Little Girls Lost (16 page)

He liked to play it out in his mind. It was his favorite leisure-time activity. The core of the problem for committing any crime is, how do you cover your tracks? In a modern, surveillance society, even the act of covering your tracks creates new tracks for the police to follow. If you succeed only partially in covering your tracks, you have helped the police to focus their attention. The average policeman, in Sundquist's estimation, was barely more intelligent than a cockroach, but the one quality they had in abundance was stubborn, dogged persistence. Give a cop one thread to follow and he'll catch you even faster than if you had done nothing at all.
 

That problem had occupied him through college and his first few years of graduate school. He turned it over like a puzzle, looking for the solution. Then one day it came to him. At his moment of illumination he was in a meeting with his dissertation supervisor, and had spent several interminable minutes pretending to listen to the man's inane prattle. All at once the solution to the puzzle burst on him like a starburst. Sundquist had been so delighted that he laughed, stood up, and left the professor's office without explanation. Let the moron bluster and protest; Warren had work to do.

The solution, in retrospect, had been in front of him the entire time. Take clues away from the cops and you help focus their limited intellects. Give them too many clues, though, and they'll be incapacitated.

That had been the key. The plan had unlocked his work. Absently, Sundquist unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out the polished teak box inside. He opened it and ran a finger lovingly over its contents. Inside were carefully-bound locks of hair from the girls who had been subjects in his study. Displayed in aggregate, this was Warren's work. In the end, his life and his purpose boiled down to these locks of hair that he had clipped from the heads of 32 young women in the prime of their lives, right in the moment before he killed them, right in the moment when he looked into their eyes and glimpsed, for the briefest of instances, the answer to the riddle of life.

The plan had defined his entire existence. It had also taken him places he didn't want to go. Sundquist didn't like disfiguring the bodies. It was dirty and unpleasant work, but in the end it was necessary. Mutilation confused the police, and that allowed him to continue his work.

Until now. Sundquist had been careless. He had come to rely too heavily on Tyrone, and that proved to be the one thread that allowed a cop as stupid as Sam to find his way to Sundquist's door. He should have disposed of Tyrone months ago. That would have been the clean and orderly way of enacting the plan.
 

Now a new plan was taking shape in his mind. There was some small risk, but he could see that it was the solution to everything. It would cut the thread. It would allow him to continue with his work.
 

It was perfect. Sundquist would make it perfect, because the plan required nothing less of him.

When she heard the footsteps coming closer, Pamela was ready. She had been waiting for hours—or maybe it was days? Something had changed up above.

Something had happened to disrupt the horrible routine of being locked up down here, in a cage, in the dark. Something was different now, and Pamela sensed instinctively that this meant one of two things: she was about to be set free, or she was about to die.

She was ready for either possibility. Pamela had wept and cried and prayed to see the sun and her family and friends again, but she knew she might die down here and a part of her had come to terms with that. Go free or die, she thought. The only thing she could not accept was the thought that her life in this dark, damp hole might continue.

She felt the pain in the palm of her hand and squeezed her fingers tighter, relishing the sensation. She had come across the shard of glass the day before—€”or maybe it was a week? It hadn't been there when she first woke up in the cage, she was sure of that. Someone must have inadvertently kicked it in with a booted foot while entering the cage to change her water or leave a hunk of the stale bread she'd been living on.
 

When Pamela first found it, her first thought was to use the sharp edges to open the veins in her wrists or throat, to bleed out and be done. It was a seductive thought, and she nearly sank into it. But then another thought intruded, sweeter still: before she died, she could make them hurt. She need not be the only one to bleed down here in the dark.

Now the shard of glass was wrapped tightly in her right hand. Pamela listened to the sound of footsteps approaching, and waited. She was very much afraid: of pain, of death, of slashing out with her weapon and missing her target. Tears stained her cheek and she gripped the glass tighter still. Not long now.

"You are awake."

It was the other one, not the man who usually came down here. Pamela had never thought to give them pretend names, they were simply the two voices in the dark. This one scared her more than the other. When he spoke to her, which was not often, she could hear no emotion in his voice. It was flat and cold, like the sounds a machine might make.

"I can hear your breathing. Don't pretend. You're awake and listening to me."

Pamela lay still. If she raised her head and responded to him, he might not come inside the cage. He might not come close enough for her to make him bleed.

"Since you've been here, you've probably wondered why it's you who's down here, and not some other girl. Do you want to know why I chose you?"

Pamela lay still and fought to control her breathing.
 

"It's not because you're special or important. You're neither of those things. I chose you because you were the most perfectly average and uninteresting person I had ever seen. Your stupid, unattractive parents rutted together and managed somehow to create a stupid, unattractive child. And I've always wondered, what does life mean to someone like you? Why should you care whether you lose a life that was never going to be worth caring about?"

Pamela lay silent and allowed the words to slip over her. She was beyond caring about his insults. All she cared about was whether she'd hear the sound of a key turning in the cage's lock.

"That's why you're here. That's why I brought all of them here. So I can take you to the edge and see what you see at the moment when you begin to fall into the pit. Until that moment, your entire life is a lie. For one instant you see a truth. That's the only thing of yours that I want, and once I've taken it from you, you'll be nothing at all."

Pamela's heart leapt. She could hear the turning of a key. The cage swung open.

"Time to fulfill your destiny."

Pamela struck, swinging her arm in a wide arc. The sliver of glass in her hand cut through the air and then thunked into something solid. She couldn't tell what she had hit—an arm, a leg, a torso—€”but she heard a grunt of pain and surprise.
 

She leapt to her feet. She knew that she had mere seconds, if that. Even in the dark, she had been down here long enough to know exactly where the door was. She burst through it and fled down the hallway, towards the stairs she had seen before.

She heard cursing behind her, the man's voice so furious as to be almost bestial. Fear bloomed in her chest and added speed to her shaky legs. Pamela reached the staircase and scrambled up it on all fours. She knew there would be a door at the top. She didn't know whether it would be locked. If it was locked, she would be dead soon. If it was unlocked, maybe she would live for a little longer.

There were feet on the steps behind her. She could hear the angry breathing of the man who was going to hurt her. Pamela burst against the door at the top of the stairs and flew through it, her shoulder bruised but her momentum carrying her forward into a dark room with a wooden floor.
 

Her eyes scanned desperately for an exit, a window or a door. The monster on her tail was not far behind. She flew down the hallway, dimly noticing rugs beneath her bare feet, and with a thrill saw the house's front door.

Now, for the first time, Pamela was truly afraid. Fear did not capture her until now, when escape seemed a possibility. Her heart hammered in her chest and her arms and legs tingled with anxiety as she hurried to the door. Would she be able to open it before the man was upon her? Would her hands fumbled on the knob, or would there be a lock that she'd be unable to open in time? She couldn't breathe. Her back twitched at the thought that a knife would plunge into her at any moment.

She was at the door. Her right hand went to the knob, her left hand turned a simple lock at the top. The lock slipped back, the knob turned, and then the door was open and Pamela was out into the night. She felt grass beneath her feet. She gasped in clear, cold air.

She heard her death hurrying up behind her, closer than before. Pamela tried to find enough breath to scream.

Sam first thought that a dog was loose and bearing down on him, angry that he'd invaded its territory. Instinctually he shifted into a defensive pose and drew his firearm.

Sam prided himself on how long it had been since he'd fired his weapon anywhere but on the firing range. He would shoot to save a life, though, even his own.

As his eyes adjusted, though, he realized that what he was seeing stood too far off the ground to be a dog. Instead, he was seeing a person, not running exactly, but stumbling in an awkward gait. And this person was being pursued by an adult male.

Sam's senses came to full alert all at once. He raised his weapon and took aim. "Freeze!" he shouted. "Police!"

At the sound of his voice both figures faltered, then the one out front—a young girl, Sam now realized—turned and scrambled toward him. He could hear her now, her breath ragged, and something that sounded like near-hysterical sobbing just beneath the panting. Meanwhile the man who had been chasing her turned and ran into the shadows.

Sam had a choice, to pursue or to protect, and that choice was easy. Keeping his weapon at the ready, he reached out a reassuring hand to the girl as she approached him.
 

"It's OK now," he murmured, keeping a sharp eye out to ensure that he was not making a promise he couldn't keep. "You're safe now. You're safe."

The hospital room was a war zone of conflicting priorities. Nurses and doctors, the protectors of life, stood in equal numbers to the heavily armed police officers who were there to protect against those that might take life.

Sam surveyed the scene and tried to shrug off his discomfort. Since he was a boy, he had hated the sights and smells of hospitals. He understood why it was important for the environment to be antiseptic, and he appreciated the professionalism of the hospital staff, but there was something so cold and clinical about it that seemed counter to the purpose of nurturing life.

Pamela Wilson was the center of attention. An IV dripped fluid into a vein, and her parents sat to her side. Her mother clung to her hand as if she never intended to let go. Her father was trying his best to look strong and stoic, but to Sam's eyes he mostly looked exhausted.

Sam's work here was mostly done. Pamela Wilson had already answered the questions that she was able to answer. She confirmed that she had been abducted and imprisoned by two men working in concert. She had been locked in the dark and was clearly still in shock, but her description of one of the men sounded a lot like Tyrone Pasco. The other man had left less of an impression on her, but it was still sounded a lot like Warren Sundquist.
 

Sam knew that he should feel vindicated. He had been proven right when no one was interested in listening to him, and his stubbornness had saved a young woman's life and would most likely result in the capture of a killer. Still, he felt restless. Warren Sundquist was still out there. The job remained undone.

He turned on his heels and headed for the elevator. Where do you start looking when you have no leads at all?

Outside the hospital a mob was forming. Reporters and their cameras were crowded around the entrance, where a mixed team of cops and hospital security were holding them at bay.

When Sam came into view, a dull murmur broke into a chorus of shouting. Sam heard his name shouted by men and women he'd never seen before. Today they cared who he was. Tomorrow they'd have forgotten, and that was fine with him.

A flash of blonde hair and blue eyes caught his gaze. Celeste stood with the others, a microphone in her hand. She was just one more face in the crowd now. Sam was only beginning to accept that she had never been more than that.

Celeste smiled at him tentatively. She opened her mouth to say something. He turned and walked away without waiting to hear what it was.

Warren Sundquist contemplated the pieces on the chess board in his mind.
 

Life, he had always thought, was much like a chess game. The pieces—the king, the queen, the bishops rooks and pawns—represented the forces at your disposal and those arrayed against you. At any given moment the pieces might represent people or things, but it didn't really matter. Ultimately every piece was expendable.

Except for the king, of course. Sundquist knew that he was the king on the board, and everything he did, every move he made, was to protect himself.

The metaphor was a little fluid. Sometimes the opposing king was a person, someone who stood in Sundquist's way and needed to be cleared from the board. Other times the king represented something that he wanted. Either way, the game followed the same rules. Sundquist advanced his pieces, sacrificing when it gave him an advantage, and making sure not to expose his king to danger.
 

Sundquist had found that the best way of protecting his king was to attack, but carefully. Plan every move. Look forward through time to the moves that his opponent might make, and be sure to protect against that. There was no way you could remove all the risk from the game. That's what made it fun. But the best players—and Sundquist considered himself a very good player—found ways to minimize the risk to their own king while making the board a very dangerous place for the opposing king.