Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (39 page)

“Then you met Perry Nelson in the hospital?” Tom asked Jody. A real meeting of minds: two psychopaths in search of reinforcement. “Is that how all this started?”

“That’s right.” Rita’s face lit up with hope, as if she believed she was winning Tom over. “Perry Nelson took advantage of him when he wasn’t strong enough to say no. He got him to talk, then he threatened to tell the police if Jordy didn’t go along with him.”

Jordy nodded as if agreeing with everything Rita said. “Once Perry killed Shelley, he said I didn’t have any choice, I had to get rid of Dr. Goddard for him. I went in her sister’s office, but I couldn’t kill Dr. Goddard. I just couldn’t.”

“You see?” Rita said to Tom. “Jordy’s a good person at heart. He was supposed to kill Dr. Goddard this weekend, when Perry Nelson was back in the hospital and nobody could blame him. But Jordy likes her, he never would’ve hurt her. You have to believe that.”

The whole scene felt surreal to Tom, Rita pleading for him to forgive and trust Jordy while Jordy held a gun to her head. “Nelson’s got Rachel now, doesn’t he?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, he took her,” Jordy said, his voice turning mournful. “He knew I wouldn’t kill her, so he has to do it himself before he goes back to the hospital. I’m supposed to meet him, though. He told me I have to help him after he’s got her.”

“Where are they?” Tom demanded. “Where did Nelson take Rachel? Just tell me and this will all be over.”

“If I tell you, Perry’ll kill me.” Jordy’s face puckered, he squeezed his eyes shut and tears spilled down his cheeks.

Brandon shifted closer. He froze when Jordy opened his eyes.

“Honey,” Rita said, “if they catch Perry Nelson, you’ll be okay, you can get help, and he’ll be in prison, he won’t be able to get to you.” She looked at Tom. “I know where they are. Jordy was going to shoot himself, and he wanted me to tell you—”

“They’ll put me in prison for killing Brian.” Jordy wailed like a child, sobbing now, pressing his face into Rita’s red-gold hair. “I don’t want to go to prison. I’d rather be dead.”

“Jordy, honey,” Rita crooned. “don’t say that. You’ll get through this. I’ll help you. I’ll never let you be alone.”

Brandon was almost there. Tom saw Rita’s gaze flick toward Brandon, and for a heart-stopping second he thought she would warn Jordy. He saw her consider it. He saw her decide against it, and he breathed again.

“Why did you help him get away with killing Brian?” Tom asked Rita. “Why would you let an innocent man go to prison for it?”

Her face went slack with shock, and her mouth fell open. “What—How—”

“I know everything,” Tom said. “I just don’t know why you did it.”

She burst into tears, her body shaking with sobs as Jordy held her against him. “It was all my fault. Jordy just wanted to keep Brian from hurting me. I told him to throw the damned thing in the river. I didn’t know he was going to put it in Vance’s car.”

“Shut up!” Jordy cried. “Don’t tell him that stuff.”

Brandon took a step toward them, and this time Jordy caught the movement. He swung his gun toward Brandon.

Tom sprang forward and landed on top of Jordy and Rita, knocking them both flat.

Chapter Forty-two

Rachel twisted her hands behind her back, rubbing her wrists raw in an attempt to free herself. The sisal rope had loosened, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

What was Nelson planning? Why were they just standing here? She got the feeling he was waiting for something—for someone?—before he could carry out his plan for her. That meant she still had some time, if only a little.

She had to be ready to fight for her life when her chance came, but how would she defeat a man with a gun and a knife while her hands were tied?

Keep talking. Keep him talking.
“You said Jordy. Do you mean Jordy Gale, the locksmith? He’s part of this? What does he have against me?”

“Nothing, and that’s the problem,” Nelson said, petulant now. “I didn’t have anything personal against the Beecher girl either. I didn’t even know her. That was the beauty of it. Nobody would connect me to her, and nobody would ever suspect Jordy of killing you. But he’s a moron with no backbone. I got rid of the girl, and he got into your sister’s office a couple of times, then he started wimping out.”

“Jordy’s the stalker?” Rachel felt as if all her perceptions had exploded into pieces and fallen around her in an unrecognizable pattern.

Nelson grunted a laugh. “Some stalker he turned out to be. I even had to tell the idiot what to say on the phone. Had to write it down for him, for fuck’s sake. He doesn’t even know what women are afraid of. Sex and violence, how hard is that to understand?”

He paced around her, muttering under his breath. She thought she heard him say, “…taking him so damned long?”

She was right. He was waiting. “Is somebody else coming?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. Jordy’s going to help me with you. He’s going to live up to his part of our bargain.”

Rachel stared at the house. He—they—would have to drag her, kicking and screaming, to get her inside it.

Nelson moved close to her. His mocking chuckle made her shiver. “You don’t seem to be falling in love with this little place. It’s a real fixer-upper, isn’t it? Well, don’t worry, sweetheart, you’re not going in the house. You’re going
under
it.”

“What?” Rachel heard her voice rising and fought to control it, to sound calm. “What do you mean?”

“Stay right where you are and I’ll show you.” Nelson pulled the pistol from his waistband and pointed it at her face. “Don’t even think about trying to get away. You won’t go six feet before I bring you down. Do you understand me, Rachel?”

She nodded.

“Good girl.” Nelson stepped over to a slanted door, jutting out from the back of the house, that obviously led to an underground space. In the beam of his flashlight Rachel saw a shiny new padlock hanging from the hook-and-strap latch.

A coal bin? A root cellar? No, no. He can’t put me in there.

Her horror grew as she watched his every move. Nelson inserted a key into the lock, removed it, and pulled up the metal strap of the latch. He hung the opened padlock back on the hook. When he swung the warped wooden door up, its hinges squealed and resisted. He let it drop open to one side, exposing a black, black hole.

He shone the flashlight into the opening. “Aw, shit. That idiot left the ladder in there. What the hell was he thinking? I told him to check it out, make sure it was secure. I didn’t expect—” Nelson broke off, shaking his head, and blew out a sigh of exasperation. “Well, he can get it out again when he shows up.”

“When is he coming?” Rachel asked.
How much time do I have?

“Any minute. He’d sure as hell better show up. He knows I’ll come after him if he lets me down again.”

She couldn’t wait until there were two of them. She had to free herself before Jordy Gale arrived.

“Get over here,” Nelson said. “Take a look.”

Rachel didn’t move.

He took several long strides, grabbed her arm, and propelled her forward.

Rachel squeezed her hands into fists behind her back, nails digging into palms. Holding her breath, she peered into the hole. The chamber looked about ten feet deep. The flashlight beam played over dirt at the bottom.

Nelson swung the light her way, flashed it over Rachel’s face, momentarily blinding her. She heard amusement in his voice when he asked, “How long do you think you’ll last down there? No food, no water. Just the rats and spiders for company.”

Digging deep for her last scrap of confidence and strength, Rachel said, “I thought you wanted the snake to kill me. So why do you have this place ready for me?”

“Oh, the snake was just a taste of what I had planned for you.” He moved closer and spoke in a near-whisper, his breath hot and moist on her cheek. “I knew you’d get to the hospital before it killed you. Then when you were back at home, recuperating, Jordy was supposed to go and collect you and bring you here. But the fucking weasel backed out, said he couldn’t do it, I’d have to do it myself. Well, your sister got the snakebite, but I can follow through on the rest of it. Here’s what I’m going to do to you, Rachel.”

Rachel stood still, determined not to let him see that he terrified her.

“Before I put you down there,” Nelson went on, “I’m going to blindfold you and stuff a rag in your mouth. I’m going to take off all your clothes. We might take a little break then for some recreation. You up for that, sweetheart? I could get that nice soft blanket out of the car so you’ll be comfortable on the ground. Would you enjoy that? Huh?”

Rachel kept silent. She wanted to fling herself at Nelson, kick him, bite him.
Kill him.
She would kill him if she could.

“Then I’ll tie you up so you can’t move, and I’ll drop you in that hole. It’ll take you days to die, Rachel. You’re going to have a lot of time to think about what you did to me. You took my whole future away from me, and now I’m taking yours.”

She scanned the yard, trying to readjust her vision to the moon’s glow after the glare from the flashlight. She hoped to spot a possible weapon, yet she knew she could be surrounded by guns and knives and blunt objects and they would all be useless to her. When she spoke, she willed herself to keep the terror and rage out of her voice. “Somebody will find me. Everybody will be looking for me.”

Nelson’s face contorted with an ugly smile and he moved close enough for her to smell his breath again, that disconcerting sweet scent of peppermint. “Oh, yeah, every able-bodied person in this little hick county will be out searching for the wonderful Dr. Goddard. Hell, the sick and the crippled will rise from their beds to join in. But they’ll never find you. That hole you can see—that’s not all of it. There’s another hole under it, with a hatch. And when it’s got a couple of feet of dirt on top of the hatch, nobody would ever know it was there. You’ll be tied up and gagged, and an army of people can be standing right here looking in, and you won’t be able to let them know you’re there.”

Rachel couldn’t control the shudder that shook her body.

Nelson pivoted away from her and vanished into the deep shadow against the house. All Rachel could see was the beam of his flashlight, bobbing as he walked.

Where was he going? She could try to get away right now, run into the woods. She might make it to the main road, stop a motorist, find help. But no.
Be realistic.
Nelson had a gun, and she would be slow and clumsy with her hands bound behind her back. She had to do something, though, however reckless, before she ran out of time.

She followed his flashlight beam with her eyes and saw it land for a second on an old metal lawn chair. He hauled it out of the blackness and into the moonlight where Rachel waited.

“Sit,” he said. “I’m going to tie you down so you can’t give me any trouble while I take care of Jordy.”

“Take care of him?” Rachel said. “What do you mean? You said he was your partner.”

“Well, I’ll tell you a little secret. Jordy thinks he’s coming out here just to help me, but he’s going in the hole to keep you company. Except he won’t be in any shape for lively conversation. I hope you don’t mind the smell of a decomposing corpse right next to you while you’re dying. I told you to
sit down
, Rachel.”

Nelson shoved her and she lost her balance and dropped into the metal lawn chair. No more than five feet in front of her, the dark hole gaped. A plan of escape was forming in her mind, but she had to act quickly. She twisted her wrists, silently praying that the rope would suddenly drop away, knowing she couldn’t count on a miracle like that.

***

Locked in the back seat of the cruiser with Rita, hands cuffed behind his back, Jordy poured out a torrent of words that swept past so rapidly Tom could barely keep up. In the front passenger seat, Brandon had turned so he could keep an eye on the prisoners as Tom drove.

“My fault,” Jordy said, “it was my fault, I said yes to everything, I just wanted Shelley to stop, you know? She had to stop before she started telling people I killed Brian. Perry said he’d stop her, he’d stop her for good.”

If this was a confession to conspiring in Shelley’s murder, Tom wasn’t sure how well it would hold up in legal proceedings. Jordy had swung from depression and despair to wild-eyed incoherence in a matter of minutes. Was he manic-depressive? Maybe bipolar was the proper term these days, but mania was the best description of Jordy’s current mental state.

When Tom glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw Rita leaning her face against the window glass, an endless stream of tears flowing down her cheeks. She was cuffed too, and Tom intended to throw every charge he could justify at her. But that would be later. Right now he had to find Rachel, and Jordy and Rita were the only ones who could help him.

“Tell me something, Jordy,” Tom said. “Why did you bring Shelley’s body down here? Why not leave her where she died?”

“He had a plan, but I ruined it.” Jordy sounded mournful, almost angry at himself. “Perry said he wanted to get double use out of Shelley’s murder. He brought her here so you’d be busy investigating, you wouldn’t be spending much time at home. Dr. Goddard would be alone at night and she’d be easier to get at. Easier for me to get at. But I couldn’t do it.” Choking up, he paused to catch his breath.