Clay turned twice more. As they climbed higher up the hills, the houses grew bigger.
“Ever noticed that in rich neighborhoods, it’s like a ghost town?” Brody asked. “Nobody walking the streets. Cars inside garages. In poor neighborhoods, people are out, sitting on front porches gossiping. Rich neighborhoods, no one knows nobody.”
“Exactly,” Clay said. “This man is not stupid. If you were keeping prisoners, wouldn’t you prefer a ghost town?”
Moments later, Clay braked at a corner in front of a street sign marked Desert Quail. He wasn’t going to drive into the cul-de-sac.
“I’ll need a gun,” Clay said. “Yours.”
“You’re still under official custody. You know that.”
“And I’ve done all this so I can lure you to a secluded spot, shoot you, and make a desperate getaway. Give me a break, Brody. We’re
talking about my wife and my son. I’m going in to get them out.”
Brody unsnapped his holster and handed Clay his pistol.
“It’s four forty-nine,” Clay said. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, that’s your cue.”
“You sure you know what you’re doing?”
All Clay needed was a way to get up to the house without being noticed. He had an idea – an all-or-nothing idea. After that –
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Brody was saying. “They could fly a SWAT team in from Vegas in under an hour. How about local backup? And what if –
“Brady,” Clay interrupted, “you’re talking too much again.”
4:50 p.m.
The boy stared straight ahead as the truck stopped.
“We’re here,” the driver said unnecessarily. The boy had not spoken in three hours. He had rebuffed any attempts at conversation. The man felt he was speaking more for his own benefit rather than the boy’s.
“I know you haven’t had an easy few days,” the man said, not unkindly. “But all of us will be doing our best to make it home. Because it is your home. I’ll treat you like my son, and the others will treat you like a brother.”
The boy did not reply to this either. He still smelled smoke and burning rubber. He still heard the wailing sirens of the firetrucks. He still saw the great geysers of water arched against floodlights.
Why hadn't his mother come out of the trailer? Why had she stayed inside? The firemen told him she had died without knowing what happened.
But the boy knew what had happened.
He had lit the kerosene-soaked foundation of the mobile home. He had started the fire that killed his mother. It was just supposed to scare her, not kill her. Nothing else but the nightmare of that night filled his thoughts.
“Step outside... son.” The man’s voice was awkward.
The bay got out of the truck slowly, reluctantly.
Two children close to his age came out of the house. The older one, a boy, did not run, but walked with grave dignity. The younger one, a girl, ran with a smile on her face.
“Hello,” she said when she got closer.
“Hello,” the boy said. A curious warmth filled him. In his back pocket was the only possession the fire had not taken. It was a photo of his mother when she was a girl. He’d always loved the photo, had spent hours looking at it, wondering about his mother at that age.
This girl, this shyly smiling girl in front of him, could have stepped out of that photo.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she told him. “You’ll see,” She stepped forward and hugged him. She stepped back and took his hand.
“Come with me,” she said. “There’s a lot to show you.”
The girl’s brother followed them, and all three spent the rest of the day wandering around. The boy showed proper amazement at everything they pointed out for his benefit.
That evening, the girl took him for another walk. “Don’t tell anyone,” the boy told her, “but I love you.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “I love you too.”
The curious warmth filled him even fuller than it had in the afternoon when he had first seen her smiling and running. “Maybe we can get married.”
She laughed. “You say the sweetest things. But nobody would let us.”
She laughed again when he pouted, and she hugged him. “Let’s keep walking,” she said. “It’s going to be fun having you live with us.”
The Watcher pulled open the door, half-expecting Kelsie to try to force her way out in a frenzy of kicking similar to the one she’d launched from the trunk of her car. Instead, as Kelsie had agreed, Taylor stepped outside.
The Watcher locked the door again.
“Yabba-dabba-do,” Taylor said. He grinned.
The Watcher could not help but grin back. He was softening, and he blamed it on his excitement at finally being with Kelsie.
He held out his hand, and Taylor took it without question, allowing the Watcher to lead him to a closet down the hall.
“Sorry, my little friend,” the Watcher said. “You’ll need to sit in here for a while. But at least there’s a light, and it’s better than a bomb set to a timer.”
The rigged bomb-jacket, of course, had been a bluff. Why complicate things, as long as Kelsie agreed to his demands?
The Watcher shut the closet door on Taylor and locked it from the outside. Now everything was ready. Kelsie was waiting.
He allowed himself to hope she would be pleased when she saw his face. After all, they had shared much of their lives together. He told himself, however, it did not matter if she was not pleased. After a while, she would be happy that he loved her so much he would throw away his old life for her and go to all this effort to show his love.
The Watcher closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply, held his breath, then released it. He felt a strange, heady mixture of tension, pleasure, and nervous anticipation. At no other time and with no other woman had he felt this kind of peace and tingling warmth.
With a final sigh, he turned the key and pulled the door open to greet his lifelong love.
Her voice echoed disbelief. “You?”
4:54 p.m.
Clay kept his hat low over his face and consulted his clipboard as he walked on the sidewalk into the cul-de-sac. He had his guess as to the real identity of Thomas Wilkens and knew, even if he was wrong, that the killer would recognize Clay immediately – no person could stalk a man’s wife without knowing the man and his habits almost as intimately as the wife’s.
Clay assumed that Wilkens would not be watching the street with suspicion, let alone be watching the street during the next two minutes. The hat, workshirt, and clipboard – purchased hastily at a discount department store – were merely needed to fool neighbors who might otherwise call the police and to buy time on the minor chance Wilkens might glance out the window during Clay’s approach from down the street. These were huge houses, set well back from the street, giving Clay protective distance from any casual inspection. All Clay needed was thirty seconds to get unseen from the sidewalk to the front door of 289 Desert Quail. It was a good gamble; Clay figured chances were small that Wilkens sat at his front windows. If the gamble failed and Clay did not get those thirty seconds, even the most elaborate disguise wouldn’t help with what he had planned.
His quick survey from beneath the bill of the cap showed the five houses on the cul-de-sac to share classic desert architecture – tiled roofs, light pastel exterior walls, and three-car garages. Clay didn’t know real estate well, but he figured each to be worth a million easily, each to run over four thousand square feet. What better place to keep someone prisoner than in the depths of the intimidating privacy of these mansions on the hill?
Clay walked slowly, pretending to check off various boxes on an imaginary paper on his clipboard, keeping his face turned away from 289 Desert Quail.
Clay had gone through the possibilities as he drove from the airport. Thomas Wilkens was the stalker, or he was not. That simple. The three-story mansion looming ahead belonged to a killer who had kidnapped his w
ife and child, or it did not.
If it didn’t, Clay would accept the price. He’d face jail terms for breaking and entering, with added time for carrying a weapon. Not much of a price, he thought, compared to the alternative, risking the loss of Kelsie and Taylor.
If the mansion did belong to the stalker, chances were no one else lived there. Serial killers were loners – too many secrets to share. And if the house did belong to the killer, another set of two possibilities existed. Wilkens was either inside, or he wasn’t.
If he wasn’t, any mistakes Clay made wouldn’t matter. If he was, Clay had to do this correctly and quickly, because of the final set of two possibilities: Kelsie and Taylor were inside the mansion, or they were not.
If not...
Clay pushed the thought out of his mind. Clay had made his best conclusion based on the patterns in the information back in Kalispell. This was not the time to second-guess himself.
He reached the sidewalk. With long strides just short of a lope, he moved toward the front door. These were the crucial seconds. If Wilkens happened to be watching at this moment, all surprise was lost.
Once into the shadows of the enclave at the front door, Clay did not relax. Although he was completely screened from any inside observer, and largely hidden from the street, he still had to assume the worst, that Wilkens had seen him and was already reacting.
Clay took the roll of packing tape out of his back pocket and peeled off a strip. Earlier, he’d picked a pebble from the street. He placed it squarely in the center of the tape and pressed the pebble into the doorbell. Clay squeezed the tape on both sides of the pebble onto the doorframe, holding it tightly in place, pressing against the doorbell.
Chimes inside bonged repeatedly.
This was his second gamble. If Wilkens was inside, he’d have to come to the door. Clay didn’t expect Wilkens to open the door, but the constantly ringing bell would at least bring him to the door to look through the security peephole. All Clay wanted was the distraction to get Wilkens to the front of the house.
He ducked and sprinted around the garage, angling toward the backyard. There was a gate, locked. Clay hit it without slowing and tore it off his hinges.
He was going into this blind, and he knew it too well. He had no idea where the back door was. He was hoping he’d find a walkout patio and sliding glass doors, and he had no idea whether or not he’d set off a security alarm. Once inside, he faced another problem: He would be totally unfamiliar with the layout of the house. Which was why he wanted Wilkens at the front door – away from Kelsie and Taylor if they were inside.
As he’d hoped, there were sliding glass doors. Easier to break.
He kicked hard. On the third kick the glass shattered. To his relief, no alarm went off.
Every second now was crucial. He had to assume Wilkens had heard the breaking of glass and was now turning back from the front door.
Clay cleared out the glass and ducked inside, the pistol in his hand and cocked to fire. A blast of cold air hit him. He’d forgotten how hot it was outside.
He sprinted across carpet, the room and its contents a blur to him. He guessed the direction of the front door and dashed up a set of stairs, ready to fight or fire, dive or tackle at the first sign of movement.
Within seconds, he reached the wide hallway leading to the front door, almost skidding as he stopped on the glazed tile flooring.
The echoing bongs of the doorbell taunted him. The man had not come to the door at all. Did that mean he wasn’t there?
“Clay Garner,” a voice reached him from a hallway above. “You’re looking in the wrong place. Come upstairs and join us. But do us all a favor, and get the doorbell silenced.”
Clay whirled his head.
“Keep the gun if it makes you feel better,” the voice instructed. “But it won’t do you any good. I’ve got Kelsie and Taylor as shields. After all this effort on your part, wouldn’t it be a shame to watch them die?”
Before moving, Clay memorized what he could see of the interior from where he stood. He’d dashed through the kitchen and a dining room to reach the front-door hallway. In the other direction, a wide, curving stairway led upstairs. At the top of the stairs, he could see that one hallway led left and another to the right. The walls were lined with large modern prints. Vases of dried-flower arrangements had been placed on various tables in the front hallway and dining room.
Clay unbolted the front door and removed the tape and pebble from the doorbell. The silence was eerie in the gigantic, empty house.
Clay closed the front door but left it unlocked. He took the stairs slowly, his footsteps absorbed by the rich carpet. At the top, he hesitated. The hallway to his right was longer, and there were open doors on both sides. The hallway to his left was much shorter and led to a single closed door at the end.
His instinct told him to go toward the closed door, but before he could act upon it, the speaker voice confirmed it.
“Come join us. We’re behind the door at the end of the hallway.”
Clay advanced. He wasn’t sure if there was any other way to play this. The voice might be bluffing. Kelsie and Taylor could be elsewhere or – he gritted his teeth at the thought – already dead. Either way, Clay could not control the situation. He had to respond as though Kelsie and Taylor were on the other side. He had to hope he could delay events until Brody called in for local backup.
Clay pushed the door open with his foot and turned sideways, pressing himself against the wall. Not much protection, but if someone was going to shoot at him, it was better than giving his entire body as a target.
“Spare the drama.” The voice did not come from a speaker but from directly inside. Clay knew that voice.
He stepped through the doorway, pistol chest-high and at arm’s length.
The sight was so unexpected, it disoriented him briefly. This entire half of the second floor was wide open, like a warehouse loft. The walls were unfinished, the floor was rough wood. Filling the back portion of the huge open room was a smaller room, like a box within a box. Large television cameras, mounted above the smaller room on metal frameworks from the ceiling faced downward, toward the room. Video cables trailed everywhere.
The sight did not distract him for long. Against the outside wall of the inner room stood three people. Kelsie was alive and unmarked. Taylor held her hand. Behind and between them, with the barrel of a pistol pressed into Kelsie’s ear, was Lawson McNeill.
4:59 p.m.
Sheriff Brody looked at his watch for the tenth time in a minute, wondering for the fifth time in that minute if he had shot his career by agreeing to this, wondering if he should just go ahead and call for backup immediately.
A four-door Lexus, gleaming waxed green, cruised past the parked car and turned into a driveway just up the street. Seeing the car reminded Brody of fat-cat lawyers, and lawyers turned his mind to lawsuits, and for the sixth time in the same minute, he wondered if he had shot his career. Then he thought about his own wife and their two kids and what he might do if they’d been taken by a monster who preyed on women and dumped them from airplanes. He’d be doing the same as Clay.
And if he was the one out there and Clay was in the parked car, he’d want Clay giving him a decent shot to rescue his family.
Brody began to strum his fingers on the steering wheel. All right, then, he wouldn’t make the call until twenty minutes had passed. But did time have to move so slowly?
4:59 p.m.
“Set your gun down,” Lawson said. “Kick it away from you.”
“No.” Clay kept the gun trained in Lawson’s direction.
“Who do you want killed first? Taylor? Or Kelsie?”
Clay’s gun did not waver.
“Think about it,” Lawson said. “This is not your normal hostage situation. I can kill one and still have the other for protection. And it’s not like I’ll be particularly upset to pull the trigger. As you might guess, one more dead person on my list won’t keep me awake at ni
ght.”
Without the gun, Clay would be standing unprotected. With it, he knew without a doubt, he would watch Taylor or Kelsie die.
Clay set the gun at his feet and kicked it away. This was the moment of truth.
Lawson did not shoot Clay. Instead, he forced Kelsie onto her knees and kept a grip on Taylor’s shoulder. He smiled his satisfaction from behind tortoise-rim glasses.
“I must admit,” Lawson said, holding his pistol at his side, “this is a surprise.”
He gestured at a bank of small television monitors at his side. “If it weren’t for my outdoor surveillance cameras, it would have been far more of a surprise, since I didn’t have the alarm system on. Very kind of you to alert me with the doorbell.”
Lawson’s cold smile stayed in place. “Let me satisfy your curiosity. Behind me is my guest room. Thanks to the wonders of modern electronics, I can observe my guest from my own room, down the other hallway. I can also watch for intruders from there. On occasion, of course, I must indulge myself in person here in the guest room. I always thought it would be prudent to put in monitors of the grounds here as well. Your presence is ample demonstration of how wise I was to protect myself.”
“Are you all right?” Clay asked Kelsie. “Has he hurt you? Taylor?”
“We're fine,” she said, taking a gulp of air.
“It’s nice to see concern between the estranged,” Lawson said. “Misplaced concern, Clay, These two will not be hurt. You, on the other hand...”
“I presume you built all of this yourself,” Clay said, forcing admiration into his voice. Anything to waste time. “This must have taken years to set up.”
“I was still at law school when I began to dream of this solution to my frustration. Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the money I needed. This house, as you might guess, cost a fortune. So did my renovations. Of course, I also needed a large retirement fund. But I was patient. And, as you can see, it was worth the wait.”
Blood Ties Page 37