That Darkness Page 24

  He waited.

  She said nothing. Her lips moved but no sound came out. She didn’t know what to say, where to even begin. She thought of the girl in the cemetery, Viktor’s body on the bridge. The look on Dillon Shaw’s face as he plunged a knife into her body. Was Jack wrong?

  The unanswerable question.

  “And there you have it,” he said simply. “I have to go now. It was interesting to meet you, Maggie. When I’m out of the city, you can walk out of here and go to the ER to have that shoulder looked at.”

  “You’re going to just let me go, knowing I can identify you.”

  “Actually, you can’t.”

  She felt herself goggle at him. “But I know your name.”

  “No. Actually you don’t.”

  That should not have surprised her, of course, but somehow it did. It unmoored her just that much further. But she persisted: “Jack, you’re a cop. I know who you are. The entire department knows who you are.”

  “Actually, again, they don’t. And by the time you tell them your story, I will have completed my—I’ll be on my way to someplace else, and you will never see me again. Granted, my career as a police officer is probably over, but I will deal with that.”

  He had been drifting toward the door as he spoke, she now realized. Then he stopped and pulled out two items.

  The gun and the keys.

  “I’m sorry you got involved in this, Maggie—really. But that’s all I’m sorry for.” His voice walked a tightrope between integrity and insanity. “So if I have to beat you into unconsciousness in order to leave this room, I will. Please don’t make me.”

  He unlocked the door.

  “Please.”

  Chapter 31

  Friday, 7:50 p.m.

  And so she watched the guy with the gun leave and lock the door behind him.

  Oddly enough she believed him, that he felt truly sorry for her involvement, but—more to the point—also believed that he would do whatever he had to do to her in order to get away . . . get away and keep killing. Because Jack believed that he was right. He believed himself to walk on the side of the angels. He believed it to the point of taking any risk, eliminating any threat, to continue the angels’ work.

  That was what made him so dangerous.

  Unfortunately all this sincerity still left her locked in a room with a dead body and no means of egress. The dead body didn’t bother her, but the issue of egress certainly did. So she leaned over Dillon Shaw and checked each drawer of the desk. She found a supply of fresh tarps and duct tape, which no doubt would have formed a shroud for the late rapist had she not interfered. In the middle drawer on the other side she found three manila files and a ballpoint pen, something she really wished she’d located earlier. She wasted a moment staring at it in frustration until she opened the first file.

  A mug shot of Dillon Shaw stared out at her, clipped to a copy of his rap sheet. Suspect in three pages of rapes and rape attempts, sentenced in one. She could see why Jack wouldn’t have been satisfied with simply arresting a man who had already been arrested seven times; Dillon Shaw was very good at not getting convicted.

  Old news. She opened the next file. It held a number of mismatched sheets with different names, criminal histories, social work reports. Louis Bellamy, Andre Tidyman, a fifteen-year-old name Ronald Soltis. She went to the last file.

  And said aloud, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  The photo, printed on regular copy paper, showed a middle-aged woman with wavy, brown hair, medium build, pleasant features, dressed in a suit and standing next to a photographer’s prop of a white trellis and a cascade of fake pink roses. Was this another target? A drug dealer? Pedophile? War criminal?

  Or a victim? Another Katya?

  Written in pencil at the bottom: Maria Stein.

  Then Maggie flipped the page to the next photo, and saw who the real victim had been.

  It showed a gray-haired person lying in bed. Maggie assumed it to be a male from the golf-club pattern on the one small patch of unstained pajamas. The flesh had sunk until the body appeared skeletal; what hair remained stuck out in patches and seemed crusted here and there with brownish material. The bony fingers were clenched into fists and the thin blanket twisted around the bruised limbs. The head rested on a pillow, still white at the very corners but turned to a dark tan around a central hollow.

  Beyond that were a few close-ups. A bedsore, green and pus-filled and hollowed all the way to the bone. The person turned on his side, showing an accumulation of feces and other staining that had pooled underneath him from his knees to his shoulder blades. Another bedsore, this one containing maggots. The palm of his hand, pierced with a stigmata in the center where his untrimmed nails had opened his own flesh.

  The last photo had been taken from a merciful distance, showing the entire rough-framed bed in which the man lay and the rest of the room beyond it. There were five other beds in two neat rows, each occupied. Maggie could smell the place from just the photo, and it sickened her.

  The pictures mercifully ended. A piece of paper ripped from a legal pad completed the file with notes written in the same hand but with a few different pens. “7 SS checks” “Cettie’s Star” “isolated” “1st of month” were at the top and the names of three cities at the bottom—Atlanta, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Arrows were doodled here and there, most notably from “1st of month” to the word “checks.”

  None of it told her much. Apparently someone had done great evil to several helpless senior citizens—the type of egregious violence that would put them on Jack’s radar. But was that person Maria Stein? She could be the child of one of the victims. But there were six victims, so why only one Maria Stein?

  Maggie had not heard of any such case of extreme neglect in Cleveland, and surely Jack would not have let these victims suffer while he stalked their abuser. They must be from a past case in which the abuser had escaped justice. That would be in keeping with Jack’s habits. And the abuser had not turned up, so far as Maggie knew. All their recent victims—Day, Viktor, Masiero—had well-defined crimes with well-defined victims, and they did not include the elderly.

  Jack kept saying he had to do something before he could let Maggie go. It had sounded as if he needed to leave town and get clear before phoning in an anonymous tip or actually calling Riley and Patty to come and let her out, and—one hoped—letting them know that she had not killed the man on the floor.

  But what if that had not been it? What if he needed to use his last few hours of freedom in the city to kill someone else?

  Someone like—perhaps—this Maria Stein.

  She walked through the court system....

  Maggie’s gaze fell again to one of the photos, a close-up of a gangrenous bedsore at least two inches in diameter.

  Society had failed to protect him. Jack would feel that whoever could do this needed to die, and even with his own police force closing in on him, he could not let this last job go. He would kill Maria Stein.

  So Maggie had a decision to make.

  Chapter 32

  Friday, 8:01 p.m.

  She moved to the granite counter. Top-shelf liquors—nothing but the best for those about to die—of every variety and even a few tiny airline-sized bottles of the more exotic stuff like cognac and brandy. Behind them sat an elaborate silver box, flat and rectangular. Tiny hinges at the back told her the lid should open, but it didn’t. The lid had no edge or lip she could brace against the counter; she tried banging it on the counter a few times but nothing happened.

  She gave up and examined the tumblers: real glass, but useless unless she wanted to slit her wrists, which she didn’t.

  The only other occupant of the counter happened to be an ice bucket. She lifted the lid and saw ice cubes. Jack had had it all planned. The rapist would have gotten the royal treatment. She considered pouring herself a vodka tonic—she could certainly use one—but decided against it. One way or the other she would have a lot of explaining to do by t
he end of the night, and would not be surprised if drug testing became part of the process.

  She had no way to contact anyone. The workday had ended and no one would be missing her until Monday morning. Riley might work the Saturday, notice that she didn’t show up to investigate more possible locations in the morning, but surely his partner would pass along a message that something had come up and she couldn’t make it. The neighbors in her apartment building were accustomed to her sometimes erratic hours. Marty would be wondering what she had found out about his wife’s medical claim, but that was an informal assistance. And she had never returned Alex’s phone call. That bugged her.

  She crossed the room again to the window, confirmed her earlier impression that the entire opening had been covered with a thick piece of plastic, screwed to the wall at all four corners. Behind it, the standard double-hung frame seemed ordinary enough. Then she noticed a small trash can next to the desk.

  It had one crumpled-up napkin and a white paper bag with the remnants of Spanish rice and tortilla chips. When Maggie realized that she was almost certainly holding the last item the foreign Viktor had ever touched, she dropped it back in the can. DNA analysis on the napkin would tie that victim to the crime scene—

  Later. Take care of that later. Right now there was a woman out there about to die.

  This completed her search of the room, except for the dead guy on the floor.

  It’s just a body, she told herself. This is not a man who was about to rape and murder me ten minutes ago. Just a body. Just another body.

  What she would give for a pair of latex gloves. He had wound up facedown and the blood that had spilled out of his head had pooled and spread, soaking his clothes, a morass of red goop all the way to the top of his jeans. In a way, this helped, obscuring his features with a thin mask. It made his face easier to ignore.

  His upward, dorsal surface remained relatively clean. She patted the pockets at the back of his jeans, finding a wallet with six dollars in it and a pair of leather gloves. Though worn, they were still heavy and she pulled them on without hesitation; thus outfitted, she could bear to flip him over to check his front pockets and the saturated crevices of his jacket. A single key, gum, a cigarette lighter, and a pack with two cigarettes left in it. He must be the only guy in the city without a cell phone, but she couldn’t feel too surprised. Jack had thought to frisk her for tools, surely he would have made sure not to leave a phone in the room.

  She could use the lighter and the stronger samples of alcohol to start a fire, but that would have little effect on a hefty steel door and she would most likely asphyxiate before the fire had any other effect. She could use it in a small way, to set off the smoke alarms—except that there were no smoke alarms. Renovations had obviously stalled before that safety reg could be fulfilled.

  Or she could simply drink the alcohol, then settle back to wait for Jack to finish killing the bad woman and send someone to free her.

  She dropped the three items on the floor beside the dead man, then pinched the tips of the gloves with her foot to slide her hands from them. Then she straightened.

  And summarized. She could not walk through walls. That left only the door and the window. She had no key to the door, and the window had been secured. Force would be required to open either point of egress.

  She looked around, considered her resources. These resources provided three possible ways to get out of the room.

  One, she could take the thin metal harp that supported the lamp’s shade above its bulb and use it as a chisel to lift the door’s hinge pins out of their frame wings. A particularly heavy liquor bottle might work as a hammer. But then she would still have to get the door open somehow, and it seemed to fit pretty tightly. Getting her fingers underneath it to slide it open from the hinge side would not be at all easy.

  Second, she could take one of the mini-bottles from the bar, break open the cheap plastic cigarette lighter and fill it partially with the butane, stuff a piece of gauze from the first aid kit in the neck for a wick, and duct-tape it to the deadbolt like a miniature explosive charge. Except she had no way to light it once she’d broken and emptied the lighter, and also had no idea if the resulting explosion would be sufficient to destroy the lock.

  Third . . . it would have to be the third.

  She opened the first aid kit and removed the roll of gauze with which Jack had bandaged her neck. Then she went to the counter and examined the bottles, looking for the highest proof liquor she could find—lacking Everclear, she chose Bacardi 151. She snatched up one of the tumblers and used it to soak the strips of gauze in the rum, then carried the tumbler over to the window.

  She put her hand on the sheet of thick polycarbonate that covered the window and shoved. It barely moved, barely bowed inward. The four screws were large, probably at least a quarter inch, but the flat heads had not been made utterly flush with the surface. She could feel the edges when she ran a finger over them. Good.

  She wrapped one piece of dripping gauze around each lower screw, then dragged the desk around Dillon’s body so she could climb onto it in order to do the same for the top two. After donning her dead attacker’s heavy gloves, she picked up his bloodstained cigarette lighter.

  Rolling the tiny, sparking wheel hard enough to get it to light proved difficult when wearing too-large leather gloves. She tried for four fruitless seconds before giving up and freeing her right hand. Most of the blood had been wiped off, anyway, she tried to comfort herself, but after lighting all four pieces of gauze on fire, she had smears of red on her fingers. She could use the sanitizer, of course—if she had time for that. Which she didn’t.

  With both gloves back on, she slid the top desk drawer out of its rail, swung it upward, and smashed it into the floor as hard as she could. The old, wooden object promptly shattered into pieces. Then she took the other small top drawer and did the same.

  The gauze continued to burn, filling the room with the smell of smoke and burning plastic. What most people called Plexiglas these days was actually Lexan, or polycarbonate resin thermoplastic. The thermo part of the name applied because it had a melting point of 155 degrees. If the burning gauze melted just enough plastic around the screws to enlarge the screw holes and allow the sheet to slip over the heads—then she might be able to remove the plastic. Then it would simply be a matter of opening the window and climbing out.

  A crowbar would be really, really helpful right now. Unfortunately all she had were the long, flat, metal tracks from the undersides of the desk drawers. She pulled at the lower right corner of the Lexan, trying to get her fingertips underneath it but the gloves made them too large. Yet she would need the gloves, so instead she pushed the end of one of the drawer tracks into the crack, hammering at the other end with her fist. Even with the glove on this hurt the edge of her palm and did not seem remotely effective at first, but then the plastic shifted away from the wall just a tiny bit. She couldn’t even tell if the plastic had moved outward or the drywall had simply dented inward, but used the space to shove in the other track. A little pushing and pulling, and the lower right corner popped off its anchor. It pulled the burning gauze off as well and it fell onto the desktop, where she absently stamped out the flame with one foot.

  Energized by this success, she went to work on the other lower corner, wedging the tracks under the plastic with a manic hammering; she would feel the pain in her hands when the adrenaline slacked off.

  Provided that she lived that long.

  Coughing from the fumes, it seemed to take twice as long to get the other corner up, but finally it burst free.

  The upper two were at a difficult angle—it had been hard enough to reach the screws at all—so she simply pulled out the sheet at the bottom and tried to wriggle up behind it. The lower right screw hole, with its heat source removed, had fused to the top of the screw head but a good yank freed it.

  The polycarbonate might be more flexible than glass but that still did not exactly mean flexible, and the laye
r of it smashed her up against the window and wall so that she scraped her forehead and knee getting her body into position. But her fingers found the latch in the center of the lower window’s frame. She grabbed the thumb paddle to slide it open.

  It didn’t budge.

  Chapter 33

  Friday, 8:12 p.m.

  Jack nestled in the shadows of an overgrown lilac bush, whose tiny pimples of flower buds did not yet give off even the slightest hint of the delicious aroma to come. The streetlights had just flicked on and plenty of traffic still zoomed along Euclid. But it grew less every minute, as the downtown workers fled the area, eager to begin their weekend. Rats rustled in the eaves behind him, while a cat waited under an elm tree for one of them to emerge. The cat blended with the growing night more effectively than Jack could, disappearing into the trunk of the tree with only the occasional flash of two glowing eyes to give it away. It waited there for its prey, just as he did. Only he didn’t feel quite as patient.

  His head swam. His command center had been breached and its evidence would tie him to all the murders. He had left Maggie Gardiner alive to tell what she knew.

  It was his own fault—he should never have tried for Dillon Shaw with so much else going on. He should have thought up better excuses for Riley. He should never have let Maggie into that building. He should have just stayed the hell away from Maggie Gardiner, period.

  Now he should cut his losses and run, not even stop at the Euclid house, just get out while he could. Catch up with Maria somewhere down the road. But he could not make himself do that, he could not take that chance. It had taken too long to find her, to get this close. Maria would be sent to hell tonight—even if she took him along.

  Social Security sends their checks out on the first of the month, which almost always arrive on the second. Right now they sat in the mailbox at the street and Stein would show up to collect them. From what he’d been able to piece together over the years it seemed to be the only time she came back to the locations, once they were full; otherwise she left her victims to waste away in their own filth. He felt sure she would wait until dark to arrive, just as she had in the other cities—she would want the commuters to go home for the day without any stragglers from the two nearby office buildings getting a look at her. And so he still had his chance.