Paradise County (52 page)
“And here we have another problem. Are there no end of them tonight? Do I go up there and bring him down here too? I don’t want him, and there really isn’t room… . Ah, he’s leaving. Maybe he’ll just go away.” Tapping one finger thoughtfully against his teeth, Homer seemed to be talking more to himself than to Neely or her, Alex thought. The hand holding the gun hung limply down at his side.
For a split second she thought about running for it, but a glance toward the door dissuaded her. He could have the gun snapped up and firing in an instant. She could not possibly get past him and out the door.
As Alex watched the TV, Joe walked out of her bedroom. The screen now showed just the empty room. There were her clothes on the bed… .
“There’s a camera over my bed.” The realization brought an unpleasant, creepy feeling with it.
“Yes indeed. And in your bathroom, too. I call it Alexandra TV. All Alexandra, all the time.”
At the idea that this pervert had been watching her in her most personal moments, Alex felt sick.
“I was watching you at the inn, too, you know. When you spent the night? I have a very nice videotape of you and your sister. You put on quite a show.”
“You have cameras in your hotel?” Alex burst out in horror.
He smiled at her. “Oh, yes. All my rooms are wired: video and audio. The things that go on in a hotel—adultery, fornication—all kinds of chicanery. For example, I have your father on tape bribing our esteemed Lieutenant Governor Whelan.” His face darkened. “I was hoping to make quite a bit of money from that tape, actually, but your father wouldn’t play ball. I suppose I’ll have to take the matter up with Mr. Whelan, but he really doesn’t have any money so it all just seems a waste.”
“Is that why you killed him? Because he wouldn’t play ball?” Alex was conscious of something hard and cold being passed through the bars between her body and the wall, where Homer could not see. Neely was passing her something—Alex ran her fingers over it experimentally: cold flat metal with a sharp point on the end.
“Well, you know, I had him on
tape.”
Homer sounded aggrieved. “He and Whelan had breakfast in my restaurant then went into a room that had been rented in someone else’s name. Your father wanted a permit for a certain number of hospital beds, and Whelan was glad to oblige—for a price. Money changed hands. I’ve got it all on tape.” He frowned at Alex. “Your father was a very rich man. I didn’t think there would be any problem. He asked me to meet him in the barn at Whistledown on a certain night at a certain time, told me he’d bring the money if I brought the tape, so I did. I even brought a bottle of whiskey along to celebrate. But he said he wasn’t going to pay me a dime and pulled a gun on me! I believe he meant to kill me. But I had my taser with me—you know my taser, don’t you, Cornelia? It’s broken now—and I was able to zap him while I was handing over the tape. Spilled every bit of the whiskey while
I was doing it, but no matter. When he was unconscious, I could see there was really only one thing to be done. If I didn’t, he’d just keep coming after me. So I put the gun in his hand, pressed it to his head, and pulled the trigger. Instant suicide. I
am
sorry for your loss, by the way.” The TV caught his eye again. His tone changed to one of vexation as he added, “There he is back!
A
lex was nowhere in the house.
At the realization Joe felt cold stark terror grab him by the throat. He knew as well as he knew morning was coming that she hadn’t walked back down to his house in the dark by herself.
Joe picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed Tommy. Calling 911 was not nearly so efficient as knowing the sheriff’s home phone number, Joe had found.
“Haul your butt over to Whistledown now!” Joe’s grip on the phone was so tight his knuckles showed white. “I can’t find Alex! She was in the house, and she’s disappeared!”
Tommy had obviously been asleep when he’d picked up the phone, but his voice was alert as he answered, “On my way.”
He’d known Joe long enough not to ask questions: if Joe said it was an emergency, it was.
Then Joe went back up to Alex’s bedroom. The clothes she had planned to take with her were on the bed. The damned cat had been on the bed. A depression and a few orange hairs on top of the pile of clothes made that obvious. Whatever had happened to Alex had most likely happened in her bedroom.
He walked inside and stood looking around. His heart was pounding, and the harsh taste of fear was bitter in his mouth. He couldn’t lose her, not now… .
He didn’t think he could bear to lose another person he loved. Hannibal emerged from under the bed. He looked at Joe, yowled, and walked toward the closet with his tail held high.
The cat… .
Arrested, Joe followed him, and opened the door. The cat walked right into the closet and stopped in front of the back wall, waving his tail gently from side to side, and turning to meow at Joe for all the world as if he were asking to be let out.
Joe let out his breath as a truly horrific thought struck him, and put his shoulder to the wall.
It gave way.
W
ell.” Homer sounded faintly regretful as they watched Joe enter the closet in Hannibal’s wake. “I guess it’s destiny. Yours—and mine.”
He walked over to Alex. Even as she tried to jump up, tried to stab him with the spear, he grabbed it from her hand.
“Bad girl!” he said, and hit her over the head with the gun.
Alex saw stars. By the time she recovered, he had chained one of her wrists to the wall.
“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” he said. “But then again, maybe you’re not. Anyway, bullets ricochet down here.”
In the cell, Neely was sobbing.
“Alex! Alex! Oh, no, please! Alex… .”
Alex felt her heart begin to pound. Her mouth went dry. Her eyes were wide with fear as she watched him pocket the gun and walk to the opposite end of the room from the cell.
He’d threatened to chain her to the wall and make a bonfire out of her.
She broke out in a cold sweat, and began to fight the chain that held her. It rattled and clanked, but it was a heavy chain fastened to a solid iron ring set into stone, and it didn’t give.
When he returned, he was carrying a red metal gas can.
Panic almost overwhelmed her.
He was going to burn her alive. Neely was keening now, a high-pitched sound of sheer terror.
Alex began to shake. “Please, Homer. Please. Don’t do this. Please… .”
“This is not how I meant this to turn out, Alexandra,” Homer said regretfully. “I meant to keep
you.
But since Joe is obviously coming this way, and I see no way of avoiding having my little home away from home discovered, the only thing to do is remove all the evidence by burning the entire place. When they find you and Cornelia and Eli in the ashes down here, they’ll know what happened. But they won’t know who did it.” He started splashing kerosene around. The stench rose up to choke Alex as the liquid hit near her feet. “After all, he who turns and runs away lives to play another day.”
He poured kerosene near the cell, splashed some through the bars, and backed away, pouring a stream of kerosene behind him as he went.
“Good-bye, Alexandra,” he said, opening the door. Then he reached into his pants pocket, withdrew a book of matches, and struck one. Alex watched in horror as the flame flared brightly in his hand.
Then he dropped it, and the world turned orange with a
whoosh.
A
lex! Alex!”
“Neely! Oh, God, Neely!”
Alex screamed as bright orange flames danced across the floor, raced around the room, climbed the walls. Smoke rose in its wake, curling toward the ceiling, reaching oily fingers toward her, clogging her mouth and nose. Neely was screaming too, Alex heard her, saw her sister burst through the door of the cell and run toward her, dodging a line of flames that was growing taller and more furious by the second.
“Alex!” Neely was fumbling with her wrist, with the manacle around her wrist, fumbling to insert a key which she produced from somewhere, God knew where, while Alex gagged at the smoke and tried to shield her face from the intense heat with her hand.
“Leave me! Leave me!” She was going to die, she knew it, she and Neely and Eli in this monstrous place, consumed by flames, screaming. “Neely, run! Leave me!”
“Please God, please God, please God …” Neely was sobbing the words as the flames climbed higher up the walls, heating the air, sucking the oxygen from it… .
The crackling roar was the most terrifying thing Alex had ever heard.
The walls were beginning to char. She estimated that they had about a minute before the room was fully engulfed, before licking tongues of flame were climbing up their skin… .
The manacle came free.
The door at the back of the room burst open. The influx of oxygen caused the flames to soar. Joe appeared, leaping over one small line of flames, one arm up to shield his face… .
“Alex!” His bellow was louder even than the roar of the fire.
“Eli! Eli is in the cell!” Neely shrieked as she ran toward him. Alex turned toward the cell; she couldn’t leave Joe’s son… .
“Get out of here!” he screamed at her, running past.
The smoke was getting worse; her eyes were watering. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see… .
Her skin was crisping in the heat.
She couldn’t leave Joe.
Panic welled like vomit in her throat. Joe was in the cell, bending over the mattress, hauling Eli up… .
And the flames had reached her feet. Sheer black terror overwhelmed her.
Alex ran, screaming, leaping like a deer, beating at the fingers of flame that grabbed at the legs of her jeans. The superheated air made it almost impossible to breathe.
The door; the door. Heart pounding, feet racing, she made it to the door. She burst through it, out into the dark earthen safety of the coal bin, beating at her legs, gasping for air, and turned just in time to see Joe, with Eli slung over his shoulder, come leaping out of the flames.
