The Last Kiss Goodbye (44 page)

Maybe a dozen diners remained.

“I agree.” Charlie took a bite of fried catfish, and almost closed her eyes at the delicate cornbread flavor of the crispy crust. Even Michael’s wry expression as he watched her eat couldn’t dim her appreciation.

Kaminsky bit into the catfish, too, but seemed to be in no mood to appreciate it. “He assigns me to you because we’re both
women.
”

“I’d rather have Buzz,” Charlie assured her. “I’ll be glad to tell Tony so.”

Even the coleslaw was superior, Charlie decided as her gaze drifted down to the file she had been perusing: a detailed background check on Jeff Underwood. Reading it felt like an invasion of privacy, but with the lives of those girls on the line they couldn’t afford to overlook any possible clue. She was going over the experts’ files, and Kaminsky was reading through the victims’ files, and then they were going to switch, because fresh eyes were always a good thing. They were looking for anything,
anything,
that might lead them to the killer.

“Like Bartoli’d listen.” Kaminsky gave her a hostile look. “Anyway, that makes me sound like I’m being difficult. Like I’m not a team player.”

Charlie didn’t say anything. Despite her ire, Kaminsky was eating in a way that made Charlie think she was enjoying her food, too.

“I’d file a complaint, except I like Bartoli. I like our team.” Another hostile look that Charlie translated to mean
, Especially when you’re not on it.
”

Charlie shrugged. “If I were you, I’d just shut up and sit tight. After all, I’m not a permanent fixture.”

Her eyes returned to Underwood’s file. Reaching the end of it, she clicked onto the next one: David Myers’. At the idea that she might come across details of her own youthful involvement with him inside the next few pages, she barely managed not to grimace.

“Bartoli would like you to be,” Kaminsky shot at her. “He thinks you’re a real
asset.
”

Michael snorted. “He wants to bang your brains out,” he corrected with a sneer.

Charlie ignored that.

“I am,” she told Kaminsky serenely, and kept her smile to herself as the other woman almost choked on her food.

“We were doing fine without you,” Kaminsky retorted as soon as she finished swallowing a restorative sip of water, but by then Charlie wasn’t listening: her attention was riveted on the file in front of her.

“I think I may have found something.” Charlie’s pulse pounded in her ears as she looked at Kaminsky. She felt a weird, almost lightheaded sensation, like her blood was draining toward her toes. “I’ve always felt that the first Gingerbread Man murders were the most significant. His victims were boys between the ages of twelve and fourteen, remember? It’s been my theory that our unsub’s original exposure to violent death occurred at that same age. I’ve also felt that he would have roots, or a connection, to this location, because the first murders occurred near here.”

Kaminsky scowled at her. “So you want to cut to the chase?”

Charlie did: “According to this file, David Myers was thirteen years old when he shot his cousin in Granville, which is about twenty miles from here.”

Kaminsky’s eyes widened. “Are you saying you think
Dr. Myers
might be the Gingerbread Man?”

As hard as it was for her to process, Charlie gave a jerky nod. “I think it’s possible.”

“Holy shit,” Michael said. “That little worm?”

Charlie already had her phone out and was pushing the button that dialed Tony’s number.

“You telling Bartoli?” Kaminsky asked with a glance at the phone.

Charlie nodded. But Tony didn’t pick up.

“He’s not answering,” Charlie said tensely.

As Charlie left Tony a message, Kaminsky snatched up her phone, saying, “I’ll try Crane.

“Thank God,” Kaminsky said as Buzz answered. From where Charlie was sitting, she could hear his end of the conversation as well as Kaminsky’s. The other woman’s voice was quiet and urgent as she spoke into the phone. “Listen up: Dr. Stone thinks the Gingerbread Man might be Dr. Myers.”

“What?”
Buzz sounded shocked. “How? Why?”

“We’ll explain later.” Kaminsky broke into his sputtering impatiently. “Just tell Bartoli. Dr. Stone tried to call him, but he’s not answering his phone.”

“He’s got it turned off,” Buzz said. “You caught me right as I was turning mine off, too.
Hey, boss!
” It was a loud whisper. “Damn it, he can’t hear me. You slowed me down: he’s already up there by the garage.” From the sound of Buzz’s voice, he was now on the move. “We’re at the house. The local police have a perimeter set up, and Bartoli and I and a couple of detectives are getting ready to go in. Doesn’t look like it’s going to amount to much, though. The house is dark and looks deserted. We don’t even have to break in. One of the detectives has a universal garage door opener and he’s using it to open up the—”

BOOM.

The explosion came out of nowhere. It was loud enough to hurt Charlie’s ears, to make the room shake, to rattle dishes and cutlery, to bring everyone in the room, including Charlie, leaping to their feet. Outside one of the big windows, Charlie could see a not-too-distant geyser of black smoke and scarlet flames shooting upwards over a jagged skyline of trees.

She gaped at it in shock.

“What the hell?” Michael’s eyes were riveted on the mushrooming fire. Everyone rushed toward one of the two doors, clearly meaning to pour out into the parking lot to get a better look at what was going on.

“Crane! Buzz!” Kaminsky cried into the phone. She gave Charlie a stricken look. “I could hear the explosion over the phone. I think—either it knocked out reception or—
Buzz! Buzz!
My God, was it them?” She started toward the nearest of the doors at a run, her eyes wild. “Let me see if the reception’s better outside. You stay here.” The last part of that, which she threw over her shoulder at Charlie, was fierce.

Charlie nodded, but Kaminsky, already thrusting through the door, didn’t see. Heart thumping, cold with dread, Charlie felt like she’d been rooted to the spot. She’d heard it clearly, too: the sound of the explosion had come through the phone. Which meant that Buzz, and Tony, had been on the scene.

Oh, my God.

“This ain’t good.” Michael had moved over to the nearest window, and was staring out at the billowing cloud of smoke and fire as it reached for the sky.

Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie saw that the last remaining diner, a man who’d popped out of the restroom at the sound of the explosion only to drop his briefcase at the sight that greeted him through the windows, was on one knee hastily gathering up his papers.

Please let Tony and Buzz be fine.

Probably the reception had been knocked out.

Taking a breath, getting a grip, Charlie moved to help him. Giving in to the panic that was surging through her body did no one any good. Crouching, she scooped up a handful of papers, which looked like pages of a manuscript. The title page was one of a number in her hands, and as she glanced at it the title leaped out at her. In large, bold type it read,
Causative Factors: A Treatise on the Nature of Evil.

Charlie blinked at it, then glanced up at the man crouched on the other side of the briefcase. He was holding a handful of papers, too, and as their eyes met he looked as astonished as she felt.

Her heart gave a great leap. Every tiny hair on the back of her neck shot upright.

“David,” she breathed.

That was all she said, because his name had no sooner left her mouth than he punched her in the face as hard as he could.

Charlie felt an explosion of pain, and everything went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Charlie!”

The voice yelling her name was loud enough so that she would’ve winced if she could have. Michael’s voice: she would recognize it anywhere.

Opening her eyes, Charlie nearly blacked out at the pain, and let her lids drop.

My face hurts.

“Michael?” she whispered.

“You need to wake up, babe. Right now.”

The urgency of it made her try to open her eyes again. This time, since she was prepared for the pain, it wasn’t quite so debilitating. But for whatever reason, her eyes wouldn’t quite open all the way, and so she peeped out through narrow slits.

Michael leaned over her. His face was the first thing she saw. It was hard, fierce even. She smiled anyway, or at least made a pathetic attempt at it. That hurt, too, so she stopped.

He didn’t smile back. She could feel tension rolling off him in waves.

“Hey,” he said. “You with me?”

“Mmm.” At least, she was trying. Then she remembered. “You’re mad at me.”

“No,” he said. “Not now.”

Relieved, she tried smiling again. It still hurt.

Michael said, “I know you’re hurting. But you got to snap out of it.”

He moved away from her, out of her line of vision. She tried to track him but failed because it hurt when she moved her head. Wherever she was, it was dark. Not pitch dark: she could see shadows, and flashes of light that seemed to come out of nowhere. The lights ran across the walls—curved metal walls—only to vanish. It took her a second to realize that what she was seeing were the headlights of passing vehicles slicing through the one she was in. She
was
in a vehicle: she knew that for sure because of the movement, and the sounds. She was lying down, on her side, on a hard, uncomfortable surface, in a moving vehicle. Something warm pressed close against her back. Her face—her nose and cheekbones and eye sockets—ached and throbbed. The skin over them felt swollen, a little tingly, mostly numb.

Charlie realized that she would have been afraid if Michael hadn’t been there.

“Michael?”

“Shh.” From the sound of his voice, he wasn’t very far away. “Keep your voice down. I’m right here.”

“What … happened?” Whispering, she moved a little, trying to locate him. A quiver of pain shot like an arrow behind her eyes, and her head swam, but she persevered. Breathing through her nose, she discovered, was hard. Clearly she’d been in some kind of accident.

She tried to think, to remember, but the effort made her head pound so she gave up.

“I missed part of it—I was looking out the damned window—but best I can tell you ran into that bastard Myers, and he punched you in the face and knocked you cold.” Michael’s voice was grim. “You remember any of that?”

“No.” Charlie saw him now, as a big solid shape in the darkness, through a grid of metal bars mere inches from her poor damaged nose. He was crouched about three feet away, and appeared to be examining the tall metal grid that inexplicably seemed to stand between them. She tried to make sense of what Michael had just said. “David?”

“He’s the Gingerbread Man.”

“What?” Woozy, she was unable to think clearly. As long as she kept her head relatively still, moving her arms and hands didn’t cause her pain, Charlie discovered as she reached out to curl her fingers around the metal wires, each of which was approximately as thick as her pinky finger. The whole grid felt as sturdy as if it was made of solid steel. “What … is this?”

“It’s a cage. You’re in a damned cage.”

That still didn’t make sense. Nothing made any sense. She forced out an inarticulate questioning sound.

Michael glanced her way. “Okay, here’s the situation as it stands: you’re in the back of that gray van you’ve been looking for, locked in a cage. That bastard Myers is driving. The cage takes up nearly the whole back of the van, it’s bolted to the floor, it’s got a padlock on the door, and right at the moment I’m not seeing any way to get you out of it. Those three missing girls are in the cage, too, lying next to you. They’re out for the count. There’s a tank—I think it’s empty, thank Jesus—out here, with a hose going into the cage. I’m guessing from its presence that the girls were gassed. Oh, and Sugar Buns is in there with you, too. She got zapped with a stun gun when she went outside hunting for you. From the look of her, she’ll be coming around any minute.”

Charlie began to frown. Frowning hurt. She stopped. A hard knot of fear formed in her chest. She could feel her heart starting to beat a little faster. Her brain was still missing some of its spark, but at least it was starting to function, bathed by an icy infusion of adrenaline.

“David,” she said with horror, as the truth hit her like a slap in the face: David was the Gingerbread Man; David had kidnapped her; David had her locked in the back of his van—

“Charlie, is that you?” A familiar, almost jovial voice from the front seat responded, and she realized that she had forgotten to whisper.

Fear made her blink. Blinking hurt.

“Son of a bitch,” Michael said.

“David?” Charlie’s gaze slanted in the direction of the voice. Even as she said his name again the memory of looking up over the manuscript pages in her hand to see David staring back at her surfaced. A split second later, had he slammed his fist into her face? Yes, Charlie concluded as anger joined the fear that was turning her icy cold inside, he had. She moved a little, careful to shift her whole body rather than only her eyes, and strained to see him. The dark shape of his head was just visible on the other side of what appeared to be the curved edges of a sliding plastic door similar in type to that which separates the back of a limo from the chauffeur. At the moment, it was open. He could talk to her, and obviously to some extent hear what was going on in the back of the van. He was driving, and past him, through the windshield, she got a slight glimpse of inky sky. Indignation filled her voice. “You hit me!”