Cody stepped into my personal space, ignoring Janet. “We can’t let him tell us what to do. We need to counteract him.”
I stepped closer to him, our noses almost touching. “We are.” I kept looking at Cody but spoke to Janet. “How long till you have something?”
She pulled out her laptop. “Today.”
Cody took a few steps away, shaking his head.
My brain still racing with implications of just what the conductor knew about me, I led the group into the detached garage, which had been spared from the flames and in which sat Steph’s old Jeep. The keys were still in the unlocked vehicle’s ignition—of course they were, that beautiful girl.
I fired the engine.
12
SUNDAY, 1:20 A.M.
White gas was all Stephanie could remember.
A putrid mustiness filled her nostrils. She opened her eyes and blinked several times. Tried to wipe away the blurriness.But she couldn’t. Her hands were tied to a chair she was sitting in, and next to her—in chairs on either side facing the opposite direction—sat her daughters, motionless but breathing.
She yelled into a gag that she just realized was in her mouth. What was wrong with them? Why weren’t they waking up?
They’d been abducted.
Canisters of gas had been thrown into the basement where Cody had herded her and the girls. But then . . . nothing. She couldn’t remember what had happened next or who had brought them here.
Where was Cody? Where was Markus?
Stephanie screamed while shaking her chair, trying to find any loose restraint.
She was in a viewing room of sorts. In front of her, scratched-up glass looked into an adjacent chamber that was set lower than the floor at her feet, the walls streaked with black sludge. Under an auburn glow sat a leather chair fitted with shackles, which was the only object in the eerie interrogation room. And behind the chair, a stairway—from which a man was descending.
His face looked as though it had been dipped in hot white wax. His hood and coat clouded him in blackness. Staring at her silently, he smiled and stepped closer to the glass, pressing one finger to his lips. “Stop screaming, woman—chickpeas are fine.”
Stephanie could tell he could hear her but not see her through the two-way mirror, even though his eyes were peering almost directly into hers. She stilled herself, but another glance at her limp children produced another shout that cracked into a whimper. Then uncontrollable sobbing.
“Settle,” the white-faced man said. “Got the best pharmacologist around. They’ll awake rested and with plenty of questions about their dreams.” He took a slight bow. “I’m the conductor, and I have so much to tell you. You think a monster stands before you, but in reality there’s a different monster in your life.”
He meandered around the chamber room. “I know what you’re thinking. I know who you’re thinking.” He tilted his chin up. “But you would be wrong. Your monster is no cheating ex. Your monster’s closer than that. They always hide in plain sight. Let me demonstrate.”
The one who called himself the conductor whistled, and a man with cropped hair in a gray suit and blue tie descended the stairs into the chamber, shaking.
“Take a seat, Iseman.”
The man’s pleading eyes glanced at the chair, then back to the conductor.
“Come. Sit and let us tell Miss Stephanie and her chickpeas”—he tapped the window—“a story.”
Iseman proceeded to sit.
The conductor strapped him with restraints and stuffed a gag into his mouth.
“Please,” Iseman slurred.
The conductor turned to the two-way mirror. “Sitting before you is one of the wealthiest good old boys at Trenton University, Franklin Iseman. Grand opening, he’s there. Graduation, he’s there. Quote in the paper, yessir. If there’s so much as a crowd gathered around a hot dog stand, there stands Franklin. Visible. Likable.” He mimicked how a crooked politician might look sipping scotch with the boys. “Shaking hands and kissin’ babies!”
Stephanie was so confused. Why did this man raid her home and take her and her daughters? What was this about monsters and the man on the chair?
Iseman’s lips were trembling, his face turning nearly as white as the conductor’s.
“That’s the way it’s always been for Franklin: be enough places that people think you’re important, then take advantage of skewed perceptions. A fine living he’s made off this, yes indeed. But the problem with Franklin is, like fame, money is a drag.” The conductor motioned with his hands as though he were climbing a ladder. “He just . . . can’t . . . get enough. Making money off the innocent for years.”
Iseman protested, but his gag muffled his words.
“Unsurprisingly, he’s gone and decided to profit some more.” The conductor looked at the ground, then pointed forcibly at the glass. “Let me ask you, Stephanie.” He looked up. “What would you do if this man suffocated your daughters?” He turned back to Iseman. “You wouldn’t be able to forget it, anger boiling inside, year after year, never a release . . . until you finally popped from the pressure.” He tapped his head. “That’s how a person becomes me, you know—pressure. One day normal, and then the next thing you know, you’re lathered in makeup in an abandoned building with one person you want to kill and another you want to save.”
The man on the chair closed his eyes. Began to whimper.
Stephanie chewed at her gag, teeth clenched and grinding.
“A bit confusing, coming into this cold,” the conductor said. “I hunt monsters, okay? I hunt them and make them suffer.” He pressed his fingers together and shoved them against his temple. “Problem is, it takes a monster to do away with them. Get it? Do you get it? I can’t see your face, but I hear your thoughts, Stephanie. You’re thinking, ‘I didn’t ask for this; don’t hurt my girls; just let us go.’ So understand when I say that monsters left roaming will soon roam near you. And you have monsters roaming near you, Steph, so many monsters.”
The conductor once again approached the window separating him from her and the girls. “So, Miss Stephanie . . .” His playfully evil eyes churned her stomach. He glanced over his shoulder at Iseman. “The only way he’s leaving is if you and your girls don’t. Understand? He’ll do what it takes to live. But the choice doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to you. So, the monster or the children, Stephanie? I need to know you’re capable of making the right decision.”
Stephanie couldn’t breathe. Her shoulders, arms, fingers all were trembling.
“All you have to say is ‘him.’ Go ahead. I can hear you. Say the word, be rid of this monster, and you and your girls will be saved from your monster.” He pressed his ear to the glass. “Say it. Say ‘him.’”
Stephanie’s mind was locking up. She couldn’t let anything happen to her girls, and she couldn’t play executioner. She glanced right and left at her daughters. Still motionless, still breathing.
“Isabella and Tilly won’t see a thing,” he crooned. “Backs turned, still snoozing, sounds like. Last chance, Stephanie.”
The conductor’s smile faded. He sighed and stepped away from the window. Turned back to Iseman. “My, my, oh lucky day.” The conductor loosened the restraints on the man. “Putting you on scholarship at the expense of her own children. Bravo, Mr. Iseman. You, sir, have won the day.”
Iseman shook off the restraints, eyes manic and glued to the glass between him and Steph.
She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t let her daughters die.
The word kept pinging in her mind. Him. Him.
HIM.
Come on, you’re free. Attack him!
But Iseman did no such thing.
The conductor handed him a key. “Up the stairs, around the corner to the left. Make it gentle but quick.”
Sweat dripped down Stephanie’s face. Her breath caught in her throat. “No,” she whispered.
The conductor linked his fingers behind his back and turned to her again, confident enough to tur
n his back to Iseman, whom he spoke to over his shoulder. “Once you’re done, you’re free to go.”
Iseman stumbled off the chair, legs shaking, and headed toward the stairs.
The conductor put one hand on the mirror, as if offering condolences to a straggler begging at a door that had been bolted shut. “It wasn’t supposed to end this way.” He looked down with glazed eyes. “But I suppose . . . once touched by a monster, always a monster.”
“Stop it!” Stephanie screamed into the gag. From somewhere outside the observatory room, footsteps padded toward her and the girls. Iseman was coming.
She couldn’t let Iseman touch her girls. But with her back to the door, she couldn’t even face him once he entered. He could walk up to her and, right between her daughters, choke her from behind without ever making eye contact.
She watched the conductor. He seemed to know exactly where to look to stare directly into her eyes.
The door behind her rattled as Iseman inserted the key. The lock sprang free.
Oh Jesus, Father—help me!
“Please, get me untied,” Stephanie said over her shoulder. But the words were a muffled mess.
The door swung open and the man’s footsteps crept toward her.
“Your life for ours,” she garbled.
She could hear Iseman breathing, but nothing more.
She tried to turn her head to look him in the eyes, but her neck just didn’t go that far. “These are my babies, just babies.”
Hands gripped her neck.
“HIM!” Stephanie screamed, nearly throwing up.
She pushed off the ground with her legs, ramming the man backward as the chair slammed against the ground. One of her restraints loosened, and she yanked her arm in front of her face, ready to fend off another chokehold.
But Iseman pounced on her, straddling her head between his knees like a vise. He thrust his hands down awkwardly, trying to grip her neck.
Stephanie swung her free hand and connected with his temple, which loosened the grip his knees had on her head. She bit his leg and he cried out.
But it was unlike any cry she’d heard before.
It had started with the sort of bloodcurdling fierceness that Isabella might have shown had she stepped on a rusty nail. But near the cry’s apex, it had gone eerily silent, as if pure shock had suppressed the man’s vocal cords.
Franklin Iseman, muscles tensing, wheezed and looked at her with questioning eyes. He dropped on top of her but was suddenly thrown off by the conductor.
A knife was stuck in his back.
After setting Stephanie upright on her splintered chair and, upon her request, turning the girls around so as not to see Iseman’s bloodied body should they awaken, the conductor untied her gag and paced back and forth. He pressed his right foot on her chair, right between her knees, and leaned forward. “I’m going to ask you some questions and I want you to answer: What do you really know of Markus Haas? What do you feel when you’re around him?”
Stephanie didn’t hesitate. “A great man. Committed to making sure people like you never win.”
The conductor smiled. He connected his phone to a device and engaged a projection feature, which appeared like a television on the room’s wall. The picture that appeared was the photo the Trenton Telegraph had used after Markus had broken up a sex slave operation right under the university’s nose.
“That sounds like a fine, fine man. The kind women look for,” the conductor said. “Marriage material. But then you’ve gone that route before.” The conductor tapped his phone to his chin. “What was his name?”
Stephanie’s eyes darted to the ground. She could feel the conductor staring at her, so she glanced up.
The conductor was extending his open palms to Isabella and Tilly. “The father of these beauts—surely you remember his name.”
“Declan,” she muttered.
“Just Declan?”
“Declan Ross.”
“Ross, that’s right. MBA. Sharp as a razor. The kind of man your littles couldn’t wait to throw their arms around.” He leaned toward Isabella as if inspecting her eyelids.
Stephanie felt as though her skin could rip open at any moment from the violent tremors tearing through her bloodstream. “Leave them alone.”
He flicked his wrist. “Just seeing which one has more of Daddy in them—eyes, nose, et cetera.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Just stop it.”
“Six years is a long time to be married to someone you don’t know. I would have thought a strong woman like you would have, how should I say this, adjusted your dating criteria after Decky.”
“What are you talking about?”
The conductor gazed at the image of Markus on the wall. “He’s a fascinating one, so dedicated to his craft, top one percent in every category—a mental and physical specimen!” He folded his arms and leaned back, pursing his lips. “But then . . . why? Why work at the bottom rung, this great man? Why not climb the ranks of elite world protectors? Why remain unrecognized and disrespected amongst colleagues and superiors when the world of law enforcement should be his oyster? Something’s held Markus back, something dark and hidden. I am drawn to such darkness, Stephanie.”
“If that’s what you think, you don’t know him at all.”
The conductor stepped over Iseman’s body toward the projected image of Markus, reaching out to touch the wall. “Eyes of a dark soul trying to show it’s capable of light.”
She leaned forward. “You manipulative lunatic, hiding behind your mask, you don’t know anything.”
The conductor spun around and showed a bit of a smile. “Tell me, Miss Stephanie—”
“Don’t call me that.”
He kicked his foot back onto her chair, between her knees. “You forget so easily,” he said, glancing at Isabella and Tilly, “where you are and who I am.” He pressed his face down to hers, breathing hot breath onto her cheek.
She looked straight ahead, breathing hard, unwilling to meet his eyes. She needed to shut up, just shut up—her babies were in danger.
He pressed his lips into the corner of hers and pulled at her lower lip.
Her body shook.
“Miss Stephanie,” he said, an inch from her tearstained cheek. “Your makeup is smearing.”
He pulled away from her.
Stephanie choked back a sob.
The conductor clicked to another photo, this one of a house, early twentieth century, remodeled and beautiful—one of the original homes settlers built in Trenton. “Familiar? It’s the house in which your boyfriend made his mark, did something heroic, finally got noticed. How your heartbeat must’ve quickened when you learned this about Markus. Hand on your heart, radiant glow on your face, perhaps telling baby Tilly that you may have actually come across a true man, someone you could possibly love?”
He paced, motioning as if he’d stepped out of himself and into Stephanie. “The way he treats the girls, his dedication to being the best he can be.” He looked her directly in the eyes and let his jaw hang open. “Those good looks.” He winked. “So many boxes checked, it’s no wonder you said yes to coffee and a stroll by the bay. He’s just too good to be true.” He tapped his phone against his head. “Too good . . . to be true.”
He clicked the device. A photo flashed on the screen, a picture Stephanie didn’t recognize featuring a group of partying people she hadn’t seen before, save for one face on the far right of the photo: Eric Ward, the lynchpin behind the sex slave scandal that Markus had uncovered.
“Every graduation at Trenton, Mr. Ward invited the seniors’ best and brightest students to his lovely home to throw them a party they’d never forget. It was all well and good until your Haas stumbled upon what transpired in the deep, deep basement of that home. You know the story. Or, you know the story that’s been told. See, I’ve dug deeper into your Haasy. Limited information available, all told—almost suspiciously so—but after what I’ve found, it makes sense why it was so well hidden.”
/>
The conductor’s lips curved into a smile. He clicked the projector to reveal more of the photo—a person standing next to Ward, arm wrapped around his shoulders. “None other than Markus Haas,” he said with a deadpan voice. “Loves students, is loved by students, makes sense to attend graduations, yes?” He began flipping through photos, the only sound in the room the clicking from snapshot to snapshot.
The pictures showed Markus arriving at Ward’s mansion, not once, not twice, not a dozen or multiple dozens of times. And not just for Ward’s graduation bashes. Markus had been to that house hundreds of times, wearing uncharacteristic buttoned shirts and slacks in every photo—his 4Runner pulling into the driveway, him walking to the door, giving a courtesy knock before entering.
Photos snapped from afar showed him dining, laughing, and partying. Women hung off his arms as he drank and guffawed.
Stephanie’s brows furrowed. What felt like a life force broke away from her heart and rode a thin breath out of her mouth.
“The dagger to any woman’s soul.” The conductor clicked to the next set of photos. They showed Markus escaping upstairs, sometimes with one woman, sometimes two. Then leaving the property, always as if nothing had ever happened.
The conductor killed the projector and turned Stephanie’s chair so that she could no longer look at him. “You’ll have to excuse me. I have a meeting to get to.”
Stephanie’s heavy breathing filled the room.
The images flashed before her like firecrackers: Women hanging off him. Drinking. Disappearing to some suite upstairs. She bared her teeth.
And cried.
“Here.” The conductor tossed a white rag onto her lap.
It was smeared with his black-and-white makeup.
The chirping of crickets filled the night as the conductor stepped into Trenton University’s oldest and largest piece of art, which edged the evergreen-rich hilly terrain backing the campus. He appreciated art almost as much as it appreciated him. Whereas paintings, drawings, and sculptures used to be considered a luxury, the first budget cut in tight times, the day was coming when people would see that creators ruled the world and breathed life into the ordinary and mundane.
The String Page 11