Blind Pursuit (12 page)

20

Gund didn’t relax until he had pulled out of the parking lot onto Broadway. When Erin’s apartment building shrank to nothingness in his sideview mirror, he began to breathe normally again.

He had avoided an encounter with Annie by a dangerously thin margin. If he hadn’t heard movement in the den and left the bathroom immediately, ducking into the living room with a heartbeat to spare, she would have come face to face with him.

And now she would be dead.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened. He pictured himself squeezing her slender neck. Choking, strangling ...

Bad thought. He didn’t want to kill her. Didn’t want either of them—Annie or her sister—to die. Of course he didn’t.

Of course.

At Houghton Road he hooked south, heading for the ranch.

* * *

It took Erin a half hour, by her estimate, to make the tool she needed.

Carefully she had cracked off the fine teeth at the narrow end of the comb until that part of the spine had been stripped naked, a spindly, mangled finger.

Then, rubbing the comb against the can opener’s blade, back and forth, back and forth, she had scraped away layers of plastic. Tortoiseshell shavings had accumulated on the floor.

The thought had occurred to her that a witness to her behavior would conclude that she’d lost it.
Poor thing
, a sympathetic voice had clucked in her mind,
she’s cracked under the strain
.

There was method to her madness, though. At least she hoped there was.

After two hundred strokes the comb’s narrow end was as sleekly tapered as a stiletto, its tip nearly as keen.

Not an ice pick. But close.

She wondered if she still had time to use it. Maybe safer to wait until after her abductor had come and gone.

But she was only guessing at the time, after all. It might be hours earlier than she imagined.

Before proceeding, she took a moment to swallow her last Tegretol. The bottle was empty now. If her abductor didn’t return and she was unable to break free, then within twenty-four hours the first withdrawal symptoms would develop. Status epilepticus. A bad way to die.

Quickly to the door, heart drumming.

The doorframe had warped slightly with age, leaving considerable clearance between the door and the jamb. Erin inserted the modified end of the comb into the crack, pressing its sharpened tip against the side of the bolt at the point where the small movable bar sank into the socket in the striker plate.

The comb slipped off the bolt the first time she levered it sideways. No good. Maybe if she held it in place with one hand while manipulating it with the other ...

That did the trick. She only wished her hands weren’t so damp, and that they would stop trembling.

She could do it, could bust out of this joint, run away before her jailer returned.

Smiling fiercely, she imagined his shock at being outwitted, his rage at having failed in this ultimate test of control.

“Very sorry, sir,” she whispered in the tone of an efficient receptionist as she began prying at the bolt. “I’m afraid the doctor is
not
in.”

For some reason this struck her as much funnier than it was, hilarious even. She giggled, soft, manic laughter rising from her throat, until she realized she was displaying symptoms of incipient hysteria.

“Cut it out,” she ordered, focusing her undivided attention on the job at hand.

She worked the comb left, right, left, right. It flexed with each twist of her arm, each calculated increase in pressure, but it did not break. The plastic spine seemed sturdy enough to withstand the demands she was making.

There
.

The bolt had moved. She’d felt it. She was sure she had.

An inconsequential victory, a slippage of the bar that could amount to no more than a trivial fraction of an inch, but it was something, anyway.

And the bar had not jerked back. That meant it was a dead bolt, not a spring latch. Good. Had the bolt rested on springs, it would have fought her every step of the way.

This was going to happen, she realized with a surge of exhilaration so intense as to be almost disorienting.

She was Houdini, she was Papillon; no locked cell could hold her.

She wedged the tip of the comb in deeper—it definitely was finding purchase now—and wrenched the tool sideways.

Again.

Again.

With a faint muffled rasp, the bolt retracted another hairbreadth.

She’d almost gotten it. She was nearly free.

The tip of the comb scrabbled eagerly, desperately.

Sweat, beading on her eyelashes, dripped onto the bridge of her nose. A muscle in her neck twitched, taut with nervous tension.

Just a little more. Another quarter of an inch to go. That wasn’t asking so much, was it? A lousy quarter inch ...

From the bolt, a thin squeal of complaint, as welcome to her ears as a newborn’s first squalling cry.

Good God, she’d done it, done it,
done it
.

Triumph thrilled her. She knew, even before squinting through the crack for confirmation, that she had pried it completely out of the socket.

The door was unlocked.

All she had to do now was ease it open, not a simple task when there was no doorknob on her side. With her fingertips she gripped the edge of the door and tugged.

The damn thing was heavy—solid mahogany—and inertia held it motionless for a long, frustrating moment.

It seemed unnecessarily cruel for anything to impede her progress now. In a more benevolent world the door would have opened by magic as soon as the bolt was retracted.

Of course, in a more benevolent world she wouldn’t have been held prisoner in the first place.

She pulled harder. With a reluctant sigh of hinges, the door yielded.

Slowly it swung inward under her hands ... halfway clear of the jamb now ... completely clear ... a half inch of space between door and frame—

It stopped.

Though she pulled desperately, the door would open no farther.

Crouching, she peered through the narrow aperture, and her heart twisted.

A chain. Her abductor had installed a security chain.

“Damn it,” she whispered. “Oh, damn it, that’s not
fair
.”

The chain links, heavy and thick, would challenge even a good-sized bolt cutter. No way she could hope to snap them.

She curled both hands around the edge of the door and yanked at it. If the screws securing the chain weren’t imbedded too deeply, she might be able to jar them loose.

After straining every muscle in her arms and shoulders, she concluded that the screws were fastened immovably to the wood.

Defeat the chain, then. There had to be a way. If she—

Outside, the rumble of an engine.

She recognized that sound. The motor of the van or truck that had transported her here.

He was back.

Oh, Jesus, close the door,
close the door!

She closed it, but the bolt was still retracted. He was certain to notice that.

The engine was silent now. The vehicle had been parked.

She jabbed the narrow end of the comb into the clearance between the door and jamb, pried at the bolt, trying to reverse what she’d done a minute ago, dig the bar out of the faceplate and insert it in the jamb socket again.

Upstairs, the creak of a door.

Footsteps on the ceiling.

The bolt slid partway out of the latch assembly, but still it was not engaged in the socket.

The footsteps now directly above her.

She pressed harder. The spine of the comb curved.

Thump-thump-thump
—she heard him descending the cellar stairs.

Frantically she levered the comb, the pointed tip scratching like an agitated pencil. The bolt eased forward another fraction of an inch, just enough to sink into the socket in the striker plate ...

And the comb snapped.

Its narrow end, broken off, slid down the crack, disappearing under the door, out of reach.

A double thud of footfalls. He was in the cellar, approaching the door.

Just in time she remembered the peephole.

She pushed herself upright and retreated to the rear of her cell.

The single percussive beat startled her. She needed a second to identify it as the rap of his hand on the door.

“I’m back, Doc.” The familiar raspy voice, muffled by two inches of solid mahogany.

Half of the comb was still in her hand. As casually as possible, she turned slightly, concealing it from his view. “I heard.” Her voice was steady, betraying nothing.

“Put on the blindfold.”

“Yes. Of course.”

She leaned over the cardboard box and made a show of rummaging through it as she hid the comb inside.

Her gaze traveled from the box to the floor nearby, where there was a small, telltale pile of tortoiseshell shavings.

“Can’t you find it?” he demanded.

“Yes. Yes, here it is.”

She took out the blindfold, then stepped away from the box. With a nonchalant scuff of her shoe she scattered the shavings.

One problem taken care of.

But when he opened the door ...

Her heart kept up a frantic staccato rhythm. The palsied shaking of her hands made it difficult to knot the blindfold in place.

When he opened the door, he might see it. The piece of the comb under there.

Impossible for her to explain away the tool as anything innocent. If he noticed it, she was dead.

“Hurry up,” he ordered.

Quickly she finished fastening the cloth over her eyes. She groped for the chair, found it, and sat.

“Ready,” she called. The chilly finger tickling the base of her spine was a trickle of sweat.

Rattle—a key. Clunk of the bolt retracting. Rasp of hinges.

Footsteps in the room.

The chair opposite hers scraped the floor, then protested as he sat.

He hadn’t seen the comb. Thank God.

She might live a little longer, then.

She’d lost her best chance of escape and broken the tool that had made it possible, broken it probably beyond repair, but at least, this night, she wouldn’t burn.

“Excited, Doc?” he asked softly.

“What makes you say that?”

“You seem ... on edge.”

“I’m always a little tense when I’m working.” The lie came fluently. “That
is
why you’re here, isn’t it? To start our work together?”

“Of course it is.” His chair creaked as he leaned forward. “As of this moment, Doc, our first session has officially begun.”

21

Our first session
. The words stirred a cold queasiness in the pit of her stomach.

She wished she could see the man before her, read his face. Difficult to analyze him without the nonverbal clues that often spoke louder than even the most candid testimony.

Well, she would manage. Would have to.

With effort she forced her mind into clear focus. He would judge her skills by her performance in this encounter. If she was found wanting, she might not get a second chance.

“All right,” she said slowly. “I’ve read the newspaper stories you left me. I’d like to discuss what it was like for you when you did those things. What you were feeling each time you ... kidnapped a woman.”

“Burned one, you mean. Kidnapping was merely an unavoidable preliminary.”

“Burned one. Yes.”

“Don’t be afraid to speak plainly. I can take it.”

He sounded relaxed, almost cheerful. That state of mind was unlikely to last.

Therapy was not fun. Though it might seem like a game in the beginning, it quickly turned serious and, often, uncomfortable. Her style of analysis was aggressive, probing; to save time, to compress months of work into hours, she made intuitive leaps and challenged the patient to keep up. It was a method that got results, but it didn’t always make for restful exchanges.

She wondered how he would react when the first nerve was struck.

“I’ll try to refrain from euphemisms in the future,” she promised. “Now tell me about this compulsion to kill. Does it come on gradually or all of a sudden?”

“Gradually.”

“How does it start?”

“With physical sensations. Coldness in my fingers. Heat at the back of my neck.”

“Do your fingers get numb?”

“No. They tingle.”

“Painful?”

“Disturbing, that’s all.”

“Any other symptoms?”

“Sometimes ... I hear a sort of chiming. Distant. Like ringing in the ears but more elusive. Hard to describe.”

She frowned. The symptoms he’d described were suggestive of the aura phase that marked the onset of an epileptic seizure. She’d experienced similar reactions in childhood.

The notion that an epileptic might imitate Frankenstein’s monster, blindly wrapping his hands around a terrified maiden’s throat, was an irresponsible myth. But in the case of a profoundly disturbed individual, someone already showing homicidal tendencies, a prolonged status seizure of the partial or focal type—a fugue state—might permit his suppressed aggressive feelings to rise uncensored to the surface.

It was possible. But she didn’t intend to raise that hypothesis with him, at least not yet. If he believed that a pill could cure all his problems, he wouldn’t need her anymore.

“Other than physical sensations,” she asked, “are there any other feelings—emotions, moods—that you associate with the murders?”

For the first time he hesitated. She heard a series of soft pops and realized he was cracking his knuckles.

“I don’t feel anything when I do it,” he said at last.

“No emotions at all?”

“None.”

“Any special dreams?”

“No.”

“Do you ever dream? At any time?”

“I ... Sometimes.”

“Erotic dreams?”

His chair squeaked with a shift of his weight. “I knew you’d get to that.”

“To what?”

“Sex. And dreams. They’re unavoidable, aren’t they?”

She didn’t respond directly. “Tell me about your dreams.”

“They’re erotic, like you said.”

“In what way?”

He cleared his throat. “Nothing special. I mean ... they’re dreams, that’s all.”

His first apparent resistance. Briefly she considered backing away from this subject if it was agitating him. But under other circumstances she would never do that. When the patient showed discomfort, that was the time to drill deeper, penetrate to the root of the problem.

If she didn’t use the techniques that worked for her, if she didn’t allow herself to function as a therapist, she would guarantee her own ineffectiveness. And the man before her already had made clear what he would do to her if she didn’t get results.

Probe, then. Push.

“You seem reluctant to talk about this,” she said carefully.

“I don’t see that it’s relevant.”

She ignored that. “What’s your role in the dreams? What do you see yourself doing?”

“I don’t do anything. I just ... watch.”

“What are you watching?”

“Not what. Who.”

“A woman?”

He flared up. “Of
course
a woman. What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything.”

“I don’t want to talk about the goddamn dreams, anyway. I already told you they’re not relevant. They have no significance, none at all.”

Abruptly she had an insight into him, an insight born at the gut level where the best analysis was done, and though she knew she shouldn’t press him further, something within her would not let the thought die unspoken.

“You hate it,” she said quietly. “You hate the feeling of arousal, of sexual need. Don’t you?”

A short silence. When he spoke, his voice was small, muted. “It’s ...
sick
.”

“What makes you say that?” No reply. “Everybody has sexual feelings, you know.”

“This isn’t what I want to talk about.”

“It may be related to your problem—”

“It’s not. I told you, I don’t feel anything when I kill. It’s not sexual. Not sadism. I don’t do it for pleasure, any kind of pleasure. I
told
you all that. So just change the subject.”

“I still think we need to understand—”

“
Change the subject!”

The lion cough of his command froze her. For a bad moment she was certain she’d pushed too hard. She sat motionless, listening to his hard, steady breathing above the throb of her own heart.

“Change the subject, Doc,” he said at last, his voice flattened into a dangerous monotone.

“All right,” she answered evenly. “Let’s talk about the killings themselves.”

The pattern of the murders clearly reflected a subconscious obsession at the heart of his psychosis. Comparable examples were familiar to her—the man who compulsively washes his hands because he harbors a secret guilt that makes him feel unclean; the woman forever double-checking the locks on her doors, motivated by buried memories of a molesting parent’s midnight visits to her bedroom.

“All three of your victims were young Caucasians.”

“True.” The faint tapping sound was the nervous drumming of his fingers on the side of his chair.

“Why did you pick those particular women?”

“No special reason.”

“There wasn’t anything that drew you to them; it was totally random. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, what do
you
think, Doc? What’s your brilliant theory?”

He was still exhibiting hostility. She wasn’t sure how much she ought to say.

“I don’t have a theory.” She picked her words with care. “But I wondered if there might be someone in your past, someone you were thinking of when you cruised the streets.”

“You mean my long-lost fiancee, the one who jilted me at the altar when I was eighteen and left me emotionally scarred for life? Sorry, Doc, only kidding. Afraid I can’t wrap it up that neatly for you.” His jocular tone was obviously defensive.

“Perhaps it’s some other feature of those women that you focused on,” she said. “Let’s take the first one, Marilyn Vaccaro. She was Italian, dark-haired, dark-eyed—”

“So?”

“Would that description fit a woman who means something to you? A girlfriend, a sister? Your mother?”

“Ah, the other shoe drops. The mother complex. Sex, dreams, and mama—the basic ingredients in every Freudian recipe.”

Humor again, stiff and forced. Clearly it was a defense mechanism characteristic of him.

She would not be put off. “
Was
your mother dark-eyed? Dark-haired?”

“No on both counts. Her eyes were blue. As for her hair, it was red—just like yours, Doc.”

Blue eyes, red hair. Erin saw it then. The link between the first of his victims and his past. “Was your mother Irish?”

In his startled silence she heard the answer he didn’t want to give.

“Catholic?” she pressed.

This time he spoke, his reply drawn out of him with painful slowness. “Yes.”

“Marilyn Vaccaro was kidnapped after attending a midnight church service.” He said nothing. “If you saw her leave that church, you must have known she was Catholic. That’s why you chose her, isn’t it?”

“I ... don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“No, I mean ... It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part. I never realized ...”

He sounded genuinely astonished to have discovered this unsuspected facet of himself.

“Do you realize it now?”

“Yes.
Yes
.”

“Why do you suppose you focused on her religion?”

“I can’t say. Really.”

“Do you have something against Catholics?” No response. “Do you?”

“Why would I?”

“You tell me.”

“I’ve got nothing against them.” He coughed, a nervous sound.

“Don’t hide things from me, please. Not if you want my help.” He wouldn’t speak. “I’m Catholic, you know. Irish Catholic, like your mother. Did you pick me for that reason?”

“No. No, it was those articles you wrote, the ones on fire starters.”

She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Are you a practicing Catholic?”

“Of course not.”

“Why of course?”

“I just ... I could never accept it. An afterlife. Eternal punishment.”

Punishment again. The idea that had set him off last time. Plausible enough that he would hate and fear a religion that held out the prospect of damnation for his sins. But somehow his answer struck her as too facile.

“What else do you object to about the Catholic faith?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’m not a theologian.”

“You don’t need to be a theologian in order to have an opinion. Did your mother raise you as a Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“You must have learned some tenets of the religion. What turned you off?”

“It’s crap,” he said with sudden vehemence. “All of it—everything they believe.”

“What about it is crap?”

“All of it, I said.”

“What, specifically?”

“Abortion.” The word was blurted out, and she knew she’d penetrated to the heart of the matter.

“The church doesn’t permit abortion,” she said quietly.

“No.”

“And it ought to?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Some people shouldn’t be born.”

His answer chilled her.

“Like you?” she whispered.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you wish your mother had aborted you?”

“
I didn’t say that!”

Perilous to ride him any harder, but she had to. She couldn’t let it go.

“Do you hate her,” she asked with quiet insistence, “for bringing you into the world? Is that why—”

“No, God damn you, no!”

He was up now, and close—must have leaped out of his chair. She could picture him standing over her, balled fists shaking as he contended with the impulse to lash out and stifle her questions forever.

A long, crackling silence passed while she waited to learn if she would die tonight.

Sudden footsteps circled away from her, toward the door.

“I brought you the Tegretol,” he said from a distance, his voice empty of feeling. “You’d better be sure to take it, Doc. We wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize your health.” The door did not slam. It clicked shut politely. She heard the rattle of a key, then a receding drumroll as he climbed the stairs.

Our first session, she thought as her trembling hands groped for the blindfold’s knot.

She was by no means certain she would survive a second one.