“Our theory,” Canfield said, “is that he is just one link in what is probably a very extensive chain of conspirators. We believe he started out as a kidnapper, and, in the beginning, he did sexually assault and murder his first couple of victims. We found their remains, so we know that to be true.” Bill winced and she said, “Sorry. Would you rather I not go on?”
He shook his head. “I need to hear this.”
“That’s what I thought. Somewhere along the line, this disturbed man who was kidnapping and murdering teenage girls was co-opted by players much bigger and more frightening than he. How this connection was made and how extensive the ring is, we don’t know. But now we think he satisfies his compulsion, taking the girls and probably getting some sort of time limit within which he can enjoy them in his own way as long as he doesn’t damage them irreparably, then he passes them along to a contact, who smuggles them out of the country, probably to buyers in Russia or the Middle East.”
“Oh my God, that makes me sick.” Bill’s hand shook and coffee slurped over the side of the ceramic cup, overflowing the saucer and pooling on the scarred and chipped table.
“I know it’s hard to hear,” Canfield said gently, “but the thing you should focus on, and the reason I told you, is that we believe Carli is still alive, and just as importantly, is still in this general area. If we catch a break or two, like we seem to have done with your memory about the truck, we just might be able to nail this twisted bastard before Carli is shipped out of the country. If we don’t find her before that happens…” Her voice trailed off. There was no need for her to continue.
Bill hung his head, thinking hard as he tried to digest the implications of this information. Carli was alive. He held onto that nugget of hope like a drowning man clinging to a life raft. She was alive, and if she was alive, she could be saved. That was what he needed to focus on, not the horrifying scenario Angela Canfield had just laid out.
The FBI agent finished her coffee, setting the cup down on the table with a jarring clatter that sounded much too loud, echoing off the bare walls, vinyl flooring, and ceramic dinnerware in the empty restaurant. “I’ve got to get this information out to everyone in the field. Thanks for calling, Bill. It goes without saying that this is a huge break. If you think of anything else, let me know immediately. I would prefer if you only called me. It makes things easier to have just the one point of contact. Thanks for the coffee.”
Agent Canfield rose from the table and glided out the door without a look back. Bill watched her through the big, plate glass window as she got into a plain Chevy Caprice sedan and drove away.
He sipped the last of his coffee. He wanted to scream, to hit somebody or something. He didn’t feel the information he had just given Agent Canfield was huge unless it led directly to the capture of the I-90 Killer. Bill knew in his heart that the kidnapper of his child was no longer driving around the east coast in that ratty old box truck; he couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to continue using it after Bill had seen him in it. The guy had successfully kidnapped thirteen girls before making his first and, so far, only mistake. He was much too smart to keep using the vehicle a witness had seen him driving.
And as far as using the available evidence to convict the I-90 Killer after his capture, Bill couldn’t care less about that. Fingerprints, DNA evidence, the lettering on the bastard’s truck, none of it mattered to Bill, at least not in terms of using it to attain a conviction in a court of law. Bill didn’t care about a winning a trial or incarcerating the lunatic or anything else.
Beyond finding Carli alive and rescuing her, what he wanted more than anything else in the world was the I-90 Killer, dead and buried. It was a visceral need, almost like the intense thirst of a man lost in the desert. He had missed his chance to put the man in the ground once; he wouldn’t make that mistake again if he ever got another crack at him. He drained his cup, threw down some money, and stalked out of the coffee shop.
CHAPTER 43
CARLI’S HEAD POUNDED RELENTLESSLY. It felt like the USC Marching Band had taken up residence inside her skull and was practicing for their next halftime show. She had suffered on and off from migraines ever since young childhood, so Carli Ferguson knew headaches, and this one was off the charts.
She kept her eyes closed and began turning over in her bed, ever so slowly, moving onto her left side. Sometimes, curling up in the fetal position with her arm covering her eyes helped block out the light, and with this massive headache attacking her, she was ready to try anything. But as she pulled her right arm to place it over her head, she realized she was unable to move it. Her arm was stuck.
She pulled harder, but something was grabbing it. She could hear a clanking, like the creepy noise of the chains poor Marley was forced to tote around in
A Christmas Carol,
except not as loud. What would chains be doing in her bedroom? Carli tried to open her eyes, and the reality of her situation finally penetrated her consciousness. She groaned, partly out of fear and frustration and partly from the pain pounding through her head.
She was here, wherever “here” was, in the basement of the lunatic’s house. She had grabbed the grimy knife off the kitchen table in a desperate attempt to slice open the kidnapper and escape and had actually, for just a moment, thought she might manage it. She had even sliced open his arm. Then he overpowered her and grabbed the knife and—what? Did he cut her with it? In the head?
She didn’t think she would still be alive if he had used the business end of the steak knife on her head, or anywhere else for that matter. Plus, the almost unbearable pain thundering through her head led her to believe she was, in fact, still alive. Either that or Hell was a real drag.
Whatever Martin had done to her was definitely effective, she had to give him that. She reached her left hand, the one not handcuffed to the bed frame, tentatively up to the right side of her head and gasped in pain when her fingertips touched the open wound.
The skin on her skull was torn and raw, and blood oozed sluggishly from the gash. The blood had seeped into her hair, making it messy and sticky. Then it had dried, clumping great tufts of hair together until it felt matted and disgusting. One eye was sealed shut. She touched it with her fingers and felt dried blood crusted all over it. She lifted her head and peered around her with her usable eye. The pillow and threadbare sheet were stained with both dried and newer blood. It seemed like a lot of blood; a frightening amount of blood to have all come out of her head. Fortunately, the flow of it seemed mostly to have stopped, at least for now.
What would happen when she tried to get up was anybody’s guess, but with her head pounding and throbbing the way it was, she knew she was more helpless than before. If that was even possible.
Then she realized that she had peed herself sometime during the night. Half-dried, sticky wetness covered her butt and the insides of both thighs. And the worst part was that she needed to go again. Note to self, she thought groggily: Wait until
after
your kidnapper allows you to go to the bathroom to attack him with a dirty steak knife. This sort of information is invaluable, she thought to herself, and will really come in handy the next time you’re kidnapped at gunpoint off the school bus by a stark raving mad lunatic.
Carli eased her good eye closed again, grateful for the resulting darkness as the pounding in her head seemed to lessen slightly. She wondered what time it was, how long she had been unconscious, and most importantly, where the crazy pervert with the knife had gone and when he would be coming back.
Weak, watery daylight struggled through the dirty basement window, so she knew she had been lying unconscious on the bed for quite some time. It had been the middle of the night when she tried to play ninja with her kidnapper, and now it was daytime.
Without fully realizing it, Carli drifted back into an uneasy half-slumber.
* * *
Martin sat on the bottom step of the basement stairs and watched his angel quietly as she fidgeted on the bed. She explored her head wound, which had bled like crazy as head wounds always do, but which Martin still figured was not too serious. He was something of an expert on inflicting damage on teenage girls, and he figured she may have suffered a slight concussion and probably had a doozy of a headache, but that was likely the extent of it.
The skin he had torn open with the butt end of the knife had more or less stopped bleeding. It probably required nothing more than a few stitches, not that he was about to bring her to the hospital. The scar would be almost invisible under her luxurious mane of blonde hair, so his contact would not be too upset, and the wound might serve as a handy reminder to her of what would happen if she tried to rebel against him or her next owner again.
He would let her suffer for a while with her bloody face and pissed pants—it was exactly what she deserved after her treachery last night—and later, after she had had a chance to meditate on her foolishness, he would bring her upstairs to clean the cut on her head and allow her to shower. While he watched, of course, as a security measure.
Clean clothes wouldn’t be a problem. After hosting more than a dozen girls, all roughly her exact dimensions, for anywhere from a few hours in the beginning to seven days more recently, Martin had built up a pretty fair collection of stylish clothing favored by the twenty-first century teen girl. All the hot brands—t-shirts, sweat shirts, jeans, skirts, tank tops, and, of course, pretty underwear—he had it all, stacked in piles in the back of his closet, all waiting for the perfect girl to wear them.
Carli would be the one. She was perfect.
Eventually, he would do all that. For now, though, he was content to sit unobserved and watch his little angel as she began the process of adjusting to her new way station and her new situation. As angry as he had been at the moment of the attack last night, Martin now realized he had brought it upon himself. He never should have trusted her. It was just so hard not to.
The 4:00 a.m. trip to the hospital had been interesting. Martin had driven himself to the emergency room, his sliced-up arm screaming in protest, even after he had swallowed all those ibuprofens. The road in front of the windshield had wavered and shimmied as if he were driving drunk, sometimes disappearing entirely for a second or two as his body dealt with the shock of the serious wound, before swimming back into focus, more or less.
Then, at the nearly empty emergency room, first the nurse and then the doctor who eventually stitched him up took one look at the chunk taken out of his arm and eyed him suspiciously. The injury had “domestic dispute” written all over it, and the concern of the medical staff was clearly for whoever had been on the other end of the knife, and what fate she might have suffered.
Martin chuckled, watching as his angel tossed and turned on the bed in obvious discomfort. The medical buffoons assumed it was a domestic dispute, and in a way they had been spot on. But of course, Martin had known what conclusion they would jump to and was ready with a story. He had been replacing the muffler on his car. “The wrench slipped,” he said, the picture of innocence, sincerity in his eyes, “and I gouged my arm on a loose piece of exposed sheet metal.”
“You were working on your car at three o’clock in the morning?” the doctor asked sarcastically, making no attempt to hide his disbelief. Martin didn’t blame him, really; the explanation was about as flimsy as they come. But what could the doctor do? Martin stuck to his guns, and, in the end, they had done the only thing they could do—suture the wound, give him a prescription for some high-quality painkillers, and then send him on his way.
They were suspicious, of course they were, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. Even if they decided to alert the authorities, their efforts would be wasted. The license and insurance information was all bogus—fakes provided by his contact for use in the event of just such an emergency.
By the time he walked back through his front door, daylight was dawning, although the sky was overcast and moisture hung in the air like evil intent. Martin was exhausted. He stumbled into the basement and checked on Carli, still passed out on the filthy bed, and then went back upstairs and taken two Percocets. He had slept like a baby. A baby high on prescription pain meds.
The disappointment of not being able to consummate his burgeoning relationship with Carli last night was fresh in Martin’s mind, but after participating in a knife fight, enduring the cleaning, and suturing of a serious stab wound as well as the accusatory stares of the hospital personnel, and being up all night to boot, Martin decided it couldn’t hurt to wait another few hours for the big moment. He wanted to be able to enjoy it, after all, and right now, with his forearm throbbing and barking at him, the sex wouldn’t be that much fun anyway. It would be nothing more than animal rutting, and he wanted it to be special. He wanted it to be something they could both remember with fondness as the years went by, despite the fact they might not ever see each other again.
There was still plenty of time, after all. He had six more days, and Carli Ferguson wasn’t going anywhere until every last hour of that time was up. He watched her sleep for a few more minutes and then rose and ascended the stairs. It was time for more Percocet and another nap.
CHAPTER 44
May 28, 2:05 p.m.
SPE
FAR
ET
EIGHT LETTERS CLUSTERED IN three distinct groups, running from upper left to lower right, down the side wall of a truck’s cargo box. Eight seemingly random-looking letters that obviously weren’t random at all. They had, at one time during the truck’s previous incarnation, signified something, something that meant enough to someone to shout it out to the world.
Bill chewed on the significance of the letters, certain he had seen them somewhere before, pacing his tiny apartment and walking the neighborhood under glowering skies, the air so heavy with moisture and the promise of rain that he felt as though he was practically swimming.