Almost Dead (18 page)

CHAPTER 41

Kitally cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face against the windowpane. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she told Hayley.

Hayley felt the same way. They had been at the Perdue house for a few minutes already. The old house sat in the middle of about three acres of grass and trees. The next-door neighbors were well hidden behind all the greenery. There was a truck parked in front of the attached garage, but nobody was answering the door. There was also a barn in the back, but it was locked up tight.

“I’m going to go around to the back again,” Hayley said.

“I’m coming with you.”

Hayley tried the door leading to the garage. She knocked, waited, then turned the knob. Locked.

Kitally knocked on the sliding glass door leading into the back of the house. It was also secure. “Everything seems to be locked up tight. Didn’t you say this guy was married?”

“According to the records I found, he’s been married for five years.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than they heard a crash.

“That came from inside, didn’t it?” Kitally asked.

“Sounded like someone dropped a glass.”

“All the blinds are shut tight. It’s impossible to see anything.” Hayley pulled a pick from her bag, went back to the garage door, and used it to wriggle the lock.

When that didn’t work, she pulled out a tension wrench. After she used a delicate touch and a lot of experience, a click sounded and the door opened.

She took a look inside. It was dark. A weird, musty smell wafted out to greet them. She stepped into the garage and felt around until she found a switch. Flipped it up. The place looked like most garages. There were boxes, old bikes, an extra tire, tools, and a Buick Encore.

“Anything in there?” Kitally asked.

“All the usual stuff people keep in a garage, including another car.”

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“You sound like Jessica.”

“Is that a bad thing? I like Jessica.”

Hayley came to an abrupt stop. She turned to face Kitally, who had just stepped inside the garage behind her. “Listen. If we call the police and something inside this house is not right, we’ll be suspects.” Hayley pointed a finger at her own chest. “I don’t want to be a suspect.”

Kitally nodded. “I get it. What about the crash we heard inside the house?”

“Let’s check out the garage first. One step at a time.”

“Look at this.”

There were four large aquariums on the far wall, large enough to keep a cat in. They were lined with newspaper, and two of them had real tree branches inside.

“I wonder what those are used for?”

“Snakes,” Hayley said, pointing to shed skin nearby.

An enormous shed skin.

“Gross,” Kitally said.

Hayley started working on the lock to the door leading into the house. She didn’t like the idea of finding that skin outside the aquarium any more than Kitally did.

Kitally started to hum, a nervous habit she’d been indulging in more and more often.

“Could you stop that?”

“I don’t like snakes. Never have.”

“Go wait in the car then,” Hayley suggested.

“I’m fine,” Kitally said with a sigh. “I’ll be quiet.”

At the same moment the door clicked open, they were met with a sound from behind that made Kitally jump.

“Is that what I think it is?” Kitally asked.

“Yes, it’s a rattler. It’s coming from the other side of the garage. You’re safe.”

Kitally squeezed into the house in front of Hayley. “What happens if we get bit by one of those things?”

“Swelling, internal bleeding, and intense pain.”

Kitally started humming again.

They were in the laundry room. “Anyone home?” Hayley called out.

She listened. Heard multiple voices.

Hayley unsheathed a knife from her right leg and held it in front of her as she continued on through the kitchen.

The television had been left on.

Kitally had let her pass and now followed at a safe distance, checking every nook and cranny for more snakes, no doubt.

Two dirty plates, a half-empty glass. On the floor, shards of glass. The other glass had rolled off the table and shattered.

It looked as if the couple had finished dinner, and then what?

Hayley stepped into the family room and had to suck in a breath. She’d never seen anything like it. Mr. and Mrs. Perdue were sitting on the couch.

Kitally pulled up beside her, gasped, and clamped a hand over her mouth.

A ridiculously large python had wrapped itself around Mrs. Perdue’s upper body and neck. Her face was a puffy mask—or what was left of her face was. From the looks of it, Mr. Perdue had tried to help his wife and had been bitten several times. There was no reason to check for a pulse. Clearly, they were both dead.

Before Hayley could tell Kitally that they needed to get out of there fast, Kitally screamed. When Hayley swiveled about, she found Kitally standing on a chair. On the floor under the table was a rat being eaten whole by a long, slender-bodied snake with a speckled design.

“Come on,” Hayley said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t. I’m trapped.”

“The snake doesn’t want anything to do with you,” Hayley said. “Not until he finishes eating that rat. Come on!”

“No.”

“Look. I’m telling you he won’t bother you when he’s got that rat to work on. But when he
finishes
. . .” Hayley headed back the way they came. “I’ll be in the car. I’m going to call Lizzy.”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“I’m leaving you. You’re being ridiculous.” Hayley left her standing on the chair, humming a tune.

Another ten minutes passed before Kitally exited the house through the front door. Her face was ghostly white and her spine was stiff as she marched toward the car. She opened the door, slid in behind the wheel, and sat there, blank-faced.

“Lizzy is on her way,” Hayley told her. “She’s calling Detective Chase. She wants us to wait here.”

No response.

“Do not say anything to them about me picking the locks. We’ll just say the doors were unlocked. Got it?”

Kitally refused to look at her.

“What did you want me to do? Carry you out of there?”

“I don’t like snakes. You could have cleared a path for me.”

“Do I look like a snake handler?”

“That thing swallowed that enormous rodent whole. I’ve never seen anything so disgusting in my life.”

“Those snakes are the least of our worries. That woman is taking them all out—one at a time.”

“What? What are you talking about? Our woman—the one with the cookies? You think
she
did this?”

“She must have come here last night or the day before and mixed rat poison or something in their dinner. Or maybe she put it in their milk. I don’t know much about poisons and crap. I need to do some research and figure out how that all works.”

“I think you can safely blame the snakes on this catastrophe,” Kitally said.

“Open your eyes. Judging by all the cages and equipment in the garage, that man has been breeding snakes for a while. There’s no way his snakes would have been able to get to him and his wife unless they were both incapacitated somehow.”

“So you think she just set the stage to make it all look like a crazy snake attack.”

“That’s exactly what she did. There’s no doubt in my mind. The killer must have waited a certain period of time before she came back to let all of his snakes and rodents loose.”

“If that’s true,” Kitally said, “then she’s literally running from one city to another. Who’s next on the list?”

“Aubrey Singleton and Chelsea Webster.”

“How are we going to help them?” Kitally asked.

“I don’t know if we can.”

CHAPTER 42

Even with the extra blankets, Shelby had never been so cold and scared in her life. The man who’d been holding her captive had just returned to camp. He was acting strange, much different than before. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth clamped tight. He grabbed the pan and his cooking utensils and shoved them into an old backpack.

Usually when he returned to the campsite, Shelby was able to start a conversation, get him to tell her something about himself, but not this time. He stomped around, kicking dirt and breaking thick branches with his bare hands. For the past few minutes, he’d muttered a string of nonsensical words.

Lizzy always told her students that if they ever found themselves in the hands of an abductor and they couldn’t get away, to stay calm and use their instincts. Shelby’s instincts told her she needed to get her captor to calm down.

It was midday. She couldn’t remember exactly how many days had passed since he’d forced her from the car. He’d held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she didn’t do everything he said. He was big and he was strong, and she had believed every word he said, every threat he made.

If she had to guess, she’d say she’d been in the woods for a week now, which would mean it was February. It hadn’t rained once since he’d brought her to the woods. She was thankful for that because she was always cold. The lean-to he’d made out of branches and leaves helped a little on the windy days, but not much.

Whenever he left her, he made sure to use a rope or duct tape around her ankles. He would place a chain around her neck and fasten the other end to the oak tree next to the lean-to. Her hands were almost always duct-taped behind her. There was one time during the third day where he’d left her hands unbound, but she’d thought he was testing her, trying to find out early on whether or not she would run for it. He’d then set out for the woods to relieve himself. Her ankles had been bound and she could have hobbled down the hill, but she wouldn’t have gotten very far, and she knew trying to escape him would only have made him angry. She’d been taking Lizzy’s defense classes for years and knew that in the event a person was abducted, it wasn’t wise to make a run for it unless you knew you had a really good chance of getting away.

Still, it was running from him—full speed, her hair flying out behind her, leaving him far, far behind—that she was fantasizing about when he suddenly lunged at her with his knife in his hand.

She let out a shriek, but he didn’t seem to care as he cut the duct tape from her ankles. When that was done, he unlocked the chain from around the tree and used it as a leash to pull her behind him, dragging her with him as he made a new path up the hill.

The brush tore at her arms as he pulled her through it. Her legs shook. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer her, just kept pulling her up the hill.

If she didn’t keep up with him, she’d choke. “You said you’d let me go.”

He yanked hard, stole her breath.

She was hungry and thirsty, cold and bruised. She wanted to go home. “You promised!”

He turned on her then, fast and furious. He pushed her to the ground and held her there. His eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them. The lines in his forehead had deepened. He didn’t look anything like the soft-spoken man who only last night had told her about his little brother and how they used to make up skits that they would perform for family and friends.

“Your stupid whore friends told the police that your secret boyfriend took you. They’re not looking for me anymore. They’re looking for someone else.”

“I don’t have a secret boyfriend.”

“You’re a liar. All bitches are liars.”

He got up on his knees and began to undo his belt.

“Don’t do this.”

“Shut up. I need to. I have to.”

Panicked, she knew she needed to turn the attention back on him. “Why are you so angry? You should be glad that they’re not looking for you.”

“They’re taking my glory,” he said in a loud voice that cracked with intensity as he worked his belt loose. “Everyone wants to take the glory. First Lizzy Gardner and now your secret boyfriend.”

“Raping me isn’t going to help matters.”

“It’s going to be thrilling. You’re going to love every minute of it. They all do.”

“You need to send them a letter,” Shelby said with the conviction of a desperate person in a desperate situation.

“Send who a letter?”

“The police. Tell them you’re the one who took me. I’ll help you write it. Tell them you have me and demand that they get their facts straight.”

His fingers were no longer grasping at his pants. His breathing grew calmer as he seemed to think about what she’d said.

“You’re the one with the power. You have full control of the situation,” she reminded him. “You have all the glory. They just don’t know it yet.”

“You’re right. I’m in control.” He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

“A new campsite?”

“No. I found an old cabin. We’ll write the letter there.”

CHAPTER 43

Lizzy was on the highway headed for the Perdues, where Hayley and Kitally had found two dead bodies, when the phone rang. The console showed that the caller was her niece.

She pushed Talk and tried to sound cheerful. “Brittany, what’s going on?”

“Lizzy, you need to come, quick. Mom and Dad are fighting again. This time it’s really bad.”

“Are you safe?”

“I’m in my room. I locked the door. Can you come?”

“I’m less than ten minutes away. You stay where you are—you hear me?”

“I promise. Just hurry.”

Lizzy got off the phone and cursed. She knew Cathy would be pissed, but she didn’t care: she called the police and pretended to be a neighbor reporting a domestic violence case. Then she hung up and made it to the house in ten minutes, just as she’d said.

The moment she stepped out of the car, she could hear screaming. First she shuffled around inside the glove box looking for something sharp. She found a pushpin and stuck it in her pocket. She then went to the back of her car, opened the trunk, and put her gun and holster inside, then locked the car.

Richard knew how to push her buttons. She refused to lose her license because of him.

Her brother-in-law wasn’t the only one who knew how to piss people off, which was exactly what she planned to do.

She looked up, saw Brittany peering out the window. Lizzy waved and her niece waved back. She looked so young, reminding Lizzy of the good old days when she and Brittany spent time in the park, talking and hanging out.

When she got to the door, she didn’t bother knocking. She just walked right in and made sure to leave the door ajar. Chairs had been overturned. A picture had fallen from the living room wall. Her sister was standing in the dining room, holding a kitchen towel to her nose. Richard stood beyond her, glaring wildly at them.

“What the fuck is she doing here!”

“Your daughter is upstairs, scared out of her wits,” Lizzy told him. “She could hear her father beating on her mother.”

“Get out of here, Lizzy,” Richard said, pointing his finger at the door. “This isn’t any of your business. Your sister is a whore. I caught her texting a man at work.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

“You know this man?”

Lizzy looked outside. No sign of the police yet. “You bet I do,” she lied. “He’s good-looking and charming and everything you’re not.”

He stomped past Cathy to get at Lizzy, chest puffed out, fingers rolled into fists at his sides—doing everything but thumping his chest like the idiotic ape he was. “Get out of my house,” he snarled, “or I swear I’ll plant you on your ass.”

Lizzy held her ground, didn’t budge.

He pushed her.

She stumbled back.

“Leave her alone,” her sister shouted.

“I’m fine, Cathy. Go see Brittany. She’s scared.”

Cathy hesitated before she finally rushed up the stairs.

“Why don’t you pull out your gun?” Richard asked. “Makes you feel like a man, doesn’t it? You want to kill me, don’t you? Hack off my head like you did that other guy. That worked out real well for you, didn’t it? You piss off enough people, they come back to get you. And if they can’t get you, they go for the people you care about most. I bet Jared never saw it coming, did he? Looking all dapper in his—”

Lizzy heard a car pull up outside. No sirens.
Perfect.
She pulled the pushpin from her pocket, stepped forward, and stabbed him in the leg, then screamed as loudly as she could.

He did what most rage-infested, out-of-control men would do—he punched her in the face right as the door opened.

The cop wrestled him to the ground.

Richard cried out, trying to let the officer know that she’d purposely set out to make him mad, but he made a crucial mistake. His frustration got the best of him and he sort of bitch-slapped the cop in an attempt to get free.

Another he’s-so-dumb joke ran through her head as she watched the officer’s partner step inside and help him pull Richard to his feet and then hold Richard’s arms behind his back so he could cuff him. Figuring they might be more inclined to teach Richard a lesson if she weren’t watching, she went to the kitchen to get some ice and a towel.