by Lisa Gardner
She took the pill. She waited to sleep like a baby. And when she bolted awake at three a.m., her head filled with Aurora Johnson’s soundless scream, she went straight into the shower so Quincy would not see her curl up into a tiny ball and weep from pure frustration.
She took more pills. She drank more beer. She let the darkness swell inside her, turning herself over to it, resigned and accepting.
While her best friend pulled her over for driving under the influence. While her husband asked her again and again if she was okay. While her young charge realized that she’d lied to him and ran away from her to hide in the woods.
It was amazing the things one could do to one’s own self. How much you could lie to yourself. How much you could hurt yourself. How you could have everything you ever wanted—a loving husband, a good job, a beautiful home—and still not find it enough.
Rainie tortured herself. And then she stood back from the outside and watched herself fall.
Until here she was, bound and gagged in a basement, hair hacked off and a seven-year-old child unconscious at her feet. Her inner demon should be roaring with approval. See, the world really is a bad place and there’s nothing you can do.
Instead, for the first time in months, her mind felt quiet.
Yes, she was nauseous. Her head pounded. She had a strange tingling sensation shooting up and down her left leg. But overall, she felt focused, resolute. Somewhere above her in the dark was a man. He had kidnapped her, he had hurt Dougie.
And for that, Rainie was going to make him pay.
In the dark, Rainie’s lips curled into a smile. The old Rainie was back, and finally, ruefully, she understood. Quincy only gave her someone to love. Apparently, what she needed more was someone to hate.
Tuesday, 10:15 p.m. PST
“You’re touching me.”
Dougie’s voice roused Rainie from her reverie. She swore she hadn’t dozed off. Well, maybe just for a second.
“You’re a pervert. I’m going to tell.”
Rainie straightened in the dark. A cold, stabbing pain shot up her left hip, like an electric shock. She winced, uncurling from Dougie’s body, and tried to stretch out her legs.
“How do you feel? Does your head hurt?” she asked.
“Where are we? I can’t see. I don’t like this game!”
“It’s not a game, Dougie. Someone kidnapped me. The same person also kidnapped you.”
“You’re a liar,” Dougie said angrily. “Lie, lie, lie. I’m going to tell Miss Boyd! You’re nothing but a drunk. I want to go home!”
“Yeah, Dougie. Me, too.”
With consciousness came the chill. Rainie reached up instinctively to rub her arms, only to be thwarted again by her bound hands. She wished she could see. She wished she could feel her fingers. It occurred to her that Dougie’s voice sounded normal, unencumbered, meaning that he wasn’t gagged. She dared to be optimistic.
“Dougie, there’s a blindfold over my eyes. Is there a blindfold over your eyes?”
“Yes.” He still sounded sullen.
“What about your wrists and ankles? Are you tied up?”
“Y-yes.” More of a hiccup now. Dougie was starting to become more aware of his surroundings, and with that awareness came fear.
Rainie forced her voice to sound calm. “Dougie, did you see the person who took you? Do you know who did this?”
The boy was quiet for a while. “White light,” he said at last.
“Me, too. I think he’s using some kind of blinding flash, followed by a drug, maybe chloroform. You might feel sick to your stomach. It’s okay if you need to throw up. Just let me know, and we’ll get you off the stairs.”
“I don’t like you,” Dougie said.
Rainie didn’t bother to respond to that statement anymore; Dougie had been saying it for weeks, ever since she was supposed to meet him one Wednesday night and wound up at a bar instead. It had taken her months to gain the boy’s trust. She lost it all in less than four hours. This is your life, Rainie thought not for the first time, and this is your life on booze.
“Dougie,” she said carefully now, “I’m going to reach forward and see if I can untie your wrists. I can’t see anything either, so just hold still for a sec while I figure it out.”
The boy didn’t reply, nor did he move away. Progress, she supposed. Leaning over him, she could feel him shiver, then stiffen his body against the tremors. His sweatshirt was still damp, stealing precious heat from him. Rainie swore if she ever got out of this basement, she was never going out in the rain again.
Her fingers finally found his bound arms. She explored his wrists, then swore softly. The man had used hard plastic ties. The only way to get them off would be with something sharp, such as scissors. Son of a bitch.
“I can’t do it,” she said at last. “I’m sorry, Dougie. We need a special tool.”
Dougie just sniffed.
“Let me check out the blindfold. Maybe I can do that.”
Dougie turned his head; Rainie found the knot. The blindfold had more potential; it was a simple strip of cotton fabric. The knot was tight, however, and Rainie’s fingers stiff. She had to pick at it again and again, occasionally pulling Dougie’s hair and making him yelp.
In the end, she never mastered the knot. But her constant pulling stretched the worn fabric. Dougie surprised them both by sliding the blindfold off his head.
“It’s still dark!” he said with surprise.
“I think we’re in a basement. Can you see any windows?”
The boy was silent a moment. “Up,” he said at last. “Two of them. I’m not that tall.”
Rainie thought she knew what he meant. Two high portals, probably set above the foundation. At least that allowed in some natural light. Anything had to be better than the endless dark. “Dougie, do you think you could work on my blindfold now?”
The boy didn’t answer right away. Resentful, angry? Still thinking of all the ways Rainie failed him? She couldn’t turn back time. That much she knew to be true.
Finally, she felt his fingers. They moved up her arm to her neck, then the boy stilled.
“Where’s your hair?”
Rainie didn’t want to scare a young child, but at the same time, she needed him as an ally, which meant she needed his hatred of their abductor to be greater than his anger with her.
She answered truthfully. “He cut it off. Sawed it off, actually, with a knife.”
The boy hesitated. She wondered if he was now processing the rest of the information his fingers must have given him. The sticky feeling of her skin, where crisscrossing cuts still bled and oozed. The warm swollen area around her elbow where something had gone dreadfully askew.
“Work on the blindfold, Dougie,” she ordered quietly. “We’ll start by gaining our eyes, then see what we can do about our feet.”
He went to work on her blindfold. His fingers were smaller, nimbler. Even with his bound wrists, he had her blindfold off in no time at all. Dutifully, they both checked out their ankles. Thankfully, not a zip tie, but old-fashioned strips of cotton. As Dougie had already proved himself more adept, he went first.
The minute the ties came off and Rainie’s legs sprang apart, she felt an explosion of electrical impulses up and down her legs. Her toes shook, her left leg quivered. For thirty seconds, she gritted her teeth in agony as nerve ending after nerve ending filled with blood and fired to life. She wanted to scream, bang her hand in open-fisted frustration. Mostly, she wanted to kill the son of a bitch upstairs.
Then the worst of it passed, leaving her shaky and rubber-limbed, as if she’d just climbed Mount Everest instead of enduring a round of muscle spasms.
She tried for a deep, steadying breath, realizing for the first time how much her head hurt, the low ringing filling her ears. She had missed at least one dose of medication. She had no illusions about what would happen next.
She went to work on Dougie’s bindings, moving to the bottom step. Her eyes were still adjustin
g to the gloom; the two high portals let in a distant glow, probably from an overhead patio light. It was enough to allow their prison landscape to transform from pitch black to shades of gray. Dougie’s shoes became a darker silhouette against a lighter backdrop. She fumbled around with her heavy fingers until she found the knot, picking and tugging away.
“You’re not very good at this,” Dougie said.
“I know.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Did you bring any food?” she asked him.
She could feel him scowl in the dark. “No.”
“Then we have nothing to eat.”
“He took my beetle,” Dougie said, and for the first time, sounded angry. “He stole my pet!”
“Dougie, you know how adults are always telling you not to hit? No biting, no scratching, you have to play nice?”
“Yeah.”
“This man is the exception. You get the chance, go after him with everything you’ve got.” The knot finally loosened. The cloth fell down and Dougie kicked his legs in triumph.
They had use of their feet, their eyes, their mouths. Not bad for a day’s work.
Rainie picked up the loose strips of cloth. She didn’t know how she would use them yet, but waste not, want not.
Now, in the dark, she could see Dougie bring his wrists to his mouth and start chewing at the zip ties. Theoretically speaking, it should be difficult to chew through the tough, plastic strap, but she didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm. She got up on her own, trying to walk off the strange sensations still ping-ponging up and down her side.
It felt good to take a real solid step. She felt strong, almost human. Aching head, ribs, and arms aside. Then her teeth started chattering again, reminding her of the numbing cold.
She gazed up the flight of stairs. She could see a glow of light underneath the door. So he was still awake, still moving, still doing whatever it was abductors did.
“Hey, buddy,” she told Dougie, “I have a plan.”
28
Tuesday, 10:03 p.m. PST
Shortly after ten, the task force dispersed. Shelly Atkins met separately with her deputies to coordinate sleeping shifts. The OSP detectives went in search of hotel rooms for themselves. People were tired and edgy, exhausted but wired. Everyone would try to grab at least a little shut-eye. Maybe half would succeed.
Quincy felt nearly giddy, in that strange euphoric state that preceded a body’s total physical collapse. In the good-news department, he didn’t have any tightness in his chest or fluttering in his stomach.
In the bad-news department, however, his mind was racing wildly, thoughts ricocheting between Dougie Jones’s troubled childhood, Luke Hayes’s suspicions, and the wisdom of involving his own daughter in the ransom drop. He thought of Astoria, and the way the entire task force worked so quietly, so seriously, and yet never saw anything that yielded results. He remembered walking into his house just last month, spotting Rainie reading in front of the fireplace, and stopping to admire the curve of her neck as she bent over her novel.
There were moments when Quincy wished he could stop time. He would like to reach out his hand like some great cosmic conductor, and say, Freeze. Let this moment linger. Please, for just a little while, let this moment last.
He would like to extend first thing in the morning, when he could watch Rainie sleep, her hair spilling across the pillows, the smudge of her eyelashes against her cheeks. Once awake, Rainie was all hard angles, fast steps, and jerky motions. She moved as she talked, moved as she ate, just moved, moved, moved. Of course, he admired her energy, her attitude, her lithe, catlike grace. But he preferred her in the morning. He liked knowing he was the only person who saw this Rainie, soft, still, vulnerable.
He felt ashamed now. As if all along he’d been sleeping with a woman, but never really seeing her. How much she hurt, how desperately she needed, how terribly their work was eroding her little by little, until she needed a pill to get through the day, and a drink to get through the night.
Underneath his shame, however, was a growing sense of fury. Because she was broken, and he couldn’t fix her, and that left him feeling so damn helpless, and so damn weak, which made him mad at Rainie all over again. Why couldn’t she be tougher, he—the trained professional—found himself thinking. Why the hell couldn’t she pull herself up by her own bootstraps?
He’d been at the crime scene, too. He’d had to look at the body of that little girl. And he’d seen Amanda and Kimberly and he’d felt what any father feels when he realizes he’s too late, that he can’t protect his little girl anymore, that no parent is as omnipotent as their child believes.
The world was filled with shit. And the only way Quincy knew how to deal with it was just keep shoveling. It’s what he did, and once upon a time, that’s what Rainie had done, too. They had been a team. They were supposed to make each other feel strong.
But his strength wasn’t enough for her. His love hadn’t been enough for her. He had held her every night, and she had broken anyway.
He could feel an unbearable pressure building in his head. And just for an instant, he wanted to open his mouth and scream.
Instead, he caught Kincaid’s gaze from across the table. Quincy got out his notes, straightened his tie, and prepared for what they had to do next.
Tuesday, 10:32 p.m. PST
“Let me be the first to say, I know this is highly irregular,” Kincaid began. “Given the tight time constraints, however, Mr. Quincy and I both agreed it was most expedient to have him serve as a profiler for this case. Naturally, any good defense attorney will have issues with documents generated by the husband of the victim, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need an expert psychologist to devise strategy for tomorrow morning’s chat. Given his past experience with ransom cases, Mr. Quincy is qualified for that role, and better yet, he’s available.”
Kincaid gestured toward Quincy, who acknowledged the OSP detective’s underwhelming introduction with a slight nod of his head. “I’m touched.”
“You should be. Any minute now, the Tillamook County DA is going to catch wind of this meeting and come charging in here to chew off my head. Let’s enjoy the honeymoon while it lasts.”
Quincy nodded again and picked up his yellow legal pad. Sitting across from him were Kincaid, Candi, and Kimberly. Mac had moved out to the lobby, where he was using Kimberly’s laptop to research Lucas Bensen’s family—not that Quincy felt like volunteering that particular tidbit of information just yet.
Otherwise, there were no OSP detectives present, no members of the Bakersville Sheriff’s Department. The meeting was strictly for those who needed to know—Kincaid as the leader of the task force, Quincy as the psychological expert, Candi Rodriguez as the negotiator, and Kimberly as the officer who would be making the ransom drop. Kimberly and Kincaid each appeared suitably intent. Candi, on the other hand, looked like she might yawn at any moment.
“Profiling in ransom situations is a slightly different beast,” Quincy said by way of introduction. “In a traditional murder case, much of the psychological information is derived from the murder itself—key data points include how the victim was killed, condition of the body, placement of the body, probable method of abduction, profile of the victim, etc., etc. And generally, by the time someone such as myself has been called in, there are several crime scenes for analysis, meaning we have a lot of data for consideration. This case, on the other hand, provides only a limited amount of information. We have identified the victim, but not the means of abduction. We have a geographic location for the kidnapping, but no idea where the victim is being held, the condition she might be in. We don’t even have forensic evidence to help us understand the means of abduction, given the extreme weather conditions. What we do have is five separate communications from the subject, and that’s what I have used as the basis of my analysis.”
Quincy pulled out photocopies of the three ransom letters plus transcripts from the two phone calls. He fanned the five s
heets out in front of him. They were labeled Communication 1 through 5 and presented in the order in which they occurred. All these years later, Quincy remained bureau to the core.
“There are several important things to consider when analyzing these types of communication. First, the method of communication. In this case, the subject is using both written correspondence and phone calls to initiate contact. The fact that he is reaching out indicates he clearly wants to be heard. Indeed, on both occasions when we failed to respond to his letters fast enough, he followed up by phone. Dialogue is extremely important to this person. He wants to feel connected to the investigation; more to the point, he wants to feel in control of the investigation. Control is the primary motivation of the subject, as we will see over and over again.
“The second key consideration when analyzing these communications is that the subject initiated contact through the press. His first letter is addressed ‘Dear Editor,’ his third letter, delivered directly to a senior reporter, is addressed to both ‘member of the press and assorted task force officers.’ Clearly, the subject wants attention. In his first conversation with me, he went so far as to identify fame as one of his goals.”
“ ‘Fame, fortune, and a finely baked apple pie,’ ” Kincaid murmured.
“Exactly. I believe the apple pie is a reference to the American Dream, and the sentence as a whole—‘What everyone wants: fame, fortune, and a finely baked apple pie’—is a rather wry observation about America’s obsession with celebrity. So now we know two things about this individual: He wants to feel in control and he craves recognition.
“Both of these character traits are further substantiated when we look at the contents of the letters. On numerous occasions he refers to rules. We, the police, must follow his rules. Do as he says, the victim will be fine. Dismiss him, and the victim will be punished. Obviously, when we deviated from the orders in his second letter, he retaliated by snatching a second victim and upping the ransom demand. It’s important to note that he ‘punished’ the task force by taking a second victim, not by killing the first. Why? Because killing the first victim would render the subject out of control. Without a hostage to dangle over our heads, he has no bargaining chip. I’m not saying the subject will not kill—in fact, I think there’s a very high probability he will turn violent, as we will soon discuss. For the short term, however, his desire to manipulate the police outweighs his bloodlust. If he begins to feel out of control, however”—Quincy’s gaze went hard to Candi—“that equation could change instantly.”