He was sure Martin Krall was home, since there was a car parked in front of the garage. Maybe he was right on the other side of the door, six feet away, gloating about his successful kidnapping of Carli Ferguson and how he put one over on, not just the FBI and the New York and Massachusetts State Police, but on Bill Ferguson himself.
Bill flicked the safety off the Browning and grasped the tarnished brass doorknob with his right hand. He was sweating like he had just done fifty pushups. Another crash of thunder sounded outside, and the resulting flash of brilliant lightning illuminated the garage like Fenway Park during a night game. He turned the knob, opened the door, and cautiously peered inside, then walked through the door into an empty kitchen.
Dirty dishes littered a single-basin sink as well as the kitchen table, which was located next to the garage entrance. The dingy green and white tiles of the linoleum floor were way overdue for a good mopping. But the thing that drew Bill Ferguson’s attention immediately upon entering the kitchen, as soon as he had determined no one was present and about to shoot him, was the terrifyingly large bloodstain splattered all over the floor and halfway up the wall of a hallway running adjacent to the kitchen. It looked as though someone had died a violent death here. Recently.
A surge of fear and anguish coursed through his body. A mental picture of Carli lying on the floor mortally wounded, leaking blood from a serious wound while the I-90 Killer watched in amusement, sprang unbidden into Bill’s mind. He set out to check out the rest of the house, hurrying, moving as fast as he could without alerting Krall to his presence.
The remainder of the home’s first floor was just as deserted as the kitchen, although signs of habitation were everywhere. A dirty pair of white gym socks had been tossed haphazardly onto the living room floor next to a sagging green couch in front of the television. An opened newspaper covered the messy coffee table. Dirty drinking glasses were scattered around the room, some still half-filled with liquid.
But there were no people, injured or otherwise.
Bill bolted up the stairs and quickly searched the second floor, once again finding plenty of evidence that Krall lived here, but nothing whatsoever to indicate the presence of Carli or any other kidnap victims.
Bill realized that, if she was here at all, Carli must be in the basement. He hoped the I-90 Killer hadn’t created his own private little dungeon there, like the portable one in the back of his truck, or worse. Bill raced down the carpeted stairway to the first floor and into the kitchen.
Adjacent to the entryway was a wooden door, identical to the one from the garage, located to its right as he faced it. This had to be the doorway that would lead to the basement and, hopefully, to Carli.
Bill allowed himself a pleasant, momentary vision of Krall off somewhere else, like he had thought before, at a job or shopping or even searching for another victim. In this scenario, Bill would waltz down the stairs, find his little girl safe and sound, untie her, and bring her home. He would be more than happy to let Special Agent Angela Canfield handle the job of hunting down and arresting Martin Krall.
It was a nice dream. But Bill knew it was an unrealistic one as well.
He repeated his exercise of a few minutes ago, leaning up against the door and pressing his ear against it, straining to hear voices or footsteps or any other sound that would give him some indication of whether anyone was there or not, and if they were, what they might be up to.
He could hear nothing but the relentless pounding of the wind and rain against the house and the occasional terrifying crash of thunder and lightning. Once more, he grasped a brass doorknob with a sweaty hand and eased the door open, praying to God that his luck would hold.
Bill exerted a steady upward pressure on the knob, hoping the added tension would prevent the door’s hinges from squeaking excessively and alerting Krall, if he was there, to his presence. The door slipped open, revealing a wooden stairway disappearing into the gloomy semi-darkness of the basement.
These stairs, like everything else in the home, appeared badly in need of repair. One tread, about halfway down the stairs, had come loose and been thrown haphazardly onto the riser. He’d have to be careful not to trip on that or some other loose tread on his way down.
He took one step, then two, then a third, and slowly descended into the stifling humidity of the cellar. Shadows moved below, and Bill knew he had been right. Whatever was happening in this house was happening down here.
One more step, and Bill’s eye level was finally below the first floor joists, allowing him a view of the entire basement. He stopped in his tracks, horrified. Chained to a bed, lying on a ratty, filthy mattress, was his little girl. Dried blood crusted one side of her head, running from her scalp, creating a mass of hopelessly clumped and knotted hair, down her face and onto her Avril Lavigne t-shirt. Her jeans were a filthy mess, stained with dried blood and urine. But all he cared about at this moment was that she was alive!
She’s alive! Carli’s alive!
A man—undoubtedly Martin Krall, although his back was to Bill, so he could not say for certain—approached Carli from the left of the stairs. His right arm was swathed in bandages and Bill flashed on all of the blood he had seen on the kitchen floor. Was it possible Carli had inflicted that injury on Krall? His heart swelled with pride for his gutsy child.
Krall knelt next to the cot as Carli cringed back against the grungy black iron bars of the headboard. Her eyes were screwed shut and her mouth drawn down in a grimace of fear and disgust. The man fumbled with her belt buckle and unsnapped her jeans, mumbling to her in a low voice. Bill could just make the sound out over the noise of the storm, although he couldn’t tell what the man was saying.
Every fiber of his body was screaming at him, S
hoot! Shoot him! Do it now before he turns and sees you! Before he does any more damage to your little girl!
Bill raised the Browning Hi-Power and sighted down the barrel, then shook his head in mute frustration. Krall’s body was positioned directly in front of Carli. If he took the shot and Krall moved at the last second, or if Bill missed—his hands were shaking badly, it was a definite possibility—or if he hit Krall, but the round went through his body, it would strike Carli. There was no question about it.
Bill wanted to scream, and would have, if there was any way to do it without alerting Krall to his presence and giving up the advantage of surprise. He moved down another step and then another, somehow remembering in the tension and fear to step over the faulty stair tread. In a few seconds, he had reached the bottom of the stairway. Krall still hadn’t heard a sound.
He took two steps and reached a position immediately behind Krall as the man was unzipping his little girl’s jeans. Bill lifted his gun to blow Martin Krall to Hell and—
CHAPTER 54
May 28, 4:17 p.m.
HE HEARD THE DISTINCTIVE sound of a slide being racked, the heavy, metallic
ka-chink
that was at once menacing and unmistakable. A split second later, he felt the deadly mass of a handgun barrel pressed into his ear. “Drop it,” commanded a voice so softly that Bill could barely make it out over the shrieking noise of the storm outside.
For a moment, nothing happened. The wind howled and the thunder crashed and the rain pelted the casement window, and Bill Ferguson knew, if he surrendered his weapon, he was condemning himself and his daughter to death. Confusion battled frustration in his head—fear was running a distant third—and Bill tried to imagine how someone had managed to sneak up behind him after he had just finished clearing the entire house.
“I said, drop the gun,” the voice repeated. “You have two seconds before I blow your meager brains all over your little girl.” In front of him, Krall had finally realized something was happening, and he turned slowly. The initial look of concern etched on the face of the I-90 Killer, of barely controlled panic, was replaced by a sly smile as he completed his turn and took in the scene.
Something was wrong here, something more than the fact that Bill had botched his rescue attempt. Something about that disembodied voice behind him sounded chillingly familiar. It was disorienting. He reluctantly held the Browning out to the side with two fingers on the butt of the pistol.
In his peripheral vision, Bill watched as a hand snaked out and grabbed the gun. It was a slender hand, female, and attached to it was an arm covered with a soaking wet blue windbreaker. An FBI windbreaker. Immediately, he placed the voice. It was the same one he had spoken to dozens of times over the last two days. It was Special Agent Angela Canfield.
“This is the guy,” Bill said, turning excitedly, wondering why she didn’t get what was going on here. How stupid could she be? “This is the I-90 Killer! Put the cuffs on him before he has a chance to—”
“Shut up,” Angela Canfield said, pistol-whipping Bill in the forehead with a force that opened a gash and rocked him back on his heels. Blood spurted and dribbled down his forehead in a thick rivulet. “I need a minute to think.”
As she spoke, Krall reached out, carefully plucked Bill’s Browning from Agent Canfield’s hand, and began examining it. “What are you doing here?” he said to her. “I was supposed to have this chick for a whole week. We had the usual agreement.” The I-90 Killer seemed only annoyed by the fact he had come a half-second away from having his slimy head blown right off his shoulders.
Carli moaned. It was the first sound Bill had heard her make since descending the stairs. She looked at Bill with huge eyes filled with desperation and maybe even resignation. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but before he could do that he had to figure out how to deal with this astounding turn of events.
“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re involved in this, aren’t you?” He looked into Canfield’s face and saw those ice-blue eyes staring unblinkingly back at him, glittering and beautiful and suddenly also cold and calculating. He recalled the frosty gaze she had leveled at him when he sent her away last night. She continued pressing her service weapon insistently into his forehead. He refused to back off and more blood spilled, starting a second track, running into his eyebrows. Soon it would begin to drip into his eyes.
“Duh,” she said mockingly. “Great sleuthing, Sherlock. How else do you think this moron could escape capture for so long?”
“Who are you calling a moron?” Krall protested, but Canfield ignored him.
“It’s the perfect scam,” she continued. “He takes the girls, enjoys them for a week in his own unique way, and then we move them out of the country and along to their new owners.”
Bill was stunned. “But…these girls are people! They’re human beings, and you’re ripping them away from their families, their lives…”
“There’s money to be made.”
“My God,” he said in wonderment. “What is wrong with you? How can you be so cold? This guy here,” Bill indicated Martin Krall with a nod, “has obviously got mental and psychological issues, but you…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head in utter amazement.
“Oh, grow up, will you, Mr. Boy Scout?” Canfield replied. “I worked gangs for years when I first started in law enforcement, and you know what I saw?”
Bill stared at her silently, in shock, and she continued. “I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw people on the take everywhere. I saw money being made, hand over fist, mountains of money, more money than you could ever count, all going to judges and lawyers and politicians and high-level bureaucrats. I saw myself busting my butt, trying to make a difference, while all the fat cats got rich off my hard work.
“So when I got this gig and ran down the legendary Mr. Krall, here, I saw the chance, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make my big score. We teamed up, made the right connections, and had a great thing going until
you
came along and rocked the very lucrative boat.” She shoved the gun barrel into his forehead again and pain blossomed outward from the point of impact. Bill barely noticed.
“I was within one or two more girls of having enough money to be able to chuck it all, to blow off the FBI and go live on a beach somewhere.” She sighed and shook her head ruefully. “Now this changes everything. I guess I’ll have to work a little longer. On the bright side,” she said, smiling coldly at Bill, “I believe I can make this all work out to my benefit. Yes, I’m pretty sure I can.”
“But what about—” Bill began.
“Last night? ‘Oh, Bill, let’s share our loneliness and fear!’ Is that what you’re talking about? You concerned me,” she told him. “I had a feeling you knew more than you were telling me, and I knew I needed to keep a close eye on you. I figured you were just like every other man on the face of this filthy planet. I figured, given the opportunity to roll around in the hay with me, you wouldn’t hesitate. Who would have guessed I would come across the one Boy Scout left in the world?”
Bill shook his head defiantly. “Tell yourself that if you want,” he said, “but not every man is as twisted and amoral as you seem to believe.”
Canfield barked out a laugh, short and cruel. “Sure, Bill, if you say so. Let me tell you what I know from personal experience. There’s no such thing as love in this world. There’s only pain and cruelty. And that,” she said, still smiling without a trace of warmth, “brings us neatly back to this moment in time. Here we are, all four of us, and the question is, how do we proceed?
“Mr. Krall, here, as useful as he is at procuring ripe, virginal young ladies for our little business venture, is nowhere near creative or clever enough to come up with anything resembling a workable conclusion to this thorny problem, but fortunately for me, I am. In fact, I believe I have already developed a plan that will satisfy my needs more than adequately. It’s not perfect, but what in this world is?” Agent Canfield no longer trained her ice-blue eyes on Bill, but appeared to retreat back inside her mind. She seemed to be working at convincing herself of the feasibility of her “workable conclusion.”