"Oh God. Oh Lord." Sharon shrunk, internalizing the pain both of the death of a child and the belief one was responsible for that death "Candace is dead?"
"Not necessarily," Heath said overload. The kid probably was dead but she could tell Sharon needed to deny that a while longer. "E-mails," she urged.
Sharon forced her eyes back to the computer screen.
"'Candace... only you... alive... come... come save her... we're here still... come back... he's dead... I need you... he's gone... we need you... come back...'" Sharon skimmed the remaining messages, her voice cracking wet with tears. When she'd done, the three of them stared at the gray wasteland, the face of cyberspace.
For a minute no one said anything. Not even the faint comforting sound of Wiley licking hypnotically at some part of his anatomy could kill the echo of the unvoiced siren's song Proffit had been singing via e-mail.
"'He's gone'... ?" Sharon looked over at Heath.
"Get the light, would you, Patty?" Heath had had enough of this ghost gray computer glow. Then, remembering they were hiding, said, "Never mind. Thanks anyway." The little girl waited by the switch, wanting to be on hand to help should Heath change her mind again.
"He, from the context of the messages"-Heath put the thoughts together as she spoke-"must be the kidnapper. A man the girls have rea-son to be afraid of. 'He's gone. He's dead.' That looks to be said by way of reassurance."
"Robert telling the girls that he's killed or gotten rid of their kid-napper? That doesn't seem right."
"My guess is it's the other way around, the kidnapper's pretending to be Robert to lure the girls back. He's hooking them with their faith in Robert Proffit. The bait is Candace. Saving Candace. He's playing on their goodness. Or their guilt."
"'Only you... we need you... save her. Come back, we're here,'" Sharon repeated the highlights of the litany.
"Where the hell is here?"
"The park."
Heath said nothing. The girls had been found-or rather, had found her-in the park after who knew how many days walking, wandering, running, maybe much of that time lost. Even half-naked and unshod the} could have covered a lot of country.
Heath had covered a lot of country herself. There were few places in Rocky she'd not been. A place where a man could keep three girls. A place with access to computer and internet. Within walking distance to the handicamp. The west side of the park was out-too far. Two girls without gear, food or water couldn't make it that far. And it meant a climb up and over the great divide. The frontcountry was a possibility. It was densely populated but often there's more anonymity in crowds than in solitary climes. They'd been missing too long for them to have been kept in a camp, tent or RV. At the height of the season permits weren't that long and compliance was rigorously enforced.
This place: "back," "here," was still extant six or seven weeks after the initial disappearance. An employee, then. Dorm and shared housing were out. Most of the permanent employees lived in Estes Park.
"Fern Lake Cabin," Heath said with certainty. She'd not thought of it before because no one really knew if the girls had been kidnapped or run away, whether any accomplices or perpetrators remained in the area or had long since departed. Besides, Fern Lake Cabin was occupied during the summer months by a law enforcement ranger. A ranger who was by now dead, or if he wasn't, would be if Heath got her hands on him.
twenty-seven
Either Rita heard the urgency in Anna's command or she was too glad to be free to push her luck. Without a word of protest or a single question she shrugged into her daypack.
Anna was already on her feet. "Quietly," she whispered. In the dark-ness beside her, Rita rose effortlessly. Strong and young, knees didn't crack, hands didn't grab at the tree for support or balance. Jealousy was the furthest thing from Anna's mind. At the moment she needed all the strong and young she could get.
"He's had time. More than enough. Rita, you'll need your sidearm." She dropped to one knee and reached for her daypack. Nothing. Eyes were useless. Filtered moonlight was sufficient for the big stuff, not for this. On all fours, she dragged her hands lightly over the duff, feel-ing for it.
"My pack's gone."
"It's not gone," Rita said reasonably. "You must have shoved it farther back than you thought."
"It's gone. Shut up. Listen."
He'd been there, close enough to take the pack with Rita's gun, and Anna had heard nothing. Rita safely under lock and key, she'd let down her guard, happily interrogating a woman whose greatest crime was sav-ing the lives of four wolf pups, then transporting them to a place that needed their pointed teeth and predatory minds to bring nature back into balance.
The thought that a monster-an honest-to-god, raise the hair on the back of the neck monster, the likes of which kept entire cities in terror- had slept in the room next to her, poured her coffee and lied to her about mice made Anna feel vulnerable. Worse: a fool, a mark, a victim. That the same monster could walk lightly enough to sneak up on her in the night woods scared her half to death.
In the sane world, criminals could be negotiated with, threatened, bought off. For the most part they were rational folks just suffering from poor impulse control, arrogance or lack of moral rectitude. In an insane world, what was negotiable, threatening, legal tender? Where monsters be, monsters' rules are law and only the monster knows what they are.
He'd been so close, unseen, armed. It would have been easy to put a bullet in their heads and drag them off somewhere the bodies would never be found. Or feed them piecemeal to the wolf pups. Why hadn't he?
The answer that came to Anna was not reassuring. He hadn't killed them because that wouldn't be any fun. Piedmont, her beloved yellow tomcat, loved to play with mice, birds, butterflies, cockroaches. Once he broke his toys, and they would no longer peep or flutter or run, he lost interest.
This man didn't want to break his toys. Not right away. Not quickly.
For the count of maybe ten breaths Anna and Rita stood stone-still, ears trying to pry into the night and the forest. Anna could see, but only enough not to bash into trees if she moved slowly. Down by the lake there would be more open space, more light. With their backs to the water there'd be only half as many directions from which an attack could come. A fifty percent improvement in survival odds, providing they could find cover. Anna was about to catch Rita's hand, move her toward the water, when she heard what she'd been listening for. More than she'd been listening for.
From the darkness came an eerie cackle. The sound mimicked the maniac's merriment heard in grade-B horror movies. In another setting Anna would have smiled. Stranded in the woods at night, it wasn't even remotely funny. The laughter whirled around them, crackling liquid as directionless as poison gas, then drifted away into the night.
"Jesus."
"Shh."
Silence. Then Robert Proffit's voice: "God forgive me, but I hate mice."
"Robert?" Rita called.
"Shh." The sound seemed to be coming from uphill, from the direc-tion of the makeshift wolf den. Anna pulled Rita back till their shoulders touched the bulk of the pine tree that had been prison and home for the past few hours.
A muffled click, then: "I love those girls like they were my own flesh." Another click.
"Robert?" Rita whispered.
"No. It's a recording," Anna said with sudden realization. She'd seen the equipment at Fern Lake Cabin but, at the time, had thought nothing of it. "He's used it before on Heath Jarrod and I'm pretty sure he used it to try and lure Alexis and Beth back. Quiet now."
Snippets of information gleaned from conversations with Molly; her psychiatrist sister, floated haphazardly through Anna's mind. Challenging a psychotic's delusion could produce violence in the subject. A symptom of attachment disorder is the inability to care about anything or anyone except as it relates to the subject's own needs or desires. Sociopaths are incapable of feeling compassion for others.
None of it helped. Anna went with her instincts. "Cut the crap, Ray," she said into the darkness. Rav. His name wasn't Ravmond Bleeker. He wasn't a ranger. Anna felt an idiotic rush of relief as if a stain had been removed from her people. Before she'd come to Rocky there'd been a rot-ted corpse found on the northern end of the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Battery acid had burned hands and face and been poured in the mouth. Evidence of the murders of two boys in Pennsylvania and notes to the dead boys had been found on the body. The suspect in the Pennsylvania killings had jumped bail and run, the notes were in the suspect's hand-writing. Descriptions of the suspect and the measurements of the corpse were a match. Lacking any indication to the contrary, the official theory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was that the murderer had either killed himself in a gruesome manner or gotten his just reward from an outraged accomplice.
No one fitting the corpse's general description had been reported missing. But then a seasonal backcountry ranger wouldn't be. Family and friends were accustomed to them dropping off the face of the earth for months at a time.
Raymond Bleeker was undoubtedly lying in an FBI morgue some-where in Tennessee, rotted beyond recognition, dental work and finger-tips destroyed by battery acid.
"You took Ray Bleeker's identity," Anna said more to herself and Rita than to the killer in the woods. "How'd you do it? Befriended him, then killed him? What?" Only silence came back. For once, Anna hated silence. Feared it. "You couldn't hope to fool people very long. You were too piss-poor a ranger for that," she goaded.
Rita started to move. Anna sensed rather than heard or felt it-maybe Rita only thought about moving. Anna put a hand on her arm to keep her still.
There was a stirring in the duff to the left and slightly uphill.
"I fooled you," came a high-pitched singsong, the tune of quintes-sential derision recognizable on any playground from Miami to Nome.
"You fooled me all right, buddy," Anna admitted. What had inspired her to call him "buddy" she had no idea but it got a reaction.
"Don't fucking call me Buddy, you pushy faggot whore," exploded through the still damp air, followed by what sounded like the whimper of a child. It might have been one of the wolf pups frightened by the uncharacteristic noise.
A hand clutched Anna's wrist and she almost screamed. It was Rita. "It's okay," Anna breathed. It wasn't. She knew it. Rita knew it. But it had to be said for some reason. Maybe to see if God-or the fates-would laugh out loud.
"What should I call you?" she asked in the direction from which the fury had come, knowing Ray, Buddy-whoever-was probably no longer there. For a man who had lived most of his life in cities-according to the news reports the school where the boys' killer had done his hunting was in Philadelphia-he moved through the dark forest with remarkable stealth.
Maybe he isn't human, Anna heard a whisper in her brain and suffered a terror so ancient it could not be stilled with logic. Navajo skinwalkers, vampires, werewolves: nothing but the rising of the sun could banish them. With a mental jerk so pronounced her head shook like a comic doing a double-take, she ridded herself of the thought before it could take root and blossom into panic.
"What's your name?" she asked, to keep him engaged. Like she had to amuse him to keep herself and Rita alive until a better plan presented itself. Once they weren't fun anymore, their life expectancy would shorten considerably.
"Buddy. My name's Buddy."
Maybe his name was Buddy. Maybe she'd hit on it by pure dumb luck. Whether good or bad remained to be seen.
"Yeah. Old Buddy boy," he added. "I'll be your pal. We'll have such fun."
The voice moved. Now Anna could hear boots or, more likely, sneakers shushing over the duff. As he talked she unsnapped the keeper on her pancake holster and eased out her semiauto. Straight-armed, both hands supporting the weapon, she aimed at the sound, pivoting slowly as the words trailed down to the right.
"I'll be your friend. Like Mister Rogers. Okay, everybody, take your buddy's hand!" A few bars of the television theme song were hummed, then a scream: 'Are you out of your fucking mind?" and Anna went blind. The beam of a powerful flashlight was trained in her eyes. She'd been spotlighted as sure as a hapless doe by an illegal hunter.
"Put the gun down like a good little ranger." The voice had gone back to singsong. Anna found the screaming less disturbing.
"What's in it for me?" She squinted past the glare.
He pulled the trigger. The report hurt her eardrums. Rita cried out and fell. Anna squeezed off three shots in quick succession. One at the light. One just left of it and one to the right. The beam went wild as the flash-light fell, then rolled. Rita was panting. A child cried piteously. In the spill of the fallen flashlight Anna could see what she'd shot. Not a monster but a little girl. Buddy had been too clever to make a target of himself. The underweight girl with the punked-out hair who'd alibi'd him had been holding the light.
