The Maze

by Catherine Coulter

“Yes, Pa.”

  “Well, we got this gal here now. Let’s off her and then get out of here. There’s no more food anyways.”

  “No,” Marlin said, and his voice was suddenly different—strong and determined, not like the deferential tone he’d used with his father since he’d come in. “Marty’s going to walk the walk. She’s got to be punished. She shot me in the belly. It hurt real bad. It still hurts. I got this ugly scar that’s all puckered and red. It’s her turn now.”

  Erasmus said, “I want to just kill her here, now. It ain’t smart to hang around here.”

  “I know. I got my maze all fixed up for her. She’ll like it. She already knows the drill. Only this time when she hits the center, she’ll have a big surprise.”

  Thirty minutes, no more.

  “You fix up another warehouse, Marlin?”

  “Hey, Marty, I fixed it up real good. You’ll like it. I had lots of time so it’s really prime.”

  “Why would I walk the walk when you get me there, Marlin? I know you’ll be at the center waiting to kill me. I’d be a fool to go into the maze.”

  “Well, you see, Marty, you’ll do anything I ask you to. I got myself a little leverage here.”

  Dillon. No, not Dillon. Who?

  “Let me go get my little sweet chops,” Erasmus said and rose slowly. He stretched that skinny body of his. His legs were slightly bowed. He was wearing cowboy boots. Without boots he’d be no more than five foot six inches. “You keep a good eye on her, boy. She’s tricky. Look at her eyes—lots of tricks buried in there. I bet you the FBI taught her all sorts of things to do to a man.”

  Marlin calmly pulled a .44 Magnum out of his belt. “I like this better than your FBI gun, Marty, although I’ll take it with me, as a souvenir. This baby will blow a foot-wide hole out of your back if I shoot you in the chest. I don’t think you would survive that, Marty.” He assumed a serious pose, rubbing his chin with his hand. “You’re real tough, but you couldn’t live through this, could you?”

  “No,” she said, studying his face, his eyes, trying to figure out what to do. “No one could.” Should she try to disarm him now?

  It was academic. There was Erasmus in the door. He was grinning. “She gave me a mite of trouble so I had to smash her head.” He dragged in Hannah Paisley by the hair. She was wearing a charcoal gray running suit, running shoes on her feet. She was unconscious.

  “You know her, don’t you, gal? Don’t lie to me, I can see it writ all over your face.”

  “Yes, she’s a Special Agent. How did you get her?”

  “Easy as skinnin’ a skunk. She was out running. I stole her fanny pack, saw she was with the FBI, and took her down. Nary a whimper from her. I’m real pleased you know her, personal like. That’s gotta make a difference. You don’t want me to kill her, now do you?”

  “How did you know that I knew her?” Out of ten thousand FBI agents he had to get Hannah Paisley? No, it was too much of a coincidence.

  “Oh, I was watching you come out of that huge ugly Hoover Building. There was this one, standing there, waving at you, but you didn’t see her, you just kept walking. I knew I had the one I needed right then. Yep, she knew you.”

  Hannah groaned. Lacey saw that her hands were lashed together behind her back and her ankles were tied tightly together.

  “Don’t hurt her. She didn’t do anything to you.”

  Marlin laughed. “No, but I knew you wouldn’t cooperate unless we got someone. Pa followed her. He figured she was FBI and he was right. Now, Marty, you ready to come to the warehouse with me and walk the walk?”

  Twenty minutes, no more than twenty damned minutes. There would be no way Dillon would find her if they left, no way at all. She looked around then. They had trashed the kitchen, the living room. He would come in and he would know that she was taken, but he wouldn’t know where. For the first time she smelled spoiled food, saw the dishes strewn over the counters and the table. There were a good dozen empty beer cans, some of them on the floor.

  “Where is this warehouse, Marlin?”

  “Why do you care, Marty? It won’t make any difference to you where you croak it.”

  “Sure it will. Tell me. Oh yes, my name’s Lacey, not Marty. Belinda Madigan was my sister. You having trouble with your memory, Marlin?”

  His breathing hitched, his hand jerked up. She didn’t drop her eyes from his face.

  “Don’t piss me off, Marty. You want to know where we’re going? Off to that real bad-ass part of Washington between Calvert and Williams Streets. When I was going in and out down there no one even looked at me. They were all dope dealers, addicts, and drunks. Nope, no one cared what I was doing. And you know something else? When they find you, no one will care about that either.

  “Every night I got there, I had to kick out the druggies. I’ll have to do it just one more time. I wonder if they’ll report finding you or just wait until a cop comes along. Yeah, I’ll flush out all the druggies. They’re piled high around there, filthy slugs.”

  “My boy never did drugs,” Erasmus said, looking over at Lacey. She nearly vomited when she saw that he was stroking his gnarled hand over Hannah’s breasts, the other hand still tangled in her hair. “Marlin ain’t stupid. He only likes gals, too, knows how to use ’em real good. I taught him. Whenever he found his way to the center of the maze I built, why I took him off to Yuma and bought him a whore.”

  Fifteen minutes.

  “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, Marlin.”

  “You really gotta pee, gal? You’re not shittin’ Marlin?”

  “I really do. Can I get up? Really slowly?”

  Marlin nodded. He’d straightened, the gun pointed right at her chest. “I’ll go with you, Marty. No, I won’t watch you pee, but I’ll be right outside the door. You do anything stupid and I’ll let my pa cut up that pretty face of yours.”

  “No, Marlin, I’ll cut up this gal’s pretty face. First I’ll cut off all her hair, scrape my knife over her scalp so she looks like a billiard ball. Then I’ll do a picture on her face. You got that, gal?”

  “I got it.” Ten minutes. Calvert and Williams Streets. She wasn’t familiar with them, but Dillon would be.

  Her downstairs bathroom was disgusting. It stank of urine, of dirty towels, of dirty underwear, and there were spots on the mirror. “Did anyone ever tell you you were a pig, Marlin?”

  She wished she’d kept her mouth closed. He punched her hard in the kidney. The pain sent her to her knees.

  “I might be a pig, Marty, but you’ll be dead. Not long now and you’ll be dead and rotting and my pa and I will be driving into Virginia. There’s some real pretty mountains there and lots of places to hide out. Do your business now, Marty. We’ve got to get out of here. Hey, you gotta pee because you’re so scared, right?”

  “That’s right, Marlin.” She closed the door on his grinning face, heard him lean against it, knew he was listening. She knew she didn’t have much time.

  He banged on the door just as she flushed the toilet. “That’s long enough, Marty.”

  When she walked out, he shoved her back in. He looked around. “I’m not the pig. It’s my pa. He never learned how to do things ’cause his ma never taught him anything, left him lying in his own shit when he was just a little tyke, made him lie in his own shit when he was older, just to punish him. She wasn’t nice, my grandma.”

  “She doesn’t sound nice,” Lacey said. “Why’d you come here, Marlin? Why do you want to kill me? It’s a really big risk you’re taking. Why?”

  He looked thoughtful for a long moment, but the gun never wavered from the center of her back. “I just knew I had to take you out,” he said finally. “No one can beat me and get away with it. I thought and thought about how I could get out of the cage in Boston and then that judge just handed me a golden key. Those idiot shrinks were a piece of cake. I acted all scared, even cried a little bit. Yes, it was all so easy. There was my pa, sent me a message in prison, and I knew where he was waiting. A
ll I had to do was get in Brainerd to the Glover Motel just at the western edge of town. There he was, had clothes for me, everything, a car with a full tank of gas. I knew then that I could get you, take you out, and then I’d be free. Actually, it was Pa who hit that FBI guy in Boston, nearly sent him off to hell where he belongs.”

  “I know. Your pa used your driver’s license. We got the license plate.”

  Marlin wasn’t expecting that. “Well, I told Pa to be careful. He was sure he’d knocked the FBI guy from here to next Sunday, but he didn’t. He really got the plate, huh? No matter. Everything’s back on track now. I just wish that the FBI guy had gotten his.”

  Hannah moaned from the kitchen.

  “Now, let me see if you tried to leave any message for that muscle boy you’re sleeping with.”

  She didn’t move, barely breathed. And waited. He poked around a bit, then straightened. “You’re smart, Marty. You didn’t try anything. That’s good.”

  Hannah moaned again. They heard Erasmus say something to her. They heard a sharp cry. The bastard, he’d hit her again.

  “You’ll come, won’t you, Marty? You’ll come to me at the center of the maze? My pa will kill her slow if you refuse. It sounds like he’s already got started. You got the picture now, don’t you?”

  To die for Hannah Paisley, perhaps there was a dose of irony there. No, she’d die anyway. Lacey seriously doubted that Hannah would survive this either. But Lacey had no choice, none at all. “I’ll come.”

  Ten minutes.

  “Let me see if Hannah’s all right.”

  “A real buddy, is she? That’s excellent. No shit from you then, Marty, or Pa will make her real sorry. Then it’ll be my turn to make you even sorrier.”

  “No shit from me, Marlin.”

  “Ladies shouldn’t say that word, Marty.”

  She wanted to laugh, realized it was hysteria bubbling in her throat, and kept her mouth shut. When she walked into the kitchen, Hannah was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah. Are you all right?”

  Hannah’s eyes weren’t focused, but she was trying. She probably had a concussion. “Sherlock, is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is this place? Who are these animals?”

  Erasmus kicked her.

  Hannah didn’t make a sound, but her body seemed to ripple with the shock of the pain.

  “This is my place. These men are Marlin Jones and his father, Erasmus.”

  She saw that Hannah realized the consequences in that single instant. She also knew that she was going to die. Both of them would die. Lacey saw her trying to loosen the knots on her wrists.

  “Gentlemen,” Hannah said, looking from one to the other. “Can I have a glass of water?”

  “Then you’ll probably have to go pee, just like Marty here,” Marlin said.

  “Marty? Her name is Sherlock.”

  Marlin kicked Hannah, just the way his father had. “Shut your mouth. I hate women who haven’t got the brains to keep their lips sewn together. I just might do that someday. Get myself a little sewing kit. I could use different colored thread for each woman. No water. Let’s get out of here. Who knows who’s going to show up?”

  Five minutes, but it didn’t matter now. Lacey was bound and gagged, lying on her side in the backseat of her own car, a blanket thrown over her. Hannah was behind her in the storage space.

  One of them was driving a stolen car she’d seen briefly, a gray Honda Civic. Then she heard her Navajo revved up but didn’t know which one of them was driving. She guessed they’d leave her Mazda at the warehouse.

  Lacey closed her eyes and prayed harder than she’d ever prayed in her life. If Marlin left her hands tied behind her, then there would be no way she could get to the Lady Colt strapped around her ankle.

  Savich stretched his back, then his hamstrings. He heard a woman’s voice from the front of the gym and started to call out.

  But it wasn’t Sherlock.

  It had been an hour and twenty minutes. In that instant he knew something was very wrong. He called her house. No answer. He and Quinlan both had this gut thing. Neither of them ever ignored it. He immediately called Jimmy Maitland from his cell phone.

  “It’s dinnertime, Savich. This better be good.”

  “There’s no word about Marlin Jones, is there?”

  “No, none yet. Why?”

  “I haven’t seen Sherlock in over an hour. She was supposed to meet me at the gym. She hasn’t shown. I called her house. No answer. I know that Marlin and his father are here. I know it. I know they’ve got Sherlock.”

  “How do you know that? What’s going on, Savich?”

  “My gut. You’ve never before mistrusted my gut, sir. Don’t mistrust it now. I’m out of here and on my way to her house. She was going there to get more stuff. We made a firm time date. She isn’t here. Sherlock’s always on time. Something’s happened and I just know it’s Marlin and Erasmus. Put out an APB on her car, Mazda, 4X4 Navajo, license SHER 123. Can you get a call out to everyone to look for her?”

  “You got it.”

  Savich was at her house within ten minutes. It was dark. Her car wasn’t in the driveway. Jesus, he prayed he’d been wrong. Maybe she was at his place, maybe she wanted to unpack her stuff before she came to the gym. No, she wouldn’t do that. He went to the front door and tried the doorknob.

  It opened.

  He had his SIG out as he poked the door fully open.

  He turned on the light switch. He saw the trashed living room. Furniture overturned, lamps hurled against the wall, her lovely prints slashed, beer cans and empty Chinese cartons and pizza boxes on the floor. One piece of molding cheese pizza lay halfway out of the box onto a lovely Tabriz carpet.

  The kitchen was a disaster area. It was weird, but he could smell Sherlock’s scent over the stench of rotted food. She’d been here. Recently. Then he saw her fanny pack on the floor under the table. He opened it but saw it wasn’t Sherlock’s. It was Hannah Paisley’s. They had both women. How the hell did they get Hannah? How did they know to get Hannah?

  And why had they taken her?

  Of course he knew the answer to that. Marlin knew he’d have to have some leverage, something to make Sherlock do what he told her to do. And that would be? To walk the maze, to get to the center, where he’d kill her, to pay her back for scamming him, for shooting him, for beating him.

  So he and his father would have taken the women to some warehouse nearby. But where? There were lots of likely places in Washington, D.C. He knew Sherlock would know that he’d realize what had happened. She had to have left him something, if she’d had the chance. He looked around the kitchen but didn’t see anything.

  He was on the cell phone to the cops when he walked into the small bathroom off the downstairs hallway. He nearly gagged at the stench. He pulled open the linen drawers below the sink. Nothing. He pulled aside the shower curtain. There was Sherlock’s purse on the floor of the shower stall, open.

  “Give me Lieutenant Jacobs, please. I imagine he’s gone home. What’s his phone number? Listen, this is Dillon Savich, FBI. We’ve got a real problem here and I need help fast.”

  Savich was on the phone to Jacobs even as he was bending down to pick up Sherlock’s purse. It was a big black leather shoulder bag. He’d kidded her about carrying a full week’s change of clothes and running shoes in there.

  “Is Lieutenant Jacobs there, please?”

  He carefully pulled out each item. It was when he got to her small cosmetic bag that he went really slowly. He unzipped it just a little bit at a time, holding it upright.

  “Is this you, Lewis? Savich here. I’ve got a huge problem. You know all about Marlin and Erasmus Jones? Well, they’re here in Washington and they’ve got two of my agents—Agent Sherlock and Agent Paisley. Hold just a second.” Slowly Savich turned the cosmetic bag inside out. There written in eyebrow pencil was: Calvert & Williams, wareh—.

 
Damn, she was good. “Lewis, she managed to leave me a message. There’s a warehouse at Calvert and Williams. Marlin and his dad have both Agent Sherlock and Agent Paisley. He’s going to make her go through a maze, Lewis, and Marlin will be at the center. He’ll kill her. Do a silent approach, all right? I’ll see you there in ten minutes.”

  He couldn’t believe it. His Porsche wouldn’t start. He tried again, then raised the hood. Nothing obvious, not that he was a genius with cars. He cursed, then kicked the right front tire. Then he ran into the street. A motorist nearly ran him down, slammed down on his brakes, and weaved around him. Savich cursed, then stood there, right in the middle, waving his arms.

  A taxi pulled up. A grinning black face peered out at him. “Well, if it isn’t the lucky man who’s going to marry that pretty little gal.”

  35

  THERE WAS no time. No time at all.

  She didn’t want to die, didn’t want to lose her life to this crazy bastard who was grinning at her like the madman he was. No, he wasn’t mad, he knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew it was wrong. He enjoyed it. Remorse was alien to him. Being really human, in all its complexity and simplicity, was alien to him.

  She looked at Hannah, who was standing with her back against one of Marlin’s props, her head down. At first Lacey thought she was numb with fear, but then she realized she wasn’t terrified senseless, which Marlin and Erasmus probably thought. No, it was an act. Hannah was getting her bearings, thinking, figuring odds.

  Good. Let them think she was broken. Lacey called out, her voice filled with false concern she was sure Hannah would see right through, “Hannah, are you all right?”

  “Yes, but for how long?” Hannah didn’t look at her, just kept breathing deeply, staring at the filthy wooden floor. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance that Savich will get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shut up, both of you cunts!”

  “Really nice language from your daddy, Marlin.”

  “He can say whatever he wants, Marty. You know that. He’s a man.”

  “Him? A man?” It was Hannah, her voice hoarse because Erasmus had choked her when she’d tried to get away from him. “He’s a worm, a cowardly worm who raised you to be a rabid murderer.”