"Carla wouldn't listen. She said it would bring him back here. She might have been right, for all I know."
"She might have hurt herself out there in the woods."
She turned to look out the opaque door glass. "It's not that late yet."
Sully shook his head, but Janice didn't see. He patted the sofa. "Come sit with me. I don't like any of this."
Janice did as she was asked. "Did you look over the clippings Carla saved?"
"Yeah. They sounded like he could have done them. They were his M.O., as they say. He's been busy. Three homicides in six weeks."
"What did she think she could accomplish going into the woods to look for him?"
Sully polished off the whiskey in his tumbler, grimaced at the strong taste. His stomach was empty. Drinking was making him queasy. Maybe he could warm supper, invite Janice to share it. "She intends to kill him."
"With what? She's just a kid. Up against him she's like tissue paper in a tornado."
"She had...a few weapons she took with her this morning."
A puzzled frown punctuated Janice's unlined face. "What weapons, Sully? The gun didn't get either one of you anywhere."
"She had a crossbow. And an axe. A sling..." His voice trailed off at how ridiculous the words sounded when it was remembered Carla meant to use the weapons against a man like Martin Lansing.
"You are kidding me." Janice turned his face to her by catching his stubbled chin and swiveling him around to look into her eyes. "Aren't you?"
Sully's eyes hooded and he could not raise his gaze to meet hers. His hands closed over her fingers. "I thought it was harmless. She was so determined, I thought..."
Janice sighed tiredly, and then sipped from her glass. "If he's out there like Carla thinks, she doesn't have a 'coon's chance of coming back to this house alive. Have you faced that yet, Sully? Did both of you forget about the night Mike died? Did you forget the way Lansing killed your Frannie?"
"I didn't forget. Carla thought she was right. She's strong, Janice, and she's smart. She may have more chance than we think. At least, pray God, I hope she does."
"Are you calling in the sheriff?"
"Not yet. We should wait. You know how I hate that son of a bitch. Besides, she might be lost in the woods. She went into the marsh, way over north. She might be having trouble finding her way out if she stayed past sundown. I don't see what good it would do right now to call in our illustrious law enforcement."
Janice set her glass next to Sully's and took his hand. She stood, pulling him to his feet. "I bet you didn't eat. I saw the cloth covering the table. Let's go. That whiskey could burn a hole through your gut."
Sully hugged her to him. Over her shoulder he stared at the French doors. He swallowed noisily and let Janice lead him by the hand to the kitchen. He doubted he could eat. The thought of food conjured an image of rocks, hard and tasteless stuff that would sit in his mouth until he spit them out.
Carla where are you?
CHAPTER 3
Sully dozed throughout the night, Janice at his side on the sofa. He woke feeling washed out and achy, a cramp in the middle of his shoulders. Janice woke at his touch, jumping slightly, her eyes snapping open wide with question. "What time is it?" she asked, yawning once she recognized Sully.
He looked at his watch. "It's eight-thirty." He stood from the sofa, stretching the muscles in his neck and back as he walked to the glass doors to look at the sunny morning illuminating his lawn, the woods thrown into relief behind it. "She didn't come back," he remarked, knowing the observation was redundant. He went through all the rooms turning off the lights. At the kitchen he went to the back door and unlocked it. He stood at the screen door, his hands braced on the frame. Janice came up behind him and encircled his waist with her arms.
"Sully, it's serious now. You need to call in help."
Sully went to the sink to run water in an aluminum percolator for coffee. When he didn't answer Janice, she let herself out onto the back steps. He went to join her while the water heated.
She stepped to the lawn and moved forward. She had not gone far when she halted, and he saw her from the back, trembling. "What is it?" He came to her side.
She stood at the left edge of his huge garden. Immediately Sully saw something wrong. The chicken wire fence he had put up as precaution against small animals raiding his produce was down, smashed into the earth. He stepped nearer, his hand gesturing for Janice to stay back.
"What did that?" she asked. "It looks like a bear got in here."
Sully stepped gingerly over the downed fence, following the destructive path mowed through his vegetable rows. Lettuce and radishes were stomped flat and now wilting in the early sun. His bean trellises, so carefully set and tended, leaned every which way, some of them fallen completely over to crush a bed of asparagus just beginning to sprout.
"It must have been a damned bear to do this," Janice said from right behind him where she had followed. "Christ, Sully, I'm sorry. I know how much you've put into your garden."
As Sully's sad gaze roamed over the crazy demolished state of his hard work, it was snagged by a bright bit of cloth on the ground between rows. He went to the oddity, stooped, and poked at it with one finger.
"What did you find?" Janice asked, leaning over his shoulder to better see for herself.
"I don't know..."
He turned his head to the side to block the bright sun. The object, foreign to his garden, appeared to be a swatch of flannel shirting, tied to make a small bundle. From beneath it a white slip of paper showed from between clods of dirt. Sully lifted the tiny bundle and placed it in his left hand. The bottom felt slimy, sticky wet. He drew out the stained paper slip with his free hand, unfolded it, and to his growing horror read: "This won't be all she's missing if you try to follow us."
Janice, peering over him at the barely legible scrawled note, let out a little gasp. "Is that...? Could that be...from...?"
Sully, his hands palsied and shaking now, lowered the flannel-wrapped bundle to the ground, dropped the note, and began fumbling at the knot holding the cloth together at the top. When he folded back the two tie ends and saw the punctured, bloody remains of flesh soaking through the cloth, he stood abruptly and backed away, Janice having already turned in the row, hand over her mouth.
"The son of a bitch, the son of a bitch, the insane son of a bitch," Sully muttered. He stumbled to the house, grabbed the wall telephone extension in shaking hands, and dialed the county sheriff's office. "This is Sullivan Torrance. I want someone out here," he said haltingly to the dispatcher. Water boiled over onto the stove, hissing and spitting. "I want the sheriff out here now."
#
"Come on, Carla, we've got a long way to go." Lansing had all his camping paraphernalia stowed away in the duffel bag. He now hoisted his prisoner to her feet and started from the clearing in a northwest direction.
"Where are we going?" Carla ground out the words as she stumbled and hurried behind him to keep the rope binding her hands in front from cutting her wrists into half.
"I've got a place."
"More hideouts, more lean-tos?"
He laughed deep in his throat and did not lessen his pace through the underbrush. The rope length holding Carla fast was draped over one shoulder as he forced her along behind him. "Better than that," he said. "It's a place I use for resting when the cops get hot after me."
"Like when you killed that old couple the night we lost you and lately when you killed three other women?" After waiting for the answer that did not come, she changed her questioning's direction. "You lost a lot of blood from that eye." This she said with some satisfaction. "Don't you realize you'll probably get an infection, maybe gangrene? You go off to hide out, and you might die."
"Not me." He slogged steadily forward, leading her farther into the twilight-shadowed woodland. "But if I do, you'll be free, won't you?"
"Why haven't you killed me yet, Lansing? You know if I get a chance I'm going to kill you. And i
f I don't do it, the police are going to track us down and do it for me." She was having to walk too fast and her breath was coming out in ragged little puffs now. All he had given her to drink was a cup of thick black coffee full of floating grounds before breaking camp. "They will," she persisted. "They'll shoot you down like a rabid dog. So why?"
"We have our reasons."
"We? Who's we, Lansing?"
She thought she heard him giggle mysteriously, and it made her skin crawl. "You're a crazy motherfucker, Lansing. You aren't even a human being. Maybe you never were."
"You ever made it with someone who wasn't human, Carla? Huh? Where's your big talk now? You want to see what it's like to fuck a crazy man?"
Carla ducked her chin to her chest as if in this way she could stop the filthy words from coming into her ears. Blood drummed louder and louder until she couldn't hear him anymore. Sexual talk surprised and frightened her. Although he had stripped her naked and tied her to the bed the night of the kidnapping, Lansing had never actually touched her. His madness seemed to be of an asexual nature, as if he were a eunuch, a man whose concern was solely involved in torture and death dealing. That he so casually threatened her with rape now confused her.
She watched her feet staggering one boot after another over forest debris and kudzu vines. At least, she thought, they were leaving some kind of trail for Sully to follow. But it was impossible to glean from Lansing where they were headed. How far? Which direction? Where to? She could not believe he lived through the ordeal of having one of his eyeballs ripped from his head without keeling over from pain or shock. Yet, what she told him was true; he was not like other humans. Not only were his values and desires warped beyond all reason, but he did not respond to what should have been unbelievable pain the way a man would respond.
When she'd opened her fingers for him to see with his one good eye what she had done to him, he carefully scooped the mess from her palm, hit her with his left fist to knock her unconscious, and then... Did he howl like a man on fire? Or did he, as she imagined, quietly clean and bandage the empty socket to still the flow of blood? When she woke her hands and feet were tied, and Lansing sat over a fire heating canned chili in a tin skillet as if they were partners on a camping trip. He showed absolutely no emotion over the mutilation she had done to his eye. All through the night he seemed immune to what must have been terrible repercussions in his nervous system.
He left her alone, bound to a tree, gagged with a soiled handkerchief that made her want to vomit. He returned shortly, unrolled the bedroll, lay down, and slept peacefully until dawn. Though the bark of the pine tree she was tied to scraped at her back through the brown shirt, and though the ropes on her hands, feet, and around her middle chafed her skin when she tried to free herself, she was finally forced to relinquish hope of escape and fell into long dreams of bulging, bloody eyes, dripping sockets, and faces half drenched with scarlet.
"I hope they string you up and flay your hide when they catch you!" she yelled at his back as he pulled her through a waist-high tangle of blackberry briers that left minute thorns in her clothes and skin. "I hope they roast you alive."
"Carla, Carla." He said her name with false exasperation and yanked her onto a clearer path free of the brambles.
"Fuck you." She could talk dirty and tough, too, if that's what he wanted.
"Save your wind," he said, forging ahead. "It's a long way, Carla. It's not safe here."
Safe. Carla felt the urge to giggle as hysterically and maniacally as he had done earlier. He might drive her mad, infuse her with his own brand of insanity. But with him near, she could never think, even if she went crazy, that she would ever be safe.
CHAPTER 4
Sully did not, and had never, trusted the county sheriff, Eustus Banks, nor either one of his bumbling under-schooled deputies, Gordy Holcum and Deke Callman. He did not vote for Banks and had, in fact, campaigned against him.
Yet now he was reduced to showing the man the evidence he had found in the garden and hoping beyond hope something could be done for Carla before it was too late.
Banks sat on one of Sully's kitchen chairs, his wide buttocks overflowing and hanging off the edges. He kept Garrett snuff tucked in his bottom gum and carried a spit cup that was usually, as now, a Dixie paper cup stuffed with Kleenex, with him at all times as a portable spittoon. His brow was high, wide, and shiny, his eyes granite chips peeking out from roils of fat. His face was oafish and stupid looking.
He had not personally bungled the investigation of Martin Lansing four years earlier when Frannie was murdered, but his deputies had done so, and Sully still held him responsible. How could he live with himself after watching the case thrown out of court on a technicality that only hayseed fools would have perpetrated?
Gordy and Deke sat comfortably in the den questioning Janice while the sheriff sat with Sully in the kitchen. Banks spit a stream of brown-stained saliva into the Dixie cup and cleared his throat. "Guess we oughta get up a search team for 'em."
Sully held himself back from showing utter contempt. He wanted to hop to his feet and pound the table with his fists. He wanted to shout at this fat, indolent jerk that he was wasting precious time with his slow way of talking and his ponderous decisions.
"Well?" Sully pushed, "shouldn't you call some men, get them organized?"
Banks eyed him like a snake eying a sunning lizard. "That's what I'm gonna do, give me time. You sure this..." He pushed the malevolent flannel bundle on the table with his little finger extended. "...Is the girl's eye?"
Sully ran a hand over his face and fidgeted on the chair. Good Jesus, the son of a bitch was wasting time. "I can't be sure, can I? It's so goddamn bloody, it's hard to tell it is an eye. We can't even tell what color the eye was, but that wouldn't help anything. Carla and Lansing both have brown eyes."
Banks raised one brow. "You don't mean..."
"Look, you didn't even get a hint at how completely insane Lansing was when you had him in your jail before the trial? You don't think he's capable of leaving his own eye here to make me believe it was Carla's?"
"He's a bitter hickory nut, all right," Banks admitted. "Ordered tomato juice and fruit cocktail with his supper every night."
Sully wanted to snatch the old sheriff's shirtfront and shake him until he rattled. He tried to speak coolly, calmly.
"I showed you Carla's newspaper clippings. They cover three recent murders in the state of Georgia, and they're all stabbings with strips of skin sliced from the bodies. I think he did those killings. It's what he did to...to Frannie."
"Yeah, but you think this fella's nuts enough to tear out his own eye just to keep you from following him?"
"I don't know what I think. All I know is that we both agree it's a human eye and part of a lid." Sully knew one thing he could not think. He could not afford to think too closely about what was in the cloth on his table and whether it belonged to Carla. Pretty Carla, his little girl, the girl he had loved and raised to adulthood. If she had truly been harmed, he'd lose his mind. If that happened, he would be of no use in the search.
Banks spit again and rose sluggishly from the chair to motion his deputies to him. He held the Dixie cup in a fat, hairy fist.
"Gordy, you take the car and go back to the office. I want you to call in searchers. Radio Atlanta, tell 'em we need the loan of a helicopter and a fly-boy that can check out these woods. Tell 'em we need it today, before darkfall. You get that done, come on back out here." He waited for the young man to nod his assent before turning to the other deputy. "Okay, now, Deke, I want you to scare up some prime bloodhounds. Check with Harvey and Thomas, they got good trackers. Have 'em bring their dogs here, we're gonna need 'em. That done, you come back, too and don't forget to lock the office, you hear? We're gonna be out here maybe all night."
"What are you going to be doing, Sheriff?" Deke asked, squaring his shoulders and adjusting the gun holster at his waist with an air of self-importance.
"Me?" Banks spit
into the cup, wiped his lips with the back of a hand where it left a brown streak. "I'm gonna organize the men when they get here, that's what I'm gonna do. Now, git on and don't lollygag around asking dumb questions. There's a girl missing, might be wounded or..." He stopped himself.
Sully had walked to the back door while listening to the sheriff's instructions. His fists were balled until the knuckles showed white. Janice came up beside him and linked an arm through his. "Sully? This is all we could do," she whispered. "Carla has more chance this way."
"Yeah." Sully's gaze never shifted from the heavily wooded rear of his property. "I guess so. About as much chance as Mike and Frannie had."
Noon came and went, the sun's zenith scorching Sully's trampled garden and drying the water from the cement birdbath. By one o'clock ten men, all townspeople known to Sully, milled in the backyard waiting to be split into groups and given instructions. Morry Thomas stood at the woods' edge, his best two bloodhounds straining at the leash. They had been given Carla's scent from a set of clothes from the dirty laundry basket and the pillowcase she had slept on the night before she disappeared.
Sully heard the flutter-roar of helicopter propellers as the Atlanta policeman-on-loan swooped over the housetop and sped toward the wooded area.
"I wish I could go along." Janice crushed Sully's arm close to her side. "It's going to be awful to wait."
Sully looked into her gray eyes and kissed her on the lips lightly. "I hope it won't be that long. Do me a favor. Call Flap and tell him what's happened. He's going to be pissed he wasn't asked to help out. Tell him if I'm not back by dark, to come find us. We'll need him."
"Okay, I'll call as soon as you're gone."
Banks raised both arms for attention and the men quieted. "All right, I don't want any of you using those guns of yours unless you're forced to it and you've got a clear shot. And don't pull the trigger at every bush rattle, or you'll wind up blowing one another's asses to hell and gone. Use your walkie-talkies, call in and let the rest of us know if you sight him. Have y'all seen the pictures we passed around of Lansing and the girl?"
CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set Page 37