Dead Wrong

by Janice Kay Johnson

  "He kept Karin alive for half the night or more. Quick isn't his style. We'll find him." She sounded optimistic but didn't feel it. Where did he take his victims? Goddamn it, where?

  And would they get there in time?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TRINA CROUCHED like a cornered animal, one wrist shackled with police handcuffs to a pipe that ran from open metal roof to rough concrete floor in—she didn't know what the building was. Some kind of loafing shed or barn, long unused, she guessed, from the lack of animal smell. Open-air from head high to eaves. Floor ran down to metal drains. Cold despite the space heater thoughtfully provided by a serial killer. Lit by bulbs along the center rafter. So—someone was still paying the utility bill.

  A large rubber mat, maybe designed for a stall, had been cut so that the pipe rose from the middle of it. A nice, clean rubber mat, kept spotless for killing, she guessed.

  He'd taken her by surprise when he walked her to his huge black pickup. She had decided to scream, to fight, even if he cut her bad. She'd die either way, and she didn't want to be raped first. But just as they reached the tailgate, without warning he slammed her forward, headfirst into the frame. Shattering pain and…nothing. She had come to with the cold snap of the handcuffs closing on her wrist as he fastened her to this pipe, but had had the sense to stay limp until she heard his footsteps recede.

  Her head pounded, wave upon crashing wave of pain. Her vision didn't seem quite right. Nonetheless, she assessed her surroundings, realized with shock that she was naked and covered with goose bumps. Examined the sense of vulnerability that knowledge brought and dealt with it. To hell with modesty. She had bigger things to worry about.

  Trying not to rattle the handcuffs against the metal pipe, she tested it. There was no give. It was solidly embedded in concrete beneath the mat.

  Maybe she should lie back down, pretend to still be out. How long would he wait? Or would he start hurting her to hasten consciousness?

  Too late. He appeared in her peripheral vision, circling her like another animal. A starving predator. Skinny, sweating, eyes insane. He would kill eventually, but what he wanted was to hurt her.

  "Are we having fun yet, Will's bitch?" he crooned. "You're mine now. My bitch." He savored the idea as if he could taste it. As he would taste her blood when he ripped her flesh with his teeth.

  She scrambled, crablike, to stay facing him. God, her head throbbed and he wavered before her eyes. But adrenaline, terror and rage fueled her.

  "I'm not yours. I'll never be yours. Did you know I've been in love with Will since I was about twelve years old? Yup," she taunted. "All my life. And I plan to stay in love with him until I die."

  Husby's face darkened, engorged with blood. She was making him angry, and she didn't know if that was good or bad. All she knew was that she wouldn't beg. Not even for her life.

  He called her names she'd never heard before, foul, degrading, obscene, hate-filled names. She laughed, teeth showing.

  "That the best you can do?"

  He lunged and she kicked, high and hard, just as she'd planned, slamming him in his chest. Taking kickboxing was the smartest thing she'd ever done.

  "Bitch!" he screamed and came back for more. She kicked again, savagely, right for his balls, and he went down, kneeling just out of her reach, screaming his fury. Her foot hurt like hell and she wondered if she'd broken some bones in it. One more small problem.

  And no one was near, she realized with an icy cramp in her chest. He didn't care how much noise they made. There was no one to hear.

  No one to save her.

  Trina steeled herself. Maybe no one would. But she'd make Gavin Husby very, very sorry he'd chosen her.

  * * *

  8:20.

  Half a dozen detectives gathered around the conference table, faces drawn, voices tight, rising to quick anger. Will couldn't sit, even if his prowling was a distraction. He'd never known he could feel so violent. He wanted to smash in Gavin Husby's face. Rip out his rotting excuse for a heart.

  "I've put out a bulletin," Meg Patton said. "Every cop in Elk Springs and the county is looking for Husby's truck. But he had a long enough lead time to get it under cover. We need to figure out where."

  "His dad," Will said. "No, wait. He's a stepdad. Different name. Oh, crap. What's his name?" He pounded his fist into his other palm. "What's his name?"

  "It'd be on school records." Jerry Dixon half rose. "We can get someone out there to turn on a computer."

  And how long would that take? Will thought with a savage lack of detachment. Forty-five minutes? An hour? Too long.

  Oh, for God's sake! He wasn't using his head. "Let's not waste time. I know where he lives."

  "Go with Jerry." Her gaze swept the table. "Fisher. You, too."

  The three men ran out to the sheriff's department SUV.

  "Old part of town," Will told Dixon as he tore out of the parking lot. Faster than was safe without flashers. Not fast enough.

  "Elm. No." He swore, dragged a hand through his hair. "A block over."

  "Maple?"

  "Yeah, yeah."

  Five minutes, Jerry slowed. Darkness made the houses look one hell of a lot alike. The wrong side of the river, these were smaller than those in the neighborhood where Will's mother had grown up. Bungalow style, shabby, lawns frozen and lumpy, cars lining the curb, a few set up on blocks. Will looked from porch light to porch light, wracking his memory. He'd only been here a few times to pick up Gavin, who hadn't liked anyone coming to his house.

  "That one," Will said suddenly, with assurance. Yeah, yeah, he remembered the tree, an enormous lone pine Gavin's stepdad wanted to cut down before a storm dropped it on the house. But it was still standing.

  "House is dark." Jerry cut the headlights and drifted to the curb. Sharply, he said, "Will, you stay here. Okay, let's go."

  The two men slipped out, closed doors quietly, un-holstered weapons. They ran into the darkness around the house, separating to each side.

  Waiting didn't sit well with Will. What if Trina was in there? If that crazy son of a bitch had her in the basement? But he knew better than to screw things up, maybe get himself shot.

  A porch light came on at the neighbor's. The front door opened and light streamed out, casting in silhouette the stooped figure of an old man.

  Will got out and walked up to the porch. "I'm with the sheriff's department, sir. We're looking for Gavin Husby. I believe his stepfather still lives here."

  "The Gaines have gone to Arizona for the winter. That boy," the old man spit into the darkness to the side of the porch, "he weren't welcome here last I knew. That Gavin, he's never been right. I ain't surprised you're looking for him."

  "What do you mean, not right?"

  The old man peered at him. "Rochelle Gaines, his mom, why she likes cats. Don't care for 'em, myself. Always crapping in the flower beds. But that's nature," he said philosophically.

  Will braced himself. He knew what was coming.

  "Her cats kept disappearing. Found pieces of one of 'em." He shook his head. "Then Wayne caught the boy, fourteen, fifteen years old, hurting the kitten she'd brought home. He had to kill it. Then he beat the crap out of the boy, for what good that does."

  Will swallowed. That long ago, it had already been too late. Gavin Husby, for whatever reason, had been programmed to become a monster.

  "Have you seen him around? Does he use the house when his parents are away?"

  "Wayne changed the locks a few years back. I've got a key so I can water Rochelle's houseplants. You want to take a look in there?"

  "Please," Will said.

  The two detectives reappeared, walking across the frozen grass toward the Explorer. Before they could realize he wasn't in it, Will called, "I'm over here, talking to the neighbor."

  The old man unlocked the house, and they separated to search the house from basement workshop to the single car attached garage that faced the alley.

  "Nothing," Jerry said, when they me
t again in the living room. Seeing Will's face, he added, "Your mom'll have a warrant by now and be in his apartment."

  Will was shaking his head before Jerry finished. "He won't have taken her there." Fear thickened his voice. He'd just looked at his watch.

  9:00. Gavin had had Trina for two hours and counting.

  Splayed limbs, torn breast, blood-splattered belly, white cup covering the face. Horrific images, frozen in black-and-white photos, flipped before his eyes.

  He wished he didn't know what she would look like.

  * * *

  TRINA FOUGHT VICIOUSLY, noisily, screaming like a wildcat.

  He flung himself atop her, slammed his fist against the side of her head, which bounced off the mat. Darkness rolled in like a bank of fog. She stayed ahead of it. He flattened her, splayed so that one hand was immobilized by the handcuff, the other by his cruel grip.

  "Crawl, bitch. Beg!" He sank his teeth into her breast.

  She screamed and freed one leg enough to knee him.

  Obscenities streaming from him like the sick smell of his sweat, he rolled off her and she pulled herself into a crouch again.

  "Can't get it up, can you?" she jeered. "Only way you can is if you make a woman snivel. What a way to cure impotence. Guess what? You ain't gonna get it up tonight."

  Snarling, he launched himself again. He was frighteningly strong, and her own strength was failing. Shock and cold and wounds that smeared her with blood were taking a toll. They rolled on the floor with him squeezing her breast until she screamed, her kicking and bucking and telling him what a loser he was.

  As he circled her again, her scrabbling to be prepared for the next assault, he sneered. "Ask your boyfriend what a loser I am. I've managed to have all his women and then make them beg. They quit thinking about him."

  "You killed Gillian."

  "Took 'em long enough to figure that out."

  "And you just let Ricky Mendoza go to prison for six years. Couldn't even take credit for your own work."

  "Didn't matter."

  But it did, she saw, from the way his face tightened, his lips drew back from his teeth.

  "Having fun yet?" She laughed at him. "There's no way you'll clean me up, you know. I've got your blood under my fingernails, your saliva all over me. We were moving in to arrest you. See, we knew you were the killer. They're hunting you right now." She shook her head. "Too bad we don't live in Texas. You could fry for this. But fifty years in a cell, that sounds good, too."

  She braced herself as he came at her again like a rabid dog.

  * * *

  "WE'LL NEVER FIND THEM." Will swayed on his feet in the middle of the Gaines' living room. "Trina. Oh God."

  Jerry gripped his arm. "Keep it together. We can figure this out. He's got to have a place he feels safe. Someplace that would be deserted at night."

  "A storage unit," the other detective suggested.

  "Yeah, yeah. Call it in. Have 'em start searching."

  "Does anybody rent out garages? What about a cabin?"

  Help, Goddamn it! Don't mourn yet.

  Will shook his head. "He doesn't own any real estate. Trina searched county records." Her name caught in his throat; he forced it out anyway.

  "All right." Jerry's face was haggard, his eyes kind. "Let's go back to the station. He's not here."

  On a burst of fear and rage, Will whirled and slammed his fist against the wall. "Why isn't he? Goddamn it, why not?"

  Jerry looked at him as if he'd gone crazy. "There's no why."

  "There is. Goddamn it, there is!" He nursed his hand, his thoughts suddenly sharp, crystalline. "He knows his parents are gone all winter. The house is deserted. Totally available. There's a basement. He could put his truck in the garage."

  "Neighbors would notice."

  "And they might hear screams," the other detective said.

  "Fine. So this house is out. He needs someplace that's isolated. But does he rent it year around? Does he know someone else who's gone?" He was shaking his head even before he finished. "He doesn't have that many friends. He just moved back here last summer. Nobody I know has a cabin on the river. A few friends own houses, but they live in them."

  "Somebody's parents who also winter south?"

  "Nobody that I can think of." Will walked in a circle, yanking at his hair as he walked. "And six years ago. Did he use a different place? Or does he know of someplace that's been deserted all this time?"

  "Or is closed at night?" Wheeler said.

  "Wait. Isn't he a car salesman?" Jerry pulled out his cell phone and hit buttons.

  Will was still pacing, still thinking even as Jerry told someone to send units by every goddamn car dealer in town.

  Yeah, a service bay might work. But why hadn't any of the victims picked up oil or grease? The showroom? Too open. Didn't they always have a wall of glass? Too hard to clean. Offices too cluttered. Couldn't let her crash into a desk or file cabinet.

  "He has to be able to really scrub. Or know that nobody will see the place and a little blood doesn't matter." His pacing brought him to the door to a small, crowded den. His gaze swept it without interest. He'd been in here once. He was already turning away when he stopped dead. Swung back.

  Tacked to a bulletin board were several ribbons. Gaudy ones with rosettes. The biggest one said Butte County—The Cattleman's Fair.

  Will stepped closer. A few photos were tacked up, too, all of huge muscular bulls or beefy steers or calves, groomed and polished and being displayed at the fair. He barely recognized Wayne Gaines. The sullen boy holding the calf's lead had to be Gavin.

  "He was new at the high school the same year I was." Will studied the photos. "They were ranchers. I remember him complaining about the life. Only they were going broke, so his stepfather took a job selling insurance and they bought the house in town." He shook his head as if to rattle memories, make them float to the surface like snowflakes in one of those globes. "I think his dad kept running some cattle. Do you suppose they never sold the ranch?"

  "Depending on where it was, there hasn't been much market for grazing land."

  Land was gold toward Juanita Butte, but to the east, where it stretched barren but for sage and tumbleweed and scant grass, cattle-ranching days were all but over and the land too bleak to hold much appeal for anyone else.

  "They were out toward Newton," he said, surprised he remembered.

  "Don't they bus their kids to Elk Springs High School?"

  "They didn't in those days." Will sat down at the desk and yanked open the first drawer. "There have to be records here somewhere."

  Jerry went for a tall metal filing cabinet.

  The minutes ticked.

  "Here we go," the bandy-legged detective said suddenly. "Beef prices, records of sale, a contract with a stockyard…" He had the file open atop the others. Papers slid out to the floor.

  Will shoved his chair back just as Jerry said in triumph, "Got it! Let's go."

  Wheeler was outside talking to the neighbor.

  "Gotta go," Jerry said, and all three men ran for the Explorer, the neighbor's querulous voice following them.

  "Ranch? Wayne hasn't run any cattle in years! Why would that no-good boy of his be out there?"

  Jerry hit the lights and siren both and screeched away from the curb. Wheeler got on the radio, reporting their route and destination.

  "Request second unit."

  Dispatch concurred. A patrol officer came on. "We're out past the high school now. Shall we proceed?"

  The Explorer rocketed across the Deschutes bridge. All their heads damn near hit the roof, but he took the corner on two wheels.

  The two detectives conferred, then Wheeler got back on the radio. "We aren't two minutes behind you. Hold off until we get there. Do not alert suspect. Repeat, no siren or lights when you near the property."

  The officer came back on. "We'll hang back at Highway 20 until you get there."

  Jerry swore as half a dozen people came out of a brewpub an
d stepped into the street, laughing and probably drunk and oblivious to the law enforcement vehicle bearing down on them. He had to come to damn near a full stop, Will swearing, every muscle in his body taut.

  When they finally reached the highway, Jerry opened it up. He silenced the siren but left the flashers on as he raced east on the flat, dark strip of pavement. Town and its lights fell behind them. Will saw a light now and again out in the darkness at the occasional ranch house. None of them spoke. Instead, they listened to the massive manhunt underway. The crackling voices of sheriff's deputies and ESPD officers reported in as they investigated storage facilities and car dealerships. Nothing.

  This could be another dead end. If it was…

  Panic smothering him, Will bowed his head and made himself breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  Don't mourn yet.

  This made sense. Gavin had hated the ranching life, hated his stepfather. He'd enjoy defiling the ranch and Wayne Gaines by extension with the blood of his terrified victims.

  Trina's blood. It had been too long….

  No. Don't think about it. Don't look at your watch again.

  She was strong. Trained. She wasn't like the other women, who would have responded with fear, who didn't know how to fight back.

  Keep fighting, Trina.

  Please, God, let us be right. Let them be there. Let her be alive.

  * * *

  TRINA KNEW she was almost done. She hurt so terribly. On the side where she was shackled to the pipe, her shoulder was dislocated or broken. One eye was swollen shut and from the other she saw through a mere slit. Her lip was split, swollen, her mouth filled with blood. Ribs must be broken; every breath was agony.

  Once, briefly, she heard a distant siren and felt the tiniest stirring of what might have been hope. Gavin faltered in his attack. But then the siren faded and she knew it was somewhere far away, outside the bubble that contained the two of them, predator and prey. A speeder getting a ticket. A deputy rushing to the scene of an accident. Not coming here.

  No one would come.

  "You're a worm," she whispered.

  He hit her, over and over, bouncing her head on the rubber mat. He hadn't torn her breast apart with his teeth yet. She thought that must be part of his sexual rage/pleasure, and although he'd pressed his penis to her, it remained flaccid. He desperately, frantically, needed her to submit, to beg, to cry, to fear him.