Daddy's Little Girl (26 page)

Carnes had to stop, the pain in his side becoming intolerable. He had been running too hard on too little sleep. He needed to rest.

Beth came up beside him, knelt down.

To the west of them was the river. It carried both sweet and sour smells on the crisp night air. Downriver a motor boat plowed through the water. Closer by they could hear lovers giggling. Beth explained that there was a kind of lover’s lane nearby.

In the twenty minutes since they had been free of Harcourt and his shotgun, Carnes had had a chance to think things through.

He was more convinced than ever that in finding out who Kenny Foster had seen in the park that night long ago, he would find out who had taken Deirdre.

His thoughts had ranged to everybody from Sheriff Wayman to the clerk in the motel.

By now he had ruled out Harcourt. The man was only a stooge for somebody. He had learned that when Harcourt’s wife had warned him about what “they” had forbidden him to talk about.

They.

That meant there was more than one of them, or there was a conspiracy.

Or both.

He felt sure that the answers lay in the mansion where Ruth Foster lived.

He got up from the grassy slope and said, “I’m ready.”

Beth, panting hard herself, nodded that she was, too.

They set off on the final part of their journey to the Foster place.

Deirdre began to crawl backwards.

The man in the “Goofy” mask carrying the knife still walked toward her.

So much for her “freedom,” she thought bitterly.

Death was as inevitable now as it had been at any time during the past twenty-four hours.

None of this should be happening to anybody whose world was filled with Clearasil and stuffed teddy bears.

As she crawled, keeping herself so that she faced the man at all times, she could feel the floor ripping the backs of her hands and legs.

She fought back tears of pain, but she kept moving.

A single glance over her shoulder told her what awaited in moments.

She was running out of space in which to crawl. Another two or three feet, she would be at the wall.

He would have her.

Again.

She was turning her head again to look for another way out when she noticed the brick.

Just a red housing brick.

She angled her body toward it.

The man in the mask began to make animal noises that slowed Deirdre down out of pure terror.

He sounded like a drooling dog.

She put out a hand to grab the brick and had just started to reach for it when he moved with surprising grace and stepped on her wrist.

She cried out in pain.

He roared with laughter, the sound eerie trapped inside the mask.

She could see that his eyes were studying her again.

Taking in every inch of her naked, torn body.

The feral sound came again.

The knife in one hand, the man bent down. He put his hand directly between her legs, feeling her warm softness.

Once more, the terrible dog noise issued from behind the mask.

She was held there by terror and a kind of submission.

She had started to cry.

His rough, tearing fingers inside her, she felt this was the final violation, that no more could be tolerated.

That only death offered any kind of mercy.

He parted her legs even further with his hands and bent down to do what she knew would be her final experience before death took her.

She was about to be raped.

When Ruth Foster heard Minerva go upstairs and close the door to her room, she went back to the basement door and proceeded down the steps.

The air grew moist, causing Ruth’s sinuses to act up immediately. Moisture was worse for them than ragweed.

Ruth, at sixty-nine, had to be careful of how she moved. Bones broke so easily.

The shotgun she held felt oddly comforting, perhaps because it brought back memories of her husband.

A tall, handsome man, he had liked to hunt, and had looked elegant in his country gentleman hunting clothes.

So many memories ...

But not only good memories, she thought, as she descended the stairs and started for the cubicle with the trapdoor.

Finding the bloody apron this morning ...

It would never end....

In the twisted love she and her husband had felt for—

But no, that kind of recrimination did no good. Not now. She was too old and too wise to believe that guilt was anything more than self-indulgence. When you wanted to amend something, you took action.

She had explained to Minerva over the past five minutes what had been happening during the last three decades.

At first Minerva had seemed horrified. Gradually pity had shone in her eyes.

She went back upstairs dutifully, knowing that her friend had to do what her own sense of ethics called her to do.

Ruth found an overhead light. Her slippers flapping on her feet, she went down the dim corridor to the cubicle she wanted.

The block was no trouble pulling up. Her husband had shown her how to do it when the trapdoor had first been built. Originally they had used the subbasement to store valuable antiques.

Then, after 1953 . . .

Finished with the girl named Angie, having taken her first vaginally then anally, Laumer moved on. Behind him, she whimpered.

He had a Celtic sense of himself at this moment. Of a bloody warrior whose lust for violence could rarely be sated.

Not that he was irrational ...

If he had not killed Reverend Heath, the minister would have gone to the state authorities and confessed what was going on.

The same with Shanks. And with the people in the cabin—even the ones who said they wouldn’t talk, eventually they would have.

And they would have taken Laumer along with them.

That Laumer wouldn’t stand for.

Because that would have meant prison for Laumer.

And nobody imprisoned Laumer.

Nobody.

Five minutes later, Laumer had crawled up the ancient oak that spanned over the top of the electric fence surrounding the mansion.

Moments later, safe, he dropped to the grounds of the Foster mansion.

Only a single light shone from a towerlike room on the third floor.

He moved, dark as the night itself, toward the house. The screen door leading to the back porch was open. The kitchen door required only twenty seconds with his pocket knife.

Inside, he drew his Luger and proceeded with his plan. He patted the grenade inside his jacket pocket as he moved.

There was nobody to be found on the first floor. But then, he hadn’t really expected anybody to be found.

He moved toward the back of the house, taking note that everything in the house seemed a tad unreal.

So fancy, it was like a museum ...

The basement door stood open when he reached it....

He went down directly, not pausing to check for anybody lurking in the shadows....

The night of blood had left him tired. Now he wanted rest.

He wanted to be done with this, and quickly.

It took him ten minutes to find the cubicle with the lighted hole in its floor.

He took the steps easily, thrilled that he was closing in so quickly.

He had just put a single foot down on the floor when he saw something extremely unlikely.

Tiny Ruth Foster standing there with a shotgun in her arms.

A shotgun pointed right at him.

A shotgun that went off almost immediately, shattering his right shoulder, causing him to pitch forward instantly.

He had the terrible and unreal sense that he was dying.

At the hands of a little old lady.

Adam Carnes stared at the oak and knew that it would be their only passage into the Foster estate.

“I’m not much of a climber, I’m afraid,” Beth Daye said.

“Neither am I. Maybe we can help each other.” They started the climb, keeping away from the electric fence as they moved.

It took many inches of rasped-away flesh and nearly thirty minutes to accomplish the climb.

When they dropped to the ground, Carnes stood staring at the mansion with a combination of awe and terror.

Somehow—a premonition perhaps—he knew that, dead or alive, he would find his daughter inside the Foster mansion.

Deirdre slipped in and out of consciousness.

The man in the mask at first had trouble getting an erection. Then, when that was successful, he could not seem to have an orgasm.

A few times Deirdre screamed.

The man slapped her when she did.

Just after he came, standing over her, ripping off his mask, the man spit on her. As if she was vile, filthy, evil.

That was when the crash against the door sounded on the still air and the man turned around.

He turned back around only once. To kick Deirdre in the head.

This time she stayed unconscious for a long time.

Jake shook his head.

He was having the nightmares again.

Like now ...

In the dream he seemed to be in some kind of dungeon....

There was a naked girl lying in front of him....

Someone was pounding on the wooden door behind him....

What was he doing here, anyway, a handyman like himself, a man who never bothered anybody, let alone went around hurting naked women.

He went to the door, on which somebody still hammered, and opened it.

There stood Ruth Foster.

Behind, sprawled on the floor, was a body that seemed to be Carl Laumer.

He was splattered with his own blood.

“Stand back,” Ruth Foster said, waving the gun at him.

“What’s wrong, ma’am?” Jake said.

She looked at him.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

She shook her head with a mixture of pity and contempt.

“What’s going on here,” she said.

“No ...” He held both sides of his head. “It’s like a nightmare....”

Ruth looked beyond him, to the girl on the floor.

“Is she dead?”

Jake stared back at the girl.

“I don’t think so.”

“Move aside,” Ruth said harshly.

She went in to see if the girl was still breathing.

Carnes and Beth Daye walked around the house twice before they walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

Though no lights showed anywhere, except a small one on the third floor, they assumed that Mrs. Foster would be home.

A recluse, she rarely went out.

“Damn,” Beth said, sitting down on the front steps. “Now what?”

“How do you feel about committing a felony?”

“Like what?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“We’ll scare Mrs. Foster.”

“Deirdre’s in there.”

“What?” She was startled. “How do you know?”

“Call it a premonition.”

“I don’t know,” Beth said, “about breaking in.”

“We’re already trespassing.”

“Well ...”

“Anyway, after all the things that have happened tonight, I don’t see where we have much to lose.”

The logic of the statement seemed to convince Beth to stand up and join him.

They went around the house again. This time they found the back porch door standing open.

“Kenny.”

“My name is Jake.” He was holding his head again. As if he wanted to crush it between his hands.

“Your name is Kenny,” Ruth Foster said. “You’re my son.”

“No, I’m Jake. I’m your handyman.”

Ruth Foster sighed.

“You were diagnosed as a split personality, Kenny. When you do bad things, you don’t face them. That’s when you become Jake.” She smiled bitterly. “But you don’t understand that, do you?”

“I’m Jake.”

Ruth sighed again.

Near the back of the room, the naked girl stirred. Ruth shook her head.

She found herself in an unbelievable situation.

She was going to have to help her son kill this girl.

When Carnes and Beth reached the vestibule downstairs, they heard a door open on the second floor.

A bar of yellow light fell down the stairs.

A black woman in a housecoat stood in the center of the light.

“Minerva!” Beth called.

Beth ran up the steps, Carnes following.

Minerva looked as if she were in some kind of drug withdrawal.

Beth led her back into the bedroom, helped her lie down.

Carnes poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the nightstand and held Minerva’s head up so that she could drink it.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Minerva, is something wrong?”

Minerva could only shake her head.

“Where’s Mrs. Foster?”

Again, Minerva only shook her head.

“What’s wrong, Minerva?” Beth asked. “You look as if—”

She glanced at Carnes.

“Minerva,” Carnes said. “My daughter Deirdre is missing. Do you know anything about her?”

A deadness came into Minerva’s eyes.

“Is she in shock?” Beth asked.

“I don’t know.”

“He isn’t dead,” Minerva said, in a voice that sounded as if she had been heavily sedated.

“Who isn’t dead?” Carnes asked.

“Kenny.”

Carnes’s flesh crawled. “Kenny Foster isn’t dead?”

But Minerva had slipped back into her silence.

Carnes paced while Beth tried to get the woman to speak again. But it seemed hopeless. Beth gave her more water. Held her hand. Spoke softly and tenderly to her.

Nothing.

Dead eyes.

Still voice.

Carnes slammed his fist into his palm and stormed over to the bed.

“Minerva, listen,” he said, sounding as if he was on the verge of coming apart, “I need you to talk to me, to tell me what’s going on! I need to find my daughter!”

But the stare remained dead.

The tongue remained still.

Beth shook her head, looked at Carnes helplessly.