Shattered (32 page)

Carol grabbed the key again, then forced herself to stop, to think, to push back panic. She was not an expert seawoman by any means, but she had been in and around boats all of her married life. She knew enough to cope with an emergency in just about anything that was seaworthy, from a wave-runner to a sailboat. She had never been at the controls of anything this powerful, it was true, but one inboard was very much like another. She could manage this, if only she didn't panic.

She thought briefly about life vests, and a radio, both of which were no doubt located below if they were onboard at all. She dared not let go of the wheel long enough to search for them. When the boat crested the next wave, it did a half-turn and she saw the rock jetty was less than thirty yards away. The boat was caught in the undertow and being sucked in.

She found the gearshift and levered it into what she hoped was the neutral position. She turned the key again. Nothing happened. Was the battery dead? Had that last wave gotten into the engine? She turned it again, frantically. “Start, damn you. Start...”

The powerful twin inboards roared to life, drowning out the sounds of the surf and wind. With a sob of relief, Carol turned the wheel hard to port, away from the rocks, and forced the engine into gear.

The boat shot forward with a force that threw Carol against the wheel and she almost blacked out with the pain. The deck tilted beneath her, a fan of water slapped hard against her face and for a terrifying moment she thought the boat had capsized.

Sobbing for breath, she wrestled the wheel against the power of the tide, easing up on the throttle experimentally. The sun was lost behind a cloud just then and the air was abruptly cold against her face.

Carol looked back over her shoulder. The water was a dark, undulating sheet of purple and indigo, and the sky had lost its color. Just across the channel, less than twenty minutes away, was St. T., safety, the promise of help.

Carol did not even consider turning the boat in that direction.

~

Chapter Forty-seven

“
I
need a boat,” Guy demanded as he burst through the door. A sheet of rain and wind followed him into Walt's office.

“Yeah, I just bet you do—” Then Walt looked up and saw the sheriff standing beside Guy and he removed the cigar from his mouth. “What the hell's going on? Your office just called wanting the description of Ken Carlton's boat.” He looked at Guy. “Say, is Carol—”

“No time to explain,” Case said. “We need something that'll get us to Lighthouse Island fast.”

“He's got Carol!” Guy pushed around the counter and searched the pegboard for a familiar set of keys.

“Hold on there, pardner, nobody's got Carol. I saw her myself leave with—” And understanding darkened his face. “Holy shit,” he said softly.

Guy said, “He killed all those girls, Walt. And he had a picture of Kelly.”

“We've got to move, Walt,” Case said urgently.

Moving with startling speed for a man his size, Walt snatched up a key and pushed it across the counter. “The Sea Ray,” he said. “It's the only thing that has a chance of catching them in this weather. Go on, git!”

Guy snatched up the keys before the sheriff could take them and Case did not waste time arguing. They ran out into the rain.

***

By the time the makeshift pier came into view, a fine cold needlelike rain was driving into her face and the sea had taken on a blue-green ferocity that was typical of brief, angry storms offshore. It took two tries, and when she finally got close enough to the stanchion to drop anchor, a surging wave tossed the boat against the pier with a grinding, crashing sound on the hull.

She had never been good at docking procedures, and Guy's patience had generally not endured her attempts. But today, there was no one to take over, no one to cast the line for her, no one to hold the wheel steady in the tossing sea. The pain in her back had transformed into an odd, tingling numbness, but she was beginning to lose sensation in her left hand. A lifetime passed while she cast the line, missed, reeled it in, cast again.

Finally the loop caught and held, and she drew it tight, pulling with all her strength to bring the boat close enough to allow her to climb out onto the pier. The boat rose and fell beneath her and her feet almost slipped on the slippery deck, but she grabbed on to the pier and pulled herself up.

The lighthouse loomed like a giant, prehistoric monolith before her. Its huge, scarred white base took up her entire field of vision, blocking out the sea and the sky, filling the whole world.

The last time Carol had been here, there had been a small sandy beach, tall sea grasses, and twisted pines. Pink and white flowers had bloomed in the spring, and deep orange ones in the fall. Now all that remained of the land upon which the lighthouse sat was covered with broken rocks from the dredging. It was ugly, barren, deserted.

Carol drew an arm across her face to clear her vision of sea spray and rain, and it was only then that she realized the distant wheezing sound in her ears was not the wind at all but her own desperate, chopping sobs.

The rain turned into a dampening mist as she scrambled over the rocks, slipping and sometimes falling hard on her hands and knees. Her hair clung limply to her scalp, and rainwater mixed with the sea spray and tears that trickled down her face and into her mouth. She could no longer feel the fingers of her left hand, and when she tried to move that arm, the response was slow and clumsy.

She reached the lighthouse in a state of shock and exhaustion, and for a moment, simply pressed against the rough tabby with both hands, unable to understand why she couldn't get inside. Then she realized that she had come upon the lighthouse from the backside, and she followed the circular wall around until she came upon a boarded-up entrance.

The barricaded doorway was mere yards from the ocean. Surf splashed against the boulders below and spray blew through Carol's clothes and hair. She pounded a fist against the barricade in a gesture of helplessness and frustration, and then stepped back, gasping for breath, to examine the situation.

The entrance was covered with a thick sheet of plywood reinforced by several crossed two-by- fours. She didn't see any opening or weakness in the barricade and she wondered for a moment— just a moment—whether Carlton had been lying after all, whether anyone had been here in years, whether it was all some trick.

Furiously, she pounded the door again with her closed fist. “Kelly!” she screamed.

She heard nothing in reply, but she hadn't expected to. The rumble and crash of the surf drowned out everything except her own gasping breath. She tugged at one of the two-by-fours, knowing it was useless, and met nothing but resistance. Carlton was lying—no one had been here since the Coast Guard had boarded up the place.

And then she noticed one of the nails in the topmost board was protruding a little. It was still new looking, not rust-covered like the others that had been driven, deeper. In fact, the wood itself had not yet weathered to gray, and if it had remained undisturbed since the Coast Guard closed down the lighthouse, the entire barricade would have rotted away by now.

Frantically, Carol looked around for something with which to pry away the boards. What would Carlton have used? He had to have a way of getting in and out.

The boat. He had planned on bringing her here; of course, he would have whatever tools he needed in the boat.

Half running, half crawling, Carol made her way back to the boat. All the while she was expecting that when she reached the pier, the boat would have disappeared, pulled loose from its moorings or swallowed up by the sea and she would be stranded, helpless to find Kelly, powerless to save even herself.

But the boat was there. She climbed over the rocking, swaying deck and half leapt, half tumbled into the cockpit. She threw open the hatch that led below decks and left it open to the meager light that seeped in from outside. She stood for a moment, bracing herself against the bulkhead as she tried to get her bearings, gasping with exertion and desperation. She could see nothing but shadows. Shadowed bunks, shadowed lockers...

She dropped to her knees and jerked on the handle of the locker beneath the nearest bunk, expecting it to be locked. But why should it be? There was no law against carrying ordinary marine tools.

And that was exactly what she found, in a gray watertight pouch in the second locker—a neat and organized assortment of hand tools. Two screwdrivers, a plastic box of heavyduty nails and screws, a sharp-pointed awl, a set of wrenches, pliers, a hammer.

She zipped the pouch closed when she saw the hammer and spun to her feet. “Thank you,” she whispered, and lurched toward the square of light that was the open door.

Then the light disappeared and at first she didn't understand why. Slowly a figure straightened in the doorway, moving toward her, filling up the space, blocking out the light.

Ken Carlton was dripping seawater and rivulets of blood from half a dozen small injuries. His hair was slick against his scalp and his clothes molded to his body. His smile was stiff and cold.

“Well now,” he said, “this is going to be more interesting than I thought.”

~

Chapter Forty-eight

C
arol's hands were tied behind her back with a length of marine rope, and the position turned her spinal column into a pillar of fire. Carlton had to drag her the last few dozen yards over the rocks because her knees kept buckling with the pain. She couldn't have escaped from him, even if he had not taken the keys to the boat.

He used the hammer to pry out the nails on one side of the barricade, creating an opening large enough to crawl through. He pushed Carol through first and, unbalanced, she fell facedown onto the hard floor. He was close behind her, jerking her upright, but not before she noticed the dark, splattered stains on the floor in front of her eyes. She refused to look at the floor again, but she couldn't get the stains out of her mind.

The narrow windows that climbed the height of the structure had not been boarded up, and they admitted enough light to dispel most of the shadows and give substance to shapes. Carol saw some concrete blocks and cardboard boxes, a couple of five-gallon buckets, and a tray and trowel encrusted with mortar. In the center of the room, where the metal spiral staircase climbed to the top of the lighthouse, an enclosure had been built of concrete blocks. It had a narrow wooden door with a brass padlock. Carol's heart began to pound when she saw it, seeming to shake her ribcage.

Noticing the direction of her gaze, Ken said in a tone that was almost conversational, “It was a stroke of luck, really. Most of the supplies I needed—the wood and the concrete blocks and a lot of the hardware—were mine for the taking with what was left of the old lighthouse keeper's cabin. It would have been a perfect setup.” He looked around almost wistfully. “Almost inaccessible, completely sound proof ... but you've spoiled all that, haven't you?”

He did not sound angry over the fact, however, merely stressed and distracted. He glanced at Carol as he thrust a hand into his pocket. He brought out the ring that contained the boat keys and separated one of them from the others. “Now that you've gone to all this trouble,” he said, “you may as well see what you've come for.”

He went over to the concrete-block room and unlocked the padlock on the door. She heard sounds inside, scraping metal and his low voice, and in another moment he came out.

The girl was wearing a soiled white dress that came to her ankles, and a pewter figurine on a leather thong around her neck. Her feet were bare and manacled with a heavy chain no more than eighteen inches long. One wrist was enclosed in a handcuff that was attached to another, slightly longer chain that ended in a second handcuff. Carlton held the chain in the middle as he led her out of the room, although he did so almost casually, as though knowing she had long since passed the point of resistance.

Her dark hair was tangled and her face was pale and pinched. There was a discolored line around her throat where the leather thong of the necklace had been drawn tight so often it had created an almost permanent bruise. Her arms and shoulders were tiny, birdlike, painfully thin. Her eyes were sunken and dull. But it was Kelly.

Carol sobbed her name and took a stumbling step toward her. Needles of ice twisted through her spine and shot down her leg. She fell to her knees, sobbing, struggling against the rope that bound her hands. “Kelly! Oh, God, what has he done to you? Kelly, honey, it's all right. It's Mama. Kelly!”

Nothing registered in the girl's eyes.

Ken came over to her, jerking on the chain to which Kelly was handcuffed so that she was forced to follow. She did so with dragging, uncertain steps. He said, “A touching scene. But ineffective without the embrace, I think.”

He knelt behind her and Carol felt the sawing, slicing motions of a blade against her ropes. The ropes fell away, but before Carol could free herself, he grabbed her right wrist and fastened the other handcuff at the end of the chain around it. At that moment, Carol didn't care. She flung her arm around Kelly and held her tightly, weeping, caressing her hair, kissing her cold cheek.

“Kelly, sweetheart, oh, baby, I'm here, I'm here...” Words of joy, words of relief, words of welcome and comfort—nonsense words. “Kelly, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you. Thank God, I found you, thank God...”