the nuts and the side of his face ached, compliments of her sharp-heeled boots.

But she hadn’t gotten away. No. She was getting everything she deserved. Finally. Like the rest.

Nikki Gillette was already in a casket. Soon to draw her last breath, soon to know the fear and pain, the sheer terror of being helpless, at the mercy of someone stronger. She, like the others, had crumpled before him, always underestimating his strength and cunning.

As he drove outside of the city, The Survivor swiped a bloody hand over his forehead, catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Blood covered a face streaked with mud, compliments of Le Blanc Cemetery. His hair was wet and plastered to his head, his muscles sore from the hard work and the wounds she’d inflicted.

But he’d suffered worse and survived. Nikki Gillette’s pathetic attempt at harming him was nothing.

His mission for the night was nearly accomplished. Soon, the police would arrive and he imagined the look of horror on that bastard Reed’s face as he opened the coffin buried deep in the mud of Le Blanc Cemetery.

“Too late,” the Grave Robber said aloud as he headed steadily north, wipers slogging through the rain that pummeled his windshield. Past the lights of the city, he saw a flash of lightning sizzling through the night sky. Rolling claps of thunder followed.

It seemed fitting.

A storm was raging as Nikki Gillette breathed her last.

Unfortunately he couldn’t finish all of his business. Not right away. He would have to lay low for a while. Now, for certain, the police would know who he was and it would take time, after tonight, for him to be able to continue his quest. But the principals had been punished. Those who’d been most influential at the trial.

The other jurors, had, he’d sensed even then, been weaker, not as strong of personalities, their opinions more easily swayed. They wouldn’t get away. He’d find them, one at a time, and when they least expected it, he’d spring. He’d have to make the first couple look like accidents in a year or so, just so he wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. He smiled to himself as a police car drove past, flying down the road in the opposite direction.

“Go get ’em,” he muttered, watching in his mirror as the cruiser’s lights flashed on and disappeared around a corner.

Chuckling to himself, he felt invincible.

He only wished he could witness Pierce Reed opening the coffin lid and discovering that he was too late. By the time the casket was pried open, Nikki Gillette would be dead.

CHAPTER 30

Reed’s gut clenched with fear. Had the blood in the Gillette home been Nikki’s? What had that twisted bastard done to her?

His headlights cut a wide swath of light through Le Blanc Cemetery, illuminating the old gravestones and plots and he told himself to hang in there, to have faith; he couldn’t help her if he went off the deep end. And yet, terror unlike any he’d ever known tore at him.

Other police cars followed him through the intricately designed iron gates that the caretaker had opened a few minutes before.

“Please, God, no,”
he whispered as he parked the El Dorado and the rain poured from the sky.

He saw it as he climbed out of the car. A fresh mound of mud already collecting puddles near the back wall. He started running. Oh, God, was he too late?

No, no, no!
She couldn’t be buried here, even now trying to claw her way out.

“Over here!” he yelled, his pants wet over his ankles. Flashlights bobbed, people shouted as other cops wearing slickers and carrying shovels and picks and crowbars poured over the area.

A big cop tossed Reed a shovel and they began digging frantically, trying to save a life, each cop knowing what they were up against with the Grave Robber.

To hell with the crime scene, Reed thought, shoveling faster; all that mattered was to get Nikki out alive! He strained to hear any sound from the earth below, barely noticed that other cops, radios crackling, cell phones jangling, were roping off the area and starting to make a grid.

He dug frantically. Fearfully. Knowing that every second that passed could cost Nikki her life.

Hold on, darlin’,
he thought, throwing shovelful after shovelful of the muck over his shoulder.
I’m coming. Just you hold on!

Faster and faster he flung mud over his shoulder as rain pounded down in sheets that shimmered on the tombstones and danced in the beams of flashlights. He didn’t bother with a slicker, just kept throwing his weight into each scoop of muck he could loosen.

What were the chances that she was still alive? God damn Chevalier. God damn his soul to hell! If she was dead, Reed would take the law into his own hands. That bastard would never have a chance to get out of jail again.

Come on, Nikki, hang in there,
he silently said and remembered another night in San Francisco, recalled sitting in the dark on the stakeout, watching what he’d thought was a sex game through the shades until he’d realized the silhouette he was viewing had turned from a game into a violent struggle for her life. Reed had raced into the building, taking the stairs two at a time to her apartment, but it had been too late.

But not this time.

It couldn’t happen again. Not to Nikki. Not Nikki. Reed sent up another quick prayer. And still he shoveled. Sweat ran down his back, cold rain peppered his head. Voices shouted. Diane Moses was squawking about her crime scene.

Fuck off!
Reed thought as his shovel struck thick wood.

“We got something!” another officer said, his shovel clunking against the top of a long box.

Wildly they dug with shovels and hands, scooping away the mud, uncovering the coffin’s lid. Over the rush of wind and the splash of raindrops and voices around him, Reed strained to hear something, anything, coming from inside the casket. He heard nothing. He pounded on the lid. Stomped on it. “Nikki!” he yelled. “Nikki!” Oh, Jesus, was he too late? Like before? Had the blood on the wall been hers?

“Don’t mess up the coffin,” Diane Moses warned. “That’s evidence, Reed. There could be tool marks or fingerprints or—”

“Open it up. Now!” he yelled, ignoring Moses, his fingers raking at the casket’s mud-slickened top. “Now!”

It was sealed tight. Wedged into the hole.

His heart pounding fearfully, he and a burly cop used crowbars to wedge into the top, using their weight against the handles of their tools, blinking against the rain, straining in the night.

“It’s no use, we’ll have to lift it,” Cliff Siebert yelled down at them.

“We don’t have the time,” he screamed, flinging his weight harder against the bar.

“We’ll get the equipment.”

“For God’s sake, we have to open this fucker now!” He and the big man leaned on one bar, their muscles flexing, cords of their necks visible, jaws set. He felt the bar give. Just a little.

The big man roared and pressed harder and there was a cracking sound as the seal gave way. They both straddled the coffin, their legs sinking into the mud as they forced open the lid and the smell of blood and death seeped out.

“God, no,” Reed whispered, hearing nothing. “Nikki?” He pulled the flashlight from his pocket and, heart thudding in dread, shined its thin beam through the crack to the bloodied, mutilated corpse within.

Reed thought he might be sick as he stared into the glassy eyes of a very dead LeRoy Chevalier.

Nikki dragged in a breath. Opened an eye to the intense darkness.

Her mind was foggy. She reached up and hit her hands.

Just like before. You thought it was all part of a macabre dream, but it’s not.

“No!” she cried, trying to sit up and cracking her head again. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be trapped in a coffin! This was a sick dream.

Adrenaline pumped through her blood.

Instantly her mind cleared.

There was something beneath her, something that felt like a big, lumpy body and…and…She touched her leg with her hand, then her hip and her chest. She could barely move but she realized she was naked and definitely pressed into a box…No…oh, no…this couldn’t be a casket! Whatever she was in was moving. She felt the bumps as it bounced. Or was being transported. Faintly she heard the whine of an engine. Probably a truck carrying her to what the Grave Robber thought was her final resting place.

With a dead body beneath her.

That was it.

Terror cut her to the core and she nearly threw up. She couldn’t be buried alive in a coffin, and oh, please, God, and not mashed into a rotting, dead body.

Panic strangled her. She began clawing, pressing against the top of her cage. The lid didn’t budge.

This was insane. She had to get out! Had to! This small dark space…Her mind tried to turn to jelly; she’d always been a little claustrophobic, but she wouldn’t die this way. Couldn’t. As long as she wasn’t yet buried, she had time. She could escape.

Think, Nikki. Don’t lose it. Do something! Do something smart!

She forced herself to concentrate, to keep the panic at bay.

She remembered going to her parents’ house without the gun her father had insisted she carry. If only she had that weapon now, she might be able to save her life, but no, she hadn’t had it with her when she’d found her father and come face to face with the Grave Robber.

Sick, detestable bastard.

And to think she’d once felt empathy for him.

How foolish she’d been.

He’d duped them all and now she was his captive, his next victim along with the corpse on which she’d been placed. Her skin crawled and it was all she could do not to cry out, but she knew that would be to no avail. Hadn’t she heard Simone’s pathetic wails? No doubt the animal would record her screams should she cry out, getting his rocks off listening to her terror as she realized she was trapped in this casket with a dead, rotting cadaver…but there wasn’t a stench, nor the sickening scent of weak, decomposing flesh. Just the slight smell of cigars and whiskey, the same blend of scents that had surrounded her father, the aromas she equated with safety and trust and…

She froze. Her mind wandered to a forbidden territory more bizarre than what she already knew to be true.

Her throat clutched.

The bastard wouldn’t have…couldn’t have been so coldhearted, so diabolically sick to have forced her into a coffin with…with…her father!

NO!

She couldn’t believe it,
wouldn’t
believe anything so disgusting.

And yet?

Wasn’t her father dead or near death in the house? Wasn’t the corpse beneath her fresh…still not cold? And whoever was beneath her was large and smelled like…
Oh, Daddy
.

She swallowed back tears, forced her fear and anger at bay. Gingerly, her skin crawling, she touched the clothing on the body beneath her. She felt the stiff weave of slacks and the cold buckle of a belt, the hands beneath hers were big with hair upon their backs.

Oh, Daddy, no
…

Bile burned up her throat. She nearly heaved as the stark, horrid realization hit her. She was trapped in a coffin with her dead father! Her fists clenched in rage. Tears filled her eyes. She wanted to scream and rant and kick, but she fought the urge to cry out, to say anything as much as a whisper. That’s what the bastard was waiting for. That’s how the sick son of a bitch got off.

Nikki refused to give him the satisfaction of so much as a whimper, not even though the air was thin and breathing was getting harder by the minute, not even when panic screamed through her and she wanted to kick and claw and pound her way out of her prison.

You twisted, bilious piece of shit!

She was shaking violently. Her mind splintering between fury and fear.

Think, Nikki, think. You have to hold it together. It’s your only chance. Get this bastard. Find a way to nail him. Turn the goddamned tables!

How? She was trapped.

The only weapon you have against him is your brain.

He’s stronger.

He’s athletic.

He’s determined.

He’s psychotic.

But if he’s not satisfied, if you don’t give him the crying, begging, pitiful sobs he’s expecting, he may open the lid…. You have to be patient. No matter how badly your lungs are burning, you have to wait it out….

Her fingers dug into her palms. Her lungs burned. There was a damned good chance she was about to die. A damned good chance.

She was probably waking up. Feeling the effects of the drug but at least realizing where she was, what would be her fate. The Survivor smiled to himself as he drove.

And now she knew that he’d survived. Beaten the system.

It was so dark in this part of the country that he nearly missed the turn-off to the old, forgotten, overgrown cemetery, even though he’d been here earlier—but there had been a bit of daylight to guide him. But now, with the storm raging, his wipers could barely clear the windows and visibility was poor.

Which was perfect.

He eased off the gas and stopped the truck at the old family plot. Leaving the pickup’s door open, he stepped outside and into the maelstrom. Rain and wind lashed at him as he walked up the overgrown ruts that had once been a gravel road. The rusted gate creaked as it swung inward. Earlier he’d found it unlocked and prepared the grave site—the final resting place—for Judge Ronald Gillette and his worthless daughter. “Rest in peace, you bastard,” The Survivor muttered under his breath as rain drizzled down his nose. The man had been elected to mete out justice and he’d been a joke, an embarrassment to the court system.