Dark Lie (9781101607084) (15 page)

I limped over there, signaling Juliet with my eyes,
Do it.
She stood up, letting my thick quilted coat slip from her thin shoulders. I took it from her, holding it over one arm. In her skimpy top and jeans, she stood trembling like a deer.

“Now you're sweet sweet Candy,” He pattered like a carnival barker. “See how nice I can be when you're my good sugar Candy? Come on, babies, Pandora and I will take you to the potty.” Waving His knife like a signal flag, He directed us both toward the door.

I expected Him to step ahead of us and unlock it, His back to us. I hoped maybe I'd be able to throw myself on Him, knock Him down.

Instead, from behind us He ordered, “Go.”

I said, “Unlock it.”

“Already did.”

I tried the handle. It turned. He had it rigged up somehow, like the ceiling light and like the seat belt in the van. Pulling on the door—it opened inward—I felt all too much the way I used to when my father hogged the TV remote: helpless and furious. Seething, I stepped out into a basement corridor, all too aware that our captor could flick off the light at any moment and trap us in total blackness. The only illumination came from the room we were leaving, and even with it, that passageway seemed dim as a tunnel. Especially with that awful dark paneling, that mottled brown indoor-outdoor carpeting . . . the same mud-toned carpeting I remembered from seventeen years before, although it lay in threadbare patches now.

I knew where this hallway went.

“Stop there,” ordered the voice from behind me. That strange, familiar voice. Daydream voice. Nightmare voice, now.

I halted outside a door that looked as elderly as the building, tall and solid, probably oak, with rectangular insets but no glass except—what was that glass door over the top of the door called? A transom. I suppose, back before there had been either air-conditioning or electric light, they'd needed it up there for ventilation and some illumination of the hallway. Now the transom's wavy old glass showed only darkness.

Juliet stood close beside me, skinny arms wrapped across her chest, hugging herself.

“One at a time,” our escort directed. “Light switch is inside on the right. You'll notice the lock is on
this
side.” He flourished His knife toward a substantial bolt on the outside of the doorframe.

Oh, no remote control device on this door? “Kind of low-tech,” I remarked.

And wished instantly that I hadn't. The look He gave me froze my blood. “But very effective,” He retorted too softly. “Don't try anything stupid or I'll leave you in there to die and rot.” His stony eyes shifted in thought. “Might be the way to do it, Marie,” He added, almost friendly. “I don't want any of your weird-ass freaking blood on me or Pandora.” He gestured with the knife. “You say you gotta go, all right, go.”

He terrified me. I didn't want to go into that room. Not at all.

Only my pride and a desperate plan made me do it.

I clenched my jaw, straightened my shoulders, and stepped into the bathroom. Flicking the light on, I closed the heavy oak door behind me. And from the other side I heard the bolt snick.

Oh, God, I'd left Juliet alone with Him. What if He took her and—

Don't dither. Act.

I blundered into one of the two tall old wooden stalls. This must have been a private bathroom for the librarians, smaller than the upstairs restroom I remembered using as a child, although every bit as ugly: the same bilious green paint, and no window except a tiny one at the very top of the wall, boarded over from outside. Way out of my reach anyhow. Why had they made the ceilings so darn high in these old buildings, even in the basement?

This room, like the other one, must have been lightproof. Or else He figured that nobody would notice a little light seeping around the plywood covering the window, not in the daylight. If it really was daylight. If He hadn't been lying to us, playing mind games with us.

No wonder I felt surreal, like I was swimming in a fever dream, half-crazy, not knowing whether it was day or night or what time it was. I wished I had my wristwatch.

I wished . . . so many things I wished. I wished I'd lived more and worried less. I wished I'd been able to have children. I wished I'd gotten to know my husband better. Sam was a truly good guy. I wished I'd told him more, trusted him more. What had seemed like “sparing him” at the time now looked like cowardice. If he found out things about me after I died, he was going to be terribly hurt.

Sam, I'm sorry. . . .

Once again I made myself stop thinking of him, because I had to keep my mind on staying alive, and keeping Juliet alive, one minute at a time. Sitting on the toilet, I made myself hurry up and use it, all the time listening for—I don't know. Voices cursing, or shouting, or screaming.

But I heard nothing.

I stood up, adjusted my clothing, flushed. Out of the stall, I turned on the water at the sink so it would sound like I was washing my hands. Actually, I was sticking my face under the spigot to gulp a hasty drink. And at the same time I was emptying the pockets of the coat Juliet had handed back to me: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a can of beer, some wads of Kleenex. Good.

Finished with my drink, I stepped back into the stall, took Juliet's PB&J first and used the beer can to ram it down the toilet, then followed up with the aforementioned can and the wads of Kleenex. Plugging things, such as the van's tailpipe, seemed to be my new forte. Adding a generous handful of toilet paper, I plugged that toilet very quickly and, I hoped, very well.

“What the hell is taking you so long?” demanded a harsh voice outside the door.

Good. Good, He was right there, not back in that horrible room, not—not doing anything to Juliet.

I called, “Coming.”

“Get your filthy ass moving.”

I tucked the ends of the wet TP out of sight in the bowels of the toilet, then stood up and took one more look. Nothing showed. Good job. I didn't want this toilet to look like a mess. I wanted Juliet to use it.

The knife-edged voice outside the door shouted, “
Move
, bitch, or I'm coming in!”

There wasn't time to mess up the other stall.

But what if Juliet used the wrong toilet?

I left my coat draped over the stall door of the one I'd tampered with. I felt sure Juliet would notice. She would head for that stall to get the coat back. But whether she would sense a signal, I had no way of knowing.

Turning off the sink faucet, drying my hands on my skirt for lack of a better option, I reached the door just as it banged open and, knife raised, the abductor scowled in at me.

I let my gaze slide right over His glare to focus on Juliet instead.

“Next,” I told her, looking her intently in the face, trying to tell her without words,
Use the stall with the coat.

He closed the door behind her and bolted it, all the time keeping His knife at the ready and His eyes stonily on me. I could see Him all too well now that electric light poured out over top of the bathroom door, through the transom.

“What took you so long in there?” He demanded.

“It takes women longer,” I informed Him in teacherly tones, “especially after we get to a certain age.” Mentally I prayed,
Juliet, the one with the coat, and hurry.

“Bullshit. You were up to something. I can see it in your ugly face.” He balanced His knife on its thick black handle in the palm of His hand. There it stood with its blade up like a silver flame of hell. Even in my worst paranoia—and I'd been entertaining a morbid phobia of knives for a long time—even in my worst nightmares, I never would have imagined there were so many ways to scare a person with a knife. This man and His dear Pandora had threatened me a dozen times a dozen different ways and each one intimidated me more. Or maybe it was His stony-flat crazy glare, or the way He lowered His head like a stallion closing in on a filly. I started to sweat.

He said, “I want to know what you—”

I heard the watery whoosh of a toilet flushing, and then Juliet shrieked. And bless her, she flushed it again, and kept screaming hysterically. “Let me out! It's going everywhere. It's going to get on me. Let me
out
!” I heard her throw herself against the inside of the door, pounding with her fists, so frenzied she scared me, and I had been expecting something of the sort.

“What the—” Our captor lunged for the bolt.

With His back to me.

He flung open the door. With my coat clutched around her, Juliet darted out of the bathroom like a cat spritzed by a sprinkler.

And as He peered in there to see what the problem was, I shoved Him from behind as hard as I could.

* * *

Sitting on a cold folding metal chair in the bulky cop's cubicle, Sam informed him that Appletree was Dorrie's hometown. He couldn't believe the big, obnoxious jerk—what was his name? He couldn't believe Walker hadn't known. Only then did Sam realize that probably the Fulcrum police hadn't informed the FBI of the significance of Appletree either, or hadn't known themselves, and he wished somebody had taught him how to swear.

Instead, he answered too many questions he'd already been asked before. Additionally, he gave a description of the missing flashlight. The craggy old cop, who apparently functioned as a gofer, brought coffee. Sam drank his. Yeah, the brew tasted not quite as gruesome when loaded with cream and sugar, but it didn't cut through his fatigue as much as he'd hoped. He still felt as if he were trying to conduct business underwater.

He told the Walker cop—one of those people too legendary in their own mind to use a first name—“I want to see where you found Dorrie's car.”

“This isn't Fulcrum, Mr. White. The Appletree police department consists pretty much of me, myself, and I, and now the FBI is going to be all over me like flies on a rump roast—”

“I'm not asking you to take me.” Sam tried to keep his voice under control. “I just—”

“What I'm saying is, I have to stay put waiting until the FBI gets here, and I can't spare
anyone
to take you.”

“So just tell me where it is and how I get there!”

“It's a crime scene. Restricted access. Sorry.”

A gravelly voice said, “I'll take him.” The venerable cop who had brought the coffee still stood in the doorway.

“Bert, now, think,” Walker complained before Sam could say thanks. “In what vehicle? I don't have a vehicle to spare any more than I have a man to spare.”

“You can spare me. I'm just deadweight left over from the previous administration. You can't wait till I retire. Anyway, I'm on my six-in-the-morning lunch break.” Bert turned to Sam with twinkling eyes that didn't look sleepy at all. “We'll have to go in your truck.”

“That's fine! Thank you, um . . .” Sam glanced at his name tag, wanting to thank the nice old guy by his proper name and title. But the plastic pseudo-metal tag was so worn and faded he couldn't read it. It had probably been on the job as long as this cop. Definitely it was ready to retire.

“No, it's not fine,” snapped Walker. “It isn't regulation.”

“Well, we're going anyway.”

Walker growled something worth ignoring. As Sam mentally counted to ten, the old officer escorted him out of the station.

Crossing the parking lot, Sam handed him the keys. “You drive.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. You don't want me driving. I've been up all night.”

As the old cop chauffeured him through Appletree, Sam leaned back and closed his burning eyes, feeling nerves firing and muscles jumping in his legs.

“I been trying to remember your wife,” said the old cop. “Her maiden name was Birch? I recall a Douglas Birch, used to run a used-car lot—”

Sam shook his head. “No relation.” Sam felt too tired to explain that Dorrie's family, like other members of their religious sect, had kept very much to themselves, even to the point of ordering their household goods wholesale and growing their own meat and vegetables.

“Not Catholic, huh?” Receiving no response, the old man added, “Was her mother a Miller? I seem to recall one of the Miller girls married some guy from out of state, might have been Birch—”

“No.” Sam's mind and mouth felt too sluggish to vouchsafe Dorrie's mother's maiden name, but he did manage to open his eyes. “Thank you.”

The old man gave him a puzzled glance. “Thank me for what?”

The reason seemed obvious to Sam at the time. “For trying to remember her.”

The old cop shrugged. “I got a good memory for people. It bothers me that I can't place her.”

If Dorrie was dead, who was going to remember her?
Me. Three friends. And her parents. Barely.

Sam turned and stared out his window so the old man would not see his blinking eyes.

The car stopped in the roadway and Bert said, “Here's the FBI's so-called crime scene.”

Sam looked where Bert was pointing, out the driver's side window at the corner across the street. The “restricted area” was just an expanse of disintegrating concrete sidewalk cordoned off with yellow police tape—inconveniently for pedestrians, who had to walk in the street to get past. A couple of old men were doing just that, shuffling along the asphalt, eyeing the empty sidewalk. A massive, bored-looking woman in a police uniform stood guard with her back against the corner building, which still read
WILSON UMBRELLA REPAIR
in faded gold paint on the window. How long had it been since anybody repaired umbrellas?

“Car was right up on the sidewalk by the phone booth,” Bert said, rolling down his window and waving at a vehicle behind him to drive past.

Sam saw the pay phone, though he wouldn't have called that box on a post a booth. He saw a newspaper vending machine. He saw the old guys walking past. He saw the guard. None of this helped him.