by Lisa Jackson
As the actors were moved from one shooting site to the next and the cameras were rearranged, Maddie, the diet soda swinging from her fingers, sought out Teej again. Once more, Bianca was left on her own. She thought about calling Jeremy to come get her, but she wasn’t ready to go home yet, and besides, the deal was that everyone was supposed to stay until the shoot was over for the night.
So she hung in the periphery, saw Carlton Jeffe and Ivor Hicks and a few other Big Foot Believers and wondered how she’d fallen out of favor so quickly. Not that long ago Barclay Sphinx had been interviewing her, talking up her story at the Big Foot Believers meeting. And what had happened to all that talk about a trailer and setting up a reward for helping locate Destiny Rose Montclaire’s killer? Was that still on the table? She didn’t know because she was out of the loop and Lara, now in only a bra and short skirt as she stood near the open door of Austin’s BMW, was Barclay’s latest discovery.
Bianca couldn’t help but feel a little like a girl out in the cold, her nose pressed to the window of a home where a birthday party was in full swing, a celebration from which she’d been excluded or, more likely, recently uninvited.
Wah, wah, she chided. Get over your bad self.
“Okay, everyone . . . back up. We need a little more room here,” Mel said to the crowd.
The action started up again, and Bianca inched farther into the shadows, her attention focused on Austin’s car and Lara overacting all over the place. Bianca couldn’t stand it another second. Who cared if she was supposed to stay for the entire shoot? They were never going to ask her to be a part of any of the scenes. She’d been here over three hours, and not once had anyone in production spoken to her, except to tell her to stay out of the way. It was all just a big waste of time. She should just call Jeremy and go home, rest her ankle and figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life, which, obviously, wasn’t going to be a part of Big Foot Territory: Montana!
She started for the main gate and reached into her pocket automatically. Of course it wasn’t there. Great. Now what? She either had to borrow a phone from someone here or wait for a ride. She started to turn back to the set when she heard the first twig snap.
Craaack!
Glancing over her shoulder, she searched the darkness.
No one.
Nothing.
You’re being a moron, she told herself, but felt a movement, a disturbance in the air, an undercurrent that caused her heart to still.
That was crazy, though, right?
She was still inside the gate.
Another sound—the shuffle of stealthy footsteps?
Fear sizzled through her bloodstream, a very primal wariness.
One more look over her shoulder and she saw only the darkened forest surrounding the lane where cars were parked haphazardly. Nothing to worry about—
She started to look over her shoulder just as something cold and hard was pressed against the side of her neck. A gun? A gun with teeth?
“Don’t move,” a low male voice ordered, a voice she thought she recognized.
“What?”
Zaaaap!
Pain ripped through her body.
Her scream was a mere gurgle in her throat.
Thousands of volts sizzled through her body. Needles of pain. She jerked. Her legs gave way. She fell, hard, the ground rushing up, her head clunking, dust flying into her mouth, her cheek twitching against the gravel.
What, what, what? She thought around the agony of having no control as her muscles spasmed, her eyes out of focus. Pain ricocheted through her and she tried to think, to see, to scream, but could do nothing.
“I told you not to move, Bianca. Jesus, you’re a fuckin’ bitch.”
She knew that voice. She was sure. But her brain was scrambled, her entire body disconnected. She tried to rise from the ground but couldn’t control the violent spasms running through her limbs.
What was happening?
Who was doing this?
Why, oh, God, why?
Her assailant, huge and shadowed, grabbed her with strong, meaty hands and dragged her twitching body along the hard earth.
No, oh, please no! Scraped and battered, pain shrieking through her limbs, agony ripping through her brain, she was hauled into the darkness. Her thoughts were scattered, the world spinning, and suddenly everything went black.
CHAPTER 32
“I need a cigarette,” Preston Tufts said when Alvarez slipped into the second interrogation room.
“Sorry.” She wasn’t going to play nicey-nice. Not tonight. So he was having a few cravings, a need for a hit of nicotine. Fine. Let him itch for a smoke. “No can do. Not in here. But you can have one later, when we’re done.”
“And when will that be?”
“Depends on you, I guess. When you want to tell me the truth.”
“Hey, I haven’t lied. And I could really use a smoke.”
She acted as if she were considering the request. “What’s your brand again?”
“Excuse me?”
“Camels, right?”
He stared at her warily, as if wondering where she was going. “Maybe.”
“I’d say, ‘for sure,’” she countered. “And you know, that’s funny.”
“How?”
“Because we found the butt of a Camel cigarette not far from where we found your stepmother’s car. The pink classic T-Bird with the vanity plates.”
He swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on hers.
“It will be interesting to find out whose DNA is on that butt, a filter-tip by the way, like the kind you smoke. It’s with the lab now.”
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t respond and she noticed a trickle of sweat running from his brow. The room was a couple of degrees too warm by design. She’d wanted him uncomfortable.
She continued, her voice even, “Also, pretty soon we’ll find out whose fingerprints are on the steering wheel of her car and if there’s any DNA, you know from sweat on the ape suit we found in the trunk.”
He froze.
She smiled.
“God, it’s got to be hot running in that thing in the middle of summer—and we’ll figure out who was wearing the ape suit . . . oh, excuse me, Big Foot costume. Got to be DNA in it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed for a second.
“Did you wear it?”
“I didn’t even know it was there!”
Another lie. She saw it in his eyes.
“You’d better be straight with me, Preston,” she warned him. “Because it will be pretty easy to link the person inside the suit to the murders and whoever chased Bianca Pescoli the night Destiny Rose Montclaire was found.”
“Wait a second! What does one thing have to do with the other?” he asked, and his eyes had rounded, a newfound fear evident. “I mean . . . Jesus.” His shoulders slumped. He bit his lower lip. “I think I need a lawyer.”
Damn!
She’d known it would come down to this, the lawyer request, of course, and she’d gotten more from him than she’d expected, but she’d hoped he’d open up. For now, the interview was over. “Okay, we’ll call one for you or if you don’t have one—”
He closed his eyes and dropped his face into his hands. “I am so fucked!” he said into his palms. “So damned fucked.”
She didn’t wait, but there, on the spot, with the cameras rolling, read him his rights, the Miranda warning. “Now, you’ll need to stay here until your lawyer arrives. But if there’s anything you want to tell me, I promise I’ll try to get a deal for you.”
He hesitated, then lifted his face. It was wet. Tears shined in his eyes. “I didn’t mean to kill her,” he said, and she froze in her chair. “I didn’t mean to kill Marjory, but she was banging my dad and he would find out, especially with all the DNA samples you took. My mom told me a long time ago that Dad . . . well, his sperm wasn’t viable, and that she’d gone to a sperm bank.” At her expression, he nodded, his lips pulling into a frown, the dam of silence t
hat he’d built suddenly broken, the flood waters of guilt rushing through.
“Yeah, how do you think that feels, huh?” Preston demanded. “Dad, he doesn’t even know. She did it behind his back, only told me because I had to go to the hospital, got in a car wreck and might need a transfusion, and she was afraid it would all come out. That somehow the blood type would show up wrong and . . . But it didn’t matter cuz he left her for Marjory. You know the end of that story, that she was originally Emmett’s girlfriend and so, once they were married, she and Emmett got back to it. And crap, she gets pregnant?
“How stupid is she?” He was unloading now, still fighting tears but seeming to want to unburden himself. Sniffing, he said, “It was an accident, really. Marjory and Dad had gotten into another one of their fights—rip roarers—and this time Emmett, he thinks he’s going to take Dad on. Which is just stupid, so I talk him down, say I’ll handle it and you know, talk some sense into Marjory.
“Like that was going to happen. Anyway, I met up with Marjory in town before she got to the hotel where she was going to stay after her fight with Dad. We drove around and stopped the car, up near Cougar Pass, and you know what? She not only doesn’t listen to me, she actually comes on to me. Like kissing me and touching me and . . . and I start to go for it, y’know?” He was staring at Alvarez, hoping she understood.
“Of course,” she forced out.
“I mean she’s hot and I’m always horny, and we start going at it. I mean, big time.”
“You had sex.”
“Yeah, yeah, in the car, and then, when it’s all over, she kind of freaks out, and not just a little bit, not like she feels a little guilty. Nuh-uh, she fuckin’ goes psycho on me and starts to try to kill me and screaming that I took advantage of her, that I raped her when she was all over me—all over me. She was, like, all of a sudden fuckin’ nuts!”
“So what did you do?”
“I tried to shut her up. That’s all.” His hands flew to the side of his head, palms out, as if he were trying, in his mind, to back away from an impossible situation. “When she comes at me, hitting me and trying to bite me, I just try to shut her up, y’know. So I put my hands around her neck and squeezed until she quit attacking me and . . . and I guess . . . I guess I didn’t stop. Not when I should have. I was kind of like in a different dimension, you know?”
She didn’t.
“It was like almost an out-of-body experience. And when it was over and I knew she was dead and the baby was dead too”—fresh tears erupted from his eyes—“I just panicked and thought, maybe I could leave her in the woods, somewhere close to Reservoir Point and . . . and maybe everyone would think that a Big Foot or whoever killed Destiny Rose had done it.” He let out a long, shuddering breath.
“What about Destiny Rose?”
“I don’t know. I had nothin’ to do with that. Nothin’, I swear!” He ran an arm under his nose and sniffed loudly.
“And the ape suit?”
“Shit. How the fuck did that get in there? I have no idea.” He looked at her so ingenuously she almost believed him. Almost.
“You didn’t kill Destiny Rose Montclaire?”
“No.”
“Or Lindsay Cronin?”
“For fuck’s sake, didn’t you hear me? I said no! I don’t know what happened to them.” He shoved the fingers of both hands through his hair. “For the love of Christ, Detective, can I please have a cigarette now? And would you call my fuckin’ lawyer?”
* * *
Where the hell were they taking her? Two men had abducted Bianca. She knew that now. They’d tied her hands quickly, stuffed a rag into her mouth so she couldn’t scream, then thrown her into the back of a pickup and driven wildly through the night, the huge truck bouncing and grinding over the old road at Reservoir Point to the country road where the engine had roared smoothly, the tires humming over smooth asphalt, hip-hop music blasting through the open windows.
This she only knew partially, as her rattled brain was trying to make sense of what had happened and regain control of her body again. But it had been impossible, and as she’d stared upward, seeing a wide night sky filled with thousands of twinkling stars and feeling the rush of the wind as the truck sped down the road, she could do nothing but wait and see what fate they had in store for her.
Nothing good. She realized that horrifying fact. She’d heard the thrill of excitement in their voices, felt the testosterone thrumming through them, pumping them up, pushing them into the caveman mentality of sheer brutality.
Think, Bianca. You have to get hold of yourself. You have to save yourself. No one knows where you are; no one will be looking for you. Jeremy will think you’ve gotten a ride with a friend or Michelle. Mom is at the hospital with the new baby. Santana’s staying with her. You’re on your own. For the rest of the night, these psychos will be able to do whatever they want to you.
Unless you fight back.
She wanted to give up. To fall into a million pieces and cry. To even beg for mercy, but she could tell, even in her current, jangled state, that whoever had taken her was psyched up, adrenaline running fast and hard through their veins, maybe helped along with drugs . . .
At that thought, she knew what she was up against.
She knew who had abducted her, and a cold as icy as the frigid North settled in her gut.
It all came together. In her jolted, jerking state, she mentally ID’d the son of a bitch who had to be behind all of the attacks. She didn’t know why he was involved or how, but he was involved.
She hazarded a glance to the back window of the cab and saw the gun rack, in position, the long barrel of some kind of hunting rifle visible. So they were armed with more than a stupid stun gun.
With a jerk, the driver cut a quick corner, and the back tires spun on dust and gravel, throwing Bianca to the far side of the bed before the wheels caught hold again and the pickup nosed upward, gears grinding on some steep backwoods road. She tried to think, to reason things out. Why Tophman, the preacher’s son, and drug dealer to the football and baseball teams? Everyone in school knew that if you wanted to get high and needed anything from weed, to meth to ’roids, Tophman could set you up. He himself had bulked up by using steroids, and it was his private joke that his parents and coaches hadn’t figured it out. All of the other kids, Bianca included, never ratted him out. In Bianca’s case, she was a cop’s daughter, already the target of ridicule and suspicion, and besides, she didn’t care what the other kids did.
Now it had come full circle, and she was going to pay the ultimate price. Unless she did something and fast. The truck ground upward as she tried to figure out how to save herself. She twisted to her side, raised her head, and through the cab window saw a glow, the headlights spraying light against the trees.
Still she had no idea where she was, just somewhere deep in the wilderness of the Bitterroot Mountains.
Move, Bianca. Get moving. You don’t have much time, and if you want to save yourself . . .
Her hands were tied, but in front of her, rather than in back, and she’d already yanked out the filthy rag they’d used as a gag. She worked at the knots at her wrists, but her fingers were still disobeying, unable to loosen the heavy twine. Her legs were free, thank God, and slowly, far too slowly, she was regaining control of her limbs.
The pickup bucked and shook as it hit a big rock.
“Shit! Be careful!” Tophman yelled, his voice reaching Bianca from the open window of the cab.
“It ain’t as if this is the damned freeway,” another voice said. Kywin Bell. The driver. Oh, damn! Her mother’s number-one suspect in Destiny Rose’s murder. She tried to push herself upright. Her arms gave way and she fell against the floor of the bed, hitting her chin and probably splitting open the wound. Damn it all to hell.
She tried again. Her muscles tried to fold in on her, but she gritted her teeth and was able to hold up her weight for a few seconds. Now, if she could just find a weapon, or jump out of the truck without th
em seeing her...
But she couldn’t outrun them.
And she had no source of illumination, while they had flashlights. And the stun gun. And the rifle or shotgun or whatever. And probably more.
No, no, no . . . all she had on her side was the element of surprise.
The truck was slowing—they were reaching their destination, wherever it was. God help me. She felt around the bed of the truck. Empty. Except for the toolbox fastened behind the cab, right behind their heads. As they turned a corner, the truck leveling off, she forced her still-shuddering body to her knees and then, as quietly as possible, pushed the lid of the box open just wide enough for her hand to slip through and dig, quietly, across a shelf of flat tools until she felt the handle of what was probably a screwdriver. Just what she needed.
As Kywin braked, she withdrew the small tool and, with shaking fingers, hands still tied together, lifted it to the neck of her T shirt and forced it into her bra. Then, daring another raid in the box, she reached inside again and felt something flat and palm sized and . . . oh geez, was it one of those all in one tools, like a Swiss Army knife? Could she get that lucky? She slipped it out, saw it was just that and, using her fingers and teeth, pulled several of the deadly little blades from their sheath. Then she went to work on the twine, sawing wildly.
You can do this. You can! At least the feeling was back in her hands and feet, her muscles were beginning to obey her again.
But, she knew, she was fast running out of time.
* * *
Kip Bell had finally cracked. Given enough time alone, he’d come to his senses and decided he wanted a deal. But he’d demanded a lawyer and a promise of leniency, both of which had been granted. He’d talked with his lawyer and after an hour of negotiations with the DA, whom Alvarez had called, he finally spilled his guts.
“Just so you know. I didn’t kill no one,” he said. “Not really.”
What kind of confession was that? Alvarez said, “But—?”
He glanced at his lawyer, who sat next to him in the interview room. She was about sixty, with silver hair, no lipstick and tired eyes behind rimless glasses. She’d obviously not wanted to be hauled out of bed in the middle of the night, but now, Diane Moore was giving her all to her client. She nodded.