The Maze

by Catherine Coulter

  “You can leave now, Lacey, I’m not going to die. Your father didn’t hit me hard enough. I guess he couldn’t build up enough speed to get it done once and for all.”

  “All right,” Lacey said. She leaned down and kissed her mother’s white cheek. “You take it easy, okay?”

  “What? Oh yes, certainly. I’ll bet that powerboat with all that stuff on it costs exactly thirty-three thousand five hundred dollars.”

  As Lacey walked from the room, she heard Bob Barker call out, “It’s thirty-four thousand!”

  She wasn’t aware her father was there until he stepped into the elevator with her.

  “I’ll see that she’s well taken care of. I’ve decided Mrs. Arch just isn’t keeping good enough control. She never should have let her get away like that. Also, after the new shrink sees her this afternoon, I’ll call and let you know what she says. I’ll tell you one thing, though. Right now she certainly doesn’t sound as if she wants any attention from me. She sounds as if she wants me hung up by my balls.”

  “As you said, we’ll see.” She looked up at her handsome father, at the uncertainty and confusion in his eyes, at that stern set of his jaw. She lightly laid her hand on his forearm. “Take care, Dad. You don’t really think she’ll try to press charges?”

  “Probably not. She’ll forget all about it by this afternoon. If she doesn’t, the cops will treat her gently and ask me to see that she has better care.”

  “Dad, does Mother have money of her own?”

  “Yes, something in the neighborhood of four hundred thousand. It’s safely invested, has been for years. She’s never had to touch it. Why do you ask? Oh, I know. Your mother’s been claiming I married her for her money again. Not likely, Lacey.”

  On a hunch, she called San Quentin from the airport. Belinda’s father, her mother’s first husband, Conal Francis, had been out of jail since the previous Monday. She pressed her forehead against the public phone booth. Where was Belinda’s father? Was he as crazy as her father had said he was?

  She called Dillon from the plane and got his answering machine. He was probably at the gym. She’d surprise him. She could see him walking through the front door all sweaty and so beautiful she’d have to try to touch all of him at once, which was great fun but impossible. Suddenly, in her mind’s eye she saw him and Hannah in the shower. The jealous rage surprised her. She was breathing hard, wanting to yell, but the person seated next to her on the plane probably wouldn’t understand. It was in the past. Every woman he’d ever had sex with was in the past, just as Bobby Wellman and his yellow Jaguar were in her past. That made her smile.

  It was raining hard in Washington, cold, creeping down into the forties, and utterly miserable. She couldn’t wait to get home. Home, she thought. It wasn’t her own town house, it was Dillon’s wonderful house, with the skylights that gave onto heaven. She got into the taxi at the head of the line and gave the black middle-aged driver directions.

  “Bad night,” the driver said, giving her a huge white-toothed smile in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m hoping the night is going to be a lot better than the day was,” she said.

  “Pretty little gal like you, I hope it’s a hot date?”

  “Yes, it is,” she said, grinning back. “In fact, I’m going to marry him.”

  “This guy get lucky or what?”

  “Oh yes.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. When the taxi pulled up in front of Dillon’s red brick house, she was asleep. The driver got out of the cab and walked to the front door. When Savich answered, the driver gave him a big grin.

  “I’ve got a nice little present for you, but she’s all asleep in the back of my cab. I guess you’re her hot date, huh? And the guy who’s going to marry her?”

  “She told you that, did she? That’s a really good sign.”

  “Women always tell me everything,” the driver said, walking back to the taxi.

  Savich couldn’t wait to get her inside the house.

  “Dillon?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Go back to sleep, Sherlock. You’re home now. But I’m not going to let you sleep very long. That all right with you?” He leaned down and kissed her nose.

  “Okay,” she said, and bit his earlobe.

  She giggled. He thought it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard in his life.

  The phone was ringing as he laid her on the bed.

  “Well damn,” he said and answered it. She lay on her back, just looking over at him, listening to his deep voice, his very short answers. When he hung up the phone, she said, “Have they caught him?”

  Savich just shook his head. “No, but it might be really soon. That was Jimmy Maitland. A call came through from this woman in southern Ohio claiming to have seen both Marlin and Erasmus in a restaurant off the turnpike. It sounds like it’s for real. They’re going to check. They’ll get back to us when they know one way or the other. Nothing to do now but wait.”

  “Is this the first time both Erasmus and Marlin have been reported being seen together?”

  He nodded as he pulled his navy blue sweater over his head. He smiled at her as he unfastened his jeans.

  Sometime later, she whispered in his mouth, “Please sing to me.”

  His rich baritone filled the air. “You’re my gateway to heaven, all tied up in a bow. Let me at your hinges and I’ll oil them really slow.”

  The phone rang again. He held her close as he rolled to his side. “Savich here.”

  “We think it’s Erasmus and Marlin,” said Jimmy Maitland, more excitement in his voice than Savich had heard in three months. “So it looks like they’re in Ohio. I’ll get back to you when I hear any more.”

  “That’s a relief,” Savich said and slowly hung up the phone. He turned back to her, saw that the sated vague look was long gone now, and there was fear there, haunting fear. “No, no, Sherlock, Maitland thinks it was Erasmus and Marlin. They’re way off in Ohio someplace, far away from us. It’s okay. They’ll catch them.” Still, the fear didn’t leave her eyes. He said nothing more, just came over her again. He shuddered with the feel of her stiffening beneath him.

  He didn’t ease his hold on her until he was certain she was asleep. He kissed her temple. He wondered what had happened in San Francisco. Then he wondered if they’d caught Marlin yet and if they’d dispatched him to hell.

  Lacey was feeling mellow as she sipped Dillon’s famous darkly rich coffee. Morning sunlight poured through the kitchen windows. She was leaning against the refrigerator.

  Dillon took her cup and kissed her until she was ready to jump on him. Then he gave it back to her. It took another three long drinks of coffee and a distance of three feet from him before she could function again. He just grinned at her.

  When she had her wits together, finally, she told him about her parents, about Douglas. “Douglas was treating my mother like she was his lover. He kissed her, caressed her face, called her by her first name. I’m not wrong about this even though he denied it, denied it quite believably.”

  He nearly dropped his spoon. “You’re kidding me. No? Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. When it comes to your family, I’m willing to believe just about anything. Do you think it’s possible that Douglas was sleeping not only with his wife but also with his wife’s mother?”

  She took a bite of toast, then added another dollop of strawberry spread. “I have no idea. Maybe he wanted all the Sherlock women. After all, he wanted to sleep with me too.” She sighed, rubbed her stomach, knew she was going to have to relax or she’d get an ulcer. “It’s as if I know them but they’re strangers to me in the most basic ways. I found out that Belinda’s father, my mother’s first husband—his name is Conal Francis—was released from San Quentin just a short time ago.”

  “Interesting. He’s the one your father told you tried to kill him? That he was nuts?”

  “Yes. My father told me that was why Belinda shouldn’t have kids. She had too many crazy genes in her. My father also told me that
Belinda was already well on her way to being as nuts as her father. I think I’ll call the shrinks at San Quentin and see what they have to say about it.”

  He rose. “Go ahead and call San Quentin, that’s a good idea. You want to ride downtown with me?”

  Ollie greeted her with a hug and began talking immediately about a string of kidnappings and murders in Missouri. “It’s the same perps, that’s pretty well established. They kidnap a rich couple’s child, get a huge ransom, then kill the kid. Actually, it’s likely that they kill the kid immediately, then string the parents along. There have been three of them, the most recent one in Hannibal, you know, the birthplace of Mark Twain. These folk are real monsters, Sherlock. They drown the kids in bathtubs, then after they have the ransom, they call the parents and tell them where to get their child.”

  She felt rage deep inside her. She took a deep breath. After all, monsters were their business. She understood that, she accepted it, and wanted to get them put away, that or get them on death row. But children. That was more than monstrous. Once they had Marlin and Erasmus, she wanted to concentrate on the kidnappers. No, they were murderers, the kidnapping really didn’t count.

  She went back to her desk and booted up her computer. Dillon had put a lion on her screen, and he roared at her out of the small speakers on either side of the console. She heard two agents shouting at each other. She heard a woman laugh, saw a Coke can go flying past her desk, heard the agent shout his thanks. She heard the hum of the Xerox, someone cursing the fax machine, heard an agent speak in that deep, rich FBI voice on the phone. Everything was back to normal chaos. Only it wasn’t, not for her, at least not yet.

  Marlin Jones was still free. Belinda’s killer, whoever that was, was still out there. She just prayed that both Marlin and Erasmus were in Ohio, with the state police getting really close. She hoped the police would just take both of them out.

  She looked up to see Ollie stretching. “Anything new on Missouri?”

  Ollie shook his head. “Nothing, nada, zippo. But you know, I got this funny feeling in my gut. I just know that we’re going to get the perps. Despite MAXINE being really stumped on this one, I just know it’s going to come to an end soon now.”

  She sighed. “I hope so.” But what she was thinking about was smoke and mirrors. Her life seemed filled with smoke and mirrors. Everyone looked back at her, but their faces weren’t real, and she wondered if they were looking at her or at someone they thought was she. No one seemed as he really was. Except for Dillon.

  “You haven’t called Chico for a karate lesson,” Dillon said as he revved up the engine of his 911 just after six o’clock that evening in the parking garage.

  “Tomorrow. I swear I’ll call this madman of yours tomorrow.”

  “You’ll like Chico. He’s skinny as a lizard and can take out guys twice his size. It will be good training for you.”

  “Hey, can he take you out?”

  “Are you crazy? Naturally not.” He gave her a fat smile. “Chico and I respect each other.”

  “You going to tromp me into the ground tonight?”

  “Sure. Be my pleasure. Let’s swing by your place and pack up some more things for you.” Actually, he wanted all of her things at his house. He never wanted her to move back to her town house, but he held his tongue. It was too soon.

  But it was Lacey who swung by her own town house, Dillon having gotten a call on his cell phone. He dropped her off at home for her car, then headed back to headquarters. “An hour, no longer. There’s this senator who wants to stick his nose into the kidnappings in Missouri. I’ve got to give an update.”

  “What about Ollie?”

  “Maitland couldn’t get hold of him. It’s okay. I’ll see you at the gym in an hour and a half, tops. You be careful.” He kissed her, patted her cheek, and watched her walk to her own car. He watched her lock the car doors, then wave at him.

  The night was seamless black, no stars showing, only a sliver of moon. It was cold. Lacey turned on the car heater and the radio to a country-western station. She found herself humming to “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

  She’d have to ask Dillon to sing that one to her. Her town house was dark. She frowned. She was certain she’d left on the foyer light that lit up the front-door area. Well, maybe not. It seemed as though she’d been gone for much longer than a week. She supposed she might as well rent the place out, furnished. She’d have to call some realtors to see how much would be appropriate to ask. Why had Douglas been leaning over her mother, kissing her, talking to her as if she were his lover?

  She knew this was one question she’d never be able to ask her mother. And Douglas had denied it was true. She wondered if all families were as odd as hers. No, that just wasn’t possible. Not all families had had a child murdered.

  She wasn’t humming anymore when she slid the key into the dead bolt and turned it. She was wishing she were at the gym. She wished he were throwing her to the mat when she turned the lock and pushed the front door open. She felt for the foyer light, flipped it on. Nothing happened.

  No wonder. The miserable lightbulb had burned out. It had been one of those suckers guaranteed for seven years. She had replacement lightbulbs in the kitchen. She walked through the arch into the living room and found the light switch.

  Nothing happened.

  Her breathing hitched. No, that was ridiculous. It had to be the circuit breaker and that was in the utility closet off the kitchen, with more of those seven-year-guaranteed lightbulbs. She walked slowly toward the kitchen, past the dining area, bumping into a chair she’d forgotten about, then felt the cool kitchen tile beneath her feet. She reached automatically for the light switch.

  Nothing happened. Of course.

  Little light slipped in through the large kitchen window. A black night; that’s what it was. Seldom was it so black.

  “Technology,” she said, making her way across the kitchen. “Miserable, unreliable technology.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it a bitch?”

  She was immobile with terror for a fraction of a second until she realized that she’d been trained not to freeze, that freezing could get you killed, and she whipped around, her fist aimed at the man’s throat. But he was shorter than she was used to. Her fist glanced off his cheek. He grunted, then backhanded her, sending her against the kitchen counter. She felt pain surge through her chest. She was reaching for her SIG even as she was falling.

  “Don’t even think about doing something that stupid,” the man said. “It’s real dark in here for you but not for me. I’ve been used to the dark for a real long time. You just slide on down to the floor and don’t move or else I’ll just have to blow off that head of yours and all that pretty red hair will get soaked with brains.”

  He kicked the SIG out of her hand. A sharp kick, a well-aimed kick, a trained kick. She still had her Lady Colt strapped to her ankle. She eased down, slowly, very slowly. A thief, a robber, maybe a rapist. At least he hadn’t killed her yet.

  “Boy, turn on the lights.”

  In the next moment the house was flooded with light. She stared at the old man who stood a good three feet away from her, a carving knife held in his right hand. He was well dressed, shaved, clean. He was short and thin, like the knife he was holding.

  He was Erasmus Jones.

  The boy came into her vision. It was Marlin.

  They weren’t in Ohio. They were both right there, in her kitchen.

  34

  “HI, MARTY. How’s tricks?”

  Dillon would miss her in another forty minutes, maybe thirty-five minutes. He’d be worried. It would be an unspecified worry, but worry he would. He might wait another five minutes, then he’d come here. She looked from father to son. She smiled, praying that only she realized it was a smile filled with unspoken terror. “Hey, tricks is just fine, Marlin. How long have you and your dad been squatters in my house?”

  Erasmus Jones answered as he hunkered down to be at her eye l
evel. “Three days now. That’s how long it took us to get from Boston to here. We had to be real careful, you know?”

  “I would imagine so. Lucky I wasn’t here.”

  “Oh no,” Marlin said. “I wanted you to be here. I wanted you, Marty, but you’d gone. Were you with that cop? Savich is his name, right? You sleeping with him?” He said to his father, “He’s a big fella, real big, lots of muscles, and he fights mean.”

  “I bet he ain’t as mean as your mama were,” Erasmus said and poked the tip of the knife into the sole of Lacey’s shoe. It was so sharp that it sliced through the sole and nicked her foot. She winced, but kept quiet.

  “Mama was a bitch, Pa. I remember her. She was a bitch, always cussing and back-talking you, always had a bottle in her hand, swigging it even while she was hitting me in the face.”

  “Yep, Lucile were a mean one. She’s dead now, did I tell you that?”

  Another rabbit hole, Lacey thought. Forty minutes, max. Dillon would come over here in no more than forty minutes now. Then what? He wouldn’t be expecting trouble; there was no reason for him to. Erasmus and Marlin were supposed to be in Ohio. So he’d think she just needed help moving stuff. He’d be vulnerable. She wouldn’t let them hurt him. No, she had her Lady Colt. She’d do something. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let anything happen to Dillon.

  “Ma’s dead?” Marlin asked as he sat down on one of Lacey’s kitchen chairs.

  “Yeah.”

  His father was telling him this now?

  Marlin said, “No, you didn’t tell me that, Pa. What happened?”

  “Nothin’ much. I just carved her up like that Thanksgiving turkey she didn’t make me.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right, then. She deserved it. She never was a good wife or mother.”

  “Yeah, she was just like all those women who walked the walk for you, Marlin. That maze of yours, I sure do like that. You got that from that game we used to play in the desert.”