Gingerbread Man (17 page)

"I'm in my element, dear. In my element." He
rubbed his hands together in mock maniacal glee and got to his feet
again with effort. "Come, we still have to try out the fog machine
before dark."

***

IT WAS DUSK, and Vince now knew what Holly
meant by "alone." They were in a rowboat, bobbing serenely on the
far side of the lake. They'd taken turns rowing, and were near the
opposite shore. They both wore bright orange life vests. He'd
objected, and she'd insisted.

"I'm a good swimmer," had been his main
attempt at arguing.

"The water's about 45 degrees this time of
year. Mark Spitz isn't a good swimmer in that kind of cold.
Besides, it's the law. You don't want to go breaking the law, do
you?"

He'd put on the lifejacket. Was still wearing
it now, as they floated quietly in the long, narrow lake. A soft
but dense gray mist was rising from the water, even as the sky grew
darker. "I don't know how the hell we'll find our way back," he
muttered. "Did you bring a compass?"

She let him tease her, even smiled a little
in response. "Don't need one."

"You can tell by the stars where we are? What
are you, Davy Crockett?"

She shook her head. "Don't trust me,
O'Mally?"

He shrugged. "This
is
the longest of
the Finger Lakes, isn't it?"

"Yep, Cayuga's the longest. Over thirty-five
miles from the southern tip to the northern."

"Mm-hmm."

“There's a light on the end of the dock
that'll guide us right back in," she told him.

"It wasn't on when we left."

"It comes on at dusk. Watch." She pointed, he
presumed back toward the direction from which they'd come, although
he was already turned around and disoriented. They watched in
silence, and as the darkness grew thicker, the light came on.

He sighed audibly. "Okay. That's better." He
dipped the oars, and rowed them farther into the depths of the
lake.

It was quiet on the water. Soothing somehow.
He hadn't seen the lake this calm since he'd come out here. Every
time he'd looked out over the water, it had been broken and choppy.
Either spiderwebbed like cracked glass, or foaming at the mouth
with whitecaps. Now it was deep and dark, a well of secrets.

"This is as good a spot as any," she said at
length. He stopped rowing and the boat drifted on its own.

He pulled the oars in, leaned back in his
seat. “This was a good idea. It's nice out here. You look...
better."

"I've always loved the lake. It relaxes me."
She drew a breath, sighed. "So I guess this is where I tell you
about Ivy."

"When you're ready," he said. He didn't want
to push her. He didn't want to do anything to cause this woman any
pain.

She smiled sadly. "I'm not ready. I'll never
be ready, Vince. But, the way I see it, I don't have much of a
choice here."

He nodded, watching her closely. She seemed
to need to prepare. First she opened the Thermos bottle he'd
brought along, and poured two tin cups full of cocoa. She handed
one to him, balanced hers on the rowboat's seat, while she screwed
the cap back on. Then she set the jug down, picked the cup up, took
a deep breath. "I was born on Christmas, you know."

"No. I didn't know that."

She sipped the cocoa, nodded. "Three years
later, Ivy was born on my birthday. Mom named us for her favorite
carol. "The Holly and the Ivy."

"I get it. That's really cute."

She smiled just a little. "God, we used to
love Christmas. It was such an event in our family." Through the
darkness he could still see her eyes glow with the memories. "There
would be so many presents, we wouldn't be able to get from our
bedroom to the living room without unwrapping ourselves a path. Dad
used to say Santa was extra good to us, because Christmas was our
birthday. Used to say we were the only kids around who got birthday
presents from St. Nick."

He nodded, and he could almost picture those
times in his mind. Two little girls, their eyes sparkling. The
image made his chest hurt.

Then the sparkle in Holly's eyes turned to
wetness, and her voice went taut. "I loved her so much."

"I know." He reached across the distance
between his seat and hers, took her hand. He didn't know why he did
it. He just did. And she didn't pull it away.

"Mom had told us time and time again to walk
straight to school, and come straight home. I don't know why the
hell I got so cocky. I loved her. I didn't know what would
happen."

He nodded, but he didn't think she was seeing
him now. Her gaze was distant, or maybe focused inward. It was
almost completely dark now. The moon hadn't risen yet, but the
stars were beginning to wink to life in the sky, one by one. They
appeared and predictably, the first thing they seemed to do was
check themselves out in the lake, their mirror.

"There was this boy I liked. This boy... I
wanted to walk by his house on the way home. I don't even remember
his name—Johnny ... something—but I put him above my own baby
sister."

He jerked his gaze away from the glasslike
surface of the water. "No, you didn't. You had no idea you were
putting her at risk. If you had, you'd have made different choices
that day. You know you would."

She nodded, but her expression was vague. The
nod was more an affirmation that she had heard him, not that she
agreed. "I promised my mother I'd take care of her, Vince. And I
didn't do it. I didn't even come close."

He knew that feeling too well to offer an
objection to it. So he didn't. He just let her talk.

"This van came along. Very slowly pulled
alongside us." Her breathing got a little faster. Then a little
faster.

"And then he just... he jumped out and... he
grabbed her, and that was—"

"No, no. Wait, slow it down for me, Holly."
Vince faced her, clasped her other hand, and held both firmly
enough to get her attention. "Think, very slowly. Try to see every
detail you can in each moment of this thing before moving on to the
next. This van came along, you said. Stop there. Don't go forward,
don't think about what happened next. Just the van. Freeze-frame it
in your mind, can you do that?"

“I... I can try."

"What did it look like? What did you see when
you noticed it?"

"It was dark gray. Not like it had been
painted that color. More like it hadn't been painted at all."

"Primer colored?"

She nodded. "Yes. I remember darker patches.
I thought it was spotted then, but it must have been where rust had
been sanded off, and something applied to it under the primer."

"That's good. That's very good. Keep going.
What about the windows? Was there anything... ?"

She frowned. "I... can't be sure."

"What?"

"Well... they might have been kind of curved
outward. Just a little."

"Like in a Volkswagon van?" he asked, all but
holding his breath.

"I remember that its shape reminded me of the
Mystery Machine."

Vince went blank, shaking his head, searching
his mind. “I don't—"

"Scooby Doo,"
she said. "The cartoon?
That was the van they drove. All this one needed was pink paint and
psychedelic flowers and it would have fit." She drew her focus back
to the present and stared at him. "My God, that's more than I've
ever remembered before."

"Maybe that's because you're ready to
remember it now."

Her eyes lowered. "Or maybe it's because of
you."

A little alarm bell went off in his mind. He
didn't want her to think that way, that he was the one to fix
things for her. That he could be some kind of hero. That was the
last thing he wanted. "I've got nothing to do with it, Red. This is
all you. Go on now. What happened next?"

She breathed long and deeply. Her shoulders
rose and fell with it. She lifted her chin. "The van stopped. A man
got out. He—he—he—"

"No, no. Slow down. Freeze-frame." He held
her upper arms, squeezed to remind her he was there. "Breathe slow,
and just take that one image. The man got out."

She took a deep breath, then another, then
nodded twice, firmly. "He was very tall. Of course, all grown-ups
seemed very tall to me then. He ... wore jeans, a blue shirt. A
denim jacket. His belly hung over the top of the jeans, I
remembered that much in therapy. He wore a ski mask, so all I could
see of his face were his eyes. I know he was Caucasian."

"Blue eyes, you said. Anything else? Unusual
shape? Any scarring? What about his lashes or brows, was there
anything there?"

"Blue eyes. Icy blue." She shook her head.
"Other than that, I only remember being terrified. He grabbed us
both. Ivy with one hand, me with the other."

"Bare-handed or was he wearing gloves?"

She lifted her head slowly. She wasn't aware,
Vince thought, of rubbing her right arm above the elbow. "Gloves,"
she whispered. "He hurt my arm, he held on so tight. I screamed.
Ivy did, too. I twisted and he lost his grip on me. I fell on the
sidewalk. He gave me this look. This
look.
And Ivy—she was
screaming and reaching for me. Her eyes were so huge and so blue.
And she was so afraid. He just shoved her into the van and crammed
himself in after her. And then they were gone."

Tears were rolling down both her cheeks now.
Her body shivering gently.

He wanted to move onto the seat beside her,
pull her snugly against him. He was, in fact, actively and
determinedly resisting the urge to do so.

"Are you all right?" he asked instead.

She sniffed, nodded. "Mom fell apart. Dad
retreated into himself. He tried so hard to be strong for us, you
know. He didn't let any of it out, not at all. I think that had a
lot to do with the cancer. It was only a couple of years before the
symptoms set in, and one more before the diagnosis."

"And what about you, Holly? What happened to
you?"

She lifted her big eyes to his. He felt a
tremor in his belly. "I never veered from my route again. Not from
school to home. Not from my locker to my classroom. Not from my bed
to my shower to my closet. Everything in my life suddenly had to be
regimented. I developed specific patterns for everything I did, and
I couldn't function if I missed a single step. The therapists
called it O.C.D."

He nodded. "Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder."

"Yeah. And then of course there were the
night terrors. The panic attacks. The phobias. I was terrified of
everything from heights to being outdoors to strangers to going to
school. Mom finally had to pull me out, hire tutors."

"But you got better."

She looked at him. "I got to the point where
I could function. With extreme effort. I wasn't a hell of a lot
better. I was in therapy and on several medications for a long,
long time."

"Until when?"

She drew a breath, sighed. "Hubey Welles
confessed and went to prison. My father died the day after his
sentencing. He held on all that time—by sheer will, I think. Mom
put the house on the market and started looking for a place out
here. Uncle Marty and Aunt Jen helped. We never would have survived
that time without them. It took a while, but, once the house sold
and we closed on the new one, we came out here. We hadn't been back
here since before Ivy was taken. But back then, this town was our
haven. It was a place where only happy memories existed for us. And
I guess Mom thought, with Dad gone, and Ivy's case finally closed,
we might be able to heal out here. So we came."

The night wind lifted her hair, danced with
it. "And was she right?"

Holly nodded. "I started seeing Doc
Graycloud. He weaned me from my meds within the first year. Put me
on herbal supplements and teas, and after a while I didn't even
need those. Hell, up until just a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't had
a symptom. Then all of the sudden they started coming back."

"When I came to town."

"No," she said, tipping her head to one side.
"No, that's not exactly true. It started before you got here. I
don't know what triggered them."

"That's something to think about. Something
must have triggered them, Holly. If we can pinpoint what it was, we
might have a clue. Try to think back. What was the first symptom to
return?"

She hesitated for a moment. "I started
dreaming about Ivy."

"And when was the first dream?"

She shook her head. "I made a note of it in
my journal. I can look it up when I get home tonight."

"Do that," he said. "And while you're at it,
see if you can recall anything else unusual that happened within a
day or two of that date. Anyone you talked to, saw, even in
passing, anything that happened that wasn't a part of your normal
daily routine."

"You really think that's going to help?"

"I think it's going to help."

"All right, then. But what about right
now?"

He frowned, a little trill of alarm sounding.
Because without realizing it his hands had moved down her arm to
her hands. Her hands had turned in his, and were clasping them now,
and he didn't like that. "What
about
right now?"

She lowered her eyes, then raised them again.
She looked at him squarely. "You're trying very hard not to let me
too close, aren't you?"

He averted his eyes. "I'm a cop, Holly. We're
trained not to get too close."

"And you already got too close to this entire
case, once," she added.

"I did, yeah."

She covered his hands with hers. "Do you have
any idea how much I need you right now?" she whispered. "How alone
I feel in this nightmare?"

He stared into her eyes. "That's what Sara
Prague said. Oh, not in so many words. But it was in her eyes. That
same pleading look I see in yours. You want me to promise you that
I'll make this right again. Just like I promised her. But I can't
get past the memory of having to face that woman—the mother—and
tell her my promise was a lie. That I'd found her kids, and that
they were dead."