Perfect Nightmare (22 page)

Maniac though he might be—and obviously was—in the end, he was still a man. And Ellen knew all about men. Reaching deep into the depths of memory, she retrieved the scraps of anger she’d felt toward Danny Golden, every wrong he’d done her. She examined each of them like jewels, then piled them together as if they were a hidden treasure that would renew not only her fury, but her strength as well.

Then she focused that fury and strength upon their captor.

He was standing next to the table now, holding a steaming kettle. As he started slopping scalding water into the tiny cups, Ellen assessed the possibilities.

If he expected them to drink, he would have to unbind at least one of their hands.

And if he did, and the water were still hot enough—

The vision of him screaming in agony as the boiling water struck his eyes, then recoiling from her to stumble blindly around the tiny chamber in which they were imprisoned, seemed to double her strength, and hope surged through Ellen once more. But then, as he poured water into Lindsay’s cup, he looked over at her and stopped.

He set the kettle on the table.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Ellen could almost feel his eyes fixing on the small tattoo of a bird that perched high on her thigh, a souvenir of that first weekend with Danny, when she’d managed to get tattooed and knocked up all in the same day.

“Who did that?” the black-clad man demanded. “Who did it?” He looked at the two girls, and Lindsay shook her head almost violently.

The other girl made no move at all.

“It shouldn’t be there,” she heard the man saying. “Mommy never had anything like that!” His eyes once again flicked between the two girls who sat bound to the chairs opposite Ellen. “And someone’s going to have to be punished for this,” he added in a voice so soft and menacing that her skin crawled as if something dark and cold had touched her soul. “Someone’s going to have to be punished for everything!”

Then the man was rattling around in some kind of drawer or cabinet behind her. Though she could not see what he was doing, Lindsay could, and Ellen watched the girl’s eyes for some clue as to what might be happening.

A moment later, as Lindsay’s eyes widened in an expression of horror, Ellen had to fight for breath again.

And again she struggled with her bonds, but her legs were securely taped and her wrists so tightly bound that her hands were going numb.

“This,” the man said. “I can use this, just like—” His voice broke and he fell silent. Then he reappeared, holding an ancient, rusting paring knife. “Yes,” he said, his voice trembling as he gazed at the blade. “I remember this.”

Ellen was afraid she was going to faint. But she couldn’t. She had to hold it together, had to deal with whatever was about to happen.

But when he started to carve her leg with that dull, rusty blade, the blackness closed in around her peripheral vision like a swarm of bees.

And no amount of her will could keep it away.

Chapter Forty-four

S
omething is wrong.

I can
feel
it, feel it as if it were something physical.

It’s the same feeling I used to get when I was a child, a strange tingling on the back of my neck when someone was watching me.

Or, more specifically, when one single person was watching me.

That person never watches me anymore, of course—I haven’t set eyes on her in years—if she even still exists, it is no longer of any consequence to me.

And yet the feeling I have been experiencing the last few days is the same: the hair on the back of my neck begins to rise, as the hackles of a dog rise when it senses danger. But there seems to be no pattern to it. I have experienced it upon first awakening, and occasionally as I let myself drift into the arms of Morpheus when my day or night has come to an end.

Yet perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it is only in my head, nothing more than a result of my recent carelessness.

And I readily admit that I have been careless.

The thing is, I truly believe my carelessness has been deliberate, for the very risks I have been taking have made everything I do that much more exciting. So perhaps it is nothing more than paranoia.

Yet how can I be sure?

But of course the answer is simple: I must be vigilant.

I must tune my senses to detect the first hint of any danger whatsoever, and determine its source the moment I feel it. There will be mistakes, of course—for now, instead of dealing with what I can readily control, I find myself forced to deal with what I have no control over whatsoever.

I do not like that.

I do not like it at all.

Still, what choice do I have? If my instincts are correct, and I truly am in danger for the first time since I was a boy, I must defend myself.

It is sad, though, for this should be a time of great rejoicing. I should be overcome with happiness. I should be shouting from the rooftops. But instead, this dank cloak of suspicion hangs over my head and blocks out the sunlight.

I am unable to enjoy myself, unable to bask in the glow of my accomplishments.

Perhaps, though, I’m wrong. Perhaps this strange sensation of an unseen watcher truly
is
merely a function of my recklessness last week.

Perhaps it is me, punishing myself.

Yet how can I know? For some reason, I find I barely trust my own instincts, though they have never failed me before. Yet those very instincts are now warning me of unseen danger.

I feel walls closing in on me. I am a prisoner of my own foolishness.

I don’t know what to do next. Shall I abandon all and begin again, somewhere else?

I am afraid to do anything.

I am afraid to do nothing.

I am afraid my fear will turn to fury, and then all control will be lost.

And if control is lost, then everything is lost.

F
or the first time in her life, Kara wished she was the kind of person who took naps, but though her body now felt as exhausted as her mind and her spirit, she knew that retreating to her bed wasn’t going to change anything. Even if she slept—which she knew she wouldn’t—when she woke up, Lindsay would still be missing and Steve would still be—

Even in her mind, and in the loneliness of the house, she still cut her thought short before thinking the word. But not thinking it wouldn’t change anything, any more than a nap would, so she paused halfway up the stairs, stood perfectly still, and said it out loud.

“Dead. He’s dead, and nothing in the world is going to change that.” The word echoed almost mockingly in the stairwell, but Kara steeled herself against reacting. She might feel like crying, but she wasn’t going to. Instead she went back to polishing the already spotless banister, applying enough force to the dust cloth to make her wonder if it was possible to actually dust the finish right off the wood. She banished that thought, too, and kept polishing until she came to the top of the stairs.

Across the hall, the door to Lindsay’s room stood open. It was the one room she hadn’t touched today, and now she closed its door, determined that it, at least, would be unchanged when Lindsay was finally back home.

The buzzer on the dryer sounded, and Kara automatically turned back to the stairs, to go down and fold the last load of laundry. But she abruptly changed her mind. It was mostly Steve’s things, and they’d just have to wait, at least until she made up her mind whether to put them in boxes and take them to Goodwill or fold them up and put them back in the dresser, even though she knew it wouldn’t bring Steve back.

She pushed open the door to the master suite and stared at the stripped mattress; the clean sheets were down in the laundry room, neatly folded. But if she went down to get them, she wouldn’t be able to ignore Steve’s clothes cooling in the dryer, and then—

And then she’d start crying again, no matter how many promises she’d made to herself.

Ignoring the unmade bed, she picked up the remote control and clicked the television on. The sound came on before the picture.

“—was discovered alone in her house after her mother disappeared sometime after ten o’clock last night.”

The picture suddenly popped up on the screen, and Kara gazed at the image of a little girl, no more than five years old, her eyes wide with fear as she was carried to a van by an attractive woman wearing a police uniform. The little girl was crying, and Kara bit her lip as she watched. The camera cut away to a cool blonde in a well-tailored suit who was standing in front of a small house. A For Sale sign was clearly visible on the front lawn, and as the reporter spoke, Kara felt her blood running cold. “According to neighbors, Ellen Fine became afraid there was someone still in her house when she and her daughter returned to it after her agent had held an open house yesterday afternoon.”

Kara’s heart began to race and she leaned closer to the set.

“Police searched the premises, but there was no evidence of an intruder.”

No evidence of an intruder.

Just like her own house, after Lindsay disappeared.

Her hand was on the telephone before the broadcast was over. Andrew Grant’s business card, with his home number written on the back, was on her nightstand. She took a deep breath, got herself under control, and dialed. As she waited for the detective to answer, she stared at the photograph of Ellen Fine that was now on the screen. She was a pretty woman who couldn’t be more than thirty and looked vaguely familiar. But before Kara could ruminate on the woman who’d vanished, the detective answered the phone.

“Is your television on, Sergeant Grant?” she asked without preamble. “Because if it isn’t, you’d better turn it on. Channel 5.” There was silence for a moment, then she heard the detective breathe a single, quiet word.

“Shit.”

Finally, at last, she had his full attention.

A
ndrew Grant rang Rick Mancuso’s doorbell and hoped to God that Mancuso was going to have all the right answers to his questions. Not that it mattered—whatever Mancuso had to say, it was going to be a long Sunday afternoon. He’d wanted to put Kara Marshall and her phone call on the back burner until tomorrow morning when he’d be back in the office, but there was no way he could; not, anyway, if he wanted to sleep tonight.

So he’d put in a call to Sean O'Reilly at the Smithton Police Department, but O'Reilly was already into the disappearance up to his ears and there was nothing else for him to do but grab his gun and shield and head over to Smithton.

In the briefing, flares went off in his head when the name Rick Mancuso had come up, and he’d laid out the whole Lindsay Marshall case for O'Reilly. O'Reilly had shrugged. “I already talked to him, and I think he’s clean. But hey—if you want to lean on him, there’s no way I can stop you, is there?”

So now he was leaning against the real-estate agent’s doorbell. When Mancuso finally opened the door and he showed the agent his badge, Mancuso nodded as if he’d been expecting to see another detective and opened the door wide, inviting him in.

They sat on stools at a neat kitchen bar. For a single guy, Grant thought, Mancuso kept a tidy house. Too tidy? “So here we are again,” he began, his manner carefully amiable, at least for now. “Another open house, another abduction. Any idea why your name keeps coming up?”

Mancuso shrugged. “It’s a pretty small community. I can’t be the only guy who was in both those houses.” Grant said nothing, but kept his eyes steadily on Mancuso's, and finally the agent sat up straighter. “What do you want from me? I don’t know anything about it. When I left Ellen Fine’s house yesterday, it was all locked up. I don’t even have a key—she wouldn’t give me one. That’s why I had to ring the bell when I went back today.” His eyes narrowed truculently. “I’ve already told the other police the same thing a dozen times.”

“Did you keep a logbook from yesterday?”

“Of course. And the Smithton cops have it.”

Grant’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He fished it out, glanced at the caller ID screen, and flipped it open.

“Grant?” the caller said. “It’s Sean O'Reilly. Listen, we just found a report that there was another disappearance after an open house.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“I wish I were. Happened over in Mill Creek about three weeks ago. A nineteen-year-old girl named Shannon Butler. Vanished in the middle of the night. No clues. She’s still gone—listed as a missing person. Looks like maybe we’ve got something hinky going on.”

“I’ll get back to you.” Grant closed his phone and fixed Mancuso with his hardest stare. “You ever work open houses in Mill Creek?”

Did Mancuso hesitate before he shook his head? Grant wasn’t quite sure. “Too far away,” the agent said.

“Not that far,” Grant countered. “You’ve never showed property there? Never gone to an open house there?”

Now Mancuso looked less certain. “Hey, I’m not going to say never—” he began, and Grant stood up.

“Grab a jacket,” he said. “I think we need to talk down at the station.”

The blood drained from Mancuso’s face. “Am I going to need a lawyer here?”

“Did you do something you don’t want to tell me about?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why would you need a lawyer? C'mon.”

Grant didn’t know what Mancuso had to do with all of this, but he’d bet all his years as a cop that if he dug deep enough into Shannon Butler’s file, he’d find Mancuso’s name.

Chapter Forty-five

M
ake it stop,
Ellen prayed silently.
Dear God, just make it stop.
But no matter how hard she prayed, the agony in her leg seemed only to grow worse. When she’d first seen what the man had done, when she’d first looked down at the raw, bleeding muscle that lay exposed where the man—the
monster
—had cut the small tattoo away from her thigh, she’d barely believed it could have happened at all. But as she watched blood ooze from the gaping wound and felt the pain radiate out from her thigh until it had spread through her entire body, the truth quickly sank in. It wasn’t a man who had taken her at all.

It was a maniac.

Which meant she’d have to deal with him as a maniac.

It was that realization, almost even more than the pain where he’d hacked her skin away, that made her want to simply give up, to fall back into the unconsciousness from which she’d awakened only a few hours ago.

Or was it only a few minutes?

And what did it matter anyway? Even if she fell back into the blackness, she’d only wake up again to the nightmare that was not only hers, but that of the two girls as well. So she’d forced aside the urge to escape back into unconsciousness, closed her mind to the agony in her leg, and tried to clear her head.

She was no longer in the room with the table and chairs. After he’d cut her leg—and after finishing with the hideous parody of a tea party—he’d carried and dragged her down a steep flight of stairs, through some kind of tunnel, and into a cold, dank chamber with bare mattresses on the floor and manacles chained to the walls.

A dungeon.

He manacled her wrists, then left her alone, not even bothering to replace the tape he’d torn from her lips for the “tea party.”

A few minutes later he brought Lindsay in, and manacled her as well.

He was gone longer after that, and when he returned, he carried the other girl—holding her almost tenderly—and when he put her down, she didn’t move.

Was she unconscious or—

Ellen didn’t allow herself to think it.

The monster—for that’s what she now knew he was—chained the unconscious girl as securely as he’d chained Lindsay and her.

At last, he’d finished securing the girl, taken his light up a set of wooden stairs and vanished, leaving them in absolute, claustrophobic blackness. Then all the nightmarish fears that Ellen had ever experienced came roaring back.

Now she found it almost impossible to breathe. Panic rose inside her as the darkness closed around her, and for a moment she almost gave in to it, almost began screaming and thrashing.

Instead she concentrated on slowing her breathing, forcing herself to relax her body, limb by limb. She blocked out the blackness, instead visualizing a perfect day at the beach.

And there, in her mind’s eye, she saw Emily, playing happily in the sand.

The panic surged forth again.

Relax, or you’ll hurt yourself. As long as you’re here, there’s nothing you can do for her. And it isn’t just Emily, either. Think about Lindsay. If you can’t help Emily, at least you can help Lindsay and—

What was the other girl’s name? The question itself seemed to turn the tide against the panic, and finally she began to think.

She took a deep breath, and the panic further loosened its grip on her. “Lindsay?” she said, her whisper sounding to her like a shout in the silent darkness. When there was no response, she repeated the single word, more loudly this time.

A moment later there was the sound of chains rattling somewhere to her right. “How do you know my name?” a faint, almost lifeless, voice asked.

“I saw your picture on television. My name’s Ellen Fine.”

More rattling.

Ellen imagined the girl struggling to sit up. “Your mom is hunting for you.”

“You saw my mom?” A little more life in the voice now.

“She’s been on TV, trying to find you.”

There was a silence, then: “H-How long have I been here?”

Instead of answering the question, Ellen countered with her own: “Who’s the other girl?”

“Shannon,” Lindsay whispered.

The name meant nothing to Ellen. “Does he give you anything to eat or drink?”

“Sometimes. But I don’t even know—” Lindsay’s voice caught, and Ellen could hear her choking off a sob. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow and she made no attempt to mask her fear. “I don’t even know what time it is, or what day it is, or anything else. I just—”

Her voice broke again, but this time Ellen was ready. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “We’re going to get out of here—there are three of us and only one of him. We can do it if we have a plan, and if we work together.”

No response. Then, in the quiet, Ellen could hear Lindsay crying, a sound that brought back memories of Emily, frightened of a nightmare, sobbing in the darkness of her room.

Only this was not a nightmare.

This was real.

“Listen to me, Lindsay,” Ellen said. “It’s going to be all right. We’re going to get out of this.”

There was a sniffle, then Lindsay uttered a single word. “How?”

Desperately, Ellen cast her mind back to the moments after she had awakened to the surreal scene in the room with the tiny table and chairs and the grotesquely leering smiles she’d seen on all the faces around her. And she realized what they had to do.

“We have to give him what he wants.”

“But I don’t know what he wants,” Lindsay moaned.

“Of course you do,” Ellen told her. “Think of the smiles, Lindsay. And think of what he said. He called me Mommy, and he kept talking about how happy we all were. Don’t you see? He wants a happy family. He wants us to be his family, and he wants us to be happy. So here’s what we’re going to do . . .”

Slowly, uncertain if Lindsay had enough energy left even to understand, let alone follow it, Ellen began to explain her idea.

A
ndrew Grant raked his fingers through his hair, tried to slow the thoughts that were tumbling chaotically through his mind, then leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. There were a million things that had to be done, but if they weren’t done in the right order, everything could—and undoubtedly would—turn into a disaster.

With the third deep breath, he felt his mind begin to clear, and he began to assess the situation.

For the moment, the powers-that-be had given him interjurisdictional authority, which presumably meant the guys in Smithton would have to cooperate with him, at least until the FBI guys arrived. And, for now at least, the guys in Smithton had given him everything he’d asked for, though what they had wasn’t much. Still, it was enough that he’d at least be coherent at the press briefing scheduled for nine o’clock.

According to the big clock on the wall, it was now 8:38.

It was going to be a long night.

First things first.

Seventeen minutes to figure out exactly what he was going to say, and then . . .

Then it would be a
very
long night.

A couple of patrolmen who had been called in more for show than because anyone expected them to do anything tonight were grumbling in a corner, and half a dozen reporters were already in the lobby, glancing impatiently at their watches every few seconds as they waited for the briefing to begin. To Andrew Grant, they looked like nothing more than a flock of circling vultures waiting to descend on a corpse, and if he made one false step, the corpse they descended upon could be his. Eyeing them balefully, he decided that maybe the briefing would start on time and maybe it wouldn’t.

The telephones had been ringing steadily since word of Ellen Fine’s disappearance had gotten out that afternoon, and they hadn’t slowed yet. The reporters seemed to have put two and two together at least as quickly as the two police departments involved, and into the evening the local talk radio stations had done their best to whip the public into a frenzy. It worked: apparently everyone on Long Island had seen someone who looked “suspicious” at an open house sometime over the last year or so.

The talk jockeys had even come up with a name for the guy: Open House Ozzie. Well, maybe if it got bad enough, they’d both wind up in one of Ann Rule’s books, and he would become a character on a TV miniseries.

More likely, he’d get fired for being the obtuse dunderhead he now felt like. Why couldn’t he have at least listened to Kara Marshall, instead of insisting her kid had just decided to take off?

The office walls seemed to be closing in on him.

He took his mug to the coffee machine, filled it with the dregs of the lunchtime coffee, then took the curse off its bitterness with a double shot of sugar and powdered cream and slowly made his way back to his desk. Stirring the sludge in his cup, he relegated his mistakes to the back of his mind so he could concentrate on getting it right from here on out.

The first priority, of course, would be to keep anyone else from vanishing from their own homes after an open house. He needed to get the word out that three abductions had taken place after open houses on Long Island—within fifteen miles of each other, in fact—in the past month.

And this was Sunday night; for all he knew, another abduction had taken place today, making it four. He needed a detail to work on that. O'Reilly and Murphy could handle it, along with the guys who first responded to Shannon Butler’s disappearance in Mill Creek.

He scrawled a note on his yellow pad.

The next thing was to find Shannon, Lindsay, and Ellen. He’d handle that one personally. Rick Mancuso remained at the top of his list of probable perps, but primarily because he didn’t have any other names on the list so far. Mancuso had been cooperative enough, but the guy didn’t have an alibi for any of the nights after the disappearances had happened.

Which didn’t mean nearly as much as the general public thought it did.

Still, there was no reason to hold him.

And so far, at least, there weren’t any bodies, so it was just possible—and now he knew he was grasping at straws—that all three victims actually had just taken off.

And pigs could fly, too.

Taking yet another deep breath, Grant signaled to one of the guys who’d been called in from their Sunday dinners. “I want every logbook from every open house from every agent in a thirty-mile radius. For the last month or so.” The patrolman, who’d only been with the department for three months, gaped at him.

“But that’ll take all night.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “So people won’t go to bed. Too bad. Just do it.”

As the patrolman went off to find a phone, Grant set two more patrolmen to work on the local agents: faxing, calling, and following up on everybody who had signed in at the Fine, Marshall, and Butler open houses. Not, of course, that this guy would have signed in, but you had to go through the motions, and who knew? Maybe the guy wasn’t nearly as smart as Grant thought he was.

He sipped his coffee and winced at the nastiness of it while he prayed to the gods of caffeine that it would keep him sharp through the night.

Then he turned his attention to his third priority: dealing with the press while at the same time keeping the spotlight off himself.

This was going to be a media circus. Once the FBI arrived, it became their baby, and they didn’t have far to come. They’d be here by morning, telling him and everybody else what to do. Between now and then, he would be in the spotlight, and he’d better look good.

Or, in the best of all possible worlds, find those girls.

Grant checked his watch. Five minutes left. He could feel the energy rise in the building as the briefing room filled up, and in a couple more minutes he’d be at the podium, his lieutenant sitting in the audience, observing him.

If he was lucky. If he was unlucky, the chief himself would have come down to watch.

Shit.

He took a last gulp of the mud in his coffee cup, grabbed his legal pad, and stood up to go deal with the press, which until today had never been more than old Marguerite Gould, who delighted in making public every minor disturbance Smithton and Camden Green and every other town on the north shore ever experienced, even if it was only a dog running loose in the park. Tonight, Marguerite probably wouldn’t even be able to get a question in edgewise.

Billy Ferguson poked his head around the corner.

“Sarge?”

“I’ve got a briefing.”

“I know,” the patrolman said, “but look at this here.” He held out the guest book from the Butler open house. “Mark Acton—you know, the agent who held the Marshall open house?”

Grant’s attention was instantly riveted on the kid. “Yeah?”

“He was at the Butler open house.”

Goose bumps rose on Grant’s arms.
Acton was a real weasel.
“Was he at the Fine open house?”

The patrolman shrugged. “I don’t know. If he was, he didn’t sign the book.”

Grant’s eyes narrowed and his lips tightened into a hard smile. “Go get him.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man’s face disappeared.

Feeling better now, Grant shrugged into his jacket, smoothed his hair, and picked up his yellow pad. Now, at least, he had a real suspect.

Mark Acton—a guy who had given him a bad feeling the moment he met him. And if there was one thing he’d learned over all the years he’d been a cop, it was this:

Always trust your feelings.

T
he light woke Ellen. That and a moan from Shannon, the first sounds she’d heard from the girl.

He was back.

Ellen’s heart began to hammer in her chest again. How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? Not days, but how could she know, really? Not that it mattered. The only thing that mattered now was to keep her mind clear and stick to the plan.

Whatever happened, she had to stick to the plan and pray that Lindsay had not only understood, but had the strength and the will to go along with it, too.

Banishing the last tendrils of sleep that clung to her mind, and ignoring the knot of fear forming in her belly, she sat up on her mattress, tucked her legs beneath her and leaned on one arm, trying to make herself look as relaxed as if she were lounging on a picnic blanket. The wound in her leg shot a stab of pain through her as she dragged it across the coarse mattress, but she stifled the scream that rose in her throat as the light from the trapdoor opening illuminated the man in silhouette. Then it went dark again for a moment, until he turned on a beam of light. She squinted into it as he came down the stairs and moved toward the dark chamber. As he approached, she spoke.