One Grave Too Many (41 page)

She passed out. When she regained consciousness, she’d wet herself. Damn them to hell, whoever they were.

The sudden voice in her ear made her jump. “You have one chance.” It was a hoarse whisper. “Do what I tell you and live. Don’t and die.”

“What?” she said, and gagged like she was going to throw up.

Her captor lifted the hood up just past her mouth. As she was trying to control her gagging reflex, he whispered to her, “When it’s dark, we’re going to the museum. You’re going to tell me where the bones are. That’s all I want.”

“Bones? We have hundreds.”

“You know which ones I mean. Don’t play dumb.” He slapped her on the side of the head. “I’m already pissed about what you did to the van. Don’t make it worse.”

“I don’t have the bones you’re talking about.”

He slapped her head again. “Don’t lie. You have everything but the skull.”

He pulled the hood down and retied the rope around her throat. He half lifted her and then dragged her for a ways, scraping her feet on the ground. She heard more noises that she recognized and dreaded. They were the noises of a car trunk being opened. She was suddenly lifted off her feet and tumbled, headfirst, into the trunk.

“Wait,” she called out before he slammed the trunk.

“What? Begging won’t work.” His words were barely above a ragged whisper.

“Unless you want me to suffocate, I need more air than this hood allows me.”

She heard rustling around as if he were fishing inside his pocket. She felt a tugging at the hood and heard a ripping sound. She could breathe. The trunk slammed shut. It was suddenly very quiet, and she knew without moving or touching the top or the sides that she was in a small, dark, enclosed place. It didn’t smell like a new car.

Doors slammed. The engine started. The car was moving. They were going again. She was on her side. She started working to get her hands down and around her feet so they would be in front of her. It was a painful strain on her shoulder joints, made many times worse by the bruising and soreness that had not yet healed from the last attack. But she shoved the pain aside and worked.

It took her less time than she had imagined. She could reach the ropes on her legs. It was a small-diameter hard rope, probably nylon. No chance of breaking it. Nothing to cut it with. She found the knots and started working at them with her fingers. Someone knew how to tie knots. They held if she strained against them, but were relatively easy to untie. Obviously, they wanted to be able to get the rope loose when they got her to the museum. With her feet free, she worked on her hand restraints with her teeth. That took even less time because they had used the same knot and she knew how to untie it. She pulled loose the rope that held the hood closed around her neck and jerked the hood off her head.

It didn’t help her vision, but she breathed more freely. She felt around inside the trunk. It was mainly empty. A spare tire, rags. She felt along the edges, in cracks. Her fingers wrapped around something metal wedged between the floor of the trunk and the side. It moved when she pulled at it.

It was too hard to get out, it wouldn’t come loose, it was taking too much time. The car was bumping down an uneven road. She could hear the sounds of the tires on gravel. She started to panic. She wanted to cry. Finally, the object slipped free. It was metal and felt like the blade of a screwdriver. No handle, but good enough. She wrapped the cloth hood around the shank of the screwdriver to improve her grip, felt with her fingers along the back ledge of the trunk lid until she found the hook that held the lid shut, pushed the screwdriver tip into the hook and pulled hard.

The screwdriver slipped, her knuckles hit hard on something sharp. It hurt like hell. Her fingers throbbed. She couldn’t tell if she was bleeding. She felt with the tips of her fingers and found the latch again, wedged the screwdriver tip in tight and pulled against it with all her strength.

The trunk lid popped open. The first thing she saw was the tree line streaming by against the twilit sky. She didn’t stop to think; she lunged out the back, landed on the dirt road, rolled, scrambled up and ran into the brush. The car hadn’t been going fast, but it didn’t matter; she would have jumped anyway. Better to get killed on your own terms. She had no doubt they’d kill her once they got what they wanted.

Tires crunched on gravel as the car slid to a halt—car doors slammed, muted shouts. She kept on running. Adrenaline must be deadening the pain, for she felt strangely invigorated. And she knew where she was: the back approach to the museum, going toward the loading docks. She stayed in the woods, running alongside the road.

A frightening thought—the museum was locked. Even if she got that far before they caught her, she didn’t have a key and there was no time to wait while she banged on the door, hoping the security guards would hear her. They could be on the third floor or in the basement, and she would be overtaken before they could get to her. She was close to the nature trail and she knew it like the back of her hand. There was a toolshed on the trail. If she could get to it, she could find a weapon.

They’d be looking for her near the roadway. She veered further into the woods. The trees broke into an open field; she sprinted toward the nature trail on the other side. Damn, she heard shouts behind her. Had they seen her? Her heart felt like it was going to explode.

She crossed a path.
For heaven’s sake, don’t stick to the paths.
She stayed to the woods. The shed was near the pond, and the pond was the center of the ten acres of trail. She wanted badly to stop and rest, but all she allowed herself to do was to slow. It was like running in the jungle, looking for Ariel, running from Santos’ men. Hate welled up inside her and she ran faster. Just ahead was the pond. There was a bridge over part of it. That gave her an idea.

As soon as she reached the edge of the pond, she quietly slipped into the water, ducked under and swam, coming up only briefly to fill her lungs with air until she got to the pilings that held up the bridge. She stopped behind a piling and rested, propping herself against a crossbar, holding herself still. Her lungs wanted desperately for her to gulp in air, but she forced herself to breathe slowly and silently. Sound travels over water.

The water was cool and it eased her aching body. Beams from flashlights swept through the undergrowth. Ariel. Where was Ariel?

“No,” she whispered out loud, and got a mouthful of water and choked.
Shit, don’t cough, and don’t start having some kind of flashbacks. Not now. They’ll find you.

Sudden footfalls resounded across the wooden bridge and echoed across the water. She almost screamed, but remained quietly bobbing up and down behind the piling. The footsteps pounded overhead and turned toward the feeding dock, a walkway perpendicular to the bridge with a deck for watching the swans.

It was too dark to recognize anything but outlines. The flashlight beams searched for her like silent hounds on the hunt. They darted across the water, and she ducked under the surface as they sniffed under the bridge. She held her breath for as long as she could. She was pretty good at holding her breath. One of those fantastic esoteric talents, like being able to guzzle a quart of beer at once, that served no useful purpose other than to impress her friends when she was in college—until now, and now it might save her life. She stayed underwater to the count of 120. Two minutes. She forced herself to let her eyes come up slowly to make sure . . . Good thing she was a caver. It made her strong. She needed physical strength right now. Emotional strength too. That was a lot harder.

They crossed the bridge again and again. Searched the toolshed, broke in its door. She waited. The water was cool and seductive. She could see how easy it was for people to drown themselves.
Just slip under and breathe, let the water fill your lungs and take you to a place where there’s no pain or grief. But not me.

Diane never wanted to die, even in the depths of her grief for Ariel, cursing God and man, throwing up until her ribs ached, crying until her eyes were so swollen she could hardly see. All that, but she never wanted to die. She didn’t want to die now, and she wasn’t going to. She would kill before she would die. She waited.

She knew patience. Anyone who could take weeks to excavate a mass grave of murdered innocents, map miles of unexplored caves, take eight hours to climb twenty feet up a rock face was patient. She could wait.

He, the raspy voice, knew about the missing skull. The thought had struck her as he said it, but now she had time to think about it. How did he know? It wasn’t a secret, but he had to be close to her investigation to know. Who was the secret enemy in her camp?

The cool, soothing water was feeling colder, but she didn’t think she was in danger of hypothermia. She pretended she was in a cave. She’d traversed many a water-way colder than this. There was nothing more serene and lovely than an underground lake. Cave ethics dictate that you remove your dirty clothes and stuff them in a waterproof bag to keep the pristine waters of an underground lake or stream as unpolluted as possible. She thought about how the cool cave waters felt on the skin, how she felt like an otherworldly creature slipping through the still waters of a deep, dark chamber. She pretended the piling was a stalagmite, one she could touch—another principle of caving is to not touch anything that has taken eons to form and could be destroyed by careless touching, but this one she could touch. This one was life-giving.

She’d have to do a cave exhibit at the museum. Take visitors on an underground adventure beneath the earth, give them a new view of nature. She could do that in the basement—create a cave environment. She wondered if Mike Seger, the geology student, knew anything about caves. She planned the entire project in her head as she waited and listened, trying to hold at bay the feelings of terror inside her.

No more light hounds, but can’t trust them to be predictable. They may have been crouched in the dark, waiting for her to move. She’d wait all night until her staff arrived, until the groundspeople arrived. In the meantime, she’d continue planning exhibits and try to figure out who might be doing this.

Korey thought Frank’s attacker was a racist. She didn’t think so. He just wanted to look the opposite of what he is. People would see the dreadlocks, the dark face, and think African-American; they wouldn’t think white. But where did that get her? She had already guessed that.

Better to go back to planning exhibits. She could handle concepts, but her brain was having a hard time with deduction. What she would really like to do is sleep. Perhaps it might be safe to move now, to get out of the water. She quietly moved away from the piling and scanned the distance around the pond. No lights; everything was quiet.

Something, perhaps fear, told her to stay with her plan. She felt physically unable to deviate from it. She went back to her place just as a flash of light swept through the woods. The hounds were still there.

She began planning an attack on Jonas’ chess pieces, forcing her brain to plot moves, anticipate responses. By the time the sun was beginning to show through the trees she’d planned a campaign against his black king, and designed an underground adventure exhibit for the museum. Perhaps all she needed to be able to get her museum work done was to become stranded overnight in the swan pond with murderers on shore searching for her.

When the road noise picked up and she saw the movement of the groundskeepers, she swam out from under the bridge for shore and climbed out, frightening one of the gardeners, a young Hispanic man, heading for the toolshed. She must look like the swamp creature.

“Lady, what you doing in the lake? You shouldn’t be there. You hurt?”

“What’s your name?” Her words came out in a hoarse whisper.

“Hector Torres, ma’am.”

“Hector Torres, I’m very glad to meet you. I hired you. I’m Dr. Diane Fallon, the director of this museum. I know that appears unlikely at the moment, but could you help me get out of here?”

“Hector? What’s going on?” Luiz Polaski, the head groundskeeper, was driving down the trail in a golf cart.

“This lady says she’s the director of the museum. She walked out of the lake.”

“Dr. Fallon, what happened to you? My God, sit down.”

Diane let them lead her to the golf cart.

“I was attacked.” She didn’t want to get into the details. It would take another night.

“Again?”

“Yes, again. Will you take me to the museum, please?”

“Of course.”

“Dr. Fallon, thanks for the job,” yelled Hector Torres as they drove off.

“How is he working out?”

“So far he’s found you, so I guess he’s doing pretty good. He says his mother is a women’s guard at the jail?”

“Yes. She said her son was looking for a job.”

“I know there are some interesting stories here,” he said as he drove the cart up to the rear of the museum. “Can I help you inside?”

“If you don’t mind walking with me. I’ve been in the water all night.”

“All night?”

“I know this must all sound incredible, and when I can I’ll tell you all about it.”

They walked down the hallway past the restaurant to the mammal exhibit, where she cut through to the Pleistocene room and to the lobby just as Andie, Korey and Mike Seger entered through the large double doors.

“Dr. Fallon. Oh, my God, what happened to you!” Andie came running and grabbed her around the waist just as her knees were giving way.

Diane could only imagine what she must look like, not to mention smell like. She felt like a wet cat, standing in her bare feet, dripping water onto the marble floor. The initial relief of getting out of the lake was wearing off, and now she felt herself sinking against Andie, unable to stand. Several more staff arrived and they all gathered around, some helping Andie support her, others mumbling and asking questions. She felt suffocated—and afraid.