The Watcher in the Wall (29 page)

Gruber grunted. Halfway to a laugh. “That’s what they called it,” he said. “‘Motor Court.’ Like anyone would be fooled that it wasn’t just a crummy old trailer park.”

“Did you always live in Indiana?” she said.

“Grew up in the city,” Gruber replied. “Louisville. I never had any friends out here, not even Sarah.” He paused, wheezed a little. “She was a bitch, if you want to know the truth. She never even gave me a chance.”

He was pushing her down a long row of trailers, all of them empty windows and black, yawning doorways, their sides yellowed by age and the elements and marked up with graffiti.

“Which one’s yours?” she asked him. “That’s where you’re taking me, right? Your old trailer?”

Gruber grunted again. Sounded like a yes. “Trailer eighteen,” he said. “Eighteen Frey Lane. Sarah’s room.”

“Sarah’s room.” Madison felt her stomach turn.

“Yes,” Gruber said. “A special place for your special night. It’ll be just how it used to be, won’t it?”

Not if I have anything to say about it,
Madison thought. She touched the phone through her jeans, moved it a little higher.

“Eighteen Frey Lane,” she said. “Okay, show me.”

<
109
>

The plane surged forward.
Banked left. The jet engines roared. Louisville’s city lights pitched crazy outside the windows.

Then the pilot came on the loudspeaker. “Agent Wheeler just radioed up from the ground,” he said. “Your girl called her friend in Tampa a few minutes ago. She’s outside of town, the other side of the river. Someplace called the Shady Acres Motor Court. Indiana somewhere.”

“Elizabeth.”
Windermere shouted it so they could hear her in the cockpit.
“He took her to Elizabeth, Indiana.”

A pause. Then the loudspeaker again. “There’s a private airstrip north of town. We’re rerouting now.”

Windermere exhaled. Caught Stevens looking at her. “Back to the old stomping grounds,” he said. “Guess he’s trying to relive the past.”

“You can’t go home again, partner,” she said. “Let’s get down there and stop him.”

•   •   •

They were landing in minutes. The plane came down hard, bounced and rattled along the short airstrip, came to a halt opposite a little sheet-metal hangar, a couple single-engine prop planes. No control tower, no terminal. Just a stretch of road and an Indiana State Police cruiser parked at the head of it, blue-and-reds flashing, a trooper waiting for them.

“Your Agent Wheeler called ahead,” he told Stevens and
Windermere. “Apparently the girl has the phone in her pocket, but he patched through the call and we can hear everything pretty good. Shady Acres Motor Court, Eighteen Frey Lane.”

Windermere crossed the tarmac to the cruiser. “You a fast driver?” she asked the trooper.

The cop kind of waffled. “Uh . . .” he said. “Depends on the—”

Windermere showed him her badge. “Keys,” she said. “Backseat. FBI is requisitioning this car.”

•   •   •

Windermere drove. Stevens rode shotgun. The cop sat silent in the back.

Windermere had a heavy foot, but she’d only driven these roads once. Stevens was working Google Maps on his phone to try and pin down a route, Madison Mackenzie patched into the cruiser’s radio, Wheeler and the rest of the cavalry somewhere in the way back, speeding toward them from Louisville.

“Trying to scare up a helicopter, too,” the cop said from the back-seat. “State police on both sides of the river, local cops, everything. People take it seriously when it’s a little girl’s life in danger.”

Windermere muttered a silent thank-you to Drew Harris, knew if she’d asked for an army tank, her SAC would have found her a whole armored division. Knew she could have the army, navy, and air force on her side and it still might not be enough to save Madison Mackenzie, but at least they were still in business.

Smart girl,
she thought as Madison’s voice crackled through her phone again.
Amazing girl. Just hold on a little longer. We’re coming for you.

<
110
>

Even in the darkness,
the place hadn’t changed.

They’d left Shady Acres shortly after Sarah’s death, moved back to Louisville, where his mother found a job and another boyfriend, and Randall stashed pictures of Sarah under his mattress, watched horror movies with death and violence and blood, captured insects on the street and pitted them against each other, watching to see the moment when one killed the other.

It was the watching that was important. He watched everything. Stayed in the background at school, out of sight, watching the girls as they fixed their makeup at their lockers, the boys in the change room. He set out food in the middle of the street and sat for hours by the living room window, hoping a squirrel or a stray cat or dog would venture out into traffic, get hit by a car.

He’d watched everything, but nothing compared to Sarah. Nothing ever had, even the prospects on their webcams, the suicide kids. Nothing brought Gruber that same high, until now. Until here, the trailer. DarlingMadison.

In this light, she could have been Sarah.

•   •   •

Gruber realized Madison was looking at him. Waiting for him. They were standing in front of the trailer, on the sagging old stoop, and he was zoning out, staring into the void beyond the empty doorframe.
He’d completely lost track of where he was, what he was doing. Why he’d brought DarlingMadison here.

He pushed her forward. Felt her buck against him, pushed harder, maneuvered her toward the yawning door.

“You think
you’re
scared,” he said. “I used to
live
here.”

<<<

It was the scariest place
Madison had ever seen in her life.

There was no door in the doorframe, just blackness beyond. Gruber pushed her toward the threshold, through a couple of dense, clinging cobwebs, his grip never loosening on her arm. The darkness was still and choking. The cobwebs hung from her hair, stuck to her face, making her skin crawl. She wanted to scream, knew it wouldn’t do any good. Knew if she went into the trailer, she wouldn’t come out alive.

Here it is, then. Here’s where you make your stand.

Gruber continued pushing her toward the door. Madison resisted. Gathered all of her strength and wrenched her arm sideways, clawing with her free hand at Gruber’s fingers, prying at him, digging her fingernails into his doughy skin. Heard the knife drop as he swung his left hand to grab her, felt the sudden release as Gruber’s grip gave way, and then she was running, off balance, spinning away from the trailer and careening back toward Frey Lane, the darkness and the looming hulks beyond.

Madison ran. Stumbled over the gravel-patch yard, Gruber scrambling behind her, his feet kicking stones. He was old and heavy and slow, and she had the element of surprise. She was winning. She was getting away. She would live after all.

But then she reached the end of the lane, the lip where it met the larger crossroad, and the asphalt was cracked and broken up by years of neglect, cold winters, and overgrowth pushing up through the fringes. It was dark and the road was uneven, the lip a good three or four inches above the gravel in the yard, and Madison missed her step and stumbled, turned her ankle, staggered forward wildly, arms out and reaching for something, anything to keep her balance. She failed miserably. Fell flat on her face and skidded across the road, scraping her palms, knees, tearing her jeans.

She tried to stand, couldn’t. She’d messed up her ankle. Gruber was coming, and she couldn’t put weight on it, and she watched him approach like a horror-movie monster, lumbering, slow and steady. Tried to pull herself forward, crawl, anything. Wasn’t fast enough, not by a mile. And then Gruber was on her.

Madison slapped at him, hit him, tried to gouge his eyes, do something,
anything
to be free of him. But he fought her off; he was angry now, ready for her fight and powerful enough to put her down.

He stood above her, pinned her down with his foot on her stomach, his face just a shadow, moonlight on his grimy glasses.

“Tsk, tsk,”
he said, breathing heavy. “What did I tell you about misbehaving? There’s a way to do this that’s decent, and a way that’s unclean and foul, but it’s going to get done either way. You
will
enjoy your surprise tonight.”

She felt around for a weapon, a tree branch or a piece of scrap metal—hell, the knife—but there was nothing in arm’s reach. The bastard had her again. And then he reached behind him, pulled something from his back pocket, and she watched him fiddle with it, heard the ripping sound, and she knew it was duct tape.

“Come on,” he told her, flipping her onto her stomach, “It’s getting late. And I really want you to see Sarah’s room.”

He brought her wrists together, and she heard the duct tape unspool again, felt it on her skin. And she screamed finally, loud and desperate and raw, though it was obvious no one was coming.

<
111
>

Madison screamed.
It came through the cell connection staticky and muffled, rattled around the inside of Windermere’s head and stayed there. Windermere grit her teeth, urged the cruiser to move faster. Saw the broken-down front gate of the Shady Acres Motor Court in her high beams, slammed down hard on the brakes.

“No sign of a car,” she said, scanning the darkness. “We sure this is the right spot?”

Stevens was already out of his seat belt, reaching for his pistol, a tactical flashlight. “She said Shady Acres. Maybe they took the bus.”

Windermere found her Glock, turned to the state trooper in back. “Guard the entrance,” she told him. “Nobody gets out, understand?”

The cop nodded, pried his fingers from the panic bar above his head. “Got it.”

“And tell Wheeler to set up a perimeter around the park once he gets here,” she told him. “It’s all forest back there. Gruber gets out into that, we might never find him.”

Then she was out of the car and running, Maglite in her left hand, the Glock in her right. Hurdling the log at the front gate, Stevens beside her, huffing and puffing as she scanned the road signs, the empty trailers beyond, searching for Frey Lane and trailer eighteen and the girl.

Don’t let him win, honey. Just a few minutes more.

<
112
>

Gruber finished binding
her wrists with the duct tape. Flipped her back over, and the cell phone slipped out of her pocket. He cocked his head as it clattered to the ground, bent down to examine it.

“You
have
been misbehaving,” Gruber said, and there was something to his voice now, a tremor that hadn’t been there before, a knife’s edge. “You just couldn’t make this easy, could you?”

He stepped on the phone. Ground it beneath his heel, crushed plastic and metal. Kicked the wreckage away and then stopped, froze. Looked around, at the shadows, the empty husks. Madison tensed, too. She’d heard what he’d heard: low, faraway noises—voices, maybe, a car door. She opened her mouth to scream again.

Then Gruber was on top of her, his meaty hand pressing against her lips, smothering the scream before she could get a sound out. And then he had the duct tape again, a long strip of it, was wrapping it over her mouth and around the back of her head, ripping it roughly and pulling her to her feet, holding her upright when her ruined ankle buckled. She
could hardly stand, let alone run. And no matter how hard she struggled, Madison knew he wasn’t letting her go this time.

Gruber dragged her across the gravel yard again. Toward that open doorway. He stopped briefly to pick up the knife where he’d dropped it, the coil of yellow rope, showed her the blade. Like he was giving her a choice, and neither one of them good.

The cobwebs grabbed at her hair again. She was through them and into the trailer before she really noticed. They were in the remnants of a kitchen, litter everywhere. Dead leaves and dirt, years’ worth of built-up grime. Nobody had been here in a long, long time, Madison knew. Still, there was a terrifying aura about the place. Bad things had happened here.

Then Gruber was pushing her forward, and she was staggering down a long narrow hallway, impossibly black, her shoulders bouncing off the cheap fake plastic-wood walls, her body moving faster than her feet, trying in vain to keep her weight off her ankle.

“This way,” Gruber said, his voice higher pitched, tremulous, excited. “Sarah’s room is down here.”

There were doors in the walls, each side. Gruber paused at the first door, on the left. “This was my room,” he told her. “I used to lie there and wait for Sarah to come home from her dates. I used to wait for her for hours.”

•   •   •

Madison screamed through the duct tape. Struggled to break free. But Gruber’s grip was firm. He wouldn’t let go of her.

He shoved her forward again. Down the black hall to the next door on the left, sending more spasms of pain through her leg. Madison
knew this had to be Sarah’s room, where Gruber’s sister had lived her life, unaware that her brother was watching her—and where, ultimately, she’d died. She knew Gruber wanted her in this room. Knew that however he planned to kill her, it would happen in here.

But the door was closed. And when Gruber reached around her, tried the doorknob, the door gave an inch, but no more. There was something behind it, something barring the way. A dresser or something, something solid. Something heavy.

“Shit.”
Gruber grunted, shoved her out of the way. Pinned her between his body and the end of the hall as he threw himself at the door. Madison heard the flimsy wood crack. Heard Gruber draw back and try again.

He wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. He’d wedged her in the little patch of hall between his body and the end wall of the trailer, left her to wait, confident that her ankle had her hobbled. He was breathing heavy, the door giving a little more each time. Madison waited, watched him through the shadows. Knew she’d only have one shot at escape.

Gruber drew back again. Hurled himself forward. Cannonballed the door off its hinges and fell over the threshold and into the dark room. Madison didn’t wait to see if he was hurt. She leaned on the wall and forced herself to break for it, biting off another scream as she landed on her bad ankle.