The dogs howled constantly for the better part of a minute and then gave it up to silence. Daphne, winded from the exhausting run, collected herself. She stood and circled the perimeter of the cabin, sliding her back against the logs, rushing quickly across the windows, weapon pointed through the glass. The kitchen door was open, its window broken. She edged it open with the toe of her shoe, and stepped inside, glass crunching beneath her shoes. She moved stealthily room to room, her weapon and flashlight held as a team, jerking around door frames and leveling the gun.
She climbed the stairs to the tightly confined second floor and continued her search. She entered a very small bedroom, the floor dotted with mouse pellets and dust balls. A mass grave of dead flies was collected at the bottom of the window frame from which one of the panes of glass was missing, the wood around it moldy.
She stepped up to this window and looked out on the Quonset hut below, hearing a loud hum coming from the building. At first she couldn’t place it. His car returning? she wondered, panicked by the thought. As the moonlight intensified, a shadow raced from one end of the Quonset hut to the other, as if someone had yanked away a huge cover, and she identified the source of the sound as a vent stack plugged into the corrugated roof. A furnace.
Why heat a Quonset hut—even a kennel, if that’s what it was? They hadn’t had frost in six weeks.
She hurried down the stairs, wondering whether to check the cellar before the Quonset hut. She had to! She descended slowly, her pulse thumping in her ears. It smelled like Dixon’s autopsy room down here, and it terrified her. Light from the flashlight played off the stone walls. The storm doors to the outside were open, letting in the night. She reached the bottom of the stairs, gun poised, and turned right. Nudged open a door. Stepped inside.
The light revealed a plastic room, a shiny gray. It found the overhead surgical light and lowered onto the bloodstained operating table.
She was sure then what the furnace was for. She went off at a sprint. Up the cellar stairs, out into the cool night air. She fell to her knees and vomited. She stood and ran harder. The Quonset hut seemed to fade away from her. Her vision dimmed. Hyperventilating. Her feet sloshed through the wet grass.
She reached the door to the shed, the dogs barking frantically, and found an enormous padlock containing it. She stepped back, aimed her weapon, and fired off four consecutive rounds. Two hit the lock but did nothing to open it, boring holes through the metal to no effect. Two others penetrated the galvanized metal, lost to the inside of the shed.
When she heard a rhythmic banging, obscured by the barking, she caught herself immediately and stopped firing. What had she been thinking?
“Sharon?” she shouted, paying no consideration to the possiblity of someone—a guard, Tegg—being nearby.
Daphne reared back and kicked the door repeatedly. It didn’t budge. She grabbed hold of the lock. It was hot. One shot had struck it cleanly, damaging the casing, but the lock itself remained intact.
She circled the building, beating on the walls with the butt of her gun. Three quarters of the way down one wall, a return signal echoed back. Tears streaming from her eyes, Daphne shouted to the wall, “I’m coming in!” She came completely around the building: no other doors.
Deciding the structure’s only door was far enough away from Sharon’s location inside, Daphne elected to use the gun one more time. She placed the barrel’s opening directly in contact with the brass lock, stretched her arm straight out, averted her eyes, leaned fully away, and squeezed the trigger. The dogs were barking so loudly that the discharge sounded more like a hand clap.
A piece of shrapnel sliced into her lower leg, barely noticed as she inspected her target. An oversized bullet hole was bored through the center of the lock, which otherwise remained intact. She slammed it against the door repeatedly, frustrated and angry.
She checked her leg. It was a pea-sized wound, the metal lodged inside. It was bleeding, through not badly. With each passing second, the pain intensified.
She knew then that she had to find another way inside. That lock wasn’t coming off. She hurried to Pamela’s vehicle and climbed inside. No key! She pounded her fist on the dashboard in frustration. She spotted an old tractor, grass growing up around it, but even from thirty yards away it was apparent that it hadn’t run in years.
She came out of the car. Limping, she circled the building again. There had to be another way inside.
When the furnace kicked off, she looked up and realized there was.
56
Tegg knew the exact location where his cellular came back into range, a small rise in the road just prior to Maud Lake. He pulled over, leaving the Trooper running, and dialed Wong Kei’s cellular number, which was now routed through the Vancouver telephone system. Wong Kei answered coldly, “Speak.”
Tegg said, “This is me.” He looked down at the hand trembling in his lap and wondered if it really belonged to him, if anything was really as it seemed.
Felix had massacred Pamela, one of the few persons he had seen as a part of his future—his budding young protegé. Had turned her into a bloody pulp. She was now inside the first pen, contained in two black garbage bags. Pamela. Witnessing the slaughter, attempting to stop it, had drained him.
“Our plans are moved forward,” Tegg advised.
“What? Impossible!” the man protested. “Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning!”
“Tonight. Now,” Tegg declared. “I’ll call from the airport. Expect me around,” he checked his watch, “midnight, maybe a little after. You’ll have to move quickly: It will be two hours and counting by the time I reach you. We will have used up half our time.”
“Impossible!” the tight voice complained.
“Make it happen. I’m on my way.” He pushed: END. He stared at the button’s simple message.
He could find ice in Snoqualmie Falls.
He would chain and lock the main gate, use the old fire trail at the back of the property as his escape route. If he got into a panic about time, he could put the harvest off until later; sedate Sharon, hide her in the back seat under a blanket. In the far back of the Trooper he carried everything necessary for field surgery. Why not? Head north—enter Canada through the logging trails, do the harvest somewhere out there. Get the money from Wong Kei—he needed that money now more than ever. Stick with the plan.
The old saying was right: There was more than one way to skin a cat.
A human, too, if it came to that.
57
With the gun returned to its holster and the flashlight protruding awkwardly from her pocket, Daphne used a planter box stood on end as a ladder and scaled the Quonset hut’s wall to the roof. The constant howling of the dogs served to remind her what awaited her inside. Optimism fueled her: Sharon was alive!
When she reached the lower lip of the curved roof, she hooked one leg up and over the edge and slid herself carefully onto it. It was cold and wet, and her clothes were immediately soaked through.
Her cheek pressed to the galvanized roof, her fingers groping for purchase, she inched her way up to the ridge, where she pulled herself up to a straddle. With her hands now free, she trained the flashlight onto the vent stack and inspected it, finding her first bit of encouragement: It was surrounded by a poor patchwork of rubber, sheet metal and caulk, all applied haphazardly.
Through the hole, the barking grew louder.
She stuffed the light under her knee, leaned down and pulled on the stack. It popped loose almost effortlessly. She tore at the materials, bending the stack to one side, prying open a hole large enough to stuff herself into. She poked her head into the hole and gasped with the smell, coming up immediately for air. She aimed the flashlight inside, locating the steel frame of the propane furnace suspended from the ceiling. The furnace itself was about the size of a dishwasher. Beneath it she saw the cyclone-wire cage of a dog kennel, the dog’s red eyes trained up at her. The furnace’s superstructure offered her a platform for her descent.
She lowered herself inside.
Her gun snagged on one of the furnace’s angle-iron struts and threw her off balance. The gun ejected from the holster and disappeared into the dark, banging somewhere below her. Instinctively, she reached out to try to catch it, but hit the hot face of the furnace instead and burned herself. She let go and fell, crashing onto the top of the dog cage.
Directly below her the dog leapt up, snapping viciously at her through the wire. She moved and heard the flashlight rolling away from her. She pounced for it, but only managed to knock it off the cage. When it hit the cement floor, it flickered off and then back on as it bounced and rolled.
There, across the room, the light found a woman, stark naked. A bandaged eye. Another bandage on her side. Leather straps around her head holding a gag in her mouth, a heavy collar around her neck. Sharon was up on her knees, her one good eye staring hopefully at Daphne, an I.V. running from a bag overhead. A large bloodstain was smeared in front of the cage. “Sharon?” Daphne called out in horror. Could it be?
Sharon Shaffer cried with joy.
Daphne saw the other dog then; he was not in a cage but loose in the aisle. And he was coming right at her, teeth bared.
58
Unable to stomach these speeds, Boldt chose to look over at LaMoia instead. The blue police light, stuck haphazardly to the dash, pulsed a sterile wash across the car’s hood, reflected back onto their faces. The siren wailed loudly but did little to part the traffic ahead of them; people ignored sirens for the most part.
Boldt jerked to one side as LaMoia cut the wheel sharply and passed another slow-moving vehicle. “Asshole,” he cursed under his breath. This car honked angrily at them, as if they were in the wrong. LaMoia honked back and flipped the guy the bird.
They had made two stops prior to this: Pamela Chase’s apartment and Elden Tegg’s home. The former was deserted, the latter in the midst of a dinner party, though the front lawn looked as if some teenager had driven across it.
Tegg’s wife had been evasive but under pressure from Boldt had admitted that her husband was not at home, having left about an hour earlier. When LaMoia asked about use of their property in Snoqualmie, the woman said she wanted to phone her lawyer.
“Let me guess,” Boldt said. “Howard Chamberland.”
“Why, yes,” she admitted, her face reddening.
Boldt, worried about Daphne, called a patrol car to check the clinic as he and LaMoia headed for I-90 and Snoqualmie Falls. When it came back to them that no cars were parked in the back lot and that the clinic was locked up tight and dark, he telephoned the King County Police to alert them that SPD Homicide had a possible hostage situation north of Snoqualmie Falls and would appreciate cooperation. Five minutes later a call came back saying that two four-wheel-drive cruisers would rendezvous with them at the intersection of the Burlington Northern tracks and state highway 202. An Air Rescue helicopter, an ambulance, and the local hospital were all on-call. Boldt requested that the ambulance join the cruisers at the rendezvous. “Done,” said the dispatcher.
“Not quite,” mumbled LaMoia as he cut the car across three lanes and just barely caught the exit for 203 north.
Boldt shut his eyes and said, “Tell me when it’s over.”
59
Daphne jumped back, avoiding the jaws of the dog. His ear was cut, his face covered in dried blood. Her gun was lost, having fallen inside the dog pen through a gap between the two cross supports onto which she had dropped.
From across the room, Sharon attempted to shout at her through the gag. It filled Daphne with a sickening pity. Sharon inched forward on stiff legs and seized hold of the chain-link cyclone fence with both hands. A loud buzzer sounded. Her entire body shook with the jolt of electricity.
She let go and smiled.
Numb to the current? Daphne wondered. Conditioned to the pain?
Sharon nodded proudly. Daphne wondered: Insane? Could she get her out of here? Could this woman be expected to climb through the hole in the roof?
One thing at a time! she resolved.
Her problem at the moment was making it over to Sharon’s cage while staying out of the jaws of this guard dog.
She studied her situation thoughtfully, recalling from her training so ingrained in her: Assess the situation.
Difficult but not impossible. The roof of the cage stood four to five feet off the cement—low enough that the dog could snap at her but too high for it to actually jump up onto. She had to stay at this level, up above the dog. And she had to get over onto Sharon’s side of the building—it seemed her only hope to help her, though by the lock on the cage it wouldn’t be easy.
She squatted, prepared to jump across the wide aisle, when Sharon took hold of the cage again, sounding her collar. She did this apparently only to get Daphne’s attention, for she immediately let go and gestured toward the overhead funnel light suspended in the middle of the aisle.
Seeing it, Daphne understood immediately that Sharon had considered every possibility of escape—even crossing the aisle. They were a team.
Indeed, the light looked like a good idea. She would try it.
It was deafening in here. Frightful. The dogs wouldn’t stop barking. Had Cindy Chapman once been inside this building? Daphne tried to tune them out, to concentrate, but it wasn’t easy. She risked the leaping dog just long enough to reach out and touch the funnel light and get it swinging. With each pass, she increased its arc until she could grab hold of it, which she did. She tested it, giving it a little of her weight, and then tugged down on it. It held firm.
She threw her weight into it and swung across to the other side like Tarzan, letting go in time to land painfully on the top of the opposing cages. The guard dog followed her across—dancing, nipping at her shoes.
The light bulb broke and fell. The pit bull leaped high for it, caught it mid-air, and shattered it in its teeth, unfazed.
Seeing this, Daphne thought: Hungry?
The flashlight barely threw off enough light to see anything but the few feet immediately in front of it: Sharon’s cage. Daphne opened her eyes wide and moved from one cage to the next, reaching Sharon’s. Unsure how the collars worked, Daphne carefully lowered her finger through the wire mesh, not making contact with it. Sharon, crying now, raised her finger and the two touched. Their fingers hooked and Sharon squeezed.
Daphne fought back her own tears. She had no idea how much time she might have—all night? an hour? a few more minutes?—and knew that she had to make the most of it.
Her top priority was getting the guard dog out of the aisle, so she could get herself down to ground level and Sharon’s cage.
Food seemed her most promising weapon.
She discovered that the farthest pen on this side was stacked high with unopened bags of dried dog food. The latches were a mechanism that lifted via a small finger trigger, freeing a steel bar bolted to the hinged door. Sharon’s was the only cage padlocked.
Daphne slipped off her belt and fished with its buckle for the gate latch but was interrupted by the dog, who got his teeth on it.
Seeing this, Sharon distracted him by banging on her cage and hopping up and down. This agitated the other dogs as well. The guard dog, head lifted and barking, patrolled the center aisle, irritated and confused.
Daphne hooked the latch, and the door came open. The guard dog approached her, stretching his neck and barking. “Get in there,” she said, lowering her hand to tempt him. He snapped at her and she pulled back, but he did not enter the cage, despite the bags of food. He barked erratically, one distrustful eye on the stacked contents, the other on Daphne. She tore loose a bloodied piece of her pant leg and stuffed it between the chain link, landing it directly on top of one of the bags. The suspicious dog stopped barking and edged his way forward, nose twitching. The other dogs went silent as well.
Inside!
Daphne leaped down into the center aisle—reeling from her wounded leg—and slammed the cage door shut, trapp
ing him.
Sharon applauded, hopping around her cage like an ape.
The dog lapped up the piece of pant leg and then tore open a bag of food and gorged himself.
The latch on Sharon’s cage was broken, the small padlock now secured to the chain-link wire. Daphne wondered whether, unlike the padlock outside, this smaller one might succumb to being shot open. She turned and studied the placement of her gun inside the occupied cage below the furnace. There was a gap between a vertical post and the chain link that appeared wide enough to shove her arm through. But in the time that would take, it seemed the dog would win the contest.
She retrieved a shovel that was leaning next to Sharon’s cage and poked the handle through this gap. The pit bull locked onto the handle, pulling and pushing, preventing Daphne from properly directing it. She wrestled it free and then tried again but with the same frustrating results—the pit bull interfered, and the gun remained at bay.
She hooked the shovel’s handle on the gun and pulled, managing to skip the gun a foot closer to her. It was within an arm’s length now, within reach, if she dared endure the punishment that dog would give her.
The flashlight went dead. Daphne grabbed for it, shook it, and it came back on.
Sharon hopped up and down again. Frightened. She pointed alarmingly toward the door. She placed her hands against the cement. Daphne felt the cement.
It was vibrating.
The dogs, still quiet, starting pacing in their cages.
A car!
Her thoughts raced ahead: He would see the damaged lock, but it would appear no one had made it inside. She looked up at the furnace’s exhaust stack—the ceiling was black tar paper, the hole there impossible to distinguish.
How much time did she have? Seconds?
She took a deep breath, steeled herself for the pain, and went for the gun, shoving her hand into the dog pen.
The Angel Maker Page 34