Escape the Night (45 page)

Ten …

“
I know where to hide
…”

Carey burst between the pillars and hit the steps to Bethesda Fountain at full tilt.

He tripped, plummeting face-first down the long flight of cement, ribs cracking until he struck his head at the bottom, rolled sideways. Footsteps sounded from the top of the steps. Skull throbbing, Carey rose; his vision cleared.

The fountain was empty, its statue a winged shadow, the lake silvered obsidian. The sound of running would betray him in the dark …

Wheeling, Carey saw the triple archway, froze. The footsteps came closer.

“Peter!”

Carey began running toward the archway.

Laughter echoed in the tunnel
…

He burst inside.

It was black.

Martin stopped at the edge of the fountain.

Suddenly, he heard nothing.

His heart beat faster. Staring across the lake, he listened for the thud of footfalls.

Nothing.

Carey had stopped running.

He was close now; Martin knew this.

The gift of tracking had come back to him.

He had driven Carey deep into the park, running easily and in control, just fast enough that Carey felt him ever closer, knew panic in his stomach and spine, until he ran with a mindless frenzy that would drain him now, exhausted and alone.

Martin would take him to the small man like a child, the price of his woman.

Turning, he smiled to himself, and then he saw the tunnel.

With a chill, Martin realized where Peter Carey had led
him
.

Carey stared through the darkness.

Peter stopped, disoriented. The tunnel was long and too dark: the row of stone arches along each wall made it seem like a ruined church. Turning, he blinked at the three semicircles behind him
.

Once inside the tunnel, the stranger could no longer see him. Darkness was his chance.

A silhouette appeared in the archway.

Frightened, Peter felt suddenly cut off from his father, unsure now whose shadow he saw or whose steps were coming closer, confused as to whether Charles were pursuer or thwarted rescuer, deceived by Peter's foolishness. The shadow came nearer. Peter skirted beneath an arch, back pressed desperately against the moist stone, eyes screwed shut. His heart pounded
…

Carey backed to the wall, waiting. He had all but ceased breathing. Blood pounded in his head.

Charles Carey stole through his brain in the nightmare of his childhood, relentless and unpitying. They were hiding in the tunnel near Bethesda Fountain. It was a game; his father smiled at him, and then his mouth opened in a tortured scream and his face turned to ash and bone before Peter could pull him from the tunnel. Peter held the empty sleeve of his father's windbreaker, crying out as the faceless man began stabbing at his eyes with garden shears
…

Moving in the tunnel, the silhouette became a shadow with no face.

As Peter went blind, blood spurting from the sockets of his eyes, he heard laughter echo in the tunnel, screamed aloud
.

Carey clenched his teeth. He must take him, or lose Noelle.

Blood gushed from her eyes
.

The shadow vanished in blackness. Steps came closer.

“
Suppose, Peter, that the burning face and the faceless man are
both
Charles Carey?
”

The footsteps slowed. Carey sensed the shadow searching in the dark, fearful.

“
It's too dark down there for elephants, Daddy
…”

Carey saw the glint of metal, three feet in front of him. He raised his arms.

Carey's knees drew up. “Why would my father blind me?
”

“
I'm not suggesting it's true, Peter. I'm just wondering if you've some buried feeling that your father might be angry at you
.”

The shadow held a gun.

“
Tell me, Peter, are you concerned that the faceless man is you?
”

Carey clasped both hands above his head as the shadow began turning …

Phillip leaned to kiss his forehead. “I won't tell your father
.”

Screaming, Peter Carey swung down.…

Tensed to shoot, Martin thought of Noelle: he must bring Carey back alive.

In the split second of his hesitation Carey snapped his collarbone like a twig.

The revolver dropped to the cement, its echo lost in that of Carey's scream. Martin fell to his knees, groping. Carey stuck one palm in his face, lunged out for something, swung …

Martin spun reeling as the revolver cracked his jaw and white, brilliant pain shot through his face and shoulder. Carey grabbed for his legs; Martin broke free, stumbling toward the tunnel's mouth …

Carey's cry pursued him from the tunnel: “
Where is she?
”

Leaping with the cry still in his throat, Carey skidded on his side; the man broke free as Carey rose with the revolver in his other hand, all sinew and nerve and instinct.

“
We've been watching you
.”

Carey caught him by the fountain.

Wheeling, the man swung his arm like a scythe at Carey's neck, slipped. The nails of his hand scraped Carey's face.

Carey struck at his head with the revolver.

There was a sickening thud. Shock ran through Carey's arm; the man pitched backwards into the fountain. Carey swung again, felt the gun butt hitting bone as the man fell back and momentum brought Carey down on top of him. Grasping his throat, Carey smelled sour breath, felt his knees digging into the stranger's ribs, the heartbeats that linked them like two animals.

Carey jammed the revolver against his head.

The man's eyes widened.

Her eyes gushed blood
…

Carey began pounding his skull on the cement. The head lolled, made no sound.

Suddenly, Carey jerked the face toward his. The man's mouth was bleeding, his jaw grotesquely crooked.

Carey dropped him from his grasp.

The man's skull cracked on the cement. His eyes rolled and then focused; he was waiting to be killed.

Carey touched the revolver to his forehead. “Now,” he said softly, “you can tell me where she is.”

Barth watched the gray void of Englehardt's eyes.

The man's sudden quiet was unnerving. He kept glancing at the telephone. “Where is he?” Barth demanded.

Englehardt did not look up. “I don't know.”

Barth felt a sudden, irrational rage. “Damn Phillip. What's on that tape—what did he do to Peter?”

Englehardt's pupils widened. He stared at Barth, his fingers stroking the telephone.

Barth saw the telephone dangling above his father's skull.

His book was open to John Carey's name.

“You must wait for Peter Carey,” Englehardt answered softly.

“And if he doesn't come?”

“That was always a contingency.” Englehardt's long look at Barth made the words seem frightening. “I have another plan.”

The telephone rang.

Carey watched the stranger lean into the light.

His face was swollen; his mouth still bled; one arm hung at his side. The other hand grasped a telephone.

Carey held the revolver to his head.

They stood in a phone booth near the traverse. Leaves swirled at their feet with a dry, skirling sound; the headlights of invisible cars passed thirty feet away and vanished with the snarl of their motors; an arc light cast silver into the booth. Carey and the stranger breathed together.

“If you so much as shiver,” Carey whispered, “I'll kill you.”

The man's eyes froze. “Yes.” He spoke into the telephone; the shattered jaw made him slur each word. “Carey has me.”

Carey saw the cost of failure on his face. He could not hear the voice.

Laughter echoed in the tunnel
.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

The stranger shook his head. “He'll explain in person,” he answered, then said into the telephone, “Carey won't come unless he hears her voice.”

The stranger began listening. Carey slid one hand into his pocket, touching the cassette recorder that he had taken. He pressed the gun harder.

The stranger flinched and began speaking rapidly. “I've told him nothing—no names or reasons or where you are.” His voice took on a jeering, bitter edge. “He needs the woman too much to shoot me.”

“
Hurry up
.”

The stranger turned. Through swollen lips, his smile reappeared, more terrible for the pain it cost him.

He held out the telephone.

Noelle clung desperately to who she was.

It was black; bound and blindfolded, she could not move or see. Trussed behind her, her wrists were raw from chafing against rope. Her legs were tied beneath her buttocks at both ankles; her thighs and calves had cramped with pain. She had no balance; one side of her face and shoulder was mashed against cold metal. She needed to urinate.

Peter was dead.

The ugly man would kill them both.

Reaching beneath her blouse, the ugly man had touched her shoulder.

He could not make her urinate.

She wept in hate and anger, for that part of her already dead.

Her legs screamed their pain, endless and unrelieved as the darkness that surrounded her, without time or faces or the sound of humans, save her own sobbing.

She had not been gagged; this freedom mocked her, the last measure of her hopelessness. No one could hear her.

She would not urinate; would not lose control.

It was so cruel; safe within their separate spaces, lovers smiled into each other's eyes, and neither knew nor cared.

She thought of the Village, warmth she took for granted, her apartment. Peter would dress before the mirror …

He cried out in the night.

There were candles at La Chaumière, flickering in the mirror.

Peter had brought her here.

She wished never to have met him.

She could not face her cowardice, her shame for not believing in his fears.

If she regretted loving him, fearing for her life, then Peter would abandon her to save his own.

He was dead.

She wished to hear his voice.

Blood stained his hair; he had died alone, knowing that his fear was real.

Her kidneys hurt.

The man had watched them together …

He would take her, and then they both would live.

She began imagining his touch.

He could not make her urinate.

He was using her as bait for Peter.

He would enter her, mouth pressed on her skin.

Her jeans were tight.

She would soon wake up.

No.

The ugly stranger wanted more from her; there were other men …

She would kill him.

Peter was dead.

He could not be dead; he must save her, she had earned this with her patience.

He would not know where to find her …

His love for her had killed him.

She could not let him die.

The ugly man would save her.

She would please him.

Peter's arms and chest were warm in the dark.

The stranger would kill them both.

Peter must come; she could not die.

She could not urinate.

The door burst open; the man jammed something cold into her face …

Urine ran down her leg.

“Noelle …”

A telephone: Peter.

“Peter!” she screamed out. “
Please don't come
—he'll kill you.”

The line went dead in Carey's hand.

He stared into the stranger's eyes, gun pointed at his temple. Their faces were two feet apart.

“If you go to the police,” the stranger said, “he'll kill her. You're being offered an arrangement.”

Carey hesitated; seeing this, the man smiled again. “I'll die before you'll take me elsewhere,” he added softly. “And then
you
will have murdered her.”

Carey's mind shrank instinctively from believing that his faceless enemy would kill Noelle Ciano because he had reached to her in love; at his brain's center, he felt her death. His enemy knew him, better than he knew himself: for more reasons than Carey yet could understand, he had no other choice.

“I'll come,” he answered simply.

Englehardt appeared in the elevator of the loft.

Barth watched as he moved toward him. “Young Peter's on his way,” Englehardt said slowly, “with my operative and a revolver.”

“How?…”

“He has more resources than I'd thought.” Englehardt walked behind the desk and slid open its middle drawer. “It simply requires an adjustment.”

Quickly, Barth calculated. When Peter came, he must surprise this man and kill him: no one else could prove the fact of his complicity. He would distract him, stall for time. “You said you had a plan …”

“I do.” Englehardt looked down at him consideringly. “Let me instruct you further, as an intellectual proposition. Inside this drawer is the revolver used to murder both Phillip and the psychiatrist. Peter Carey is still an amateur: once he arrives, there are ways I can exploit his psychic pain to distract and then kill him. But I require his suicide to explain Phillip and Levy, and suicides don't kill themselves at a range of forty feet. Are you with me so far, Clayton?”

Barth's eyes narrowed. “You'd need another murderer.”

“Precisely.” Englehardt took out the black revolver and held it like a pointer, speaking more rapidly. “Peter Carey as a murder victim reopens the question of the murderer. And yet, clearly, his existence leaves us quite vulnerable—particularly my operative and you, who are now both known to him.” He began pacing beside his desk. “It's the gift of the superior intelligence officer, therefore, to be able to turn a plan on its axis to view it from a second angle. In itself, the notion of a suicide was lovely.” Gently, Englehardt placed the revolver to Barth's temple. “As the child of a suicide, I'm sure that you can appreciate the richness of it.”