Stone Maidens (38 page)

Prusik’s heart vibrated like the wings of a hummingbird, threatening to dart right out of her chest and buzz off into the night. His confidence was ratcheting up her fear. So was the shiny sliver of stone he’d displayed between his teeth. Why had he asked her if she wanted another? She flattened her sweaty palms against her thighs, fighting to pull herself together.

The outside lights of the interstate gas plaza north of Crosshaven appeared up ahead.

Numb from adrenaline rushes, Prusik was devoid of any further desire to struggle. Just the way he wanted her. She thought of
the nature programs she’d watched on television as a young girl. In the slow-motion chase of a cheetah after a gazelle, the cheetah would lunge, swiping the legs out from under the graceful animal, then hover nonchalantly over it, with no need to hold on to it. Hovering was enough to keep the poor animal frozen in place as its own nervous system conspired against it. Prusik had pounded the floor in front of the TV screen, urging the fleet-footed gazelle to run: “Get up, go! Get away, you can make it!”

Now, she was like that downed gazelle—feeling that same frozen-in-place terror, that same inward collapse as if an invisible but palpable electric current had hooked up between Holmquist and Prusik, predator and prey. He looked at her. She caught a faint flicker of retinal red in the passing lights of an oncoming car.

“Don’t try any funny business, if you catch my drift,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

Prusik gripped the door handle in her right hand. She’d bail if she had to. But first she must steady herself.

The rumble of a vehicle approaching fast from behind caught Christine’s attention. Headlights flooded in through the back window. A large SUV veered closer into Holmquist’s lane, trying to head him off, clipping the front panel of the doctor’s car and sending it fishtailing onto the soft shoulder in a cloud of dust. Ahead, the SUV’s tires squealed, got hung up on the lip of the pavement, and careened sideways too fast over loose gravel. In an instant it was airborne on an angle and cleared the steep embankment. Christine winced as she watched it slam into a freshly plowed field and come to rest on its roof.

The sedan’s front tires were spinning freely, suspended over the deep irrigation ditch ten feet below the road’s shoulder. Holmquist flung open the driver’s side door and dropped down into the ditch out of sight, thrashing among the weeds. Beyond the ditch, Christine could hear the whirring sound of a spinning tire fade—the flipped vehicle. She made out the shape of it and read,
upside down on the door panel, the large letters: C
ROSSHAVEN
S
HERIFF’S
D
EPARTMENT
.

Christine flung open her door and slid down into the steep irrigation drain, grasping handfuls of weeds to steady herself. She slipped onto the scummy tiles lining the bottom of the excavated channel, enveloped in sudden darkness. Without her .38 Special, being trapped in the dark ditch with Holmquist wasn’t an option. She clawed her way up the opposite side and reached the plowed field. The loamy dirt felt good under her bare feet. The sound of splashing came from the ditch behind her—Holmquist was getting away.

Christine plodded awkwardly through the deep plowed soil, her arms outstretched for balance. The Bronco lay resting on its roof at the edge of the field. She reached through the busted-out driver’s window and with two fingers palpated the sheriff’s carotid artery, checking for a pulse. It was strong.

“Joe,” she whispered, gently squeezing his arm. “Can you hear me?”

McFaron didn’t respond. She felt along his gun belt and pulled the Maglite from its holder. She flicked it on. McFaron’s face was bloodied. His eyes fluttered.

“Check Claremont.” He winced. “In back.”

Prusik shone the light across spare rubber boots and an emergency first-aid kit that had broken off its holder. Glass shards from the busted-out side windows glinted under her beam. “He’s not there. He must have been thrown clear.” Christine aimed the beam around the sides of the truck and spotted a set of fresh footsteps that led across the field. She traced the light in their general direction, but there was no sign of the man.

McFaron’s eyelids closed again. She feared that moving him would cause him more injury, so she didn’t unfasten his seat belt. Prusik retrieved his service revolver—all six chambers were loaded.

The radio transmitter suddenly blared from the dangling mike cord. “Sheriff McFaron, this is Mary, over.”

Prusik grabbed hold of the mike. “Mary, this is Special Agent Prusik speaking. There’s been an accident about four miles north of the interstate gas terminal, in a field bordering the northbound lane of the state highway. Sheriff McFaron is hurt, semiconscious. We need an ambulance and police backup ASAP. Donald Holmquist kidnapped me this afternoon and has now escaped on foot. He’s killed at least three Indiana girls that we know of.”

Christine waited for Mary’s acknowledgment and then took off along the field toward a small stand of second-growth poplars, holding the sheriff’s gun barrel high. Nearing the trees, she dropped into a crouch beside the embankment, listening for signs of movement. The horizon glowed beyond the trees. Less than a minute later the edge of a full moon appeared over the crest of a hill, perceptibly brightening the landscape. A branch snapped. Something moved up ahead in the thicket that bordered the field’s edge—the shadow of someone ducking behind a trunk. Donald Holmquist or David Claremont?

Christine held the gun steady and trained the powerful Maglite beam from tree trunk to tree trunk. She felt certain it was Holmquist hiding there. Claremont would surely have revealed himself or said something. She pressed forward through the weeds, aiming the gun chest-high, continuing to sweep the beam from left to right. The killer was probably eyeing her already, planning his next move. She illuminated one trunk large enough to hide a man and stayed hidden in the weeds.

“Donald Holmquist, this is the FBI. Come out with your hands up. You’re under arrest for the murders of Betsy Ryan, Missy Hooper, and Julie Heath.”

No sound came back in return but her beating heart. She approached slowly, remaining low on her haunches. Stopping
under the gloomy canopy of the largest tree, she shone the light slowly around the grove.

“Stand clear, Mr. Holmquist, with your hands up!”

Prusik drew back the firing pin. For the first time,
she
felt like the hunter. She was a dead shot—her marksmanship had been best in her class in the FBI training program—and holding the gun helped compose her.

“Holmquist, this is your last chance. Give yourself up now.” The words came to her automatically. “I will shoot to kill if necessary.”

A branch cracked overhead. Holmquist was airborne over her, his arms outstretched. Prusik fired once at the man’s midsection. The sudden force of his falling body knocked her to the ground. Both the gun and flashlight came out of her grasp. He was on top of her, panting loudly—she’d wounded him.

“Nice shooting, FBI lady,” he managed between heaving breaths.

Prusik jerked her knee up into the injured man’s crotch. Holmquist cringed but didn’t relax his hold, pinning her by the wrists. His face drew near hers.

“You won’t be needing to shoot me full of holes no more.” Clasping both her wrists in his left hand, he jerked up her blouse, prodding, palpating her abdomen, as if getting a measure of things. She was amazed by the wounded man’s strength.

Summoning her rage, Prusik strained her neck muscles upward and bit down on Holmquist’s chin with everything she could muster, lodging an eyetooth deep into his flesh. He groaned, slapped at her cheek, clawing, searching for purchase along her jawbone. Prusik bit down harder, scraping chinbone, willing the strength of her entire body into her tooth hold.

She freed one hand and grasped the stone dangling from his neck. With a furious jab, she drilled the charm stone inside the killer’s ear, twisting it for maximum effect. He flopped off.

A squirt of adrenaline was all that seemed to be necessary to clear his mind and send him scrambling off across the field. Prusik frantically patted the weeds, searching for and finding the gun and the light.

She stood gazing in the direction Holmquist had taken. The moon suddenly dimmed, cloaked behind a passing cloud, as if conspiring with him. Precious seconds had passed.

She knew a gunshot wound in the stomach was mean. A web of major arteries and veins fed through a man’s midsection, and the chances of a .38’s slug passing clean through were next to nil. The loss of blood would be substantial.

The full moon appeared again, hanging over the treetops, orange as a mango. Out in the open, it was easy for Prusik to pick out Holmquist’s footsteps in the plowed soil. She hoped that she’d spot the injured man crumpled on the ground, but only uninterrupted plow lines met her gaze.

From the distance came the wail of police sirens and a strand of shimmering bubble lights. The imminent arrival of backup buoyed her confidence. A small rise in the field sloped suddenly away. Prusik kept her head down, the barrel of the gun straight ahead in a lowered position. Her left hand clutched the Maglite. She passed down the gentle slope without realizing that she was now hidden from the view of anyone on the state road.

Just ahead of her, a darker smudge marred the tilled expanse. A leg moved in the furrows—Holmquist’s. Prusik warily approached the downed man. From a good ten feet away she shone the light into his face—no response. His shirtfront was heavily stained with blood. She moved in, tapped his leg with her foot. Still no response.

She lowered the Maglite. Holmquist came alive, thrashing and kicking the light out of her grip. He was on his feet and charged her. Christine lost her balance and fell to the ground.

“Get away from her!” A body lunged in from the side, separating her from her assailant. “Get away from her, I said,” her defender roared in fury. The two men struggled on the ground.

Christine got to her knee and drew a bead on the man who lay beneath her rescuer. “It’s OK, sir,” she said to the man in a tattered shirt on top of Holmquist. “I’m an officer of the law, Special Agent Christine Prusik. Please get off the suspect.”

The men continued to struggle as if they hadn’t heard hear. Amid grunting and moaning and bellowing came tearful accusations from both straining figures—had she heard right?

Prusik fired a shot in the air. “Get off the suspect, sir! That’s an order!”

When her rescuer hesitated, Holmquist threw him off. Then he hobbled unsteadily toward the dark edge of the field. Prusik didn’t give chase this time. Holmquist wasn’t long for this world, and she was exhausted to the bone. Between heaving breaths, the man on the ground said, “Please, ma’am, don’t shoot him.”

Prusik immediately recognized the voice. “David?”

He raised his hand in acknowledgment. “Please don’t shoot my brother.”

Prusik lowered the gun. Her arm trembled badly from the strain of combat. “I owe you an apology, David.”

Claremont’s eyes drifted back out over the field, following his brother’s haphazard footsteps. “I’ll stay with him till the law comes. I promise.”

“Forgetting something, David? I am the law. A .38 slug tore through his midsection. He won’t get very far.” She measured Claremont’s ragged state. “You were thrown clear in the car wreck?”

He got to his feet, fidgeting his hands. “I’m sorry for not helping out before. I was afraid I’d get shot in the mix-up.” As Claremont spoke he gazed intently in the direction Holmquist had fled, wringing his hands, caught in a maelstrom Prusik could barely begin to fathom. In the illumination of the cool moonlight, his face gave the appearance of a man who bore too much of the world’s weight upon his shoulders.

“I should go, Ms. Prusik. I need to find him.” Claremont started off in the direction Holmquist had loped.

Christine wiped a few clods of dirt off her suit pants, too drained to stop him. Claremont’s anguish—and it was nothing less than anguish—was excruciating to witness. What agonies of the deep had the twinning bond dredged up? What loss must Claremont be feeling as the life drained out of his mirror image?

Christine shook her head, trying to clear it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried, but she felt perilously close to tears. Bursts of laser-like light illuminated the western sky from what she estimated to be fifteen or twenty police cars just out of sight over the rise. She gazed east, in the direction that Claremont had taken, then turned and headed back toward the state road.

The sun rose to the noisy cries of red-winged blackbirds aggressively defending their territory. The feisty birds flicked their wings amid a cacophony of cackles. It had rained hard the night before and steamy mist was rising from the ground everywhere, making it look like a battlefield on the day after.

The front tires of the rental car spun in the muck. McFaron put it into park. He’d get stuck if he drove any farther into the muddy field. His new four-wheel-drive truck was on order, and he wouldn’t have it for at least another week. The farmer who’d wakened him at four thirty that morning had insisted he come immediately. An early riser for years, the sheriff had elected not to stir Christine, who had spent the night at his home in Crosshaven. She’d looked exhausted after the press conferences yesterday and all the back-and-forth faxes and calls between his office and hers in Chicago.

McFaron usually enjoyed the peaceful quiet of morning, a quiet that today was broken by the pesky birds raising a commotion near a hedgerow less than a mile from where the Bronco still lay totaled. Something was upsetting them. He removed his knee-high boots from the back of the car, a staple of the sheriff’s equipment kit. His left arm was in a sling, the tendons in his shoulders badly strained from the accident. He followed the farmer’s footprints, as the man had said to. It was difficult keeping his balance, pulling each boot free, wincing each time he had to jerk his bad arm to keep from falling. He huffed from the workout. Peepers trilled
from a manmade pond. As he passed by it, the chorus abruptly ceased, silenced by the sucking noises of the sheriff’s rubber boots.