RAINEY DAYS (24 page)

“Alright, I’ll come by about this time tomorrow,” Ernie said. “I’ll bring you some watermelons, too. Henry’s best ones just got ripe.”

“Thank you, Ernie. I love you. Be careful,” Rainey said.

“I’ll cut his pecker off, if he comes near me,” Ernie said, in one of the rare moments when she said anything remotely off color.

“I’ll bet you would,” Rainey said, laughing.

Rainey hung up with Ernie and told Mackie about the watermelons she was bringing. Henry Womble grew fantastic melons. They were so sweet, Rainey could eat half of one all by herself, and these were big watermelons. Henry called them African watermelons. He said he got the seeds off a man in Wilson County, and that is what he had called them. They were gigantic round watermelons, dark and light green stripes encircling the rind and were legendary in these parts. Mackie was as excited as Rainey. It was good that they had something fun to anticipate, surrounded by the FBI’s tactical team and a maniac out there somewhere, with Rainey his only obsession.

Katie’s tone reflected how she felt about the following statement, “JW is tagging along behind me, in his car. He decided it was too good a chance to slap backs and shake hands to miss.”

Rainey saw the politician character, JW, in her mind and knew he could not resist showing up at a public place. Free votes had to be collected where they could be found. The high level of income that the majority of the students’ parents enjoyed was probably a major enticement, as well. There could be donations out there for the picking. Katie was not happy about it that was for sure.

Katie’s voice broke Rainey’s train of thought, “I just wanted to ask if I could call again, at eight thirty? That’s not too late is it? I think that’s still early enough that you could afford to focus on me for a few minutes.”

“Yes, that would be nice. I’d love to focus on you for a few minutes,” Rainey said, smiling inside and out.

“Okay, I have to go now. Talk to you soon,” Katie said, and then she was gone.

She did not say, “I love you,” Rainey thought and then dismissed it, as something typical of a teenage reaction to a supposed slight. Rainey was turning into a little girl, tender to the touch, overwhelmed with the mere thought of Katie. This was a heavy-duty crush. Rainey knew why it was called a crush, because it crushed your brain and made you stupid.

Rainey convinced Mackie to go down and get some files out of the office, so she would have something to do. When he got back, Rainey began the same routine as last night. Watching the sun go down and then alternately reading, eating, or anxiously pacing the floor from room to room. Mackie did some phone tracking of skips, and was able to convince two of the ones he located, to come in voluntarily. Mackie sweet talked a girlfriend into giving up the whereabouts of her worthless banger boyfriend and sent Junior to pick him up with the boys. Rainey anticipated Katie’s call, at eight thirty. It was all she had to look forward to, while waiting for the maniac to make his move.

Rainey expected him to come soon. Today or tomorrow, he could not wait much longer. The bizarre flight of fancy, he was living, would not allow him to ignore this chance of fate, Rainey stumbling across him and him her, outside of Katie’s house. He had to have Rainey to relive the thrill of out-smarting the FBI. He would be getting sicker with his psychosis; it would be in control of him by now, constantly driving him, nagging him, pushing him toward his goal, the capture and murder of one Rainey Blue Bell. He considered her death critical to completion of his sexual fantasies. He was a need-based killer. He would not stop, until he was caught or dead. Rainey was hoping for the latter.

Eight thirty came and went with no phone call. The anticipation was beginning to turn to anxiety as the minutes clicked by. Rainey paced her bedroom floor, until her cell rang. It was only eight forty-five, just fifteen minutes late, but it felt like hours to Rainey. She yanked the phone open and shoved it to her ear.

“As a matter of fact, I was,” Rainey said, wanting him off the phone, so Katie could call. She forgot all about call waiting. Her failing reasoning was a symptom of her crush.

“Katie Wilson went missing from backstage an hour ago. I just now had a chance to call you. I’ve been dealing with her shithole, ‘I am somebody’ husband and a bunch of locals trying to get the area locked down. I wanted to call and let you know. I guess we were wrong.”

Rainey only heard the first sentence and then her knees buckled to the floor. All she could hear was the roar of her blood rushing to her heart. She froze in place, unable to move, to think, to react.

“Rainey… Rainey... Did you hear what I said?” Danny was talking in her ear. “Rainey! Answer me!”

She found her voice, only it was weak and shattered, “We have to… We have to find her.”

Danny spoke rapidly, “You stay put, Rainey. That’s why I called, so you wouldn’t hear it from one of the guys at your house, and run out of there to look for her. We got it covered. We’ll find her. He did not get out of this neighborhood, no way. We locked it down seconds after she vanished. Hang on a sec.”

He pulled the phone away from his head to speak to someone else. Then he was back with her, talking fast again, “Hey look, I gotta go deal with Mr. Wilson. It seems he’s going out on his own to search for his wife. Probably get shot. Serve him right. He’s a real piece of work. Stay put, Rainey. I’ll call you when I know something.”

He hung up. Rainey continued holding the phone to her ear. She did not move for a while, she could not. All the blood had rushed to her heart and stayed there, not letting her brain or limbs share. When the feeling started coming back in her arms and legs, she dropped the phone on the floor. Her arms hung limp by her sides, as she tried to stand up. Then a wail started in her gut and fought its way out of her throat. A guttural, primal sound of grief crawled from her body. It was so distressing that Mackie burst through the door, seconds later.

Mackie rushed to her side and lifted her from the floor, as if she were a feather. He placed her on the end of the bed and made her put her head between her legs. He brought a cold, wet rag from the bathroom and held it on her head. She was racked with silent sobs and rocked back and forth on the bed. He waited a few minutes for her breathing to become more regular.

He did not speak until he was sure she could understand him, “Rainey, the guys out there told me what happened to Katie. You have to get it together. Don’t let it take you down.”

Rainey could hear him now. His voice rumbled through her brain. She took the cloth from his hand and began wiping her face, the worm had turned and the rage began to boil from the depth of her being. Mackie must have seen the tension building in her muscles.

“Rainey, we’re not going to do anything stupid, because if you go, I’m going and I ain’t letting you go off half cocked.”

Rainey did not answer. She had her breakdown and cry and it was over, for now. All she could think about was finding Katie. Rainey stood up and went to the closet. She found the extra holster that attached to the shoulder harness she wore. She added it and the Beretta, from the car, to the harness. She checked that her flashlight worked and added extra batteries to a side pocket on her pants. She grabbed the ballistics vest she kept in the closet. She took down the dark blue wind breaker, emblazoned with FBI in large block, yellow letters on the back, from the coat rack on her bedroom door, where it had been hanging untouched for a year. Rainey put on the vest, tightening the Velcro straps, adjusted her holster harness over it, and then slid the thin blue jacket on, feeling its coolness brush against her arms. She found her other nine millimeter in the bedside table and dropped it into the waistband at the back of her pants.

Mackie watched, silently, the guardian at the door. Rainey was aware of his presence, but said nothing. She knew she could not leave here without him. He would not let her. Rainey went to the dresser, stopping to pick up her cell phone from the floor, and retrieving her old FBI cap, from where it hung over the mirror. She pulled her ponytail through the hole in the back, sliding the cap on her head.

Rainey looked at her reflection in the dresser mirror. Hers eyes shown back at her full of hatred and rage, and yes, guilt. She saw it there for an instant, but had to shut it out. Rainey could not let herself be consumed by the guilt she felt. She had left Katie alone, so sure that Katie was not his real target. Rainey let the rage focus her on the one thing she had to do, the only thing she could do, find Katie.

Special Agent Rainey Bell turned to the big man, waiting by the door, “Let’s go.”

Mackie stepped in front of her. He said, “Has it crossed your mind that he could be luring you out, where he can get to you?”

Rainey picked up the shotgun, leaning against the wall, by the door. She looked up at Mackie, her jaw set and focused, “I hope so.”

 

The agents in the outer rooms of the cottage were involved in a blur of activity. All movement ceased when Rainey and Mackie stepped out of her bedroom. All eyes on Rainey, as she made her way toward the front door, Mackie right on her heels. No one tried to stop her. She was armed and being followed by a former NFL defensive end. Nobody wanted to tell her she could not go. They would all be doing the same thing, in the same situation. But they didn’t know the whole story. What the agents in the cottage did not know was that Rainey was not going after the killer, because of what he had done to her, not entirely. Rainey had to find Katie, before he had the chance to do more to her than he probably already had.

Rainey had to think like a trained analyst now, not emotionally attached to the facts she had at hand. Separating her fears and anxiety, over what the sadist was doing to Katie, she tried to think like him. Where would he go? He would need isolation to do what he did. He would have found a house where the neighbors were not too close or friendly. It would have a garage he could pull into, so no one could see the occupant of the house coming and going. He had stalked and kidnapped Katie in Chapel Hill. Rainey figured it had gotten too hot for the psycho in Raleigh, after the attack on her last year. He was probably living in Chapel Hill now. His torture chamber would be located nearby. He would have to visit it, prepare for his victims, and revel in his memories. The Y-Man may have continued killing all along, learning from his mistakes and concealing the bodies from discovery. The only thing she could not wrap her mind around, was why he had deviated from his usual behavior, why had he begun to stalk Katie?

Rainey could not answer that question. She only knew she was leaving the cottage to find the house, where the kidnapper had taken Katie. Her mind raced through the neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs of Chapel Hill. Finding his lair was all Rainey could let herself think about. There was so much new building since she had lived here, the old wooded areas were now speckled with houses. She needed her laptop and picked it up from the coffee table, as she went by. If Rainey looked at Google Earth images of the town, she had a better chance of finding a secluded area, with widely spaced houses, near Katie’s school. If Danny was right, and the kidnapper had not escaped the area, the piece of shit had to be nearby, holed up in a residence.

Just as Rainey’s hand hit the handle of the front door, after shutting off the alarm, one of the agents said, “Who are we supposed to watch, if you’re not here?”

“I think your services would best be used searching for this fucker, but that’s just me. You should ask your supervisor.”

The agent who had asked the question immediately pulled out his cell phone and frantically punched in a number. Rainey did not wait to find out what the supervisor said. She and Mackie went out the door, leaving the confused agents to work it out on their own. When she reached the car, she heard footsteps and turned to see two agents running down the stairs. The agent, who had been making the phone call, stood at the top of the stairs, with the phone pressed to his ear. A big black SUV was coming down the road, from where an agent had been stationed, out of sight. The guy with the phone yelled, “Stay with her!” at the agents, now standing in the yard waiting for a ride.

Rainey said, under her breath, “Good luck.”

She and Mackie climbed into her car. Rainey put the shotgun on the floor of the back seat and positioned the laptop in its holder. She fired up the engine on the Charger, just as the other agents were climbing into the black SUV. They had no chance to catch her. The Charger had already started down the driveway, before the big SUV turned around. She left rubber on the road, where the driveway met the pavement, kicking up a cloud of smoke that trailed off behind her. The Charger vanished from sight, slipping into the shadows where the trees closed in over the road.