Taking Eve

by Iris Johansen

Or Bonnie.

  She felt a wave of nausea abruptly wash over her, and she had to grab hard at the wood of the worktable to keep from falling off the stool.

  Not the gas. Not the gas. Not the gas. Bonnie’s words flying back to her.

  Her gaze was blurry as she stared at the face of the reconstruction. Kevin’s face.

  She could feel it pulling her, smothering her.

  Things that do go bump in the night. He’s so strong, Mama.

  We’ll beat him, baby.

  But not by sitting here right now. Doane had given her an opportunity, and she had to take it.

  The desk. The locked drawer.

  She shook her head to clear it, then reached for the steel spatula she’d been using to smooth the clay. It had no sharp edges she could use to pick the lock, but it was fine steel and might be strong enough to pry the drawer open. It didn’t matter any longer that Doane remain ignorant that she was trying to rifle the desk. The conflict between them was now stark and without subterfuge on either side.

  Move.

  She slipped down from the stool and ran across the room toward the desk.

  Damn, her knees were weak.

  And she could feel a tension in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades.

  As if someone was staring balefully at her.

  Imagination.

  That blob of clay held no life.

  But could it hold death?

  Ignore it.

  Easy to say. The cords of her neck were so tense she could hardly breathe.

  Go away.

  She closed her mind and concentrated as she inserted the spatula in the opening of the drawer.

  She carefully worked it back and forth, chiseling at the soft wood around the lock. The spatula was as strong as she’d hoped. Strong enough?

  A sound from outside.

  She tensed and listened.

  No footstep. No slamming truck door. Just a faint sound that might be Doane’s voice talking on his phone.

  Good. It might keep him occupied a little longer. She started working frantically at the drawer.

  A moment later, the wood splintered around the lock!

  Yes.

  She jerked the drawer open.

  She stared at the contents of the drawer in shock and disappointment.

  An old beat-up photo album?

  Memories that warm the heart, Doane had said.

  And beneath it was the folded jacket she had worn the morning Doane had taken her.

  Where the hell was her phone and her gun?

  She lifted the tan album out of the drawer and tossed it on the top of the desk. Why was it so faded and well thumbed? What was inside that album that Doane held so precious that he carried it with him?

  Just a quick look …

  She opened the heavy leather cover.

  Not a quick look, she realized in shock.

  Because her gaze was caught and held by a yellowed newspaper front page. She didn’t understand German, but she could make out that it was a Hamburg, Germany, newspaper. And the photos on the front page told their own story. Children. Little girls of seven or eight or nine. Victims. She had seen headlines in Atlanta and Chicago and dozens of other local papers that were tragically similar.

  Oh, God.

  She wasn’t important, Doane had said.

  And these little girls?

  Eve closed her eyes for an instant. Get over the horror. No time for it now.

  She closed the album shut and threw it on the floor.

  She hurriedly started to rifle through the deep drawer. She pulled out her jacket, checked the pockets, then tossed the jacket aside.

  The gun. Find the gun.

  There it was! She grabbed the .38 and checked the magazine.

  Empty. Dammit, of course he’d pulled the magazine clip.

  She tossed the gun on the desk and started looking for her phone.

  She found it a moment later.

  Dead. The batteries in the cell phone had been pulled. Find the batteries. He wouldn’t leave bullets around, but batteries weren’t lethal. She started looking through the other drawers in the desk.

  No battery. And she hadn’t had a charger with her.

  Shit.

  There had to be a way to get power.

  She studied the laptop computer that Doane had set up for her. A slender cable connected the mouse with one of the computer’s USB ports. Could that actually work? Only one way to find out.

  She ran across the room and pulled the cable from the port and wrapped it around her hands. She dropped the mouse on the floor, stepped on it and yanked with all her might until the cable finally pulled free. She picked up the frayed end and peeled back the insulation until she could see four thin wires, each a different color. Red and black were for power, the others were for data, she thought. Concentrate on the red and black.

  She used her teeth to strip away the red and black casings to expose the copper wires. She picked up her phone and squinted at the copper terminals in the battery compartment. There were three, not two. One was probably for the battery capacity gauge, temperature, or some other data. But which was which?

  She glanced up. A sound from outside. Had he come back?

  She froze, straining to hear the sound of Doane’s truck or his footsteps on the front walk.

  Nothing.

  She turned back to the phone.

  She decided to start with the two outside terminals. If she didn’t short out the phone, she could try other combinations later. She reached over to her workbench and took two tiny dabs of sculpting clay. She carefully applied them to each wire and affixed them to her phone’s first and third battery-compartment terminals. She plugged the other end into the laptop’s USB port.

  Please, please, let it give her enough power …

  She held her breath and pressed her mobile phone’s power button.

  Nothing.

  Her heart sank with disappointment.

  Okay. Maybe the negative and positive were reversed. She switched terminals.

  She pressed the phone’s power button again.

  The battery lit up!

  A few seconds later the carrier name and signal strength bars appeared. She was in business.

  The door of the truck slammed outside.

  Hurry. Call Joe. Tell him where—

  She heard the front door open as she pressed the access button on the phone.

  Answer, Joe. Dear God, answer me.

  No answer. She didn’t even hear a ring. Was she even connecting?

  She heard Doane curse.

  Pain.

  He’d leaped across the room, struck the side of her neck, and knocked her to the floor.

  He grabbed the phone from her hand, checked the ID to make sure she hadn’t been talking on it, then stomped it beneath his foot, shattering it. He ground the broken shards of the cell phone into the floor with ferocity, cursing her all the while.

  Eve rolled over, got to her knees, and launched herself at him. He staggered and brought the back of his hand against her cheek with stinging force.

  She rammed her head into his stomach and heard him gasp with agony.

  Good. Now try to get in a position to use karate …

  “Stop, you dirty little bitch,” Doane grunted. “I should have known. You’re just like him. Keep your hands off me, or I’ll blow your guts out.”

  Eve froze as she felt the muzzle of a revolver pressed against her abdomen.

  “Scared? Not so brave now, are you?” He pushed her away, grabbed her hair, and pulled her head back. His eyes were glittering with anger, the cords of his neck standing out as he stared down at her. “I wanted to wait, but I don’t know if I can. Kevin’s getting impatient.” He smiled mirthlessly. “So am I.”

  “You won’t shoot me,” she said, glaring back at him. “You want me to make that skull into some semblance of a human being. Though I don’t know if he was that even when he was alive.”

  He released her hair a
nd slapped her again. “He was more than a human being. He was magnificent.” He pushed her down into the office chair. “You were trying to call Quinn?”

  “Who else?”

  “Evidently you didn’t reach him, or I would have heard you speaking to him. What a pity.” He glanced at the pieces of phone on the floor. “You won’t get that chance again. I’ll handcuff you before I leave you alone.”

  And Doane was discarding the possibility that even though she hadn’t made the final connection, the call might be traced. He had not seemed that tech savvy, maybe he didn’t realize it. For that matter, neither did she know if that second of connection could be recognized and traced. “I won’t get much done on dear Kevin’s reconstruction with my hands cuffed.”

  “You’ll get it done. I’ll be here beside you until it’s finished.” His big hand grasped her throat. “And you’ll finish soon. I want it done by tomorrow.”

  “And what if I won’t work on Kevin? It would be foolish of me to complete him when that’s all you’re waiting for to shoot me.”

  “But that’s not all I’m waiting for,” Doane said. “It’s true that I want to see him again the way he was before he was butchered. But it’s more than that.”

  “You wanted proof of his identity?” She shook her head. “No, you know this is your son. DNA would be the legal proof, but you wouldn’t care about that.” Her glance went to the photo album on the floor. “No one is going to care about bringing to justice someone who killed a monster like him.”

  “Oh, you’ve been looking at Kevin’s souvenirs?” He made a clucking sound as he picked up the album and put it on the desk. “But you shouldn’t have been so disrespectful. Kevin wouldn’t like it.”

  “You mentioned one little girl. I guess I didn’t want to think that a ‘release’ for a killer like him would have to be plural. It was too painful for me.” She couldn’t take her gaze off the album. It was like Pandora’s box hiding all the evil of the world. “How many, Doane?”

  “Kevin never kept count. I wasn’t with him when he was overseas in the military. I know he started needing release when he was fourteen.”

  “How many?”

  “I told you that—” He shrugged. “I suppose there were at least fifty or so. But they weren’t all little girls. He liked them best, but there were boys and even a few women.”

  Eve felt sick. “But he liked the little girls best. Why?”

  “He said that the release was more potent because the girls seemed to have a kind of strong purity.” His lips turned up with malice. “I’m sure he would have enjoyed your Bonnie. He likes little girls. Isn’t it nice that he still has one available? Perhaps since they’re together he’s enjoying her now.”

  She wanted to kill him. He had chosen just the right words to lacerate. “They’re not together.”

  “How do you know?” he asked softly. “I believe there’s some kind of connection.”

  “Then you’re insane.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “She was special, and he was a demon.”

  “I’m sure the parents of those girls in my album thought they were special, too.” He flipped open the album to the first page. “Look at them. Do any of them have a resemblance to Bonnie?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not looking.” He took her hair and forced her head toward the album. “Perhaps the little girl in the center. Anna Grassker. She had curly hair like your Bonnie.”

  But not red curls, the child was blond. Yet Anna’s face was sweet and her eyes bright with joy, and it hurt Eve to look at that photo. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You made me angry. I like things easy, and you’re making them hard.”

  “Did you help Kevin kill those people?”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Some of them?”

  “When Kevin needed me. I didn’t actually touch them, that would have spoiled the release for Kevin.”

  “And that would have been horrible, right?”

  “Yes, why take a life if it provided him no value?”

  “How did you help him?”

  “He trusted me to scout, to bring the little girls to him. It was easy for me. People like me, they trust me. Kevin was smarter than me, but I was happy and proud that I could help him. I got really good at it.”

  Yes, Eve could see that he was proud. His son might have been a monster, but who was the most twisted? She could imagine a little girl looking up into that face and giving him her trust. “You’re his father. You could have stopped him. At some point, you would have had the opportunity to persuade him that what he was doing was wrong.”

  “He wasn’t wrong. He was different. It took me a little while to realize that he couldn’t be held to ordinary rules. When I did, it seemed very simple and clear.”

  “And you became his enabler.”

  “I don’t like that word.” His hand tightened on her throat. “That’s what Kevin said they’d call me if I stayed by him in that courtroom.”

  “Enabler,” she repeated deliberately. “You’re as dirty as your son. Why did you try to tell me that the court case concerned only one child if you’re so proud of helping him?”

  “The court case was only about one child, Dany Cavrol. The prosecution usually chooses only one victim even if there are several.”

  Eve’s gaze was on the photos in front of her. “Which one is she?”

  “None of them. Dany lived in Marseilles.” He reached out and flipped several pages of the album. “This is Dany. I think they chose her because she had a wistful appeal. The bastards wanted to make sure the jury crucified Kevin.”

  A newspaper from Marseilles, France, and the little girl couldn’t have been more than five. Dany had tight dark curls framing her thin, solemn face. She was heartbreakingly adorable.

  “You see?” Doane asked. “Kevin didn’t have a chance.” His voice was harsh. “Dany’s father, General John Tarther, set it up. What the hell did he care about the kid? She was illegitimate and lived with her aunt. Her mother signed the kid over to Tarther and left for London. Tarther made payments for Dany’s upkeep but rarely came to see her. Kevin thought it was safe to take a chance on punishing Tarther for getting in his way while he was working with the al-Qaeda in Pakistan. And it should have been safe for Kevin. Who would know that Tarther would go crazy? But Tarther stirred everyone up. He hired detectives to find out who had killed Dany. Then he flooded the media with photos and stories, bribed politicians.”

  “How inconvenient,” she said unevenly. “Love isn’t necessarily governed by legalities.” She couldn’t look at the picture of Dany Cavrol any longer. She was too beautiful. The thought of that ugliness touching her was too painful. “You skipped a lot of pages to get to Dany. What’s on the other pages?”

  “Oh, much the same. Naples, Istanbul, Liverpool. Do you want to see them?” Doane said. “This is the only one that’s at all important. The only case where they charged Kevin.”

  “And they executed him?”

  “No, Blick managed to bribe a witness, and the case was declared a mistrial. Kevin escaped when they were taking him back to jail. I was so happy. I’d arranged a place for him where he’d be safe until he was ready to take charge of his life again.” His lips twisted. “But I never saw him again. Tarther sent his bloodhound after him.”

  “Bloodhound?”

  “Zander.”

  “A detective?”

  “Detective?” His laugh was harsh. “A killer. Tarther called my Kevin a killer, but then he sent that snake after him and told him to make sure that Kevin never faced another judge who would let him go free.” He was looking down at the album, but Eve knew he wasn’t seeing it. “Kevin and I had arranged to meet in Athens. I’d hired a captain to take us to Istanbul. Kevin had contacts with a terrorist group who operated out of there. He never showed up, never met me. Blick called me and told me that Kevin had been shot in an alley near the wharf. Zander butchered him.”

  “How do you know who
did it? A child killer has a world of enemies. Anyone in that courtroom would have been enraged when Kevin was let loose without being punished. I probably would have killed him myself.”

  “Yes, you would. Because you’re like Zander, aren’t you? Filth. Pure filth.”

  Ignore insults, find out as much as you can. The more she learned, the more weapons she had against him. “Blick knew who killed Kevin?”

  “No, Kevin was picked off by a shot from a shop across the alley. It was an excellent shot. Straight to the heart. Zander’s so good he didn’t bother with a safe head shot. Blick ran like a scared rabbit, but he crept back later and saw Kevin being picked up by Nalaro Crematorium.” His lips twisted. “I didn’t get there before the funeral director, Guido Nalaro, threw Kevin into his damn furnace, but I saved Kevin’s skull.” He paused before he added with grim malice, “And I threw Nalaro into the furnace to keep Kevin company and burn with him.” He shrugged. “I shouldn’t have done it. I was in a rage, and I wasn’t thinking of anything but Kevin. I should have waited to kill Nalaro until after I’d questioned him about the man who murdered my son. I ransacked his office afterward, but I couldn’t find any clues to who had done it.”

  “Then how did you find out it was this Zander?”

  “It took years. I couldn’t move right away. When I thought it was safe, I sent Blick back to Athens and told him to question Nalaro’s family. I’ve always found that sometimes you can get what you want by going through the people surrounding the prey. Nalaro was a secretive bastard, and his wife and children didn’t know anything about his being bribed to get rid of the body or who bribed him. But his father knew, and Blick found out. Would you like to know what Blick did to him to make him give us Zander’s name?”

  “No.”

  “Squeamish? He deserved it. I had to have that killer’s name. But I knew it must have been Tarther who was behind it all. I knew I had to start there. But I couldn’t make a mistake like I’d done by killing Nalaro. Tarther was a bigwig general in the Army, and he was surrounded by Army Intelligence and CIA. I had to be patient. I had to gather in Tarther and the man who’d killed Kevin and anyone else who had been involved. I had to make them suffer. I wasn’t smart like Kevin, but I knew I’d find a way. Kevin had already given me the tools to do it. I thought that he just meant to keep me safe, but maybe he knew…”