Until Dark (27 page)

“The body they found in the cave . . . that’s Ian, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s Ian.”

“What happened?” she asked again. After all these years, Kendra needed to know. She would have begged him for the truth if she’d had to, but it seemed that Zach was now as eager to tell as she was to listen.

“Ian was so hot to trot to find this old Indian guy. He wanted that Cochise bow, let me tell you. He wanted it in a big way.”

“Was there really a bow?”

“What do you think?” He looked at her as if she had sported an extra head.

“Then why did you tell him?”

“Because I needed him to have money with him. And I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist something like that. It was the only way I was going to get out of there, don’t you see? I couldn’t stay there any longer. That TV program I told you about, I saw it the first night I was at your house that summer. All those kids, living together on the streets. It looked better to me than what I had. And I got the idea to go there. I figured I had nothing to lose. But I needed a little something to take with me.”

“So you got Ian to bring money out so you could kill him and steal it.”

“No, no, you gotta understand this. I never planned on killing him. I was just going to take his wallet, that’s all. I figured I could make him believe that he’d dropped it someplace on the trail, that it fell out of his backpack or something. The other stuff . . . it just sort of, you know, happened. I mean, like it was fate.”

“What exactly happened?”

“It was cold. I said I’d make a fire, but he didn’t want to sleep outside again. He went up the hill. I saw him going into the cave. For a minute, I almost called to him to not go in there.” Zach swallowed, remembering. “But as soon as he got past the mouth of the cave, he started to scream. Man, did he scream. I never heard anything like it.” A look of triumph crossed his face, as if he was reliving that moment, savoring Ian’s agony. “It seemed like he screamed forever. I thought he was never going to stop.”

“And you did nothing to help him?” A horrified Kendra shivered.

“Hey, what could I do?” Zach shrugged cavalierly. “The minute he went in there, he was as good as dead. If I went in, I’d have been stung to death, too. What good would that have done?”

“So you just stood there and listened to him scream.”

“Couldn’t avoid it, Kendra. He was
loud
.”

“And you left him to die.”

“Couldn’t avoid that either.”

“So that you could take his money.” Kendra swallowed hard.

“Yeah, well, his wallet was in his backpack there on the ground, so I figured, what the hell? I wasn’t looking that gift horse in the mouth. I took the backpack with his stuff in it, threw my old pack into the cave with him, and just walked away.”

“What about Christopher? Was he there?”

“Christopher? Oh, you mean the kid from the ranch? Yeah, he was there,” Zach said. “He followed us. We let him camp with us, but sometimes he had trouble keeping up. I told him to go back to the ranch, but he didn’t. He’d followed Ian up the hill, he was maybe twenty or thirty feet behind Ian when he went into the cave. He just stood there with his hands over his ears, whimpering and crying, all the time Ian was screaming. He was still crying the next morning.” He paused for a moment, reflected briefly, “I wonder if he ever stopped crying.”

“No,” Kendra said softly. “He never did.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw him when I was in Arizona recently.”

“You were in Arizona? Did you stop at the ranch?”

She nodded.

“See, that’s another thing. That ranch should have been mine, but she left it to her friends. I always knew she cared more for them than she did for me. She cared for everybody more than she cared for me. She was one damned poor excuse for a mother, Kendra. I deserved better. I deserved more.” His jaw settled hard again. “It should have been mine. She should have left it to me. I wasn’t even in her will.”

“She thought you were dead, Zach,” Kendra pointed out.

“Even after she found out I was alive, she wouldn’t change it.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Bitch. Why couldn’t she have done that much for me? She never did a damned thing for me my whole life. And you know what the first thing she said to me was, when she saw me? She said, ‘Where’s Ian?’ ” He sniffed and wiped at his nose with his shirtsleeve. “Five years I’m gone, and the first thing she says is ‘Where’s Ian.’ ”

“What did you tell her?”

“Oh, I showed her. Showed her where the cave was. She wanted to know how I pulled it all off.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Same thing I’ve been telling you.”

“You didn’t finish the story.”

“There isn’t anything left to tell.”

“Where did you go after Ian? How did you get there?”

“I walked most of the night. I figured I could hitch a ride and get to California once I got out to the road. The kid followed me, but I had to leave him when I got a ride with some college kids who were on their way to Sacramento. He was still crying but I told him someone would come along and pick him up and take him home. These kids, they took turns driving straight through the next couple of days, and after they dropped me off, I got a ride with a trucker to San Francisco. I lied and told him my dad lived there. And once I got there, I found a lot of kids, just like me, and that’s where I stayed, mostly. And then I was Ian. No more Zach.”

“There’s a man serving two consecutive life sentences in prison in Arizona who was convicted of killing you and Ian,” she told him.

“Yeah, I read about that.” Zach laughed dryly. “Dumb shit pedophile. I know all about what those guys do. You have no idea what they . . .” He shuddered, as if something terrible had touched his soul. “He belongs in a cell. They all belong in jail. I hope he rots there.”

“He may belong in prison, but not for the crime he was convicted of.”

“So what? What difference does it make, what crime he’s in for? He hurt little boys, you have any idea what that means? You think he deserves to be out walking the streets?” Zach took on a decidedly righteous expression.

“It matters, if he’s being held for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s wrong, Zach.”

“I don’t care. They’re all creeps and they all deserve to die.”

“Why didn’t your mother call us after she found out that you were still alive?”

“Because by that time she, too, had gone to that big Smith reunion.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that right after she and I had our little chat,” he glared at her, his eyes blazing, “she took a little tumble off the side of the hill.”

“You pushed her.” Kendra shook her head. She’d begun to think there was nothing Zach could say that could shock her after learning how he’d gleefully listened to her brother’s agonizing death. How many more terrible secrets could this man possibly harbor?

“Let’s just say accidents happen and leave it at that.”

“Why? Why would you do such a thing to your own mother?”

“Sierra, as you now know, was hardly June Cleaver,” he said coolly. “Not exactly Mother of the Year material.”

“But all those other women you killed,
they
were.” Kendra’s stomach lurched every time she thought of the beautiful young women, the loving young women, who had been so devoted to their children, so brutally taken from them.

“Yeah, and you think those kids appreciated them? Those kids had everything. They got to do everything, go to school and everything. They got to play baseball. Soccer. Had friends to play with. Bikes to ride. They had nice houses to live in.” His voice rising, he turned to her with the eyes of an angry, spiteful child. “I watched them. They did not appreciate what they had, Kendra. And you know what happens when you don’t appreciate what you’ve got, don’t you? It’s taken away from you, that’s what, because you don’t deserve to keep it. They didn’t deserve.” His words began to free-fall from his mouth in a jumble. “They did everything for their kids, you know that? Everything.”

Fat tears began to roll down his face.

“Why couldn’t one of them have been mine?” The howl of pain was sharp and clear. “Why couldn’t she have been like that? Why was everything always so wrong for me, and everything always right for everyone else? It just wasn’t fair.”

The tears stopped as another wave of anger washed over him.

“I went to her. I thought maybe she’d be glad to see me again. But she hardly seemed to even care that I was alive. Like it didn’t matter. So I figured, okay, it doesn’t matter to me either. Just give me what’s mine and I’ll go away again. But then she told me about her will, how everything was already set up and she wasn’t going to change it, not even about the Smith trust being set up to support the ranch and her friends. She offered me a couple thousand dollars to go away again. A couple of thousand dollars!” The words fell from his mouth in a tumble. “It wasn’t fair, Kendra. All that money, the ranch . . . she wouldn’t put me—
me,
her only child!—back in her will. She met me in the hills the next morning and gave me the cash—five thousand dollars, can you believe that? Well, it just wasn’t right. She had to be punished for being so mean to me. So she took a tumble and I took her money and I left, figured I’d go back to San Francisco. What the hell, I’d lived all those years on the streets, I’d probably die on the streets.”

His focus wandered for a second or two. “I hitched back to California, got stranded overnight and got a room in a motel on Route Ten. Got some dinner, got a shower. Laid down on the bed to watch TV. Well, who do you think I saw on the TV that night? Can you guess?”

He jammed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, enjoying the telling, building up to the moment.

“My beloved Aunt Elisa! Right there on ‘Larry King Live’! All those years I’d been away, she’d gone and gotten herself elected to the goddamned United States Senate! I thought, well, shit, Sierra cut me out as Zach, let’s see what I can get from Aunt Elisa as Ian. I mean, we had so many of the same features, who’s to say we wouldn’t have looked alike when we grew up?”

“You went to see my mother?” Kendra whispered, incredulous. Finally, something to truly shock, when she’d begun to believe that he had no secrets left to tell.

But her mother had never mentioned that she’d been contacted by Zach. Surely she’d have told Kendra if he had.

“Why not? Oh, you should have seen her face when I walked into the house. Let myself right in the back door. She was in the library, reading, and I stood in the doorway and said, ‘Hello, Mom.’ ”

Beneath the blanket, Kendra’s fists began to clench, her body quivering now from something other than the cold.

“I almost had her convinced, too.”

“You told her you were Ian? You let that woman think that, after all those years.” It was almost too terrible to speak the words. No one knew better than Kendra how her mother had suffered the loss of her son.

“Sure. I thought I could cash in with the happy reunion thing. But she wasn’t having any of it.” The sneer returned to his face. “After the shock of seeing me wore off, she knew I wasn’t Ian.”

“A mother would know her own child,” Kendra’s voice was still a whisper.

“Now, see, that’s just what she said.
Exactly
what she said,” he told her, the sneer turning into something uglier. He stubbed out his cigarette in the dirt. “Right before I put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”

“You . . .” the words stuck in her throat. “You . . .”

“Well, damn, Kendra, I’d had about enough, you know? My mother turns me down, my aunt turns me down . . .”

She flew at him so fast, with such fury, that he barely saw her coming, had no time to even brace himself before she slammed into him and knocked him backwards. He fell over a fallen branch and slammed headfirst into the dirt. Her mind now as numb as her body had been, Kendra raced to the canoe and grabbed the paddle, but this time she chose not to flee. She came back at him, the paddle raised over her head, held in both hands, and she smashed it across his face even as he tried to stand.

“Bastard!” she roared, and slammed his face again.

Blood ran from his broken nose and his mouth.

“You bastard!” she screamed, and hit him across the shoulders when again he sought to rise.

Every emotion that had been tucked away inside her since her mother’s death exploded. The torment she’d suffered, the double pain of loss and the terrible business of dealing with the aftermath of a loved one’s suicide, the overwhelming sense of guilt, of not having done enough, not having been enough, to have kept her mother tethered to this world—all surfaced in one massive, unstoppable swell. Wild-eyed, she fought him furiously until the paddle cracked, then broke, and even then she fought him with her hands and her fists, until he fell back, his head cracking against the side of the burned-out barn.

Her breathing labored, her lungs in agony, her face wet with tears, she stumbled, exhausted, to the canoe and untied the rope from the bow with rapidly swelling fingers, several of which were broken though she was not yet aware of the pain. Adrenaline had carried her beyond her physical limits, but was beginning to abate. Still, she could not, would not, permit him to get away. Staggering back to where he lay, she rolled him over and tied his hands behind his back in a tight knot. She tried dragging him to the canoe, but he was too tall and too heavy for her to budge him.

“Hell with it,” she mumbled, and walked on unsteady feet to the canoe. Zach could awake in the dirt, as she had earlier, and wait for the police to come for him.

With the broken paddle and bloodied hands, she headed for home, weeping as she thought of her mother’s last moments, stunned by the unexpected confirmation that she’d been right all along, that Elisa had not taken her own life, had not chosen to leave her. Now she had proof. Kendra clung to this unexpected treasure, this newly found truth, and it warmed her and gave her the strength to keep on moving toward her home.

What, she wondered as she found her way through the ever-thickening smoke, would she find when she got there?

Chapter
Twenty-three

The flames licked at the roof of Smith House, plumes of water chasing them higher as hoses trained on those not-yet-ignited parts of the house sought to contain the blaze. Drawing water from the stream, the firefighters did their best to douse the fire and to save as much of the historic house as possible.

Adam had arrived as the first pumper had set up and the hoses were being brought to the water’s edge. The sight of flames shooting from the roof of the beautiful old house saddened him, but that it was Kendra’s house, the house that symbolized all she had left of her family, sickened him.

But where was Kendra? His eyes scanned the landscape again, but she was nowhere to be seen.

He’d started across the yard when he was struck by the unthinkable. Was Kendra in the house?

He threw his jacket on the ground and rolled up his sleeves as he crossed the yard, yelling to the crew frantically attempting to put out the fire that had spread to the back porch, limiting their access to the source of the blaze.

“Is she here?” Adam demanded of the first man he reached.

“Haven’t seen her” was the reply.

“Are you a friend of Kendra’s?” A man wearing a black shirt and a worried expression grabbed Adam’s arm.

“Yes. Have you seen her?” Adam tried to push the man aside.

“I’m Father Tim.” The priest sought to calm him. “I’m a friend, as well.”

“What are the chances she’s inside?” Adam fought to control his emotions.

“We don’t know.” The priest shook his head and continued with his tasks. If Kendra was inside the burning house, the best thing they could do for her—the only thing they could do for her—was to extinguish the fire and get her out. “Pray that she isn’t.”

A frantic Adam drew as close to the house as he could, seeking a possible safe entry, but as yet there was none. He grabbed a portion of hose and held on as the water pressure built before hitting the house with a blast. When enough of the flames had been subdued, he started up the back steps with the clear intent of kicking in the door, at which time several of the firefighters directed his energies to helping hold the hose. Without the proper gear and lacking training, Adam could be more of a hazard than a help.

“If she’s in there, they’ll find her.” Father Tim grabbed Adam by the arm. “They know what they’re doing. You don’t. You’re getting in the way. Let them do their job.”

Only the thought that his well-intentioned efforts could impede Kendra’s rescue kept Adam from entering the house. He stood near the rear of the property, watching the men struggle to take control of the conflagration, his mind nearly paralyzed with the fear that she could be trapped in the inferno. After all, her car was in the drive, and there’d been no sign of her or Selena.

Had Selena’s car been parked at her house? Adam realized he hadn’t even noticed as he’d flown up the road, following the smoke and flames.

“Anyone check Selena’s?” he asked Father Tim. “Maybe Kendra’s there with her.”

The priest shook his head. “Selena’s still at her brother’s up around Trenton. As a matter of fact, it was she who first alerted us to the fire.”

“How could she have known about the fire if she’s out of town?” Adam frowned.

“She saw it in a vision,” Father Tim told him without giving any sign that he found that even the least bit questionable.

“A vision? You brought the fire trucks down here because someone had a vision?”

“No, but I did drive out here to check after she called. As soon as I made the turn off the main road I could see the smoke.
Then
I called in the fire. Good thing I did, wouldn’t you say?” Father Tim pointed to the house, where the flames were just starting to subside.

Adam was still pondering the probability of anyone rousing himself in the middle of the night because someone had had a vision, when movement from the corner of his eye drew his attention to the stream that ran behind the house. He turned just as the canoe stopped at the water’s edge.

“Holy Mother,” he whispered.

The woman was covered with blood and moved on shaking legs that appeared barely capable of taking the next step. In three strides, Adam had covered the distance and gathered her into his arms. She collapsed against him, sobbing and muttering something indistinguishable.

“Kendra . . .” His arms tightened around her. “Dear God, what happened to you?”

“McMillan’s barn,” she sobbed. “The barn . . . Zachary. He killed Ian. . . . He left Ian to die in the cave. . . .”

“I know. The report came back from the medical examiner. They’d checked the dental records on the body they found. It’s definitely Ian.” Adam stroked her back as if to comfort her.

“Zach tried to be Ian,” she said, clinging to his neck like a child, “wanted to be Ian.”

“Is he armed, Kendra?” Chief Logan asked.

“Don’t think so.”

Logan sent three officers into the stream toward McMillan’s.

“She didn’t do it, Adam,” Kendra sobbed. “She didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do what, sweetheart?” He smoothed her hair, thanking God that she was here, that she was all right. That she was alive. “Who didn’t do what?”

“My mother . . . my mother . . .” she said, her last words before passing out.

The ambulance took way too long to arrive, in Adam’s opinion, and he paced restlessly, Kendra still in his arms, until the first emergency vehicle arrived. He reluctantly relinquished her to the gurney, then climbed in the back with the EMTs and rode with them to the nearest hospital emergency room, which was twelve miles away. Once there, his FBI badge notwithstanding, he was relegated to the waiting room, where he paced some more.

He’d filled out her admission forms, printing his own name on the “next of kin” line. It wasn’t a lie, he thought. Who else did she have? From where he sat, she had him, and she had Selena, and that was about it.

Bless Selena. If she hadn’t called Father Tim when she did, they might not be worrying about who Kendra Smith’s nearest and dearest were.

Later, at the hospital, Selena would tell Adam, the vision had blasted through the shield she generally invoked whenever she had the feeling that something was trying to get through. She could see Kendra’s house, clear as day, flames spilling from the kitchen windows. Through the smoke, she could see Kendra, in water, struggling. Selena had awakened from sleep shaking, cold, coughing, and sputtering, as if she’d been drowning. She’d not stopped to think before picking up the phone and calling Kendra’s house. When the operator came on the line and told her there were problems with the line, Selena knew. She called Father Tim, who went to check Kendra’s house and rallied the volunteer firefighters as well as Chief Logan, and within minutes, a line of cars and trucks were screaming through the night in the direction of Smith House. Chief Logan and two patrol cars had pulled into the drive just minutes before Kendra had stumbled onto the bank and all but collapsed into Adam’s arms.

Kendra had been barely recognizable, her hair hanging down her back in one long wet tangle, her face and shirt covered with blood. Her jeans had been wet and torn and she’d been weaving with fatigue. It had taken Adam’s brain only a split second to realize that the woman teetering toward them was Kendra. How she had come to such a state had yet to be determined. Had Zach attacked her and set her house on fire? Adam had seen the bruises on her neck and on her arms, seen the broken blood vessels in her eyes, and his fists clenched at the thought of Zach’s hands around her throat.

“Mr. Stark?” The young doctor stood in the doorway of the waiting room.

Adam jumped to his feet.

“I’m Dr. Brady,” she smiled. “You’re listed as next of kin for our patient.”

“Kendra Smith, yes,” he nodded. “How’s she doing? Is she going to be okay?”

“She’s going to be fine. But I’m afraid she won’t be able to come home for at least another day.”

“What exactly—”

“Well, she’s suffering from hypothermia, exposure, and broken bones in both hands.”

“Her face?” he asked, recalling all of the blood.

“A few cuts and bruises,” the doctor told him.

“But all the blood.” Adam frowned.

“Apparently it wasn’t hers.”

“Really.” He pondered this.

The doctor shrugged. “I have no idea whose blood it is, but it isn’t Ms. Smith’s. Oh”—she tapped the clipboard that she held—“she does have bruises around her neck.”

“And broken blood vessels in her eyes.” Adam muttered curses under his breath. “Evidence of strangulation.”

“Yes. We will be calling in the local police,” she told him.

“They already know.” Adam took out his badge and showed it to her. “Chief Logan should be along real soon.”

“I’m confused.” The doctor frowned. “Are you here because she’s the victim of a crime, or because—”

The double outside doors slid open automatically and a gurney, accompanied by three EMTs, emerged.

“Got another one. Shit, you’d think this was a weekend night in the summer,” someone complained from the other side of the emergency room.

Chief Logan appeared in the doorway, and signaled to Adam.

“When can I see her?” Adam asked.

“You can come back with me now,” the doctor told him, “she’ll be down here until her room is ready and the paperwork is done. She’ll be going to X-ray soon.”

“Great, thank you.” Adam turned then toward the gurney and the new patient who was being wheeled in.

“Says his name is Ian Smith,” the chief told him. “What do you think of that? Kendra’s brother, after all these years.”

“It’s Zachary Smith,” Adam said. “Kendra’s cousin, after all these years. Ian Smith is dead.”

The man on the gurney breathed heavily through a broken nose, and his face was encrusted with dried blood. He looked up at Adam through puffy eyes.

“She do this to you, Zach?” Adam said, pleased at the extent to which she’d fought. He leaned down and said, so that only Zach could hear, “I’ll bet you never figured her for a fighter, did you? She do all that when you were trying to strangle her?”

“You’re the FBI agent who’s doin’ her, aren’t you?” Zach’s swollen mouth smirked, and Adam fought an urge to break the man’s nose from the other side.

Instead, Adam stood up and back, allowing the orderlies to take the gurney into the emergency room.

“We’ll be here when they’re done with you, Zach,” Adam told him as they wheeled him away. “The chief and I will be waiting.”

“What do you think you have to hold me on?”

“We can start with the attempted murder of your cousin,” Adam said calmly.

“She told you I tried to kill her?” Zach yelled.

“No, but I’m betting she will.”

“And it’s Ian. She’s my sister.” He tried to sit up. “And I want to press charges against her. For assault.”

“Save it,” Adam muttered in disgust.

“He’s been insisting since minute one that he’s Ian,” one of the police officers noted.

“His name is Zachary Smith. He’s the son of Sierra Smith, who was the sister of Kendra’s father. We know he tried to kill her.” Adam watched the gurney disappear behind the curtains of one of the examining rooms. “We’re also going to want to question him about seven recent murders in Pennsylvania. And God knows what else he’s done.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” the chief nodded.

“Mr. Stark, if you’re ready.” Dr. Brady dropped some paperwork off at the receptionist’s desk. “I’ll take you back to Ms. Smith now.”

“How is she?” Chief Logan asked.

“I guess I’m about to find out,” Adam told him as he followed the doctor to the door of the fourth examining room on the right.

Adam stood in the doorway and looked at the figure that lay upon the bed. Most of the blood had been washed from her face and her bloody clothes had been exchanged for a worn blue-and-white hospital gown. She rested back against the pillows, an IV drip in her right arm, her eyes half-closed.

“I heard him,” she said without opening her eyes. “He’s here. Zach . . .”

“Yes, he’s here.” Adam pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. She looked so small and so pale, so . . . wounded. The sight of her wrenched his insides.

“He did it all,” she murmured. “You were right. Miranda was right. He killed those women.”

“Did he tell you that?”

She nodded.

“He wanted to see if I could sketch him. If I’d know him.” She swallowed hard, her throat tight and raw. “It was all just a game. Just to see if I’d know him. All those lives ruined, all those beautiful young women dead . . . how sick do you have to be to do such things?”

“Or how evil.” Adam wanted to take her hands in his own, to give her some small comfort, but both were heavily bandaged. He rested a hand gently on her forearm, to touch, to reassure. To make some contact, however slight.

“And Ian . . . he let him die. Call Sheriff Gamble. Webster. . . . they’ll have to let him go. . . .”

Her voice was so faint now that he could barely make them out. “Sierra. Not an accident.”

She partially opened her eyes, and he was surprised to find the faintest trace of light, a smile.

“Adam, she didn’t do it,” Kendra murmured. “She didn’t do it. I knew she didn’t do it . . . told you she wouldn’t.”

“Who?” Adam leaned forward, wondering if they’d given her medication for pain, and if it had confused her. “Who are you talking about?”

“My mother,” she said, only the very corners of her mouth curving into the barest hint of a smile. “Didn’t kill herself.”

“She didn’t?”

“No,” she sighed as she drifted off to sleep. “Zach did.”