Stone Maidens (37 page)

“OK, Donald, we’ll just drop that line of conversation for the moment. According to St. Mary’s Hospital records, you were the first born.” He shot her a mistrustful look. “That’s right. That would make you the older brother, Donald, the man of the house, seeing how your father disappeared. Don’t you know that being the big brother is a responsibility? It means you’re supposed to set a good example for your younger brother, even if David’s only a few minutes younger.”

“I said hush, now!”

She couldn’t risk stopping, even if it meant treading dangerously into unknown territory, as Dr. Katz had warned her against. “Now I know for a fact David doesn’t kill and eat people. I know you know that, too. Am I right, Donald? You two have already met up? Haven’t you, Donald? Have you seen your brother today? Maybe even before today?”

Holmquist’s face was perspiring heavily. He looked confused, panicked, trapped. Just as she had felt only moments before.

“What did big brother Donald accomplish today? Huh? Did you treat your kid brother right? Take him under your wing the way Bruna would’ve wanted you to?”

The man hit the brakes hard enough to rock Christine forward off her seat back. She heard something shift in the trunk, a dull heavy thud.

“So you’ve got David tied up in the trunk, Donald?”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, FBI lady.” Before she could think what to say next, a shower of blue sparks stung her chest, bringing sudden darkness.

McFaron high-revved the Bronco. He’d received word from his dispatcher about Murfree’s cab stalling and Christine running off. He’d hightailed it from the Sweet Lick Resort in Cave Springs, Indiana, normally a thirty-minute ride that he’d made in less than twenty. Earlier that afternoon, he’d heard from Brian Eisen, who’d passed along information about a call from Lonnie Wallace, a groundskeeper at the Sweet Lick, to follow up on. Wallace had looked at a picture of David Claremont and said that it looked almost exactly like an odd-duck freelance sign painter who Wallace hadn’t seen in nearly a month and who’d skipped out on finishing a job. A man named Donald Holmquist, who Wallace suspected for the recent theft of a Sweet Lick Resort vehicle.

It bothered the sheriff that he couldn’t reach Christine. Tapping her cell phone number still indicated no signal was available. Why hadn’t she waited for him to come pick her up, as he’d promised Howard he would once her departure from Chicago had been discovered? The spot where Murfree told Mary he’d stopped was only five miles from Echo Lake, he figured. Maybe Christine had left the phone in the cab with her briefcase? Turned it off to preserve the batteries? He doubted she’d do either. He anguished over the impulsive move, her running like that.

A large black late-model sedan, a Chrysler, sped by McFaron in the opposite direction. The sheriff made out the silhouettes of two people in the front seats and no one in back. He hadn’t passed any other cars. The sparkle of the lake appeared in and out of the trees. The sun was low over the treetops, shimmering on the lake. It was well past five thirty. A minute later he skidded to a halt behind a maroon van. Kids were huddled around several women, crying.

“Sheriff!” Mrs. Greenwald rushed forward. “Sheriff, come quick! It’s Maddy Heath. She’s gone missing! Her friend Rachel saw a disheveled-looking man on the shoreline trail who looked like the one on TV, the one wanted for...”

The scout leader hesitated, as so many children were within earshot. She pointed toward the trail sign.

“I should have known better. I found her earlier straying from the building, walking down to the lake.” The woman covered her mouth. “I should have known.”

“MADDY!” A high-pitched scream echoed off the steep-sided lake. Three Brownies, in unison, screamed the missing girl’s name again.

McFaron dashed toward the woods, unclipping his holster. At the trailhead he withdrew his .38, checking that the chambers were fully loaded. It had been six months since he’d fired his weapon—and that had been at the state police range. He’d never fired a gun at anyone before, not even aimed one; his two-year stint in the army had not involved any actual combat.

He moved down the muddy trail, alert to movement, brandishing the weapon in a cautious stance. A hundred feet down the trail a figure stumbling forward sent the sheriff into a crouch. Was he too late? A man limping badly came into view behind spindly second-growth yellowwood trees along the lakeshore. He was laden down, carrying something, speaking in a halting voice.

The man approached, sideways now, passing over some deadfall, hefting the girl in a chest carry. McFaron saw her feet dangling. The girl’s face was slumped against the man’s chest, expressionless. She was missing a shoe. It was too dangerous to risk taking a shot.

McFaron looked around for a good ambush spot near the trail. There was none other than the birch trunk he was leaning against. He extended his thumb and levered back the firing pin, careful not to touch the trigger.

An uncomfortable tickling beneath her ribs brought her around. The car was idling beside the road. She was slumped against the passenger door under the man’s weight. A pungent salty odor—it was his breath, she realized, coming from very near—turned her stomach. Prusik cracked open her eyelids enough to see Holmquist, heard the glove box pop open and him rummaging through it. Something was jabbing her side, lower down than before. He was prodding her abdomen, his eyes wide open now in an expression of wonderment. A small groan escaped him.

“Get off of me!” In a command burst, Christine shoved her feet hard against the floorboards and repositioned herself upright.

Holmquist stayed put, grasped her by the arm. “You going to hush now?” He waved the menacing electrode prongs of the Taser close to her face, the telltale high-pitched whine of the device reaching full power. “You didn’t tell me about your little surprise.”

She raised her free hand, acquiescing, realizing she’d been rendered unconscious by his tasing her once already. The flesh near her collarbone still stung from it. What surprise was he talking about?

He resumed a driving position and floored the vehicle before she could even think to open her door. She wiped away drool from her lower lip, feeling dizzy and sore and foolish for not having a firearm on her as required by the bureau. As a forensic anthropologist, she usually conducted interviews in the presence of
armed personnel and, therefore, had rarely felt compelled to lug one around herself.

“Mind if I listen to the radio?” He flicked it on without waiting for her answer. A special bulletin broadcast interrupted a song. “Breaking news—this afternoon the search for David Claremont led police to Echo Lake State Park, where the man was successfully apprehended—”

The man turned it off and chucked his hat into the backseat. In the green glow of the dash she recognized the full profile, that same prominent zygomatic arch, overhanging browridge, the hollowed eyes—David Claremont’s. Prusik sucked in a breath she couldn’t seem to release. Her heart threatened to gallop out of her chest. His overpowering her physically had proved a setback.

He turned his head toward her. “Spot that feather I left for you?” he said, brimming with overconfidence. “You and that cop poking your noses around? I wasn’t too happy at first, finding someone snooping in my house, but once I knew it was you...” He nodded and grinned as if that explained everything.

“Donald...please...I won’t...” Prusik’s tongue balled in her mouth. Whatever imbalance had caused him to tase her now seemed forgotten, judging from the man’s nonchalance. Prusik realized that with a psychopath, little things like understanding how someone else knows who you are or what you are doing or even why you are doing it are unimportant, nothing to worry about.

“Seen you up at the podium in front of all those fancy people dressed for the occasion, too. Yep. I was there, Special Agent. You and me go back a long ways.” A smile broadened across his face. “Cat kind of got your tongue, huh? Just like it did when you saw that wild man of Borneo back there at the museum? Our friend with the stone.” He chuckled like a parent somehow indulging a child.

Prusik’s mind started spinning wildly. He’d been there. He’d seen her reaction to the display case.

“See, that’s what I like about you. You and me, we understand. We’re alike that way.”

“What do you mean we’re alike, Donald?” She tried to sound conversational. “I don’t go around killing innocent people.”

He cackled. “You do have a sense of humor, don’t you, FBI lady? You’re
just
like me. That’s why I been leaving those presents for you like I been doing. The first girl, she only got a regular stone, but that was before I knew there was someone else out there like me. And it was you, a copper!” He cackled again. “But no use cryin’ over spilt milk.”

Prusik felt sick. He’d been leaving charm stones in his victims’ throats for her to find.

“You ran out the room because of its power, didn’t you?” Holmquist lifted his hand from his shirt collar and dangled something. “See? I know you.”

Prusik didn’t dare look up. The fact he’d had her on his radar from the beginning had her floored. She clenched her knees, tried summoning her vanishing point through the windshield: the lap-pool lane, coursing through the smooth waters, rolling her torso from side to side, rotating her arms up overhead, and knifing down through to complete the rhythm of her swim stroke. This time she couldn’t visualize it. She couldn’t grasp anything beyond feeling like a cornered animal.

She focused her attention on the blank pad of paper stuck to the dashboard. It was a small prescription pad conveniently adhered near the instrument cluster, above where an ashtray is usually located. Printed across the top of the pad she read the name: Irwin Walstein, MD. The thud in the car’s trunk when Holmquist suddenly braked flashed through her mind. She had an urge to speak, but her throat constricted as if it might seal off. She gathered herself. “What about Dr. Walstein?”

Holmquist twisted his hands around the steering-wheel grip, shrugged. “You mean Claremont’s doctor?” He twisted his neck right and left, cracking the vertebrae like Prusik’s father would
crack his knuckles. “Did unto him as he’d have done unto me.” Prusik fought to find calm. She had a terrible urge to leap from the moving car, with the idea that she would tumble and run. But she couldn’t, not with the car doing fifty. She’d be knocked unconscious—if not from the jump, from his finishing her off at the edge of the road. Stick with plan A, she told herself: stay calm, keep him distracted, somehow get to a public place, and do it quickly.

Prusik flashed on his fingers prodding along her abdomen when she lay semiconscious a few moments ago. “What did you mean by my ‘little surprise,’ Donald?”

He cast a quick glance at the rearview mirror, then returned his eyes to the road.

“Let’s talk about this stone business. The power they have, as you say.”

Holmquist was listening. She noticed him shoving his tongue against his cheek, or maybe he was chewing on something inside his mouth.

“I’m an anthropologist, you know.” Prusik gritted her teeth, determined to maintain level, that calm space in the heat of battle that she’d practiced during her FBI basic training. “I did summer research a long time ago in Papua New Guinea. Saw carved stones just like yours.”

He nodded slightly, an acknowledgment of sorts.

“It’s been puzzling me—the stones, and their significance to you.”

Holmquist turned toward her, his face oddly displaying a cheesy grin. “Why? You wanting another all to yourself?” he said in a low voice.

His lips parted. Between his teeth was something hard: a shiny sliver that glistened with saliva. A charm stone.

Prusik squinted to read the fuel gauge. From her angle, it looked nearly on empty. If the car rolled to a stop, she’d make a dash for certain. She slipped off her shoes, preparing. She rubbed the bottoms of her heels against the floorboards.

“What’d you do that for?” he said. “Take off your shoes?”

“I...they hurt.” She felt herself winding back up; her heart knocked against her blouse. “How’s the fuel?” she blurted out.

“Enough to last till Blackie.”

Prusik groped with her hand down between her seat and the passenger door. She felt inside her purse and coughed hard at the same time as she punched the memory button for McFaron’s cell phone number, praying it would connect through to him this time. She didn’t dare look down and risk losing her one chance. She had to assume the call went through.

“Donald, why are we turning north onto the state highway?” She enunciated as clearly as she could. “Isn’t Echo Lake in the opposite direction? You said Blackie? Why are we headed to Blackie when they were expecting me at Echo Lake more than two hours ago?”

They passed under a large green sign indicating five miles to Crosshaven’s airport, where she’d landed only hours ago.
Why is he headed back to Blackie?

“Take a left at the Crosshaven airport ramp, would you?” she said brusquely. “I forgot my bag at the counter.”

His right hand descended at lightning speed and squeezed her thigh painfully hard. “Nice try, copper. You won’t be needing no bags where you’re going.” He returned his hand to the steering wheel and tapped out a lively rhythm.