Triptych (47 page)

The glass made a sucking noise as she tried to move.

“Think about it,” Michael called from the open doorway above. “Think about what’s going to happen to you.”

The light went out. The door closed. The bolt slid home.

She was going to die.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Will kept his cell phone to his ear as he drove, praying that Amanda would be in her office. He had brought John with him because he needed to hear his story, wanted to know what kind of animal he would be dealing with when he reached Tennessee. For his part, John was more than willing to oblige. All of the man’s recalcitrance had disappeared, and Will’s head was spinning from his theories.

Caroline finally answered the phone, saying, “Amanda Wagner’s office.”

“I need Amanda now. It’s urgent.”

She put him on hold. Will kept his eyes on the road, speeding up Interstate 75 in the HOV lane thirty miles over the posted speed limit.

“Will?” Amanda said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m on my way to Tennessee.”

“I don’t recall signing off on a vacation request.”

“I think Michael Ormewood is the killer.”

“All right,” Amanda drawled. “Break it down for me, Will.”

Will told her John’s story, how Michael had tried to lean on the parole officer, how John’s sister had told him about the cabin in Tennessee. He finished with the oil stains in Michael’s driveway and what the neighbor had told Leo Donnelly.

“You checked Polaski’s house?”

“I had a cruiser go by. She’s not there. Her car’s not in the driveway.”

Amanda was silent. Will had introduced her to Angie once-not by choice. She had taken him to the hospital when Amanda had shot him with the nail gun. Inconceivably, the two women had gotten along.

Finally, she spoke. “So, what you’re saying is, based on some unanswered phone calls and a few spots on a driveway, you’re taking a convicted felon over state lines to look for an Atlanta police detective who may or may not have snatched another detective in broad daylight?”

“You need to search his house.”

“This is the house in DeKalb County’s jurisdiction? How do you propose I get a warrant, Dr. Trent? Not that your mysterious oil stains in the drive aren’t compelling, but I doubt there’s a judge alive who would sign off on it.”

“Amanda,” Will said, trying to control his voice. “You are a nasty, horrible person, but you have always had my back every time I worked a case. Don’t do this to me now.”

“Well, Will,” she countered. “You are a high-functioning dyslexic who reads on a second-grade level, but let’s not throw stones.”

Will felt all the saliva in his mouth dry up. When had she found out?

Amanda said, “I don’t have many friends in Tennessee, Will. I can’t reach out to them to help you with nothing more to go on than the bad feeling in your gut and we both know Yip Gomez would rather eat his own shit than give you a hand.” Yip was Will’s old boss in the northwest field office. She added, “This is why I keep telling you not to burn bridges,” as if now was the time for one of her lessons.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he admitted. “You’re right. This could be nothing. I could get there and it could be just a waste of time, but I can’t stand around not doing anything, Amanda.”

“You put out an APB on Polaski’s car?” Yes.

She was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “Tell me, this Detective Donnelly, he was the last person to leave Ormewood’s house?” Yes.

“Well, look at this,” Amanda exclaimed, her voice raised in mock surprise. “Caroline just handed me a message. It’s an anonymous tip. A concerned citizen has noticed that Detective Ormewood’s back door has been busted open. I think I should check on it myself, don’t you?”

Will felt a wave of relief. Amanda was going to help him. He could almost hear her thinking it through over the phone.

“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Will ended the call. He kept the phone in his hand as he drove, taking the exit onto 575 with an abrupt jerk of the wheel that made John Shelley grab the side of the door like he was afraid they were going to roll. Will had been in such a hurry that he hadn’t even considered how he was going to find the cabin until John had asked for a map. The five-minute detour to the gas station had seemed like a lifetime. If what the neighbor had told Donnelly was right, Michael had about an hour on them. But, then, Michael was probably driving the speed limit, staying under the radar. Will wasn’t being so careful.

John asked, “What did she say?”

“You could have prevented this,” Will told him. “You could have stopped this four days ago.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Michael was with me when Cynthia Barrett died.”

John looked down at the map he had spread across his lap. “I heard she was running across the yard and tripped. Hit her head on a rock and died.”

“Then cut out her own tongue?”

John didn’t offer an answer.

“You should have done something then.”

“What?” John demanded. “Gone to you? You don’t even believe my story now, man. What am I going to do? Turn in a cop? Who’s gonna believe an ex-con who works at a car wash?”

Will kept his hands tight around the wheel. John had brought this down on Angie. She would be safe now but for the man’s arrogance and stupidity. “You were baiting him. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

John snapped the map along a crease, folding it into a smaller section as he kept trying to defend himself. “You tell me what I should’ve done and I’ll get back in my magic time machine and do it. Tell you what, though, let’s don’t stop at four days. Let’s go back twenty years. Give me my youth back. Give me my mother and my grandparents and my family. Hell, throw in a wife and a couple of kids for me while you’re at it.”

“She was running away from something in that yard.”

John was still working on the map, but Will could hear the anguish in the other man’s voice when he said, “Don’t you think I know that?”

Will looked back at the road, watched the signs blur by, the mile markers with their bold numbers popping up along the landscape. He hadn’t thought this through; hadn’t considered that he might be endangering John.

Will said, “It violates your parole to go over state lines.”

“I know.”

“You could be arrested. I can’t help you in Tennessee.”

“You can’t help me in Atlanta, either.”

Will chewed his lip, staring at the black pavement, the other cars on the road. He had driven back and forth between Atlanta and the mountains for the last two years, so he knew exactly where all the speed traps were. He slowed down through Ellijay, not resuming his speed until he crossed Miciak Creek. He coasted by the new Wal-Mart and the old one, then past several outdoor flea markets and a couple of liquor stores. At the town of Blue Ridge, he took a left. He was flying down Coote Mason Highway, just beyond the apple orchard, when the phone rang.

He flipped it open on the side of his leg. “Amanda?”

Her tone was grim. “We found blood in the garage. Two different types and lots of it.”

“Angie?”

“She’s not here, Will.”

His mouth opened, but words failed him.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Amanda said. “I’ve called Bob Burg at the Tee Bees.” The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “He’s putting together a team right now. They’re about forty minutes out from the cabin.”

“I’m closer.”

“I figured you would be,” she said. “Let me speak to the pedophile. I’ve got directions to Elton Road.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Angie had almost passed out when she lifted her arm off the shard of glass cemented to the bottom stair.-not so much from the pain, but from the sensation of the glass sliding out of her flesh. There wasn’t much blood, and compared to the throbbing in her wrist, the wound was manageable. She had been lucky. Her right wrist was the one that was probably broken and she had by some miracle fallen on her right shoulder at the bottom of the stairs. Like Will, Angie was left-handed.

“Jasmine?” she whispered, her voice echoing in the pitch-black cellar. “Jasmine?” There was no response.

Angie pressed her good shoulder against the wall and stood. She took a moment to catch her breath, then carefully slid her bare feet across the dirt floor, searching for the girl.

“Jasmine?” she repeated, her foot making contact. “Are you okay?”

The girl was either too terrified to answer or was dead.

Angie knelt down, put her head to where she thought Jasmine’s mouth and nose might be and tried to listen for signs of life.

Nothing.

Angie turned around, reaching blindly with her fingers. She felt along the girl’s naked body, touching sticky blood, finally feeling the shallow up and down of Jasmine’s chest laboring to breathe. Angie didn’t touch her mother much, but the few times she’d visited Deidre in the home, this is what she had felt like: dead weight, just a shell that looked like a body.

“Jasmine?” Angie whispered.

The girl did not stir as Angie touched her face, her hair. Angie’s fingers slipped under the scalp and she recoiled.

“Oh, Jesus!” Angie bent at the waist, trying not to vomit again. She’d touched the girl’s skull, felt the splintered bone and the soft, wet, gray matter underneath.

They had to get out of here. They had to get help.

Angie stood again. She paced out the cellar. Ten feet wide, maybe twelve feet deep. Before the bulb had been switched off, she had glimpsed crude wooden shelves built into the walls. With her hands tied behind her back, it was difficult to check the top shelves. Her fingers felt nothing but vacant space as she checked the lower shelves for anything that might be used as a weapon.

The cellar was empty. Even the packed dirt floor was swept clean.

Maybe her wrist was not completely broken. Angie could still move her fingers, though they felt swollen and hot as if an infection was already working its way through her bloodstream. She was becoming used to the pain, almost welcoming it because it took her mind off the pounding in her head, the roiling in her stomach. The dark helped, too. There was nothing for her eyes to focus on, nothing to throw her balance.

Michael was upstairs. She thought he might be making a meal, lunch or dinner. She didn’t know what time of day it was or how long she’d been in this fucking hole.

Every noise he made-a chair sliding across the floor, joists squeaking as he walked around-intensified her fury. Angie seethed with hatred. He had gotten to her. He had worked his way into her mind and made her feel like a useless piece of shit. She’d had more men inside her body than she could count, but not one of them had ever gotten into her head like this.

She would kill him when he came back. She would kill him or make him kill her. Those were the only two options.

Angie braced herself, sliding down the wall until she was on her knees. Two paces to the stair, the broken glass imbedded in the tread. She turned and felt for it with her hands, careful not to slice her already shredded fingers as she positioned the thick, knotted rope over the biggest shards. She sucked in air through her teeth, trying not to think about the pain as she sawed the rope against the glass.

Michael’s handcuffs were on Jasmine. He had used rope to tie up Angie.

“You fucker,” she breathed, a mantra to herself. Michael Ormewood didn’t make mistakes. He was always in control, always on top of everything. Everything but the fact that glass could cut rope.

“You stupid fucker.”

Blood soaked her hands, wet the rope that bound her wrists together. Angie stopped sawing, trying to catch her breath, take it slow. She’d almost passed out the first time she’d tried to cut the rope, but with each new attempt, she honed her technique, learned more about the knots he’d tied, the way the rope bound her wrists. She could feel that the rope had shifted down a little, was rubbing raw a new section of skin. Her blood was acting as a lubricant.

She would get out of this. She would saw off her own hand if she had to.

“Oh!” She gasped as the rope skipped down the glass, her hands slipping, the razor-sharp edges slicing into her fingers.

Angie held her breath, listening for Michael. God, she had never hurt so bad in her life. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t take the feeling of the flesh being sliced off bone. She leaned forward, her forehead touching the ground as she cried.

“Will,” she whispered. She couldn’t pray to God, not after everything she’d done, so she prayed to Will. “I’m going to get out of this,” she promised him. “I’m going to get out of this and…” She didn’t say the words, but she knew them in her heart. She would leave Will for good. She would finally let him escape.

Overhead, footsteps walked across the floor. Angie reared up, her hands fumbling for the glass. She furiously worked the rope, fear anesthetizing her against the pain.

“Angie?” Michael called. He was on the other side of the locked door. “Answer me. I know you hear me.”

She stretched the rope taut, wrenching her shoulders, desperate to break free. “Fuck you, motherfucker!”

“Get away from the stairs, Angie. I’m gonna open the door, and I’ve got my gun trained right on you.”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Faster, faster, she sawed the rope up and down the jagged glass.

The key scraped in the lock.

“No,” Angie whispered, forcing herself to hurry. “Not yet, not yet.”

“Get away from the stairs,” he said. “I mean it.”

“No!” she screamed, jumping away from the glass just as the door flew open.

The light blazed on. Angie looked at Jasmine, saw the girl’s face was turned toward her, the eyes slit open but unseeing. Her mouth was open. Blood pooled around her head.

“Don’t try anything,” Michael warned. He stood at the top of the stairs with the gun in his hand. He was bare-chested, jeans and sneakers the only thing covering his body.

“Fuck off,” Angie told him. She’d felt the rope give, but not enough. Blood wet her hands like water. She was still trapped, still helpless.