When Death Draws Near (19 page)

I stared at the name. So Sheriff Reed turned the investigation over to his son. No wonder the murder inquiry stalled. I pictured Junior plunging over the side of the road, mucking up any hope of finding out more about Trish's death.

Twyla Fay was next, less than a month later. Hit-and-run. Ruby mentioned her name. Ruby said she was a member of Jimmy and Mamaw's church.

I stood and paced, rubbing my arms. Mamaw and Jimmy, the elderly couple who died in their garage. Surrounded by snakes that Jason confessed to have turned loose after being paid. Add the five people who died in the accident, again that Jason probably caused.

Mamaw and Jimmy knew Grady Maynard.

That linked eleven people together. A murder, four “accidents,” and Grady's disappearance. At least two other deaths, a poison and a burned body, could have ties to a serpent-handling congregation. Plus Samuel, dying from a snakebite, making far too many coincidences, and I didn't believe in coincidences. What had Trish said? She couldn't get photographs, but she did learn some first names. Mamaw and Jimmy were pretty unusual names, as was Twyla Fay. Did Trish tell someone those names, resulting in their deaths?

I dry-washed my face, then ran my fingers through my hair. “It's ridiculous.” My voice sounded loud in the empty cabin. “To
think someone is killing off members of a church just because they handle snakes. Ha! Their very practice puts them at risk of dying.” I saw the dangers of their form of worship today when the man drank strychnine. If someone wanted to wipe out the practice, all they had to do was wait.

I poured a glass of water and checked the time. I still had a few minutes before I needed to leave and pick up Aynslee. I placed her cell phone in my purse. I could probably get cell reception closer to Ruby's place. I needed to call Beth and find out if she'd discovered anything more.

Someone else had to have made the obvious connection between the deaths and the church they went to. I checked for Junior's name and found it as the investigating officer on not one but three of the cases.

Was the sheriff involved somehow? Did he put his inept son in charge of the investigation to make sure nothing was ever solved? Was this related to the rape cases?

Who could I trust? According to Jason, no one. Sheriff Clayton Reed could be enmeshed in these deaths up to his eyeballs.

I could call Dave. He could get the ball rolling with the state police.

Something else nudged at me, but the more I focused, the more it eluded me.

I replaced the information on the deaths in the folder, laying it neatly on the drawing pad. Underneath was Professor Wellington's map to the cabin and a folder with an article on snake handling. Retrieving the glass of water I poured earlier, I took a long drink.

Something caught my attention.

I slowly lowered the glass. The red light of the fire alarm
was on. Had someone been in the cabin while I was gone? I stood quickly. The room whirled.

Holding on to the chair, then the sofa, I made my way to the phone and picked up the receiver. Still dead.

The room spun faster.

I grabbed for the chair, missed, landed on the floor.

The room went black.

THE SHIP ROCKED BENEATH ME. NO. I WASN'T
on a ship. I was in the cabin, under the bed. My pencil was there. More rolling motion. Earthquake? I was going to be sick. Again darkness.

The ground scratched my back. My face was wet. Cold. The earth moved under me. I was . . . I was being dragged. My arms over my head. My legs in the air, tugging, someone tugging my ankles, pulling me toward . . .

Falling. I grabbed for something. Earth tumbled under my fingers. Sliding faster, I frantically grabbed at anything, nothing, more sliding earth, moving faster, faster. A rope. Clinging to it, my downward motion slowed.

The rope jerked. I almost lost my grip as it skated through my hands, tearing flesh. The rope loosened again. I skidded down. Now my legs were over open space. The rope dropped again. My whole body dangled free. The rope broke. I dropped.

The ground slammed into me. Pain shot from my right
ankle. I rolled, then stopped. I remained curled up, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Darkness.

The throbbing from my ankle insisted I pay attention. I opened my eyes, but nothing changed. Inky blackness cloaked me.

Gauzy thoughts filled my brain, but the pain in my ankle helped me focus. The ground under me was solid enough, smelling of freshly disturbed earth and stale air. A few small rocks tumbled around me and on me, dropping from the unseen heights I'd fallen from. I'd lost my fuzzy slippers and my feet were cold. My hands were raw and abraded from gripping the rope still under me—

Not a rope. It had smaller extensions growing from it. A root, one that broke with my weight. Rotating my foot, I winced at the sensation. Probably a sprain. Painful, but at least not broken.

Still lying on my side, I carefully groped around in a semicircle. More freshly disturbed earth and rocks. I found one slipper near my shoulder and put it on. No edge leading to still deeper depths of the earth.

I wanted to cry out for help, but whoever threw me down here could be waiting to see if I survived. I felt for the tiny keyring flashlight and found it in my pocket, but held off on turning it on for the same reason.

Straining my ears, I listened for any voices or sound of movement above. I heard nothing, not even sliding dirt from my earlier fall.

I remained still and tried to reconstruct the past few . . . hours? Minutes? How long had I been drugged? And how? I'd taken a shower, read the files, caught a raccoon sneaking about, drunk a glass of bottled water.

The water. I'd opened it before we went to the memorial service for Samuel.

They . . . he? . . . must have had a key. I'd locked the door. Hadn't I?

Had someone been waiting all that time for me to drink a glass of water?

Nothing made sense. Only that I was someplace cold, dirty, moldy, and dark. I stretched my hand above my head, exploring with my fingers this world I'd been thrust into.

This time I felt fabric.

My heart hammered in my chest. I forced my trembling hand forward, tracing the material, finding a seam. And under that, a leg.

I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. I snatched my hand back and scooted away.

Outside of my pounding heart, I heard no other sounds. No breathing, no movement. Sweat broke out on my forehead and chilled rapidly. Fumbling in my pockets, I found the key-ring flashlight. It took me two attempts before I could switch it on.

A man, a very dead, mummified man, was propped up against a boulder in front of me.

I dropped the flashlight. The light remained on, now shining on a rock wall behind the man. Picking it up, I took a deep breath, then returned the light to his face. My forensic artist brain recorded the details: skin stretched tightly over high cheekbones, prominent nose, square jaw, level eyebrows. I knew this face. “Hello, Grady Maynard.”

Grady was well beyond answering.

Playing the light down his body, I stopped at his legs. Both angled off in impossible directions. I shined the light overhead.
The ceiling had to be fifteen feet high, with an opening outside of the reach of my light. Various-sized roots dangled down, but none were closer than ten feet above me.

If I hadn't caught the root and slowed my progress, I'd have a lot more wrong with my body than a sprained ankle.

My second slipper rested against Grady's foot. I put it on, relishing the feeling of warmth.

The flashlight flickered, then went out. I tapped it in my palm to no avail. My ragged breathing sounded loud in the small chamber.
Settle down. Morning will come soon. Then you can see your way out . . .

Like Grady did? When did the missing person's report say he disappeared—1996?

But Grady had two broken legs.

“Okay, Gwen, here are your options.” Hearing my own voice helped slow my breathing. “Unless you want to search Grady's body for matches in the pitch dark, you need to wait until morning.”

It figured the first time I'd sleep in a room with a man since my divorce, it would be with a mummified corpse.

Curling up to conserve heat, I tried to rest. A collection of strange thoughts kept intruding on my brain.
The murdered woman. The scratches on the floor. Aynslee didn't know how to start a fire. How did someone know when I'd drink that water?

I opened my eyes. I must have finally drifted off. In the gray light of morning I could clearly see my prison. The cave was about twenty feet across at its widest by about ten feet, oval in shape, with yellowish rock walls curving inward to the access point overhead. Stones and debris littered the floor and piled up against the walls on the bottom. Grady sprawled close to the
back wall, roughly in the middle of the oval, probably where he landed so many years ago.

Tugging off my slipper, I examined my ankle. Swollen, with impressive purple bruising. I rotated it, wincing at the feel.

During my sleep, my subconscious mind had worked on an answer to the puzzling pieces. The scratches on the floor, light on the fire alarm, laced drinking water.

I'd obviously been drugged, but someone had been watching me in order to know when I'd drink that water. No one was outside. They would have sent that raccoon flying. They watched me from
inside
the cabin.

My stomach rolled.

A camera, hidden so no casual visitor would notice. Most cameras had telltale lights when they were on.

Aynslee started the fire on the first morning and failed to open the flue. When the room filled with smoke, the alarm didn't go off, but I'd seen a light on it the night before.

So the camera was in the smoke alarm, and the light came on when the camera was in use.

I gingerly put my slipper back on and looked at Grady. “That camera wasn't set up to watch Aynslee and me.”

Somehow it was less creepy talking to the body.

As long as he didn't answer back.

“Sheriff Reed said the Hillbilly Rapist had to have a remote location. The Campbell cabin, your old home, was perfect. But the rapist couldn't just disappear for five-day stretches every time a girl was abducted. Of course, he could have kept her in the snake room, with no outside entrance, assuming he'd found it.”

Thinking about getting thrown into that black hole filled with spiders made my skin crawl.

“A camera would both keep an eye on the girl and record his conquests so he could play them back. That's the kind of thing this pervert would like to do, and it fits his profile.”

Grady didn't comment.

“There were scratches on the floor under the bed. He moved the bed so it would be directly under the camera.”

I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the visual out of my mind. As long as the cabin was ignored or unoccupied, the monster was free to practice his perversions. But Aynslee and I had moved in. He didn't have time to brainwash the victim into leaving town. He had to get rid of her quickly. So he killed her and threw her into the river.

I was still missing something. That kind of rapist wasn't opposed to murder, so what prevented him from killing before?

And he'd been watching me, which meant the man the sheriff arrested, Jason Morrow, was the wrong person. The Hillbilly Rapist was still on the loose.

And he was accelerating. Now that I was out of the picture, his favorite torture location was available.

At least Aynslee is safe. Ruby and Elijah will protect her. And when I didn't return within the hour like I told them, they must have come looking for me.

Various aches and pains, plus the jab of my twisted ankle, protested my standing. I hobbled over to the body. Covered by a sifting of dirt, Grady wore jeans held up by suspenders, a red plaid shirt, and high lace-up boots. A blaze-orange baseball hat was slightly behind him. I couldn't remember if the file I read said what month he'd disappeared, but I'd bet hunting season.

Should Grady have been located, his death would have looked like an accident. Poor ole Grady fell down an old mining
shaft, or hole, or whatever this place was. But someone knew he was down here. Someone wanted me to share in his same fate.

Unless I found a way out, Grady's killer would be my killer.

In the light of day, I could more clearly see his features. His skin looked like yellowish leather stretched across his face, pulling his lips slightly open and revealing a chipped front tooth. He had a prominent nose, heavy brow ridge, and high cheekbones. His thick, chestnut-brown hair tumbled across his forehead. The cave must have been just the right combination of cool and dry to have preserved his body so well. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't figure out if that was because of the photo I'd viewed or someone I'd met.

His left hand was on his lap, index finger slightly raised, the rest of his hand making a loose fist holding the stump of a pencil. A gold wedding band with three engraved crosses had slid to the end of his ring finger. His right hand rested on the dusty floor of the cave. A piece of paper lay under his fingers.

I moved closer.

Grady had written something on the paper. Gingerly I retrieved the note. One side was a grocery list, written in ink, now faded. I could barely make out the words on the opposite side. The writing was sprawled across the paper as if done in the dark.

I glanced upward. If someone had sealed this cave after shoving Grady down here, it would have been inky black. No bugs, air, water, or anything else could get in, forming the perfect conditions for creating a mummified body.

I shivered.

When I could hold the paper steady enough to read, I held the note to the light. The first line read,
Devin killed me
.

Grady identified his own son as his killer.

The second line read,
The boy was strange
.
I sent him away . . .
The rest was illegible.

Early behavior of serial rapists included Peeping Tomism and fetish burglaries. If Grady had been aware of Devin's actions, he might have sent him away.

Grady's cabin was the key. The Hillbilly Rapist knew of its existence, used it, abducted me from it, and knew where Grady's body lay undiscovered. The Hillbilly Rapist could only be Devin.