Tell Me You're Sorry (21 page)

He smiled and shrugged. “Thank you. Are you going to be okay closing up here by yourself? It's kind of creepy out there in the hallways. I can wait for you.”

“That's all right. My older brother's coming to pick me up.”

“Well, good night, then.”

“Good night, Ryan,” she said.

He didn't know her name, but she knew his. That was the way it was with him and a lot of people in school. He gave her a wave and stepped out to the hallway.

As he walked down the shadowy corridor, Ryan thought about his father. Fifty classmates had commented on him. And no one had called him nice. In fact, there was every indication that he was a terrible bully. Maybe Dick Ingalls and Scott Hamner were just like him.

Ryan couldn't help wondering just what they'd done to deserve the punishments they'd gotten.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

S
he woke up freezing.

Her teeth chattered behind the tape that sealed her mouth shut. She rubbed her bare arms and legs, trying to bring some warmth to her cold, prickly skin. In her semiconscious fog, Jenny suddenly realized she was moving her arms and legs. Her hands were free. The cord binding her ankles together was gone. But the rope burn was still there.

She sat up—too suddenly. Her head started throbbing, and she felt so dizzy and nauseous, she thought she might be sick. With a shaky hand, she pulled the tape off her mouth, a little section at a time. Slow or fast, it was still torture. Once she pried the tape off, Jenny gratefully breathed through her mouth.

How long had she been asleep? She vaguely recalled two different times when her captor had opened that drawer under the bed and given her an injection. But she had no idea how many hours had passed between those shots.

He'd stripped her down to nothing but a bulky pair of Depends. Even in the summer, Jenny needed to wear a T-shirt and have a sheet or light blanket over her while she slept. No wonder she was so cold. Did he have the air conditioner in the RV cranked up?

She glanced down at the bare mattress—with a plaid blanket folded in one corner. She grabbed the blanket and threw it around her shoulders. It was scratchy against her skin, but warm.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Jenny numbly looked at her surroundings. A dim, strange, flickering light was all she had to see by. He'd moved her from the RV. This new place had no windows. Corrugated metal walls arched over her. The floor—a laminated wood parquet—had what looked like two trapdoors cut into it. Across from her was a set of bunk beds. Just beyond them, against the arched wall, was a kitchenette with a mini-fridge, a microwave, a sink, some cabinets, and a desk.

Jenny got to her feet, and almost collapsed. She braced herself against the wall. After lying in the same position inside that drawer, her legs weren't working right. She readjusted the blanket around her shoulders and hobbled along the cold floor to the sink.

She was so thirsty, she felt dehydrated. She turned the cold water valve, but nothing came out of the faucet. The hot water didn't work, either. She opened the mini-fridge. There was no light inside, but she spotted two bottled waters. They were lukewarm, but she opened one and guzzled down half of it.

Catching her breath, she turned and looked at the chocolate brown, ribbed imitation-velvet sofa—and the small TV bracketed to the corrugated wall. The flickering light came from the TV, tuned to some televangelist show. The sound was off, thank God. Jenny figured if she could find a different station, maybe the local news, she might be able to figure out the day, time, and where she was. She glanced around for a remote, but didn't see one. She tried to find something along the side of the TV that worked the volume or the channel changer. But none of the buttons on the side of the TV worked. They'd been glued or soldered in place.

The tunnel-like room had doors on either end. Jenny realized it was a bomb shelter or underground bunker. One of the doors had a big wheel crank on it. She tugged at the wheel, but it didn't budge. She made her way to the other door. A stationary bike was right beside it. She started to teeter on her feet again, and grabbed the handlebar to keep from falling.

Taking a few deep breaths, Jenny opened the second door. An automatic light went on above the shower stall. The tiny bathroom smelled moldy. She tried the valves to the sink and shower. Nothing. The toilet wasn't working, either. There was no water in the bowl.

“Hi, Jen!”

She swiveled around and stepped back into the main room. Jenny recognized the voice—coming from a speaker somewhere above. It was her friend, Carroll Jordan. It sounded like a recording.

“I'm just checking in to see how your blind date went. I didn't hear from you Tuesday night. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or bad . . .”

Jenny looked up at the ceiling, just inches beyond her reach. She spotted the recessed box, which had to be a speaker. She also noticed two more recessed compartments—each with a small green light in it. On her tiptoes, she could see the camera in each one of them. Someone was watching her every move.

“Maybe the two of you have already eloped and you're honeymooning in Barcelona,” Carroll said. It was obviously recorded off her voice mail.

Jenny remembered telling her abductor the only person who knew about their date was the ninety-year-old woman who lived upstairs. Now he wanted her to know that he'd caught her in a lie.

“Anyway, give me a call,” Carroll continued. “Jimmy's out of town on business, and Suzy has a cold. So I'm going crazy here. Adios!” The beep sounded, and then the recording started to play again: “Hi, Jen! I'm just checking in to see how your blind date went . . .”

Jenny stood in the middle of the bunker with the blanket wrapped around her. The sound of her friend's voice brought her to tears. She longed to be back in her apartment with her cat. Who was looking after Simon? Her captor had threatened to give her Simon's head “as a souvenir” if she didn't cooperate.

Her friend's message, now repeating for a third time, seemed to taunt her about her lie. She wondered if her abductor would make good his threat.

Jenny rubbed her forehead. “I'm sorry!” she said loudly, hoping to be heard over the recording. “I forgot I told my friend about our date. It was an honest mistake, okay? All the codes and passwords I gave you are correct, aren't they?”

She imagined him and that woman tapping into her checking and savings, draining both accounts until there was nothing left—including the money she'd inherited from her mother. The most they could get was about sixty-five thousand dollars. That was a lot of money for her. But for a couple of kidnappers, it probably wasn't much.

The recording abruptly stopped.

“Why are you doing this?” Jenny screamed. The shrill words seemed to reverberate inside the bunker.

There was no answer. In the long silence, she could make out a train in the distance.

“Over in the desk,” he said at last, “there's a pen and paper in the drawer . . .”

Jenny headed toward the small desk with a chair—near the big door. She opened one of the drawers. She found a Bic pen and a yellow legal pad. Pulling them out of the drawer, she turned around and looked up at the closest camera on the ceiling. She showed him that she had the pen and paper in her hand.

“You're not going to lie to me again, are you?”

She adamantly shook her head. “No, that was an oversight. I'm sorry.”

“I want you to be comfortable here. Tomorrow, I'll turn on the electricity, ventilation, and water. You'll have sheets for the bed, clothes, soap, shampoo, toothpaste. I'll furnish you with a remote for the TV, food, soft drinks, snacks—you name it. But that'll have to wait until tomorrow, because you lied to me. Meanwhile, you'll find out just how cold it gets down there at night—and how hot and stuffy it becomes during the daytime. After twenty-four hours, you'll have a hard time breathing in there, too.”

Clutching the pen and legal pad, Jenny defiantly stared up at the camera. She tried to keep from shaking. “What am I supposed to do with this? Write, “I'm sorry” a thousand times?”

“Twenty things you cherish,” he replied. “Write down twenty things from your place that you can't live without. I'll make sure you have them.”

Jenny couldn't help shaking her head. It was such a bizarre request. The reason behind it made no sense, considering the brutal way she'd been treated so far. Why would they go to the trouble of bringing her the things she missed most?

She kept gazing up at that little green dot in the recessed box in the ceiling. She tried to swallow, but she couldn't. Her mouth was dry again. “What about my cat?” she asked. “What have you done with him?”

“It's here with me now. It was in the Winnebago with us all the time.”

“Is he alive?”

There was a pause. “I'll let you know tomorrow. You work on that list. And take it easy. This is going to be the longest twenty-four hours you've ever lived.”

“Why are you doing this?” she demanded to know. “Why did you pick me?”

She heard a click. And somehow she knew he'd turned off the speaker.

 

 

The image on the TV monitor wasn't exactly high-definition. With the murky, grainy color picture, he felt like he was watching an old bootlegged video on a defective VCR. The lighting was so dim down there in the bunker right now. Still, he could see her seated at the desk, clutching the blanket around her as she wrote on the legal pad.

He was at his own desk, in the back room on the third floor of an old white stucco house. The rest of the floor was empty, except for some broken furniture and trash. But this room was his control center. One section of his L-shaped desk held his computer keyboard and a big, HD monitor. On the other half he had the surveillance monitor, speakers, a control panel, and the mic, which allowed him to talk to the woman in the underground bunker. Right now, the mic and the sound were shut off. She couldn't hear him. He couldn't hear her.

From the window, he looked down at the backyard and its neglected, overgrown lawn. On the other side of a high chain-link fence ran the railroad tracks. The big elm tree in the middle of the yard had a thick, braided rope dangling from one of the branches. The rope lazily swayed in the morning breeze.

Amid the shrubs along the side of the yard stood a dilapidated, 4 x 6 green and white fiberglass shed. Rust streaks bled from every bolt and screw in it. But the foundation was firm. A padlock secured the door. Anyone who broke inside would find a bunch of old garden tools. The mat covering the floor was filthy. He had to put on gloves every time he lifted it. The trapdoor was under there—along with a ladder, which went seven feet underground to the bunker.

It amused him to look outside and know she was down there beneath that unkempt lawn.

His cell phone rang.

He snatched it off his desk. “Yeah?” he said into the phone.

“Did you see the news last night?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “I had a feeling the sister-in-law would be trouble. I know I said this before, but I still can't believe with the dose you gave her she had enough smarts to abort the flight. Hell, I wasn't sure she'd even make it onto the plane . . .”

“She probably didn't finish the coffee. Anyway, we didn't exactly get the result we wanted—”

“Yeah, some result you were after, the whole plane kaput,” he cut in, chuckling. “You are a cold cookie, aren't you? Or was that the idea of the guy you're working with?”

“Let's leave him out of this.”

“I'd still like to know who he is.”

“You make out okay. Why ask questions?”

“Well, let me ask you this,” he said. “What are we going to do about our lady pilot? She's on TV, talking about a conspiracy. All she has to do is mention the Farrell job in Lake Forest, and people will start connecting the dots. And we know she's onto us there, because—”

“Yes, yes, I'm aware of that,” she interrupted. “That's why I'm calling. How soon can you go to Portland and take care of this once and for all?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I need to get this new one settled into her quarters.”

“And how is our guest?” the woman asked.

“She'll have to go ‘without' until tomorrow morning,” he said. “I told her it's her punishment for lying to me. At the moment, she's writing her wish list . . .”

“Good. I'll collect the stuff tomorrow. I don't want to be going in and out of her apartment any more than I have to. One of her neighbors from down the hall spotted me last night.”

“Did they see you up close?”

“It was some old guy, probably with cataracts. He started chatting me up halfway down the hall. I gave him the brush-off before he got too close. I don't think he noticed any difference. But I don't want to keep pushing my luck. This painted-on scar looks phony. Anyway, get her list to me in the morning.”

“Check,” he said.

Somewhere in one of his desk drawers, he had the “wish lists” the others had made up—those things they couldn't live without. The stupid women never got any of the items they'd missed. The stuff was removed from their apartments—so friends and family wouldn't be too suspicious: “Why, Lacee never would have left behind her precious china elephant!” It was amazing the shit some of these women considered valuable. In Lacee's case, the china elephant was found in the master bedroom, not too far from her corpse, at the house in Lake Forest where Brent Farrell supposedly shot his family and himself.

That was where all their things from their wish lists ended up. The stuff they couldn't live without went to the crime scenes.

He thought about the list Jenny Ballatore was now composing. She would never see any of that crap again—except possibly in the last few minutes of her life.

“All right then,” his cohort said on the other end of the line. “Make your reservation for Portland. I'll talk to you tomorrow morning before you leave. Let's nip this sister-in-law situation in the bud.”

“I'll take care of it,” he said. “Third time's a charm.”

“Good,” she said. Then she hung up.

He clicked off the line, slouched back, and stared at the monitor. His guest was still writing her wish list. At least that stuff would be with her in the end—when they found her without a face.

He glanced back over his shoulder toward the hallway. “Kitty?” he called. “Hey, kitty, kitty . . .”