She walked out to her car. Rooting around in her glove compartment, she found a New England map. She spread it on the seat and eyed her two choices: Nashua, New Hampshire, or Lithia, in western Massachusetts. Warren Hoyt had used ATM’s at both locations. It was down to pure guesswork. A toss of a coin.
She started the car. It was ten-thirty; she didn’t reach the town of Lithia until noon.
Water. It was all Catherine could think about, the cool, clean taste of it streaming into her mouth. She thought of all the fountains from which she had drunk, the stainless-steel oases in the hospital corridors spouting icy water that splashed her lips, her chin. She thought of crushed ice and the way post-op patients would crane their necks and open their parched mouths like baby birds to receive a few precious chips of it.
And she thought of Nina Peyton, bound in a bedroom, knowing she was doomed to die, yet able to think only of her terrible thirst.
This is how he tortures us. How he beats us down. He wants us to beg for water, beg for our lives. He wants complete control. He wants us to acknowledge his power.
All night she had been left to stare at that lone lightbulb. Several times she had dozed off, only to startle awake, her stomach churning in panic. But panic cannot be sustained, and as the hours passed and no amount of struggling could loosen her bonds, her body seemed to shut down into a state of suspended animation. She hovered there, in the nightmarish twilight between denial and reality, her mind focused with exquisite concentration on her craving for water.
Footsteps creaked. A door squealed open.
She snapped fully awake. Her heart was suddenly pounding like an animal trying to beat its way out of her chest. She sucked in dank air, cool cellar air that smelled of earth and moist stone. Her breaths came in quickening gasps as the footsteps moved down the stairs and then he was there, standing above her. The light from the lone bulb cast shadows on his face, turning it into a smiling skull with hollows for eyes.
“You want a drink, don’t you?” he said. Such a quiet voice. Such a sane voice.
She could not speak because of the tape over her mouth, but he could see the answer in her feverish eyes.
“Look what I have, Catherine.” He held up a tumbler and she heard the delicious clink of ice cubes and saw bright beads of water sweating on the cold surface of the glass. “Wouldn’t you like a sip?”
She nodded, her gaze not on him but on the tumbler. Thirst was driving her mad, but she was already thinking ahead, beyond that first glorious sip of water. Plotting her moves, weighing her chances.
He swirled the water, and the ice rang like chimes against the glass. “Only if you behave.”
I will, her eyes promised him.
The tape stung as it was peeled off. She lay completely passive, let him slip a straw into her mouth. She took a greedy sip, but it was barely a trickle against the raging fire of her thirst. She drank again and immediately began to cough, precious water dribbling from her mouth.
“Can’t—can’t drink lying down,” she gasped. “Please, let me sit up. Please.”
He set down the glass and studied her, his eyes bottomless pools of black. He saw a woman on the verge of fainting. A woman who had to be revived if he wanted the full pleasure of her terror.
He began to cut the tape that bound her right wrist to the bedframe.
Her heart was thumping hard, and she thought that surely he would see it surging against her breastbone. The right bond came free, and her hand lay limp. She did not move, did not tense a single muscle.
There was an endless silence. Come on. Cut my left hand free. Cut it!
Too late she realized she’d been holding her breath and he had noticed it. In despair she heard the screech of fresh duct tape peeling off the roll.
It’s now or never.
She grabbed blindly at the instrument tray, and the glass of water went flying, ice cubes clattering to the floor. Her fingers closed around steel. The scalpel!
Just as he lunged at her, she swung the scalpel and felt the blade strike flesh.
He flinched away, howling, clutching his hand.
She twisted sideways, slashed the scalpel across the tape that bound her left wrist. Another hand free!
She shot upright in bed, and her vision suddenly dimmed. A day without water had left her weak, and she fought to focus, to direct the blade at the tape binding her right ankle. She slashed blindly and pain nipped her skin. One hard kick and her ankle was free.
She reached out toward the last binding.
The heavy retractor slammed into her temple, a blow so brutal she saw bright flashes of light.
The second blow caught her on the cheek, and she heard bone crack.
She never remembered dropping the scalpel.
When she surfaced back to consciousness, her face was throbbing and she could not see out her right eye. She tried to move her limbs and found her wrists and ankles were once again bound to the bedframe. But he had not yet taped her mouth; he had not yet silenced her.
He was standing above her. She saw the stains on his shirt. His blood, she realized with a feral sense of satisfaction. His prey had lashed back and had drawn blood. I am not so easily conquered. He feeds on fear; I will show him none of it.
He picked up a scalpel from the tray and came toward her. Though her heart was slamming against her chest, she lay perfectly still, her gaze on his. Taunting him, daring him. She now knew her death was inevitable, and with that acceptance came liberation. The courage of the condemned. For two years she’d cowered like a wounded animal in hiding. For two years, she had let Andrew Capra’s ghost rule her life. No longer.
Go ahead, cut me. But you will not win. You will not see me die defeated.
He touched the blade to her abdomen. Involuntarily her muscles snapped taut. He was waiting to see fear on her face.
She showed him only defiance. “You can’t do it without Andrew, can you?” she said. “You can’t even get it up on your own. Andrew had to do the fucking. All you could do was watch him.”
He pressed the blade, pricking her skin. Even through her pain, even as the first drops of blood trickled out, she kept her gaze locked on his, showing no fear, denying him all satisfaction.
“You can’t even fuck a woman, can you? No, your hero Andrew had to do it. And he was a loser, too.”
The scalpel hesitated. Lifted. She saw it hovering there, in the dim light.
Andrew. The key is Andrew, the man he worships. His god.
“Loser. Andrew was a loser,” she said. “You know why he came to see me that night, don’t you? He came to beg.”
“No.” The word was barely a whisper.
“He asked me not to fire him. He pleaded with me.” She laughed, a harsh and startling sound in that dim place of death. “It was pitiful. That was Andrew, your hero. Begging me to help him.”
The hand on the scalpel tightened. The blade pressed down on her belly again, and fresh blood oozed out and trickled down her flank. Savagely she suppressed the instinct to flinch, to cry out. Instead she kept talking, her voice as strong and confident as though she were the one holding the scalpel.
“He told me about you. You didn’t know that, did you? He said you couldn’t even talk to a woman, you were such a coward. He had to find them for you.”
“Liar.”
“You were nothing to him. Just a parasite. A worm.”
“Liar.”
The blade sank into her skin, and though she fought against it, a gasp escaped her throat. You will not win, you bastard. Because I’m no longer afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anything.
She stared, her eyes burning with the defiance of the damned, as he made the next slice.
twenty-five
Rizzoli stood eyeing the row of cake mixes and wondered how many of the boxes were infested with mealybugs. Hobbs’ FoodMart was that kind of grocery store—dark and musty, a real Mom and Pop establishment, if you pictured Mom and Pop as a pair of mean geezers who’d sell spoiled milk to
school kids. “Pop” was Dean Hobbs, an old Yankee with suspicious eyes who paused to study a customer’s quarters before accepting them as payment. Grudgingly he handed back two pennies’ worth of change, then slammed the register shut.
“Don’t keep track of who uses that ATM thingamajig,” he said to Rizzoli. “Bank put it in, as a convenience to my customers. I got nothing to do with it.”
“The cash was withdrawn back in May. Two hundred dollars. I have a photo of the man who—”
“Like I told that state cop, that was May. This is August. You think I remember a customer from that far back?”
“The state police were here?”
“This morning, asking the same questions. Don’t you cops talk to each other?”
So the ATM transaction had already been followed up on, not by Boston PD but by the staties. Shit, she was wasting her time here.
Mr. Hobbs’s gaze suddenly shot to a teenage boy studying the candy selection. “Hey, you gonna pay for that Snickers bar?”
“Uh … yeah.”
“Then take it outta your pocket, why don’t ya?”
The boy put the candy bar back on the shelf and slunk out of the store.
Dean Hobbs grunted. “That one’s always been trouble.”
“You know that kid?” asked Rizzoli.
“Know his folks.”
“How about the rest of your customers? You know most of them?”
“You had a look around town?”
“A quick one.”
“Yeah, well, a quick one’s all it takes to see Lithia. Twelve hundred people. Nothing much to see.”
Rizzoli took out Warren Hoyt’s photo. It was the best they could come up with, a two-year-old image from his driver’s license. He was looking straight at the camera, a thin-faced man with trim hair and a strangely generic smile. Though Dean Hobbs had already seen it, she held it out to him anyway. “His name is Warren Hoyt.”
“Yeah, I seen it. The state police showed me.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“Didn’t recognize him this morning. Don’t recognize him now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t I sound sure?”
Yes, he did. He sounded like a man who never changed his mind about anything.
Bells chimed as the door opened, and two teenage girls walked in, summer blondes with long legs bare and tanned in their short shorts. Dean Hobbs was momentarily distracted as they strolled by, giggling, and wandered toward the gloomy back end of the store.
“They sure have grown,” he murmured in wonder.
“Mr. Hobbs.”
“Huh?”
“If you see the man in that photo, I want you to call me immediately.” She handed him her card. “I can be reached twenty-four hours a day. Pager or cell phone.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The girls, now carrying a bag of potato chips and a six-pack of Diet Pepsi, came back to the register. They stood in all their braless teenage magnificence, nipples poking against sleeveless tee shirts. Dean Hobbs was getting an eyeful, and Rizzoli wondered if he’d already forgotten she was there.
The story of my life. Pretty girl walks in; I turn invisible.
She left the grocery store and went back to her car. Just that short time in the sun had baked the interior, so she opened the door and waited for the car to air out. On Lithia’s main street, nothing moved. She saw a gas station, a hardware store, and a cafe, but no people. The heat had driven everyone indoors, and she could hear the rattle of air conditioners up and down the street. Even in small-town America, no one sat outside fanning themselves anymore. The miracle of air conditioning had made the front porch irrelevant.
She heard the grocery store door tinkle shut and saw the two girls stroll lazily out into the sun, the only creatures moving. As they walked up the street, Rizzoli saw curtains flick aside in a window. People noticed things in small towns. They certainly noticed pretty young women.
Would they notice if one had gone missing?
She shut the car door and went back into the grocery store.
Mr. Hobbs was in the vegetable aisle, cunningly burying the fresh lettuce heads at the back of the cooler bin, moving the wilted heads to the front.
“Mr. Hobbs?”
He turned. “You back again?”
“Another question.”
“Don’t mean I have an answer.”
“Do any Asian women live in this town?”
This was a question he had not anticipated, and he just looked at her in bafflement. “What?”
“A Chinese or Japanese woman. Or maybe a Native American.”
“We got a coupla black families,” he offered, as though they might do instead.
“There’s a woman who may be missing. Long black hair, very straight, past her shoulders.”
“And you say she’s Oriental?”
“Or possibly Native American.”
He laughed. “Hell, I don’t think she’s any of those.”
Rizzoli’s attention perked up. He had turned back to the vegetable bin and began layering old zucchinis on top of the fresh shipment.
“Who’s she, Mr. Hobbs?”
“Not Oriental, that’s for sure. Not Indian, either.”
“You know her?”
“Seen her in here, once or twice. She’s renting the old Sturdee Farm for the summer. Tall girl. Not all that pretty.”
Yes, he would notice that last fact.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
He turned and yelled: “Hey, Margaret!”
The door to a back room swung open and Mrs. Hobbs came out. “What?”
“Didn’t you drop off a delivery at the Sturdee place last week?”
“Yeah.”
“That gal out there look okay to you?”
“She paid me.”
Rizzoli asked, “Have you seen her since, Mrs. Hobbs?”
“Haven’t had a reason to.”
“Where is this Sturdee Farm?”
“Out on West Fork. Last place on the road.”
Rizzoli looked down as her beeper went off. “Can I use your telephone?” she asked. “My cell phone just died.”
“It’s not a long-distance call, is it?”
“Boston.”
He grunted and turned back to his zucchini display. “Pay phone’s outside.”
Cursing under her breath, Rizzoli stalked out again into the heat, found the pay phone, and thrust coins into the slot.
“Detective Frost.”
“You just paged me.”
“Rizzoli? What’re you doing out in Western Mass?”
To her dismay, she realized he knew her location, thanks to caller ID. “I took a little drive.”
“You’re still working the case, aren’t you?”
“I’m just asking a few questions. Not a big deal.”
“Shit, if—” Frost abruptly lowered his voice. “If Marquette finds out—”
“You’re not gonna tell him, are you?”
“No way. But get back in here. He’s looking for you and he’s pissed.”
“I’ve got one more place to check out here.”
“Listen to me, Rizzoli. Let it go, or you’ll blow whatever chance you’ve still got in the unit.”
“Don’t you see? I’ve already blown it! I’m already fucked!” Blinking away tears, she turned and stared bitterly up the empty street, where dust blew like hot ash. “He’s all I’ve got now. The Surgeon. There’s nothing left for me except to nail him.”
“The staties have already been out there. They came up empty-handed.”
“I know.”
“So what are you doing there?”
“Asking the questions they didn’t ask.” She hung up.
Then she got in her car and drove off to find the black-haired woman.
twenty-six
The Sturdee Farm was the only house at the end of a long dirt road. It was an old Cape with chipping white paint and a porch that sagged in the
middle beneath a burden of stacked firewood.
Rizzoli sat in her car for a moment, too tired to step out. And too demoralized by what her once-promising career had come down to: sitting alone on this dirt road, contemplating the uselessness of walking up those steps and knocking on that door. Talking to some bewildered woman who just happened to have black hair. She thought of Ed Geiger, another Boston cop who’d also parked his car on a dirt road one day, and had decided, at the age of forty-nine, that it really was the end of the road for him. Rizzoli had been the first detective to arrive on the scene. While all the other cops had stood around that car with its blood-splattered windshield, shaking their heads and murmuring sadly about poor Ed, Rizzoli had felt little sympathy for a cop pathetic enough to blow his own brains out.
It’s so easy, she thought, suddenly aware of the weapon on her hip. Not her service weapon, which she’d turned over to Marquette, but her own, from home. A gun could be your best friend or your worst enemy. Sometimes both at once.
But she was no Ed Geiger; she was no loser who’d eat her gun. She turned off the engine and reluctantly stepped out of the car to do her job.
Rizzoli had lived all her life in the city, and the silence of this place was eerie to her. She climbed the porch steps, and every creak of the wood seemed magnified. Flies buzzed around her head. She knocked on the door, waited. Gave the knob an experimental twist and found it locked. She knocked again, then called out, her voice ringing with startling loudness: “Hello?”
By now the mosquitoes had found her. She slapped at her face and saw a dark smear of blood on her palm. To hell with country life; at least in the city the bloodsuckers walked on two legs and you could see them coming.
She gave the door a few more loud knocks, slapped at a few more mosquitoes, then gave up. No one seemed to be home.
She circled around to the back of the house, scanning for signs of forced entry, but all the windows were shut; all the screens were in place. The windows were too high for an intruder to climb through without a ladder, as the house was built upon a raised stone foundation.
She turned from the house and surveyed the backyard. There was an old barn and a farm pond, green with scum. A lone mallard drifted dejectedly in the water—probably the reject of his flock. There was no sign of any attempt at a garden—just knee-high weeds and grass and more mosquitoes. A lot of them.
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