She’d give Crystal five more minutes and then she’d take the car out and drive around the lake to look for her.
Patsy’s mind sought a logical explanation. Maybe she stopped to talk to someone.
Crystal didn’t know anyone at the lake, she reminded herself.
“Well, maybe she met someone.” The words slipped out impatiently.
Patsy checked the clock again. Crystal was now almost thirty minutes late. Trying her best not to jump to conclusions, Patsy took her car keys and went out to start the Buick. It would only take her a few minutes to take a spin around the lake. If there was no sign of Chrissie, she’d call Brian and see what he recommended.
Patsy drove slowly, as one was forced to do on the narrow, winding road. Chrissie didn’t know that they’d be leaving that day. She had crept out that morning before Patsy had turned on the television for the morning news. Before Calvin Sharpe himself had called to tell them that Genna and John would be picking up Patsy and Crystal and heading off to some secret location. That the FBI would be everywhere around Bricker’s Lake over the next week or so.
Patsy glanced around as she drove.
If the FBI was there, they sure did know how to make themselves scarce.
She stopped at the stop sign at the first crossroads, thinking back to the night before, when she’d gone out onto the deck to call Crystal for dinner. The young woman stood at the end of the dock, stock still, looking up at the road, as if frozen.
Patsy had turned to see what could have spooked the girl so. Kenny Harris was just passing the cottage, and he had paused to greet Nancy, who had just arrived earlier in the afternoon. Nothing unusual there. When Crystal had come into the cottage for dinner, she had appeared distracted, distant, but when Patsy had questioned her, she had merely shrugged and said something about her imagination playing tricks on her.
Patsy drove past Sally’s Lakeside, where the restaurant parking lot was empty except for Sally’s car and a delivery van. She continued along the road, peering over the steering wheel, then turned around where the road dead-ended and drove on back to her own driveway.
Truly worried now, she parked and got out of the car. The sound of the screen door slamming across the road startled her, and she looked up to see Kenny heading toward her.
Nothing travels faster than bad news, she told herself. Kenny must have seen the news this morning, by the look of concern on his face, and wants to talk about it.
And there’s Nancy, poor soul, Patsy watched her next-door neighbor emerge from her front door. I surely don’t want her worrying about me or Genna, all she has on her mind. Who’d have guessed she was undergoing cancer treatment all this time?
Not that Nancy had ever mentioned it, Patsy acknowledged, silently admiring the woman’s strength. Patsy herself wouldn’t have known, had she not stumbled onto the fact just the day before. Nancy’d been scarce these past two weeks, and Patsy had been delighted to see her car there in the drive when Patsy and Crystal returned from a trip into town. Crystal had taken the shopping bags into the house to put the groceries away, and Patsy’d gone to Nancy’s back door and knocked, calling through the screen door a time or two, but there’d been no response. She’d knocked again, then called as loudly as she could, but still, there was no answer. Tentatively, Patsy had tried the back door, and finding it unlocked, had gone into the cottage.
“Nancy?” she had called.
When there was no answer and Patsy began to fear that something not good might have happened, she went into the living room. Nancy’s handbag sat open upon the coffee table, a pack of cigarettes next to a glass ashtray.
“She never goes anywhere without that purse, and God knows she didn’t once all summer step outside without those damned cigarettes in her pocket,” Patsy muttered, then called again. “Nancy! Are you here?”
Patsy poked her head into the small front bedroom that she knew Nancy used, and was greatly relieved to hear the sound of the shower from the bathroom next door as the water was just being turned off.
“Oh, thank heavens!” Patsy exclaimed to herself, feeling a little silly to have let herself get so worked up over nothing. She’d just go on out the way she came in before Nancy could emerge from the shower and find her there, and none would be the wiser. Surely Nancy’d be startled to find her there, and then she’d for certain feel like a ninny for having let her nerves get the best of her.
But turning back to the door, it was Patsy who was startled.
There, on the bed, was Nancy’s pale blond page boy.
“Oh, my!” Patsy said aloud, reaching a hand out to touch the wig.
“Patsy.” A voice from behind made her jump.
“Oh, my stars, Nancy!” Flustered, Patsy turned to face the cottage’s occupant. “I was so worried about you. I knocked, and I called, knocked and called, and when you didn’t answer. . .”
“So. Now you know.” Wrapped in a white terry cloth robe, her bald head shiny from the shower, Nancy stood in the doorway, her face a study in stone.
“Yes. And oh, Nancy, I’m so very sorry.” Patsy clasped her hands in front of her. “But I wish you had told me.”
“Told you?” Nancy raised an eyebrow.
“My sister Connie was a victim of this terrible disease almost ten years ago. I know what chemotherapy can do to a body.” Patsy’s eyes filled with tears. “Now, if there is anything I can do for you, will you let me know? Anything at all, dear.”
“I appreciate that, Patsy,” Nancy nodded slowly. “I really do. But if you wouldn’t mind. . .”
“Oh, of course, dear. You need your privacy, of course you do. But why don’t you just come on over when you’re done, and we’ll have some iced tea and lemon pound cake.”
“Thank you. That sounds very nice. But I’m a little tired tonight. . .”
“Oh, of course you would be,” Patsy sympathized. “Did you have a treatment this week?”
Nancy nodded, and backed out into the living room. Patsy followed.
“Then you need your rest. Now, it’s been nice and peaceful up here these past few weeks, so you should be able to relax. I’ve missed you, by the way, but of course, I understand,” Patsy chattered as she headed for the back door. “Now, you just take it easy and feel free to stop on over any time you feel up to it. . .”
That was before the phone call from John last night, Patsy recalled. All hell seemed to have broken loose since then, if the morning news was to be believed.
Well, she was packed and ready to go whenever Genna and John got there.
But where was Chrissie?
Patsy checked her watch as Nancy and Kenny approached, making small talk about the morning’s weather, and wondered just how much she should tell them about their planned hasty departure. Should she tell them anything at all? Would they be in danger if she did not? She wrestled fitfully with her dilemma, but knew that her immediate problem was Crystal. It was time to call Brian. And then, if he thought she should, the state police.
“So, how much longer before we get there?” John asked for the fourth or fifth time.
He was much more comfortable as driver than as passenger, but Genna knew the road from the airport in Erie like she knew the back of her hand, and so it made perfect sense for her to drive. John just didn’t like it much.
“About twenty more minutes,” she laughed, mildly amused by his discomfiture at having to sit back and let someone else take control.
“How do you think Patsy will feel about going to Maine for a few days?”
“She’ll be fine with it. I’m glad Sharpe agreed with my suggestion that we spend a week at the Sangers’ camp. I never did get to see it last year, you know. And besides, I’m looking forward to seeing Ethan and Leah again.” She smiled, thinking of how nice it would be to visit with the newly married couple whose lives had been so closely meshed with her own the previous summer. Leah had come to the FBI seeking help in finding her missing sister, and the case had become Genna’s. And while, in the
end, all that had been recovered of Leah’s sister was her remains, bringing closure to that aspect of her life had permitted Leah to find her heart. It was the sort of love story that people wrote books about, Genna mused, and she’d been pleased to have been even a small part of it.
“We’re lucky that they offered to make room for us in the inn,” John told her. “Not only because they’re booked solid this time of the year, but because of the purpose behind our impromptu vacation.”
“I explained everything to them very thoroughly. But they both agreed that White Bear Springs was probably the last place anyone would think to look for us. And besides, I’m not planning on being there for all that long. I’m just happy to be getting Pats and Chrissie out of the way.”
Genna stopped at a stop sign, and in her face, John read hesitation.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We are at the corner of Freedom Road and Tolliver,” she said quietly.
“And the significance of that is. . . ?” He suspected there was one.
“The camp is about two miles straight ahead,” she told him. “For as long as I’ve had my driver’s license, I’ve made a right turn here, choosing to go miles out of my way rather than to drive past it. It’s occurred to me that I don’t have to take the long way home anymore.”
After waiting for a pickup truck to pass, she accelerated and went straight through the stop sign.
“Chrissie and I went to the camp a few weeks ago,” she said, “did I tell you?”
“No. No, you did not. Why did you do that?” He found himself frowning.
“Because Chrissie wanted to. She said that her therapist told her that if you face your fears, they lose their power over you, so she wanted to go up there. She thought maybe she could shake the memories.”
“Did she?”
“I doubt it. I know I certainly did not. If anything, the nightmares have gotten worse,” she admitted.
“You didn’t tell me you were still having nightmares.”
“I never stopped. They’re just different now.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that somehow, it feels like someone else’s nightmare now.”
While John was pondering what someone else’s nightmare might be like, she pulled to the shoulder of the road and slowly stopped the car.
“It’s back there,” she told him as she rolled her window all the way down and pointed across the road. “Down that dirt road. It’s hard to see it, of course, because it’s so overgrown, but there’s one lane there. It goes straight for a while and then it dips sharply to the left and drops down at an incline. We didn’t stay too long because a storm came up on us, which was just as well. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. So much was as it was back then, and yet so much had changed.”
John noticed that her hands were beginning to shake. He took them in his own in an attempt to soothe her.
“The cabins almost looked the same, except they’re overgrown now. And they had numbers painted on them. When we talked about what happened there, at the trial, we had to refer to the cabins by number. The water was still in the pool but the water was black. I still heard the voices but they were different this time. I still hear them in my sleep.”
She closed her eyes tightly, hearing them, as she had every night in her dreams since the day she and Chrissie had visited.
Please. . . help. . . us. . .
She shivered, and John leaned over and put his arm around her, then looked out the window. He stared for a long minute, looking skyward. She followed his gaze, and watched the dozen or so birds circle slowly over something that lay in the fields back behind the trees.
“Vultures,” she whispered, her eyes shifting back to the opposite side of the road.
“That’s what I thought they were,” John said. “We used to see them every once in a while, on the back roads to the shore. But I’ve never seen so many in one place before.”
She stared out the window for a very long time, trying not to think what she was thinking.
Please. . . help. . . us. . .
“Ohmigod,” she threw the door open and ran across the road before John could react. “Ohmigod. Ohmigod, John.”
She doubled over, her arms across her midsection. Like a shot, John was right behind her, holding her up.
“Genna. . .”
“Ohmigod,” she sobbed, her voice exploding in ragged blasts. “They’re there! They’re there! Oh, my God, they’re there!”
“Who’s there?” John sank to the ground along with her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Who’s where?”
“At the camp,” she gasped. “Back at the camp. The women. . . Michael took them to the camp. . .”
Her entire body trembled violently as the sobs ripped from her throat. “My God, I was there! I left them there! Hurry! Hurry. . .”
He grabbed her and pulled her, against her will, back across the road, leaning her against the car while he made first one, then a second, call on his cell phone.
“John, please,” she gasped, “we need to go—”
“I’ve called for help, Gen. Listen to me. I know your instincts tell you to go back there now, but you have to wait. We have to wait, do you understand? If Michael is back there, he’s waiting for you. We can’t take that chance, babe. We just can’t.”
“But—”
“No, no,” he held her tightly. “It’s just going to be a minute more, I promise. Then we’ll go back and if anyone is there, we will tend to them. But I’m not letting you go back there without an army of state troopers. We don’t know if those women are dead or alive, Gen—”
“They’re alive, I heard them,” she looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I heard them. They called to me and I heard them and I didn’t understand and I left them there. I thought it was the wind. . . I left them there—”
“Shhhh,” he cradled her against him, watching over her head as the three state police cruisers came into view. “If they’re there, we’ll find them.”
“You Agent Mancini?” A burly state trooper stopped on the opposite side of the road.
“Yes.”
“We’re on our way down,” the trooper told John, “we’ll let you know what we find.”
“I’m going, John,” Genna told him. “I’m going with him.”
“No. You’ll go with me.” To the trooper, John said, “We’ll follow you down. Let’s do it.”
The terse parade wound slowly along the narrow dirt road, with John, driving now, falling in behind at the end. Genna leaned forward in her seat, her eyes wide and frantic. As the cars came to a stop, still in their straight line, Genna bolted from the car and ran to the cabin area, John and the troopers close on her heels.
At the top of the clearing, Genna stopped, tilting her head to listen. She took several steps toward the first cabin to her right, then stopped.
“In there,” she said, turning to the state officers. “Call some ambulances. Quickly. We may be able to save them.”
The trooper closest to Genna brushed past her, a look of skepticism on his face, and took the cabin steps two at a time. Pushing open the door to the cabin that bore a large, hastily painted black number five on the outer wall, he stepped in, only to rush back out, his hands over his mouth.
The porch railing sagged as he leaned over it and lost his battle to keep his lunch.
“Get water,” he gasped. “And get that ambulance here as fast as you can. I think she’s still alive. God help her, I think she might still be alive. . .”
Of the twelve women that Michael Homer had abducted, half of them had not survived the weeks of horror spent gagged and tied to the old metal camp beds. Of those six who had managed to outlast the unspeakable torture and abuse, the insects and the dehydration, the rats, and the lack of food, two more were near death when they were rescued and another was catatonic.
Three of them, however, had managed to hold on to their lives and th
eir wits, and it was hoped that at least one of these three women could assist the FBI by providing the information that would aid in tracking down their abductor and bringing him to justice. Once, of course, they were able to speak again. Weeks of dehydration had taken its toll on their vocal chords.
It was late afternoon by the time a totally drained Genna slumped back against the car, exhausted and haunted by the possibility that one or more of the dead women might still have been alive when she and Crystal had been at the camp the week before. Might still be alive if she had only followed the voices that had been carried on the wind. The guilt weighed heavily on her soul.
Somewhere, among the throng of law enforcement and emergency medical personnel that had invaded the campground, John guarded the corpses of the women who had died while chained to their beds, then dragged into an open field for the vultures to feast upon. Genna had tried to keep that vigil with him, to be ever the professional. In her time with the FBI, she’d seen corpses mutilated beyond description, beyond recognition. But these were the remains of women who had been children with her, children with whom she had shared an important time in her life, children who had once been brave enough to stand in an open court and tell the truth.
Genna took the deaths of each of them personally, but knew she had to look to the living if the dead were to be vindicated.
Overwhelmed by sorrow, sickened with grief, Genna sat with the living while each awaited her turn for an ambulance, talked to them, praised them for their ability to have outwitted their captor and for having survived such horror. Apologized for not having understood their cries for help. And promised them that, with their help, the man responsible for their nightmare would be punished.
Just as the sun began to lower itself behind the trees, bright lights flashed from somewhere up near the road.
“Great,” she muttered. “The media has found us.”
Genna located the officer in charge of the scene and pointed out to him that they were no longer alone, suggesting that he have the entire upper end of the field placed off limits, which he agreed to do even if it meant appealing for backup from the National Guard.
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