A late-model black sedan bearing MD plates slowly motored past the picnic area and disappeared along the service road.
Maddy went back to the lake trail. A few feet into the woods it turned darker. The other girls’ singing reverberated off the still waters. Between tree trunks she glimpsed the one-story brown building, now nearly a football field away.
She stepped over a muddy spot in the trail with deer tracks through it. Just ahead a small creek fed into the lake. Her eyes wandered up the creek bed, which contained only a trickle now—a vestige of what it had been during the springtime flood, which would have concealed the rocks that lay dry and exposed. A dribble of water spilled from a limestone overhang, challenging the girl to climb higher. She hopped from rock to rock, her arms extended for balance, completely oblivious to the gathering of Brownies now out of sight several hundred yards behind her.
The jumble of rocks in the bed grew steeper. She found handholds, careful not to slip. Catching her breath, Maddy crested the waterfall and looked out across the lake, and for the first time in a long time she experienced a sense of triumph.
A shrill cry tore open the silence. Too loud for a birdcall—too human sounding. The anguished cry was repeated, this time as a perfect high-pitched echo coming back across the lake, the sound of someone choking. It wasn’t right. Goose bumps raced up Maddy’s arms. A dragging sound drew nearer, made her crouch behind a tree stump. She noticed a road ahead.
It grew quieter again. There was no more gasping. Gaining courage, Maddy cautiously rose, holding her breath as she did. Her own heartbeats filled the girl’s ears—nothing else. Had she only imagined it?
The sound of someone rolling in leaves, rolling and groaning, made the young girl freeze. Her eyes focused on a stand of evergreens near the place where it leveled out. The noises didn’t sound like fun; someone was in trouble, maybe needing help.
She skirted the evergreens, keeping a safe distance from whoever was moaning. The immense girth of an old beech tree stood blocking her view at the edge of the dirt road. A sign was nailed to it, a direction sign. She’d seen it out the car window before arriving at the lake. It read: PICNIC AREA ¼ MILE AHEAD.
A man’s bloodied face slid into her view, propped against the tree trunk with the sign. His shirt and pants were torn and dirty, one cheek scraped raw. She’d never seen anyone in such an awful state before. Had he been attacked by some wild animal? The man’s eyes were fixed, not really looking at her. He seemed very distressed. Maybe he’d been lost in the woods overnight, or had broken his leg? Maddy’s father always warned her about wandering off. Crosshaven’s woods were plenty notorious for kids getting lost or hurt or worse, like Julie.
The man’s stance shifted awkwardly. He scraped his shoulder along the tree trunk for support, grimacing and twisting. His arms were restrained behind his back. Suddenly his hands popped free. The man rubbed his reddened wrists. He dropped to his knees, his head sunk down. Maddy climbed the rest of the way to the road, emboldened by the apparent emergency.
“Mister, are you OK?”
His head bobbed, and he closed and opened his eyes once. “Better…you leave.” His chin slumped back to his chest. “Go…quick…”
Maddy didn’t budge. “Who hurt you? Do you want me to get help?”
The man jerked his head from side to side, as if expecting someone’s return. A motor rumbled closer, crunching and spitting gravel sounds of a car rapidly approaching. Its running lights shone through the trees up ahead.
The man tumbled to the ground and he rolled down the embankment toward her. Maddy leapt backward. Her Brownie cap fell off as she plunged through the leaves, not caring about the noise she was making. She didn’t have time with the car braking hard behind her, the car door slamming. The hurt man’s cuts and bruises had spoken loud and clear: GET OUT!
It was after five o’clock, and the sky grew noticeably dimmer along the narrow forest road. Prusik had developed a bad blister on her right heel. She chided herself for running off like she had in a brand-new pair of oxfords. The blister was tiring her right leg, with no sign of the lake in sight. Worse, no one had driven by to flag down.
She dug her hand into her coat pocket and tried McFaron’s number again. The low battery symbol blinked on. She grumbled aloud to herself. She couldn’t believe it: limping with an excruciating blister in the middle of nowhere with a dying cell phone. Up ahead through the trees, the flicker of headlights caught her attention. The distinct whir of a car motor approaching—someone was coming her way.
“Finally. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
The wash of the car’s beams illuminated the gloomy woods. A moment later they shone brightly in her face. She shielded her eyes, holding the FBI badge out. The car slowed. She hurried to the passenger side. The driver leaned over and pushed open the door.
“Your timing couldn’t be better,” Christine said, clambering inside the vehicle and pulling the door shut. She gingerly pulled off the back of her right shoe where it had rubbed unmercifully.
The driver accelerated hard. “You Ms. Prusik? FBI?” He spoke from under a dapper wool hat with a pull-down brim, an Irish tweed sort.
“That’s right, Special Agent Prusik,” she responded, taking in the man’s profile. All she could see clearly was a side view of his lower face—the rest of his face was concealed behind the hat—but the driver’s chin and jawline were David Claremont’s. Her heart began to hammer in her chest.
The man’s shoulders were slightly askew—lower on his right—meaning there was some degree of curvature to the man’s spine. His driving posture slouched toward the left. He held the steering wheel firmly with his right hand while propping his left elbow on the window ledge, resting his head against his left hand—all of which suggested right-handedness, not like Claremont, who she’d verified was a lefty. During her interview of Claremont, Prusik recalled that he had sat canted to his right side, another facet of left-handedness. She squeezed her pinkie in the tightening ball of her fist.
“Who contacted you? Was it Sheriff McFaron’s office?” Prusik said in her most assertive voice. She was good in an interview room, but in the confines of a speeding car with a killer, she was clearly not the one in control.
“Yes, that’s right, the sheriff’s office. Didn’t mean to get your credentials wrong, Special Agent. They sent me out looking for you as soon as they heard.” The man’s speech had a boldness and confidence totally absent from the man she’d interviewed in the Weaversville Police Station.
“So you were in contact with Sheriff McFaron?” she demanded to know, feeling increasingly uneasy. How could this man—Donald Holmquist?—know who she was and where she’d be?
“That’d be him all right.”
He hadn’t really answered her question at all. No acknowledgment either way, which told her that she was in great danger. Christine scrubbed her fingers through her hair. She needed to buy herself time.
“Then you must know I’m expected at Echo Lake State Park for a speaking engagement with the Brownie troop. I imagine they’ll be looking for me by now.”
“A woman’s work is never done,” he pronounced cryptically.
Christine distinctly heard neck vertebrae cracking as the driver twisted his head toward her, then away—a quirk she recalled seeing David Claremont do at one point during the interview. “I appreciate your coming to look for me,” she said as casually as possible. “How close are we to the picnic area?”
The driver gunned the motor in response. They were careening back through forest tracts she’d spent the better part of an hour limping past.
“Just a ways ahead.” He levered a forefinger up off the top of the steering wheel, pointing forward. “There’s a shortcut that leads to the lake quicker.”
“Yeah.” Prusik forced a chuckle. “I know all about your shortcuts down here.”
“Not like the big city, is it? With plenty of people around to help out when you need it,” the man said almost gleefully.
>
Prusik blinked in surprise at this second cryptic remark, some kind of inward code of his, or implied threat. She decided to take a calculated risk. “Say listen, you know your brother, David, has become quite a celebrity in the media? I think your story is worth hearing, too.”
The car gained speed, passing an intersecting road Prusik recalled seeing a half hour before. Her mind raced. “Are you sure we haven’t missed the turn?” she asked, saying “we” to sound less threatening. “We could turn around back there?”
He swerved a little too rapidly around a bend; gravel dinged beneath the car. “Hardly,” he said, then uttered in a deeper voice, “Mother always said, as you make your bed, so must you lie in it.”
The man’s odd manner of expression sent Prusik’s blood pumping. His driving too fast and going the wrong way did, too. Her throat went dry. Pulses from her amygdala crowded her head as they had in the stuffy interview room at the Weaversville jailhouse. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She had found the man she’d been hunting for. Or he had found her.
She steeled herself, focusing out the windshield on an invisible vanishing point in her mind, envisioning the hypnotic quiet of the lap pool. Taking stroke after stroke, her arms pulling her through the water, her flutter kick steady, keeping her abdomen taut with each breathful of air. Maintaining steady her pace, a V-shaped wave rippling off her bathing cap, Christine Prusik touched down in her calm place.
“Speaking of your mother, Donald”—she took a brazen leap of faith—“what would she say if she knew that you still wet your bed? I’ve been up to your room in Delphos. But you know that, don’t you? Quite a mess you’ve made of the place.” Prusik watched the man’s hands jam tightly together, scrubbing across the top of the steering wheel.
“What do you think your mother would say about your soiling the mattress like that?” Prusik pressed. “A man your age still soiling her mattress, I mean really.”
Holmquist’s lips were quivering.
“And I won’t even ask whether she’d approve of what else you’re doing—of what you’ve been canning up these days.”
The car slowed. The man’s head slumped down in shame.
“I don’t think she would approve at all. That would definitely be a big no.”
“You better just hush,” he said in a small voice.
“OK, Donald, we’ll just drop that line of conversation for the moment. According to St. Mary’s Hospital records, you were the first born.” He shot her a mistrustful look. “That’s right. That would make you the older brother, Donald, the man of the house, seeing how your father disappeared. Don’t you know that being the big brother is a responsibility? It means you’re supposed to set a good example for your younger brother, even if David’s only a few minutes younger.”
“I said hush, now!”
She couldn’t risk stopping, even if it meant treading dangerously into unknown territory, as Dr. Katz had warned her against. “Now I know for a fact David doesn’t kill and eat people. I know you know that, too. Am I right, Donald? You two have already met up? Haven’t you, Donald? Have you seen your brother today? Maybe even before today?”
Holmquist’s face was perspiring heavily. He looked confused, panicked, trapped. Just as she had felt only moments before.
“What did big brother Donald accomplish today? Huh? Did you treat your kid brother right? Take him under your wing the way Bruna would’ve wanted you to?”
The man hit the brakes hard enough to rock Christine forward off her seat back. She heard something shift in the trunk, a dull heavy thud.
“So you’ve got David tied up in the trunk, Donald?”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, FBI lady.” Before she could think what to say next, a shower of blue sparks stung her chest, bringing sudden darkness.
McFaron high-revved the Bronco. He’d received word from his dispatcher about Murfree’s cab stalling and Christine running off. He’d hightailed it from the Sweet Lick Resort in Cave Springs, Indiana, normally a thirty-minute ride that he’d made in less than twenty. Earlier that afternoon, he’d heard from Brian Eisen, who’d passed along information about a call from Lonnie Wallace, a groundskeeper at the Sweet Lick, to follow up on. Wallace had looked at a picture of David Claremont and said that it looked almost exactly like an odd-duck freelance sign painter who Wallace hadn’t seen in nearly a month and who’d skipped out on finishing a job. A man named Donald Holmquist, who Wallace suspected for the recent theft of a Sweet Lick Resort vehicle.
It bothered the sheriff that he couldn’t reach Christine. Tapping her cell phone number still indicated no signal was available. Why hadn’t she waited for him to come pick her up, as he’d promised Howard he would once her departure from Chicago had been discovered? The spot where Murfree told Mary he’d stopped was only five miles from Echo Lake, he figured. Maybe Christine had left the phone in the cab with her briefcase? Turned it off to preserve the batteries? He doubted she’d do either. He anguished over the impulsive move, her running like that.
A large black late-model sedan, a Chrysler, sped by McFaron in the opposite direction. The sheriff made out the silhouettes of two people in the front seats and no one in back. He hadn’t passed any other cars. The sparkle of the lake appeared in and out of the trees. The sun was low over the treetops, shimmering on the lake. It was well past five thirty. A minute later he skidded to a halt behind a maroon van. Kids were huddled around several women, crying.
“Sheriff!” Mrs. Greenwald rushed forward. “Sheriff, come quick! It’s Maddy Heath. She’s gone missing! Her friend Rachel saw a disheveled-looking man on the shoreline trail who looked like the one on TV, the one wanted for…”
The scout leader hesitated, as so many children were within earshot. She pointed toward the trail sign.
“I should have known better. I found her earlier straying from the building, walking down to the lake.” The woman covered her mouth. “I should have known.”
“MADDY!” A high-pitched scream echoed off the steep-sided lake. Three Brownies, in unison, screamed the missing girl’s name again.
McFaron dashed toward the woods, unclipping his holster. At the trailhead he withdrew his .38, checking that the chambers were fully loaded. It had been six months since he’d fired his weapon—and that had been at the state police range. He’d never fired a gun at anyone before, not even aimed one; his two-year stint in the army had not involved any actual combat.
He moved down the muddy trail, alert to movement, brandishing the weapon in a cautious stance. A hundred feet down the trail a figure stumbling forward sent the sheriff into a crouch. Was he too late? A man limping badly came into view behind spindly second-growth yellowwood trees along the lakeshore. He was laden down, carrying something, speaking in a halting voice.
The man approached, sideways now, passing over some deadfall, hefting the girl in a chest carry. McFaron saw her feet dangling. The girl’s face was slumped against the man’s chest, expressionless. She was missing a shoe. It was too dangerous to risk taking a shot.
McFaron looked around for a good ambush spot near the trail. There was none other than the birch trunk he was leaning against. He extended his thumb and levered back the firing pin, careful not to touch the trigger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
An uncomfortable tickling beneath her ribs brought her around. The car was idling beside the road. She was slumped against the passenger door under the man’s weight. A pungent salty odor—it was his breath, she realized, coming from very near—turned her stomach. Prusik cracked open her eyelids enough to see Holmquist, heard the glove box pop open and him rummaging through it. Something was jabbing her side, lower down than before. He was prodding her abdomen, his eyes wide open now in an expression of wonderment. A small groan escaped him.
“Get off of me!” In a command burst, Christine shoved her feet hard against the floorboards and repositioned herself upright.
Holmquist stayed put, grasped her by the arm. “Y
ou going to hush now?” He waved the menacing electrode prongs of the Taser close to her face, the telltale high-pitched whine of the device reaching full power. “You didn’t tell me about your little surprise.”
She raised her free hand, acquiescing, realizing she’d been rendered unconscious by his tasing her once already. The flesh near her collarbone still stung from it. What surprise was he talking about?
He resumed a driving position and floored the vehicle before she could even think to open her door. She wiped away drool from her lower lip, feeling dizzy and sore and foolish for not having a firearm on her as required by the bureau. As a forensic anthropologist, she usually conducted interviews in the presence of armed personnel and, therefore, had rarely felt compelled to lug one around herself.
“Mind if I listen to the radio?” He flicked it on without waiting for her answer. A special bulletin broadcast interrupted a song. “Breaking news—this afternoon the search for David Claremont led police to Echo Lake State Park, where the man was successfully apprehended—”
The man turned it off and chucked his hat into the backseat. In the green glow of the dash she recognized the full profile, that same prominent zygomatic arch, overhanging browridge, the hollowed eyes—David Claremont’s. Prusik sucked in a breath she couldn’t seem to release. Her heart threatened to gallop out of her chest. His overpowering her physically had proved a setback.
He turned his head toward her. “Spot that feather I left for you?” he said, brimming with overconfidence. “You and that cop poking your noses around? I wasn’t too happy at first, finding someone snooping in my house, but once I knew it was you…” He nodded and grinned as if that explained everything.
“Donald…please…I won’t…” Prusik’s tongue balled in her mouth. Whatever imbalance had caused him to tase her now seemed forgotten, judging from the man’s nonchalance. Prusik realized that with a psychopath, little things like understanding how someone else knows who you are or what you are doing or even why you are doing it are unimportant, nothing to worry about.
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