Edge of Midnight (29 page)

Hands still tied, Cary stumbled along on numb feet, her balance precarious. Grassy fields stretched away on both sides. Across a hill, she could see another cabin. Too far to hear a cry for help, even if someone were there.

He staggered as the wind hit him, then leaned into it. She planted her feet. He shook her until her head wobbled, sparks of pain sizzled behind her eyes. Arm around her shoulders, he propelled her through dead leaves and rotted vegetation. A piercing cry, like a woman screaming, rode on the wind. She froze.

“Bobcat,” he said. “Just like the sounds in my dreams.”

The cabin's two windows faced a rutted dirt driveway, a tattered screen dangled from one, a pane was missing from the other. He kicked open the door. The small room was grungy, walls of unfinished pine, an unscreened fireplace, sagging, lumpy, gray couch with two grimy pillows, easychair in the same dilapidated condition. Musty smell.

He hauled her to the chair and tossed her in. “Don't move or I'll start hacking off fingers.” Breathing heavily, he backed to the couch, leaned the rifle against the arm.

Wind howled in the chimney and rattled the windows, sweeping in through the missing pane. He took a lantern from the mantle, lit the wick, and replaced the glass globe. The soft glow showed marks in the dust like the floor had been recently swept.

“Kelby is dead,” she mumbled through dry, cracked lips.

He took out a knife. Air got trapped in her lungs. Heartbeat pulsed in her ears. She was going to die. Not at some distant future. Now. She'd be tortured and killed.

Wind slammed the door open. Startled, he turned to look. Screaming like the bobcat, she jumped up and swept the lantern to the floor. Glass shattered, oil ignited, and fire spread. She gave Joe a shove that sent him sprawling and darted for the door. In an instant, he was after her. She stumbled onto the porch, down the rickety stairs, and hit the driveway running. She fell against the car, rebounded, and kept going.

Running, stumbling, falling, she rolled downhill. She struggled to her knees and he snatched her arm and yanked her to her feet. His precarious balance brought him crashing into her. She tumbled sideways and he fell over her. Scrambling, he got to his feet, raised a hammer and slammed it down. She rolled. The hammer caught her hip. Pain streaked along her leg. His hand closed around the back of her neck and he raised the hammer again.

*   *   *

Wind hit the cruiser broadside. Ida fought the wheel as she fumbled with the mike. “Just got word,” Hazel said. “All of Fredericks County has been placed under a tornado warning until midnight.”

“Okay,” Ida said, not sure what she was supposed to say.

“This should be a bad one. Winds over two hundred miles an hour. You need to take a swing through the northeast section of town and make sure people are aware.”

“Right.” Ida dredged her mind for the procedure. First warn the citizens. Anybody in the elements should be taken to shelters.

She wished she had rain gear. When she came on this afternoon, it was a hundred and two degrees. Who needed a raincoat? Flashers blinking, she rolled.

Mike in hand, she spoke slowly: “This is the Hampstead Police. A tornado warning has been declared for Fredericks County. Repeat, a tornado warning has been declared for all of Fredericks County. All citizens are advised to take shelter immediately. Enter a concrete-reinforced building, or go below ground. Stay away from windows and doors. Repeat. A tornado warning has been…”

She didn't see a single soul as she cruised the area. Anybody who lived here would know better than she what to do. The closest she'd ever come to a tornado was watching news clips taken by idiots who tracked them. Residents were all probably inside finding candles, checking food supplies, and rounding up kids. Not that she wanted anything to happen, but she must admit, she felt a thrill that raised her pulse.

The sky was black. The wind blew dust and debris, plants, small tree limbs and fast-food wrappers across the street. A tornado could be right next to her and it was so dark she wouldn't see it. She'd been told they sounded like freight trains. How close before they could be heard?

The windows of the Coffee Cup were steamy bright through the gloom. She angled into a parking slot and got out of the squad car. Wind, howling in fury, tore at her pants legs, and damn near blew her into the street as she fought against it. The air smelled of sulfur and dust. Grit and torn plant life peppered her face. Everybody looked up when she pushed through the door.

“We got a tornado coming,” she said. “Everybody should get home and find shelter. Weather bureau is saying we could have tornadoes reaching force three.” She didn't know what that meant, exactly, but she knew it was potential disaster. She'd never heard Hazel have that tight sound to her voice. If unflappable Hazel was concerned, it was serious.

Ty Baldini, reporter for the local paper, looked up from the counter. “Get an identity on the woman in the silo?”

Ida could see his mind thinking headline:
WOMAN IN SILO
. Everyone in the place read it as though it hung in the air. Even killer tornadoes weren't as interesting as a homicide victim buried in grain.

One whiff of the odor, they'd have skedaddled.

“We're working on it.”

Ty snorted. “Sure sure. Blah-blah-blah.”

“I can only tell you we have new evidence.”

Ty shot to his feet. “What evidence?”

Oops. She should have kept her mouth shut. “Nothing I can talk about.”

He took a step toward her, and by God if it wasn't menacing. The jerk. She could break him in two. Not that she would. Mangling members of the press probably wasn't a good idea, since she really really wanted to keep this job.

“What would it be, if you could talk about it? Where's the chief? I haven't seen her around anywhere.”

“She's making progress, and when—”

“What kind of progress? The citizens of this town have the right—”

Without warning, Phyllis, who had been a waitress here for probably as long as the place existed, came from the kitchen. “Knock it off, Ty. She's trying to do her job.”

“But Phyllis, I'm just trying to—”

“Well, stop trying. She came in to tell us there's a tornado on the way. You all get yourselves out of here so I can get the windows shuttered and head for the basement. The lot of you, if you have any sense, had better do the same.”

“Right,” Ida said. Running procedure from the manual through her mind, she gave the group a stern look. “Go to the basement and get under something sturdy. Stay away from windows. Take water, food, flashlight, radio, and extra batteries. The warning is in effect until two
A.M
. Listen to your radio to learn if it extends longer.”

The handful of customers got up and trooped out. Ty gave her a dirty look as he went past. “The citizens have a right—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go.”

Phyllis crossed her arms. “Pack of idiots. Don't know enough to come in from a storm. Ty's a good kid. Except he takes this reporting stuff too seriously. I don't know if it means anything with the storm coming and all, but Kelby Oliver called earlier and ordered some hush puppies to pick up, then she never showed.”

Ida didn't say that Kelby, most likely, had killed an as yet unknown woman and hightailed it for parts unknown. “When did she call?”

“Around seven. Said she'd pick them up on her way to work. I'm just a little worried, you know? She's taken to stopping by and getting things Dr. Farley likes. She's never failed to pick them up.”

“I'll look into it. Maybe she's busy getting herself into shelter, which is what you should be doing.” Ida helped Phyllis put shutters over the windows, then got in the cruiser. As she was pulling away, her radio crackled. It was Hazel, with a report of an accident on Larsen Road, telling her to investigate. Ida hit the overheads, gave the siren a whoop, and went into a U-turn. Larsen Road. West. Right.

Wind buffeted the cruiser as she sped through town and bumped into a turn onto an unpaved. Might as well be midnight, she thought as she turned on the headlights and tried to identify landmarks that looked completely different in the dark. Just ahead, past a dip in the road, light glowed. At the top of the rise, she saw an SUV, headlights on, parked by the side of the road. She stopped behind it and got out. Wind hit her so hard she got pushed several steps. The driver of the SUV was the concerned citizen who had reported the accident. She thanked him for calling it in and told him to find shelter.

A car missed the turn, hit a parked car, rolled down the embankment, smashed through the barbwire fence, tearing out the fence post, and came to an abrupt stop, front end mashed up against a boulder in the middle of a grassy field. Two shacky cabins at the top of the slope two hundred yards apart, trees behind, trees along the right edge of the field. A man was dragging what appeared to be an unconscious woman toward the cabin on the right.

Ida yelled, “Don't move her!”

Switching on her flashlight, she made her way down the hard dirt of the embankment, sliding and nearly landing on her butt at the bottom. Staggering against the wind, she stepped over barbwire and tromped across uneven ground.

“Any closer and I'll kill her!”

She froze. “She's hurt. She needs medical attention.” Ida took a step.

Muzzle flash and the zing of a rifle shot. She switched off the flashlight so she wasn't such a clear target. Talk about dark. Headlights from the cruiser provided the only source of light. How badly was the woman hurt? Who was this creep? And what the hell did he think he was doing?

Wind howled so loud she couldn't hear anything else. Even as she struggled toward the trees on the right edge of the field, she was talking into her shoulder mike. She explained where she was and described the situation, requested backup and an ambulance.

“Help on the way,” Hazel said. “Wait for it.”

The cabin on the slope above had flickering light inside. A couple football fields across an empty pasture, the cabin she'd glimpsed earlier was lost in darkness. She considered running for it, but didn't know where the sniper was. Creeping up on her?

Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Shrieking wind made so much noise, she wouldn't hear him sneaking up until he stuck the rifle in her face. Maybe he'd gone for the cabin. Or slipped away. Simply left the woman and taken off. Slowly, she shuffled across the field, stumbling on the uneven ground, to the row of trees along the right.

Suddenly, with no warning, hail pounded down. She crossed her arms over her head. Lightning split the sky. Whoever lay on the ground was getting pelted with golf-ball-size hail. Where was the jerk with the gun? How long before backup got here? She held up her wrist to peer at her watch, but it was too dark to see her hand, let alone the hands of her watch.

Rain poured down in buckets. Wind whipped tree branches in a frenzy. Lightning crackled. Hail battered her from all sides. She had a stray thought that standing under a tree in a lightning storm was not a good idea. Probably also a bad place to be when the tornado roared through. Oh boy. An injured woman couldn't be left out in this deluge. Unlit flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, she started toward the middle of the field with a mental picture of where the woman should be.

Wind and hail wiped out all sounds. She curled her index finger around the trigger of her gun and held it straight down alongside her leg. Taking in a breath, she kept her eyes focused on the spot where the woman should be, alert for any hint of the man with the gun appearing through the rain.

The storm battered her. Tree branches moaned and lashed. The wind howled, hail beat down, rain drummed against the ground. Unless he yelled through a loudspeaker, she couldn't tell where he was or what he was doing. A denser shadow seemed to separate from the darkness below and flutter in the wind. Then the shadow melted again into the black night.
Wait! Was that him?

As loud as she could, hoping her voice would carry over the storm, she yelled, “Police! Drop your weapon!”

Lightning crackled, flooding the field like a stage. Then darkness. In the brief glimpse, she'd seen only an empty field. He wasn't anywhere. Nor was the woman.

In the dying echo of thunder, she heard another shot. “Police!” she shouted again. “Surrender your weapon!”

Desperately, she wished for better visibility. A solid curtain of rain fell. Lightning splintered the sky. For an instant, she thought she saw a face, white with pain and twisted with rage. The eyes were those of the mad, or the damned.
Great,
she thought.
Now I'm hallucinating.

She heard screaming, something unintelligible, coming from the deep rage, something dark and unreachable. He was coming toward her!

Wind penetrated her wet clothing. Icy rain blew against her face, blurring her vision. She blinked, saw nothing but a faint flow from the headlights of the cruiser. She raised her gun, held it ready. She waited, watching. Heard something.

So dark, so dark; if only she could see. A misstep could send her headlong into the mud. A shadow loomed out of the dark. Her finger curled around the trigger.

The shadow hurtled toward her.

 

37

Ida strained to see through the pounding rain. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

The apparition fell against her. She staggered back, dropped the flashlight, grappled with the weight clinging to her.

“… help…”

Lightning splintered the black sky. A shot boomed through the rumbling thunder.

“… kill me…”

A split second passed before Ida realized the weight clutching at her was the injured woman. Another shot was fired.

Gun in her right hand, left arm supporting the woman, Ida half-carried, half-dragged her over the field. Wind hit her with staggering force, pushing her at an angle. She fought to stay on her feet. The uneven ground, soggy and slick, tripped her repeatedly. She stumbled, nearly fell, and lost her grip on the woman she carried. Hail pelted her. Lightning zigzagged through the dark. Ida glimpsed the woman's face.
Kelby.