The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  For the first time since the lights of Deputy Terry Jervis's patrol car began revolving in his rearview mirror, Maxwell experienced pure, mind-numbing panic. Crowd noise, confusion.

  “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!” His cry filled the sally port; the crowd noise stilled. “I'll take care of this.”

  Time to play detective. Max examined the lock on the outer gate: open but undamaged. He—it had to be a man: no woman would do that to a dog—had picked it, slipped inside. The dogs had ambushed him as they'd been trained to do, knocked him down and held him. He'd shot three, then blown off the other lock to get through the sally port and enter the property.

  It had to have happened when Max had been down in the drying shed, which had been soundproofed, not to keep noise out but to keep it in. Freaking goddamn irony.

  Anyway, Miss Miller must have surprised the intruder somehow. . . .

  But that's where Max's scenario stopped making sense. If Miss Miller had surprised a burglar, where was she? Burglars didn't carry off old women. Rapists, maybe, but not even the most desperate rapist would consider Miss Miller a likely victim. Perhaps he'd killed her and hidden the body. Or—

  Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw a flutter of white. He turned his head, focused in on the piece of paper caught in the dense ivy growing up the fence. It was a MasterCard receipt from— he squinted in the dim light under the sally port—the Shell station just outside Umpqua City. And the name of the purchaser was E. L. Pender.

  Pender. Thick-skull motherfucker. God double fucking damn the man again. Now time was really of the essence: Max had to know whether Pender had snatched Miss M and gone for help, or whether they were still on the property. But he couldn't just leave the sally port open and unguarded, so he found a twenty-foot length of dog chain in the kennel, wound it around and around the outer gate, secured it to the gatepost, and locked it with a rusty old padlock, to which the key had long since disappeared. He then hurried back into the kennel, dragged out the three remaining dogs, and closed them into the sally port.

  If Pender were still on the property, Max reasoned, this would be his only way out. And if the FBI man shot the remaining dogs to get through, at least Max would hear him, and could sneak up on him from behind while he struggled to unwind the chain. And then may God have mercy on his soul, because Max would have none.

  And if Pender wasn't still on the property? Grab the cash and haul ass.

  But Max was always one to look for a silver lining. And there was one, he told himself, locking the inner gate of the sally port behind him with the lock from the outer gate and trotting back up the blacktop toward the house with the Glock in his hand. Much as he'd miss only the third home he'd ever known, much as he'd miss Miss Miller, he could almost convince himself that in a way, this might be the best thing that could have happened.

  Because without Miss Miller to pander to—and pander for—the system known collectively as Ulysses Maxwell would no longer be restricted to picking up only strawberry blonds, or forced to keep them happy while hauling them halfway across the country back to Scorned Ridge. And no more having to fuck terrorized, halfstarved skeletons, either. The system would be free to—how had Jules put it in Pulp Fiction? —to walk the earth. To choose any girl who caught its fancy, and do with her what it wished, when it wished.

  Didn't sound half bad. But first, Max had to find out whether Pender was still on the property, and he had to find out fast. How, though? Scorned Ridge was big, with dozens of places to hide. Then it came to him. He veered off the blacktop and raced through the trees, then cut across the meadow to the drying shed.

  84

  “CALLING DOCTOR WILL. Doctor Will to Live.”

  Irene, lying on her side on the damp indoor-outdoor carpet, ran her hand over her stubbly scalp, then opened her eyes to the same nightmare she'd shut them against. The emaciated imp in the army blanket was squatting in front of her, silhouetted against the white glare of the ceiling, spouting nonsense, patting Irene's hand. Irene realized with a weary sense of resignation that the comforts of traumatic withdrawal were not for her: her mind was woefully clear.

  She sat up. “Which one are you?”

  “I'm Dolores—that's Donna.”

  “Dolores Moon and Donna Hughes.”

  “He told you?”

  “I'm his psychiatrist.” Irene looked around the room, struggled to compose herself. “Was his psychiatrist. He murdered a girl down in Monterey. I was assigned to evaluate him—he broke out of jail and kidnapped me.”

  “And now you're just another strawberry blond,” Donna pointed out. “Welcome to the drying shed.”

  Dolores shushed her. “Donna, don't you see—if they caught him and he broke out of jail, at least they know he exists. They're probably looking for him.” She turned back to Irene. “Right?” she said hopefully.

  “I'm sure they are. They don't know who he is yet—”

  “Oh.” A dismayed sound.

  “—but they have to be closing in,” Irene hurried on. “He killed a highway patrolman in northern California on Saturday morning.”

  “What day is it now?” asked Dolores.

  “Tuesday, the thirteenth.”

  “What month?”

  “July.”

  A pause. Reluctantly, Dolores asked one last question: “What year is it?”

  “Nineteen ninety-nine.”

  In the silence of the drying shed, the echoes of both question and answer lingered for all three women. Dolores realized that she was well into her third year of captivity—one way or the other, she knew it would be her last. Donna understood that the first anniversary of her disappearance had come and gone. She wondered if they were still looking for her. Or if anybody missed her, for that matter. Not Horton, that was for sure. Nor that treacherous, husband-stealing Edwina Comb, either.

  As for Irene, she was struggling to hold on to the last shreds of her composure. At no time during his interminable recitation of atrocities this morning had Maxwell hinted that any of his victims was still alive, much less only a few hundred yards away, underground. What year is it? Oh dear Jesus, what year is it?

  Dolores broke the silence. “Have you had anything to eat today? We have a little grub left.”

  “No, I'm fine,” Irene replied. “We had a picnic down by the creek. Wine. Ladyfingers.”

  “Christopher took me down by the creek when I first got here,” mused Donna. “Fed me and fucked me silly. I was so happy. At long last, I thought—at long last I'd found true love. Next day I met Max.”

  “Then you know about the DID?” Irene was mildly surprised— Maxwell could have hidden it from them if he'd cared to.

  “Dee eye what?”

  “DID. Dissociative identity disorder. They used to call it multiple personality.”

  “Oh, that,” said Donna. “Sure. Didn't know they changed the name. Didn't know it had a name—we just figured he's nutty as a fruitcake.”

  “Well, there's that, too,” said Irene. Then she surprised herself— she actually giggled. It was either a sign of returning mental health or incipient hysteria. She was trying to decide which when the door burst open.

  85

  “PENDER!” MAXWELL'S VOICE, FROM somewhere in the direction of the house. “PENDER!”

  Miss Miller, her hands and feet bound with towels from her bathroom and a sock stuffed into her mouth under the surgical mask, kicked ineffectually at the boards of the loft. Pender had tried to talk with her a few times, but she didn't seem to want to do anything but scream, so for now he ignored her—and Maxwell— and kept working. He was stacking books at the edge of the hayloft, which smelled of dust and vomit, until he had built himself a barricade two feet high, three feet thick, along the edge of the loft. From behind it he had a clear view of the barn door, and a clearer shot at Maxwell than Maxwell had at him.

  It wouldn't be an easy shot, though. The range from the edge of the loft to the door was close to sixty feet, and he'd have to figure in the downward trajectory.
He'd also have to try for the kill grid: there was no guarantee that a nine-millimeter round, even a hollowpoint, would knock a man down from that distance.

  But at least his target would be backlighted in the doorway. And even if Maxwell did manage to squeeze off a round, Pender figured he'd be safe enough ducking behind three feet of books. Unless of course Maxwell was packing something in the nature of a .357.

  Hurriedly Pender added one more layer to the barricade—a leather-bound set of the complete works of Joyce, Kalat's Biological Psychology, Barlow and Durand's Abnormal Psychology, and twelve volumes of the Handyman's Encyclopedia —then settled down for a long wait.

  If Maxwell entered the barn before nightfall, Pender would have the drop on him. If he didn't, Pender could go back on the offensive under cover of darkness while Maxwell was out looking for him. And if they didn't find each other before morning, Pender would return here and wait for the Hostage Rescue Team that McDougal would undoubtedly be dispatching as soon as Pender's fax reached him.

  However it worked out, Pender liked his chances—until he heard a woman's voice calling him from the same general direction.

  “AGENT PENDER? THIS IS IRENE COGAN. MAX SAYS HE'S GOING TO KILL ME IF YOU DON'T SHOW YOURSELF.”

  Pender didn't want to believe it. Surely Maxwell understood that a dead hostage is no hostage at all. He decided to wait it out.

  “PENDER!” Maxwell. “LOOKS LIKE I UNDERESTIMATED YOU—AGAIN. OBVIOUSLY I'M NOT GOING TO KILL MY HOSTAGE.”

  Obviously, thought Pender.

  “WHAT I'M GOING TO DO NOW, I'M GOING TO BURN HER WITH A CIGARETTE LIGHTER UNTIL YOU SHOW YOURSELF.”

  Oh fuck. Pender could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead again. Things don't get any easier, do they?

  He took off his bandanna and wrung it out, then tied it around his forehead again. Another question presented itself: was Dr. Cogan still a legitimate hostage, or was she now acting as an accomplice? She'd been Maxwell's prisoner for over a week, more than enough time for the Stockholm syndrome to have taken effect. Especially with such a charming seducer as Maxwell—most if not all of the missing strawberry blonds were believed to have gone off with Casey voluntarily, at least initially.

  Pender now faced perhaps the most difficult decision of his career. He decided to wait it out a little longer, see if he could gauge whether Dr. Cogan was really being tortured by the tenor of her screams.

  Sure enough, the first one was more of a yell—a full-voiced shout, with plenty of lung power. But Pender knew he had to discount it. Maxwell might have merely threatened her into screaming the first time—that was what Pender would have done in Maxwell's situation.

  But after the second scream—it rose and fell and rose again and bubbled in her throat, ending in a heartfelt “OH GOD, OH GOD, STOP, PLEASE STOP, PLEASE MAKE HIM STOP!”—there was little doubt left in Pender's mind. Some anguish and shame, but little doubt.

  “LEAVE HER ALONE! I'M IN THE BARN!”

  “I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE!” shouted Maxwell.

  “The hell you did,” Pender muttered.

  “WHERE'S MISS MILLER? IF YOU'VE HURT HER, I'LL MAKE YOU PAY.”

  Oh-ho. “SHE'S SAFE FOR THE MOMENT—BUT SHE'S SCARED, AND SHE MISSES YOU. GIVE YOURSELF UP.”

  “NICE TO KNOW YOU HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR, PENDER.”

  “I try to keep myself amused.” Pender settled in behind his barricade of books, steadying the barrel of his pistol on a copy of Finnegans Wake and sighting in where the two sliding barn doors met, at a point approximately three and half feet from the concrete floor.

  “I'm sorry I had to do that, Irene,” said Max as he marched her down the blacktop to the barn. “He left me with no choice.”

  Irene could no more have replied at that point than she could have flown. For the first time she understood the use of the word “insult” as a medical term meaning a bodily injury, irritation, or trauma. There was no other word to describe how it had felt to have Maxwell snatch her out of the drying shed, drag her naked across the meadow and up to the chicken coop—a more or less centralized location—then bend her wrist behind her back and hold his Bic lighter to her forearm for an agonizing eternity, until her scream finally met Agent Pender's standard for sincerity. At that moment she had hated both of them, Maxwell and Pender, with equal intensity.

  When they reached the barn, Maxwell forced Irene to pry open the sliding doors just wide enough to admit them, and remained crouched behind her as she entered. The barn faced to the west; the late-afternoon sun behind them cast the elongated black shadow of a four-legged woman across the dusty cement floor.

  Irene looked up to the hayloft at the other end of the barn, saw the barricade of books, saw the black of the gun muzzle pointing at her, saw the top third of Pender's massive bald head above and behind it, a blue bandanna knotted around the forehead. It wasn't how she'd pictured him at all.

  Maxwell saw the head too, raised his pistol, and fired a shot at it over Irene's head. The report was deafening. Instinctively she threw herself forward onto the cement floor. Maxwell was unprotected for a moment, but Pender had already ducked behind his barricade. By the time Pender raised his head again Maxwell had seized Irene by the elbow, dragged her over to the side of the barn, behind the passenger side of the blue Cadillac, then fired another shot up at the hayloft.

  Pender fired a round over the de Ville. He now had ten left—one in the chamber and nine in the clip. He had no idea how many rounds Maxwell had—or how many weapons.

  “Are you going to come down here, or do I have to burn her again?” called Maxwell.

  Irene, lying on her bare back on the rough concrete floor, ears ringing, stared up into the rafters. That hopeless, defeated feeling came over her again. If Pender came down, Maxwell would kill them both. If Pender didn't . . .

  But she couldn't let herself think about that. Because she knew that given the choice, she would choose death over burning—she just couldn't face the pain again.

  86

  “HURTING HER ISN'T GOING to do you any good, Maxwell,” Pender called from behind the barricade. “I'm soft-hearted, but I'm not suicidal. And don't forget I have Miss Miller.”

  “I guess we're going to be here for a while, then.”

  “Not that long.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How far have you thought this thing out?”

  “Far enough.” Max's provisional plan was to wait for dark, creep up to the foot of the ladder, use his talent for imitation to impersonate Irene. Agent Pender, it's me, Dr. Cogan. I'm coming up. Max would have the element of surprise on his side—he'd be content to take his chances with the older, slower, fatter FBI man.

  When that was over, Max told himself, he'd have to make a run for it. If Pender had managed to find him, the rest of the FBI couldn't be far behind.

  So yes, Maxwell had thought this thing out far enough. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering how you plan to deal with the Hostage Rescue Team that'll be coming in in about an hour. That's how much of a head start they gave me.”

  Max felt a leaden weight in his gut, and the murmuring began in his head again. Everybody shut up, he commanded. I have to think. What Pender said had rung true and fit the known facts. FBI agents never worked alone. Of course the cavalry was on the way. Why else would Pender be content to hole up in the loft?

  “Pender?”

  “Still here.”

  “Assuming you're not full of shit, why are telling me this?”

  “Because I'm prepared to offer you a deal. Once the HRT arrives, it'll be too late, it'll be out of my hands. You'll kill Dr. Cogan, they'll kill you. I don't care about you, but it's my job to see that no harm comes to her. So here's the deal: if you leave Dr. Cogan behind unharmed, I'll let you walk out of here. You can take Miss Miller, or leave her behind—that'd be entirely up to you.”

  “How's this supposed to work, exactly?”

  “Simple as pie. You walk out that door beh
ind you. You'll have a head start—that's about as much as I can promise you.”

  “How do I know you won't shoot me in the back on my way out?”

  “Because I'm an FBI agent, not a hit man.”

  “Tell that to Randy Weaver, and all those poor crispy critters in Waco.”

  “My point exactly—that's what happens when you get the ninjasinvolved. All that armor, all those guns and flash grenades and dogs, all that testosterone and confusion. Hell, I might even get killed, and that's definitely not part of my game plan.”

  “That still doesn't answer my first question. Why should I trust you not to shoot me in the back?”

  “Because given the current climate”—Waco was heating up again, with the discovery that the FBI had lied about using incendiary grenades—“the good old days of shooting perps in the back are behind us. And if you leave Miss Miller behind, which you'll probably want to do anyway, seeing as how she doesn't seem to be in traveling condition, she'd be a witness. She's up here, she can hear me.”

  “Let me speak to her.”

  “Not convenient at the moment. I'm not moving from this spot.”

  “What's to stop me from using Dr. Cogan as a shield, leaving the same way I came in?”

  “Hey, go for it, fella. You think you can get far enough in an hour, on foot, carrying a grown woman, while I'm potshotting you, then by all means go for it. If not, here's the deal. As long as you leave Dr. Cogan behind unharmed, you can walk out of here anytime before it gets dark. After that all bets are off.”

  “I'm not sure. I need to think.”

  “Just don't think too long,” called Pender. “I figure we have about an hour until sunset.”