Rainey tried a distraction to prevent further harm to Eve or herself.
“I’m a profiler, as you say, Ann. Bombers aren’t usually serial murderers. How does all this fit together?”
The diversion worked as Rainey surmised it would with a malignant narcissist like Ann. While she was occupied with Rainey’s questions, Eve went about putting a pressure bandage on Eugene’s shoulder. Again, Rainey felt a familiarity with Eve, but her main concern was buying them both more time. She listened as Ann volunteered information.
“Obadiah committed me to a mental institution. He would have killed me, but the neighbor had already called the police by the time he found me. That sort of put a wrench in his style of cleaning up family messes. I was pretty sure I was about to be another drowning victim.”
Rainey remembered Chance’s story about his mother trying to drown the boys. She commented on Ann’s version of events.
“Like father, like daughter, eh? Weren’t you about to drown your own child and two of Obadiah’s other sons? Isn’t that why you were hospitalized for ten years?
There appeared to be no remorse in Ann’s answer of, “Yes. I decided no more of his sons would breed. I think I had a valid point. My therapist in the hospital agreed with my premise, but pointed out my method of birth control was a bit dramatic.”
“I’d have to agree too, knowing what those men became,” Rainey said before concluding, “They don’t appear to have cured your homicidal tendencies before letting you go. How’d you manage a release?”
“I figured out how to convince people I was no longer a danger to others or myself. It took ten years, but I put the time to good use. I learned how to make IEDs from a crazy white supremacist and a fucked up Army guy. You’d be surprised what the mentally ill have to share if you just ask. I learned how to strip a skeleton, leaving nothing but those shiny white bones Eugene sent to you at the FBI.”
“Why did you do that? Those missing person cases would have never been solved if you hadn’t sent those bones to me. And why set up Chance. It had to be you, but why?”
“It’s a family thing, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, please, enlighten me. I’ve tried for nearly twenty years to figure this whole mess out. At least let me die with the truth, or your version of it anyway. “
Rainey couldn’t believe she could have been so wrong about Chance. She wanted to know if her theories were that off. She was also banking on what she called the James Bond effect. The bad guy never just killed Bond. He had to tell him all about his crimes first. Rainey appealed to Ann’s ego’s need to explain how she had outsmarted the police and Rainey in particular.
Ann looked down at her cell phone. “Okay, I got a few minutes before all hell breaks loose up there, unless the Captain cuts the wrong wire.” The smile she gave Rainey exposed her teeth and malice. “It’s going to be a big one, but we’re safe down here.”
Rainey smiled back. “You weren’t counting on Cathleen, were you?”
“No, but McNally would have scoured the earth for your killer. So it’s working out well.”
Rainey eyed the ankus on the wall. She glanced at the knives and wondered if her lack of cleaver throwing skills would impair her ability to immobilize Ann.
“Don’t do it, Rainey. All I have to do is hit this green button on my phone and this grotto becomes a pile of blood stained rubble. You’ve profiled bombers. You know I’m not bluffing.”
Rainey glared at her would be killer. “If that garage goes up while we’re standing here, I’ll make damn sure you and I go to hell together.”
“Ooo, feisty. Katie said you were a badass.”
“When I see her again, I’m going to talk to her about the concept of sharing too much with acquaintances.”
“Awe, she loves you. It’s sweet that she likes to brag on you a bit.” Ann took a quick look at her phone and said, “Well, if you want to ask me questions about Chance, now’s your chance.” Ann chuckled at her word choices. “See what I did there?”
“You are not so clever,” Rainey countered.
“Tick tock. You’re wasting time being rude to me. I’ll answer your questions as time permits. Go.”
“Did Chance murder those women, the ones whose bones you sent to me?”
“No, but he did horrible things to them and then he gave them to me. I used old OB’s bullhook to put them down and then Eugene threw them into the freezer for transport. Once they were frozen, he cut them up in the shop, and then fed the meat to his girls.”
Ann’s statement shocked Rainey with the implication that in addition to being lion food, the murder victims were also fed to Eve. Eve had claimed to prepare the meals there in the little kitchen where Rainey stood. That took a psychological disconnect which Rainey imagined was brought on by years of torture. She fought off the shudder, but not the facial expression that gave her revulsion away.
“That’s right,” Ann said. “Conquering armies have fed their victims to their forces for millennia. Crossing that line makes them more compliant with orders that would otherwise be unthinkable.”
“Jesus, you are truly insane.”
“Maybe, but like I said, I used my ten years locked up with the criminally insane to learn some things.”
“Why would you clean up after Chance’s crimes and then implicate him?”
“It wasn’t motherly love. I kept his secrets. He kept mine. He knew about what I did to Jean and the others. But then he turned. That first box of bones was a way to remind him of his vulnerabilities.” Ann chuckled and then said, “Damned if he didn’t think it was a great idea. No DNA, you running around swearing it was him with no evidence, and I can guarantee, other than the bones sent to you, there is not one shred of those women left to find.”
“Why did Eugene go along with killing his mother, your mother? It’s so hard to keep up with relationships in your family.”
“Robby and Chance gave Eugene some drug the night they got after that Dawson girl. Then, as he tells it, they forced him to do things to her. Chance said Eugene went at that girl like an animal with no prodding from his half-brothers.”
“What does that have to do with Jean Berry?”
Ann’s eyes narrowed, the hate obvious in her tone when she said, “Jean was OB’s equal in brutality. She found out about the attack when the police questioned Eugene. Jean couldn’t touch Robby or Chance. They were OB’s to discipline. But Eugene was all hers to do with as she pleased. She read to him from the bible for six straight hours and then she cut his balls off.”
Rainey shook her head. “Not one of you had a shot at being normal, did you?”
“No, not really. So to answer your question, Eugene hated Jean as much as I did. He hates those testosterone shots he has to take, too. My brother is a nice guy at heart. He was just born into hell.”
“I don’t know how nice he is. He tried to kill me twenty minutes ago.”
“He will do anything to keep Eve, and I do mean anything. Chance nailed it when he said that girl there is Eugene’s weakness.”
“Bringing me back into this picture and the email today, the one that brought me here; was that Chance’s idea, too?”
“Yep. Chance thought the Vanessa Wilhelm investigation would eventually lead to us, all of us. So, we set up Eugene to take the fall. It’s working. I have to say, that boy of mine is a born evil genius.”
“He’s definitely evil. I’ll give you that.”
Rainey was troubled by the first murders. The bullhook was still in OB’s possession at that point in the timeline, yet the wounds matched the I-95 corridor victims, the ones Ann claimed to have killed with OB’s ankus.
“You were in the hospital when those bodies were put in the pond behind the house in Pembina. Who killed them?”
“That would have been the boys, Robby, Eugene, and Chance. Well, Robby and Chance raped and killed them. Eugene helped them dispose of the bodies.”
“But the murder weapon was the same. Isn’t that
OB’s bullhook hanging there? Isn’t that what you said you used to kill the others? How did they have that if OB was still alive at the time?”
“Eugene. He’s quite handy. He made a bullhook just like his father’s. He wanted that mean old man to love him so badly. He tried hard to make it so.”
“Did Eugene kill anyone?”
“No, he doesn’t have the stomach for it. Eugene disposed of the bodies. They nearly got busted with that Emily Dawson girl. I explained the necessity to eliminate witnesses to Eugene, when he came crying to me about what Robby and Chance made him do.”
“Wait, you were in the hospital when that happened.”
“Eugene came with Jean to see me a few times when he was a kid. Later he came alone. He brought Robby and Chance to see me right before I got out.”
“So, Vanessa Wilhelm did not inform Chance of your hospitalization.”
“No, but she found out, and I’m quite sure in the end that she knew who I was. I have been passing as Jean Berry for nineteen years. It wasn’t hard.”
Rainey said, “You do look exactly like a younger version of your mother. The scarf and sunglasses worked. You were smart to wear them. I would have known who you were, or at least suspected something was wrong.”
“It’s those Prussian genes. They take age better than some.”
“She wore such distinct makeup,” Rainey said, all the while looking for a way out of the trap she’d fallen into.
“It was her signature look. I learned it early and found it was easy to fool the few people Jean had to meet in person to keep anyone from looking for her. I just became her. But that Wilhelm chick started coming around, asking to see Jean. She met me as Ann before I knew who she was. That complicated things.”
Eugene groaned.
Eve said to Rainey, “Help me get him on the floor.”
Rainey helped move Eugene, but she still had questions. “The rope and the knots were consistent through all the known murders. There were even little replicas tied around the bones that ended up at Quantico. Whose fetish was that?”
Eve surprised Rainey by answering, “It’s how Eugene carried the bodies. He tied them up with the trucker’s hitch, so they fit in the freezer unit on the truck and in here.”
“This one,” Ann said, pointing at Eve with the hand that held the whip. “Eugene had to have her. It was love at first sight for him.”
“I can tell by Eve’s living quarters that she’s been here a while, or is she just one in a series of guests?”
Eve tended to her captor with such tenderness. Rainey struggled to understand, although she had known victims who believed they loved their abductors after years of captivity. This young woman had been a prisoner for a very long time to be able to forgive and forget how she came to be there.
“She was somewhere she shouldn’t have been. Robby was there, Chance too. They didn’t want her, but old Eugene here, he begged Chance not to snap her neck when she got too curious.” She mocked her brother, “‘Pleath, let me have thith one.’ We gave in because it made Eugene part of the game, a game he could never stop playing the moment he took his little Eve home to this place where they will both perish.”
“How long?” Rainey asked, beginning to see the end game.
Ann ignored her question. She began to slowly snake the whip around on the floor in front of her.
“Hiiissss. Rawrr.”
“Shut up, you ungrateful beast,” she said, as she snapped the whip at the cornered animal.
Sarabi rose on her hind legs and swung her great paws in the air.
“Raarrrrr. Grrrrrrr.”
“Stop it,” Eve shouted while cradling Eugene’s head in her lap. “You cruel, evil, old witch.”
Ann pulled the whip out of Sarabi’s cell and raised it to strike at Eve. Rainey stepped between the two women, protecting Eve and Eugene from an assault.
“Oh, so you want to take her beating,” Ann said, sneering at Rainey.
“No, I’d rather have my answer. How long has Eve been down here?”
“Ask her, she knows. She’s kept a tally.”
Eve looked up at Rainey and recited, “Nineteen years, two months, and twenty-five days.”
Ann added, “That’s right, Agent Bell. The source of the albatross around your neck, according to your lovely wife who loves to talk about her crime-fighting lover, has been alive all this time.”
Rainey stared down at Eve, disbelieving what she was thinking. “Is your name Alyson Grayson?”
The woman Rainey knew as Eve blinked a wide-eyed expression at the hearing of her birth name. She turned to look at Ann, stricken with fear. It became evident to Rainey that Ann had tortured this woman if she used her real name. Just hearing it brought terror.
Rainey said to the woman with her kidnapper’s head in her lap, “Your parents never stopped looking for you, Alyson. No matter what these people told you, your parents never gave up hope of finding you. They are waiting for you right now.”
“Too bad,” Ann said. “They’ll read about how you tragically were found and killed in an explosion all in the same evening.”
Alyson’s expression of fear changed as she looked up at Rainey and asked the strangest question, “What does a cell jammer look like?”
Rainey said, “I don’t know. Depends on the manufacturer, I guess.”
Alyson held out her hand palm up with a small device resting on it. Rainey glanced at Ann, who looked stunned.
Alyson said, “She lies.”
Rainey pulled the jammer detector from her pocket and saw the word, “Detected,” on the screen.
Ann brought the whip up and began retreating toward the stairs. Alyson moved Eugene’s head from her lap. She stood and took a step in front of Rainey, as if to protect her.
Rainey whispered behind Alyson, “Don’t go after her. The police will catch her soon enough.”
Ann laughed the obligatory laugh of maniacs about to kill. “The police will believe I knew nothing, that I am stunned by Hart’s real identity, and will comfort me on those big, steroid extended shoulders they are so fond of building.”
Ann stopped at the cell door controls. She had to tuck the whip under her arm in order to pull the door mechanism open for the unit where Sarabi panted in the corner. Rainey began a move to prevent Ann from opening the door; worried about the lioness forgetting which one of them she hated the most.
Alyson grabbed Rainey’s arm, stopping her, and said. “Stay behind me.”
The screeching metal on metal sent a shudder through Rainey. It was a foreboding announcement that death was coming at the hands of a madwoman or a mad lion. Neither appealed to Rainey, as she made a move for the cleavers, but froze on Alyson’s command to the still cowered lioness.
“Hier! Sarabi.”
The big cat obeyed, bounding so close her tail slapped against Rainey’s leg.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Rainey whispered to no one.
Alyson reached behind her to pull Rainey close, while saying, “Calm yourself.”
Ann did not appear to have anticipated Alyson’s complete control of the animal. She quickly pulled the whip and snapped a loud crack in the air.
“Raawwrr,” Sarabi responded.
Alyson shouted, “Sarabi, töte sie. Fass! Fass!”
Ann tried to swing the whip again, but it made no difference. Sarabi sprang and covered the distance between them in one flying leap. Ann tried to turn and run. Sarabi knocked her prey to the floor, grabbed her by the neck, and sunk her teeth in deep.
Alyson said, “Stay here,” to Rainey and then casually walked to the cell door controls. She pulled the center lever. The door slid open. Alyson entered the cell, retrieved the weapons Ann had kicked there, and then returned to the controls.
“Gute, Sarabi. Gute,” Alyson said to the purring cat.
Ann wasn’t moving. Rainey surmised Sarabi’s teeth had found their mark at the base of her skull. Alyson pushed the lever in that closed the cell door near Rainey and
the still breathing, but barely, Eugene.
She then directed Sarabi, “Zwinger bis.”
The lioness dragged her prey into the center cell. Alyson closed the door behind her. Rainey let out the breath she had been holding.
“Let’s get out of here. I’m sure she wasn’t lying about this place being rigged to blow up.”
Rainey began moving toward the staircase, stopping to collect the weapons from Alyson, who stood by the cell door levers taking a long last look at her prison. She focused on Eugene for a second and then reopened the cell door next to where he lay. She then turned to follow Rainey out of the grotto without a single comment.
As Rainey pushed the big steel door at the top of the stairs shut and latched it, Alyson said, “She won’t eat them, unless no one comes to feed her. They will come, won’t they?”
“I’ll make sure she’s taken care of, Alyson. She deserves that.”
Alyson made a request, as they walked toward the exit, “Don’t let them kill her. I read there are sanctuaries. Is that real? Can Sarabi go live in a sanctuary?”
“I think we can arrange that,” Rainey answered.
“And can I really talk to my mom?”
“Yes, Alyson. I know she’s been waiting for this phone call for a long time.”
As they exited through the chain-link fence gate, Alyson looked around at the trees and then down at the ground. “I haven’t felt real earth under my feet in so long, I forgot what it felt like.”
“Rainey!” Danny’s voice cut through the forest.
“Over here!” she replied.
“Rainey!” Katie called, just before a bank of flashlights came into view, heading toward Rainey’s position.
“We’re here,” she yelled. She dug out her flashlight from her jacket pocket and waved it in the air. She turned to Alyson. “You see those lights, Alyson Grayson. That’s your rescue party. That’s your ticket home.”
Alyson smiled up at Rainey and said, “I think we did all right rescuing ourselves.”
“Right you are, Alyson. Well done.” Rainey put her arm around the shorter woman’s shoulders. “By the way, how did you learn how to train a lion, in German no less?”
Rainey with a Chance of Hale (A Rainey Bell Thriller Book 6) Page 20