Daddy's Little Killer (31 page)

She nodded, opened her mouth and let out a
gravely yes.  She cleared her throat and folded her hands on
top of the table.  "Call me Carrie."

"A little over six years ago, you were
assaulted by a man."

"Raped," she whispered, "and tortured, and
left terrified for my life."

"I'm so sorry that happened to you,
Carrie.  Are you all right?  Would you like something to
drink?" I asked.

"No thank you.  I'd rather just get
this over with."

Me too, for different reasons.  "I'd
like to go back to the day of the crime."

"It lasted two," she said.  Her voice
trembled, and she clutched at her hands, as if willing the tremor
to stay in her voice alone.

"Tell me what happened the first day."

Carrie looked like she was on the cusp of
hyperventilation, even after all these years.  "I'll never
forget it.  I was walking home from school.  A police
officer stopped me."

"From Portico?"

She shook her head.  "It was a state
police car.  We've only got the sheriff's department in
Portico.  Our county is small.  Portico is the biggest
town, about thirty-three hundred people."

"All right.  Was it unusual to see the
state police in Portico?"

"Well, yes and no.  See, I missed the
bus that day, on account of Candy, so I had to walk home.  My
folks don't live in Portico.  We're just outside of town,
maybe three quarters of a mile."

"Tell me about Candy."

"She was supposed to meet me after
school.  See, she skipped classes that day, but she was gonna
hook up with me after I got out of volleyball and ride the bus home
so Mom and Dad wouldn't know."

"Where was she?"

Carrie shrugged.  "I didn't know at the
time, but she was already ... already ..."  A solitary tear
streaked down her cheek.

"She had already been abducted?"

One bird-boned hand dashed at Carrie's
cheek.  "Yes.  I didn't know about it until later. 
In fact, I was so angry with her after the bus left while I was
trying to find her, that I made up my mind to tell Dad what she was
doing as soon as I got home."

"She skipped a lot of school I take it."

"Candy was counting the days until our
sixteenth birthday.  We're twins, you see.  Our birthday
falls in the summer, and Candy had already made up her mind that
she wasn't going back to school in the fall.  She wasn't
sticking around home or Portico either."

"So you were walking home from school, out
of town, and the state police stopped."

She nodded, knocked loose a few more
tears.  "I have wished every day since then that I had let him
drive me home like he wanted.  But I could see the lane, I was
that close.  I never dreamed anything could happen."

"The lane?"

"Our driveway.  My folks have a farm,
and there's a big arch at the end of our lane that says Blevins
Dairy."

"You couldn't see the house?"

"It sits a ways back, sort of in a
grove."

Isolation.  My eyes fluttered
shut.  Was this guy stalking his victims?  Could he have
known that his best chance at nabbing Carrie was when she walked up
the lane to the house after she got off the bus?  My mind
boggled a little bit at the premeditation of my suspect, whoever he
was.  This wasn't a case of a simple grabs off the street.

"He was waiting for you somewhere along the
lane, wasn't he, Carrie?"

"Yes.  I – I tried to scream, you know,
at first I wasn't even sure what came charging out of the trees at
me, but he knocked me down so fast, and something hurt.  It
hurt so bad, I couldn't move, could barely breathe."

"What happened next?"

"He carried me, I think, over his shoulder
through the trees to the country road about a quarter of a mile
away.  He put me in the back of his car and gave me a shot of
something."

"Let's go back a second," I said.  My
fingers crept across the table and gently stilled the clench and
release of her hands.  "Do you remember any details about the
car?"

Doll eyes blinked at me slowly.  I
could see her searching her memory.

"It was dark.  Older.  I remember
that it was sort of square."

"The car was dark?"

Carrie nodded.  "It was late, but it
wasn't dark yet.  The car was navy, maybe black."

"And he put you in the back seat?"

"Yes."

"Through a door, or did he have to move the
front seat to get you inside?"

"There were four doors.  I still
couldn't move.  He put some kind of funny plastic thing in my
mouth before I felt the needle go into my arm."

Her words triggered an awareness of the dull
ache in my arm.  My heart rate accelerated.  I touched my
deltoid muscle.  "In your arm here?"

"No," she pointed to the bend of her
elbow.

I glanced at Charlie.  He peered,
owl-like.

"The doctor who treated me said that
whatever he gave me went into the vein, not the muscle because it
would act faster that way."

"Did you fall asleep?"

"No, but it got harder to breathe, and I
remember that it felt like my muscles might never move again."

My mind was racing.  He put an
artificial airway in her mouth and administered a paralytic. 
Why?  Had the initial assault been a stun gun? 
Paralytics are highly controlled substances.  They had an
extremely short half life.  He couldn't have removed her far
from home for what he had in mind.

"What happened next, Carrie?"  I let
her memory lead the sequence of events, even though questions fired
like bullets from an Uzi in my brain.

"He drove me deeper into the country."

"To?"

"It was one of those camper things."

"The kind you pull behind a vehicle?"

"Yeah, I think so.  It was back in the
trees, you know, like inside a field set behind trees.  I
remember that when he pulled me out of the car, I couldn't see the
road anymore."

"What about his clothes?"

"They were black.  And he had on a ski
mask so I couldn't see his face.  I remember his eyes."

Thud
.  My heart slammed hard into my breastbone.  "What
about his eyes?"

"They were cold, like he was dead, sort of
milky, but happy.  Not a good kind of happy.  Evil, and I
don't know if I can explain it, Dr. Eriksson.  I've never seen
anything like it.  Does that make sense?"

"Yes.  What about your breathing,
Carrie?  When he got you to his camper, did you still feel
like it was hard to breathe?"

She frowned.  "I hadn't thought about
that, afterward, you know.  But it wasn't hard to breathe
anymore."

I was certain.  He'd used a
paralytic.  Somehow, this guy had access to a drug like
succinylcholine.  Were we looking for a perverse medical
practitioner?  It certainly fit with Maya's assessment of the
dismemberment.

"What happened next?"

"He took me into the camper and locked the
door."

"What do you remember about the lock?"

Carrie's head tilted to the side. 
Nobody had asked her these specific questions, I was certain. 
No wonder our perp had gone about his business for so many
years.

"There were two of them, the kind that lock
with a key."

"Like deadbolt locks?"

"Yeah.  Yeah.  Is that
important?"

"It was, Carrie."

"Can I ask why?"

Charlie, who had remained utterly silent
since the introduction phase of the conversation, piped up. 
"It means that there was no way you could've escaped, Carrie. 
It tells us that this guy modified that trailer so that you
wouldn't be able to leave.  They don't come with key-only
deadbolt locks."

"Then ..."

"Yes?" I coaxed her to continue, feeling
that she was remembering more and more as the interview
progressed.

"That was why he thought it was so funny
when I tried to get out.  He didn't tie me up, because he
wanted me to try to run away from him.  That's ... even more
horrible than I thought!"

"Take a deep breath and try to relax," I
said.  "You're safe, now, Carrie, and even though this was one
of the worst things that can ever happen to someone, it's in the
past."

"But it's not the worst
thing.  That would've been what he promised to do if I fought
him."  Tears splashed onto the table, tiny ringlets on the
checkered cloth.  "Oh my God.  He
meant
what he said!  He would
cut off my hands if I fought him.  And that's exactly what he
hoped I would do."

Chapter 29

Now I was the one on the verge of
hyperventilation.  Carrie was right.  So was I. 
This girl's bravery, agreeing to meet with us, to relive the most
horrific assault a woman could imagine, had my utmost
respect.  It was a new experience for me.  Empathy has
never been in my arsenal of psychological tricks.  It's not a
weapon, after all. 

"Helen?"

I glanced at him.

Whispered, "You're crying."

Stunned, I dabbed one finger under my
eyes.  "Excuse me."

Carrie stared at me with appreciation. 
"Thank you, Dr. Eriksson.  It means a lot to me, knowing that
you care about finding the man who did this to me.  You do
believe me, don't you?"

"Of course I do."  Who wouldn't? 
Beside the fact that there was a heap of physical evidence, it was
impossible to gaze into this innocent face, disregard the limpid
blue eyes and find a flicker of dishonesty.

"Because you know, no one ever believed
Candy."

Now we were getting into another necessary
realm.  I was relieved that Carrie brought it up
spontaneously.

"Oh?"

She shook her head.  "Not even my
parents, really.  It's hard.  I'm stuck in the middle,
you know?  She's my sister.  I love her.  Sometimes,
it's like we're one person."

"Carrie, are you identical twins?"

"Close.  We're what is called
mirror-image twins."

I considered the possibility that this might
extend to their personalities as well, not just physical
characteristics.  The phenomenon is exactly as it sounds, one
twin left handed, the other right handed, hair that curls in the
opposite direction, opposite symmetrically identical features, even
in some documented cases of mirror-image twins the internal organs
were reversed.  To stand them side by side, it was as though
one twin were the literal mirror reflection of the other.

"I've never heard of such a thing," Charlie
said.  "Does that mean you don't look alike?"

"I'll explain it to you later,
Charlie.  Carrie, I'd like to go back to what you were saying
about nobody believing Candy."

"That's it.  I mean, she's had some
stuff, before the rape.  What's that old children's
story?"

I knew which one she meant – the little boy
who cried wolf.  "So because she had done things in the past,
people weren't inclined to believe her when a real tragedy took
place."

"Exactly.  I know Candy isn't always
the easiest person to get along with or to believe, and I even
understand why my parents didn't believe her."

"Why was that?"

"Well, she skipped school all the
time.  She forged notes from my parents so the school wouldn't
call home to see where she was.  She started doing that ...
well, let me think.  I think she was nine when the police
picked her up for skipping school."

Truancy.   It was listed among
other petty crimes on Candy's record.  I hadn't paid much
attention to the dates.

"The shoplifting, the time she got suspended
from school for bringing one of Dad's hunting knives with her
–"

"How old was she when that happened?" 
Charlie was writing notes.  I didn't need them.  I could
already see the threads of Candy's past being woven into a very
clear tapestry of a girl who was beyond troubled.

"Second grade, I think."

Way outside the boundary of troubled. 
Pathological zip code, smack dab in the middle of it.

"What happened when Candy went to the
hospital?  Surely they discovered the same evidence that was
collected when you were treated," I asked gently.

"Candy didn't go to the hospital. 
Nobody thought much about it when she showed up home late that
night.  She didn't even tell anybody what happened until I was
found."

"You said you were gone for two days?"

"Yes," she said.  "He let me go on
Sunday night.  I was found wandering down the road."  She
blushed deep crimson.  "Naked."

"Did she refuse to go to the doctor?"

"My parents didn't offer to take her. 
Like I said, nobody believed her.  Not even the police. 
I was surprised that Candy went to them on her own.  She uh
... she doesn't like cops so much.  For me, it was proof that
she had suffered the same thing I did."

"Carrie, when you said Candy came home late,
what did you mean?"

"She came home Friday night, the same day he
took me."

"But you saw her that morning?  I mean,
you were expecting her to meet you and take the bus home from
school that afternoon."

"Yeah."

"Did you see or hear anything that led you
to believe this man was holding other girls, beside you and Candy,
hostage?"

"No.  It was just him and me in that
camper.  To be honest, Dr. Eriksson?  I was so freaked
out the whole time, it was hard to keep my eyes open before he
threatened to ... to ..."

"Go on," I clasped her hands in mine.

"He said he'd cut off my eyelids if I didn't
look at him."

In a very sociopathic way, it made
sense.  The act of rape could never be enough for this
guy.  He needed their fear, to see it.  He needed them
engaged and able to be baited into fighting.  That gave him
the opportunity for another layer of pleasure.  But why? 
Why force the issue with the girls; why not simply dismember and
kill all of them?