Into the Storm (43 page)

Yeah, and who was he kidding? He was done all right—until the next time Sophia looked longingly in Deck’s direction. Shit.
Shit.

“I’ll do it,” Decker said. “I’ll ask her. To dinner. If that’s really what she wants.”

Dave took out his phone. “Great. Call her right now.”

“We’re in a dead zone.”

“Not for the next few minutes,” Dave told him. He dialed Sophia’s number. Held the phone out to Decker. “Take it, it’s ringing.”

He took it, just as Sophia answered. Dave could hear her voice—his volume was up that loud. “Dave?”

“No, it’s, uh, Deck.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “Your timing is incredible!” She sounded excited.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “I was—” They must’ve both spoken at the same time, because he stopped. “I’m sorry—go ahead.”

“I was just about to call you.” Her voice crackled—the connection was tenuous at best, and Dave slowed down, afraid he was moving out of range. “We got a blip from Gillman’s missing jacket on the computer, and you’re the closest team.”

Jenk was on the verge of going bullshit.

He’d handed over the driving to Gillman, so he could double-check the map, but there was no doubt about it.

Lindsey, at the motel, was the closest operative to the location of the blip that was being picked up by the computer. The blip that was Gillman’s jacket that Tracy had taken from the cabin. The blip that was Tracy and/or a vicious and dangerous serial killer named Richard Eulie.

He dialed Lindsey’s cell again.

She picked up—thank you, Jesus—and he didn’t wait for her to say more than hello. “Please tell me you’re waiting for backup.”

“I’m meeting Dave and Decker there,” she told him.

“And you’ll wait for them, if you get there first, right?” This connection sucked. The wind wasn’t helping.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Believe me, I’m not crazy.”

And yet she was alone in a vehicle, probably his POS rental car, without chains on the tires, rushing through a blizzard. Not crazy? No comment. In fact, Jenk clenched his teeth over any recriminations that might inadvertently pop out of his mouth. He wouldn’t like it if she questioned his ability to handle a dangerous situation. She was an experienced, skilled operative—it had to go both ways.

Still, it was safe to say that, as far as their relationship went, this aspect of it was far less fun than having sex. In fact, it was going to take a lot of sex to make up for this.

Lindsey corrected herself. “I’m not too crazy.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Jenk said.

“I thought Navy SEALs weren’t afraid of anything,” she teased.

“Seriously, Linds, wait for backup, okay?”

“I said that I would.”

“We’re on our way, too,” Jenk reported. “We’re probably thirty minutes behind Deck and Dave.”

“That’s good to know. Hey, I’m getting a beep. Hang on.”

He hung. For longer than he’d hoped. He kept checking his phone to make sure he hadn’t lost the connection. But then she was back.

“You’re about to get a phone call,” she told him, and sure enough, Lopez’s phone rang.

“What’s going on?”

“Sophia just got a call from the police,” Lindsey informed him. “Someone saw Tracy on the night she disappeared with a man known as Todd Nortman. He’s something of an eccentric—no one really knows him or trusts him. Apparently he gives food away, which makes everyone leery. He’s too generous—small-town mentalities boggle my mind. Still, he fits our profile. He’s lived—with a mother no one’s ever seen—outside of town for two and a half years.”

“You don’t think he’s our man,” Jenk could hear her doubt.

“It just seems so obvious—the town freak’s a killer? But everyone else likes him for this. The police chief sent a patrol car to his house—and, get this: Tracy’s other mitten was spotted through the window of Nortman’s car.” She exhaled her exasperation. “It just seems so careless. But they’re getting a search warrant, so we’re diverting everyone in the immediate area—your team included—to his property. They want his house surrounded before they knock on his door.”

“Nortman’s property is not the same location as our computer blip,” Jenk clarified as, sure enough, Gillman carefully turned their SUV around.

“Correct,” Lindsey told him. “But it’s within ten miles. I keep telling myself that the blip is just the jacket. Tracy may have taken it off hours ago. God, it’s hard to see. You know what this is like? With the snow reflecting off my headlights? It’s like making the jump into warp speed from the
Millennium Falcon.
”

“Great,” Jenk said. “Next you’re going to say,
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
”

“Yeah, well, I do. I’m going to continue to investigate the blip. With Decker and Dave,” she added, a smile in her voice.

“Good,” he said.

“Do me a favor,” Lindsey said. “When you get over to Nortman’s, and you take a look at him…? Give me a call and let me know if you think he fits Tracy’s
hot guy
description, okay?”

“I don’t know if I’m qualified,” Jenk told her. “But I’ll do my best.”

Beth dreamed of the days when he’d first brought her down into his basement hell. She dreamed of Number Four, of the screaming that had gone on and on and on. Screaming, and crying. Unholy noises. Sounds that a wounded animal might make.

She dreamed of the horrific thing that he’d carried down the stairs, with its fingerless hands and empty eye sockets. It seemed impossible that it could still be alive, with its hair gone and part of its skull exposed, but it was. It moved.
She
moved.

And then she spoke, her words impossibly clear from behind that sutured-shut mouth: “Time for your pill.”

Beth awoke with a start. It wasn’t Number Four who’d spoken to her. It was
him.

He carried a tray with a plastic bowl and spoon. One of the antibiotic pills sat beside a plastic cup of water. He’d somehow figured out which drug Tracy had given to Beth, even though she’d tried to hide it. Of course he had. He always knew everything.

“Chicken soup,” he told her. He must’ve gotten it when he went out. She could picture him in a grocery store, pushing his cart down an aisle, waiting patiently for an elderly lady to select her favorite brand of oatmeal. Lord, he’d been in a grocery store, and no one had known that he was the devil.

The screams from her dream continued—they weren’t Number Four’s. They were Tracy’s. Number Twenty-One’s. She was still alive.

The wind was howling, making the house creak and shiver, but not loud enough to mask the sounds from the basement.

The chicken soup smelled unbelievably good. It would be the first hot food she’d had in…She couldn’t remember how long.

“Thank you so much,” she told him, because she had to do this right. She had to be polite, even though she wanted nothing more than to kill him with that plastic spoon. “Will you sit with me for a while?”

She couldn’t let him bring Tracy back into the kitchen. God knows what he’d done to her already, although from the sound of her screams she still had her tongue.

It was hard to eat the soup with him watching her with those awful eyes, with Tracy crying now. But she did it. And she kept it down. Took the pill. “I’m feeling much better,” she lied.

“You should rest,” he said, standing up and taking the tray from her lap.

“Wait,” she said. “Please.”

He turned back to her.

“You’ve been so kind.” She choked the words out, fighting the bile that was rising in her throat. “I’m asking for one more kindness. Let me fight Number Twenty-One. Let me finish her off.”

He didn’t say a thing. He just turned, taking the tray into the kitchen.

“Please,” Beth called after him. “I’m begging you. I’ll do it your way. With your knife, if you want me to.”

It took him a few minutes, but he finally came back. He was wearing the plaid hunter’s jacket he always wore when she fought, and her relief was mixed with sorrow.

He’d brought her a plastic cup, too. Handed it to her. “Drink.”

It was ginger ale. She obeyed him. Gave him back the empty cup. He tucked it under his arm because he was holding both his deadly little gun and the keys that would unlock her chains.

He tossed her the keys.

Deck hadn’t asked her.

Dave glanced at him as he drove through the storm. According to the map, the road ahead of them was straight for the next few miles, so he picked up speed even though visibility was next to nothing.

Deck being Deck, he knew what Dave was thinking. “I know,” he said. “I’m a coward.”

“It wasn’t exactly the right time,” Dave pointed out. And it wasn’t, with the news about both the signal from Gillman’s jacket and the search warrant for this Nortman guy’s house. It was, as always, disappointing to be sent away from the action, but Lindsey was alone out here, and the danger wasn’t just from a serial killer. These roads were treacherous.

“It’ll never be the right time,” Deck admitted. “Because I just don’t know how to—”

“Hello, Sophia?” Dave interrupted him. “It’s me, Deck, the idiot. I was hoping you and I could have dinner sometime soon. How does the first Friday after we get back to California sound?” He looked at Decker. “Do you need me to repeat that?”

Deck shook his head. Muscles jumping in his jaw, as if he were preparing to face a gang of murderous ninjas, he dialed his phone.

He was actually doing it, actually calling. Dave had this sudden urge to swerve off the road, to knock the phone from his hands, to rewind the past few days.

To let Decker and Sophia continue to drift apart.

Sophia would get over Deck eventually, wouldn’t she? And when she did, Dave would be there.

Deck held the phone to his ear, clearing his throat as he waited for her to pick up.

But then his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, looking through both the frosted windshield and the snow. “Dave!”

Oh, shit. An enormous tree was down in front of them, completely blocking the road, and all his brakes did was lock the tires—they were worse than useless.

“Hang on!”

They were skidding sideways now, Deck’s side of the truck heading directly for…

The side window shattered right before metal crunched. Dave saw Deck’s phone sail into the air.

But then he saw nothing as the air bag punched him right in the face.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

L
indsey got there first.

The house, looming through the swirling snow, was pure Stephen King—one of those Victorian three-storied monsters that cost a fortune to maintain, let alone heat in the winter. There were quite a few of them in this area, built as summer homes, no doubt at the turn of the century when business at the old hunting lodge had been thriving.

Like most that Lindsey had driven past, this one, too, was in a shabby state of disrepair. Peeling paint, broken gutters, missing slates on the roof, sagging porch.

Big windows with rotting frames, like vacant, lifeless eyes. A center door like a mouth open in a silent scream.

Yeah, Lindsey couldn’t have found a creepier-looking house if she’d gone to the local real estate office and asked to see something in classic Batesian psychopath.

There was an outbuilding—a barn from the looks of it—by the road. Lindsey had cut her headlights long before she’d pulled up alongside of it and now lurked there in the swirling snow and gloom.

The barn probably wasn’t a garage, since there was a car parked out in front of the house—a little beat-up Nissan, half-buried in snow, with nary a nine in the plate number.

On the drive over, Lindsey had gotten some information from the police, via Sophia, about the home’s owner—one Peter Thornton. He’d inherited the house from an elderly uncle, seven years ago. That didn’t fit their profile for Richard Eulie, their suspected killer. But…apparently, Peter’s brother, Dick—Dick, Richard?—had moved in with him…wait for it…three years ago.

And that did fit.

Especially since, after the brother showed up, Peter conveniently retired to Florida, never to be seen again.

He was, perhaps in truth, stashed in the attic.

His mummified body would be a special feature when it came time to resell the house—for that ever-growing number of serial killers in the real estate market.

Lindsey dialed Dave’s cell, but got bumped right to voice mail. This house was right on the edge of a dead zone. The fact that she couldn’t reach them hopefully meant that Dave and Decker were nearby. Any second now, they’d appear. She squinted out the car’s rear window at the road behind her.

Any second now…

But they didn’t come. And they still didn’t come. She finally called Sophia, and actually got through. “Any news from Nortman’s?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Have you heard from Decker or Dave?”

“They’re not there yet?” Sophia asked, concern in her voice. “Deck just called in, a few minutes ago, but…It was weird—as if the connection was there, but no one was on the other end. I tried calling back, but I couldn’t get through. I’m going to try again after I’m off with you.”

Their own connection was dreadful. “The wind out here is pretty intense,” Lindsey told her. “It’s possible one of the towers came down.”

“Tess says the wind alone can affect the signal,” Sophia reported. “Even if the towers stand.”

Wonderful. “The roads are awful, too,” Lindsey said. “It took me three times longer than I thought it would to get here.” She described the house to Sophia.

“I’ve dug up some more info on Dick Thornton,” Sophia in turn told her. “Nobody in town knows him very well—he really keeps to himself. He shops in the grocery store, but never stops to talk. Apparently, he disappears, sometimes for weeks at a time—speculation is he travels for business. But, other than the extended trips, he seems to be retired—putters around his yard, working on his car…Some people think he made a fortune from some Internet business, others think he inherited money, but they all agree that he doesn’t live as if he’s rich. Stella told me Rob was hoping to get some work, fixing up the house, but Thornton hasn’t done any renovations at all—other than to put in a security system, which, frankly, everyone thinks is weird. To quote Stella,
Who needs a security system out here? Most folks don’t even lock their doors.
”

Unless the system wasn’t to keep people from getting in, but rather from getting
out.
Creepier and creepier.

There didn’t seem to be any lights on in the house, although it was so big, the kitchen could be in the back, lights blazing, oven on. Dick Thornton could be baking Christmas cookies, getting ready to hunker down for an evening of watching
Rudolph
and
The Grinch.

“Will you do me a favor and try calling Dave and Deck again?” Lindsey asked. Or he could be getting ready to do embroidery on Tracy’s face. “Maybe you’ll get through on Dave’s phone. I just want to get an estimate of when they’ll be here. This place is
freaking
weird. My spidey senses are tingling.”

“Do not approach that house,” Sophia ordered. “I’ll call you right back.”

Izzy wasn’t armed.

It wasn’t that the senior chief didn’t trust him. Well, okay, it
was
that the senior chief didn’t trust him, considering that after this was said and done, with Tracy safely home, Izzy was going to take an extended trip to Punishmentland.

The senior had provided weapons for all the other SEALs in the SUV. And had given specific instructions to Gillman to keep them out of Izzy’s disobedient hands.

Still, Izzy was a body, and he was here with his boyz, and about five of the local police officers of varying shapes, sizes, and probably skill levels, considering that the guy with the beer gut was also unarmed. Although there was one little redheaded waif who looked about fourteen, who got to carry. No doubt she’d earned her Girl Scout firearms badge.

With the stealth of a herd of goats, they moved into place outside of Todd Nortman’s little house in the big woods.

And it was a little house. It was the New England equivalent of a shotgun shack. Two rooms, tops. Nortman’s ancient car, parked in front, was almost larger.

The car had a nine in the plate, and Tracy’s mitten on the floor of the front seat.

Jesus Lord of heaven and earth, please let them find her here, unharmed.

The local police were in charge of this takedown, a uniformed officer named Morris waiting until he got the signal from Lopez that he and Gillman were positioned outside the back door.

The delay—what the hell was taking them so long?—made Izzy want to scream in frustration.

Waddling through the deep snow, clearly challenged by the weight of his bulletproof vest, Morris finally knocked on Nortman’s door.

It opened immediately, revealing a little, wizened turtle-looking man, with an underbite, a nonexistent chin, and a bald head that he attempted to hide with a comb-over.

“Officer Morris,” Nortman said, genuinely pleased to see him. “What a surprise. Bless your heart for coming all the way out in this storm to check up on Mother and me! Won’t you come inside?”

Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.

If this was their killer, Izzy was his own grandmother.

Tracy didn’t hear the door open because she was crying.

She did, however, see the light streaming down the flight of rough cellar stairs.

She also got a look around, which would have made her cry even harder, except for the fact that she’d vowed never again to let him see just how frightened she was. If she was going to scream, it was going to be for help.

She was chained to a wall, just as she’d thought, in a basement, just as she’d thought.

What she hadn’t imagined were the bloodstains on the rough concrete floor. The pile of—oh dear God—human fingers, some of them recently severed, most of them little more than bones.

How many women had he brought down here to kill? All those eyelids, all those eyes?

But it wasn’t him coming down the stairs, it was Beth. She leaned heavily on the railing, taking one step at a time.

Hope bloomed, until Tracy saw that he was right behind her, the light gleaming off the barrel of his gun.

As Lindsey got out of the rental car, her cell phone rang.

It was Jenk, as if he’d telepathically known that—after waiting for Decker and Dave for what seemed like forever—she’d finally decided to investigate the contents of that barn.

She got back in the car, restarted the engine and the heater. “Hello?” Just that two-second exposure to the elements had chilled her to the bone.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Sitting in the car, outside this creepy-ass house, still waiting for Deck and Dave,” she was able to tell him honestly.

“I’m pretty sure Nortman’s not our man,” Jenk informed her. “He’s cooperating completely—he’s willing to help in any way he can—fingerprinting, DNA tests. We’re taking him up on that, although it’ll be a while before we get the results.”

“What does he look like?” Lindsey asked.

“Well, unless Tracy has a secret thing for Don Knotts…Hang on,” Jenk said. “I’m going to send you a picture. If I lose you, I’ll call you right back.”

And there it was, right on the screen of Lindsey’s phone. A photo of Todd Nortman. Wide, bulgy eyes and a comb-over and…yeah. Even tanked on tequila, Tracy would never have described Todd Nortman as a hot guy.

“He says he picked up Tracy on the night of the exercise,” Jenk told her, “on the road behind the cabin. She was in his car for well over an hour, helping him deliver food baskets to what he calls neighbors in need. Although, if you could see this guy’s house, you’d wonder why he’s not at the top of his own list. Anyway, he says he dropped Tracy at the pharmacy—it’s also a bus station—because he had more deliveries to make, and going to the Motel-A-Rama would’ve taken him too far out of his way. His mother—she’s real, she’s about a hundred and fifty years old. Apparently she would’ve worried if he was gone that long. He said there was one other car in the parking lot at the store—a dark-colored Impala that he didn’t recognize. And this is a guy who knows everyone in town.”

“Have you relayed this information to Sophia?”

“Affirmative,” Jenk said. “I’m already on my way to you, with Gillman, Lopez, and Zanella. She told me to tell you that Decker and Dave have fallen off the map. She needs you to backtrack, to try to find them. Got your map?”

“I do.” Lindsey picked it up, squinting at it in the dim afternoon light. She was far enough from the house not to be seen from the windows, but that would change if she put on the overhead light. She marked the map as Jenk rattled off a series of roads—the route Dave and Deck had been taking to reach her.

“While you’re waiting for us, head back that way. See if maybe they went off the road.”

Lindsey couldn’t not say it. “If we go inside this house—when you get here—and Tracy’s there and we’re too late…” God. “The idea of turning around, of leaving her in there…”

“You’ll be back,” Jenk said. “Think of it as getting in there sooner. If you can find Deck and Dave…”

And if she didn’t? “Just hurry,” she told him.

Tracy—Number Twenty-One—stood up, chin defiantly high, chains clanking.

He hadn’t hurt her.

Relief made Beth stumble, and he caught her arm, barrel of his gun jammed into her spine.

Only, now what? She’d come down here, thinking she’d find Tracy already tortured, already half-dead. Her intention had been to dispense mercy. To end her suffering.

Instead Beth locked eyes with her, remembering the words she’d mouthed behind his back.
Two against one.

Lord, she was weak and dizzy. It was hard to stand, let alone think. And yet she hated him touching her. She pulled her arm away, taking the rest of the stairs on her own, venturing out into the dimly lit basement.

She cradled her injured arm, using it as an excuse to bring her hands up against her chest, hidden from him. She held up two fingers. And then one. Please Jesus, let Tracy understand.

This was where he’d throw Tracy the keys to her shackles—except he didn’t.

Instead, he threw a knife. A switchblade. It clattered on the concrete at Beth’s feet, opening to reveal a long, deadly blade.

She turned to look at him, at the gun he still held on her. She could hear Tracy’s fear in the sound of her breathing—rapid now.

“Finish her,” he ordered.

“She’s chained,” Beth protested.

“You’re weak,” he said. “Just finish her.” He paused. “Or leave her for me.”

The sound of persistent ringing roused him. His cell phone.

Wow, it was cold—how long had he been out? The air bag had bent his glasses.

Dave deflated it and—Jesus.

The stump of a tree branch, its end pointed and jagged as if Mother Nature had fashioned a giant spear, had pierced the side window, pinning Decker to his seat.

Calling it a stump was probably misleading, since it was three feet long, with a diameter of at least twelve inches where it met the trunk of the fallen tree.

Dave reached both for his phone and for Decker’s throat—to check for a pulse—and discovered that his right wrist was broken.

Holy Mother, it hurt.

The fact that Decker didn’t move wasn’t a good sign, since Dave had just shouted in his ear.

He cradled his wrist as he answered the phone—it was Sophia, of course—tucking it between his shoulder and right ear, as he reached across himself with his other hand, praying that he’d find Deck still alive.

“Dave! Where have you been?”

A pulse. Thank God. But it felt weak. How long had they been sitting here, with the wind and snow blowing through that broken window? Decker had snow on his right eyebrow and ear, his shoulder and…

The stump of the branch had smaller branches attached to it, and one of them had stabbed Decker in the side. Right through his jacket and his shirt. It had broken off, so he wasn’t still attached to the tree, but…

And now Dave was thankful for that broken window and the cold that had surely stanched the flow of Deck’s blood. As it was, he’d lost a lot, soaking his clothes and pooling on the floor at his feet.

“We’ve had an accident,” Dave told Sophia, as he tried to get a better look at Deck’s injuries. “A tree came down—it’s blocking the road.” He gave her their location—on Burlington Road, about a half mile from the intersection of Mt. Trent.