by Lisa Unger
“With Katie in Houston.”
“How is she?”
“She’s doing well.”
Again silence. He wasn’t sure what she wanted, why she called. Was it guilt?
“I miss you, Ford.”
He closed his eyes against the swell of emotions that rose in his chest. If he released all that he was feeling, he was sure that the wires on the phone would burst into flames. “I miss you, too,” he said in a voice that croaked, one he barely recognized.
“Can we talk?”
“Aren’t we talking?”
“In person.”
“Come home,” he said, and he tried not to sound like he was begging.
“Ford …”
“Just come home, Rose. We’ll talk all you want.”
“Things have to change.”
“Okay whatever you want,” he said, and he meant it.
“No. It has to be what we want, Ford. If we don’t want the same things, then there’s no point in our being together anymore. Do you understand that?”
He paused, listening, really listening to her, maybe for the first time. He did know what she meant and he wondered if maybe it was hopeless after all.
“I can only be what I am, Rose,” he admitted, expecting her to hang up.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Her voice was soft, loving, sounding like she had when they were young.
“We’ll talk, then. Figure it out.”
“Yes. I’ll come home in a few days. Friday.”
“Okay.”
“Ford?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
He cried then; he didn’t care that she heard him sobbing like a baby. “I love you, Rose. So much,” he managed to croak before he hung up the phone.
He played the conversation over in his mind as he drove the Taurus up to Haunted. He’d stopped home before heading upstate, to shower and change, more to keep himself awake than out of concern for hygiene, and had been there to take the call from Rose. Part of him was starting to believe he dreamt it, that she wasn’t really coming back, that he was going to be forced to live out the rest of his life alone with only his unsolved cases to fill the empty hours and years. Like a schoolgirl, he analyzed her words. Was she coming back to stay? If he didn’t say the right things, would she leave again? Friday seemed impossibly far away. He pushed the conversation from his mind. He had to focus now. Two children were missing, two people were dead, three if you counted Tad.
He raced up the road that wound toward the outskirts of the town. Tall trees rose on either side of him and there was only the sliver of a moon in the sky. He should have waited for morning. But with the kids missing now, there wasn’t a second to waste. He was a homicide detective, so finding out who killed Richard Stratton might be the only way he could help Lola and Nathaniel. Maybe he should have brought someone with him. But he needed Malone and Piselli working the crime scene, working with the task force assembled to find the twins. He reached for his cell phone to call Malone, let them know where he was headed. But the thing was dead. Goddamn things always ringing, never charged when you need them.
Anyway, he wasn’t going to go breaking into the Ross house in the middle of the night, he wasn’t going into the Hodge residence looking for Annabelle and Maura. He was just going to look around, absorb the situation, see who was coming and going. Before he made a move, he’d get some help, maybe stop by the precinct and get a hand from old Henry Clay’s boys.
He found the drive leading to the Hodge house, then found a spot and pulled the car over, gave it some thought, and felt a little conspicuous beside the gate. So he drove a few yards farther until he found a place where he could move his vehicle slightly into the trees and out of the path of approaching headlights, giving him a little more cover. Then he cut the engine and settled in. It was going to be a long, cold night. But at least he could think about Rose and hope that this was going to be one of his last nights without her.
chapter thirty-four
How do you have a conversation with your worst nightmare? Lydia wondered. How do you do something as mundane as move your lips to talk when looking into the face that has become in your imaginings the embodiment of evil?
Since the murder of her mother, in Lydia’s nightmares and daydreams Jed McIntyre had become Freddy Krueger and Jason and Charlie Manson in one horrible form. Standing across from him, she looked at his hands and knew that the bones within them bent to grip the knife that killed her mother, that part of him touched her in her last moments. It was almost too much for her mind to get around. She felt a part of herself shutting down, slipping into a kind of shock, a welcome emptiness.
But so close to him, seeing him in flesh and blood, seeing his chest rise and fall with his breath, smelling the stench of his body, in fact, took some of his power away. He was just a man with a beating heart, with skin, muscle, and bone. He was not a demon, a supernatural force the way he’d seemed to her since his mistaken release. He was just a man with an evil heart and a sick mind. Someone who would meet his end like the rest of them. Hopefully sooner.
“Where are they?” she forced the words from her mouth like they were children clinging to her coattails.
“We’ll go to see them. Would you like that?”
She nodded.
“I wish I didn’t see so much hatred in your eyes, Lydia. That’s not what I’d hoped for,” he said, and he really did sound disappointed.
She shook her head, reminded of how insane he was. He moved closer to her and she shrank from him. A look of hurt flashed in his eyes and she almost laughed.
“What did you expect?” she asked, not wanting to feel his name on her tongue, as if to say it would validate him in some way.
“I just thought maybe somewhere inside, you’d come to feel about me the same way I feel about you. That we are one mind, one heart. Sure, we have a complicated past. But can’t we move beyond that?”
She had heard this tone of voice before. It was the tone of the manipulator, the controller, the tone of righteousness implying that all you think and all you feel, the things you believe, are wrong-headed. It was the tone of the angry and abusive man, the one who coaxes at first, then turns to violence when challenged. She’d heard it before, a couple of points lower on the Richter scale. It made him less frightening somehow, reducing him to his twisted psychology. She wondered how delusional he really was, how easily she could fool him. She forced herself to smile, though she wasn’t sure she could make it reach her eyes. Pretending was not one of her strong suits.
“I don’t hate you,” she said softly. “Not at all.”
He was a coil of energy, wound tight and ready to spring. She tried to look into his blue eyes but saw only a flat deadness reflected there. It was as if the thing within us that makes us human hadn’t been granted to Jed McIntyre. Seeing him confirmed her long-held belief that evil was the absence of something, rather than the presence of something. He was a golem, a hideous creature in the tunnels below New York City, hated and reviled, hunted, made wretched and alone by his own terrible self. Even in his grasp, he was less terrifying to her than he had been in her imagination.
“I’m crazy, not stupid,” he said, echoing exactly the words Jetty Murphy had said to Ford McKirdy. Funny how things came in circles.
He grabbed her arm and put the barrel of the gun to her temple. “We’re in the endgame now. Let’s not dawdle.”
They came to a place where a rumble of trains could be heard far in the distance above their heads, a place where pieces of concrete fell fine and glittering like snow. Though Lydia couldn’t imagine what their source could be, thin, very faint shafts of light came through the spaces between metal beams, revealing walls covered with graffiti, an old sagging couch, and other abandoned furniture. A school desk balancing on three legs, a toppled standing ashtray, a card table, its vinyl surface ripped and pouting like a mouth. A filthy pile of school lunch trays and milk cartons lay near the tracks. Un
believably, a small tree stood in the dirt. It looked as though it had struggled in the dim light, then gave up the fight, its dead branches radiating an aura of abandonment and failure. Lydia tried to imagine the journey of each of these objects, how each of them had wound up in this place. It was something her mind was doing to distract her from the situation she was in; a kind of coping mechanism to keep the brain from being devoured by the chemicals of terror.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” said Lydia, her flippant tone belying the fear that had burrowed a home in her belly.
“Mi casa, su casa,” said McIntyre with a smile.
She hated him so much she felt like her heart would turn inside out. Death was too good for him, too easy, too quick a way out. She wanted to make him pay, not just for the things he had done, but for the way she had felt over the last sixteen years of her life. She had carried this hatred around with her for so long, it had poisoned nearly every experience she’d had, impacted nearly every decision, it had, in effect, changed the entire vector of her life. She hadn’t realized the intensity of her pain and her anger she had carried on her back all these years until just this moment.
Again, she thought about the curse of Annabelle Taylor. She thought of how hatred and righteous anger had warped generation after generation of two families. And then she thought about her own lost child. She had to wonder if a child could survive in a body so consumed by pain; what child would want to be born to such a woman, whose whole life had been directed by vengeance? She looked at Jed McIntyre and for a second she wondered if she was any better than he. Maybe the only difference between them was that she didn’t kill others to mitigate her own suffering. Maybe that was the only thing that separated them. That we are one heart, one mind. Maybe he was right.
Just let it go, a voice inside her head whispered. Be calm, focus.
“We’re here,” he said as they stopped in front of a metal door locked by chains. “I’m going to let go of your arm right now to unlock this door. Remember, if you try anything, I’ll kill them both and let you live. Remember that—life will be your punishment.”
She nodded and looked expectantly at the metal door, praying that when it swung open she’d see Jeffrey and Dax safe and sound. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the waiting, the awful desperate feeling of hopeful expectancy that bloomed inside her.
But when the beam of the flashlight filled the room, there was only a toppled chair and scattered pieces of duct tape. Inside, she smiled. They got away … but how? she wondered. The door had been locked from the outside.
Jed McIntyre stood staring into the room, his mouth agape. He squeezed his eyes shut once and then opened them again as if willing his vision to obey his expectations.
It took about a half a second for Lydia to realize that she didn’t have a reason to cooperate anymore, and another half a second to decide whether to stay and try to end this twisted match of theirs or run. Then another second to assess her odds, unarmed and physically smaller than her opponent. She ran.
Any athlete will tell you that mental edge is what it takes to win when it comes to physical exertion. You can be the strongest or the fastest or the most talented athlete in any competition, but when focus is replaced by doubt, you might as well go home. The other thing is—and athletes don’t necessarily know this in the same way that, say, antelope do—that fear, the terror of being pursued, is like a shot of nitro in your engine. You’ll never be faster than when you’re running for your life.
Lydia ran into darkness, back the way she came. She ran without seeing into a labyrinth that she didn’t know her way out of. She summoned every ounce of strength left in her battered body, knowing she only had to stay an inch out of the grasp of the man behind her.
It took Jed McIntyre a few seconds to give chase. He chased her with a powerful flashlight in his hand, and its beam cast her shadow long in front of her and lit her way a bit, though the light shifted and pitched as he ran. Shadows and shapes of light and dark danced in front of her and she felt like she was in a house of horrors. She could feel him right behind her, not feet but inches, as her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest and her throat went dry with exertion. Her breathing came ragged now, every intake of air like sandpaper on her lungs.
She took a tight corner quickly and was running into blackness again, back the way they came but in another tunnel. It took him longer to get around the corner, but soon his beam filled the narrow tunnel ahead of her. It was so dark that the light only reached a few feet in front of her; she never knew what lay just ahead of the beam. It could be a wall, it could be a ten-story drop. But she had no choice … in this case, the devil she didn’t know was better than the one at her back. She heard him stumble behind her and it gave her an extra push forward. As the light came up again, she saw what looked to be a hole in the concrete, a makeshift doorway with planks of wood slanted across.
Heading for that doorway, she saw something that glinted on the ground. As she drew closer, she saw it was a wrench. She bent as she ran and picked it up, slowing only a little. She took a chance; turning as she ran, she threw the wrench with a hard flick of her wrist and sent it sailing through the air. He ducked out of its way and it landed harmlessly on the ground behind him. He laughed and then she stumbled, tried to catch herself, but fell fully to the ground hard onto her abdomen. Waves of pain turned the world red and white and threatened to take her consciousness. He slowed and stood over her, breathing heavily. She tried to crawl away from him, but he put his foot hard on her back. More fireworks of pain. He put the flashlight down beside her.
“Silly girl,” he gasped. “I could have shot you in the back anytime I chose. Ask yourself why I didn’t.”
“Fuck off,” she said, her mouth full of dirt.
“Kiss your mother with that mouth?” he said. “Oh, that’s right. I killed her.”
She struggled against his foot and got nowhere; it felt like a lead weight on her back.
“You’re not an easy woman to love, Lydia.”
“I’d have to disagree with that,” said Jeffrey, somewhere in the dark around them.
She felt the barrel of her own Smith and Wesson at her temple. Did you know that you’re forty times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime if you own a gun? her inner voice quipped. Hysteria was setting in.
Jed crouched and stretched out an arm to pick up the flashlight, never moving the gun from her head. He swung the beam around. Lydia could see that they had spilled from the narrow tunnel into an open space where five track lines lay next to each other. Around them and above them were metal stairways, ledges, and catwalks. The beam of his flashlight didn’t reveal where Jeffrey was standing.
“Jeffrey,” she said, her voice sounding desperate and scared even to her own ears.
“Jeeefffreey,” Jed mimicked. “I know you’re not armed, G-man.”
“You also thought I was tied up and locked behind a metal door. It’s time for you to start questioning your assumptions.”
“If you shoot me, I’ll make sure my last action on this earth is to put a bullet in her brain,” he said, but Lydia could hear the nervousness in his voice.
A loud bang sounded from the left, like metal falling on metal. Jed swung his gun and fired. He had four rounds left.
“I’m over here,” said a voice Lydia didn’t recognize from above them and to the right. Jed fired again.
“Just put the gun down, McIntyre,” came Jeffrey’s voice again.
“I can’t even believe you would waste your breath by saying that. It’s such a cliché. Of course I’m not going to put the fucking gun down.”
He spun madly, shining the light above him and all around. A shot rang out of the darkness, but missed its mark, hitting the dirt next to his feet. He let out a scream and moved for cover, dragging Lydia with him by the collar of her jacket. Lydia clawed at his wrist and kicked her legs, resisting him as best she could, but it didn’t seem to be of much use. They were right next to the door
way she had seen before.
Lydia craned her head to try to look around her, but she could see nothing in the pitch-black outside the flashlight beam, which was starting to flicker and dim. She felt the barrel of the gun leave her temple and looked up to see Jed moving toward the doorway. He kept the gun pointed at her, and backed away slowly.
“Another day, Lydia,” he said, and disappeared. She heard him clanging down a stairway.
chapter thirty-five
The time was passing slowly and the car was getting cold. Ford could feel the tip of his nose and his toes going numb. The night was silent, the sky riven with stars. Somewhere in the woods around him he could hear the low calling of an owl, slow and mournful. It was giving him the creeps. In all the time he’d been sitting by the side of the road, not one car had passed him. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled out onto the street.
The more he thought about it, Maura Hodge’s residence was probably the last place Annabelle would go. Sitting, freezing his ass, he’d recalled the conversation he’d had with Chief Clay, how the old man had told him the cops wouldn’t go near the Ross home, how they thought it was haunted. He thought of the old house, sitting gated and avoided by the police, and wondered if maybe, were he Annabelle Hodge, it might not be a half-bad place to hide temporarily.
Ford had never heard such silence. Maybe if it had been summer there would have been crickets singing or something. But as he pulled the car onto the side of the road across from the gate leading to the Ross estate and killed the engine, the silence was so loud it felt like a presence. He looked longingly at his cell phone. He even had one of those things that you plug into the cigarette lighter to power it. Malone had given him one after the last time his phone had died. But he’d never used it. It sat still in its stiff plastic packaging in his desk. It just seemed so self-important to have a cell phone, to be so concerned about it and who might be calling you or who you should be calling that you’d have a little rig in your car. But it didn’t seem quite as foolish right now.