Dark Places

by Linda Ladd

  Unfortunately, I missed him. I’d gotten used to him saying that the bad things weren’t my fault, that Bud wasn’t in intensive care because of me, that McKay hadn’t gotten away as slick as a whistle. Sometimes I even believed him. Not at the moment. He’d better get home soon, or I was going to be less than cheerful.

  I poked around the place and found nothing suspicious and no indication that McKay had been there. But it was one helluva good place to hide. Probably nobody but a few hard-core drug addicts lucky enough to survive McKay’s web knew the place existed. I decided to put in for the county fire department to burn it down for an exercise drill.

  I walked around behind the boiler room and looked out over the river to where another high hill rose above the opposite bank. The water gurgled and splashed, oh so happy, and the snow began to drift down as a cardinal took flight in a flash of bright red from an oak branch overhanging the stream. Hey, I was standing in a Christmas card. Hell was just over the hill.

  No footprints headed up the rise so the snow cover was Robert Frost pristine and looked like a white Caribbean Sea. I decided to check out the next hollow and see if I could find where McKay drove out of the water. Hey, maybe his four-wheeler could fly, like the bicycles in ET.

  My four-wheeler couldn’t fly, in fact, couldn’t even glide, and it wasn’t going to make it up the deep, heavy drifts, so I climbed the hill on foot. I slipped and fell a couple of times but used the slender saplings on the slope to pull myself the rest of the way up. Panting with exertion, I stared out over tree-spiked, white-caped hills stretching into the distance. Another beautiful scene but no tracks leading me straight to McKay and an easy bust. No footprints. No nothing. An untouched wilderness where no one had set foot since the last snowfall.

  So I stood at the top of the world and rested with my back against a tree. Then in the deep, deep quiet of snow-crusted woods, a faint sound filtered to me, one that definitely did not belong in this isolated wilderness. A child was crying. Nearby. Very faint, the sounds blown to and fro by the rising wind. The anguished wails rippled cold chills up my spine that had nothing to do with icy temperatures.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I stood up, muscles tight, a sudden dread consuming me. The cries weren’t coming from the old lodge. They were ahead, somewhere out in the woods in front of me. I waded through deep snow, fighting my way toward the sound. The farther I moved away from the lodge, the louder and more plaintive the cries became. Had McKay abandoned the abducted kid, Elizabeth, out here? To die alone in the snow? Then I remembered Simon Classon’s torturous end and what McKay was capable of. I pushed harder, trudging my way along, my boots and pants crusted hard with snow.

  About fifty feet off the crest, moving parallel to the lodge, I saw a tiny wisp of steam drifting out of the ground. It looked like it was coming from some kind of fissure in the rocks, from an underground cavern, maybe. Networks of caves pockmarked this part of Missouri, especially in the hills around the lake, and I struggled toward the opening, pulling out my cell phone and punching in dispatch. I was almost to the hole, still trudging through the drifts, when Jacqee picked up.

  “Jacqee, it’s Claire. Listen to me carefully, this is serious. I need backup out here at the McKay crime scene ASAP. There’s an old building just over the hill from the kill site, and I’m pretty sure Joe McKay might be hiding with the kid in a cave somewhere underground—”

  Without a hint of warning my feet suddenly plummeted out from beneath me as I stepped off into a sinkhole hidden by drifting snow. I dropped the phone, desperately grabbing at the ground for anything to hold on to but I shot down through the icy crust and hit the ground hard about twenty feet below. My left ankle turned hard and I felt something give with a blinding burst of pain. I groaned and grabbed my foot, as the collapse triggered an avalanche from the hill above and buried me in a cold, dark grave.

  I couldn’t breathe. Pure, mindless panic hit me, and I clawed frantically in the snow, digging with both hands until I finally broke through to fresh air. I gulped it in great heaving breaths, my heart hammering. I had burrowed out into pitch blackness, and I used my hands to feel around. Rocks covered the ground, and struggling to pull my legs from the heavy snow, I elbowed my way out in to the darkness and collapsed weakly on my back. I was pretty freaked out, panting hard. I knew I had to get hold of myself and quick. I could not panic.

  Okay, think straight, clear your head. Both my ankle and forehead hurt like hell, but I wasn’t gonna think about that. I had a cell phone that probably had caved in along with me. Maybe I could dig back into the drifts and find it. I felt for the Maglite clipped to my belt and breathed easier when my hand closed around it. I clicked it on and shined it around me.

  I was in a cave, all right. The ceiling was low, about three feet above my head. It was too low for me to stand so I pushed myself to sitting and groaned when I jarred my injured foot. I untied my boot laces and shined the beam on it. It felt like I might have cracked a bone in my foot, twisted my ankle at the very least. I packed some snow around, knowing I needed to bind it up somehow, but there was nothing I could use for a splint, so I’d just have to keep my weight off it as best I could.

  I lay down again, feeling a little nauseous and light-headed and shaky from pain. Then I heard the child start up again, her screams echoing from somewhere in the distance. She sounded terrified, and she was underground, too, probably in a connecting cavern. I grit my teeth and sat up and shined the light around. Craggy rock walls loomed dark and shadowy and cobwebby, eerie in the flashlight’s beam. Lots of jagged stones were piled around on the ground, and I moved the Maglite slowly over them and around the interior until I found a low opening against the floor that stretched off into darkness. I crawled over to it on my hands and knees and listened to the child’s wails reverberate up from somewhere down its length.

  It had to be Elizabeth, the missing child, and she was definitely at the other end of the shaft. And that meant McKay was down there with her. But he didn’t know I was on to him, not unless he heard the cave-in, which was unlikely. I clamped my jaw against the pain and shined my flashlight down the passage. It was so thick with spiderwebs that I could barely see farther than a couple of feet, but I could still hear the little girl. Chances were the webs were chock-full of poisonous spiders, brown recluses or widows or God knew what, but it looked like I was going to have to go through them to get to the child.

  I remembered the can of Raid I’d stowed in my jacket. I took it out and took a few minutes to saturate my jacket and pants. I pulled up my hood, covered my face with one arm and sprayed it all over my head. Oh boy, did I ever not want to do this. Okay, deep breath, the spiders won’t like the Raid, will probably scamper away and hide and think you’re their worst enemy. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them. Right.

  I focused the bright beam inside the passage. It was a tight squeeze, just big enough for me to squirm through. What if I got stuck inside? What if it was a dead end and I was trapped where I couldn’t move? That thought sent a barrage of goose bumps rippling my flesh but I could still hear the child’s frenzied screams echoing up to me. On top of that I didn’t have any other choice except to sit in this cold black hole and hope my fellow officers arrived at the scene, decided to follow my snow trail up the hill to the fissure and dig me out of the avalanche with their bare hands. And if I did wait to be rescued, McKay might decide in the meantime to kill the little girl with his widows and recluses, while I sat and listened to it go down at the other end of this nice, long, spider-infested tunnel. He might be doing that right now. That might be the reason she was crying so hard. So there you go. Decision made.

  “Man, does this ever suck,” I muttered under my breath then added a couple of obscenities I rarely ever used but that this occasion definitely called for. I took the can of Raid and sprayed it over the thick mass of webs hanging at the mouth of the tunnel, big-time encouraged when a rather large black widow ran like hell across her fancy web and out of sight.
Good sign. Encouraging, but not enough to stop the great big shudder convulsing my body. I knocked down as many sticky webs as I could with my flashlight and started a slow combat crawl through the tight opening. I could hear my own breathing, and it sounded like a marathon runner having an asthma attack. It sounded scared as hell, too.

  Webs were massed around everywhere, hanging down, the sticky strands adhering to my face and hood and flashlight as I forced myself through them. The spiders kept skittering away from me and my light, thank God, probably wishing I was more like Little Miss Muffet. It occurred to me that this tunnel could be McKay’s incubator for future arachnid assassins in training. His own private spider-breeding farm. I wondered what else he was breeding and thought of Egyptian fat-tailed scorpions. The shudders commenced again until I shoved that ghastly picture out of my mind, moving slowly and spraying the webs in front of me, my eyes burning as I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth and tried not to choke on the caustic fumes.

  After about ten feet of hell on earth, I could see a dim light ahead of me. The spiders were still fleeing the Raid so I increased my pace, knocking the webs away, killing as many of them as I could with the flashlight, getting panicky again. The narrow tunnel felt like it was closing in on me, and I had to get out! I couldn’t stand it!

  I crawled faster and finally wriggled bodily out of the passage into a small cavern. I went up on my knees, shivering and shaking and beating sticky webs out of my hair and off my clothes and hoping to God I hadn’t gotten bitten. I hadn’t felt anything, but my research had told me that victims rarely felt the bite of a recluse. I forced myself to sit still and conquer my revulsion and fear. Okay, you’re out, you did it, nothing ahead of you could be worse than crawling through that horrible place. I hoped.

  The ceiling was high enough for me to walk, bent over. My flashlight beam illuminated another passage that descended deeper underground. I braced one hand on the wall, unzipped my parka, and pulled the Glock out of my shoulder holster. I disengaged the safety and limped down the tunnel, gun and flashlight trained toward the child’s voice.

  The deeper I went, the warmer the temperature became. The air felt close and damp and fetid, earthy like that in a reptile house, and smelled of sulfur and rotting flesh. There was a corpse somewhere nearby; I’d worked enough homicides to recognize the sickening-sweet odor of decomposition.

  I swung my light around in the darkness in front of me. The odor became stronger the closer I got to the body. I stopped when I finally found it. It was a woman. She was dressed in a pink shirt and white denim skirt. She was lying on top of a military sleeping bag, one exactly like the one we found Simon Classon inside of. The body had been decomposing for quite a while, but I saw the woman’s blond ponytail tied up with pink-and-white-striped ribbons. There were spiderwebs in her hair and on her clothes.

  I moved closer to the victim, holding on to the wall for support. She held flowers in her hands. Fresh flowers. White lilies. Somebody had been visiting her recently. There were glass votives sitting around the body, the candles inside half burned down. Framed pictures of angels similar to the ones I’d seen over Simon Classon’s staircase were propped against the walls near her. I moved my light beam along the walls and found candle holders and kerosene lamps hung above the body. I backed away from it and stumbled across something and almost fell. I caught myself on the wall and put my light on another decaying body, this one more recently dead and half covered with dirt. I put my parka up over my nose and mouth and moved past the two corpses and farther down the passage, holding on to the wall for support.

  The stone wall was cold and jagged where I braced my palm but I hardly felt the pain in my foot anymore. Instead I concentrated on all the danger signals going off in my mind as I approached a large round hole opening out into yet another cavern. I was very close to the little girl now.

  I crept the rest of the way, careful not to kick the rocks. I sure didn’t want anybody arranging a welcoming party for me. At the opening I stopped and searched the interior. It was a huge cavern, and high above in the domed ceiling sunlight slanted down from a narrow fissure in the rock, illuminating everything in a smoky, surreal dusk. I stowed my Maglite in the pocket of my parka and steadied the Glock with both hands.

  I could see a hot spring bubbling up out in the middle. Plumes of warm mist rose over the surface and made the air hot and humid. Glass tanks and old fish aquariums sat around everywhere, crammed full of snakes and spiders and other horrible things. A nearby case was long and rectangular, and held what looked like human remains partially covered in arachnid silk. I could see the spiders creeping around inside. My skin crawled. I swallowed down intense aversion. What kind of monster’s den was this? What heinous acts had been perpetrated in this hidden, subterranean hell? I was shaken to the core and fighting hard to get over it.

  I peered through the gloom. Nothing moved but spiders and scorpions and snakes trapped inside their cages. I could hear muted rustles and scratching, like the sounds I’d heard coming from inside Christie Foxworthy’s trunk. The child was quiet now, and I wondered why. I hesitated, searching the murky interior of the cave for a way outside. There were maybe half a dozen intersecting tunnels leading off the main dome, all dark and deserted and draped with webs. All I had to do was figure out which one was the right one.

  I took a cautious step between the nearest cages and almost jumped out of my skin when a huge rattlesnake struck at me, its fangs hitting the side of its tank and sending rivulets of venom sheeting down the glass. I stumbled back, weapon trained on it and backed into another aquarium containing a huge black widow. It seemed to watch me malevolently as it swayed back and forth in its tangled web.

  “Hey! Who’s there? Help me, help!”

  It was a man’s voice, loud and scared, apparently alerted by the noise I’d just made. It came from the other end of the cavern, and I quickly pivoted my weapon in that direction. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t McKay. I limped slowly through dozens of ugly, nasty glass tanks full of ugly, nasty creatures. Leading with my gun, I hoped to hell Jacqee had alerted back up and they were outside searching for me.

  I could hear the child again. Whimpering now as the man continued to yell for help. Then everything went silent again. No sound. As if all the spiders and snakes were poised and holding their breaths, just waiting for a chance to jump out and get me. Every nerve and fiber in my body was screaming turn, run, get out, flee, but I forced myself to move deeper into McKay’s little cave of horrors. As I left the rows of tanks and reached a wide empty area beside the spring, I saw the little girl. She was standing up in a heavy packing crate that sat on the ground near the water. She was holding on to the top of the crate and resting her forehead on her hands. She was sobbing.

  I remained where I was and searched the cave again for McKay. He could be hiding anywhere among the shadowy tables crowding the walls. I was expecting him to show up any minute. He’d been in the Marines; he was trained in combat, Special Ops, no less. I couldn’t let him get the jump on me. I kept my gun out in front, my finger on the trigger. I could feel my heart thudding hard against my breastbone.

  Slowly, cautiously, still swiveling my weapon from side to side, I made my way to the little girl. She had on pink fleece pajamas that zipped up the front, the kind with feet in them. She didn’t see me until I knelt beside her. Then she raised her face and let out a short, shrill shriek, lurched backward away from me, and sat down hard. There was a fresh bruise on her cheek.

  “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I’m here now,” I whispered, my eyes still searching my surroundings. It shocked me when she suddenly flew at me, grabbed hold, and clenched her arms around my neck. I lifted her out of the box, and she clung trembling to me as if she’d never let go. She felt little and frail and solid and smelled of milk, and for one shining moment she became Zach, in my arms again, his small arms holding on to me so tightly, calling me Mommy. I’d not been around any small children since
Zach died, and I felt a singular kind of joy, a fading memory that disappeared abruptly when the man screamed again from somewhere off to my right.

  “Help me! Help me! I know somebody’s out there! Hurry, hurry, you gotta cut me loose!”

  The child would not let go and clutched me in a near stranglehold. I murmured soothing words and shifted the baby onto my left hip as I focused my aim toward the man’s voice. It had sounded like Willie Vines. Alive. Panic-stricken. But Willie was dead. Or was he?

  I searched the darkness hugging the walls and edged slowly toward the place where the voice was still calling for help, keeping my back against the wall. I needed to put down the baby but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She was terrified, shaking all over. I’d have to pry her out of my arms. Then I saw him, and was shocked to the core that it really was Willie. His wrists were bound together and tied up over his head to an iron hook hammered into the wall. He was bleeding from the scalp. Blood ran down his face and into the neck of his white T-shirt.

  “Oh, thank God, thank God you came!” Willie cried. He burst into tears, his sobs echoing around the domed cavern.

  I was more interested in the other person bound to the wall a few feet away from him. A woman. She stared wide-eyed at me as I moved closer but she didn’t move, didn’t say a word. Her eyes looked glazed, as if she were in shock. I recognized her at once by the red pigtails. Wilma Harte, the girl who had disappeared from the academy. Again I felt threatened, deep in danger, like I was standing in the jaws of a bear trap. I stopped and listened. I heard nothing. No sign of McKay.

  Willie started to twist against the ropes, still blubbering. “Please, please. Cut us down. McKay’s gonna come back and kill us.”

  My intuition was screaming so loud now that I shivered with dread. At the sound of Willie’s voice, the little girl began to whimper. Nothing looked right about this. Something was very wrong. “Where’s McKay?”