by Jen Blood
“What friend, Rose? Did you get a name?”
“Maman called him Mister E—that’s what he called himself, pis maman said he was un idiot for doing it. But that’s what she always called him, ‘Mister E.’ And this one night he came over late, so I heard them…”
Juarez thought immediately of the journal entry Erin had read to him.
“Did you hear any of their conversation?” he prompted. “Do you know what the E stood for?”
“They were fighting… I know that. The man told Will he was a mal partner, never helping. I couldn’t understand everything they said—it didn’t make no sense, and Will was getting angry so I was trying to hide. But he said he didn’t want to do it no more… If the man wanted anybody else, he had to find them himself.”
“Find them for what?” he asked. His fatigue vanished.
She bit her lip. He was reminded how young she was. “That’s what I didn’t understand,” she said. “He said they were for the test, oui? Or the experiment… He said Bonnie—she was the only one who passed the test. Bonnie and Will. Mais he wanted more like them. Hank and Jeff failed. Everybody else failed.”
Juarez perched on the edge of the desk and looked intently at the girl. “I’d like you to think about that night, Rose. Did he ever say the man’s name? Or maybe your mom mentioned something? Can you remember anything at all about him?”
She thought carefully for a couple of minutes, her forehead furrowed in concentration. Suddenly, her face lit up. “Eliot,” she said. “I remember because I just watched E.T., oui? And I remember thinking of that… I forgot, ‘til now.”
Mr. E. Juarez thought of the journal entry Erin had read him… Something about a Mr. E spending the summer with Jeff Lincoln.
There was no way it could be a coincidence.
He thanked Rosie and assured her that he’d contact her when he knew anything about Erin or Diggs. He ushered her out, and was on the phone the instant he was alone. Mr. Eliot… He just needed to figure out who that was. Once he did, he was positive this whole mystery would unravel. And then, God willing, he’d be able to get Erin home again.
Chapter Twenty
I stayed at the cavern entrance peering down, lying on my stomach with my heart in my throat, for what felt like a lifetime. Waiting for Diggs to move. Speak. Something. Rainier smiled up at me.
“You can run if you want, but we’re not done with you yet. And the more you run, the more he suffers. Trust me on that one.”
“Just go, dammit,” Diggs said when he could finally speak again. He sat up. His left leg was bleeding badly. He waited until he had my eye before he spoke again. “You come down here and we both die, right? What good does that do anyone? Run.”
I couldn’t get my breath. Couldn’t find my voice. I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Yeah, you are,” Diggs said evenly. I expected him to be angry—to rant and rail and lecture while Rainier beat him to death. Instead, he looked at me with a kind smile, his eyes wet. “You know what you need to do. Go on, Sol.”
“If it was me, you wouldn’t leave,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“This is sweet,” Rainier said. He hauled Diggs up by the back of his t-shirt, a knife pressed to his throat. “But we’re done here—you’ve got a choice, little sister. Get down here, or start running.”
Diggs never took his eyes from mine. “Please, Solomon.” His voice didn’t waver. “Go.”
I stood.
Rainier smiled at me, waiting for me to decide. He pressed the knife into Diggs’ throat, his eyes alight with a frenzied kind of madness. I could barely see through my tears.
“What’ll it be?” Rainier asked. He twisted the knife, pressing it deeper. Diggs didn’t even flinch, his eyes still on mine.
“You can do this,” he said.
I turned away.
And ran.
◊◊◊◊◊
I stumbled down over limestone and shale, slipping more than once in a cascade of loose rock. The sun was high overhead, the air thick. If I’d known where to go to run for help, I might have done that—might have actually left Diggs alone to fend for himself, with the vague hope that I could find someone to save our asses. But as far as I knew, we were on our own; I’d seen no sign that the cavalry was on the horizon. Lacking that, I tried to come up with a plan to save our asses myself.
Once I’d descended from the rocky outer face of the network of caverns, I crept along the treeline, searching for another entrance into the cave. Half an hour passed while I stumbled along in a panic, trying to find a way back in, all the while imagining what Rainier was doing with Diggs by now… Wondering whether he’d even be alive when I returned. When I finally found another way in, I set everything but my survival knife down outside and prepared to go in. I tried to still my shaking hands; quiet my pounding heart. I was already on my way in when I heard voices. It took me a second to reassure myself that they weren’t in my head. I pressed my back against the rocks and listened. When I turned, I caught sight of Diggs limping along the treeline not twenty yards from me, Rainier close behind.
I grabbed my stuff and crouched behind a boulder.
Diggs and Rainier continued past, apparently oblivious to my presence just above them. Diggs was using a tree branch as a crutch. Rainier held a rifle at his back. They passed so close that I could see the sweat traveling in beaded rivers down Diggs’ face. When Rainier went by, I held my breath, watching the sloping way that he walked, the power in his shoulders, the confidence in the way he held the gun. I clutched the survival knife more tightly and closed my eyes. The sound of my beating heart was deafening. I felt sure Rainier would hear it—would sense the blood rushing through my veins.
If I made a move, I realized, I would have to be absolutely certain of what I was doing. Rainier wouldn’t go down without a fight—and as long as he held that gun, I knew he would take one or both of us with him before that fight was done. They kept walking; I didn’t stop them. As they disappeared back into the woods, I heard Diggs’ voice reciting half-forgotten lyrics in a soft, easy tenor:
She’s got fuck me eyes and a fuck you smile
My red haired, silver tongued, steel toed wild child
I stifled a laugh, my eyes filling with more useless tears. Like that, I was nineteen again, wrapped in a bed sheet in a too-warm Bridgeport apartment, while Diggs strummed his guitar and made up country songs just to make me smile. I remembered the feel of his body against mine for the very first time; the way he’d tasted that night, of cigarettes and Jameson’s whiskey. The way he’d moved. The way he’d known me. This would be a good night to live in, he’d said later, his arms around me. No morning after. No ‘What happens next?’ Let’s just stay here.
“Stop,” Rainier said, before Diggs got any farther into the song.
“Just thought a little mood music was in order,” Diggs said.
“It’s not. I need to hear. Keep moving—and keep your mouth shut.”
Diggs moved on, Rainier behind. I waited until they were far enough ahead before I followed their path into the woods.
◊◊◊◊◊
I followed Diggs and Rainier for an hour before Diggs began to drag. Rainier pushed him on, but it was clear he was fading fast.
“Keep moving,” Rainier growled when Diggs slowed to catch his breath.
“I’d be faster if you hadn’t knifed me,” Diggs said. His speech was slurred. “It slows a man down.”
“I barely touched you,” Rainier said. “Rule number one: Don’t hurt the subjects before the experiment begins. Gotta be healthy enough to run, but hurt enough to fight.”
“What’s rule number two?” Diggs asked.
“None of your fucking business. Move.” Rainier pushed him in the back, hard enough that Diggs fell. He righted himself with a herculean effort, and forged on.
By hour two, I was covered with bites, sunburned, and parched. My head was pounding from the sun and lack of food or water, my body mov
ing on muscle memory alone. We reached the river at three o’clock. Rainier tied Diggs’ wrists and ankles, ordered him to stay put, and disappeared back into the woods.
I waited until I was sure he was gone before I crept forward. Diggs was sitting against a fallen tree, his head back and his eyes closed. His body was caked with mud and blood, bites and scrapes. Either he or Rainier had done a surprisingly good job of dressing the knife wound on his calf, but now the bandage was filthy. The gash in his thigh had been neglected—it was an angry red beneath the grime, swollen and festering.
“I thought I told you to go,” he said, eyes still closed.
“And I told you I wouldn’t. How’d you know it was me?”
“Because I know you. And you’re not as sneaky as you think.” He opened his eyes. They were glassy and distant, the pupils dilated. It took a minute before he actually focused on me.
I started carving at the ropes around his wrists with my knife.
“We can’t just run away from this, Sol,” he whispered. “You can’t just untie me, and we’ll skip off into the sunset. We either stop him, or he keeps coming at us.”
I continued struggling with the ropes—not an easy task with one hand. “I know that. But I have your knife. And if we can get his gun…”
“Then what? We just blow him away?”
“Then we make him tell us how to get out of here,” I said, shaking my head. “Nobody’s blowing anyone away.”
“Right,” Diggs said dryly. “Because that would be wrong.”
“No. Because we’re not killers—that’s his thing, not ours.”
I thought of this game Rainier had been playing all these years—this bizarre, deadly match he’d set up between young girls from vastly different worlds. It must have taken planning; patience. Intelligence. As far as I could tell so far, Rainier might be as mean as a snake, but he wasn’t much brighter than one.
“Where do you think he’s taking you?” I asked.
He shook his head. Before he could answer, I heard Rainier coming up the path again. I severed the ropes at Diggs’ wrists at the last minute, then put the knife in his hand before I sprinted for the trees. He looked after me wildly, but there was no time for him to argue. When I looked back, just a few yards away but safely hidden in the trees, Rainier was looking directly my way, his gaze clear and cold.
“You talking to someone?” he asked Diggs.
“Just myself. I got lonely.”
Rainier eyed him doubtfully, then looked back toward the spot where I was hiding. “Too bad your girlfriend turned tail,” he said. “Bitches. They’d just as soon stab you as give you the time of day.”
“They can be moody,” Diggs agreed dryly. “You’re taking it pretty well—Erin ditching us, I mean. I thought she was the whole point of all this.”
“She’s not,” Rainier said. “But she’s not done yet, anyway. She won’t get far. We’re just getting started.”
Diggs was still seated with his back against the tree with his hands behind him, the knife clasped there. Rainier prodded him with his rifle.
“Get up.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not until you untie my ankles.”
I held my breath, watching to see if Rainier would actually fall for it. He leaned forward, the gun loose at his side. I could see how tense Diggs was. I crept forward. A horsefly followed me, lighting on my neck. I ignored it. All Diggs needed to do was make Rainier drop the gun, and I could race in and grab it. We were just one well-placed knife slash away, and the balance of power would shift. The horsefly dug in and started to feed just below my ear; I didn’t flinch.
Rainier set the gun down and knelt on one knee, slowly working on the knots at Diggs’ ankles. Diggs eased his hands out from behind his back. The steel of the knife blade shone in the sun. I held my breath, waiting for Rainier to notice.
He didn’t.
I crawled another foot.
Rainier bowed his head, focused entirely on untying Diggs’ ropes. Diggs waited until I was just a foot or so from the gun, barely concealed by the brush around us, before he raised the knife.
He brought it down in a single, swift arc—that missed its target completely. Rainier never even looked up before he snapped one hand out and knocked the knife away. Then, in a lightning-quick move I never would have dreamed possible for a man that big, he was up and after me. I almost reached the trees before he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back into him. Diggs tried to get to the gun in time, but with his ankles still tied there was no way.
Rainier smiled, pulling me closer.
“I wondered when you’d come back to me,” he said softly, his mouth at my ear. He twisted my hair painfully and nipped my earlobe. “Now comes the fun part. Pick up the knife.”
I shook my head, my eyes on Diggs. Rainier jabbed the gun into my back. “It wasn’t a request. Pick it up.”
I picked it up.
“Get on your knees.”
I stayed where I was, clutching the knife. Diggs untied the ropes around his ankles while Rainier was focused on me, though it was clear he didn’t give a rat’s ass whether Rainier found him out or not.
“Leave her alone.” He stood on shaky feet and limped to my side.
Rainier watched the whole thing play out with his rifle still in hand, a faint smile hiding behind his Grizzly Adams beard.
“Oh… This really is gonna be fun.”
He took the knife from me, then bound Diggs’ and my hands. When he was doing mine, he twisted my broken wrist until I bit through my lip to keep from crying out. Diggs remained silent, ashen and shaking beside me. Rainier marched us deeper into the woods.
Chapter Twenty-One
Juarez
The afternoon brought no news about Diggs or Erin. Erin’s mother refused to answer his calls, and between the heat and a forest fire in the area, the search party had stalled out just beyond the perimeter Juarez had established earlier in the day. He called his assistant in D.C. at three o’clock in the hope that she might have something more promising to tell him.
“Did you find them?” Mandy asked the moment she realized it was him. She was sixty-two, but remarkably adept at all the technology that stymied Juarez.
“Not yet. What do you have for me? Any background on the Lincolns?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Then you should probably just tell me.”
“Surly today, aren’t we? I looked for Wallace and Willa Lincoln in Lynn, Mass, as you suggested, but I found no record. So, I did a search for those names in every other Lynn in the country: Lynn, Georgia; Lynn, Colorado; Lynn, Texas—”
“I get the picture. What did you find?”
“Zilch,” she said without hesitation. It was one thing he normally liked about her: Mandy didn’t sugarcoat anything. He wasn’t as happy about it today, of course. “At least, not under those names.”
“Did you find something under any other names?”
“I started thinking about the fact that Erin’s dad told her she was named after his sister—right? If you’re going to name someone after someone, you’ll do the actual name, not the name they took later on. I mean, if I changed my name to Matilda Mae now, I hope someone would have the good sense to name their child Amanda Paulette if they were going to pay homage. You see what I mean? So, even if these Lincolns changed their names at some point along the lines, I thought, ‘I bet they kept their first names, thinking no one would tie them together if they moved.’ ”
Juarez rubbed his temples. “Mandy…”
“I know, I know… The point. Keep your britches on, stud. The point is: A Wallace and Willa Monroe lived in Lynn, Indiana, up until 1965. They’d moved there from Chicago. Sweet old Wally was up on prostitution and racketeering charges, but he managed to finagle himself out of that by agreeing to testify against some very nasty folks in Chi-Town. At the last minute, Wally flaked on the whole arrangement, and his whole family went missing.”
“When they moved to northern
Maine.”
“That’s my guess,” she agreed.
“So… What about this Mr. E? Anything at all about any Eliot?”
“So far, no luck. If he was in a mob family, who knows what his real name might have been. Or whether he was from Chicago or Lynn. Or somewhere else, for that matter.”
“You’ll keep looking?”
“I’ll keep looking. How you holding up?”
“I’ll be better when we find her,” he said.
“I know you will. Just keep the faith—and don’t forget to eat. And sleep. Where’ll I be if you up and drop dead in the boonies somewhere?”
He smiled. “As long as you were still there, they wouldn’t even notice I was gone. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Yes, you will.”
After she’d hung up, Juarez considered the information she had provided. Wallace Lincoln had been a mobster… Not only that, but he’d been a mobster on the run from both the mob and the government. It was no wonder young Jeff had some issues growing up.
Juarez left the police station and headed for the Sauciers’ at shortly after four that afternoon, after attending to paperwork and reporters’ inquiries and the dozens of other administrative details that drove him up the wall when he was dealing with a case of this magnitude. All he really wanted was to get back in the field, where he might actually make a difference in getting Diggs and Erin home again.
When he arrived at the Sauciers’, Sarah was working in her garden. She wore overalls and a sleeveless t-shirt, her fleshy arms surprisingly muscular considering her size. Juarez took off his suit jacket and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and joined her in the soil.
“Your brother isn’t out here helping with this?” he asked.
She looked up in surprise at his appearance, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. “Non,” she said. “All the police scared him. Pis Bonnie… He works inside on mal days like this.”
“I can understand him being upset,” Juarez said. “You must not be crazy about having people tearing up your property, either.” He knelt and pulled a couple of carrots from the ground, adding them to a canvas bag already overflowing with fresh vegetables.