“In fact, I’ll take you right now, whatcha say?”
He was laughing and laughing, and as Robin screamed and tried to break away, he pinned her arms behind her back with a grip of steel. He half dragged, half carried her through the woods, and as they came out into a small clearing, Robin saw a wooden shack ahead of them cleverly camouflaged by the surrounding trees.
“Won’t you come in?” Skaggs laughed, and with one thrust he flung Robin through the open doorway. She skidded hard across the floor and slammed into a corner, lying there dazed while Skaggs shut the door and stood over her.
The room spun crazily. It took Robin several seconds to fight off the dizziness, and as she did so, the contents of the shelves around her—shovels, hoes and spades, clippers and pointed shears—came slowly and unsteadily into focus.
“Where’s Claudia?” she mumbled. “What have you done with her?”
“Why, haven’t you heard?” Skaggs put his hands on his head and widened his eyes. “She’s insane!”
Robin pulled her legs up to her chest, as if she could huddle herself into an invisible ball. Skaggs reached down and ran one hand slowly across her head.
“Nice girl. Nice … little girl.” He grinned. “Nice you could drop in and see me today. But hey—sorry. Gotta go. You have an appointment with an accident.”
Robin stared at him through a haze of confusion and terror. She could see his narrowed eyes inspecting her, going slowly over her body, and suddenly he squatted down on his heels beside her.
“You know … I was just thinkin’,” he said, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “There might still be time for you and me to be friends. Before you have to go. What do you think—you like that idea?”
Robin shoved out at him. Her sudden movement caught him off guard, and he tumbled back onto the floor. As she flattened herself into her corner, he staggered clumsily to his feet and yanked his shirt halfway open.
“You shouldn’t have done that. That other one—she did that, too—tried to get rough with me. And I took care of her—I took real good care of her.”
“You took her picture down, didn’t you?” Robin murmured, and she saw the slow, pleased nod of his head.
“My collection.” Skaggs grinned. “She was my first. But you know what they say about hobbies … once you start, it’s so easy to get hooked.” His shoulders shook in a silent laugh, and his eyes gleamed at her through the shadows.
“Where’s Claudia!” Robin screamed at him.
“I like the feel of it now. The feel of soft, bare skin … and cold, hard fear …”
“Where is she!”
“Well, we’re not gonna worry about her right now. We’re gonna worry about you. ’Cause you’re gonna be next. And you know what? I think I like you even better …”
Skaggs gave a fiendish grin. He reached inside his shirt and slowly pulled out a knife.
“No,” Robin whispered. “Oh, God, please help me.…”
And then she noticed the figure in the doorway.
It was silhouetted there against the raging storm, and in the dim light of the cabin, it seemed just another shadow, hazy and indistinct. Robin’s heart leapt into her throat, and her eyes went wide. She hadn’t heard it come—didn’t know how long it had even been there—but as Skaggs took a step toward her, the shadow moved stealthily along one of the shelves and floated up behind him.
“You might as well relax”—Skaggs grinned—“and enjoy it.”
He knelt down beside her.
He held the tip of the blade to her throat and leaned in close to her neck.
Robin could smell his foul breath.
She could feel his hand on her jacket, and the zipper starting down.
She heard his laugh …
And then she heard his scream.
The knife grazed the side of her neck as Skaggs made a horrible choking sound …
And as his whole body went suddenly rigid, he fell on top of Robin, pinning her to the floor.
Robin!” Claudia cried. “Are you all right?”
And someone was pulling on Skaggs, pulling at his heavy, twisted body, trying to get Robin free—
“Robin—oh, Robin—”
“Claudia,” Robin murmured. “What are you—how—”
“Please get up, Robin! Did he hurt you?”
At last Robin was able to roll out from under Skaggs’s weight, and as she stumbled to her feet, Claudia threw her arms around her, hugging her tightly.
“I thought you were dead,” Claudia said tearfully.
“I thought you were, too!” Still somewhat dazed, Robin clung to her. “But what happened? Are you all right?”
“Yes, but …”
As Robin pulled away and held her at arm’s length, Claudia stared down at the body on the floor. She stared and she stared, and as her eyes slowly began to widen, she pressed her hands to her mouth and swallowed a sob.
“Oh, my God,” Claudia whispered. “Oh, my God, what have I done?”
Robin grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the doorway. “You had to do it, Claudia—you didn’t have any choice! You were only trying to save me!”
But Claudia’s horrified gaze was fixed on Skaggs, and without warning she reeled into a corner and got sick.
Robin watched her helplessly and then turned her attention back to the body. He was twisted at a crazy angle, and a pair of shears protruded from his back, propping him off the floor as if he were still trying to struggle to his feet.
Robin felt as if she might be sick herself. She swallowed hard and reached out for Claudia, pulling her gently back to the doorway.
“Come on, we’ve got to get the police.”
“We’ve got to hurry,” Claudia said softly, and her eyes had that distant clouded look again that Robin had come to recognize. Quickly Robin grabbed the girl and shook her roughly by the shoulders.
“Claudia, you’ve got to tell me what happened,” she insisted. “Where were you? What happened back there in the house?”
“We’ve got to hurry,” Claudia monotoned again, and as her eyes reluctantly drew back to Skaggs’s lifeless figure, Robin shook her again.
“Claudia!”
“Yes … yes …” Claudia’s brow furrowed, as if she were finding it too difficult to remember. “He’ll be back soon. We can’t let him find us here.”
“Who’ll be back?” Robin demanded. “Talk to me, Claudia!”
“You were right, Robin. I didn’t want to believe you, but …” Claudia’s eyes lifted, filmy with tears. “You were right about Parker. Only he’s been using Skaggs to do most of the work.”
“Skaggs …” Robin turned loose of her and took a step back, shaking her head in amazement. “Skaggs.”
It made perfect sense, of course. Skaggs at school, having access to the locker rooms, the showers … He’d know locker combinations, too, or he’d know where to find them—it’d be easy for him to slip threatening notes into someone’s books … to push someone down the stairs and slip quickly out of sight into some empty room or some closet …
“So easy,” Robin mumbled. “So simple and so easy.”
Skaggs could drive a black car, and Skaggs would have access to Manorwood. He’d worked the property for years—he’d know all about the house, where to turn the electricity on and off. It’d be easy for him to rig up a floating body in the storage room using Winifred’s curtains … and Parker had covered for him perfectly.
“He used the flashlight, so I couldn’t really see the floor,” Robin mumbled. “If the lights had been on, I’d probably have noticed the floor was still wet, but in the dark I couldn’t tell.”
“What?” Claudia seemed to rouse herself. She wiped at her tears and looked blankly at Robin.
“Don’t you see, Claudia? It was there all the time, and we never even guessed! Parker and Skaggs made the perfect team.”
Parker had even admitted to Robin that he knew where she lived … so he wouldn’t have had any trouble leaving the n
ote on her door that night … or sending Skaggs to do it.…
“We’ve got to go,” Claudia said again, breaking into Robin’s thoughts. “When he comes back and finds what’s happened—”
“Who?” Robin reached out for her, but Claudia’s arms were wrapped tightly around herself and she was trembling.
“When … when Skaggs brought me here,” Claudia whispered, “Parker was waiting in the woods. He—he told Skaggs to take care of what had to be done. And that … that he would be back later. After it was over.”
Robin stared. She felt strangely frozen and faraway.
“I saw him leave the house as I was coming in,” she said. “He was in a real hurry.”
The air was thick with danger. Claudia put one hand out behind her, groping for the door.
“Come on,” Robin whispered, but Claudia shook her head.
“What are we going to do with him? When Parker comes back, he’ll find him here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Robin insisted. “We’re going to the police. It doesn’t matter if we leave him or not.”
Claudia couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Her voice quivered so violently, she could hardly speak.
“It—it does matter. Don’t you see? If the police—if the police don’t believe us about Parker—then—then—they’ll see Skaggs and we’re—I’m—the one who killed him!”
Robin felt her heart go cold. Yes, he planned it. He planned it right down to the last detail. Drive Claudia crazy … no one’s going to believe that Parker Swanson could ever be mixed up in something sordid or messy. “He’s brilliant … has the brains … knows how to work people … that’s how you survive …”
And Claudia will be gotten rid of after all.
“Crazy old Claudia …”
“We need to wipe off the fingerprints,” Robin said dully. Her voice sounded foreign to her, and very faraway. She stared at the shears sticking out of Skaggs’s back, and then she stared at Claudia.
Claudia looked horrified. “I … I can’t touch them.”
Robin glanced wildly around the room.
“We’ll hide him,” she said.
“What?”
“At least till I can talk to Walt.” Yes, Walt. He knew everything that had been going on—he’d know what to do.
“Oh, Robin, we can’t!” Claudia went paler, but Robin shook her head and took a step toward the body.
“Just till I can find out what to do!” she said, more sharply than she intended.
It seemed an eternity that Claudia stood there, gazing down at the pool of blood spreading out from beneath Skaggs … the thick dark stain spreading out across the dirty floor. Finally she whispered, “I know someplace,” and reached out to squeeze Robin’s hand.
Robin thought she would faint when she had to touch him.
As she tried to lift his legs up, Skaggs flopped sideways, and she gave a cry and jumped back.
“That thing’s sticking out of his back—we can’t lay him down,” Claudia said, her voice lifting shrilly, and Robin nodded.
“You’re right. We’ll have to drag him this way. On his face.”
She could see the shears buried clear up to their handles, and she wondered how Claudia had ever found the strength to plunge them in. Fighting down a wave of nausea, she worked her way around to Skaggs’s other end and wrestled his limp arms above his head. Claudia groaned and got hold of his boots.
“What about the blood?” she whispered.
Robin straightened up again, one hand to her forehead, trying to think. Quickly she scanned the room, but there was nothing they could use to wipe up the floor.
“Here,” Robin said and began pulling off her sweater.
Claudia looked at her, horrified. “What do you think you’re doing? Put that back on!”
“We’ve got to do something!” Before Claudia could say anything more, Robin dropped to her knees, pressing her sweater into the growing puddle.
“Then put on my sweatshirt.” Claudia peeled it off and handed it to Robin, even as Robin was trying to push it back at her.
“Forget it! You’ll catch pneumonia!”
“Not any more than you will!” Claudia insisted. “And I have a flannel shirt on underneath—you’ve only got a T-shirt.”
Nodding, Robin took the sweatshirt and wriggled into it. As she scrubbed fiercely at the floorboards, she watched the dark red stains soak into her favorite sweater and tried not to gag.
“Okay?” Claudia asked at last.
Again Robin nodded, holding out the soggy sweater. “What do we do with this?”
“Tie it around his neck.”
Together they knotted the sleeves around Skaggs’s neck, then repositioned themselves at each end of his body.
Then they pulled.
At some point Robin actually felt her mind blanking out. Mercifully, she felt herself moving through a kind of numbing fog, rain gushing down all around her, the forest enclosing her, protecting her, hiding her darkest secrets. It took forever to move Skaggs from the shack and through the trees. Once Claudia stumbled and fell on top of him, and as she gave way to hysteria, Robin slammed back to consciousness and held the girl until Claudia could calm down again.
“Where is this place?” Robin asked wearily. She was soaked through and drenched in mud and chilled to her very soul. To her immense relief, Claudia pointed toward a break in the trees.
“There.”
She looked like a drowned little mouse, Robin thought, tiny and helpless and utterly terrified. Robin gathered her own last ounce of strength and hauled the body several more yards, falling gratefully out into another small clearing.
They were standing on a ledge. Robin could see bare treetops clawing their way up a craggy incline below them, and from somewhere beneath the pouring rain came a distant sound of rushing water.
Claudia sank down onto the ground to catch her breath. Robin’s eyes swept over the edge of the precipice and focused on the twisted riverbed far, far below, its banks swirling with rainwater now, its boundaries marked by clusters of jagged rocks.
It was a sheer drop.
“We can’t,” Robin murmured. “We can’t put him there.”
She turned back around. Claudia was rocking slowly back and forth … back and forth … and seemed to be talking quietly to herself.
“Claudia,” Robin said again, louder this time, “we can’t put Skaggs down there.”
Claudia stared at her.
She got unsteadily to her feet, and her eyes were huge and frightened.
“What are we going to do, Robin?”
“I don’t know.” Robin shook her head, and as Claudia came over to her, she put her arms around the girl and held her tightly.
“I’m scared,” Claudia whispered.
“So am I. But I just can’t do this. Skaggs can’t go down there.”
“You’re right,” Claudia said softly, and she pulled back and touched Robin gently on the cheek. “You go instead.”
A strange sense of unreality settled over Robin.
She felt the pounding rain and the icy wind, and as she stared into Claudia’s huge eyes, she thought there might have been a faint flicker of triumph somewhere in all that emptiness.
“I have this,” Claudia said quietly. “It belongs to Parker, but I know how to use it.”
Her arms were still around Robin. Only now Robin felt something hard and sharp pressed into her back, and as Claudia released her, Robin saw the gun in Claudia’s hand.
“You made it so easy for me,” Claudia said, and her tone held a note of wonder. “I set it up so carefully … and then you came along and made the whole thing work. Even better than I could ever have hoped.”
“Claudia,” Robin murmured, “I don’t understand—”
“But it’s so simple, Robin. Just like me.” And Claudia smiled a strange smile. “Simple … crazy … Claudia.”
Robin moved forward, but the gun came up in her face.
“No, Robin. Wrong way.
”
“Let’s just go back to the house, Claudia. You and I together. We could—”
“The only place you’re going is down.”
The gun came closer. Robin took one step back, glancing fearfully over her shoulder at the long, sheer drop.
“It’s nothing personal, really,” Claudia went on, her eyes going slowly from Robin’s head to her feet. “It’s the family I’m after. But to hurt them, I have to hurt Parker. And to hurt Parker, I have to hurt you.”
“What are you talking about?” Robin’s voice rose. “I don’t mean anything to Parker—”
“Actually, you’re going to end up meaning quite a lot.” Claudia nodded. “Because when they find you, and you’re wearing my sweatshirt, they’re going to think Parker was after me but got you by mistake.”
Robin stared at her. She could hear Claudia talking, could see Claudia’s lips moving, but the words seemed very foreign and very far away.
“You … you mean … they’ll think Parker tried … to kill you.”
“They might think that.” Claudia nodded. “Or they might think I finally decided to jump. I’m very unstable, you know. Suicidal. I could snap at any time.”
A crash of thunder sounded overhead. The ground trembled beneath their feet, and the rain beat down like pellets.
“Either way, Parker’s to blame, isn’t he?” Claudia went on calmly. “Either way, he’s already a suspect. You did that for me, Robin. I have you to thank for that bit of luck.”
Robin felt sick inside. She closed her eyes for a brief instant, willing herself not to swoon.
“You even told the police.” Claudia smiled. “So who do you suppose they’ll think of first when they find you dead?”
“You really hate him, don’t you?” Robin said. “Even though he’s never done anything to you.”
To her dismay, Claudia laughed a soft laugh.
“No, Robin, I told you before, it’s nothing that personal. I just know that by destroying Parker, it’s the worst thing I could ever do to this family.”
Again the gun came closer. Robin could smell the cold tang of steel beside her cheek.
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