The Edge of Normal (28 page)

They had descended into a grim, cramped space. Benioff recalled dim light and a dank odor and holes in the low ceiling, where something had been unbolted.

Less than three hours later, she learned that a tactical team had tracked the renter, Randy Vanderholt, to his job at the mall. He didn’t put up a fight. He led them back to his house on Tevis Ranch Road, and Tilly Cavanaugh was found imprisoned there, in a different basement, less cramped but just as grim.

Alive. Naked and traumatized, but alive.

They’d found no sign of the other girls, but if Vanderholt hadn’t taken them, who had? Everyone was frustrated that the trail was going cold. By now, it was arctic.

Benioff had intended to do some research just as soon as she checked her messages and e-mail, but her day had gone sideways. Only now, late in the afternoon, has she had a moment to flip on the lights in the computer czar’s office and sit in his oversized chair, following up on an idea.

She knows it’s not much. Investigators had cross-referenced registered sex offenders with homes with basements long ago, but since Vanderholt hadn’t been netted in that particular search, she wants to go back and dig deeper.

Ordinarily, she would ask another officer to do this kind of search. But their head geek, Drew Eubank, is off on another gambling trip to Vegas—or is it Reno? And Tom Montoya is also taking his allotted vacation, off hunting with some buddies. It seems to her that Montoya and Eubank always seem to screw up and schedule their vacations at about the same time—
men!
—so once again, Benioff is on her own.

She’s not a forensic computer analyst, but she’s no slacker, and after ten minutes of keying and scrolling, she’s certain that this search has already been done. Still, she has never seen a report. She allows herself ten more minutes, hyperaware that her regular workload plus that of her absent team members is stacked on her desk.

Forty minutes later, she’s still at it.

Her eyes are starting to blur. She senses another dead end and groans, aggravated by the idea that she’s merely retracing steps. Finally, she sends a few pages to the printer. She rolls her shoulders to ease her cramped muscles, remembering that she still has to work on an unfinished report from yesterday afternoon. Stiff from sitting, she gets up to fetch the pages, finds a yellow highlighter, and spreads them out on the desk.

She stands while scanning the printouts, looking for—what? The pen’s felt tip hovers like a gull over an ocean of data.

Nothing … nothing … more nothing … and then something.

She scowls and studies. The felt tip dives to the page. Again. Three times.

Suddenly too warm, she takes off her jacket and sits back down at the computer, where she keys in a new search.

Zip.

She tries another approach, and what appears puzzles her. She narrows the focus, backtracks, starts again, and stiffens, studying the information on the screen.

Has this already been investigated and discredited, or has it been overlooked?

Benioff scrutinizes what she has found, a chill prickling her skin.

Meanwhile, the electronic surveillance expert who privately calls himself Duke is seated in his control room, following her every keystroke.

FIFTY-FIVE

The stupidity of it all sets Duke’s teeth on edge. After all his efforts, that meddling twat and that idiot Orr-ca are ruining everything. And the worst part is, he let himself believe that he’d already skated past this particular juncture.

After getting away with Vanderholt’s killing, he’d begun to imagine he was safe. But then came last night’s panicked phone call from J.J. Orr.

Duke had answered the phone with ice in his voice. “I told you never to call me. When I want to speak to you, I will be the one to place the call.”

“But this is an emergency, man,” Orr whined. “Someone was just here, snooping around.”

“Who?”

“Some girl with weird hair.”

“In a Jeep?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“What did she do?”

“She drove up to the front and just sat there, you know, looking at everything.”

“What did she see?”

“Nothing, don’t worry.”

“Did she walk around the house?”

“No, she just sat in the Jeep, staring. But don’t worry, I scared her off.”

“What did you do?”

“I scared her off.”

“You scared her off
how?
”

“Well, don’t get mad, because—”

“Not with a gun.”

“Well, uh, now—”

“Idiot.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“What kind of gun?”

A sigh. “Just a little rifle. A .22.”

“That’s very stupid of you, Orr-ca.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, okay?”

It was unforgiveable.

A lesser man might have smashed his fist through a wall in frustration, but Duke had stifled his anger and set to work, assessing the situation.

It had taken him years to perfect and implement his plans—vetting and training his keepers, researching and masterminding the elegant snares with which to trap his girls—was it possible that it was all now teetering on the verge of collapse?

He had been so careful. He had remotely fed the proper data into the computers at work, which of course went as planned. He had covered his tracks. But he hadn’t expected Kim-bo to be quite so persistent. Or so inventive.

He stifles a nicotine craving, checks the time, and stays glued to his chair in the control room. With a new sense of urgency, he taps into his most informative devices and begins a series of tasks, checking them off his list, one by one. He also attends to the history of Edgy Reggie’s GPS signal, tracking her to the sheriff’s department—not good—but now she’s parked outside the Cavanaughs’.

Careful monitoring reveals that he still has the upper hand. Still, it’s clear that Orr-ca must to be dealt with, and having an exit strategy already in place doesn’t make it any easier. Such a waste.

He places the call, and Orr answers on the first ring.

“Orr-ca, how many guns do you have?”

“Uh, I don’t, uh … just the one.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Honest, just the one rifle is all. I know better than to lie to you.”

“All right. Listen carefully and I’ll tell you what I want you to do.”

A pause. “Okay.”

“Are you listening?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“All right. I want you to take that rifle out back and bury it under the woodpile.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You know that having a gun is a violation of your parole.”

Silence.

“You know that, don’t you?”

A soft groan. “Yeah, I’m aware.”

“So, I want you to bury it. Do you understand?”

“Under the woodpile? How am I supposed to do that?”

“Don’t make me lose my temper.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll, uh, move the wood pile, I guess, bury the gun, and then move the wood pile back, right?”

“That’s correct. And when are you going to do that?”

“Um, pretty soon, I guess.”

“What did you say?”

“No, I mean, I could start right away, but, you know, these short winter days, it’s getting dark kinda early.”

Duke says nothing. He waits.

“But that’s no big deal,” Orr says quickly. “I’ll get started right away, okay?”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’ll be checking up on me.”

“That’s correct. And when do you think that might be?”

He sighs. “It could be any time.”

“So get to work.”

Duke doesn’t really care about J.J. Orr’s parole—not anymore—but he doesn’t want the moron armed, either. Besides, it will serve his purpose if Orr-ca is tired and sore and moving slowly when he arrives.

He rises, locks the control room door behind him, and strides through his house to the kitchen. He will need protein in order to accomplish what he must during the next few hours. What he really wants is a nice, thick prime rib, slathered with horseradish, but there’s no time. He grabs three protein bars and a Red Bull and sets them on the counter. Then he steps into the room where he keeps all his guns and ammunition and puts on a pair of latex gloves before loading his Glock.

FIFTY-SIX

“Reeve, would you like some more stew?” Mrs. Cavanaugh offers.

“Oh, thank you, but I’ve had more than enough.” She takes a last bite of cornbread and surreptitiously checks Dr. Lerner’s text message, holding her cell phone under the table:

Flying back now. See you tonight.

The message seemed terse the first time she read it; it seems more so now. Not a word about how things went with Terrance Moody. Not a hint of optimism, which is very unlike Dr. Lerner.

Tilly leans away from her brother and whispers into Reeve’s ear, “Come to my room when you’re finished, okay? I have something really important to tell you.”

Reeve says okay and sips from her glass of milk. The warm food is making her drowsy. Remembering her manners, she excuses herself from the table and thanks Mrs. Cavanaugh for the delicious meal. “My mother used to make cornbread like that,” she says, and suffers a sudden image of her mother crying in the kitchen, after the cancer had spread to her bones and she could no longer cook.

“You’ve been such a great help with Tilly,” Mrs. Cavanaugh says. “I wish we could bring you to Fresno with us. Promise you’ll fly down with Dr. Lerner?”

She drapes an arm over Reeve’s shoulders to give her a brief hug, and Reeve allows this, giving a quick nod before breaking away to rinse her dishes and load them in the dishwasher.

A minute later, Reeve finds Tilly in her room, busily folding clothes and placing them in a suitcase. “There’s not much to pack,” Tilly says, gesturing. “Nothing fits anymore. And I hate going out to shop.”

“I noticed.”

“After we move, maybe it’ll be better.”

“Yeah, I think so. Plus, you’ll be getting nice, new clothes for Christmas, too. Lots of them.”

Tilly flashes a rare, impish smile. “Yeah, and guess what!”

“What?”

“I have big news,” Tilly says teasingly.

“What is it?”

“You’ll never guess,” she says, going over to her dresser and opening a drawer. “It finally happened.” With a squeak of excitement, she spins around, holding up a package of sanitary napkins.

Reeve pastes on a smile. She says all the right things, all the kind, sisterly things that she imagines one should say. But images are spinning through her head, ideas clicking, and she can hardly wait to excuse herself and call Nick Hudson.

*   *   *

The sky opens up and it starts to rain as Reeve heads out of town. She fumbles with the windshield wipers, accidentally veering left so that the Jeep’s tires hit the warning bumps of the median. She swerves back into her lane as a big semi draws alongside, sending up clouds of spray, forcing her to slow down. She grips the wheel hard, driving white-knuckled. The interstate descends and straightens briefly at the bridge crossing Jefferson Lake, but the swooping turns resume as the freeway climbs in elevation. Afraid she’ll miss her exit, she stays in the slow lane, caught between two big eighteen-wheelers as northbound traffic carries her deeper into the wilderness. The asphalt becomes a slick blur. Road signs flash past. Feeling lost, she vows to take the next opportunity to exit, and suddenly she’s off the freeway, down an off-ramp, onto Old Cedar Road.

Relieved, she pulls into the weed-choked parking lot of the abandoned gas station and tries to get her bearings. She checks the map on her phone against the map she snatched from Emily Ewing’s office.

Keenly aware that Hudson still hasn’t returned her call, she equivocates for a long moment. The engine idles, the windshield wipers beat. She starts keying in a text message:

Nick: Sorry, but I’m going back to find that place where I was shot at. Don’t worry and don’t be mad. I’ll just find the address and take a picture.

Holding her breath, she hits “send.”

The instant Tilly had so proudly shown her that bright package of Kotex, an image of blowing trash had flashed through her mind. She was sure—or almost, anyway—that mixed in with all the paper and rubbish blowing around that cabin, she’d glimpsed the distinctive plastic wrappers from sanitary pads.

Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe the man with the rifle had a wife or girlfriend. But why had he shot at her?

The image of the gun makes her shudder.
I have a right to protect my property!

Rain spatters on the windshield and she sits gripping her phone, willing Nick to call her back, wondering if she can manage to retrace her route. She closes her eyes, trying to recall every detail about that cabin. It had an unusually solid-looking foundation—concrete all the way around, it appeared—with mesh-covered vents. And wasn’t it creepy that the house on Tevis Ranch Road and that old cabin in the woods both appeared to be surrounded by the same type of new chain-link fence?

She clicks on the dome light and studies the map again. When she thinks she has her bearings, she shifts the Jeep into gear and eases onto the road, but as she accelerates, she notices the yellow glow of the icon warning that she’s low on gas.

At that moment, her phone rings. She answers the phone without thinking to look at the display, keeping her eyes on the road, assuming it will be Nick Hudson calling in response to her text message.

Instead, she hears the familiar rasp of a voice from her past: “Hello, my little cricket.”

Her bowels twist.

“You’ve been in the news, Regina. Tell me, how are my puffies?”

Her mouth goes dry.

“I see you’re in Jefferson,” Daryl Wayne Flint continues. “Nice hair.”

She inhales sharply. “How did you get my number?”

She waits, but there is no response. Her phone beeps, and when she checks the display she sees the yellow words:
No service
.

FIFTY-SEVEN

Al Krasny makes sure he’s the first to enter the room. He needs to set up his computer and arrange his thoughts. Some of his methods might seem old-fashioned, but he can still whip together a pretty fair PowerPoint presentation on short notice. He’s not out of the game yet. Never mind that this tip came from that smug little hottie, Kim Benioff. He took her info and ran with it. He did the cross-referencing and found the real stuff. He rushed it to the DA, who persuaded the judge, who issued the warrant. He’s the lead investigator on this case, and he damn well deserves to get the credit.