She continued to ease forward on her hands and knees. Every little while, she moved the flashlight out ahead of her again. It seemed like she had crawled for a long time.
Too long a time.
She suddenly felt disoriented, again felt that strange heaviness in her arms and legs. She stopped, brought the flashlight up, and looked at the map. She could hardly read it and wondered why. She knew it said thirty feet to the opposite wall, she knew that, but for some reason she couldn’t get her brain around the idea. Surely she’d crawled thirty feet. It seemed like she’d crawled forever. Well, all right, maybe she’d crawled for a good three minutes. She looked at her watch. Thirteen minutes past two in the afternoon. She looked at the map yet again, tangible, as real as she was, her guide to the underworld, her guide to the River Styx. She laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. Where had that come from? She tried to concentrate. She was in a cave chamber, nothing more, nothing less. She had to be near the opposite wall, had to be. Then she’d take those three long steps to the right and there would be a small passageway—it was a passageway, wasn’t it?—and it led . . .
She heard something.
Ruth froze. From the moment she’d finessed the pathetic lock and begun her trek into the cave, there’d been only the noise made by bats and the sound of her own voice, of her own breathing. But now she held her breath. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as the sandy floor beneath her boots. She strained to listen.
There was only silence, as absolute as the blackness.
All right, she’d take silence. Silence was good. She was alone, no monsters hanging around at the edge of her light. She was freaking herself out for no reason, she, who took pride in her control. But why couldn’t she see any cave walls?
She knew the rough distance of a foot, not much longer than her own foot, and started counting. When she reached about fourteen feet, she stopped, stretched out her hand as far as she could, and her flashlight and head lamp cut a huge swath farther ahead of her. No wall. All right, so her distances were off. No problem, no reason to panic.
But she’d heard something—for an instant. What was the noise she heard?
She kept counting and crawling forward. At least another twenty feet. Okay, this was ridiculous. Where was the opposite wall?
She rose to her feet, shone her head lamp and flashlight together in a circle around her. She pulled out her compass again and pointed it. She stared at the needle. West. No, that couldn’t be right. She wasn’t facing west, she was facing east, the direction of the opposite wall. But there was no sign of a wall in any direction. She shook the compass. It still read west. It couldn’t be functioning properly.
She stuffed it back in her pocket and pulled her hefty twenty-five-foot measuring tape off her belt. She slowly fed out the metal strip in a line directly in front of her, into the blackness. Finally she reached the end of the tape. There was no wall.
She felt fear, raw and paralyzing, crawl right up her throat. Why was she feeling this way? She was a cop, for heaven’s sake, she’d been in much tougher spots than this. She prided herself on her focus, on her ability to keep panic at bay, on her common sense. Nothing could shake her, her mother had always said, and it wasn’t necessarily a compliment.
But she was shaken now.
Get back on track, Ruth, get back on track, that’s what Savich would say.
All right, bottom line: The chamber was bigger than the damned map said it was. Another effort at misdirection, like the arched doggie door covered with a slab of limestone. So what? No big deal. She’d go back out of the chamber and think things over. How many feet had she come? A good long ways. She turned and fed out the measuring tape back toward the archway. Naturally, she couldn’t see the arched opening beyond the dissipated circle of light from her head lamp. She crawled on the tape to make sure she kept in a straight line. When she reached the end of it, she fed out a second twenty-five feet. Nothing. Then another twenty-five feet. She shone her head lamp together with her flashlight all around her. Nothing at all. She looked at her compass. It said she was moving northeast. No, that was absurd. She was heading due west, right back toward the opening.
She looked up again, realized that her flashlight had faded away into a ghostly beam. All right, she’d walked a mile, who cared? And the compass was all screwed up. She didn’t need it to make her think she was crazy. She stuck it in her pocket, picked up the tape and fed it out another twenty-five feet, sure she’d see the archway at any moment. She’d come a hundred feet. At any moment, the tape would slither right through the opening back into the corridor. She crawled more slowly. By the time she’d crawled the full twenty-five feet, she was shaking.
Stop it, stop it. She pressed the retract button and heard the hiss of the tape as it smoothly ran back in. She stood there, holding the tape, knowing she was afraid to feed it out again. What was the point?
No, no, that was stupid. She had to. She had no choice. She fed out the tape again, smoothly and quickly. But even as she worked it out to its maximum twenty-five feet, she knew in her gut it wouldn’t touch anything. Still, she crawled the distance, then stopped, looked. She was nowhere, surrounded by black; she was being pressed in by black. No, no, stop it.
She thought she’d crawled in a straight line, but it was obvious now that she hadn’t; it was the only explanation. She’d veered off to the left or right. But still, shouldn’t the tape measure hit a wall? Of course it should, but you’re not near a wall, are you? You’re not near anything at all.
Ruth began to move in a circle, keeping the measuring tape fully extended. No wall, nothing.
She was losing it, her brain was twisted up, gone squirrelly. At a wave of dizziness and nausea, she sat on the floor, barely breathing now. She felt cold, raw fear skitter through her, a deadly fear that made the hair on her arms stir. Her heart pounded, her mouth was dry.
And she thought, I’m in the middle of a void and there’s no way out because I’m trapped in a black hole larger than anything I can imagine.
That thought, fully blown and as clear as bright headlights in her brain, shook her to the core. Where had it come from? She couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath, couldn’t seem to focus her brain. This was ridiculous. She had to think her way out of this. There was an answer, there was always an answer. It was time to get her brain working again. All right then. She was in a cave chamber. She’d simply crawled in farther than she’d thought, the ridiculous chamber was much larger than on the map—
She heard the noise again, a soft, sibilant sound that seemed to be all around her, but there were no visual reference points, like a snake slithering through sand, a snake so heavy it made a dragging sound as it pulled itself along. It was a snake that was coming toward her but she couldn’t see it, couldn’t get out of the way, couldn’t hide. Maybe it was one of those South American boas, thick as a tree trunk, heavy and sinuous, probably twenty feet long, dragging itself toward her; it would wrap its huge body around her and squeeze—She jerked the compass out of her pocket and hurled it as far away from her as she could. She heard it thud lightly against the cave floor.
The sound stopped. Once again the silence was absolute.
She had to get a grip. Her imagination was having a hoedown.
Stop it, just stop it, you’re in a damned squiggly hole deep in the side of a mountain, nothing more than a maze.
Maybe now she was at the center of the maze—bad things could happen at the center of a maze, things you didn’t expect, things that could crush your head, smash it into pulp, things . . . She was lost in the silence, she would die here.
Ruth tried to concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply, drawing in the blessed fresh air, and that strange sweet smell, on cutting off the absurd images that wanted to crash into her brain to terrify her, but she couldn’t seem to. She couldn’t find anything solid, anything real, to latch on to. The fear danced through her. She yelled into the darkness, “Stop being like your father, stop it!” To her relief, the sound of her ow
n voice calmed her. She managed to clamp down on the panic. All she had to do was follow the straight line of the tape measure. It was metal, it couldn’t turn into a circle, for heaven’s sake. She’d follow it and end up somewhere, because there had to be a somewhere. Her heart slowed its mad hammering, her breathing became smoother. She leaned down and spread the map on the floor, held the flashlight close.
The only crazy thing here was the damned lying map. After all, the arch wasn’t where the map showed it to be. The arch, that was it, she’d gone through the wrong arch. Maybe, just beyond where she’d stopped looking, she would have found the arch the map showed and crawled into the right chamber. Or maybe the map was a trap.
But the fresh air, where was it coming from?
Where was a damned wall?
Ruth felt her head begin to pound, felt saliva fill her dry mouth, felt a scream bursting from deep in her gut. She knew in that instant she was going to die. She stood up, weaved a bit, and listened for the noise. She wanted that noise. She would go toward it; there had to be something alive, and she wanted to find it. It wasn’t a huge serpent—no, that was ridiculous. Oh God, her head was going to explode. The pain nearly sent her to her knees. She grabbed her head with her hands. Her fingers sank into her head, into her brain, mixed with the gray matter, and it was sticky and pulsing, and she screamed. The screams didn’t stop, just kept spurting out of her, louder and louder, echoing back into her head, through her wet brains oozing between her fingers. It took all her strength to pull her fingers out of her head, but they felt wet and she frantically rubbed them on her jeans, trying to wipe them clean, but they wouldn’t come clean. She was crying, screams blocking her throat, then bursting out, so loud, filling the silence. Please, God, she didn’t want to die. She started to run, stumbling, falling, but she scrambled up again, didn’t care if she slammed into a wall. She wanted to hit a wall.
But there weren’t any walls.
CHAPTER 2
HOOTER’S MOTEL
PUMIS CITY, MARYLAND
EARLY SATURDAY MORNING
WHO WERE THESE people? Moses Grace and Claudia—those were the exact names signed on Pinky’s kidnap note, the same as on the motel registry. Why would kidnappers advertise? They must have made up the names, Savich thought. Moses Grace and Claudia, whoever they were, didn’t know the cops were there, waiting for them to come out.
Savich was so tired he could feel his thoughts falling out of his brain before he could quite finish with them. Only the bone-freezing bite of the swirling wind straight from the Arctic kept him from falling asleep. His feet were getting numb, and he stamped them hard. They’d been there since eleven o’clock. It was now nearly three on Saturday morning, and they were unable to hunker over their portable stove because Moses Grace and Claudia might see the light. They were hidden in the trees across from Hooter’s Motel, out in the boonies of western Maryland.
Why this Moses Grace character had picked Pinky Womack to take was another puzzle. Pinky was a middle-aged part-time comedian at the Bonhomie Club who could spout thirty lame jokes in ten minutes if you let him. He didn’t have much money of his own, and his only family was a single brother who had less than he did. He was unusual at the Bonhomie Club because he was one of Ms. Lilly’s token whites. He’d been gone a day before his brother, Cluny Womack, found the note duct-taped to Pinky’s kitchen counter. Hey, Savich, we got Pinky. We’ll be seeing you. And it was signed Moses Grace and Claudia. The handwriting was a young girl’s, all loopy, the i’s dotted with little hearts.
It was written specifically to him. Moses Grace and Claudia knew not only who he was but also that he performed at the Bonhomie Club, and they knew Pinky. What did they want?
They were stymied until one of Agent Ruth Warnecki’s informants, who called himself Rolly, had called on Ruth’s cell phone that evening. Since Ruth was out of town, he was forwarded to Agent Connie Ashley. Rolly was a street person, really quite insane, but he’d given her the real juice more than once. Ruth called him her psycho snitch because his information always came for the price of a pint of warm blood, O negative. Ruth had a deal with a buddy at the local blood bank to give her expired pints of O negative when she needed them.
Rolly told Connie how he’d been testing this new dark brew from Slovenia, or some such weird-ass place, rumored to have a nip of blood mixed in it, but he couldn’t taste it, and, he’d added as an afterthought, he was standing on the east side of a 24/7 on Webster Street, N.E., when he overheard this old man and a girl shootin’ the breeze not six feet away from him about how they’d scuttled old Pinky right out of his apartment as he was watching reruns of Miami Vice on cable.
Rolly said the guy sounded like an ancient old buzzard—Rolly had been too afraid to try to get a look at him—but he sounded like he was on the brink of death, coughing like he was going to puke out his lungs. The old guy called the girl Claudia and cutie and sweetheart. She spoke all jivey, sounded Lolita-young, jailbait, like ripe fruit hanging off a low branch.
Rolly knew to his pointed canines that both of them were worse than badass bad, and they’d talked about hauling Pinky to Hooter’s Motel in Maryland, and they’d laughed about Agent Dillon Savich and his Keystone Kops braying around like three-legged jackasses. Rolly didn’t know why they’d picked a boob motel in the sticks of western Maryland. Claudia had laughed and said, “Well, Moses Grace, I’m goin’ to butter Pinky up and stick him in a big toaster if the cops show their face.” Why did she call him by his full name?
When Connie offered him another pint of blood, Rolly remembered they had talked briefly about taking Pinky out of the motel before dawn on Saturday, but they didn’t say where to. Mostly they laughed a lot, weird crazy-like laughter. Even Rolly had shuddered as he said that to Connie.
It could be a setup. Maybe. Probably. But the FBI and the local cops were there because they had no other leads. They only knew Savich was at the center of it. On short notice they’d set up this elaborate operation—too elaborate, too complicated, Savich thought. And so they waited on a brutally cold winter night for Moses Grace and Claudia to leave their room dragging poor Pinky with them, FBI sharpshooters at the ready.
Savich rubbed his hands over his arms, then raised his night-vision scope toward room 212, the last room on the second level of Hooter’s Motel. Moses Grace’s old Chevy van hunkered in the parking lot, so filthy they couldn’t make out the license plate.
Raymond Dykes, the owner of the motel, had told Savich the girl signed both their names, with the same loopy handwriting. He couldn’t describe her well since she never took off the oversized dark glasses that covered half her face, but she was white, real pale white, and he knew she was pretty, with all that blond hair, wild and blowy, and a blue fake fur over jeans and a top.
They’d come strutting into his lobby during the evening, he didn’t remember the exact time. Maybe eight or nine, even ten o’clock, who knew? They were carrying bags of McDonald’s takeout under their arms, and they told him they had a sick brother moaning in the back of the van. Mr. Dykes gave them aspirin for the brother. Moses Grace called him Pinky, a funny name, which was why he remembered it. He watched them haul Pinky and the Mc-Donald’s bags up the stairs between them to their room. He thought about the french fries and Big Mac and hoped Pinky wouldn’t puke in the room.
When Savich, along with Sherlock and agents Dane Carver and Connie Ashley, had met up with Chief Tumi and half a dozen of his deputies, and given them instructions, Moses Grace and Claudia were already ensconced in their room with Pinky. By 12:15 a.m., agents had evacuated the motel’s other three occupants.
At one a.m. Savich’s directional receiver crackled, and he heard Moses Grace say in an old scratchy voice, “We ain’t heard a single lame joke from the little loser, just look at him, sleeping like a baby.” Claudia, sounding like a teenager, added casually, “I could wake him up with a little kiss of my knife in his ear, you know, dig it in a little bit, rouse him real fast.” The old man laughed, a
nd then he wheezed and coughed, phlegm rumbling low in his chest, and then there was nothing more.
Savich looked down at his receiver, as if willing the unit to come to life, but there was only silence again.
He heard a couple of yawns, a snort or two in the minutes that followed. There were the sounds of sleep, but could he trust them? A lone light still shone at the window, but he saw no movement of any kind.
At three o’clock, Savich heard Moses Grace say clearly in his aged, juicy voice, “You know, Pinky, I’m thinking I’m gonna stick my fingernail through your left cheek, poke it in deep, twirl it around in your sinuses.” Nothing from Pinky, which meant, Savich hoped, that he was gagged.
Claudia giggled. “I wish we took your brother, too, Pinky. He’s like a cute fat little pig. I could stuff him in the ground and roast him, pretend we’re in Hawaii at a luau.” She giggled again.
They wouldn’t rush the motel room, not with just verbal threats. They had to wait, and Savich knew it was driving everyone nuts.
Agent Dane Carver whispered, “The old man sounds tired and sick. Claudia sounds hyper, talked so fast I could practically see spit flying out of her mouth. She’s young, Savich, real young. What’s she doing with that old man? What is she to him? They’re mad, no doubt in my mind, like Rolly told Connie.”
Savich nodded.
“Do you have any ideas yet who they might be, why this is all aimed at you?”
Savich could only shake his head. Mr. Dykes was the only one who’d seen them, and there hadn’t been time to work with their forensic artist, not that Savich was holding out much hope since Dykes’s descriptions were both too general and, frankly, lame. Surely he could have come up with something distinctive, if he’d tried. It made Savich uneasy, made him feel there was something wrong about Dykes. On the other hand, if everything went as planned, Savich would be seeing Moses Grace and Claudia for himself real soon now.
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