He turned, eyeing the room slowly, studying it. Closet, he thought, and went over to it and opened the double doors. A walk-in. Not too many clothes, but everything arranged with obsessive neatness. Three black designer dresses hung together at the left end of the closet and at the right end hung half a dozen pairs of designer jeans. In between, clothes were arranged by type—slacks, cotton shirts, silk blouses, T-shirts, sweats, jackets, and coats—and the types were arranged by color, from lightest to darkest. Her shoes, perhaps a dozen pairs, were lined up like toy soldiers. In a closet organizer, three cubbyholes contained wool sweaters arranged in neat piles from light to dark. Another cubbyhole held nothing but socks, each pair perfectly matched, and other cubby holes held underwear, bras, slips.
The organizer held a small cupboard, and when he opened the door, he found several photo albums. Sheppard carried them over to the computer desk and wasn’t surprised to find they were as meticulously arranged as her clothes. The top two albums held e-mails and letters from and to Dean and about Dean. Much of it was legal material that related to Dean’s arrest and defense and the investigation into his death. But there were five or six love letters that Dean had written Lia.
The third album held old family photos that dated back to the 1970s and ‘80s. Sheppard paged through it, noting that some photos had been captioned and dated. Tybee 1973. Paris 1979. Farm 1975.
What farm? Where?
He went through four photo albums in all, but didn’t find any more pictures identified as farm. And among these several hundred photographs, he found only two that had little Ray in them, a wisp of a kid with huge soulful eyes and a winning smile, flanked on either side by his parents.
Odd. Why only two pictures?
This was where Keith Curry might prove extremely helpful, Sheppard decided, and carried everything downstairs and out to the car. As he slid behind the wheel, his cell phone rang. Mira’s cell number came up in the window. It was her. The bitch. He doubted if T-Mobile was on the case yet, but he couldn’t very well put her on hold to notify King. He rubbed his hand over his face, anxiety churning through him. How to play it? Was she calling to gloat or was she ready to kill Mira?
What would happen if he didn’t answer it? Would she call back? Would he have time to contact King and find out where things stood with Mira’s cell service provider?
Suppose it’s Mira?
He pressed the answer button and said, “Mira? Mira?”
Breathing. “Oops, wrong woman, Sheppard.” Her silken voice flowed through him and around him like some exotic and toxic liquid. “Are you suffering yet?”
“Allie Hart,” he said.
“Well, you’ve figured it out, have you?”
“Is that what it’s been about? Making me suffer? Or you playing God?”
“I play God every day in ER, Sheppard. This is about you. Payback. An eye for an eye. Getting even. And I think you’re dying inside right now. I think anxiety is whipping through you like a cyclone. Now you know how I felt for thirteen years.”
“Dean’s arrest and jail time were about you, Hart ? Your problem is that you tried to control his life and he refused to let you do it. He left you completely out of the loop about his wife and child. He left you out of the loop on a lot of the finer details that—”
“What bullshit.” Gone was the silken tone. Her voice had filled with vengeance. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know shit about my family, Sheppard.”
“I know that little Ray drowned when he was five and that you found the body. I know that Keith had to leave the country to get away from you. I know that Dean hated you, that—”
“Shut up,” she hissed. “And listen very closely, Sheppard. Just in case you’re operating under the usual cop delusion that you’ll find me before I kill her, let me tell you that the odds are definitely not in your favor. I figure you’ve got about three hours.”
With that, she disconnected.
Chapter 24
1
Panama to Atlanta to Savannah, and now Keith Curry was inside an FBI office, not entirely sure how he’d gotten here. He, Lia, and Sheppard sat at a long conference-room table, where Sheppard spread out maps, pictures printed from a computer, and numerous old photos, some in faded color, others in the sepia tones of advanced age. Curry sipped from a bottle of cold water that a secretary had brought into the room, his eyes skipping over the photos that Sheppard had taken from his sister’s place.
He stared at a skinny kid with a shit-eating grin on his face. Is that me?
He picked up the photo, studying it. He was wearing swimming trunks. His hair was very short, a summer buzz cut. He stood at the edge of a pond or a small lake, with an inflatable raft on the ground next to him and a paddle upright in his hand. Next to him stood a smaller kid, a toddler with hair that looked white. Dean.
He had absolutely no memory of where or when this photo had been taken.
In another photo Allie stood between him and Dean. She was tall and thin, maybe twelve or thirteen, with budding breasts no larger than pimples. Curry wondered who had snapped the photo. The where and when for this photo were also a blank.
“Do any of these pictures seem familiar to you, Keith?” Sheppard asked.
“No. It’s like they’re from someone else’s life.”
Sheppard, pacing now, removed a notepad from his shirt pocket, flipped through it. “Mira pinpointed northern Florida, a place that holds strong childhood memories for your sister. The place is near water or connected to water in some way. There could be a water reference in the name of the town.”
“My God,” Lia breathed. “That’s what it says in the Book of Voices.”
“The what?” Sheppard asked.
She quickly explained. Sheppard listened closely. It was obvious to Curry that he listened with a mind far more open than his own, and he wondered about that. He knew that some cops used psychics on their investigation, but most refused to admit it. I picked up something about a Plan B, Mira had said, and Curry suddenly thought he understood what she had meant by that.
“Excuse me. How did Mira get such specific information about Allie’s plans?” he asked.
“She’s psychic.”
“Jesus,” Curry spat. ‘That’s what we’re basing all this on? More psychic input? You have that much faith in her?”
Sheppard nodded. “Absolutely.”
Lia sat forward, her eyes strangely bright, excited. ‘This is verification, Keith. It’s right in sync with the Cassadaga predictions. A place near water or with water in the name. A curry, a shepherd, a mirror. Mirror and Mira are close enough to be the same thing. The information is valid. But your memories are vital to the whole picture. What place in northern Florida holds strong childhood memories for your sister?” She pushed one of the photos toward him. ‘This picture is labeled Farm 1975. Where is it? You’re in the photo, so is Dean. Can you remember where this might have been taken?”
Curry pushed back from the table, got up. “Give me a break. I was eleven in 1975. What can you remember of your life at that age?”
She sat back, looking annoyed. “Quite a bit, actually.”
“Well, I don’t remember shit from my early childhood.” His childhood memories had gaping holes. He never had had his sister’s obsession about the Family, and where she could cite dates and places and events from thirty years ago, Curry was largely clueless. But Lia and Sheppard expected him to dive into the gaping holes of his memories and come up with information. Fat fucking chance. He paused at the picture window and gazed out into downtown Savannah. The sky had turned dark to the east and south, sagging with clouds that promised rain within the hour.
“Is this you and Dean?” Lia asked, holding up another farm photo.
Curry turned and walked back to the table to look at the photo. In this picture that same skinny kid was holding a toddler sucking on a bottle. The toddler was definitely Dean. “Yeah, that’s Dean.” He glanced up at Lia. “Did he ever m
ention a farm to you?”
“I don’t think so. But he used to talk about almost drowning in a sinkhole and then learning to swim because of that experience.”
Almost drowning? Curry suddenly felt uncomfortable. But why?
“A sinkhole?” Sheppard sounded excited. “That’s what the body of water could be. Not a pond, but a sinkhole. North and central Florida are covered with sinkholes.”
“The area around Cassadaga has a lot of sinkholes,” Lia said. “But I don’t think your folks ever owned a farm around there, Keith. I would’ve remembered Dean saying that, In the Book of Voices, some of the earlier predictions pinpointed Cassadaga as the location. But the later predictions are ambivalent about location.”
“Because Allie changed her mind,” Sheppard said suddenly.
Even though Curry wasn’t as skeptical as he’d been twenty-four hours ago, a part of him still balked at this strange world these people inhabited. He shook his head. “Excuse me, but this requires a quantum leap in faith.”
Lia raised her eyes from the photo of him and Dean and looked at him in that mysterious and penetrating way she had. “Maybe that’s what this journey is about for you, Keith.”
“This journey is about closure,” Curry said.
“Let me try Whitford’s cell number again,” Sheppard said. ‘Then you try your sister’s.”
They had tried the numbers dozens of times, but always got the same message. The service providers involved were now alerted to the situation, and if either phone was turned on, they would be able to triangulate his sister’s position to within nine hundred feet in a populated area or within several square miles in a rural area. Personally, Curry felt that Allie kept the phone off for exactly that reason. She might be nuts, but she was functional.
He studied the maps in front of him, highway and topographical maps of Florida, maps of cities and towns, villages and hamlets. He glanced at several more photos that Lia passed to him and one of them caused something to stir deep inside him.
The photo seemed to have been taken in the same area, near the pond or sinkhole or whatever it was, but sometime later. Dean looked a little older, a little taller, around four years of age. He was facing the camera, his arms thrown out as if to embrace not only the photographer, but the entire world. He was laughing, his beautiful face consumed by sheer pleasure and joy.
Just in front of him was the photographer’s shadow, the lines so crisp and clear even now that Curry could see that the photographer was crouching so he or she was eye level with Dean. Off to the photographer’s left was another shadow, less distinct, except for triangles at the sides of the person’s body. Curry suddenly knew the shadow belonged to Allie, that she was standing with her hands on her hips and the light shone through the triangles made by her arms.
And right then, a memory snapped into place with such shocking clarity that he felt it in the pit of his stomach, in the marrow of his bones.
You’re not doing it right, you idiot. The light’s all wrong.
Curry winced and ran his fingers over the surface of the photo. Seconds after he’d snapped it, Allie had marched over and snatched the camera out of his hands. You’re so incredibly stupid.
And then she had run toward the house with the camera, and Curry had torn after her and tackled her. As they rolled around in the grass, biting and punching each other, screams erupted behind them and Curry whipped around and saw Dean flailing in the sinkhole. Dean, who couldn’t swim. He wrenched free of his sister, raced to the sinkhole, and dived in.
His sister, of course, blamed the whole episode on him, and his old man beat him to within an inch of his life. But the next day, he took Dean down to the sinkhole and began teaching him how to swim. And the place where this had happened was...
There could be a water reference in the name of the town, Mira had said.
“High Springs.” His head snapped up. ‘The farm was outside of High Springs, north of Gainesville. But it wasn’t a farm, it was just an old wooden house with an unused stable out back and five acres of land with a sinkhole on it.”
He grabbed the map, located the town, circled it in red marker, and exploded with laughter. “This is it. This is where she’s taking Mira.” Another detail clicked into place. “It’s over two hundred miles from Savannah.”
“We’re outta here,” Sheppard said, and quickly gathered up everything on the table and headed for the stairs that led to the roof where the chopper waited.
2
It had started to rain, a cold, driving rain that blew across the road in great, sweeping gusts and caused the trailer to fishtail, forcing Allie to slow down to sixty. She didn’t want to slow down. Speed kept her in the groove, in the pattern. When she wasn’t moving fast, her thoughts were flung backward and forward in time or got stuck in her conversation with that pompous prick Sheppard. How the hell had he figured out her identity? How? It had shaken her when he’d said her name, shaken her certainty, her resolve.
Your problem is that you tried to control Dean’s life and he refused to let you do it.
He didn’t know shit about her relationship with Dean. And the crap about the wife and kid. . . yeah, sure, she wasn’t about to fall for that. There had been a time during the trial, though, when the subject had come up—and Dean had denied it, denied all of it.
And why hadn’t Keith called her back? She’d left him a message hours ago. He was probably off playing with some sweet young thing and might get back to her next week or next month. Fuck Keith. Fuck all of them. When this was over, she would flee to the Amazon and study herbs. Who would bother her in the Amazon?
She accelerated again, racing south along U.S. 41, a county road that would take her from Lakeland to High Springs. A few cars passed her, but the road was basically deserted. She was getting low on gas, but not that low, not low enough to take time out to stop. She would stop when she got to the old farm. She had been through here last summer, en route to Tango Key, and even though the area had changed vastly since she was a kid, she had managed to find the road that led to her parents’ old home.
There wasn’t much left of the old place, just an empty house with vegetation pushing up through the rotting floors, and rats and mice scurrying around in the darkness. But the metal garage still stood and the stable with its four stalls had survived the passage of time, and of course, the sinkhole was there.
The sinkhole where the trailer, with Mira inside, would plunge down so deep that it would never be found.
How deep was that sinkhole? A hundred feet? Several hundred? Riddled with underwater caves, deeper than outer space, the trailer would sink and be lost forever.
She had been towing her trailer last summer, too, because a guy in Gainesville was doing the work on it, and had spent two days in here, making preparations just in case Plan B became the plan. Which seemed to have happened.
Well, she was okay with that now. She was. She was flexible. She could go with the flow if she had to. Inside that padlocked garage was a Mini Cooper that would get her to Miami. A clean break. A fresh start. A new Allie Hart now named Sandra Bedford. Not such a bad idea, right?
The wipers flicked back and forth across the windshield, smearing dirt in sloppy half-moons across the glass. She was doing seventy again, which would bring her to her turnoff in just a few minutes. As she started to change lanes, she checked her side mirror—and saw a cop pulling up close behind her. No siren yet, no spin-fling lights.
Her heart slammed up against her ribs, a hot, dry taste coated the inside of her mouth. Move on, guy, please, I don’t want trouble.
But suddenly the siren screamed and the lights spun and the cop sped up alongside her, signaling that she should pull over. Allie couldn’t outrun him, not while she was towing the trailer, and if she pulled over so she could shoot him when he approached the window, she wouldn’t have the advantage of darkness. He might see her gun and shoot first or he might approach the car with his weapon drawn. It would depend on whether he was stopping
her for speeding or because there was an APB out on her car. The latter seemed damn unlikely; such a description would have to come from Nick and he was dead. If she forced the cop off the road without killing him, he would radio for backup and she would still be as good as dead.
Decide fast. What’s it going to be?
She put on her blinker, signaling her intention to pull over, and tapped the brake, slowing down. She pulled her gun from her bag, tucked it under her thigh. One cop, I can handle one cop. I can even handle two cops. But she couldn’t handle a battalion of cops, and if this guy called for backup, that was what it would be and it would be the end of her. Like the people at the farm, this cop was in her way, and by pulling her over, he was leaving her no choice but to shoot him.
Allie popped a CD into the player so music would cover any sounds that Mira might make, then came to a stop, but without turning off the engine. The cop got out, wearing a yellow rain slicker with a hood. She watched him in the side mirror, her hand on the gun.
3
Mira knew that if she screamed, Allie would kill the cop and his death would be on her conscience. So as the Rover slowed to a stop, she popped out the window frame whose screws had taken her hours to work out, carefully lifted away two of the jalousies, and used one of the blades on the knife to cut a large hole in the screen. Then she stepped onto the dinette table and wiggled out through the opening.
She dropped to the ground, the rain and wind masking any sounds she made, and ran, hunkered over, toward the rear of the trailer, her body crying out from all the abrupt movement, pain searing through her thigh.
But the cop already had gone past the point where he could see her. Mira moved quickly to the other end of the trailer. Heart pounding, she cupped her hands at the sides of her mouth and shouted, “She’s armed, get down!”
Total Silence Page 31