Disembodied Bones (9 page)

“Buried so deep, piled over with stones,
yet…” Leonie struggled to remember the words to the riddle. But the
answer was pounding at the insides of her skull. She hadn’t come up
with the answer herself, but had seen it clearly in Whitechapel’s
mind. She resisted a shudder as she tried to recall the exact
words. “Yet! Yes, yet, I will dig up the bones. What am I?”
Leonie’s face curved in short-lived success, even while she
realized the futility of the effort. This monster under a mask of a
human would never let them go, particularly Douglas. “Memories.
That’s the answer, isn’t it? You said you’d let us go if I could
tell you the answer.”

“Disembodied bones,” corrected Whitechapel
dully. “Yes, that’s the answer. Smart little girl. I never liked
girls.”

The buzzer sounded suddenly and both figures
jumped. Whitechapel knew it was the intercom to the main gate.
Leonie thought it was the doorbell and abruptly shrieked as loudly
as should could, “Help us! Help us! We’re-”

The man who had taken Douglas Trent from a
mall by offering him something irresistible, a year’s supply of
tokens to the arcade of his choice if he would test out some new
arcade games in the mobile unit outside the mall, wrapped Leonie up
in strong arms and muffled her mouth with one hand.

Leonie tried to bite him but he was too
strong; his fingers dug into her mouth causing the skin of her lips
to tear as it rubbed against her teeth. The fear that she had been
holding back by sheer strength of will flooded through her like a
dam bursting loose. One of his arms tightened around her throat and
she strained to find air.

•

Roosevelt Hemstreet came downstairs once more
to talk to Jacques Simoneaud about his daughter and what he’d
discovered about Monroe Whitechapel. He found that Jacques had left
minutes before, a worried Louis Padeaon following in his wake. The
volunteer who had replaced Eloise Hunter had barely noticed their
leaving.

Without hesitation Roosevelt hurried to his
car, rejecting the thought that he should call for backup because
there was no real evidence that Monroe Whitechapel was the man who
had taken Douglas Trent from the mall the day before.

But his picture appears like the man in
the grainy security still
, thought Roosevelt.
It could be
the same guy. But that’s weak. And he’s got a history of arrests,
although none for kidnapping. Exposing himself to a child. Peeping.
All would lead up to kidnapping little children. A classic
pedophile. With a ritzy address in the country. A rich pedophile
who decided to do his hunting in another country to avoid getting
arrested here. A rich pedophile who’s smart, who suddenly got…what?
Greedy? Stupid? Oh, man.

Roosevelt checked his sidearm as he sat in
his sedan and made sure it was loaded and ready to go. The nine
millimeter Beretta was prepared, the only backup he was going to
have for the time being. Then he let dispatch know where he was
going, while he wondered if Jacques Simoneaud and Louis Padeaon
would somehow beat him to the address.

•

“This is the house,” said Louis. He was
sitting in the passenger seat of Jacques’s truck. Beau Sandemonte
sat behind them in another truck. He had given Jacques a ride from
the construction site. Louis pointed at the sign on the gate’s
pillar. “Whitechapel.
Oui
, I remember where I saw the name
before.”

Jacques frowned. “Louis, shut up.”

“But-”

“Just be quiet,” Jacques said gently. He
switched the truck’s ignition off and tried to concentrate. Earlier
in the police station there had been a rush of fearful emotion that
had come ripping into his skull. For a moment he thought it was
Babette, but it was not his wife. Not at all. Instead, it had been
Leonie.

Babette’s thoughts came faintly to Jacques.
Leonie’s in trouble, my darling one. I can feel her fear. Then
she’s gone. Nothing at all from her.

I know. Pull over,
chère,
before
you crash your car. She’s still alive. I can feel it.

Jacques got out of the truck and said to
Louis, “Stay here.”

Louis nodded weakly.

Jacques went to the intercom and spent
several minutes there. He waited and waited and jabbed the button
several times. Finally he got an answer. A brusque man’s voice
said, “What the hell do you want?”

“City, light and power, sir,” said Jacques
without hesitation. He could lie very well when he was properly
motivated. “There are problems with the gas lines in this area. We
need to check your grounds with a meter.”

Silence came from the other end. Jacques
stared harshly at the intercom.

“Why aren’t you wearing uniforms?” came a
crackling response thirty seconds later.

Jacques restrained himself from looking
around to see how the man could possibly know what he was or wasn’t
wearing. “Contractors, sir,” he said blithely. “They don’t got
enough fellas to go around, if catch my drift. The city signs my
paycheck is all. And well, we got reports of rotten egg smelling
gas all around your property, sir, and God knows we don’t wanna
have your house blow up with you in it.”

His eyes slowly went up and he saw what they
had missed before. There was a small camera mounted on the gate. It
was black and small, blending into the wrought iron all around it.
If he hadn’t been looking specifically for it, he wouldn’t have
ever noticed it.

“Come around the back entrance,” said the
man. His tone was neutral. “I never use the front gate.”

Jacques smiled coldly at the camera with a
little salute. He hoped Louis would understand that they were being
watched by some unknown person or persons. “We’ll be around in a
minute, sir. Don’t go lighting no matches or fires, will ya?”

There wasn’t a response.

When Jacques got into the truck he said
slowly, “There’s a camera on us, but I think the fella fell for it.
He said to come round the back. But he asked why we didn’t have no
uniforms.” He paused. “She’s awake again,” he said, wondering what
the man had done to his only daughter to make her unconscious and
feeling a surge of paternal anger that he was fighting to control.
He gritted his teeth and started the truck. “Let’s go. When we see
this bastard up close we can explain why we lied.”

Two minutes after their trucks disappeared
around a corner, Roosevelt Hemstreet pulled his unmarked sedan up
to the gate. He considered the surroundings carefully, made note of
the camera, and got out to push the same button that Jacques
had.

•

Monroe Whitechapel reached the bottom of the
stairs and was reaching for the intercom again when he heard a
faint noise from above. It resonated mutedly down to him as if
through thick walls and a great distance away; small bodies were
fast at work, trying to escape their prison.
That girl,
again
. He cursed under his breath. She wasn’t supposed to wake
up so soon. He skillfully flipped the key to the locked room over
his fingers and turned his attention back to the second visitor. He
discovered with some dismay that a Shreveport police detective was
standing at his front gate.
Power company people in the back and
a cop in the front, all after that girl finds her way into my
house. Is it all coincidental?
Whitechapel didn’t believe in
coincidences, but handling it in the way an innocent man involved
remaining frigidly cool. The key vanished into a pocket.
I can
control this.

“Mr. Whitechapel,” said the police detective.
“I’m Detective Roosevelt Hemstreet, SPD. I need to speak with
you.”

“In reference to what, Detective?”
Whitechapel was hardly ever rattled. Once he’d had the
plastic-encased body of a boy in the backseat when he’d been
stopped for a speeding ticket. That day he hadn’t even broken a
sweat, but when that girl had magically come up with the right
answer to the riddle no other child had been able to answer, he’d
been shaken. It was as if she had read his mind. He didn’t know how
she managed to find her way into the house but he would find out.
And if this police officer outside knew about it, then Whitechapel
would take care of that as well. He could dig a grave for an adult
just as well as he could for two children.

“You might have heard in the news that a
child was kidnapped in town yesterday,” replied the deep voice of
the detective. “There are reports that he was sighted out in this
area.”

“I haven’t seen any children,” Whitechapel
lied promptly.

“Perhaps I could leave a flyer with you. Your
staff might have seen the child or your wife perhaps might have
seen him?”

Whitechapel cogitated. It didn’t sound like
the large black police officer knew anything about him and the ones
in the rattletrap trucks certainly weren’t cops. And the one in
front was holding a sheaf of papers in his hand like it was a pile
of flyers. Whitechapel stared at the compact black and white
monitor that showed him the expanse of the front gate. He couldn’t
see the man’s face all that well but he appeared bored, as if on
another stop of many, just making sure that the area was blanketed
with the information about the missing child.

It could be a ploy
, thought
Whitechapel.
But if it’s not, then he’ll be suspicious by my
refusal. Won’t most people say, “Sure, officer, I’ll do anything to
help find a little boy.”? Sure they would, and so will I.
“You
can leave it at the gate, detective. Or if you’d like you can come
around to the back gate. There are some power company people here
also. Perhaps they would like to look at the flyers as well.”

The police detective didn’t hesitate in his
response. “Sure. I’ll do that.”

While the picture on the little monitor
showed the man climbing back into his sedate sedan, Whitechapel
didn’t falter. His first stop was a little office next to the
foyer, one of the few rooms in the house without a childlike theme.
He jerked open a drawer in a burled wood desk and pulled out a
Smith and Wesson revolver. Rapidly, he returned to the stairs and
took three at a time. It was time to move the children to where no
one could hear them, and certainly no one could find them in an
ordinary search. And if he had to shoot that little bitch, well,
that was all right with him. Then he would deal with the people
waiting at the gate.

•

Something was kicking at Leonie; weak, feeble
kicks barely seemed to move her leg, prodding her to wakefulness.
Her head hurt and her shoulder was aching and the floor she was
lying on was cold as if it had been covered with ice. One arm was
draped over something soft and plump. “Wake up,” someone insisted
in a croaky whisper. “Wake up!”

With a lightning bolt of realization, Leonie
remembered Whitechapel and she shot up, pushing herself up with
hands and knees. Dizziness assailed her and she caught herself on a
wall. She bent over and tried to keep from throwing up the banana
the little old woman had given her.

The little voice said, “Can you help me?
He’ll be back anytime and he’s so mad at you.”

The dots cleared from her vision and the
nausea passed. Leonie managed to look around. She was inside the
windowless room of her thoughts. A single bulb burned in a ceiling
socket, revealing what she already knew. There were dozens of red,
satin pillows on the floor and in the exact center of the room was
a metal hook that had been attached to the floor with rivets that
prying fingernails couldn’t hope to force up. But secured to the
hook was the other person with whom Leonie was so connected.
Douglas Trent stared up at her with large brown eyes. His
collar-length hair matched his eyes, a light chestnut color,
toasted in the sun’s warm light. His face was pale and drawn with
worry, but he looked the same as the picture Leonie had seen. He
was wearing what he had last been seen in and there were bruises on
his arms where he had struggled with Whitechapel. He had shifted
his body around so that his bent knees could push weakly at Leonie
in an attempt to get her to regain consciousness. Whitechapel had
choked her into oblivion and shoved her in the room with his other
prisoner, eager to deal with his visitor and get that person away
from his home.

Leonie made a noise and knelt beside him.
“It’s all right,” she muttered, praying it was so. Her fingers
worked the tight knots of the ropes around his arms. He had been
tied with his arms behind him and his legs attached to the arms.
“My name is…”

“Leonie,” finished Douglas. He swallowed and
tried to clear his dry throat. “I’ve…been dreaming of you. Dreaming
of my mother. She’s hurt real bad by this. I can hear her
crying.”

Leonie hesitated for a moment. She couldn’t
begin to understand why an outsider would have this connection with
her. It had seemed so one-way, but clearly it wasn’t. She didn’t
have a moment to waste. When Whitechapel was done doing whatever it
was that had gotten his attention.
The doorbell
, she
remembered excitedly.
I screamed. Was it loud enough?

Her fingers seemed like they were all thumbs.
The knots were tight so that little boyish fingers couldn’t work
themselves free. Not that it was a problem because Douglas couldn’t
feel his hands or his feet anymore. Leonie made a disgusted noise
and pried one knot loose. It got another one going and in another
thirty seconds she had the younger boy free. She threw the ropes
away from his body with a sound of disgust.

Douglas groaned as feeling started to return
to his limbs with a devastating resurgence of sensation that
crossed the border of pain. Leonie rubbed his hands and switched to
his feet. “We have to get out of here,” she muttered urgently. She
leapt up, ignoring the fiery ache that worked itself down from her
shoulder blade to her elbow and gingerly tried the door. It was
locked once again. Then she carefully went around the walls of the
room. There wasn’t another door, or a window, or any other opening
that could possibly allow them to escape.