by Ninie Hammon
"If you will tell me what you saw from your hiding place under the bed, who else will you tell, huh?"
"Nobody!" The word explodes out her mouth so forcefully it carries little sprinkles of spit that splatter on his cheeks, dark spots, red or pink. He makes no move to wipe them away. "Never. I would … I swear I won't tell anybody, would never tell anybody … wouldn't …"
She's babbling, knows she's just prattling on but can't stop. He squeezes her arm in his hand the size of a shovel and the words fail.
"You say that now, yes. And tomorrow and for as long as you can still feel the pain I gave to you. As long as you remember it so fresh it's like you're living it all over again. Yes, for that long, you will be silent. But after that, when the pain is just a memory. Will you still keep quiet, little mouse?"
"I will, I—"
He squeezes again and she shuts up.
"You will squeak one day. It will happen. There is only one way to keep a mouse from squeaking. You stomp the mouse."
His cold eyes reflect the depths of the gray kingdom of his soul where no human emotion has ever lived. And she realizes that she has not been spared death by admitting what she saw and taking the punishment. She has only postponed death. He will not let her live.
Then he shoves her back down onto the bed and she curls into a fetal position there.
"Rest, little mouse. Your beauty is worth a lot of money."
He doesn't ask her any more questions!
He merely turns on his heel and walks out of the room and closes the door behind him. Jeni bleats out a single sob, feeling the brokenness inside her, knowing something is very, very wrong there.
But he didn't ask!
He didn't ask if she was alone in Poli's room when she watched him kick Poli's teeth down her throat, watched him dangle her in front of him until she hung still and limp.
He didn't ask her if there was anyone else in the room, hiding with her. So she hadn't told him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The sheriff pulled his cruiser into the driveway of the Watford House, turned off the ignition but didn't get out. The news he brought wasn't anything anybody wanted to hear, so he sat for a moment, gathering himself.
Other houses in the neighborhood had been festooned with Halloween decorations, but the Watford House remained bare. Bailey wasn't a fan of ghosts, goblins, ghouls or black cats. And spiders? Black, hairy, crawly things were noticeably absent from the whole town's decorations this year. Not surprising, that.
The front screen door was open and he could hear Sparky and the puppy yapping inside. He knocked, then opened the screen door and called inside.
"Anybody here order pizza?"
T.J. came into the living room and didn't take the bait. That was not a good sign.
"Bailey's in the kitchen. I been trying to get some hot tea down her and I think she's finally coming around."
Coming around? Brice's gut yanked into a knot.
"What happened?"
"Another vision.
"She painted another painting?"
"Same painting, different day."
Bailey looked up when he entered the room and he was struck by how pale she was. Her eyes looked like cigarette burns in her face.
T.J. suddenly stepped past Brice, snatched the puppy up off the floor and hurried outside with him. The smile that appeared on Bailey's face was wan but genuine.
"House breaking."
Brice pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from her.
"Would it offend you if I told you that you look like death on a cracker?"
"I certainly wouldn't want to look any better than I feel and I feel like death on a cracker, with a side order of fried awful."
"I don't want to make it worse, but—"
"The girl's dead."
"The connection broke." It wasn't a question, but she nodded slowly.
"Last night … it was just gone. What … where did you find … the body?"
"We weren't supposed to. The killer intended for that girl to just vanish. Chained her body to a concrete block and chucked her into the deepest part of the lake. The chains caught on a houseboat anchor, random fluke. A couple more days and it would have sunk into the mud on the bottom, been covered up and we never would have found her."
"And you're sure …"
"The rose birthmark." He didn't tell her that had it not been for the mark, and her freckles, there'd certainly been no way to identify her by sight. "We're running her prints, trying to find out who she is.”
"Her name is Polly … was Polly."
"And you know that because …?"
"The other girl, Jeni, the one who saw the murder. That's what she called her."
She must have seen his mind stumble, trying to catch her train of thought, so she told him about the dark space under the bed and the girl who was hiding there.
"And you just … painted her, the other girl? Just like that — painted her into the picture?"
"I didn't paint her into the picture. I found her there. I couldn't have painted somebody into the picture who wasn't there to begin with. It was a little like …" she paused for a beat, "Riley Campbell. There was a reason I didn't paint him when I tried to. Someone … else was there, in that canvas."
And that someone had very nearly killed everybody in this room.
"Someone else came through this canvas, too. Go see for yourself. And there's more …"
T.J. brought the puppy back into the house before she could tell him about the more. He didn't press her. She didn't appear to have the strength to accompany him to the studio and that was concerning.
T.J. set the dog down on the floor at her feet and she immediately snatched it up into her arms, snuggling it to her face.
"T.J., why don't you show Brice my latest work of art. I think I'd like to just sit here awhile and drink my tea." She picked up the sugar bowl.
"You done got enough sugar in that thing to trot a mouse across," T.J. said.
"If I leave the cubes in the bowl, Dobbs will make a coal mine out of them." Brice could hear her straining for levity she didn't feel.
"You and Dobbs. You both gonna die from clogged up arteries. I mean, if Oscar don't get you first."
Brice cringed at the remark, but wasn't surprised by it. T.J. was determined to demystify the guillotine hanging over her head. Better to laugh at it than to brood over it. Brice was learning that T.J. didn't often miss on such things.
Sitting on an easel in the center of the studio was the portrait of the girl whose body had been dragged out of the lake by a fisherman. Polly. But now there was more to see in the painting. Where there had been only a portion of a bed and bedspread, and a slice of darkness under it, now the darkness had taken over that whole side of the portrait, in the same way the window behind the still-life in all the paintings was disproportionately large to show the image in it. The image in the puddle of darkness was a girl's face, her features rendered in such exquisite detail it was chilling, like it was a digital photograph. She was blonde, too, but hers was the pale blonde hair of a towheaded child, of Marilyn Monroe. Not curly, but hanging long and straight around her face. Her eyes were blue. Not sapphire blue. Robin's egg blue. The blue of a blanket that proclaims "baby boy."
Brice turned from the painting and asked T.J., "What did this girl see?"
"Not saw. Lived through. What she and Bailey lived through."
T.J.'s face bore none of the pleasant calm he'd worn in the kitchen, teasing Bailey about the sugar in her tea. His mouth was a thin line.
"They hosed that girl. You know what that is, don't you?"
Brice knew.
"But do you know what that means?" T.J.'s voice was tight, reigned in, like if he let it go he was afraid of what he might say.
"I understand it's incredibly painful."
"I didn't just hear it was painful." T.J. dropped his voice to something just above a whisper, though even if he'd spoken out loud, Bailey couldn't have heard him f
rom the kitchen. "I know exactly how painful it is." He took a breath, let it out slowly. "I been hosed. I know."
Brice managed to keep his shock off his face. Most people knew T.J. had won a whole slew of medals when he was in the military, medals he wouldn't talk about. Only a few knew he'd been in Special Forces, too, but even those few didn't put it together in their heads what that meant — that T.J. had done things and gone places he couldn't talk about. And in one of those places, he'd been captured. And hosed.
Instinctively, Brice reached out a hand and placed it on T.J.'s shoulder, felt how boney it was. Skinny, but somehow not a fragile old man. T.J. looked at him, their eyes locked, and a world of communication passed between them. Then Brice dropped his hand and focused his attention on the portrait before them on the easel.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In a single, simple gesture, Brice had conveyed his understanding of the horror that T.J. … and Bailey … had endured. He got it.
T.J. turned back to the painting and tried to get his face and feelings under control.
"I was the one told her to do it. Told her to go on ahead and see was there somebody else in the picture — because I didn't think she'd find anything. Just wishful thinking, her feeling so bad that this awful thing come to pass even though she'd tried to prevent it."
He stopped, ran his hands over his close-cropped hair.
"I's just a little boy, nine years old when I seen how my Mama looked after she painted something awful, how worn out and used-up she looked. She told me once, 'I was there. Inside her.' I knew it musta been awful, understood it musta been awful. But I never really knew until I met Bailey."
He wouldn't let his mind go back to that nightmare on steroids he'd faced as Bailey blinked in and out of the mind of an insane child two months ago. He'd walled off what happened to them that day in The Cedars, put razor wire on the top of the wall. Stationed guards with Uzis every six feet. He figured the others had done the same.
"I only encouraged Bailey today because I thought wouldn't nothin' happen. If I'd knowed, if I'd even suspected she'd really find somebody else in the painting, I'd a'took that thing out into the back yard, chopped it up and burned it."
He paused, lookin' at the face of the girl in the darkness under the bed. She was beautiful, but her face was etched in horror, disbelief, grief and fear. She was watching the monster, the Beast, kill her friend.
"Now, I got to."
"Have to what?"
"Destroy that painting."
"Now? What good would it do now?"
"Bailey didn't tell you?"
"I suppose not because I don't know what you're talking about."
T.J. told him about Polly's plan to run away, about the ring and about Jeni confessing that she'd been a witness to Polly's murder.
"This girl, this Jeni, admitted she'd been in the room, hiding under the bed, seen the whole thing."
He took a deep, shuddery breath.
"He ain't gonna let her live now. He can't, not after what she seen."
"Why didn't he just kill her on the spot? Why'd he let her live?"
"He's got some kinda plan. I don't know what it is, but he's waiting for somethin'. And he don't know the whole of it. She'd a'told him, but he didn't ask."
"Ask what?"
"She didn't tell him she wasn't the only one hidin' in that room when he strangled that poor girl. She wasn't the only witness."
Brice's eyes flew to the dark area around the face where the paint was still wet.
"You're telling me there's somebody else under that—?"
"Don't stare at it like you might be able to see it. It ain't for eyes like ours."
Then T.J. could see Brice begin to put the pieces together in his head.
"And you think Bailey's going to want to paint the other girl, too?"
"Girls. They's more than one. And she sure as Jackson don't want to. But will she? Yeah, I'm bettin' she's gonna do just that if we can't find this girl" — he gestured to the still-wet face on the canvas — "get her and the others outta there before the Beast makes good on his threats. If we can't find her …"
He could tell Brice was makin' the right connections and nodded.
"Yeah, and if she paints the other girls, what will they be livin' through? He's plannin' somethin' awful, maybe for all of 'em. So what kinda torture will they …?" He couldn't go on. He found breath enough to say only one word. "Oscar."
The two men stood together in silence, gazing at the terrified face of the little mouse under the bed.
"Then we have to find her," Brice said. He reached out and almost touched the painting, forgettin' it was wet paint that formed the incredible detail and not points of light on a digital screen. "This girl — we have to find her before that monster kills her."
"And before livin' through some awful torture kills Bailey!"
Brice stepped back into the kitchen and managed not to stare at Bailey. But when she wasn't looking his way he shot sideways glances, now understanding why she was so pale and haggard, with dark circles under her eyes like she'd missed a week of sleep.
There wasn't a mark on her. Of course, there wasn't a mark on the girl who'd actually endured the torturous beating, either. Such was the benefit of hosing as opposed to other forms of torture.
When Bailey looked at him, he said, "What you painted, the likeness is amazing." He managed to keep his voice level. "It looks like a digital photograph instead of a painting."
"I saw."
He included T.J. and Dobbs in what he said next.
"The clarity of that image is going to help us find her — tonight."
The others straightened.
"Find her—?" Bailey began.
"Tonight?" Dobbs finished for her.
"We know the girl who was murdered was a prostitute working the casino. Obviously, Jeni's a working girl there, too. The guy who hosed her, their murdering pimp, said she was fine, that she could work tonight. Which means she's at the Nautilus right now."
"So we're going to go there, try to find her?" Bailey said.
"We aren't going anywhere. T.J., Dobbs and I are going to look for her."
"But I—"
"You're going to stay right here with Bundy."
"I could help—"
"I don't need your help. This time, I'm the guy with a badge and a gun. When we find this girl, I'll tell her we believe she has information about the murder of a girl named Polly, whose body my deputies dragged out of Whispering Mountain Lake this morning."
"Can you get her out of the casino tonight?"
"I can't take her into protective custody unless she tells me what she saw … but I'm betting she doesn't know that." He held up his hand. "Legally, I can't hold her if she doesn't want to stay—"
"But once you get her out of the clutches of that monster, she'll be eager to tell you everything," Dobbs said.
"What about the other girls?"
"One step at a time. We get her, she talks, we bust the pimp. Lock him up so he can't hurt any of them."
Brice deliberately looked away from Bailey and addressed the others as if she weren't there. She was going to sit this one out, whether she liked it or not.
"Take a picture with your phone of that girl's face. Then we'll split up and search the casino, top to bottom."
"Just the three of you? Can't you use your deputies …?"
"Nope." He gestured at the others. "We're on the hook for this one. We know this girl witnessed a murder, but how we know … I've got nothing I could take before a judge to get a search warrant … yet. As soon as this girl talks, I'll march into that place with an army!"
"What if the three of you can't find her?
"We'll find her. But if we don't, we'll go back tomorrow night and the night after. Eventually, she'll turn up."
Dobbs nodded. T.J. did the same.
Bailey didn't protest. Maybe because she had seen the logic — this was a police matter now. Brice was the one to handle it. But maybe
it was because she didn't feel up to going to the casino, or anywhere else for that matter.
He managed not to shudder at the thought of her being beaten with a hose. She hadn't been, but she had felt the blows as if she had, and even though she'd suffered no physical injury, the visceral memory was still there. The horror and fear. Those lingered.
He couldn't let himself dwell on what Bailey Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Really-Was had endured. A young woman so small and — okay, she wasn't delicate and frail, but she was certainly too thin and … well, she needed to start working out.
Eulalie Hamilton had dealt with the horror of paintings like these for three years but in the end, she couldn't stand it any longer. Was that Bailey's future — suicide … successful this time? Or would Oscar finally get her when the stress became too much?
He couldn't do anything about all that now. What he could do was find that girl. Unless they found her, Bailey would most certainly connect with the other girls, the other witnesses. And God only knew what might be happening that she'd have to live through with them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Raymond Dobson moved with surprising grace for a big man. Like some behemoth former linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he glided around roulette wheels, behind faro tales and past slot machines. He didn't try to hide the fact that he was "looking for someone." No reason to. At any given time, half the people in the casino were likely looking for the other half.
It would have been useless to search for the girl tonight, on Halloween, had it not been for the "no masks" policy the casino rigidly enforced. Halloween costumes were acceptable — welcomed! But thousands of people with their faces covered was just begging for a robbery
Even with faces bared, the chances of finding one small needle in the gigantic casino haystack would have been slim, had Brice not plotted the whole thing lined out in advance and assigned each of them their role when they met him on the launch late that afternoon.
Detailed architectural plans of the casino had been furnished to local law enforcement officers before the establishment opened. Oh, Brice knew the plans weren't accurate, that there were rooms in that huge building — maybe designated maintenance or HVAC or just absorbed into the space of the surrounding rooms — that were really the sites of invitation-only gambling, a hundred, two-hundred-thousand-dollar-ante games. Dobbs had seen those in Monaco. He'd even been one of the players, briefly, though he wasn't by nature a risk-taking kind of guy. T.J. had been the adrenaline junkie in their relationship. He'd joined the Marines, signed up for Special Forces. Dobbs, on the other hand, had gone to college, where he'd made an interesting observation: he was astonishingly good at "pretend risk-taking."