Buried Secrets (35 page)

An old white GE stove, vintage 1940 or so. A Formica counter edged with a metal band. A white porcelain sink with two separate spouts, one for hot water and one for cold. It was stacked high with plates and bowls that were crusted with food. An empty box of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages lay discarded in the middle of a tin-topped kitchen table.

I heard the woman’s voice again, much clearer now, coming from the next room. From the back of the house.

Not from a TV.

The voice was Alexa’s.

99.

Amped with adrenaline, I burst into the adjoining room, gun extended.

“—Bastard!” she was saying. “You goddamned bastard!”

Then her tone changed abruptly, her voice wheedling, high-pitched. “Please, oh God, please let me out of here, please oh God please oh God what do you goddamn
want
? I can’t stand it I can’t stand it please oh God.”

And I saw that Alexa wasn’t in here.

Her voice was coming from computer speakers. A black Dell computer on a long wooden workbench that ran the length of one wall. In the monitor I saw that same strange close-up of Alexa’s face, with a greenish cast, that I’d seen in the streaming video.

But she looked so bad I almost didn’t recognize her. Her face was gaunt, her eyes swollen to slits, deep purple hollows beneath them. She was speaking out of one side of her mouth, as if she’d had a stroke. Her face shone with sweat. Her eyes were wild, unfocused.

In front of the monitor was a keyboard. To the left of it was a small, cheap-looking microphone on a little plastic tripod. Like something you’d find in a discount bin at RadioShack.

For an instant Alexa seemed to be looking at me, but then her eyes meandered somewhere else. She fell silent, then started whimpering, all her words rushing together. I could make out only “please” and “God” and “out of here.”

I spoke into the microphone: “Alexa?”

But she went on, uninterrupted. On the stem of the microphone was a little black on/off switch. I slid it down to ON. Said, “Alexa?” again. This time she stopped. Her mouth came open.

She began to sob.

“Alexa?” I said. “It’s Nick.”

“Who—who is this?”

“It’s Nick Heller. You’re going to be okay. I’m at the house. Right nearby. Listen, Alexa, help is coming, but I need you to stay quiet and keep calm, all right? Can you do that for me?

Just for a little while. You’re going to be okay. I promise.” For a second I thought I saw a flash of light in the backyard coming through the window.

“Nick? Where are you? Oh my God, where are you?”

The light again. A car’s headlights. I heard the rumble of a car’s engine, then a door slamming.

Zhukov was here. It could be no one else.

But I couldn’t see him. He’d parked on the side of the house that had no windows.

“Nick, answer me! Get me out of here please oh God get me out of here, Nick!” She started screaming.

“You’re going to be okay, Alexa. You’re going to be okay.”

Finally she seemed be listening. “Don’t leave me here,” she moaned.

“He’s back,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”

She stared up, her lips parted, and as she nodded she began sobbing again.

“Everything will be fine,” I said. “Really. As long as you don’t say a word. Okay? Not a word.”

I gripped the SIG in both hands.

But what if it wasn’t Zhukov who’d just arrived? What if it was the police? It was far too soon for the FBI’s SWAT team. They were driving, since getting a helicopter there and loading it and all that, would take even more time, and would also deprive them of the heavy armaments.

Zhukov, if it was him, would enter the house through the front door, as I had. The worn path told me that. Yet he wouldn’t expect anyone to be here. That would give me a temporary advantage. If I positioned myself correctly I might be able to get a jump on him.

Heart thudding now. Time had slowed. I went into that strange calm place I so often did when faced with grave danger: senses heightened, reactions quickened.

A door opened somewhere.

But not the front door. Which one?

The side door I’d noticed earlier.

I needed to conceal myself, but where?

No time to hesitate.

A door next to the kitchen entrance. A closet, probably, with a wooden kitchen chair next to it. I slid the chair a few inches out of the way.

Opened the door with my left hand, stepped into the darkness—

And dropped into space.

Not a closet, but the basement stairs. I reached out and grabbed something to arrest my fall. My boots landed with a muffled thud.

A wooden banister. Swiveled myself around, pulled the door shut behind me. My hand on the knob, keeping it turned so the latch wouldn’t click.

Silently eased it shut. Lowering myself to my knees on the first step, I peered out through the keyhole.

Waited for him to appear.

100.

Dragomir Zhukov had parked at the side of the house just to vary the pattern. Never be predictable.

It was for the same reason that he’d shut off the satellite Internet connection. It was predictable that he’d want to stay connected. It was also a needless risk. There were ways to trace an Internet signal.

Of course he had left one cable in place: the one connecting his computer to the casket.

Before he opened the door, he glanced down at the baseboard and saw the tiny strip of transparent tape he’d placed between the door and the jamb. It was still in place. That meant no one had entered here.

Or probably not, anyway. Nothing was ever certain.

Long ago Dragomir had learned the importance of leaving nothing to chance. This was one of the many lessons he’d learned at the University of Hell, also known as Prison Number One, in Kopeisk.

The money transfer had been received in his account. The cutout had been eliminated.

Some time ago he had made provisions for a quick escape in the event the operation did not go to plan. In a steel box he’d buried in the Acadia National Park in Maine was a Ukrainian passport and wads of cash, in U.S. dollars and euros. The passport didn’t expire for another two years.

With a new identity, crossing the Canadian border would be quick and easy, and there were plenty of international flights out of Montreal.

The only chore that remained was hardly a chore at all.

It was his reward for all the long tedious days of vigilance and patience and restraint.

He knew how it would go: He had rehearsed it countless times, savoring the prospect.

He’d tell the young girl what was about to happen, because there was nothing as delicious as a victim’s foreknowledge. Hour after hour he’d seen her fear, but when she learned, in precise and clinical detail, what was imminent, her terror would reach a whole new physical state.

Then he’d go about the business methodically: He’d disconnect the air hose from the compressor and attach it to the garden hose with the brass coupler. Once he pulled up the lever on the farmer’s hydrant, the water would start to flow. It would take a few seconds before the water began to trickle into the casket.

He had drowned small animals—mice, chipmunks and rabbits, a stray cat—in a trash barrel. But the squeals and the frantic scrambling of a dumb animal were ultimately not satisfying. They lacked
apprehension
.

She would hear the trickle, and then she would know.

Would she scream, or plead, or both?

As the water level grew higher and the air pocket grew smaller, she would flail and pound and most of all beg.

He had done some calculations. The interior volume of the casket was 230 gallons. Given the water pressure in the house and the diameter of the hose and the distance from the spigot to the burial site and then the nine feet down through the soil into the casket itself, it would take just short of half an hour to fill to capacity.

Then the water would reach her chin and she would have to struggle to keep her head above water, gasping her last precious breaths, her neck trembling from the exertion, her lips pursed like a fish.

He would watch in hypnotized fascination.

She would attempt to scream as her lungs filled with water; she’d flail and plead, and when she was entirely submerged, she would hold her breath until she couldn’t take it anymore and she was forced to expel the air from her lungs. And like a child in utero she would be forced to breathe liquid.

She would drown before his eyes.

It was a terrible way to die. The way his father died. For years he could only imagine it.

But now he would
know
.

Dragomir knew he was not like other people. He understood his own psychology, the way he drew sustenance from the fear of others.

As he entered the house, he paused.

Something was different here. A shift in the air? A vibration? He had the finely tuned senses of a wild animal.

Now that the cutout was dead, he wondered how long it would take for the Client to realize what had happened. They had some idea where he was based, but he was sure he hadn’t been followed after the last rendezvous.

Still, he wondered. Something was
off
.

He moved quietly through the parlor to the front door, where he’d placed another tell, a barely visible slice of Scotch tape at the bottom of the door next to the jamb, both inside and out.

A minuscule ribbon of tape lay on the floor. No one who wasn’t looking for it would see it.

But now he knew for certain: someone was here.

101.

I could hear footfalls, the creaking of the wooden floor, the sounds becoming louder, closer. Grasping the pistol in my right hand, the banister in my left, I squatted and looked through the keyhole and saw only the ice-blue light from the computer monitor.

Alexa on the screen. Such advanced technology in the service of such primitive depravity.

He had entered the room.

I saw a leg, clad in jeans, but just for an instant. Walking toward the computer, or at least in that direction. Then he came to a stop.

The man was standing a few feet away. I could see his back: large torso, broad shoulders, a dark sweatshirt.

Did he suspect anything? But his body language didn’t indicate suspicion.

He was standing at the window, I saw now, casually looking outside, a black knit watch cap on his head.

And the hideous pattern on the back of his neck.

The bottom half of an owl’s face.

102.

Dragomir Zhukov entered the back room, peering around at the filthy windowsills and the peeling yellow paint on the walls and the uneven floorboards.

A voice crackled from the small computer speaker. The girl was speaking.

“Nick!” she screamed. “Please don’t go away!”

The pistol was in his right hand even before he’d made the conscious decision to draw it.

ZHUKOV TURNED swiftly, holding a weapon, an enormous steel semiautomatic with a barrel like a cannon.

I recognized it at once. An Israeli-made .50 caliber Desert Eagle. Made by the same folks who gave the world the Uzi. It was the sort of thing you were far more likely to see in a movie or a video game than in reality. It was too large and unwieldy, so unnecessarily powerful. When Clint Eastwood declared, in
Dirty Harry,
that his .44 Magnum was “the most powerful handgun in the world,” he was right. In 1971. But since then, that title had been claimed by the Desert Eagle.

I saw his wide angry stare, his strong nose, a sharp jaw, a cauliflower ear.

“Nick, where’d you go? I thought you were here! When are the others coming? Nick, please, get me out of here, oh God, please, Nick, don’t leave me—” Zhukov turned slowly.

He knew.

103.

Zhukov knew I was here somewhere.

Alexa’s voice, steadily more frantic: “Please, Nick, answer me! Don’t leave me stuck here. Don’t you
goddamn
go away!”

Zhukov moved with the taut, coiled grace of a cat. His eyes scanned the room, up and then down, ticking slowly and methodically in a grid.

I breathed noiselessly in and out on the other side of the heavy wooden door. Watching through the keyhole.

I’d come to rescue Alexa. But now it was a simple matter of survival.

The hollow-point ammo I was using might have had unequaled stopping power, but the rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thick old wooden door between us. The instant they hit wood they’d start to fragment. If they actually passed through the door, they’d be traveling at such a reduced velocity that they’d no longer kill.

I was all but defenseless.

Nor was my body armor meant to stop the .50 caliber Magnum rounds fired by the Desert Eagle. I didn’t know whether the rounds would penetrate the ballistic vest; they might. But even if they didn’t, the blunt-force trauma alone would probably kill me.

So I watched him through the keyhole and held my breath and waited for him to move on to another part of the house.

Zhukov scanned the room again. He seemed to be satisfied I wasn’t hiding here. I saw his eyes shift toward the kitchen. He took a few steps in that direction.

Slowly I let out my breath. As soon as I was sure he’d moved into the kitchen, I’d turn the knob silently, and step out as noiselessly as I could.

If I got the jump on him I might be able to drop him with one well-aimed shot.

Reaching out slowly, I placed my left hand on the doorknob. Ready to turn it once he was safely out of the room.

I continued watching.

Drew breath. Waited patiently. A few seconds more.

Then he swiveled around, back toward me. His gaze dropped to the floor, as if he’d just discovered something. I saw what he was looking at.

The railback chair I’d just moved out of the way of the basement door.

It was out of place. Not exactly where he’d left it.

His gaze rose slowly. He smiled, baring teeth that were brown and belonged in a beaver’s mouth.

He raised the Desert Eagle and pointed it right at the basement door, directly at me, as if he had X-ray vision and could see through the wood, and he squeezed the trigger—

blam blam blam