In the Belly of Jonah (34 page)

“Anything?”

“Nope,” Cameron said.

“I guess I’ll have to catch him tomorrow,” Streeter said. “Thanks, Cameron.”

“No problemo,” he said, fist-bumping Streeter as he left.

“Good luck on your paper,”Streeter called out as Cameron headed toward the cluster of tables at the far end of the library. Streeter turned to Kelleher and Brandt and explained, “He was looking for Dr. Jay for me. Long shot.”

“No Liv Bergen, either?” Kelleher asked.

Streeter shook his head, asking Brandt, “You?”

Brandt shook his head. “She wasn’t at the city library. Only took me five minutes to check. Liv would come here, not the city library, if she was doing any serious research.”

Streeter said, “You got the search warrant?”

Brandt nodded.

“Then let’s get over to Dr. Jay’s house.” Streeter turned toward Kelleher. “You’ve got more coming?”

“Three others.” He turned his wrist, checking the time. “One of Brandt’s men and two of our agents and four techs. They told us to call when we’re ten minutes out.”

“We’re ten minutes out,” Streeter said. “But let me do one more thing before we leave.”

Streeter closed the distance between the front door and the main library desk, giving a quick nod to the two women huddled over a computer. He greeted them casually. “Ladies.”

They smiled.

The shorter, larger of the two women asked, “What can I do for you, dear?”

“Do you know who Dr. Jay is?”

They both nodded.

“Have you, by chance, seen him at all today?”

They looked at each other, and the taller lady said, “Yes, he was just here.”

Streeter’s heart raced. “Where?”

“In the library. Right here,” the shorter one said, pointing along the main doors and stairs.

“Did you see where he went?” Streeter asked.

Kelleher and Brandt sidled up to the desk, listening intently.

“Well, he just left, dear,” the short one said. “When did he leave, Pam?”

“Right after the ambulance got here,” the tall one said. “Don’t you remember, Ann Marie? I joked with Liv about her ride being here.”

“Oh, yes,” the short one said. “When she went all pale and stiff.”

“Guess it wasn’t that funny,” the tall one said, grimacing.

“Liv?” Streeter’s heart pounded. “You wouldn’t happen to mean Liv Bergen, would you?”

The short one smiled and elbowed the tall one. “He knows Liv. And he’s cute.”

Streeter asked, “Where did she go?”

“Well, she left too,” the tall one said. “She’d been here for . . . oh, what would you say, Ann Marie. An hour or so?”

“Yes, I’d say an hour, maybe less,”the short one answered. “She was studying again. She does that a lot. Picks a subject she knows nothing about.”

“Then studies about it, just so she keeps her mind fresh,” the tall one added. “She’s such a special young lady.”

“This time it was about art,” the short one announced.

Streeter felt sick. He could feel the sweat pop along his brow and upper lip. “Did she say what kind of art?”

“Surreal art,” the tall one said. “Modern, bizarre. She was looking for art with people and fruit.”

“A pomegranate?” Streeter asked, swallowing hard.

“Never mentioned that,” the short one replied shaking her head.

The tall one shook her head too. “She was looking for art by people like Magritte.”

“And Salvador Dalí,” the short one added.

“And Liv’s already left?”

“About twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago,” the tall one said. Streeter felt the bile rise in his throat and looked at his watch. He must have just missed them. Right before he posted Cameron at the front door.

“She left with Dr. Jay,” the short one added. “They left arm in arm, as a matter of fact. Is there something wrong, dear?”

“AREN’T YOU THE LEAST
bit curious where we’re going, Liv?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think so,” Dr. Jay said, moving at a good clip down the sidewalk toward a partially filled parking lot. No one was in sight. “You’re going to love what I have planned for you.”

I glanced over my shoulder again, willing the police to be chasing us, hoping against hope Agent Kelleher had followed me to the library and waited to pop out of the nearby bush at just the right moment. When Dr. Jay pushed me into the fancy sports car, I decided it might not be so prudent to wish for someone else to save my sorry ass from this crazy bastard.

I was on my own.

I scanned the car, looking for any kind of weapon. The car was devoid of anything except what came with it off the showroom floor. My father came to mind in that moment, or, more specifically, one of his many “life’s lessons” statements did. He had told me that if I was ever caught in a situation where I needed to fight my way out of it, to use my head—and to use my keys.

As Dr. Jay was walking around the front of the car, I reached into my jeans pocket and retrieved my key ring: there were two large ones to my Ford Explorer and a small one to my house. I fumbled with the largest key, slipping it between my first and second finger and closing my fist tightly around the other two keys in the palm of my hand. Perfect. I had a makeshift knife. Dad would be proud.

The driver’s side door opened and my abductor’s face appeared.

“Want to take it out for a spin?” he said, wearing a sickening grin.

It occurred to me that Dr. Jay had likely fashioned himself after a young Elvis Presley, thereby hoping to attract women easily. A curled lip. Bedroom eyes. But with Dr. Jay, it was all wrong. Something about him seemed disingenuous, like he was a cheap copy. He was probably more like a love child conceived by Mr. Roarke and Tatu on Fantasy Island.

“Where are you taking me?” I snarled, happy to see that he was distracted for a moment as he was climbing into his car. I slid the keys into my right sock, deep beyond the ankle of my steel-toed boot, while he wasn’t looking. He’d already made me empty my jacket pockets. It was just a matter of time before he asked me to do the same with my jeans pockets, once he thought of it.

“Somewhere very special,” he said.

He turned the key in the ignition. The car hummed to life.

“You’re Jonah,” I just realized.

Big mistake. His hand flew to my throat and he started squeezing. “Where’s the letter?”

I clutched at the long fingers of his strong hand, struggling for breath as he crushed my windpipe. I tried to answer, and my lips moved, but nothing came out except an unnatural gurgling. Was that my voice? I started to see stars and offered up a quick prayer for God to help me. Dr. Jay loosened his grip, his hand falling back onto the steering wheel, and I coughed, gasped, and spewed.

“What the hell are you doing?” I choked, protectively covering my neck with my hands.

“Where’s the letter?”

I answered honestly, risking another death grip. “I don’t know. I gave it to my friend Lisa.”

He threw the car into reverse, pulling out of the parking spot. “Agent Henry. Well, look where that got her.”

I shot him a sideways dagger.

“Dead,” he said, staring at me and grinning. He turned back to watch the road.

“You killed her,” I said.

“Lisa Henry was a beauty. I called her Awakening. She put up one hell of a fight.” He turned the rearview mirror so it was reflecting his face. He stretched and twisted so he could see the angry scratches down the side of his cheek and neck. I silently cheered Lisa and Jill for marring him.

Dr. Jay was conceited, self-absorbed.
Study his weaknesses
, I told myself. Study and learn.

“Jill didn’t fight at all,” he said, as if hearing my silent cheer.

My stomach churned again and I fought back the desire to upchuck. Often, the motion of ordinary driving is enough to make me nauseated. Given Dr. Jay’s erratic driving and my loyalty to both Lisa and Jill—let alone the fact of my sitting beside the very monster who had killed them both—it was all getting to be a bit too much. He talked as if it didn’t matter that he took the life of these two special women, beautiful souls. Both were strong, amazing spirits, with brilliant lives cut short—by this reptilian freak.

“I told her if she fought me, I’d take it out on her little sister, Julia,”he explained. “And I would have. In fact, I would have enjoyed taking my frustrations out on that little bonbon. So, Jill obeyed my every command. Right to the very end.”

I imagined the center hole punched through Jill.

I lost it.

All over the front seat and dashboard of his fancy car. I simply leaned forward and hurled between my knees, all over the floorboards. The smell was powerfully bad. Dr. Jay immediately rolled down his window.

“What the—”he started and decided against whatever he had planned to say or do. He said, simply, “You cow.”

“Sorry,” I lied, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket. Secretly, I hoped that once he had killed me, little traces of my barf in his sporty car would be the evidence collected to nail this guy’s ass. “I get motion sickness.”

The truth was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jill and what he had done to her. How he must have used all her innards as chum for the freshwater fish at Horsetooth.

I lost it again, only this time I had tried to roll my window down first. But Dr. Jay had locked the power windows, so all I managed to do was barf all over the passenger side door and under the nice leather seat of his expensive car.

Oddly, a vision of Mr. Wagner and his can of magic sand came to mind. Whenever any of us students puked at the Catholic grade school, the kind old janitor brought his magic sand to soak up whatever smells and gunk had erupted from our little bodies. Mr. Wagner never let on if he was disgusted; he wore the same deadpan expression as when he’d wheel out the gurney with the four candles—three pink and one purple—on it during Advent to our mournful rendition of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”I hadn’t thought about Mr. Wagner in years.

“My Maserati! You are such a disgusting
vaca
,”Dr. Jay shouted. “I ought to torture you by suffocating you with your own bile, you filthy cow.”

I stifled my glee. I had managed to piss him off and it felt good. The same kind of good I felt when the keys dug into my ankle. I would have my chance. If I was going to get eaten by this mountain lion I was at least going to make it as painful as if he were swallowing a feisty porcupine. Like Lisa had.

Dr. Jay pulled into the driveway off Whaler’s Way. After my initial shock in realizing this was not a plush hotel, but rather his house, the irony of Jonah living on Whaler’s Way settled on me like a terrible omen. I imagined the whale swallowing me as he tucked his car into the garage, quickly lowering the automatic door behind us.
In the belly of Jonah
, I thought. And felt a chill.

“Get out, you selfish pig,” he hollered at me.

I grabbed the slippery door handle and hoisted myself out of the stinky car. He stepped out and stomped through the garage into the house. I stood staring at the organized garage, noting the old pickup with a topper in the second stall. I was scanning the space, looking for another possible weapon, when Dr. Jay emerged with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge.

He shoved the bucket toward me and said, “Get to work. I don’t have all day.”

I did as I was told, scrubbing away at the floorboard and the door of his precious Maserati. I eased up on the elbow grease, at least enough for Dr. Jay not to notice, particularly on the area under the passenger’s seat. I would leave something for the forensic team to find and link to me after my mutilated body was found. A shiver skipped down my spine as my mind flashed to some of Dalí’s other paintings. As brave and ornery as I pretended to be, I was still scared shitless by the prospect of being butchered with high-pressure water. I glanced over my shoulder at the beat-up pickup and realized the compressor, water tank, and hose must be hidden in there. De Milo’s mobile butchering shop.

“Hurry up,” he hollered, watching my every move.

I did as I was told, taking my time but not so much so that he might figure I was stalling, which I was.