The boy stooped and looked inside the car. “You waiting for Beth?”
“Yes,” Jordan answered. “Looks like she’s put in a full day today. You must be Bobby Chandler. Beth’s told me a lot about you.”
“Call me Bob. She has?”
Jordan nodded and smiled.
“You Beth’s boyfriend?”
“I’m Beth’s hungry boyfriend. We’re supposed to go out for dinner tonight. I wonder what’s keeping her?”
Bobby shrugged his shoulders. “Wasn’t around last night either. I kind of pop around to check on things. Figured she must have been out late last night celebrating Elvis’s arrest.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Bobby looked pleased to know something about Beth’s life that Jordan hadn’t yet been privy to. “Some jerk’s been writing Beth creepy letters. Turns out to be the guy who rents the office over Beth’s store, Rex. Dressed as Elvis on Halloween and tried to scare Beth. I helped catch him.” Bobby’s thumb jabbed his own chest.
But for Beth, Fridays were “cocoon nights” — bath, book, and bed by nine o’clock. Still, if her ordeal with the letters was over and the loony had been caught, Beth just might want to kick up her heels a little.
“What time were you out here last night, Bob?”
The boy thought for a moment. “I went out at 8:30. There was a party up on Pierce — lots of kids from school. I came back this way a little after one. Beth still wasn’t home.”
“How do you know?” Jordan asked. “She was probably asleep. The lights would’ve been out.”
“Nope. I’m pretty familiar with Beth’s routine,” Bobby said emphatically. “Her living room light was on. She keeps it on a timer until she gets home.”
“Maybe she just forgot to turn it off.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Bobby said impatiently. “Besides,” Bobby glanced away, “her car wasn’t in the garage.”
“Tell you what, Bob. I’m going to make a run past the store. Make sure Beth hasn’t had a flat tire or anything.”
“Want me to come?”
Jordan shook his head, turned the key in the ignition, and shifted into reverse. “You wait here,” he called to Bobby as he backed the car out of the driveway. “If Beth gets here before I do, tell her I’ll be right back.”
As Jordan pulled away, he noticed the expression on Bobby Chandler’s face. The boy was visibly delighted to be involved in yet another intrigue, particularly since it concerned Beth.
To Jordan, this particular intrigue held no thrill, and his worry tripled upon his arrival at Personal Touch. The roses he ordered had been delivered and lay untouched across the store’s doorstep, still surrounded by transparent wrap, the blooms beginning to wilt.
What the hell was going on here?
A cursory glance through the shop window was no help. There didn’t seem to be anything out of place. The door was locked. He raced around to the back of the building. Beth’s car was still there, but she wasn’t inside it, nor could he see any sign of her when he peered through the barred windows at the rear of the store. He hurried back to his car, grabbed his cellular phone, and punched in Beth’s home number. The phone rang seven, eight, nine times. Still no answer. Moments later, Jordan was heading back to the Marina, cursing every stop sign and every pedestrian who forced his foot off the gas pedal. He racked his brain wondering where she could be. Did this have something to do with that McKenna character? There’d been a pervert, too, some old fart Beth had been trying to stroke off her client list.
No. Beth wouldn’t be caught alone with either of those losers. She was smarter than that, and more cautious. Car trouble. That had to be it. She had grabbed a cab and was probably just getting home now. She would apologize for her lateness, and he would find out he’d worried for nothing. Hair appointment, some last-minute detail — why assume anything sinister?
Bobby Chandler was pacing the sidewalk and playing his sentinel role to the hilt when Jordan’s car screeched to a stop in the driveway. The squeal of tires brought Bobby over to the car.
“Anything?”
“No sign of her there,” Jordan said, and checked the digital clock on the dash. 8:00.
“Maybe Beth was running late and went straight to the restaurant.”
There was an instant flash of hope, then Jordan said, “She couldn’t have. She didn’t know where we were going.”
Bobby was on a roll now, sensing Jordan was a captive audience. He let fly a host of what-ifs, from the ridiculous to the incredibly stupid. Beth could be on a bender in some bar, abducted by aliens and used for medical experiments —
“Listen, Bobby,” Jordan cut in.
“Maybe she just stood you up,” the boy added smugly.
Jordan shot him a look, and Bobby’s smile vanished.
He needed time to think, and Bobby’s yammering wasn’t helping.
Jordan signalled the end of the conversation by raising the window, then he reached for his phone once more. He struggled to recall Ginny’s last name, knew there was a baseball connection, then remembered Rizzuto. He listened to Ginny’s suggestive answering machine message four times. At 8:30, he remembered his reservation and called the Hotel Vintage Court. Masa, the hotel’s restaurant, had already given away his table.
He checked his rear-view mirror constantly, as though by looking, he could make Beth’s Audi magically materialize in the driveway. Every set of headlights that came up Scott Street brought him to attention.
At 9:00, he got through to Ginny, who hadn’t heard from Beth and was as worried as Jordan.
By 9:30, with no hospitals reporting any recent admissions matching Beth’s description, Jordan knew she was in trouble.
53
Her fingers and toes were freezing. Goosebumps rose on her naked flesh. Her nipples were taut, her abdomen distended. She needed to urinate.
The Spiderman drew closer. Beth jerked her head to the left and squeezed her eyes shut, as though the action would make it all go away, make him go away.
“Time to face reality,” Brad said, his voice eerily calm and controlled. “I’ve chosen you. The least you can do is look at me, get to know me a little better. That’s what you wanted, right? It’s what everyone wants. To find out what makes a guy like me tick.”
Slowly Beth turned her head toward the voice, opened her eyes, and examined the face of the man looming over her. He was clean-shaven and smelled faintly of cologne. His complexion was unmarred by scars or moles. A hint of a smile revealed even, perfect teeth. Dark brows and eyelashes framed his blue eyes, making them brighter, bigger, more hypnotic.
He seemed oblivious to her nakedness; his gaze did not travel the length of her body the way Rex McKenna’s often had. She almost wished it would — lechery, however abominable, was at least understandable. But Brad appeared to look beyond her, to a netherworld created for him, a place where his evil took shape and festered. She could not surrender to hysteria, would not allow him to smell the fear he craved.
“I have no interest in you whatsoever,” she said, surprised at the sound of her own voice. It was alarmingly normal, as though the agonizing horror that squirmed along her flesh belonged to someone else. Another Beth Wells. “How long have I been asleep?”
“It’s 10:00 Saturday night.”
“I’ve been out for over twenty-four hours?” She should be with Jordan now, all dressed up, perhaps finishing dessert. A huge lump lodged in her throat. She couldn’t think about that now. Jordan didn’t know where she was. He couldn’t save her.
“You’ve obviously never used sedatives,” Brad said, then dragged the chair closer to the table and sat down. “They kept you under longer than I had planned.”
“The appetizers.”
Beth remembered the pharmacopoeia under Brad’s bathroom sink, over-the-counter drugs she had assumed Brad purchased to alleviate stress. The chloral hydrate in the sedatives, the acetaminophen, the Pepto-Bismol, all would aggravate her regular dose of warfarin. What ha
d he given her? Again she looked down at her skin, her knees freckled with rash, her ankles bloated. Her blood was running like tap water and would soon gush to her brain or stomach, the destination of her impending hemorrhage nothing more than a crapshoot. The awful taste in her mouth. She was already dying.
She lay perfectly still, knowing her blood coursed through her body according to Brad’s schedule. She had to gain the upper hand. Somehow. Even if she was powerless to move, unable to escape, she would do whatever she could to give herself some kind of upper hand. She had been a victim before. She didn’t like the way it felt at age seventeen, and she was damned if she was going to allow it now. She intended to spoil this photo shoot, shatter some illusions, if only to achieve some final sense of victory.
“Are you going to carve me, like the others?”
“Carve. Such a savage, primitive verb. No, I’m not going to carve you. You’re not like the others. I knew that immediately. You didn’t even scream when you woke up. The others did.”
Beth knew she couldn’t scream. Didn’t dare. Her larynx or trachea could hemorrhage. She would be screaming herself to death.
She kept her voice low, barely above a whisper. “What good would it do?”
“Precisely. Good girl.”
This wasn’t a fair fight. Beth watched him rise to his feet and start preparing the camera.
Right now, the only weapon she had, and a flimsy one it was, was time. Victims had used it in fact and fiction and Beth knew Brad would recognize any stall tactic for exactly what it was. She didn’t care. She had to try.
She watched Brad climb to the top of the ladder, a camera slung over his shoulder.
“There isn’t any fiancée, is there?”
He shook his head.
“But that picture beside your bed, in the silver frame —”
“My first,” he responded calmly. “Her name may have been Ingrid. I don’t remember. She posed happily for that photo. Right before she passed out.”
“But you were with Ginny. Why not her?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Ginny Rizzuto. My friend. At your party.”
“I danced with your friend. Big deal.”
“You slept with her. She told me you were terrific in bed.” Beth couldn’t believe this conversation, a dialogue that sounded like a couple arguing on a morning talk show.
He erupted in laughter, a full-bellied guffaw that echoed in the cavernous room. “I can assure you,” he managed between gasps, “I didn’t sleep with your friend. On a first date? What kind of guy do you think I am?” he said with mock indignance.
“Ginny said —”
“Your friend lied.” The camera’s flash winked obscenely. “How nasty of her.”
Of course she did. Ginny, who wanted so badly to be loved, who was always out to prove something, had lied about Brad. To save face. To show Beth that a man who looked like Brad could actually want her. And because Ginny said she’d been with him, Beth thought it would be fine to come all the way to Muir Beach with him. Alone.
Damn you, Ginny.
“Your Caribbean condo?”
“A product of my imagination.”
“Even you have to admit your story about volunteer work with seniors was a bit over the top.”
Brad looked disappointed. “That, actually, is true.” He paused, waiting for Beth to assimilate this bizarre information, to wonder how this gentleman killer, this butcher, could spend time performing acts of kindness for old people while randomly destroying youth, then he said, “I get some of my best drugs from seniors’ medicine cabinets. Can’t always be buying rat poison from the garden centres. Someone might remember my face. Retirement apartments are a warfarin paradise. All the old folks are on blood thinners, and you know how forgetful seniors can be, always misplacing things.”
Duping the aged to procure drugs so he could watch women bleed to death.
“Lots of women at the party were attracted to you,” Beth said, not knowing where this would take her, aware only that she had to keep talking. “Why, Brad? Why this way?”
“Such a common question. Very disappointing to hear it from you. I was sure you’d come up with something original.”
He couldn’t tire of her. Not yet. Beth struggled for the right thing to say.
He spared her the effort. “Could be my dysfunctional family,” he shrugged, in answer to her question. “Abusive mother, alcoholic father, the usual. Or maybe it was the time I fell from the jungle gym and hit my head.”
Beth lay there, not knowing how to react. Was it sympathy he wanted? Understanding? She took the therapist’s approach, blinked, and waited for him to continue.
“How about impotence? A classic motive. Can’t get off without hurting someone. There are guys like that. Or maybe some lousy LSD experience in high school left me unhinged. There’s quite a list to choose from. Pick one. It could be any of them, or maybe a combination of two or more. More than likely though —”
He stopped, held his breath, then stated simply, “— they’re all bullshit.” He smiled, not a cruel leering smile, but a matter-of-fact good old buddy smile, which made it all worse. “Really had you going there, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Beth answered, “you really did.”
He was still winning, still master of his game, but there was something else. Since awakening in the basement, Beth noticed a change in Brad, not just in his eyes, but in his speech. She recalled how he spoke to her last evening, both in his car and once they’d arrived at the house; she remembered, too, how Brad had worked the room at his party. He called everyone by name, used names often. A smooth public relations move.
Down here, he hadn’t used her name once. Ginny, too, had been referred to as “your friend,” and Natalie Gorman was “the model.” In this cellar, Brad’s victims stopped being people. Could she change that, get Brad to see her as a human being, or was he already too immersed in his ritual for it to do any good?
“Why the nudity, Brad?” she asked. “This isn’t about sex, so why take off my clothes? Are you trying to compare me physically to Natalie Gorman? Or Anne Spalding? Is that it? Does Beth Wells measure up?”
Brad heaved a sigh and slowly rose to his feet. He looked bored again, and for a moment, Beth thought he would ignore her question and walk away. With a sudden movement, he was over her, his mouth close to her breast. “Tell me, how do you feel when you’re naked? Do you feel liberated, comfortable?”
She felt the heat from his breath, and tightened every muscle until she ached. “You know I don’t.”
He brought his face up close to hers. “Exactly. Besides, you’re a much better photographic subject without your clothes. And worth a lot more money to a discriminating clientele.”
He turned away then, and walked toward the door ahead. Just before he went through, he turned to face her again. His cold whisper sliced the air. “And now, I’ve got something for you.”
He opened the door and disappeared.
54
Jim Kearns drained his fourth mug of coffee and was debating pouring a fifth when he looked up and realized he wasn’t the only guy in town without a date for Saturday night.
The Kid, Ted Weems, threaded his way through the labyrinth of desks and approached Kearns’s office shaking his head. “You’re too popular for your own good, L.T.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Kearns had read about himself in this morning’s paper, his bad reviews rivalling a B-movie actor’s. “What’s wrong now?”
“Look at all these messages.” Weems patted his blazer then pulled several bits of paper from the inside pocket. “I hope I’m never this famous.”
“You mean infamous,” Kearns said, glancing at the messages. The captain had called; so had the mayor. “Jesus. I’ve only been gone an hour.”
On Kearns’s desk were three cardboard containers of Chinese food. After a week of meals consisting mainly of chocolate bars, coffee and lukewarm Cup-A-Soup, Kearns had decided to trea
t himself. He would reacquaint himself with vegetables and actually sit down to eat for a change. Despite his good intentions and Henry Ng’s promise that his Peking duck was “focking amazing,” the food had barely been sampled.
“Kid,” Kearns said, “I can understand me being here eating food from a box, but you? You should be out on the town with some hot young thing. I thought you had tonight off. What gives?”
Weems ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “My hot young thing dumped me, L.T. Last night. Go figure, huh? Nice guy like me?”
“Hey, Kid, that’s rough.”
“Yeah, I thought we had something special, but I guess it was only me who thought so. Anyway, being busy helps, so I may as well stick around here. This case is getting under my skin. Bet you feel that way sometimes too, huh L.T.?”
“Quite a few times, Kid,” Kearns answered, a hint of sadness creeping into his voice. “That’s why I don’t have a date tonight either.”
Jordan didn’t know what else he could do. He struggled to think of some other way to get to Kearns and convince him that Beth was missing. He hadn’t been able to make contact by telephone, and it was clear the cop he’d spoken to was both overworked and preoccupied.
The young inspector had tried not to be condescending. “Lieutenant Kearns is out of his office at the moment.”
“But Beth’s his friend. He’d want to know.”
“I’ll give him the information as soon as he gets back. Still, your girlfriend hasn’t been gone that long …”
Jordan could see the look in the man’s eyes, a mixture of pity and frustration. “You don’t know her,” he tried to explain, but already he could see the cop losing patience. Jordan scribbled his name and phone number on a slip of paper. “Give this to Lieutenant Kearns and tell him what I said. Please.”
He watched the cop shove the paper into his pants’ pocket.
As Jordan steered his car toward home, he felt Beth’s safety slip further from his control.
“Hey, I hope everything works out and your girl shows up soon,” the young inspector had said. “You seem like a decent guy.”
Every Wickedness Page 24