Pretty Dead

by Anne Frasier

  Audrey could have tested him by asking him to pull over. She could have tested him by telling him she was sick and she needed to get out and throw up. But her instinct also told her not to give him any warning.

  He slowed the car for a turn.

  With her left hand she pushed the release on her seat belt. With her right, she opened the door and dove out. The car was moving faster than she thought, and she hit the ground hard, her bare legs sliding across the pavement.

  Jay Thomas slammed on the brakes and threw the car in reverse. The vehicle flew backward, stopping with the open passenger door even with her.

  “What are you doing?”

  The look on his face. Gone was the friendly, warm person who’d walked up the sidewalk. The friendly guy who’d taken her photo at their house. In his place was someone she wasn’t even sure she’d have recognized—his face looked so different.

  Like nothing.

  No expression at all. Just emptiness.

  She scrambled to her feet. “I’m gonna walk.”

  On the floor of the car was her backpack. In the backpack was her phone. Her keys.

  “Get in the car, Audrey. I promised your mother I’d see you safely home.”

  “I can see myself safely home.”

  She turned and ran, ignoring the pain in her scraped legs, ignoring the dripping blood. Her black boots slammed against the pavement, her arms pumped, and her hair flew behind her.

  She heard a car approaching. She glanced to her side, caught a glimpse of gray bumper. In the opposite direction was an alley. She plunged down it. The car went straight.

  She kept running.

  Her head was full of her beating heart and her heavy breathing, leaving no room for anything else. In the distance, at the end of the alley, the gray car appeared.

  She screamed and turned. Abandoning the alley, she cut through a yard, pausing long enough to knock loudly on a door. When no one answered, she tested the handle, then kept running.

  Most of the homes in the Historic District had private backyards with high fences and courtyards. There was no easy way to get from point A to point B. As she wove through yards and alleys, she kept moving in the direction of home.

  As she ran, she tried to make sense of what was happening.

  That face. Jay Thomas Paul’s face. That was not the face of a normal person.

  But they’d caught the killer, the man who’d murdered Major Hoffman and those other girls.

  She was three blocks from home.

  Arms and legs pumping, chest and lungs on fire, she didn’t slow down. At the same time, she kept having stupid thoughts. Like how her science project stuff was still in his car. And how she needed to get it back so she could work on it this weekend.

  Then her yellow Victorian house came into sight.

  Seeing it gave her a burst of power, and she felt as though her body could hardly keep up with her flying feet. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see the gray car coming down the road.

  She bolted to the front door and pressed the thumb latch. Nothing. She rattled it. Locked.

  The car pulled to a stop.

  She ran through the yard to the back of the house, across the patio that Avery, David, John, and Mara had all helped make. To the back door.

  Locked.

  She let out a sob, then quickly scanned the houses on both sides—owned by couples who worked during the day. No help from them. She pounded on the door, then remembered that her grandfather was at the hospital getting chemo.

  From inside, Trixie let out an excited bark.

  Audrey raced to the garage. Inside, she felt above the walk-through door for the key she used when she forgot hers or when she snuck out at night.

  Her fingers made contact. The key dropped to the floor. In the darkness of the garage, she searched blindly, finding it.

  Run.

  To the house, slip the key in the lock. Hands shaking.

  A sound, followed by a blur and the force and weight of a body slamming into her. A turn of the key and the door flew open. She crashed to the kitchen floor, Jay Thomas Paul on top of her.

  Before he could get a secure hold, she scrambled to her feet and ran.

  CHAPTER 50

  Elise’s cell phone rang as she and David raced to the parking lot and her car.

  The call came from Elise’s home phone. She hit “Answer.”

  “Mom.” The word was a whisper.

  Key fob in her hand, Elise pressed the “Unlock” button. “Audrey! Are you all right?”

  David motioned for her to take the passenger side. She circled and dove in. Doors slammed. Behind the wheel, David grabbed the key from her and stuck it in the ignition.

  “Jay Thomas is in the house,” Audrey said. “And, Mom, he’s not who you think he is. I ran away from him, and he followed me inside.”

  Engine running, David reversed, then shot from the lot, the car bottoming out as they rounded a corner. “Where are you now?” Elise asked, bracing for the next turn, surprised Audrey was able to sound so calm.

  “In my bedroom with the door locked.”

  “Stay there. We’re coming. Don’t hang up.”

  Elise heard a crash and the phone went dead.

  CHAPTER 51

  The nurse handed Jackson Sweet his home care kit. It contained little more than repeat follow-up instructions and a handful of pink sponges on sticks. “We’ll see you next week,” she said with a cheerful smile. “Just three more treatments and you’ll be done.”

  They were always so damn happy here.

  His one and only goal was to get back to Elise’s as quickly as possible and dive into bed, a bucket beside him on the floor. Based on his last treatment, he knew he didn’t have long before the nausea hit, and they’d already warned him that this time would be worse.

  A young girl in a striped apron wheeled him out of the hospital. The sun was blinding, and he shielded his face, flinching like a vampire, the very brightness of the day and the blueness of the sky an insult to his poor health. He should have gone out bravely, just crawled into the woods and died. Instead, he’d let Elise and Audrey talk him into pumping himself full of poison.

  Not that he had anything against poison. But this poison, even if it cured him, didn’t have the power to make him any less of a bastard. It wouldn’t erase the things he’d done in his life. It wouldn’t repair his relationship with Elise. It wouldn’t absolve him of anything. Even as he had these thoughts, he still tried to make excuses for himself. He’d been young, and young men were stupid, full of fire and selfishness.

  In the cab, he gave the driver Elise’s address, leaned back in the seat, and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the movement of the vehicle.

  He must have dozed off, because it didn’t seem a minute had passed when the driver asked, “This it up here? The yellow Victorian?”

  “Yep.” Sweet reached for his billfold in order to pay with money Elise had given him—because he couldn’t even afford his own cab. He had no idea how he was going to cover his treatments. He was kinda hoping he’d be dead before he had to worry about it.

  He paused, his billfold still in his pocket as he watched a car exit the alley behind Elise’s house. The driver looked in his direction, and Sweet recognized the curly-haired reporter who was writing a story on Elise and David.

  Sweet didn’t like him. That didn’t mean all that much by itself, since there were few people Sweet could tolerate, but this was more than just basic dislike. He was pondering his reaction to Jay Thomas when his phone—a phone also supplied by Elise—rang.

  He hated the damn thing, and it took some fumbling before he was able to answer.

  “Where are you? Home?” Elise, talking rapidly.

  “Just pulled up,” he told her.

  “Listen to me. Jay Thomas Paul is after Audrey. And Jay Thomas Paul is the Savannah Killer.”

  Full alert, all drowsiness gone. “Where’s Audrey now?”

  “She called me from her bed
room. Jay Thomas is in the house.”

  Sweet had a decision to make. He could go inside, hoping to find Audrey alive and well, or he could follow the car that was fading into the distance. If Audrey was in the house, she might already be dead. But if she was in the car . . .

  “I just spotted the reporter driving down your alley,” Sweet said.

  “Was he alone?”

  “I’ll let you know.” He disconnected. “Follow the gray car,” he told the cab driver, “but keep your distance.”

  Minutes into the chase, Sweet realized Jay Thomas had spotted them. Kind of obvious when a bright yellow cab was mimicking his every turn. Jay Thomas increased his speed.

  “Don’t lose him,” Sweet instructed, trying to keep his voice cool.

  The cab screeched to a stop at a red light, but not before Jay Thomas Paul blasted through the intersection.

  “Run it!” Sweet shouted.

  The driver stayed where he was. “Get out!” he shouted. “Out of my cab! You don’t even have to pay—just go!”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  Sweet slipped out the left side of the vehicle, slamming the door behind him. Then, in a movement that belied just how damn sick he was beginning to feel, he ripped open the driver’s door and grabbed the man by the throat. “Now you get out.”

  At first the cabbie appeared more angry than afraid, but as he stared, Sweet saw true fear wash over him.

  “My God,” he managed to strangle out. “You’re Jackson Sweet.”

  “And you’re going to let me borrow your cab.”

  The man unlatched his seat belt while Sweet loosened his grip—not relinquishing it fully until the driver stood in front of him.

  “Don’t curse me,” the man said, backing away, hands in the air as if being threatened with a gun. Behind them, cars honked. Sweet looked up to see a green light.

  He jumped in the vehicle and pushed the accelerator to the floor. Never the best of drivers, he swerved, tires squealing, almost hitting a guy on a bike and a mother pushing a stroller. In the far distance sirens wailed—maybe for him, maybe for Audrey.

  A couple of blocks later he spotted a gray car stuck in traffic just as a warning wave of nausea washed over him.

  CHAPTER 52

  Jeffrey Nightingale, aka Jay Thomas Paul, spotted the cab in his rearview mirror, and damn if Jackson Sweet wasn’t behind the wheel.

  Nightingale laid on his horn, transmitting his emergency to the people in front of him. Cars moved out of his way, and he broke through the traffic jam and turned right, taking Highway 17 to the Talmadge Bridge, crossing the Savannah River. When he hit land again, he opened the car up, his mind racing. One old man. Just one old man. He could handle one old man.

  Three miles, and he looked in the mirror to see the cab on his bumper.

  He spotted a road of broken concrete winding between two sprawling fields of swamp and grassland. In the distance was a complex that looked like an old factory. He turned and aimed for it. The cab followed.

  The distance between the car and the padlocked gate surrounding the complex shrank, but Nightingale didn’t slow. Instead, he pressed harder on the accelerator. The engine roared, propelling the car through the barrier. A direct hit, followed by the sound of metal scraping metal.

  But Nightingale had only a moment to celebrate as the car rapidly lost speed and finally sputtered to a stop. At first he thought he’d damaged the engine in the crash through the gate, but looking down, he saw that the gas gauge was on empty.

  Bailing out, he hit the “Trunk Release.” A sprint to the back of the vehicle and he jerked the girl to her feet.

  “Run!” he commanded.

  Her mouth was covered in duct tape, her hands tied in front of her with his favorite rope, but when he dug his fingers into her arm and pulled her along, she followed.

  The terrain was flat. In the distance, Sweet saw two people—a man and a girl—moving across a parking lot of weeds and broken concrete that belonged to what had once been a paper mill. Sweet pulled out his phone and pushed the number Elise had preset for him. She answered.

  “I’m about four miles from the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, off Highway 17. We took a left at a decaying strip joint called Place of Dreams. Jay Thomas abandoned his car and is on foot. Heading toward the old paper mill. He’s got Audrey with him.”

  “She’s alive?” It was impossible to miss the tremor in Elise’s voice.

  “Yes.” Another wave of nausea hit him.

  CHAPTER 53

  Elise wasn’t sure how much time passed before she felt David tugging at her cell phone. Only then did she realize she was staring at the screen.

  They were standing in Audrey’s room after making a sweep of the house. There were obvious signs of struggle, but no blood. No blood.

  “Jay Thomas has Audrey,” Elise said. She repeated what Sweet had told her.

  David produced his phone and called Avery at the task force center, calmly and efficiently relaying commands and ordering a BOLO. “This has to be a stealth operation,” David said into the phone as he and Elise moved quickly through the house and down the stairs. “We can’t have cops going in there, guns blazing. Right now the only objective is to make sure he doesn’t kill Audrey. If we lose Jay Thomas in the process, we lose him.”

  Jackson Sweet didn’t have a gun; he didn’t have any kind of weapon. And he was no kid. Fifty-eight wasn’t nursing home age, but he felt a hundred, and he’d seen himself in the mirror lately. Right now he looked seventy.

  Years ago he’d brought killers to their knees just by being in the same room. And when he’d regarded them with unblinking eyes through the blue shades he’d given to Elise, the killers broke. They always broke.

  He was still Jackson Sweet.

  Somewhere in this pathetic weak body that had turned on him—this casing, this shell of bones and skin—Jackson Sweet still lived and breathed.

  He drove past marshland and ground so saturated it would suck the boots off your feet. At the gate, he didn’t slow down. It was all about surprise. He hurtled toward the people running for the mill. Passing them, he turned and braked, skidding to a complete stop yards away.

  He pulled the keys from the ignition, pushed open the door, and stepped out.

  Audrey’s mouth was covered in duct tape, her hands bound with rope. The man who called himself Jay Thomas Paul gripped her by the hair, holding a handgun to her temple while using her as a shield.

  Sweet could see the terror in his granddaughter’s eyes, and for the first time in his life he experienced true fear for someone else.

  Most men on a chase would have had a weapon, and the lack of one was something Sweet deeply regretted. But taking a gun to chemotherapy was frowned upon, even in Savannah.

  “Let the girl go.” The words were quiet, not much above conversational, but they carried. “Let her go. Take the car. Get the hell out of here.”

  Jay Thomas laughed. “Go away, old man. Go away or I’ll kill you.”

  “You’re done. They know who you are. It’s all over. I’m offering you an escape.”

  “It’s never over.” Jay Thomas shifted the weapon from Audrey’s head to Sweet’s.

  “Let the girl go.” A fresh wave of nausea washed over Sweet, but he fought it. His leg trembled with weakness while he called upon his inner strength to get him through the next few minutes. Just a few minutes. That was all he needed.

  Fear was the key, and belief was born out of fear. To test Jay Thomas’s fear and belief, Sweet chanted something he’d learned years ago:

  “If I hang by a single thread

  In a place no one shall see

  When the time comes for you to sleep

  A sleep of death will be.”

  White men weren’t conjurers. White men couldn’t bend people to their will. But when an old Gullah man chose Sweet to follow in his footsteps, Sweet had taken up the mantle. He should have refused. Look how it had screwed up his life. And Elise’s.

  And y
et she’d become a cop. Like Sweet. And she had whatever he had. He’d felt it in her. Audrey too.

  Not magic. Hell no. It wasn’t anything supernatural, even though he let people think so. What he had was a connection, an ability to tap into something he didn’t understand. And from practice, he knew the person on the receiving end needed to believe.

  Elise had been right about him all along. He had no real power. The power was in the belief. Question was, did the man in front of him believe?

  Sweet was close enough to see the color of Jay Thomas’s eyes. Green and gold. “Let the girl go.” Sweet held out his hand, car keys in his open palm. “I take Audrey; you take the keys. Simple as that.”

  Without breaking eye contact, without blinking, Sweet began to chant a confusion spell:

  “Cobwebs in your brain

  Fear I do sow

  Allow your thoughts to scatter

  Let the girl go.”

  The reward, when it came, was everything Sweet could have hoped for—that split second when Jay Thomas redirected his attention to the keys in Sweet’s hand, when the chant distracted him, confused him.

  Belief.

  Sweet lunged, taking Jay Thomas by surprise and knocking him to the ground. Leaping back to his feet, Sweet stomped the killer’s wrist, jarring the weapon free—he quickly swept it up and aimed it at Jay Thomas while Audrey ran to her grandfather’s side.

  Keeping the weapon trained on Jay Thomas, Sweet pulled the tape from Audrey’s mouth, and she let out a gasping sob.

  Sirens sounded in the distance, and Sweet detected what might have been the approach of a far-off helicopter. Or maybe the hum came from inside his head—because with no warning, the picture tilted. Sweet tried to catch himself, stumbled, then pitched forward, slamming into the ground.