Voices Carry (35 page)

It wasn’t enough that Genna had been identified as the next and final target of Michael Homer, that bastard—yes, she had said
bastard
and she meant it!—and that they’d all have to go into hiding for a while. Though of course, if it would save Genna, then it was no sacrifice. No sacrifice at all.

But where was Chrissie?

Patsy went back inside to check to see if there were any messages on the answering machine, though why she thought there might be, she couldn’t say. It was just a means of wasting time.

She’d give Crystal five more minutes and then she’d take the car out and drive around the lake to look for her.

Patsy’s mind sought a logical explanation. Maybe she stopped to talk to someone.

Crystal didn’t know anyone at the lake, she reminded herself.

“Well, maybe she met someone.” The words slipped out impatiently.

Patsy checked the clock again. Crystal was now almost thirty minutes late. Trying her best not to jump to conclusions, Patsy took her car keys and went out to start the Buick. It would only take her a few minutes to take a spin around the lake. If there was no sign of Chrissie, she’d call Brian and see what he recommended.

Patsy drove slowly, as one was forced to do on the narrow, winding road. Chrissie didn’t know that they’d be leaving that day. She had crept out that morning before Patsy had turned on the television for the morning news. Before Calvin Sharpe himself had called to tell them that Genna and John would be picking up Patsy and Crystal and heading off to some secret location. That the FBI would be everywhere around Bricker’s Lake over the next week or so.

Patsy glanced around as she drove.

If the FBI was there, they sure did know how to make themselves scarce.

She stopped at the stop sign at the first crossroads, thinking back to the night before, when she’d gone out onto the deck to call Crystal for dinner. The young woman stood at the end of the dock, stock still, looking up at the road, as if frozen.

Patsy had turned to see what could have spooked the girl so. Kenny Harris was just passing the cottage, and he had paused to greet Nancy, who had just arrived earlier in the afternoon. Nothing unusual there. When Crystal had come into the cottage for
dinner, she had appeared distracted, distant, but when Patsy had questioned her, she had merely shrugged and said something about her imagination playing tricks on her.

Patsy drove past Sally’s Lakeside, where the restaurant parking lot was empty except for Sally’s car and a delivery van. She continued along the road, peering over the steering wheel, then turned around where the road dead-ended and drove on back to her own driveway.

Truly worried now, she parked and got out of the car. The sound of the screen door slamming across the road startled her, and she looked up to see Kenny heading toward her.

Nothing travels faster than bad news,
she told herself. Kenny must have seen the news this morning, by the look of concern on his face, and wants to talk about it.

And there’s Nancy, poor soul,
Patsy watched her next-door neighbor emerge from her front door.
I surely don’t want her worrying about me or Genna, all she has on her mind. Who’d have guessed she was undergoing cancer treatment all this time?

Not that Nancy had ever mentioned it, Patsy acknowledged, silently admiring the woman’s strength. Patsy herself wouldn’t have known, had she not stumbled onto the fact just the day before. Nancy’d been scarce these past two weeks, and Patsy had been delighted to see her car there in the drive when Patsy and Crystal returned from a trip into town. Crystal had taken the shopping bags into the house to put the groceries away, and Patsy’d gone to Nancy’s back door and knocked, calling through the screen door a time or two, but there’d been no response. She’d
knocked again, then called as loudly as she could, but still, there was no answer. Tentatively, Patsy had tried the back door, and finding it unlocked, had gone into the cottage.

“Nancy?” she had called.

When there was no answer and Patsy began to fear that something
not good
might have happened, she went into the living room. Nancy’s handbag sat open upon the coffee table, a pack of cigarettes next to a glass ashtray.

“She never goes anywhere without that purse, and God knows she didn’t once all summer step outside without those damned cigarettes in her pocket,” Patsy muttered, then called again. “Nancy! Are you here?”

Patsy poked her head into the small front bedroom that she knew Nancy used, and was greatly relieved to hear the sound of the shower from the bathroom next door as the water was just being turned off.

“Oh, thank heavens!” Patsy exclaimed to herself, feeling a little silly to have let herself get so worked up over nothing. She’d just go on out the way she came in before Nancy could emerge from the shower and find her there, and none would be the wiser. Surely Nancy’d be startled to find her there, and then she’d for certain feel like a ninny for having let her nerves get the best of her.

But turning back to the door, it was Patsy who was startled.

There, on the bed, was Nancy’s pale blond page boy.

“Oh, my!” Patsy said aloud, reaching a hand out to touch the wig.

“Patsy.” A voice from behind made her jump.

“Oh, my stars, Nancy!” Flustered, Patsy turned to face the cottage’s occupant. “I was so worried about you. I knocked, and I called, knocked and called, and when you didn’t answer. . .”

“So. Now you know.” Wrapped in a white terry cloth robe, her bald head shiny from the shower, Nancy stood in the doorway, her face a study in stone.

“Yes. And oh, Nancy, I’m so very sorry.” Patsy clasped her hands in front of her. “But I wish you had told me.”

“Told you?” Nancy raised an eyebrow.

“My sister Connie was a victim of this terrible disease almost ten years ago. I know what chemotherapy can do to a body.” Patsy’s eyes filled with tears. “Now, if there is anything I can do for you, will you let me know? Anything at all, dear.”

“I appreciate that, Patsy,” Nancy nodded slowly. “I really do. But if you wouldn’t mind. . .”

“Oh, of course, dear. You need your privacy, of course you do. But why don’t you just come on over when you’re done, and we’ll have some iced tea and lemon pound cake.”

“Thank you. That sounds very nice. But I’m a little tired tonight. . .”

“Oh, of course you would be,” Patsy sympathized. “Did you have a treatment this week?”

Nancy nodded, and backed out into the living room. Patsy followed.

“Then you need your rest. Now, it’s been nice and peaceful up here these past few weeks, so you should be able to relax. I’ve missed you, by the way, but of course, I understand,” Patsy chattered as she headed
for the back door. “Now, you just take it easy and feel free to stop on over any time you feel up to it. . .”

That was before the phone call from John last night, Patsy recalled. All hell seemed to have broken loose since then, if the morning news was to be believed.

Well, she was packed and ready to go whenever Genna and John got there.

But where was Chrissie?

Patsy checked her watch as Nancy and Kenny approached, making small talk about the morning’s weather, and wondered just how much she should tell them about their planned hasty departure. Should she tell them anything at all? Would they be in danger if she did not? She wrestled fitfully with her dilemma, but knew that her immediate problem was Crystal. It was time to call Brian. And then, if he thought she should, the state police.

“So, how much longer before we get there?” John asked for the fourth or fifth time.

He was much more comfortable as driver than as passenger, but Genna knew the road from the airport in Erie like she knew the back of her hand, and so it made perfect sense for her to drive. John just didn’t like it much.

“About twenty more minutes,” she laughed, mildly amused by his discomfiture at having to sit back and let someone else take control.

“How do you think Patsy will feel about going to Maine for a few days?”

“She’ll be fine with it. I’m glad Sharpe agreed with my suggestion that we spend a week at the Sangers’ camp. I never did get to see it last year, you know.
And besides, I’m looking forward to seeing Ethan and Leah again.” She smiled, thinking of how nice it would be to visit with the newly married couple whose lives had been so closely meshed with her own the previous summer. Leah had come to the FBI seeking help in finding her missing sister, and the case had become Genna’s. And while, in the end, all that had been recovered of Leah’s sister was her remains, bringing closure to that aspect of her life had permitted Leah to find her heart. It was the sort of love story that people wrote books about, Genna mused, and she’d been pleased to have been even a small part of it.

“We’re lucky that they offered to make room for us in the inn,” John told her. “Not only because they’re booked solid this time of the year, but because of the purpose behind our impromptu vacation.”

“I explained everything to them very thoroughly. But they both agreed that White Bear Springs was probably the last place anyone would think to look for us. And besides, I’m not planning on being there for all that long. I’m just happy to be getting Pats and Chrissie out of the way.”

Genna stopped at a stop sign, and in her face, John read hesitation.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“We are at the corner of Freedom Road and Tolliver,” she said quietly.

“And the significance of that is. . . ?” He suspected there was one.

“The camp is about two miles straight ahead,” she told him. “For as long as I’ve had my driver’s license, I’ve made a right turn here, choosing to go miles out
of my way rather than to drive past it. It’s occurred to me that I don’t have to take the long way home anymore.”

After waiting for a pickup truck to pass, she accelerated and went straight through the stop sign.

“Chrissie and I went to the camp a few weeks ago,” she said, “did I tell you?”

“No. No, you did not. Why did you do that?” He found himself frowning.

“Because Chrissie wanted to. She said that her therapist told her that if you face your fears, they lose their power over you, so she wanted to go up there. She thought maybe she could shake the memories.”

“Did she?”

“I doubt it. I know I certainly did not. If anything, the nightmares have gotten worse,” she admitted.

“You didn’t tell me you were still having nightmares.”

“I never stopped. They’re just different now.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that somehow, it feels like someone else’s nightmare now.”

While John was pondering what someone else’s nightmare might be like, she pulled to the shoulder of the road and slowly stopped the car.

“It’s back there,” she told him as she rolled her window all the way down and pointed across the road. “Down that dirt road. It’s hard to see it, of course, because it’s so overgrown, but there’s one lane there. It goes straight for a while and then it dips sharply to the left and drops down at an incline. We didn’t stay too long because a storm came up on us, which was just as well. I couldn’t wait to get out of
there. So much was as it was back then, and yet so much had changed.”

John noticed that her hands were beginning to shake. He took them in his own in an attempt to soothe her.

“The cabins almost looked the same, except they’re overgrown now. And they had numbers painted on them. When we talked about what happened there, at the trial, we had to refer to the cabins by number. The water was still in the pool but the water was black. I still heard the voices but they were different this time. I still hear them in my sleep.”

She closed her eyes tightly, hearing them, as she had every night in her dreams since the day she and Chrissie had visited.

Please. . . help. . . us. . .

She shivered, and John leaned over and put his arm around her, then looked out the window. He stared for a long minute, looking skyward. She followed his gaze, and watched the dozen or so birds circle slowly over something that lay in the fields back behind the trees.

“Vultures,” she whispered, her eyes shifting back to the opposite side of the road.

“That’s what I thought they were,” John said. “We used to see them every once in a while, on the back roads to the shore. But I’ve never seen so many in one place before.”

She stared out the window for a very long time, trying not to think what she was thinking.

Please. . . help. . . us. . .

“Ohmigod,” she threw the door open and ran across the road before John could react. “Ohmigod. Ohmigod, John.”

She doubled over, her arms across her midsection. Like a shot, John was right behind her, holding her up.

“Genna. . .”

“Ohmigod,” she sobbed, her voice exploding in ragged blasts. “They’re there! They’re there! Oh, my God, they’re there!”

“Who’s there?” John sank to the ground along with her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Who’s where?”

“At the camp,” she gasped. “Back at the camp. The women. . . Michael took them to the camp. . .”

Her entire body trembled violently as the sobs ripped from her throat. “My God, I was there! I left them there! Hurry! Hurry. . .”

He grabbed her and pulled her, against her will, back across the road, leaning her against the car while he made first one, then a second, call on his cell phone.

“John, please,” she gasped, “we need to go—”

“I’ve called for help, Gen. Listen to me. I know your instincts tell you to go back there now, but you have to wait. We have to wait, do you understand? If Michael is back there, he’s waiting for you. We can’t take that chance, babe. We just can’t.”

“But—”

“No, no,” he held her tightly. “It’s just going to be a minute more, I promise. Then we’ll go back and if anyone is there, we will tend to them. But I’m not letting you go back there without an army of state troopers. We don’t know if those women are dead or alive, Gen—”

“They’re alive, I heard them,” she looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I heard them. They called to
me and I heard them and I didn’t understand and I left them there. I thought it was the wind. . . I left them there—”