“You mean my long-lost fiancee, the one who jilted me at the altar when I was eighteen and left me emotionally scarred for life? Sorry, Doc, only kidding. Afraid I can’t wrap it up that neatly for you.” His jocular tone was obviously defensive.
“Perhaps it’s some other feature of those women that you focused on,” she said. “Let’s take the first one, Marilyn Vaccaro. She was Italian, dark-haired, dark-eyed—”
“So?”
“Would that description fit a woman who means something to you? A girlfriend, a sister? Your mother?”
“Ah, the other shoe drops. The mother complex. Sex, dreams, and mama—the basic ingredients in every Freudian recipe.”
Humor again, stiff and forced. Clearly it was a defense mechanism characteristic of him.
She would not be put off. “Was your mother dark-eyed? Dark-haired?”
“No on both counts. Her eyes were blue. As for her hair, it was red—just like yours, Doc.”
Blue eyes, red hair. Erin saw it then. The link between the first of his victims and his past. “Was your mother Irish?”
In his startled silence she heard the answer he didn’t want to give.
“Catholic?” she pressed.
This time he spoke, his reply drawn out of him with painful slowness. “Yes.”
“Marilyn Vaccaro was kidnapped after attending a midnight church service.” He said nothing. “If you saw her leave that church, you must have known she was Catholic. That’s why you chose her, isn’t it?”
“I ... don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“No, I mean ... It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part. I never realized ...”
He sounded genuinely astonished to have discovered this unsuspected facet of himself.
“Do you realize it now?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Why do you suppose you focused on her religion?”
“I can’t say. Really.”
“Do you have something against Catholics?” No response. “Do you?”
“Why would I?”
“You tell me.”
“I’ve got nothing against them.” He coughed, a nervous sound.
“Don’t hide things from me, please. Not if you want my help.” He wouldn’t speak. “I’m Catholic, you know. Irish Catholic, like your mother. Did you pick me for that reason?”
“No. No, it was those articles you wrote, the ones on fire starters.”
She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Are you a practicing Catholic?”
“Of course not.”
“Why of course?”
“I just ... I could never accept it. An afterlife. Eternal punishment.”
Punishment again. The idea that had set him off last time. Plausible enough that he would hate and fear a religion that held out the prospect of damnation for his sins. But somehow his answer struck her as too facile.
“What else do you object to about the Catholic faith?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’m not a theologian.”
“You don’t need to be a theologian in order to have an opinion. Did your mother raise you as a Catholic?”
“Yes.”
“You must have learned some tenets of the religion. What turned you off?”
“It’s crap,” he said with sudden vehemence. “All of it—everything they believe.”
“What about it is crap?”
“All of it, I said.”
“What, specifically?”
“Abortion.” The word was blurted out, and she knew she’d penetrated to the heart of the matter.
“The church doesn’t permit abortion,” she said quietly.
“No.”
“And it ought to?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Some people shouldn’t be born.”
His answer chilled her.
“Like you?” she whispered.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Do you wish your mother had aborted you?”
“I didn’t say that!”
Perilous to ride him any harder, but she had to. She couldn’t let it go.
“Do you hate her,” she asked with quiet insistence, “for bringing you into the world? Is that why—”
“No, God damn you, no!”
He was up now, and close—must have leaped out of his chair. She could picture him standing over her, balled fists shaking as he contended with the impulse to lash out and stifle her questions forever.
A long, crackling silence passed while she waited to learn if she would die tonight.
Sudden footsteps circled away from her, toward the door.
“I brought you the Tegretol,” he said from a distance, his voice empty of feeling. “You’d better be sure to take it, Doc. We wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize your health.” The door did not slam. It clicked shut politely. She heard the rattle of a key, then a receding drumroll as he climbed the stairs.
Our first session, she thought as her trembling hands groped for the blindfold’s knot.
She was by no means certain she would survive a second one.
22
Erin waited, her gaze fixed on the closed door, until the rumble of the truck or van had faded into the night.
Then she stood, thighs fluttering, and surveyed the room. On the chair opposite hers was a small plastic bottle. She picked it up. Her Tegretol.
He had taken a considerable risk to bring her the pills. Absurdly she felt almost grateful to him. The feeling worried her; it was not unusual for hostages to bond with their captors.
She warned herself not to Stockholm. If she started to identify with him, she would lose any hope of resistance.
There appeared to be no immediate danger of losing her perspective on the man who had kidnapped her and continued to threaten her life. Still, she found it hard to condemn him as unequivocally evil.
On the one hand, he did seem to genuinely regret his crimes and to desire liberation from his pathological compulsion; and that compulsion might well be a byproduct of an epileptic fugue state in which he was not fully responsible for his actions.
On the other hand, though he had taken three innocent lives, he refused to submit to punishment—or even to treatment on any terms except his own.
Like the classic criminal personality, he was childishly oblivious to the needs, rights, or interests of others. Even the murders appeared to trouble him less for the tragic waste they entailed than for the inner turmoil they had generated. That turmoil, at least, implied the nascent stirrings of a conscience, but it was a conscience freakishly stunted and barely viable.
Did she hate him or pity him? Maybe both. Still, as long as she was trapped in this nightmare, facing death in their every encounter, hate would be the dominant emotion.
Well, perhaps she wouldn’t be trapped much longer. Perhaps she could complete the escape aborted earlier.
From the cardboard box she retrieved the wide end of the comb. Kneeling, she inserted it in the crack under the door, probing for the other half.
It had to be within reach. Unless her abductor had unwittingly kicked it clear as he stormed out. If so, it could be yards away, irrecoverable.
Slowly she swept the comb back and forth until it brushed against a small, hidden obstacle.
She drew both items toward her. The beaklike tip of the comb’s narrow end slid into view.
“Thank God,” she whispered.
Then she frowned at herself, ashamed of allowing a mere scrap of plastic to mean so much.
Either end of the comb was, by itself, too short to allow her any leverage. There had to be a way to effect a repair job.
Cleaning the room this morning, she’d found the strip of tape that had sealed her mouth. Her abductor had yanked it off—she winced, recalling the shock of pain as the adhesive tore free of her lips—and let it drop to the floor.
The tape was now part of the small, tidy pile of soiled paper towels and litter that she’d l
eft in a corner of the room. She dug it out and touched the gummed side. It was still sticky enough to be of use.
Carefully she put the comb back together, then wrapped the ragged juncture of the two pieces with the tape, winding it tightly.
To test the comb, she flexed it slightly. Though less stable than before, it ought to hold.
Just call me Miss Fix-it, she thought with a smile, then corrected herself, remembering her Ph.D. Dr. Fix-it, that is.
Her brief flush of pleasure, rare in this dungeon, faded as she turned her attention to the double barrier before her—the dead bolt, the chain lock.
Frowning again, she set to work.
* * *
Gund was raging, raging.
Outwardly calm as he steered the Chevy Astro onto Houghton Road, heading north. But inside ...
Bloom of flame. Thrash of limbs. A woman’s scream yodeling giddily toward the stars.
Erin’s scream.
He wanted to burn her, burn the bitch, soak her in gas and flick a lit match into the puddle—whoosh—and watch her smooth skin crisp and peel.
For a long time there was nothing in his world but the hum of the road, the engine’s steady grumble, the red petals of fire unfolding like a night-blooming flower.
His jaws slid slowly in a painful grinding motion.
So easy to kill her, and so good.
Part of him had wanted to destroy her all along. Last night he’d very nearly pulled the trigger when the pistol was in her mouth.
He hadn’t kidnapped her for that purpose, however. He’d taken her prisoner in order to help himself, save himself.
At least that was what he liked to believe. Perhaps it was only a convenient lie. Perhaps his true intention always had been to feed her to the flames.
Even now he could hear her final agonized shrieks, smell the mingled odors of gasoline and charred meat—
No.
The wheel spun under his hand. The Astro skidded off the road onto the dirt shoulder and shuddered to a stop.
He killed the engine, listened to the clockwork tick of its cooling parts. Around him was a vast silence and darkness, a waveless sea faintly foam-flecked with starlight.
Dry wind, unusually warm for an April night, gusted through the open window. The air had a velvet texture; it wrapped him like a winding sheet.
Sitting motionless, hands resting on the wheel in the ten o’clock position approved by driving instructors, chest expanding and contracting with slow, metronomic breaths, he struggled to marshal calmness and strength.
The fantasy of Erin staked out, drenched in gas—banish that.
He could afford no such thoughts and images. He was too likely to act on them, to make them real.
A chill passed through him as he understood how near he was right now to surrendering to the secret, deadly side of himself.
But he would not yield. Not tonight.
A long, slow exhalation shuddered out of him, leaving him limp.
He was nearer to the critical stage of his cycle of violence than he had realized. But still in control, for a short while longer anyway. Some time was left to him—and to Erin. Some, but not much.
He wondered if there was any chance he could hold off disaster. Perhaps he could. Perhaps.
Even in their abbreviated session tonight, Erin had offered some unexpected insights. The connection between the three women and his past—he had not been consciously aware of that. Yet as soon as she had identified it, he’d known it to be true.
He had selected the first one, Marilyn Vaccaro, because he’d seen her leaving a Catholic church. But at no time then or since, until tonight, had he permitted himself to recognize that fact or to consider its implications.
Though Erin’s probing questions had disconcerted him, objectively he had to concede that she’d been doing only what he’d asked her to do, and doing it well. Already he felt fractionally less mysterious to himself, felt that there was logic, of a kind, underlying his dark urges.
She was helping. She really was.
Whether or not she could free him, he didn’t know. But one thing was certain. If he killed her, or if he walked out every time she aroused his anger, he would never be cured.
To profit from her skill he had to do the work, ride out the emotional fever that such close interrogation brought on; and he had to be honest with her ... as honest, at least, as he could permit himself to be.
All right, then. He would go back. Go back and try again, while there was still time.
He restarted the engine, guided the van onto the road, and executed a sloppy U-turn. The headlight beams scared a loping jackrabbit out of the southbound lane.
Flooring the gas pedal, he accelerated to sixty, retracing his route.
23
Erin spent long minutes of sweaty effort prying the dead bolt out of the socket again. Twice the taped-up comb threatened to snap. Perhaps her prayers held it together.
She pulled the door toward her until the chain was taut. The half-inch opening was too narrow for her hand. The comb fit through and easily snagged one of the links, but the chain resisted her efforts to lift it.
Frustrated, she pocketed the comb, then considered the problem more carefully.
It did her no good to hook the chain at its midpoint. The end of the chain was what mattered—the end soldered to the sliding bolt that held it in place.
She had to find a way to hook one of the end links, then lift the bolt free of its slot in the door jamb.
To do that, she needed a flexible tool, which could be angled sharply. Wire would be ideal.
Wire ...
In her purse was a memo pad, spiral-bound.
Her fingers trembled with barely controlled excitement as she worked the wire free of the punched holes. She pulled it straight, then bent it at a ninety-degree angle and curved one end into a fish hook.
Now all she had to do was tease the chain out of its slot. She guided the hooked end of the wire through the opening, then rotated it, probing blindly for the jamb plate.
The hook seemed to catch on something, but came free when she started to lift it.
Keep trying.
For a second time the hook caught. She drew the wire toward her, seeking to give the tool a better grip, then slowly raised it. The chain rose also; she heard a faint rasp of movement, the scratching of the slide bolt in the slot—
The hook lost its grip, and the chain fell back in place.
Disappointment stabbed her. Teeth gritted, she tried again.
The hook clawed at air, scrabbled at wood, and then, with a faint metallic jangle, snagged the chain once more.
Careful now.
She drew up the chain slowly, heard the dull scrape of the bolt sliding along the slot.
Higher. Higher.
The chain stopped abruptly. At first she thought it had caught on some obstacle. Then she realized that the bolt must have reached the top of the slot.
Ease it free. Gently ...
On the other side of the door, there was a soft chink, then a louder rattle, and the chain fell away.
The wire dropped from her hand. She grabbed the door, pulled it toward her, and this time nothing prevented it from swinging fully open, exposing the flight of concrete stairs that led upward into darkness.
She was free.
Gulping air, she emerged from the cellar room, planted a foot on the staircase, almost fell—her knees were weak, her head spinning—then mastered her emotions and climbed the stairs, gripping the wooden banister.
The light from the cellar receded. The stairs dimmed. She had to feel her way, one arm outstretched to grope in the dark.
Her fingers touched wood.
A smooth sheet of wood directly before her, stone walls on either side.
A door.
She found a knob. It would not turn.
Locked.
At the top of the cellar stairs, a locked door, another locked door.
“No, that can’t be right.” Her voi
ce quavered dangerously close to hysteria. “Can’t be, just can’t be right.”
She had never heard her abductor shut this door or open it. Had never suspected its existence.
Desperately she jiggled the knob, determined to make it turn; but her hand merely slid over the smooth, rounded brass.
Fingering the knob, she felt a small button of metal at its center, like the bull’s-eye of a target.
The latch’s manual release. Of course.
She pressed it, then tried the knob again, but still it wouldn’t respond.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded of the stubborn mechanism, raw anger shredding her self-control.
She punched the button a half dozen times, but the lock remained frozen.
The latch release, goddamn it, had been disabled somehow.
Well, it didn’t matter. There had to be some way to open the door. She couldn’t be stopped now. Not now—
Engine noise. Outside.
He had come back.
A moan warbled up from the pit of her throat. “No ...”
Had all her efforts been wasted for a second time? Would she have to retreat to the room, lock herself in once more?
Lock herself in ...
But she couldn’t. There was no way she could secure the chain lock from inside the room. Working blind, she could never guide the slide bolt into the slot. Lifting it out had been difficult enough; dropping it back in would be impossible.
Panic seized her. She was stuck, trapped, unable to advance or retreat.
The engine was silent. Or maybe she simply couldn’t hear it over the hammer-and-anvil racket of her heart.
Either way, he would be here in seconds.
Her hand dived into her pocket, found the driver’s license and credit card she’d transferred there after changing out of her pajamas and robe.
If the latch was a spring mechanism, and if the beveled end faced toward her, she could loid it with one of the cards.
Had to work. Had to.
She tried the credit card first. No good. The clearance between the door and jamb was too narrow, the fit much tighter than that of the door below. The card wouldn’t go in.
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