The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  She looked around. Without a key, then what? The shovel? Could she beat the lock apart? She walked over to the shovel, knowing she should hurry, but strangely in no hurry. It was okay. Everything was okay.

  Sharon became frantic. Shouting. Waving her arms. Slapping the cement floor. Hopping up and down. God, she looked like one of the animals.

  What was this? Several of the dogs quieted; they all began pacing their cages at once.

  Sharon kept slapping the cement, in an ungainly primitive dance.

  Pamela struck the lock with the end of the shovel. Nothing.

  She tried again.

  “I’m trying,” she told the frantic woman inside. This woman’s behavior was making her nervous. “Stop it!” she said. Only when she identified this fleeting nervousness did she realize what a huge dose of Valium it must have been—there was a gulf between how she should have been, and what she actually was, feeling.

  She struck the lock with the shovel again. Nothing.

  Now Sharon was shaking her wrist toward the main door. Pounding the cement again and pointing hysterically toward the door.

  Finally, Pamela understood as she felt a rumble under her feet.

  The dogs barking had covered the approaching sounds, but now Pamela heard them distinctly.

  A car!

  But if a car, it could only be one of two people: Maybeck or Elden. And if either of them caught her in here doing this …

  Sharon grabbed hold of the cage again. Her collar sounded and Pamela watched as the collar punished her. She held on an impossibly long time. She pointed emphatically toward the door.

  Close the door! Of course!

  Pamela moved quite quickly now, surprising herself. First toward the door; then, stopping, she returned to the cage and started in with the shovel again.

  She should have never come here, she thought. All a mistake.

  She glanced toward the door.

  Sharon pointed furiously.

  “I know,” Pamela said. “I know.” What Sharon didn’t understand was that there was no way to lock that door from the inside. The only hope now was to get her free of the cage.

  She never should have gone against him, she realized. He was too powerful for her.

  She dropped the shovel, abandoning her efforts. It clanked to the floor. She felt terrified of him before she ever saw him. The Valium did little to help with this fear.

  Sharon let out a muffled, anguished cry.

  The dogs went completely hysterical.

  Pamela wanted to disappear, to vanish. Anything but face his wrath. She had glimpsed his anger before. She shook with fear, unable to imagine how he might react to this.

  The door creaked.

  Sharon retreated, curling back into a ball in the center of her cage.

  Pamela felt like hiding, too. She watched as a hand pushed open the door.

  She knew that hand.

  53

  Daphne had the Prelude up to forty, which in the dim light of an inconsistent moon seemed more like twice that. She careened through puddles, sending water up in a torrential spray, blurring her windshield and demanding the wipers.

  She had lost him.

  A few seconds earlier his taillights had been distant but visible. She had slowed to avoid pressing herself on him. When she caught herself giving him too much leeway, she had sped back up. Now, he was nowhere to be seen.

  She pushed the car a little harder, a little faster. Dangerous at best, given the slippery conditions and the lack of visibility. They had been on these back-roads for the better part of fifteen minutes—it seemed more like an hour.

  There! She just caught a glimpse of some lights out of the corner of her eye. She craned her neck to look out the mud-splattered side window. Was that a road?

  A painful cramp stabbed into her neck and locked. She cried out. Her hand just barely tugged the wheel. She forced her head back around as the car began a weightless crabbing to the right, drifting slowly on all four tires, the front end surrendering to momentum and releasing its careful grip. Like a rock tossed out onto a frozen pond. She corrected the wheel to the right. Waited. Nothing. Cut it back. Nothing. Drifting, like a chain was pulling her off the road. She tapped the brakes tentatively, and that did it: The car seemed to snap; the back end swung completely around on her—she was looking back from where she had just come, flying backwards now. Pitch black. Vertigo. Perilously close to the ditch. Mud flying everywhere. The horrible sound of machinery doing what it wasn’t designed to do.

  She jerked the wheel to the right with authority and bounced her foot off the brake again. A rear tire caught on something. The front end of the car jumped so fast, so hard, that it stole the wheel from her hands. The front end bounced into the shallow drainage ditch. Her head slammed hard against the side glass. The car came to a grinding halt, its engine still running.

  She just sat there for a moment collecting herself, checking herself with small movements, the flexing of a muscle, the movement of a joint. She got control of her breathing, though her heart was lost to adrenaline. It took the better part of a minute to get her vision down to one image.

  No time! it suddenly occurred to her. In the heat of the moment she had forgotten what she was even doing out here. She forced the car into first gear—it didn’t want to go—and let out the clutch. There was a bad noise, but then the front tires suddenly spun. She felt the tire dig a hole in what seemed like a fraction of a second. The front end sank perceptibly. She tried to back up, tried to go forward: mired. The car rocked once, and then dug in deeply one final time. She climbed out. The car was beached, high-centered on the lip of the ditch, both front tires rutted in up to their hubs.

  She grabbed the keys. She kept jumper cables, snow chains, and a heavy-duty black rubber flashlight in the trunk. She grabbed the flashlight, pocketed the keys, and took off at a run through the sloppy mud.

  The flashlight showed her the path of her car: an improbable tangle of deep ruts, crisscrossed and pretzled, that led back to two perfectly straight tire tracks and the arching curve of Tegg’s tires where the four-wheel drive had turned. She followed Tegg’s tracks up a road that quickly narrowed.

  She found the edge of the road easier for running, though her Top-Siders became heavy with mud. After about fifty yards it narrowed again, and the texture became more gravel than mud, although it remained spongy. The flashlight caught an occasional boot print, washed by the recent rains, but clearly distinguishable. Now that she caught onto it, it was one long line of boot tracks coming right at her—someone either exceptionally tall or running fast.

  It was then that for some reason it occurred to her that this was in fact not a road at all.

  It was a driveway.

  54

  The Keeper stood in the doorway, backlit by moonlight and a finger of fog that reached to the ground. Sharon had witnessed his entry several times, but only once before had he paused there like that, emanating a menace that even the dogs seemed to feel.

  Sharon’s eye stung badly. A hot, shooting pain bit into her side where the bandage covered her scar. Her neck was hot from the collar. Her ears were ringing.

  Only a few short minutes ago she had been on the verge of being rescued, but she shrank from that hope now. The Keeper was too powerful. This young woman was no match for him, even though by the way they looked at each other there seemed to be a strong connection between them.

  The dogs remained silent, though they continued to pace anxiously.

  The Keeper stepped inside and closed the door firmly behind him. He called, “Heel!” The guard dog obeyed, circling behind the man and sitting quickly by his side.

  Sharon, who had lived through hundreds of dangerous incidents while out on the street, felt the impending threat that dog represented.

  “I’m sorry,” the young woman mumbled, head down. Subservient. “But this isn’t right,” she dared voice.

  “I expected so much more of you,” he said, his voice reverberating eerily i
n the steel building. Sharon felt invisible. He had yet to even glance in her direction. Instead, his full concentration remained focused on this other woman.

  The Keeper continued, “You didn’t do as I said. You have failed me.”

  “This is wrong, Elden,” she countered.

  For the first time, Sharon could attach a name to this man, this monster. It was a strange name and somehow fitting. Strange to be fully prepared to kill a man whose name you don’t even know. The needle warmed in her palm.

  “You could help me, you know. You could prove yourself. There’s work to be done.”

  “You’ve gone way too far,” she said to the cement. “It’s over.” She wouldn’t look at him; she knew better than to look at him.

  Sharon couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He drew her into himself like a hypnotist.

  “Pamela,” he said—and now this young woman had a name as well—”since when do you refuse me?”

  The woman looked up at him.

  Pamela’s face felt hot. Her brain was like jelly. She wanted to resist him, but it was so difficult. She had worshipped him for so long, and now her anger, mingled with shame and fear, felt like spikes in the middle of her chest. Her emotions wouldn’t stay focused for long; another wave of warmth would drive them away.

  “Who do you think you are?” she asked, clinging to a shard of righteousness. “A woman’s life is at stake!”

  His face and neck reddened. Felix panted impatiently. “How can you say such things? Hmm? I suggest you consider your situation more carefully,” he said, gripping the dog’s collar. “Are you frightened? The police frightened you, didn’t they?”

  The police? Sharon thought. Was it possible?

  Pamela stepped up to Sharon’s cage and took hold of the lock. “Open it,” she said to him.

  “Get away from there!” Tegg warned in that sharp voice. He gave the dog’s heavy collar a tug, and it came to its feet.

  “Give me the key. I’ll do it,” Pamela said, her voice shaking. “We can give her the electroshock, can’t we? Some Ketamine and electroshock. We can leave her at a hospital, no one the wiser. We dismantle everything here and what’s there to find?” It took every bit of her strength to address him like this. “You said it yourself: The police don’t have anything. They’re fishing is all. We can still do this, Elden. We can still get out of this.”

  “We most certainly cannot. I told you: There’s a contract. There are things of which you have no idea. I have a plan! It’s all settled.”

  “Settled? It can’t be settled. Give me the key.”

  “Of course I won’t. Use your head.”

  Pamela picked up the shovel. “We can still save her, Elden. Contracts can be broken.” She felt as if she were dealing with a child. This wasn’t the same man of even a week ago. “You’re not well,” she told him.

  “Away from there!” he roared.

  She had chosen the wrong words. Her knees trembled. His strength was overwhelming, almost like a bright light you can’t look at. She wanted to please him, to help him.

  He stepped toward her. Felix followed. “Stand back,” he ordered. Her heart sank, but she felt her feet refuse to obey. What was happening to her?

  She raised the shovel and delivered another blow. To her joy, although the lock remained closed, the latch broke a rivet and the door came partially open. Sharon felt the hair on her arms stand at attention. Freedom? Was it possible?

  The Keeper mechanically jerked his head toward her and shouted, “Stay right where you are!”

  Sharon thought of the needle in her hand. She’d never managed to come up with a plan for the dog, but one step at a time, she reminded herself.

  Pamela said, “How can you justify taking one life in order to save another? What sense is there in that?”

  The Keeper’s expression hardened. “What sense?” His shoulders went military and he shook his head. “Lift your shirt, Pamela.”

  “What?”

  He repeated, “Remove your shirt. Now! Don’t question me, Pamela. Show it to me!” His tone was that of a doctor—clinical and authoritative. Pamela stunned Sharon by removing her jacket and unbuttoning her shirt, allowing it to hang open.

  From that moment on, Sharon knew it was over. Pamela had given in. She was his.

  Below her ribs was a five-inch scar.

  “Touch it for me,” he instructed.

  Pamela shook her head in one last try at defiance. “No, I won’t.”

  “Do it!” he thundered.

  Tears came to her eyes. She reached down and traced the long scar with a quivering fingertip.

  He nodded. “I saved you. Hmm? I delivered, when no one else was able. Let me tell you this, when one faces losing a young friend as precious, as individual as you, one becomes capable of things he never dreamed possible.” He experienced one of those tics then—his head jerking, his shoulder lifting, his eyes squinting shut. Sharon had witnessed this once before. He straightened himself, like a man adjusting his tie, and continued as if nothing had happened. “I told you a little white lie, a little fib back then, because to do otherwise would have caused you undue anxiety and might have interfered with your recovery. Hmm? Do you remember asking me about where I had located your liver? Hmm? I may not have done the actual transplant, but I saved your life—you know that’s true. The truth is inescapable, is it not? It is the biggest burden of all. Hmm? Did you sense the truth? I suspect you did. You must have thought at some point that it hadn’t really come from a trauma patient … No, of course it didn’t. But I protected you from the truth because I knew how it would hurt you.”

  Pamela sobbed and sank to her knees. She was mumbling to herself, but Sharon couldn’t understand a word.

  “That’s what I’m offering you now, you know. Protection. But you don’t seem to see that. Protection from them: the police; your parents; your fears. But you must join me. Hmm? Not go against me. I can protect you. Believe me.”

  “You lied to me?” she asked incredulously.

  “What did you think happened to Anna?” he asked.

  Pamela covered her ears.

  The man raised his voice to be heard. “Didn’t it ever strike you as odd that Anna just up and disappeared at the same time you were seriously ill? You must have thought of that!”

  He said, “There was an accident—a fatal accident—and there she was.” He pointed to the floor. “What was I to do? I tested her blood type, that’s what! A godsend is what it was. She was your blood type … You live because another died, and yet you would deny it for someone else?”

  “Nooooo!” she screamed. She came at him with the shovel raised high.

  Sharon broke for the door to her cage.

  “Stop!” he commanded Sharon, his finger pointed at her ominously.

  The Keeper flickered his wrist next to the dog’s eyes. He uttered but a single word: “Hit!”

  The pit bull sprang forward. The Keeper dodged the swing of the shovel. The dog leaped several feet into the air and knocked Pamela to the cement.

  “Back!” The Keeper ordered, but the starving dog would not obey. “Back!” he demanded, sensing his loss of control. “Off of her!!” The dog was wild with hunger and the scent of the blood. The Keeper lifted the shovel and went after the dog.

  Sharon looked away.

  The sounds of the slaughter echoed throughout the building. The Keeper shouted, he struck the dog again and again, but the dog’s will overcame it all.

  Sharon fainted.

  When she awakened, it was dark in the kennel.

  She heard a car racing away.

  55

  Moving arrows of white light shot through the trees, followed by the growing whine of a car engine advancing steadily toward her. Daphne switched off the flashlight and darted into the trees as that sound grew increasingly louder. Tegg or some stranger? Maybe this wasn’t a driveway after all, the way it seemed to go on forever.

  She hid behind a tree, standing completely still as the veh
icle passed, her breathing competing with the sound of tires in the mud. It was the Trooper—Tegg. Wherever he had been for the last half hour, he was now leaving.

  She headed back onto the road and took up running again, though this time with the light off, guided only by the glow of a broken moon. She checked over her shoulder repeatedly: If he returned the way he had come, perhaps he was gone for good; if, however, he turned left at the end of this long road, he would come across her car and most certainly return.

  She ran faster, rounding two long turns.

  All at once the road spilled out into a clearing. The moon played its game of hide-and-seek, disappearing and denying her any sight of what lay ahead. It was far too dark to see anything clearly, but she edged her way tentatively out into the muddy, rut-wormed driveway and followed it slowly up a rise. A large, heavy shape loomed to her right, another smaller, more angular shape directly ahead.

  The moon cleared the clouds and it was like someone turning on the stage lights: ahead of her an old two-story homesteader log cabin; to her right, the large arcing curve of a Quonset hut.

  No lights in the cabin. A single vehicle parked that she recognized immediately as belonging to Pamela Chase. A sense of dread filled her—had there been two people in the Trooper? She had seen the outline of only one. Had it been Tegg or Pamela Chase? Could she be certain?

  She switched on the flashlight and sprinted to the cabin, drawing her weapon as she went. She could feel her heart clear up in her throat. She tried to swallow the lump away. Was Sharon here? She attempted to blink away the annoying white sparks that interfered with her vision. It had been two long years since she had tasted terror.

  She climbed the wooden stairs, slipped off the gun’s safety, and made herself alert for the slightest noise. A board creaked slightly underfoot.

  The Quonset hut exploded in barking. It so startled her that she dropped to one knee and trained her gun in that direction, the flashlight tucked immediately beneath the weapon. For a moment she couldn’t catch her breath, she was so surprised and startled. Frightened.