She had to be ready to fight for her life when her chance came, but how would she defeat a man with a gun and a knife while her hands were tied?
Keep talking. Keep him talking. “You said Jordy. Do you mean Jordy Gale, the locksmith? He’s part of this? What does he have against me?”
“Nothing, and that’s the problem,” Nelson said, petulant now. “I didn’t have anything personal against the Beecher girl either. I didn’t even know her. That was the beauty of it. Nobody would connect me to her, and nobody would ever suspect Jordy of killing you. But he’s a moron with no backbone. I got rid of the girl, and he got into your sister’s office a couple of times, then he started wimping out.”
“Jordy’s the stalker?” Rachel felt as if all her perceptions had exploded into pieces and fallen around her in an unrecognizable pattern.
Nelson grunted a laugh. “Some stalker he turned out to be. I even had to tell the idiot what to say on the phone. Had to write it down for him, for fuck’s sake. He doesn’t even know what women are afraid of. Sex and violence, how hard is that to understand?”
He paced around her, muttering under his breath. She thought she heard him say, “…taking him so damned long?”
She was right. He was waiting. “Is somebody else coming?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah. Jordy’s going to help me with you. He’s going to live up to his part of our bargain.”
Rachel stared at the house. He—they—would have to drag her, kicking and screaming, to get her inside it.
Nelson moved close to her. His mocking chuckle made her shiver. “You don’t seem to be falling in love with this little place. It’s a real fixer-upper, isn’t it? Well, don’t worry, sweetheart, you’re not going in the house. You’re going under it.”
“What?” Rachel heard her voice rising and fought to control it, to sound calm. “What do you mean?”
“Stay right where you are and I’ll show you.” Nelson pulled the pistol from his waistband and pointed it at her face. “Don’t even think about trying to get away. You won’t go six feet before I bring you down. Do you understand me, Rachel?”
She nodded.
“Good girl.” Nelson stepped over to a slanted door, jutting out from the back of the house, that obviously led to an underground space. In the beam of his flashlight Rachel saw a shiny new padlock hanging from the hook-and-strap latch.
A coal bin? A root cellar? No, no. He can’t put me in there.
Her horror grew as she watched his every move. Nelson inserted a key into the lock, removed it, and pulled up the metal strap of the latch. He hung the opened padlock back on the hook. When he swung the warped wooden door up, its hinges squealed and resisted. He let it drop open to one side, exposing a black, black hole.
He shone the flashlight into the opening. “Aw, shit. That idiot left the ladder in there. What the hell was he thinking? I told him to check it out, make sure it was secure. I didn’t expect—” Nelson broke off, shaking his head, and blew out a sigh of exasperation. “Well, he can get it out again when he shows up.”
“When is he coming?” Rachel asked. How much time do I have?
“Any minute. He’d sure as hell better show up. He knows I’ll come after him if he lets me down again.”
She couldn’t wait until there were two of them. She had to free herself before Jordy Gale arrived.
“Get over here,” Nelson said. “Take a look.”
Rachel didn’t move.
He took several long strides, grabbed her arm, and propelled her forward.
Rachel squeezed her hands into fists behind her back, nails digging into palms. Holding her breath, she peered into the hole. The chamber looked about ten feet deep. The flashlight beam played over dirt at the bottom.
Nelson swung the light her way, flashed it over Rachel’s face, momentarily blinding her. She heard amusement in his voice when he asked, “How long do you think you’ll last down there? No food, no water. Just the rats and spiders for company.”
Digging deep for her last scrap of confidence and strength, Rachel said, “I thought you wanted the snake to kill me. So why do you have this place ready for me?”
“Oh, the snake was just a taste of what I had planned for you.” He moved closer and spoke in a near-whisper, his breath hot and moist on her cheek. “I knew you’d get to the hospital before it killed you. Then when you were back at home, recuperating, Jordy was supposed to go and collect you and bring you here. But the fucking weasel backed out, said he couldn’t do it, I’d have to do it myself. Well, your sister got the snakebite, but I can follow through on the rest of it. Here’s what I’m going to do to you, Rachel.”
Rachel stood still, determined not to let him see that he terrified her.
“Before I put you down there,” Nelson went on, “I’m going to blindfold you and stuff a rag in your mouth. I’m going to take off all your clothes. We might take a little break then for some recreation. You up for that, sweetheart? I could get that nice soft blanket out of the car so you’ll be comfortable on the ground. Would you enjoy that? Huh?”
Rachel kept silent. She wanted to fling herself at Nelson, kick him, bite him. Kill him. She would kill him if she could.
“Then I’ll tie you up so you can’t move, and I’ll drop you in that hole. It’ll take you days to die, Rachel. You’re going to have a lot of time to think about what you did to me. You took my whole future away from me, and now I’m taking yours.”
She scanned the yard, trying to readjust her vision to the moon’s glow after the glare from the flashlight. She hoped to spot a possible weapon, yet she knew she could be surrounded by guns and knives and blunt objects and they would all be useless to her. When she spoke, she willed herself to keep the terror and rage out of her voice. “Somebody will find me. Everybody will be looking for me.”
Nelson’s face contorted with an ugly smile and he moved close enough for her to smell his breath again, that disconcerting sweet scent of peppermint. “Oh, yeah, every able-bodied person in this little hick county will be out searching for the wonderful Dr. Goddard. Hell, the sick and the crippled will rise from their beds to join in. But they’ll never find you. That hole you can see—that’s not all of it. There’s another hole under it, with a hatch. And when it’s got a couple of feet of dirt on top of the hatch, nobody would ever know it was there. You’ll be tied up and gagged, and an army of people can be standing right here looking in, and you won’t be able to let them know you’re there.”
Rachel couldn’t control the shudder that shook her body.
Nelson pivoted away from her and vanished into the deep shadow against the house. All Rachel could see was the beam of his flashlight, bobbing as he walked.
Where was he going? She could try to get away right now, run into the woods. She might make it to the main road, stop a motorist, find help. But no. Be realistic. Nelson had a gun, and she would be slow and clumsy with her hands bound behind her back. She had to do something, though, however reckless, before she ran out of time.
She followed his flashlight beam with her eyes and saw it land for a second on an old metal lawn chair. He hauled it out of the blackness and into the moonlight where Rachel waited.
“Sit,” he said. “I’m going to tie you down so you can’t give me any trouble while I take care of Jordy.”
“Take care of him?” Rachel said. “What do you mean? You said he was your partner.”
“Well, I’ll tell you a little secret. Jordy thinks he’s coming out here just to help me, but he’s going in the hole to keep you company. Except he won’t be in any shape for lively conversation. I hope you don’t mind the smell of a decomposing corpse right next to you while you’re dying. I told you to sit down, Rachel.”
Nelson shoved her and she lost her balance and dropped into the metal lawn chair. No more than five feet in front of her, the dark hole gaped. A plan of escape was forming in her mind, but she had to act quickly. She twisted her wrists, silently praying that the rope would suddenly dro
p away, knowing she couldn’t count on a miracle like that.
***
Locked in the back seat of the cruiser with Rita, hands cuffed behind his back, Jordy poured out a torrent of words that swept past so rapidly Tom could barely keep up. In the front passenger seat, Brandon had turned so he could keep an eye on the prisoners as Tom drove.
“My fault,” Jordy said, “it was my fault, I said yes to everything, I just wanted Shelley to stop, you know? She had to stop before she started telling people I killed Brian. Perry said he’d stop her, he’d stop her for good.”
If this was a confession to conspiring in Shelley’s murder, Tom wasn’t sure how well it would hold up in legal proceedings. Jordy had swung from depression and despair to wild-eyed incoherence in a matter of minutes. Was he manic-depressive? Maybe bipolar was the proper term these days, but mania was the best description of Jordy’s current mental state.
When Tom glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw Rita leaning her face against the window glass, an endless stream of tears flowing down her cheeks. She was cuffed too, and Tom intended to throw every charge he could justify at her. But that would be later. Right now he had to find Rachel, and Jordy and Rita were the only ones who could help him.
“Tell me something, Jordy,” Tom said. “Why did you bring Shelley’s body down here? Why not leave her where she died?”
“He had a plan, but I ruined it.” Jordy sounded mournful, almost angry at himself. “Perry said he wanted to get double use out of Shelley’s murder. He brought her here so you’d be busy investigating, you wouldn’t be spending much time at home. Dr. Goddard would be alone at night and she’d be easier to get at. Easier for me to get at. But I couldn’t do it.” Choking up, he paused to catch his breath.
Tom wanted to stop the car, drag Jordy out and take him apart. But he needed the bastard to find Rachel. His whole body rigid with the effort of controlling his fury, Tom drove on into a part of the county that had been all but abandoned by its residents, who had moved on and left their small farms and houses behind to go to seed and ruin. Unless Jordy had invented the whole thing, Rachel was out here somewhere, trapped in a dilapidated house with a madman.
Jordy started up again. “He called me a cunt. I killed a man, I bashed in his head, I ought to be able to do anything after that. But it wasn’t me that killed Brian. It was the meth, it made me lose control. I didn’t mean to hurt him. Well, I wanted to hurt him, but not kill him, you know? Not like that. Then there he was, dead. I couldn’t believe I did it.”
“So you framed Vance Lankford?” Tom asked. “You put the murder weapon in his car?”
To Tom’s consternation, Jordy burst into tears, shaking with sobs and howling in misery. “I should’ve listened to Rita. I should’ve thrown it in the river.”
“Honey, don’t.” Rita leaned closer to Jordy, unable to embrace him because of her cuffs. “Shhh. It’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this together.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Tom said. What was wrong with the woman?
“No,” Jordy moaned. “It’ll never be over. It’s gonna stay in my mind the rest of my life….”
Tom raised his voice. “Jordy, pull yourself together. If you feel like talking, tell me where Shelley’s body was for the last month. Did Nelson have her in a freezer somewhere?”
Tom watched Jordy in the rearview mirror, bobbing his head rapidly. “You guessed it. A big freezer at his family’s place on the river.” Jordy let loose a wild cackle of a laugh that seemed to echo in the car. “Boy, that’d be a surprise for his folks. Go out for a nice weekend and find a dead girl in the freezer.”
Tom remembered something Rachel had said more than once about Perry Nelson. He’s a good actor. He can make anybody believe he’s okay, he’s perfectly normal. The same had been true of Jordy at times. But his vulnerable mind couldn’t handle the pressure of Shelley Beecher’s suspicions. She’d been right, but she’d had no idea what a mess Jordy was, and she hadn’t counted on him bringing a twisted creature like Perry Nelson into her life.
Chapter Forty-three
“Well, Rachel, I don’t think my brilliant assistant is going to show up.” Nelson stuck the pistol into his waistband. “What a surprise. I guess we’ll have to do this without his help. Just the two of us.”
While Rachel sat in the old rusted lawn chair, Nelson struggled to maneuver the ladder out of the narrow cellar opening. The moon rode high overhead, casting a cold glow that rendered the landscape and everything in it black and gray. The breeze felt chilly on her perspiring face.
Maybe he would exhaust himself with the ladder. Maybe this would be easy.
Yeah, right. He had a gun and a knife, and she didn’t even have the use of her hands.
Did Tom know she was gone? His uncle would have found Ben, alerted Tom. Ben would be at the hospital getting medical treatment by now and Tom would have the whole Sheriff’s Department looking for her. But how would they ever find her in this desolate spot?
He gave up on the ladder and let it clank back into place in the opening. Turning to Rachel, he said in a singsong voice, “I know what you’re thinking.” He leaned down and picked up something from the shadows next to the cellar door. “You’re trying to figure out how to get away from me, aren’t you? Well, you can forget about that.” He stepped closer to Rachel and held up one arm, displaying a thick coil of rope. “Put your feet together for me like a good girl.”
No, Rachel told herself. This is not over.
Standing in front of her, Nelson grasped one end of the rope and let the rest drop, uncoiling as it fell. He stuck his flashlight into the crook of one arm while he pulled his knife from his pants pocket. He began sawing at the rope, trying to cut a piece about three feet long. “Too bad you can’t hold one end for me,” he said with a nasty laugh.
With awkward movements he tried to hold the rope taut enough to cut it. The flashlight slipped out of place. Cursing, he grabbed it before it fell. His breathing came quick and shallow as he grew more frustrated. She braced herself against the back of the chair and pulled her feet together, getting ready.
“Damn it,” he muttered. Then he solved his problem by stepping on the end of the rope, holding it straight and taut.
Rachel was out of time.
She jerked both feet up and kicked him in the gut.
He stumbled backward, his arms windmilling. The knife dropped from his hand. “Goddammit! What’s the fuck’s the matter with you?”
He came at her and she kicked him again. He lost his balance and went down.
Before he could get up, Rachel was on him, slamming her feet into his ribs. When he wrapped his arms around his upper body, she aimed her kicks at his groin. Bellowing in pain and rage, he rolled on the ground as he tried to avoid her blows. She heard the rattle and clink of small objects dropping out of his pockets, keys and coins and a cell phone, but what she wanted most, the gun, stayed secure in his waistband.
“You’re going to pay for this,” he screamed. “You’re going to be sorry you fucked with me.”
He struggled to rise to his hands and knees in front of the cellar opening. He reached for the pistol. Rachel swung her right leg back, propelled it forward and hit him in the face. The force of the blow knocked him backward, into the opening. But the ladder broke his fall. He hung there, one leg hooked over the top of the ladder, the rest of him invisible below. Then a hand appeared, clawing at the opening, grasping for purchase.
Rachel stomped on his hand and he jerked it back. She kicked his leg until it came free and Nelson slid down the ladder and into the cellar. She heard him land with a thud.
“Quick, quick,” she told herself. “Close it, lock it.”
She hoisted the wooden door up with one foot, let it slam shut over the opening. She couldn’t see Nelson, but she heard him groaning. Any second he could be up and moving around, and he still had a ladder to climb out and a gun to kill her with.
She wouldn’t have a prayer of escaping if
she ran now, leaving him free to follow. Like an overturned turtle, she dropped backward onto the cellar door, grasping for the latch and the padlock. She found them, but it took an agonizingly long time to remove the lock from the hook, work the latch strap over the hook and get the padlock in place.
She heard Nelson grunt. Then a wordless roar rose from the dark hole.
Rachel clicked the lock shut. When she felt the snap, she went limp with relief.
Above her, the treetops swayed in a breeze. She gulped in air. She was alive.
But he still had the gun. She had to get out of here.
The knife. Where was it? She dropped to her knees and scoured the ground in front of the chair. She spotted the faint glint of moonlight off a steel blade. Still on her knees, she shifted around, leaned sideways as far as she could without tipping over, and combed the ground with her fingers until she found the knife.
A thump on the cellar door made her gasp. “You’re not getting away with this,” Nelson screamed. “Do you hear me? You are dead, you fucking bitch!”
Rachel gripped the knife and started sawing on the rope, ignoring the pain when she twisted her wrist, ignoring the bite of the blade when it sliced her skin.
Nelson fired a shot through the cellar door.
The rope came loose. Rachel tossed it aside and ran her hands over the ground. His keys. She was sure his keys had fallen out of his pocket.
Behind her, she heard several rapid shots. He was shooting off the lock.
She was about to push herself to her feet and run when her fingers touched metal, closed around it. His cell phone, not his keys. Where the hell were the keys? They must be close to the phone. Frantically, she shifted in a circle, searching with her fingers. When she moved, one knee came down on something hard and sharp-edged. Oh, thank god.
She grabbed the keys, jumped up and sprinted around the side of the house, down the narrow path toward the car. She heard the cellar door bang open. Nelson yelled, “You bitch! I’ll get you for this!”
Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 29