The Leviathan Effect (35 page)

When she tried to move, she felt a stab of pain in her shoulder; and then a duller ache around her right eye.

She was in the back seat of a car. The door was wide open to the night. It was cold and raining and her clothes were damp, stuck to her skin. She lay still and let her eyes adjust—trees, a slope of hillside, a wooden covering of some sort, which blocked the natural light of the sky. There was no artificial light in any direction here, but wild, occasional flashes of lightning that lit up the trees. She was deep in a sloping woods somewhere. Maybe a park.

Then she sensed movement—a shape shuffling beneath the wooden covering—and heard a scramble of footsteps on gravel in the rain and knew that the man was back.

She took a deliberate breath and closed her eyes, waiting for him. Trying to scoot back but feeling the sharp pain from her shoulder and the side of her head. She saw the man standing outside, wearing what looked like a flak jacket, not moving. Then the seat gave as the man moved on top of her and she felt his damp clothing against her skin and smelled the earthy scent of his jacket and the alcohol on his breath.

Whispering: “Okay? Are you awake yet?”

Blaine squinted: dark eyes looking at her, inches away.

“Speak?” he said, pushing something metal against her face. “Speak.”

Blaine turned her head and felt herself shudder. “What?”

“Speak into this,” he hissed. “Say you’re okay.”

Blaine felt the wet metal on her cheek again, then realized what it was.

A telephone
. He was holding a cell phone next to her face.

“Okay?”

He pulled it back, pressed a number and then held it to her lips. “Speak.”

“Help,” she said, her voice sounding distant, like someone else’s. “I’m in the back seat of a car in the woods.”

She stared into the man’s eyes.

“Where? Where are you? Give me a reference point.”

Charles Mallory
.

“In a park. Deep in the woods. You’re right. It’s east—”

The killer yanked the phone back and clicked it off.

“What were you going to say?”

Blaine went silent. She watched his eyes as he tried to flatten himself on top of her and felt a panic, realizing that he was probably going to torture and molest her before killing her.

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.” He pushed the phone in his pocket and began to touch Blaine again, grunting crudely, his hand going up and down roughly between her legs. She struggled against him, lifting her knees as a buffer.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t!”

Hearing her voice, he suddenly seemed to lose interest. He sat up. Backed away, stepped outside. Blaine listened to the rain, and heard the sound of a zipper. She breathed deeply, waiting, trying to sit up.

But she felt the give of the seat cushion again and smelled him as he climbed back on top of her. Then she felt something poking against her face and twisted her head away.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

She felt him rubbing against her in the dark. She shifted her head and smelled him, the animal scent of his groin as he jerked himself against the side of her face, his knees moving awkwardly and a little desperately on top of her, as if he were trying to straddle her chest. He pulled back and leaned closer, and then she sensed that he was trying to kiss her, his fake beard bristling against her mouth. Dark eyes. Strange, like there was no center to them, no real pupil. As if he lacked the ability to focus.

He reached under her shirt again, massaging her breasts with his right hand, as if he were kneading bread, breathing heavily. She smelled the stench of him again as he scooted forward into her face and she gagged, catching herself before she vomited.

“If I put something in your mouth, you wouldn’t bite it, would you?” he whispered. “You aren’t going to bite me.” He was straddling
her shoulders now and she felt him rocking slightly, breathing deeply in and out. Suddenly, his open hand smacked the right side of her face. Blaine stung with pain. “You
would
, wouldn’t you? That’s why I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to give you that particular pleasure tonight. But I’ll give you another one.”

He slapped her again, and a moment later, apropos nothing, Catherine Blaine suddenly understood.
The other part. The motivation
. It all made sense to her. Just like that. She closed her eyes as he lifted himself up and ground his penis against the side of her face, her eyes and nose, grunting maniacally, his left hand jerking frantically, the fingertips of his right hand jabbing at her cheeks, squeezing her face until she hurt. Grunting.
Of course
, she thought.
Of course
.

She felt a warm liquid sliding down her neck and the man pulling himself off of her roughly, putting his full weight on her legs as he backed out awkwardly, breathing heavily like an athlete finished with competition.

With a dry rag he carefully wiped her off. Then he walked out into the rain, made the rag wet and came back in the car and wiped her off again. This time, as he lifted off of her, Blaine rose up and rammed her knee into his groin. The man let out a sharp yelp and recoiled.

“Mother
fucker
!” he said, doing a dance outside the opened car door. Blaine felt a momentary triumph and tried to rise to a sitting position. But the man came slamming in on top of her, punching her face wildly with both hands, jabbing her with his elbows. Blaine’s panic turned to anger. She moved her head from side to side, missing most of it. “Bitch!” he said. “Fucking motherfucking bitch!”

Then it stopped. And suddenly, it seemed, the man was gone. He stood outside attentively, as if he had heard something approaching. And then he ran, half limping into the rain.

Blaine sat up, her face smarting, catching her breath. Listening. Seeing the shapes of bare trees in the darkness and puzzling through what she had just come to realize. Dates. Times. Motivation. Why Easton had done it.

Suddenly, she understood the whole thing.

M
ALLORY HEARD
B
LAINE
’
S VOICE
in his head as he waited in the rain for Chaplin:
In a park. Deep in the woods. You’re right. It’s east—

He had followed the GPS indicator to a parking area by the Western Ridge Trail of Rock Creek Park. He had parked and walked out into the woods along the mouth of the trail, studying the darkened, sloping landscape of the parkland, which suddenly lit up with wild jags of cloud-to-cloud electricity that startled his eyes. He turned, his vision so stunned that he didn’t see the headlights approaching until the car was right in front of him.

Chaplin parked his Cadillac Escalade next to Mallory’s car. Mallory opened the passenger door and slid in.

“Sorry,” Chaplin said. “Have you been waiting?”

“It’s all right. She’s in there, isn’t she?”

“Looks like it.” The only light was the glow of his computer screen on the front seat between them. Mallory noticed that Chaplin was dressed in a head-to-toe plastic covering.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you want an umbrella?”

“A little rain never hurt anyone,” Mallory said. He watched the downpour through the trees. Saw a violent spray of lightning illuminate the tree tops.

“Jesus,” Chaplin said.

“She just called me a few minutes ago,” Mallory said. “I’m sure it’s a trap, but I don’t think we have a lot of alternatives right now. What do you have?”

Chaplin hit several keys, changing images on his laptop. “Both readings show she’s in there.” He turned his computer, giving Mallory the GPS readings from her phone and the homing device on a split screen.

“What’s there, exactly?”

“Seems to be a covered picnic area. We’re probably less than a quarter mile away.”

“Okay.”

Mallory could feel Chaplin looking at him.

“You’re not thinking of going in there?” Chaplin asked. Mallory was silent. “I would strongly recommend against it if you are,” he said, reverting to his formal tone.

“What would you recommend we do instead?”

“Notify the police. Have them execute a raid.”

“No, can’t do that. He sees police coming, he runs. Or worse, he might kill Catherine. Where exactly is your GPS signal showing she is? Can I see?”

He studied the satellite map, then enlarged it to show Mallory. “I did a map search of the area. This is a rain shelter, evidently. A picnic area. Two tables, a grill, looks like. There’s an object there that appears to be a car or an SUV.”

“Is it static?”

“Yes, both signals have remained static for twenty to twenty-five minutes.”

“Okay.” Mallory examined the set-up some more, then looked out at the slope of the hillside. Back and forth. He enlarged the area of the map image, opening it up to the north. “I’m guessing he might be in this area, up the hill, near the next picnic area. It would give him a fairly clean vantage point.” He stared into the rain, figuring.

“For what?” Chaplin asked.

“For getting off a sniper round.”

“How would you know that? And what makes you think it’s just one person?”

“It’s one person. I’m pretty sure.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s done this before.”

Mallory again felt Chaplin looking at him. “How would you know?”

“The list I gave you,” he said. “June seventeenth, 2007. A reporter
named Michael Dunlopen was found in a remote wooded area with a gunshot wound to the head. The bullet was .243-caliber, from a hunting rifle. DNA was found in the man’s car but never matched with anyone. August twenty-first, 2006, a woman was sexually assaulted at a motel in Wyoming and then shot once in the head. Hair, skin, fingerprints, and semen were found at the scene but never identified. Some of the DNA samples were female, some male. February fifth, 2005, the body of a man named Frank Johnson was found in the woods in central North Carolina, dead from a single shot to the head, again a hunting rifle, .243-caliber. I finally realized what connects these cases: the killer’s MO. The DNA clues are obviously decoys. He finds a discarded coffee cup or a hair sample and leaves it behind. Also, he takes people out with shots to the head. They’re all variations of a theme.”

Chaplin was silent. Mallory took the safety off his Beretta. “We’re talking about a military man,” he continued, feeling a gathering of adrenaline. “Military people have hierarchal, ordered ways of doing things. They repeat what’s worked before. But he’s also an intelligence man. Intelligence people improvise. I think he’s both. I’m guessing if he’s luring me to a very specific spot, he’s going to use a sniper rifle. And aim for the head.”

Chaplin was breathing through his nose. “And what if he improvises?”

“Then I might be in trouble. But we have greater resources than he does.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, there’s two of us. And you’ve got night-vision goggles. Right?”

Chaplin took a deep nasal breath. “What are you suggesting?”

“You go up the hill wearing your night-vision gear. Try to find him or his car. I’ll go down toward the target.”

Chaplin fidgeted with what he’d brought. “I’d advise against that,” he said.

“I know you would. But that’s what we’re going to do. Unless you want to stay here in the car and wait for me. If that’s what you prefer, okay.”

Chaplin looked out at the rain through the small round opening in his hood. He didn’t say anything.

T
HERE WAS A
car parked by the picnic area closest to the trail head. Wild, silent jags of lightning lit up the woods and Mallory saw it twice: a dark-colored SUV maybe an eighth of a mile down the trail. He walked sideways through the woods, several steps at a time, avoiding the trail. The ground was slippery with mud and leaves, and his shoes lost traction several times going downhill.

Chaplin maneuvered in a wide arc up the hillside behind him, wearing his night vision goggles. They both wore open phone headsets.

Mallory moved in a diagonal down the slope, scanning the woods for movement. He stopped and started. Listened. Waited. A single silent bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning lit up the woods and he saw that the back door of the SUV was open; saw the vehicle name on the back bumper—Ford Explorer—and three of the license plate numbers. Virginia plates. He was maybe thirty feet away now.

“There’s nothing up here,” Chaplin said in his ear. “No vehicle, no person.”

“Keep looking.” Mallory raised his Beretta, taking short steps among the narrow trees. Twenty-five feet away. Twenty.

“There’s nothing here,” Chaplin said.

A quick flash turned the sky to daylight, and Mallory froze, blinking. Realizing that he’d been mistaken. That his assumptions were all wrong. For an instant, everything became perfectly clear. The killer was standing twelve feet away, his dark eyes watching him through the trees.

M
ALLORY FIRED TWICE AT
the killer’s after-image and ducked away into the shelter of thick brush, retreating frantically into darkness.