Hellbox (Nameless Detective) (8 page)

“Well, that’s possible. But she couldn’t have gone too far on foot. She’s still missing come morning, I’ll get one of the other deputies to start combing the area. Or do it myself if I can free up the time. She’ll turn up.”

“Or I’ll find her.”

“Right.” Then, as I took a step toward the door, “One thing you should know. Green Valley is a quiet place. Low crime rate. Very few assaults against women, and none against a nonlocal as far back as I can remember.”

“I wasn’t thinking along those lines,” I said.

But I had been. After what had happened to me, the three months of hell at Deer Run, how could I not think along those lines?

*   *   *

The house was just as I’d left it: locked door, dark windows, empty silence.

Hurt to see it like that, but it didn’t make me feel any less hopeful. Kerry had told me that she’d never given up hope the entire three months I was missing and presumed dead; never once lost faith. She’d lived on it, and so would I.

But I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. Still a little daylight left. I unlocked the door, reached in just far enough to turn on the porch light, then locked it again, and put myself back into the car.

I don’t know how long I drove the hillside and valley roads in the general vicinity, stopping at three lighted homes that had been unoccupied before, showing the portrait photo of Kerry I kept in my wallet, and watching heads shake and listening to voices saying the same words over and over: “No, sorry, haven’t seen a woman looks like that. No, sorry. No, sorry.” At least an hour, maybe two, until long past dark. A fat harvest moon made it easier to see what lay along the shadow-edged blacktops, but there was nothing to see. Every few minutes, I hit the redial button on my cell phone. Nothing to hear, either, except the empty ringing.

The only reason I gave it up was vision-blurring fatigue. I lost my bearings and spent five minutes roaming around in a maze of darkness and distant flickering house lights before I came upon a street sign with a name I recognized. Then I misjudged a turn and nearly slid off into a ditch. Danger to myself and to others. And this kind of aimless search wasn’t going to find Kerry, no matter how long I kept it up. There were just too many places she could be, hidden by the night.

Back to the house. I still couldn’t make myself go inside, wrap those unfamiliar walls around myself, so I sat out on the deck. The darkness was alive with the pulse of crickets, a soothing sound on previous nights, but one that had the opposite effect now. It had gotten cold, the kind of after-dark chill that descends on mountain country even in summer, but I noticed it only when the wind kicked up, and only then in a peripheral way. Same with a dull, throbbing headache.

The section of woods I could see on the north side was a clotted wall of black rising up against the moonlit sky. What if that was where Kerry was? I should have gone in there earlier. Checked the timber on the south side, too, and down along the far side of Ridge Hill Road. She couldn’t have walked far from the house, Broxmeyer had said that himself. But there were so damn many copses and stands and wide stretches of timber within a radius of a couple of miles; she could be anywhere.

If she wasn’t back by first light, I’d start combing the woods nearby and work my way outward and downward. As much ground as I could cover, by myself and with Broxmeyer or whoever he sent out to help search. If I couldn’t find her by noon, I’d appeal to Broxmeyer again for an organized hunt; and if that didn’t work, try to talk Sam Budlong into helping me prod the local politicians into it. Tourism was Green Valley’s major industry and the powers that be couldn’t afford the bad publicity that would come from letting too much time pass; a suddenly missing fifty-five-year-old ad agency executive and wife of a longtime San Francisco private investigator was sure media fodder.

Even so, it was bound to take time. Broxmeyer and his fellow deputies had other worries—last night’s explosion, and people pouring into the valley for the holiday weekend among them. No matter how much pushing I did, it wasn’t likely Kerry would become a priority until Wednesday morning at the earliest. And the longer she remained unaccounted for, the slimmer the odds she’d be found in good health.

Getting ahead of myself. Still a chance a law officer responding to the BOLO alert would find her tonight, or she’d make it back here on her own. Or that I’d find her in the morning. The rest of tomorrow and the day after were a long way off. One hour, one minute at a time.

The night chill sharpened, built a tingling in my hands and face, and started me shivering. That, and exhaustion drove me out of the chair, into the house. Get as much rest as possible, or I wouldn’t be worth a damn in the morning.

I took one unshakable certainty to bed with me, let it carry me into a fitful sleep.

Kerry was alive.

I’d know it if she wasn’t. The bond we shared was so deeply forged that if it had been broken, the knowledge, the loss, would be like a piece of steel thrust into my brain. I’d know it, all right.

Wherever she was, whatever had happened to her, she was
alive
.

8

KERRY

Lucky to be alive.

That had been her first thought when she regained consciousness on the floor of the pickup, her hands and ankles bound with duct tape. And when the crazy man, Pete Balfour, had carried her in here and dumped her on the floor and then left without hurting her anymore, she’d had it again. Lucky to be alive.

But for how long?

Terror swelled again in her mind. She beat it down with an effort of will. She’d never been more afraid in her life, but she’d learned long ago—and Bill had reinforced the knowledge through his experiences—that the only way to deal with fear was to take control of it, hold it at bay. Focus on other things, on Bill, who must be frantic by now, on rescue and safety. Dwell on the fear and it would overpower you, take away your ability to think and reason—and you’d be lost.

Oh, but how long could you hold out? Bill had done it for three months chained to that cabin wall, and still managed to emerge sane. Unimaginable. She’d thought she understood what the ordeal had been like for him, how strong his will to survive had been, but she hadn’t until now. Nobody could unless they found themselves in a similar situation, facing the same kind of horrors. Monstrous coincidence that each of them, husband and wife, could be taken and held captive separately in the same lifetime, no matter what the reasons. Random insanity, for God’s sake. Yet it had happened. It was
happening
.

She’d had two other experiences with personal peril. The first time, shortly after she and Bill were married, when the serial rapist he’d been pursuing had caught her by surprise on what was supposed to have been their honeymoon getaway in Cazadero; she’d escaped serious harm through luck and guile and Bill’s last-minute arrival. The second time was the breast cancer episode, the months of radiation therapy, the constant mind-numbing anxiety—but that had been a known quantity, the cancer a tangible enemy, and she’d had the support and medical knowledge of others. This was different from either of those menaces. Accidental blunder into a situation and an enemy she didn’t understand; alone, bound, trapped, with few, if any, resources and only the slim hope of rescue. She was not sure how long she could keep the fear under control, just what the limits of her endurance were.

She kept trying to convince herself that Bill would find her somehow. He’d always been there when she needed him, always kept her safe, like that awful time in Cazadero. There was no better detective anywhere, she believed that with all her heart. But how could he know where she’d been taken, and by whom? And where she was being held when she didn’t know herself?

He’ll find out.
Clinging to the thought, repeating it in her mind. Believing it and not believing it at the same time.

The battle with terror was harder now that night had come. Inside of her prison, it was pitch dark, not a glimmer of light anywhere, the single window covered with some kind of shutter and the only door tight in its frame top, bottom, and sides. The blackness magnified the smells of old wood, dust, linseed oil, paint, rodent droppings, and God knew what else. Scurryings in the walls and sporadic night sounds outside seemed magnified, too, thick with possible menace. Balfour had been back once while it was still light, to check on her; she’d pretended to be unconscious and he’d stayed no more than a minute. If he came back in the dark …

She rid her mind of that thought, shifted position in an effort to ease the numbness in her hands and legs. She could barely feel her fingers; pictured them swollen, like the fingers on gloves inflated with helium. Bruises throbbed on her arms, a blood-scabbed rip in one knee gave off little twinges of pain. Her throat felt as if it she’d swallowed hot sand. Once, a long time after Balfour had left her the first time, she’d given in to the urge to scream, but the only sounds she could make were painful squeaks and she hadn’t tried it again.

She could still feel the marks of his thick fingers on both sides of her neck, as if they’d made permanent indentations in the skin. But he must have stopped choking her right after she blacked out, otherwise she’d be dead now. Assaulted by a wild-eyed stranger because she’d “screwed something up” for him. Senseless words, senseless attack … as if he’d had some sort of psychotic break. He hadn’t said anything in the pickup or when he’d put her in here to give his actions a rational explanation. Hadn’t said anything at all.

Stopped choking her. Stopped just in time.

Focus on that. If he wanted her dead, he’d have finished the job then and there, wouldn’t he? Why bother to tie her up, bring her to his home, confine her in this storage shed, unless he had something else in mind?

Rape?

Torture?

Both?

Kerry shuddered at the thought of his hands on her bare flesh.

God, if he was that kind … But he wasn’t, or he’d have done something by now. Unless he was savoring the anticipation. Fragments of atrocity stories she’d read or heard flickered across her mind and she shuddered again. She could bear sexual assault, no matter how brutal or how many times he repeated the act, if he let her go when he’d finally had enough—

He wouldn’t let her go. She’d seen his face and knew his name, she could identify him. He was known and didn’t seem to be liked in Six Pines, lived somewhere in Green Valley … his pickup had still been on the logging road when she regained consciousness and they hadn’t driven far to this property, what must be his property. Crazy man, but not crazy enough to turn her loose, let her walk away …

The fear broke through her defenses again, a black wave of it that left her weak and shaking before she could lock her mind against it. The rumpled piece of old, dirty canvas she was lying on gave off a mixture of rank odors that made her suddenly nauseous. Her stomach convulsed; she twisted onto her side, head down, to keep from choking on the thin stream of vomit that came up.

She spat her mouth clear, wiggled backward away from the vomit odor. The stiff canvas rustled beneath her, cold and crawly on her bare arms and legs. Something touched her face, skittered across it. Bug. Spider. She recoiled, shook her head, and brushed it off against the curve of her shoulder.

Outside, the dog started barking at something.

The dog frightened her, too. Pit bull, as big and ugly as its owner. It had made a lot of noise, barking and snarling, when he carried her in here. Not allowed to roam free; tied by a long lead with a hook looped over a cable stretched across the yard, so that it could run back and forth. Guard dog. Patrol dog.

Her shoe scraped against a solid object. She knew what it was—one of the leg supports on the long bench below the window, the same support she’d propped herself against earlier. She squirmed over to it, rolling onto her buttocks, digging the heels of her shoes into the canvas, until she was again sitting with her back against the rough wooden edge. The position gave some relief to her cramped muscles, but not to her hands or feet. She didn’t have the strength to lift herself upright.

She knew that because she’d tried, more than once, even though there was nothing on the bench she could use to free herself. Balfour had taken box cutters, a saw, a pair of hedge clippers, and a few other gardening tools away with him before leaving the first time—everything with a sharp edge. He might have overlooked something, but she couldn’t stand, let alone search, with her hands and feet bound the way they were.

Kerry leaned against the support until her breathing eased and the last of the nausea went away. Then she wiggled around slightly so that its edge was in the middle of her back, leaned forward to bring the joining of her wrists up against it, and struggled to make up-and-down sawing motions. She’d done that before, too, thinking that the rough wood could be made to cut through the duct tape. But she hadn’t been able to sustain the effort then, and she couldn’t now. Almost immediately, pain began to radiate through both arms, across her shoulders, sharpening until she bit her tongue to keep from crying out. She had to quit then, change position to keep from crippling herself.

She let a little time creep away, working the muscles in her shoulders and upper arms to loosen them, then tried again. Same result. But the sawing was having some effect on the tape … or was it? She couldn’t be sure. Not enough feeling in her hands. And there was no sense of separation when she sought to move her wrists apart. He’d used a lot of the tape, tying her hands crosswise at the wrists and winding it partway up both forearms—

Scuffling noises outside, close to the shed. She heard them clearly because the pit bull had stopped barking.

Footsteps? Balfour coming back?

She froze, holding her breath, listening.

The scuffling came again, but only once more and not as near; then the night was quiet. And it stayed quiet except for the singsong chatter of crickets and the irregular thumping of her heart.

Not him. The dog prowling around. Or bumps in the night.