by T. R. Ragan
With anyone else, he might play the game, but not with Lizzy. “You know it is,” he said. “I’m only surprised you would ask.”
She shrugged. “If I were the mother, it would certainly make me feel better knowing my neighbors didn’t have my kid stuffed away in the back of their bedroom closet.” Frustrated, she swept flyaway bangs out of her face. “If you’ve read the files, you know Spiderman is keen on disguises.”
She looked over her shoulder as if she’d heard a noise.
He followed her gaze from the entry door to the front window. He was about to ask her what she was doing when she turned back to him. “If anyone says they saw a suspicious character around the area, I wouldn’t bank on their description, that’s all.”
“I didn’t see anything about disguises in your case file, other than the mention of a beard.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Why take notes? From the start, the authorities have taken much of what I said with a grain of salt.”
“That’s because every time they interviewed you, Lizzy, your story changed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How so?”
Jared stood and disappeared down the hall. Moments later, he returned with a thick manila file and handed it to her.
She flipped through the pages, most of which were dog-eared. She skimmed page after page of notes, starting with the day she was found and ending with a few recent articles, including an interview with her father. She stiffened. “I didn’t realize Dad agreed to talk on national television.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I haven’t seen him in years. He wants nothing to do with me. He blames me for everything bad that has ever happened in his life.”
Jared remained silent until she finished reading the article. “After you escaped and were picked up on the side of the road, you said a couple of things that turned out to be false statements. You told Betsy Raeburn, the woman who found you and drove you to the police station, that you had been sexually abused.” Jared paused. “The fluids on your undergarments matched my DNA only.”
Her cheeks flushed with color as she continued to skim the contents of the file.
“When you were interviewed by the FBI you stated that the killer forced you to swallow poison, that he burned you daily with cigarettes and hot pokers, and that you were forced to—”
She tossed the file on the couch to her side and stood so fast her knee knocked into the coffee table. Coffee sloshed over the rim of his cup and onto the table. “Fuck you and all of your FBI friends. It all happened.” She pointed a finger at him. “I don’t care if you or anyone else believes me, which begs the question: if you people don’t believe a word I’m saying then why the hell did you call me here? Why are you asking me questions I’ve already answered a hundred times? Mostly Jared, why are you doing this to me?”
Jared stood, too. He put a hand on her arm, but she knocked it away.
“I believe you, Lizzy. If you say it happened, I believe you.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, let me rephrase that. I believe that you believe these things happened to you, but they couldn’t have happened, Lizzy. Rattlesnake bites leaves scars. Your blood was checked for poisons and yet the results showed you were clear of toxins. And there are pictures, Lizzy. Pictures of your arms, hands, legs, stomach. They’re all in the file...taken days, if not hours, after you returned. No burn marks. No insect bites. Why is that, do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
It was quiet for a moment, the tension thick.
She raised her hands, and then clasped them behind her neck. Clearly frustrated, she dropped her arms to her side and began to pace the room. “Listen, I want to help you find Sophie but I refuse to be treated like a criminal...or a liar.”
Jared sat back down. He hated to get her riled. He knew she believed these things happened to her, but they hadn’t. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t verbally and mentally tortured for two months. For two months she was gone. Missing. That much was certain. And when she returned, she was malnourished and dehydrated. That was also a fact.
Before joining the FBI, Jared majored in psychology with an emphasis on criminology and victimology. He had a theory about what had happened to her, and he realized he was going about this all wrong. “Lizzy,” he said, his voice calm, “you could have experienced a form of counter-transference—what some people call bystander’s guilt or survivor’s guilt.”
She stood silent in the middle of the room, her arms crossed.
His chest tightened. “You said you wanted to help Sophie. I’ve read the files, but I need to hear it all from you. I need to know we’re not missing something crucial.” He exhaled. “You mentioned Spiderman wore a mask.”
“That’s right. He did.” Lizzy moved toward the front window. The blinds were closed tight. She opened them slightly, allowing moonlight to squeeze in through the crevices. She turned his way and said, “Besides the mask, he never looked the same: a beard one day, a mustache the next. Same with his hair: long, short, blond, dark brown, or black. Never the same.”
Lizzy came back to where Jared was sitting and put a hand on the back of the couch. “For the record, I think he left the house sometimes because days would pass where I didn’t see or hear him walking around. In the beginning I was always scared. As the days and weeks passed, I was more hungry than I was scared. Toward the end—I was hungry, cold, and pissed off.”
A twitch set in her jaw. She clutched the back of the couch and looked him in the eyes. “Did you know that my father blamed my mother for letting me go out that night?”
He nodded.
“Then I’m sure you know they divorced within a year of my abduction.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his.
She flinched but didn’t pull away. Her skin felt soft. She was trembling. He didn’t like the ache gnawing in his gut. Although she put on a tough act, she was fragile.
“If I had done as my father asked,” she said, “none of this would have happened.”
“Spiderman would have found someone else.”
“Perhaps.” She looked at him long and hard. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked, her eyes sharp, her voice less heated. “The feds think he’s going to come after me, don’t they?”
“If that was Spiderman who called you today, I’d say it’s more than a possibility.”
She lifted her chin. “For the record, I’m not afraid.”
“I’m afraid for you.”
“Don’t be.” Her eyes lit up with determination. “I made a decision on the way over here tonight.”
“A decision?”
“I’m going to find Spiderman,” she said. “I can’t keep hiding and jumping at every little sound. I’m going to find the sick bastard before he can make his next move.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“I’ll contact the media and send him a message of my own.”
Chapter 7
Monday, February 15, 2010 11:59 PM
He thought about popping another Klonopin. His hands were shaking. His hands never used to shake. Turning away from the Sophie girl, he headed for the door, then pivoted on his feet and said, “Boo!”
Her eyes widened. Beneath the duct tape, he heard a gasp.
He sighed. Is that all she had? “You never should have cussed at your mother,” he said with a pointed finger for emphasis. “Especially in public.” He shook his head. “Only bad girls dress like sluts and curse like sailors. Do you know why I chose you, Sophie?”
She shook her head. Tears dribbled down her cheeks.
“Because you don’t have any respect for your elders. If I ever dared to talk back to my parents, do you know what they would have done to me?”
She shook her head. Her entire body was shaking as if she were a damn Chihuahua. Not only did the teenager have zero respect for her parents, she had no spine.
“My father would have taken a razor to my flesh,” he
said with fervor.
Her eyes nearly bulged right out of their sockets.
Better.
He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer to view his collection of surgical knives and straight-edge razors. For Sophie’s benefit, he held up an exquisitely sharp curved blade, manufactured in England and made for precise incision.
“Should we start with this one, Sophie?”
She closed her eyes. Her lips quivered. He guessed she was praying to some invisible God who couldn’t hear her.
He stopped to stare and wait.
Why didn’t he feel anything?
He counted to ten. Nothing. His breathing was calm and even. Not one tingle rippled through his loins. The girl was a bore. At that moment, she opened her eyes and looked right at him with big brown puppy-dog eyes. Eyes that reminded him of why she was here, why he was forced to do the things he did. His pulse roared in his ears, hitting his senses like a thirty-foot wave crashing against jagged rocks.
He moved toward her, his fingers rolled into fists, his insides swirling in a state of frenzied activity: temples throbbing, pulse erratic, blood flickering through his veins like an electrical current. He had every intention of carving her eyeballs out of their sockets.
Whimpering, she squeezed her eyes shut.
Damn. Open your eyes. “Are you scared, Sophie?”
It was hard to tell if she nodded or not with all the violent shaking going on. The girl needed to develop a backbone. Man, oh, man. She had a lot to learn before he killed her. What happened to the ballsy girl with the big mouth? His shoulders dropped. He watched her for another moment before finally turning back to the dresser. He put the knife away and slammed the drawer shut.
Her eyes were still clamped shut as he headed for the exit. “I want you to think about what your punishment should be. I’m going to go rest for a bit while you think about it.”
Shutting the door behind him, he made his way to the front room. Sophie should have been asleep. He’d given her enough sleeping pills to keep her out for another two or three hours at least. She was an odd duck, all shivery and quiet.
And those eyes...disturbing.
Every muscle in his body ached. He had yet to hit forty, but today he felt like a seventy-year-old man. He plunked down on the couch and let his head fall back against the cushions.
If he’d learned anything last night, it was that all those experts were right about one thing...he could never stop.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 10:12 AM
Cathy had showed up at Lizzy’s place thirty minutes ago, and they were already arguing.
“You need a bodyguard,” Cathy told Lizzy.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lizzy said. “For the past fourteen years I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. I see a therapist every other week, a therapist I can’t afford I might add. I also write in a damn journal every day. I hate that.”
Cathy rolled her eyes. “Putting your thoughts to paper is therapeutic. It’s a healing process, a pathway toward understanding yourself.”
“Writing in a journal is bullshit. I have deadbolts and locks on every door and bars on every window,” Lizzy said, spurred on by Cathy’s blasé attitude, since her sister had no idea what it was like to be scared shitless twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for year after year. “I carry a gun. I never step outside without checking behind every bush and looking up every tree. Every tweet of a bird, every rustle of a leaf, every honk of a horn is my enemy.”
Her sister remained silent.
Lizzy attempted to rub the tension from her temples. “For too many years now I’ve been afraid of my own shadow. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t do it anymore. I’m going to learn what makes Spiderman tick, find out why he does what he does, why he—”
“What do you think every FBI profiler and criminal investigator in the country has been doing for the past decade?”
“Obviously not enough. They haven’t caught the lunatic, have they?”
“Frank Lyle probably has friends on the outside with nothing better to do than make prank phone calls.” Cathy said, ending with a sigh. “Okay, okay. So you learn everything you can about Spiderman based on what little you remember, and then what?”
“And then I figure out his next step. I figure out what he’s going to do before he does.”
“And?”
“And then I set a trap for him and I wait.” Lizzy looked at the door to her apartment, raised her arms, and aimed an invisible gun that way. “And when he walks through that door, I shoot him between the eyes.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“Why do you think he’s doing this again...after all this time?”
“That’s one of many unanswered questions I aim to find out,” Lizzy said.
“If you insist on going through with this and getting involved in the Sophie Madison case, I can’t let you hang out with Brittany. I can’t risk having her life put in jeopardy.”
“I understand.”
Cathy huffed. “Your niece means so little to you that you would give up your time with her so easily?”
Lizzy laid an open palm over her heart. “She means so much to me that I would never risk hurting even one hair on her perfect head.”
Cathy’s head dipped.
Damn. Lizzy rested a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I don’t mean to hurt you or stress you out, but after receiving that phone call and seeing Jared again, I had an epiphany. I can’t live this way any longer. I can’t run from my own shadow for another minute. It’s killing me to live this way.”
Cathy used her sleeve to wipe her eyes. “I can’t do this anymore either. I’m done caring. You’ve always done exactly what you wanted without any care to any of us. You always took my things without asking, you lied to Mom and Dad. The choices you’ve made have ruined our lives. And now you’re willing to give up your relationship with Brittany because you want to go after a maniacal, bloodthirsty killer.” She raised her arms in the air before letting them drop to her sides. “I give up. I’m done.” She grabbed her purse from the coffee table and then looked around for her sweater.
The doorbell rang.
Lizzy looked through the peephole. Jared stood on the other side. After unlocking the chain and deadbolts, she opened the door and gestured for him to come inside. He looked just as good in a blue button-down shirt and a pair of fitted jeans as he had in a suit and tie. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled to his elbows, revealing bronzed forearms sprinkled with just enough dark hair to tantalize. And here she thought she’d lost her appetite for the opposite sex. Who knew?
“Jared,” Lizzy said, gesturing toward her sister. “I’m sure you remember Cathy.”
Cathy had located her sweater. She headed for the door.
Jared said hello and offered his hand.
Ignoring his friendly gesture, Cathy stopped directly in front of him, her face a maze of angry lines. “Why did you have to call Lizzy and get her involved? Do you know how hard she’s struggled to get where she is today?”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
Cathy huffed. “You knew there was a killer on the loose fourteen years ago but that didn’t stop you from dropping her off in the middle of the street on a dark, starless night, now did it?”
“Knock it off,” Lizzy said as she put a hand on Cathy’s shoulder and ushered her away from Jared and out the door.
Once they were outside, Lizzy followed her sister down the steps to Cathy’s silver BMW parked on the street. “What is wrong with you?” Lizzy asked. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
Cathy’s eyes blazed. “I’m doing this to you?”
“Yes. Why can’t you understand that I don’t want to hide from my own shadow for the rest of my life?”
Cathy slid behind the wheel of her car, turned on the ignition, and said, “Because I happen to believe that hiding from your own shadow is better than th
e alternative.” Cathy gestured toward the apartment. “I hope you’re not planning on getting romantically involved with that man again.”
“Why would you care?”
“I’ve heard things about him that’s all. He’s a heartbreaker...a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy. Why do you think he’s still single?”
Lizzy shrugged. “There’s nothing going on.”
“Well, good.” Cathy shut the door with jarring finality and drove off.
As Lizzy watched her sister’s BMW disappear around the bend, she noticed a green Jeep Grand Cherokee parked on the other side of the road. The Jeep wouldn’t have caught her attention if the driver of the vehicle hadn’t ducked the moment her sister drove away.
Lizzy walked toward her apartment, careful to keep her attention focused on the steps leading to her apartment because she didn’t want whoever was watching from the Jeep to know she was on to them.
She entered the apartment and closed the door behind her. Jared said something, but she ignored him. Instead, she headed for the kitchen window and peeked through the blinds. Her heart raced when she saw the driver sit up. It was a woman. A baseball cap covered most of her face. A ponytail stuck out the back of her cap: thick, straight hair. Brunette.
Lizzy bolted for the Pembroke table near her front entry. She opened the drawer and grabbed her gun. Then she yanked open the front door, took the stairs two at a time, and hit the pavement running.
The screech of wheels drowned out Jared’s curses behind her. Lizzy chased after the car by foot, gun drawn. The Jeep disappeared around the corner, tires squealing. If she went back for her car keys now it would be too late to chase after the woman. “Damn.”
Jared was on her heels. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Lay off,” she warned, pointing a finger at him as she headed back the way she’d come. Frustrated, she marched up the stairs to her apartment and saw Maggie trotting down the road in the opposite direction the Jeep had gone. “Maggie, come back here!”
“I’ll get the cat,” he said. “You get inside and lock the door behind you.”