Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (40 page)

Tom wanted to stop the car, drag Jordy out and take him apart. But he needed the bastard to find Rachel. His whole body rigid with the effort of controlling his fury, Tom drove on into a part of the county that had been all but abandoned by its residents, who had moved on and left their small farms and houses behind to go to seed and ruin. Unless Jordy had invented the whole thing, Rachel was out here somewhere, trapped in a dilapidated house with a madman.

Jordy started up again. “He called me a cunt. I killed a man, I bashed in his head, I ought to be able to do anything after that. But it wasn’t
me
that killed Brian. It was the meth, it made me lose control. I didn’t mean to hurt him. Well, I wanted to hurt him, but not
kill
him, you know? Not like that. Then there he was, dead. I couldn’t believe I did it.”

“So you framed Vance Lankford?” Tom asked. “You put the murder weapon in his car?”

To Tom’s consternation, Jordy burst into tears, shaking with sobs and howling in misery. “I should’ve listened to Rita. I should’ve thrown it in the river.”

“Honey, don’t.” Rita leaned closer to Jordy, unable to embrace him because of her cuffs. “Shhh. It’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this together.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Tom said. What was wrong with the woman?

“No,” Jordy moaned. “It’ll never be over. It’s gonna stay in my mind the rest of my life….”

Tom raised his voice. “Jordy, pull yourself together. If you feel like talking, tell me where Shelley’s body was for the last month. Did Nelson have her in a freezer somewhere?”

Tom watched Jordy in the rearview mirror, bobbing his head rapidly. “You guessed it. A big freezer at his family’s place on the river.” Jordy let loose a wild cackle of a laugh that seemed to echo in the car. “Boy, that’d be a surprise for his folks. Go out for a nice weekend and find a dead girl in the freezer.”

Tom remembered something Rachel had said more than once about Perry Nelson.
He’s a good actor. He can make anybody believe he’s okay, he’s perfectly normal.
The same had been true of Jordy at times. But his vulnerable mind couldn’t handle the pressure of Shelley Beecher’s suspicions. She’d been right, but she’d had no idea what a mess Jordy was, and she hadn’t counted on him bringing a twisted creature like Perry Nelson into her life.

Chapter Forty-three

“Well, Rachel, I don’t think my brilliant assistant is going to show up.” Nelson stuck the pistol into his waistband. “What a surprise. I guess we’ll have to do this without his help. Just the two of us.”

While Rachel sat in the old rusted lawn chair, Nelson struggled to maneuver the ladder out of the narrow cellar opening. The moon rode high overhead, casting a cold glow that rendered the landscape and everything in it black and gray. The breeze felt chilly on her perspiring face.

Maybe he would exhaust himself with the ladder. Maybe this would be easy.

Yeah, right.
He had a gun and a knife, and she didn’t even have the use of her hands.

Did Tom know she was gone? His uncle would have found Ben, alerted Tom. Ben would be at the hospital getting medical treatment by now and Tom would have the whole Sheriff’s Department looking for her. But how would they ever find her in this desolate spot?

He gave up on the ladder and let it clank back into place in the opening. Turning to Rachel, he said in a singsong voice, “I know what you’re thinking.” He leaned down and picked up something from the shadows next to the cellar door. “You’re trying to figure out how to get away from me, aren’t you? Well, you can forget about that.” He stepped closer to Rachel and held up one arm, displaying a thick coil of rope. “Put your feet together for me like a good girl.”

No,
Rachel told herself.
This is not over.

Standing in front of her, Nelson grasped one end of the rope and let the rest drop, uncoiling as it fell. He stuck his flashlight into the crook of one arm while he pulled his knife from his pants pocket. He began sawing at the rope, trying to cut a piece about three feet long. “Too bad you can’t hold one end for me,” he said with a nasty laugh.

With awkward movements he tried to hold the rope taut enough to cut it. The flashlight slipped out of place. Cursing, he grabbed it before it fell. His breathing came quick and shallow as he grew more frustrated. She braced herself against the back of the chair and pulled her feet together, getting ready.

“Damn it,” he muttered. Then he solved his problem by stepping on the end of the rope, holding it straight and taut.

Rachel was out of time.

She jerked both feet up and kicked him in the gut.

He stumbled backward, his arms windmilling. The knife dropped from his hand. “Goddammit! What’s the fuck’s the matter with you?”

He came at her and she kicked him again. He lost his balance and went down.

Before he could get up, Rachel was on him, slamming her feet into his ribs. When he wrapped his arms around his upper body, she aimed her kicks at his groin. Bellowing in pain and rage, he rolled on the ground as he tried to avoid her blows. She heard the rattle and clink of small objects dropping out of his pockets, keys and coins and a cell phone, but what she wanted most, the gun, stayed secure in his waistband.

“You’re going to pay for this,” he screamed. “You’re going to be sorry you fucked with me.”

He struggled to rise to his hands and knees in front of the cellar opening. He reached for the pistol. Rachel swung her right leg back, propelled it forward and hit him in the face. The force of the blow knocked him backward, into the opening. But the ladder broke his fall. He hung there, one leg hooked over the top of the ladder, the rest of him invisible below. Then a hand appeared, clawing at the opening, grasping for purchase.

Rachel stomped on his hand and he jerked it back. She kicked his leg until it came free and Nelson slid down the ladder and into the cellar. She heard him land with a thud.

“Quick, quick,” she told herself. “Close it, lock it.”

She hoisted the wooden door up with one foot, let it slam shut over the opening. She couldn’t see Nelson, but she heard him groaning. Any second he could be up and moving around, and he still had a ladder to climb out and a gun to kill her with.

She wouldn’t have a prayer of escaping if she ran now, leaving him free to follow. Like an overturned turtle, she dropped backward onto the cellar door, grasping for the latch and the padlock. She found them, but it took an agonizingly long time to remove the lock from the hook, work the latch strap over the hook and get the padlock in place.

She heard Nelson grunt. Then a wordless roar rose from the dark hole.

Rachel clicked the lock shut. When she felt the snap, she went limp with relief.

Above her, the treetops swayed in a breeze. She gulped in air. She was alive.

But he still had the gun. She had to get out of here.

The knife. Where was it? She dropped to her knees and scoured the ground in front of the chair. She spotted the faint glint of moonlight off a steel blade. Still on her knees, she shifted around, leaned sideways as far as she could without tipping over, and combed the ground with her fingers until she found the knife.

A thump on the cellar door made her gasp. “You’re not getting away with this,” Nelson screamed. “Do you hear me? You are dead, you fucking bitch!”

Rachel gripped the knife and started sawing on the rope, ignoring the pain when she twisted her wrist, ignoring the bite of the blade when it sliced her skin.

Nelson fired a shot through the cellar door.

The rope came loose. Rachel tossed it aside and ran her hands over the ground. His keys. She was sure his keys had fallen out of his pocket.

Behind her, she heard several rapid shots. He was shooting off the lock.

She was about to push herself to her feet and run when her fingers touched metal, closed around it. His cell phone, not his keys. Where the hell were the keys? They must be close to the phone. Frantically, she shifted in a circle, searching with her fingers. When she moved, one knee came down on something hard and sharp-edged.
Oh, thank god.

She grabbed the keys, jumped up and sprinted around the side of the house, down the narrow path toward the car. She heard the cellar door bang open. Nelson yelled, “You bitch! I’ll get you for this!”

Just as she reached the car, the gun went off again and dirt flew up when the bullet slammed into the ground beside her.

Heart pounding, Rachel flung the car door open and threw herself into the seat. She was trying to get the key into the ignition when Nelson fired again and a bullet pierced a rear window.

At last the key slid into place. She started the engine and shifted into drive without turning on the lights and making herself an easy target. The car lurched forward. But she had to turn around to get out. She couldn’t risk getting trapped in a dead end.

She pulled on the steering wheel and swung the car in a circle. A bullet crashed through the windshield and struck the passenger seat next to her. She floored the gas and took off.

The shooting stopped. Where was Nelson? Why wasn’t he running after her? Why wasn’t he trying to shoot the tires? In the rearview mirror, she saw nothing but the murk of shadows.

Rachel bounced in her seat as the car jolted into and out of deep holes in the road, and she had to slow to a crawl before she lost control of the car. She needed headlights to navigate this road. Surely it was safe now to turn them on.

She flipped the lever and the headlights blazed. A figure dashed from the trees to her left and into the light. Perry Nelson stopped in the middle of the road fifteen feet ahead, pointing his pistol at the car.

Rachel yelped and ducked. A shot cracked the windshield and bits of glass rained down on her like sand.

She lifted her head far enough to glimpse the road ahead. Nelson was walking toward the car, his gun raised. He seemed in no hurry. Did he think he had hit her with that last shot? Was he coming to make sure, to finish her off?

I am not going to sit here and let you kill me.
In that moment, watching him move toward her at an almost casual pace, all the fear and rage she’d held inside for years boiled to the surface and exploded. She sat up straight, grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and found the gas pedal with her foot.

The instant the car started moving, Nelson fired again, but the shot went wide, striking the far edge of the windshield.

He didn’t get out of the way. He stood there and fired another shot at the windshield, this one coming within inches of Rachel.

She stomped on the gas and plowed into him. The impact shook the whole car, and Rachel felt the shock down to her bones. She saw the gun fly out of his hand, and he seemed to take flight too, his body lifting into the air for what seemed an eternity before it crumpled to the ground.

Gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, Rachel drove on and left Perry Nelson behind. She hoped to god he was dead.

Chapter Forty-four

“It looks good.” Rachel, on her knees in the kitchen, finished wrapping gauze around Michelle’s swollen lower leg and secured it with the strip of adhesive tape Michelle handed her. “You’ll have a scar, of course.”

Michelle, sitting in a chair at the table, sipped from her mug of tea as Rachel got to her feet. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“I was doing an internal check so I could give you an honest answer.” Rachel took a seat on the other side of the table. Frank, the cat, sat upright on a third chair, his one good ear angling back and forth between them as if he didn’t want to miss anything. “And I can honestly say I don’t feel any guilt over Perry Nelson. Maybe it’ll hit me in the middle of the night weeks from now, but I doubt it. He was trying to kill me. I defended myself.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, and I hope you won’t waste any time wishing it had ended differently. You’re rid of him now. He can’t threaten you anymore. And Jordan Gale and his girlfriend will go to prison, so you don’t have to worry about them either. But if you ever want to talk about it, remember you can call me anytime.”

“Sister to sister, right? Not patient to therapist.”

Michelle held out a hand across the table and Rachel took it without hesitation. “To tell you the truth,” Michelle said, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin to analyze you.”

They both laughed, and Rachel tried not to analyze the moment. She’d spent too many years doing that. She squeezed Michelle’s hand and asked, “Are things going to be okay between you and Kevin?”

“I think so. I hope so. We still have a lot to work out. We had reached a point where we were hardly communicating at all, and then when the stalking started, I was so stressed and scared, I was behaving so strangely, I can’t blame him for wondering if I’d gone off the deep end.”

“Now that he knows your whole story, our story, that’ll make a difference, won’t it?”

Michelle nodded. “It already has. I can’t get over how well he took it when we told him. But that look on his face at first was priceless, wasn’t it? I didn’t know whether he was going to faint or get up and run away. I was scared for a minute, but I should have had more faith in him.”