by Chuck Hogan
"Tracy?" Maddox whipped his aching head around, trying to see as much of the downstairs as he could. "Trace!"
Ripsbaugh said, "It's good here, where you live. Isolated enough. The rain outside eats up your voice."
"Tracy!" Maddox uttered the word with force and panic. He flexed his arms and legs against the cutting rope. "What have you done?"
Ripsbaugh walked around behind him, gripping the chair, tipping it back. The rear legs gouged the wood floor like claw marks as Ripsbaugh dragged the chair down the hallway with Maddox in it.
Maddox struggled ferociously, the ropes giving a little nowhis angled weight putting stress on the chair.
Ripsbaugh stopped and turned the chair around before the closed bathroom door.
Maddox felt a new wiggle in the back splats, more give in the dowels. He was struggling to exploit these weaknesses as Ripsbaugh opened the bathroom door and wheeled out a large machine: the very same video diagnostic system Maddox had seen him use at Wanda's.
The motor was quiet, the spindle still. The red snake cable trailed off with the thinner silver wire coiled around its length, disappearing into his open toilet.
At first, Maddox did not understand.
The three-by-three view screen on the control console showed vague patches of night-vision green against a blur of black. Maddox strained against the ropes to lean closer, to see better.
Something was there. Visible only in contrast. Barely moving.
A head, shoulders, half a chest. Light-colored hair against a darker T-shirt. In water up to her midsection.
The green on the screen. Tracy. Arms raised out of the septic tank water, her eyes wide and glowing, lips moving, calling out.
Maddox could not believe it. His mind would not accept it, any of this. Not the hazy image on the screen. Not Ripsbaugh standing in his house wearing Sinclair's clothes.
"The smell will be long gone before anyone thinks to come around looking," said Ripsbaugh. "The rain is already smoothing out the dig marks in your yard."
Dig marks.
No.
Impossible.
In Sinclair's cut-and-stitched sneakers, Ripsbaugh walked to the open toilet. He flushed it, holding down the handle with his inhuman fingers until the bowl emptied.
The snake twitched as the rush of the water tugged on it.
On the display screen, the camera view trembled. Maddox could do nothing but watch.
Water splattered forth. Glowing green, it vomited from the mouth of the pipe, spraying Tracy's face.
She covered her nose and mouth and her eyes glowed wide as she screamed into the darkness.
Maddox heard a muffled cry, as from someone calling out from miles beneath the ground.
"There's air, but it's bad air, and going fast. No light. She doesn't know where she is."
"Get her out!" The chair shook beneath him, Maddox pushing with every muscle, eyes locked on Tracy on the screen. "Get her out! She has nothing to do with this!"
Tracy's hands stayed up near her muck-streaked face, eyes wild. Her screaming was so far away.
"You want to save her," said Ripsbaugh, turning on the sink, full power. "To deliver her from that place, from that pain." He ran water in the tub, opening the drain. "If only you could."
More water flowing past the camera, obscuring the view.
"That is why I am showing you this, Don." He walked away, back down the hall, to the kitchen. "Now you understand." Maddox heard him open the sink tap. "Now you know what I go through."
Maddox was underneath that bridge in Haverhill again. Standing over Casey's naked corpse, knowing it should be him lying there and not her. Knowing that no amount of vengeance would ever be enough, and going a little crazy inside.
Ripsbaugh returned. "They'll find her truck pulled over on one of the hill roads. Keys inside, though not your garage door opener. Thousands of young women disappear every year. They'll come here, they'll search your house with lasers and filtered vacuums. They'll search it good, the residence of a missing state trooper. But they'll never think to search the septic tank." Ripsbaugh brought his glabrous face close, so close that a few strands of wig hair brushed against Maddox's cheek before Maddox could jerk away. "They won't ever find her."
Maddox rocked the chair with everything he had. "Kill me, get it over with," he said. "But let her go!"
Ripsbaugh watched him struggle. "One problem with that, Don. With killing you. Sinclair's next murder will be his third. Do you know what that means?"
Maddox swelled his chest, pushing against the seat. He felt some separation in the wood beneath him. Or imagined he did.
"Three victims, that meets the FBI criteria for a serial killer. And I sure don't want the FBI here."
Maddox could bend his elbows a bit, giving him more leverage.
"So you're going to have to disappear. Sinclair will be suspected, of course. They'll find this kitchen chair pulled out from the table. Abrasions in its sides, some rope fibers. Rounds from your gun lodged in the wall and ceiling upstairs. Sinclair was in your house tonight. But, as with the girl, your disappearance will remain a mystery."
Ripsbaugh stepped into the parlor, pinching a bit of sleeve with his coated fingers and rubbing the fabric against the corner of the divan. Another Sinclair transfer.
"Sinclair's legend will only grow. Because he is going to disappear tonight with you. His work here is done. But Sinclair will live on, longer than you or even I, haunting the woods around Black Falls. A town needs a good bogeyman. Fear is like religion that way. It galvanizes a community. Makes them care. Black Falls is already coming back to life. You feel it, can't you?"
Maddox had earned just enough rope slack to lean forward onto the balls of his feet, tipping up the back legs. With all that he had, he rocked back down, driving the chair legs into the floor.
A good blow, but not enough. There was no crack, though his feet were looser, allowing him even more leverage. He rocked violently side to side, trying it again.
This time, the rope shifted, still holding him fast, but giving him a few more precious centimeters with which to work.
Ripsbaugh watched dispassionately. "If I've gone on too long, it's only because, as I said, Don, I always liked you." He looked at his smooth hands again, as though awaiting their command. "I always liked you."
Maddox sprang up with all his might, driving his hips down and hearing wood crack as a splat fractured behind his lower back, one of the legs on the left side giving way.
Maddox was on the floor. On his side, still lashed to the broken chair. But loose inside the ropes.
Ripsbaugh did not move at first. Maddox had no time to be shocked, kicking free of the splintered front legs, squirming with his hands still bound behind his back.
When Ripsbaugh did finally reach out to stop him, Maddox flailed, jabbing at Ripsbaugh's knee with a loose foot, kicking him back. Maddox writhed madly, his wrists getting looser, his knees pulling free.
He felt a new tension pulling on his waist. Ripsbaugh had taken up one end of the rope. He fashioned a loop with it and came at Maddox, meaning to slip the noose around his neck.
Maddox, helpless against a strangling, dug in with his heels and spun himself around, keeping his head away from Ripsbaugh, swinging another kick at his legs.
Ripsbaugh looped Maddox's foot, catching it. The broken chair back scraped against the floor as Ripsbaugh pulled the rope hand over hand, reeling Maddox in. His smooth, blank fingers.
Maddox went limp a moment, tempting Ripsbaugh with slack. Ripsbaugh took the bait, yanking back on the line, looking to bring Maddox close enough to fall on him with the rope and finish him.
But Maddox jerked as Ripsbaugh hauled, the line pulling taut, the rope ripping right through Ripsbaugh's fingers. Ripsbaugh let go, but not fast enough.
Ripsbaugh brought his hands up in front of his face as though they had been burned. Strips of shielding latex hung like layers of dead skin, baring his fingers beneath.
Mad
dox dug into the floor with his heels. He scraped away on his back, down the hall, away from Ripsbaugh. He knocked over the shovel by the kitchen counter and dragged it along with him, the ropes pulling looser with every movement.
Maddox got to one knee. Both wrists were free of their knots, his arms still tangled in the rope and chair behind his back. He shrugged one arm loose and used that to start on his legs. In the kitchen to his right, the sink was running.
Ripsbaugh remained at the other end of the hall, doing something with his exposed hands.
Maddox worked maniacally, shredding skin off own his fingertips as he stripped away the last of the rope and the chair. He picked up the shovel with the intention of running down the hall and braining Ripsbaugh with it, but the angry crack of a handgun froze him.
Ripsbaugh held Maddox's revolver in his peeling hands, having fired it into the floor. He raised the smoking barrel now, leveling it at Maddox.
"All right," said Ripsbaugh. "That's about enough."
61
RIPSBAUGH
PULLED FROM THE BACK of his waistband, the revolver felt cold against the bare parts of Ripsbaugh's fingers. He could almost feel his skin oils adhering to the wood grip. He had to be so careful now.
Maddox stood at the other end of the hallway, wild with desperation.
Ripsbaugh had to remain clearheaded. This was a critical time. This was where killers made their mistakesin haste. In going off plan. Part of him was exposed, but he still had control of the scene.
He had the gun. He was okay. Nothing had gotten away from him yet.
"Put down the shovel."
Ripsbaugh didn't want to be too close for the kill shot, if it came to that. He wanted the round to lodge inside Maddox and not kick out. Not get lost in a wall somewhere with Maddox's DNA on it.
Maddox was doing something to the fingers of his hand. He was picking at the tips. A few drops of blood fell to the wood floor.
"That's for the FBI," said Maddox. He flicked tiny droplets into the kitchen. Up at the ceiling. He smeared some on the handle of Ripsbaugh's shovel. "Now what? What's this do to your master plan?"
Ripsbaugh knew that, even if he could find and clean every drop, there were chemicals that brought up old bloodstains. "Now that there's blood evidence, what's to stop me from shooting you?"
The plan had been to march Maddox through the woods behind his house to the top of the falls. Let the force of the water dispose of him without a trace. Then throw Sinclair's clothes in after him, the wig, the pagereverything. Flush the evidence. Flush Maddox and Sinclair. Leave nothing linking either of them to Ripsbaugh.
But, as with Frond and Pail, things wouldn't go exactly as planned.
All Maddox was doing here was making more work for him. Ripsbaugh didn't look forward to shouldering his dead weight all the way to the falls. But hard work was hard work. And he had found that killingdoing it rightwas just about the hardest work there was.
The arteries of the chest. Same place he did Sinclair. Plenty of muscle to catch the round.
"It's for Val I do this," he said.
But Maddox dropped the shovel and darted fast into the cross hallway, the shot missing him. Ripsbaugh put another quick round into the intervening wall, tracking Maddox about shoulder high. Then he cut through the sitting room, beating Maddox to the front door.
Maddox wasn't there. Instead Ripsbaugh heard footsteps pounding up the stairs.
He was going to the bedrooms to hide. He was trapped and running scared.
Ripsbaugh started up after him, coming to the top in darkness. He had to be very careful not to leave anything of himself behind. Only Sinclair. That was of supreme importance now.
One door was open in the hallway. He heard bumping inside, and it occurred to him that Maddox might have another gun in the house.
Ripsbaugh peered through the doorway into the stripped-down master bedroom. The far window had been pushed open, screen and all, letting in the rain.
Ripsbaugh rushed to it. He thrust his gun hand out the window to cut Maddox down. Below was the steep roof over the kitchen, runoff coursing down the shingles to the deck below.
Maddox was not there.
Ripsbaugh realized his mistake too late.
He was pulling back into the room when the blow came from behind, shoving him halfway out the window. His hip struck the sill hard, his feet leaving the floor, the heel of his gun hand coming down heavily against the wet shingles.
Amazed he had not tumbled right out, he looked back and saw his free hand gripping the side of the window frame. The bare patches of his fingers pressed against the smooth wooddirty oils sizzling his mark onto the painted surface.
Another body blow, so hard that the sill cracked beneath him, and his hand released the frame. The elbow of his gun arm was wedged beneath him against the shingles. His legs remained inside the house, kicking blindly, hitting nothing.
He twisted, trying to get the gun free of his own weight. Trying to aim the muzzle behind him. One shot was all he needed to push Maddox back. One bullet was all he had left.
He was half turned when the third blow came, upending him, shoving him through.
Tumbling down the roof, Ripsbaugh swung his arm around, firing wildly at the window.
Crack.
Not even close. Ripsbaugh let go of the gun to try and stop his fall. The rough shingles shredded more latex off his hands, everything coming apart now.
A rattling sound. The gutter.
He was off the roof. Twisting, falling.
It was hard, hard work. Maybe the hardest.
62
MADDOX
MADDOX RACED OUT of his mother's bedroom, the hallway listing like a ship in a storm. He grabbed the handrail and tripped down the stairs. If his choice was to finish off Ripsbaugh or save Tracy, then there really was no choice at all.
Rain thumped the spongy grass. Beneath his feet, he heard her screaming.
"Tracy!" he yelled, lowering his shoulder and hitting an ornate stone pedestal planter like a linebacker. It shifted off its base and fell, Maddox sprawling over it, then getting up and seeing the exposed tank cap, a concrete slab split into two half circles.
Maddox got good purchase around Ripsbaugh's dig marks. He pried up one half of the heavy slab with his bloodied fingers, sliding it aside.
The stench, the aching screams. It was like uncapping a tunnel to hell.
Maddox had no flashlight. He yelled her name, but she could not hear him over her own screaming. The white PVC outlet pipe was disgorging water, the camera end of the snake sticking out of the downspout like a lizard's tongue.
He pried off the other half of the cap, her head coming fully into view. Her upturned face, muck-streaked and fright-wild, finding light.
"Donny?" she shrieked. "Donny!"
The water was up to her chin. Maddox lay out on his chest, his face in the stench. Reaching down to her. Her slimy hands grasped his, but she slipped away before he could haul her up. He tried again, but could not hold the grip.
The stench gagged him and he lifted his head out, looking around the yard for something, anything. He wished he had taken the nylon rope with him.
He yelled down, "I need something to pull you out with!"
"Don't leave me!"
"I won't! I'm not! I'm coming right back! You hear me?"
"Where am I? What's happening?"
She was drowning in filth. He had to tear himself away. He jumped up.
"Donny!"
He sprinted around the house toward the driveway, praying he had left the garage door open.
63
TRACY
TRACY SCREAMED AT the open mouth that screamed rain. The mouth of the monster.
Her throat was so raw from puking and screaming that she had no sense of taste anymore, no smell, the ungodly stench having burned out her mouth and nose. Breathing this foulness was like eating it, taking it into her body. The belly acid of the beast that had swallowed her.
It grew darker above. A shadow falling. Her hope rose.
"Donny!"
No.
Someone else standing over the hole. Looking down. His face in shadow.