Daughter of Darkness (33 page)

    "Now what?"

    "Now I call a homicide detective I know." Actually, he'd hoped to be alone when he made the call.

    Rachel made it easy for him. "Maybe I'll make myself a ham sandwich. This booze is hitting me harder than I wanted it to. You want a sandwich?"

    "No, thanks."

    "It's very good ham."

    "I appreciate the offer. But thanks, anyway."

    As soon as she left, he picked up the phone and called Maggie Ryan.

    

    

    Jenny was moving much faster now but still cautiously. A dark tunnel like this, you could run into practically anything.

    She couldn't hear Gretchen any longer. She wondered if something was wrong. Could Gretchen already be out of the tunnel, waiting for her up top? Gretchen had given the impression that this was a long tunnel and would take some time to traverse.

    So where was Gretchen? Jenny tried whispering for the other woman, but her whispers didn't seem to travel far. There was no way Gretchen could hear her.

    The tunnel ran straight for quite a while. The first turn was actually a subtle curve. She had no problem making the turn. And a few moments later, she ran into the opening.

    In the dark this way, she couldn't see the shape of the thing. She had to feel it, it was the only way she could get an impression of it. It was an opening in the side of the tunnel. She felt around it. Aluminum. Another aluminum offshoot off the tunnel.

    But where did it lead?

    She wasn't sure what to do. She wished she could see. She wished she could hear Gretchen. Had something happened to Gretchen? Was this some kind of trap? Then she remembered something Gretchen had said, something about a surprise. Was this the surprise?

    She continued to grope inside the opening. She even poked her head into it an inch or two. The smell was different in the offshoot. It still smelled of grave, it still smelled of aluminum, and yet neither smell was quite so overpowering in the offshoot.

    Should she enter it? Is this where Gretchen had gone? Why hadn't she let Jenny know what was going on?

    There was only one way to find out.

    A shard of headache stabbed into her right eye. She was so consumed by the tunnel and the offshoot that, for a time, she'd completely forgotten the events that led her to be in the tunnel. Quinlan. The mind control. The murders. The headaches. She could still very well be a murderer. The blood of two human lives on her hands… the grief she would have caused so many people…

    She took the offshoot. She moved very slowly. Somehow, the offshoot felt even more confining than the main escape tunnel. She had a moment of panic when claustrophobia overwhelmed her. She gasped two, three times trying to get her breath. She wondered where this led. What was she going to find when she got there? The river? Open forest? What?

    Slowly, her pace increased. The darkness grew even darker. She had a moment when the whole situation struck her as dreamlike. Only a dream, and a terrible one at that, could duplicate this for its sustained menace.

    She wanted to cry out Gretchen's name-the way she would in a nightmare-but she knew better.

    All she could do was go ahead. Knees starting to ache very badly. Palms numb from the cold aluminum. Eyes useless.

    Go on ahead and see what awaited her.

    

    

    "I like the
X-Files,
too, Mr. Coffey. But that doesn't mean I believe in all that crap."

    "Mind control isn't crap."

    "I'm not a brain, Mr. Coffey. And I don't pretend to be. I'm a homicide detective. A good one. Not a great one. But a good one. And I II tell you something, in order to keep my job, and do what the citizens of this city expect from me, I have to rely on evidence. Hard, clear evidence. And you know what, Mr. Coffey? You know the evidence I have? I have eyewitnesses who saw her at the murder scenes. I have her fingerprints all over the murder rooms and all over the murder knives. This is the kind of case I've prayed for ever since I became a detective, Mr. Coffey. Open and shut. Simple as hell. And that's what the jury is going to say, too."

    "You're not even going to listen to me, are you?" he said.

    "I already
have
listened to you, Mr. Coffey."

    "Quinlan's job in the CIA was with a secret unit that worked with drugs and hypnotherapy to break down personalities and turn them into moles for various branches of the government. In other words, mind control."

    "You can't hypnotize somebody into killing somebody else," she said. "I may be a dumb cop, but I know that much anyway."

    "You can't turn them into killers with hypnosis alone," Coffey said, "but you can when you combine hypnotherapy and drugs. That's already been proved."

    On the other end of the phone, Margie Ryan sighed. "What exactly do you want from me?"

    "When Quinlan brings Jenny in, hold Quinlan, too. That's all I'm asking. I have a friend in the DA's office. I want him to question Quinlan."

    "What do I hold him
for
, Mr. Coffey?"

    "Just tell him there are a lot of unanswered questions that you'd like to go over with him. I'll have Dick Feldman there whenever you need him."

    "Feldman, I like." She paused. A beeping sound. "There goes my beeper, Mr. Coffey. I have to go. I'll think about it. Get back to me in a couple of hours."

    "I appreciate it," Coffey said.

    But she'd already hung up.

    

    

    Jenny sensed the wall before she actually saw it. If it
was
a wall. She couldn't be sure.

    All she knew was that, not long after she took off the offshoot of the main tunnel, she encountered some sort of blockage.

    Despite the darkness, she could sense a different texture to the thing that ended this part of the tunnel.

    She put a hand out. Felt soil, and beneath the soil, metal. And behind the metal, very faintly, she heard a noise. She wasn't sure what the noise was. It was just a… noise.

    She was ready to back up, which wouldn't be easy. Putting a car in reverse was simple; putting a human body in reverse was another matter. She was especially worried about getting around the corner of the offshoot.

    A light appeared. She put a hand forward and pushed hard. The blockage gave way.

    An electrical light. Revealing what appeared to be a concrete floor and a green-painted wall. Some sort of room, apparently. That's what had been on the other side of the metal sheath.

    "C'mon in," a familiar voice said. Gretchen.

    Jenny moved forward as quickly as she could. Crawling would never be her favorite method of traveling.

    The room was long and narrow. There was a couch, chair, small bookcase crammed with paperbacks. There was a table covered with plastic quarts of bottled water. Nothing fancy, to be sure.

    "There are a couple of people who know about the main tunnel," Gretchen explained, "but only Quinlan and I know about this little room."

    "What's it for?" Jenny said, getting to her feet, brushing herself off.

    "In case the place ever gets raided, you know, like in Waco."

    "He hides in here?"

    "Once in a while. He's real paranoid. See that door?" Another large door built into the wall. "There's a tunnel behind that door, too. It leads to another tunnel. It leads to a point in the woods. Quinlan figures if all else fails, he can escape through this one."

    "That's where we're going?"

    "Yes."

    "Could we hurry, please? I just want to get out of here. I'm really getting claustrophobic."

    Gretchen glanced around. "I sort of like it. It's so private. I hope I can get Quinlan to come back here with me someday."

    Jenny walked over to the door, put a hand on the silver safety knob. She hoped to hurry Gretchen along.

    Gretchen said, "I heard you had some very nice times together."

    Her tone made Jenny nervous. Gretchen could sound just fine for a time and then slip deeply into her Mad voice. She was there now, and it was eerie.

    "I really want to get going, Gretchen."

    "Is it true? You and Quinlan had some really nice times?"

    Jenny sighed. "I thought we went through all this. He's all yours."

    "People always talk about you. About how obsessed with you he was." She looked as if she wanted to cry. "He may still be."

    "Oh, I don't think so, Gretchen. I really don't."

    Gretchen had been standing against the opposite wall. Now she started across the narrow room with its fluorescent light on the ceiling and its dust-laden, still air making Jenny feel dirty and raspy.

    Gretchen put her hand on Jenny's shoulder. "I think he still loves you." The anxiety and sadness were back in Gretchen's eyes.

    "He never loved me, Gretchen," she said softly. "He couldn't have me. And that hurt his ego. That's what it was all about."

    "A smart girl," Gretchen said, leaving her hand on Jenny's shoulder, "that's how she'd play it with Quinlan. Hard to get. That's what I should've done, but I didn't have the strength. I never did, with guys, I mean. Any time I wanted a guy, I always went after him. And they don't like that, guys don't. Not guys worth having anyway. I always went right after them, and they weren't interested in me in the least."

    Jenny realized that she would have to spend a few minutes here bringing Gretchen down from her perch. "But you're learning, Gretchen. That's the important thing. You're learning not to throw yourself at men."

    "All they wanted was sex," Gretchen said. At least she took her hand away; took her hand away and walked back and leaned against the opposite wall. "I guess I'm pretty good at that. At sex, I mean. That's what the guys tell me, anyway. How about you? You good at sex?"

    Jenny laughed softly. "Nobody's offered me any trophies, if that's what you mean." Then, "Gretchen, do you suppose we could go?"

    "Quinlan's like that, too," Gretchen said, again giving an answer to a matter that had been raised several moments earlier.

    "He likes them hard to get. And you know what? A real sharp gal, a gal who really knew how to play him, you know what a sharp gal would do?"

    Jenny had never liked the term "gal." She associated it with the women in her mother's bridge club. But she decided now would not be a good time to bring up her aversion to the word.

    She said, "Gretchen, could we please go now?"

    "You know what a really sharp gal would do now if she really wanted Quinlan?"

    Jenny knew she'd have to answer. "What would she do, Gretchen?"

    "She'd run away. Make it look like she couldn't wait to get away. That'd make him really want her."

    Jenny immediately saw where this was going, where Gretchen's constantly shifting paranoia was leading her. "This isn't a ruse, Gretchen. I really do want to get away from the compound."

    Gretchen's eyes bloomed with sorrow. "You should hear him when he talks about you. He talks about you a lot." Her gaze met Jenny's. "A whole lot."

    Jenny reached out, took Gretchen's arm. "He'll be all yours, Gretchen. I'll be gone. You'll have him all to yourself."

    Gretchen said, "But you could always come back." Then, before Jenny could say anything, Gretchen said, "Nobody can find us."

    "What?"

    "You know the tunnel you came in to get to the room?"

    "Yes," Jenny said, sensing that Gretchen was much wilier than she'd first given her credit for.

    "Well, it fills in perfectly with aluminum, just like the rest of the tunnel wall. Unless you know exactly where to look, you go on right past it." Her eyes were once again on Jenny 's face. "I wish you'd be honest with me, Jenny."

    "I am being honest."

    Gretchen sighed. "I try to be honest all the time. Even with Quinlan. Even when he hurts my feelings. You know, I saw this shrink on TV one time and he said that he never met a person who didn't lie. Well, then he never met me. Because I
never
lie. That's pretty good, isn't it?"

    "That's very good."

    Gretchen smiled. The Mad Smile that matched perfectly the Mad voice. "Though sometimes I deceive people. I mean, I don't
like
deceiving people but sometimes I have to. Like the way I deceived you."

    Goose bumps coarsened Jenny's arms. In her quiet, sad way, Gretchen was one of the most terrifying people Jenny had ever known. "How did you deceive me, Gretchen?" Jenny said softly.

    "Two ways, actually."

    "Two ways."

    "The tunnel." She smiled again, looking more crazed than ever. "Why I brought you here, I mean."

    "You're going to help me escape."

    "That's where I deceived you. I'm not going to help you escape. I'm going to kill you. And I'm very, very sorry about that. I really, really am." She paused. "And I killed those two men in the motel rooms."

    Her words lacerated Jenny. "What are you talking about?"

    "Quinlan had me go in and kill them after the microwaves from the van knocked you out. That way, when you woke up, you'd think
you'd
killed them."

    She searched Gretchen's face. No smile. No coyness. No evidence of her little games. Gretchen
had
killed those men. She really had.

    Gretchen walked over to the door and touched the knob. "The tunnel behind this door? It was never finished. Nobody could use it even if they wanted to. Quinlan gave it up. I guess he figured one tunnel was enough." Her small, white hand touched the center of the door. "Nobody ever comes here. After I kill you, that's where I'm going to put you. In the tunnel. Then I'm going to cover you up with dirt. Then nobody will
ever
find you. Not even Quinlan." The Mad voice was back. Madder than ever. "You might not think that he'd look for you even if he knew you were dead but you know what-I think that Quinlan's some kind of space alien and he's got these special powers. I think he can raise people from the dead if he wants to." Gretchen nodded her head vigorously, in agreement with herself. "People laugh when I tell them that, about him being a space alien and all. But I saw this show on TV-I mean, it wasn't fiction, it was the real thing-and they had this professor on and he told you how to recognize a space alien when you came across one."