Speaking in Tongues (30 page)

He took the stitches bravely (even though
she
cringed every time the needle pierced his skin). But when Megan poured a capful of alcohol on the wounds he shivered frantically at the pain.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” came his garbled voice. “Keep at it, Ms. Beautiful . . .”

Her eyes teared when she heard the nickname he’d used the night he picked her up.

“Even if you get out, you’ll never get past ’em. The dogs. He’s got four or five of the big fuckers.”

“You’re sure you can’t walk?”

“I don’t think so,” he gurgled. “No.”

“Okay, you stay here. I saw a door going to the basement. I think I can break it open. I’m going to see if there’s a door or window down there. Maybe it’ll lead outside.”

He nodded, breathed, “I love . . .” and passed out.

She stacked the cinder blocks around him so that if Matthews glanced this way he wouldn’t see the young man.

She listened for a moment to his low, uneven breathing. Then, knife in one hand, she started down the corridor.

Megan was almost to the intersection of the corridors when she heard the creak of a door opening. Then it slammed.

Aaron Matthews had returned.

They drove in silence through destitute parts of Prince William County. They passed tilled fields, where the taproots of corn were reaching silently down into the dark, red-tinted earth. Barns long ago abandoned. Decaying tract bungalows, where postwar dreams had withered fast—tiny cubes of vinyl—and aluminum-sided homes. Shacks and cars on blocks.

Through Manassas, where the fearsome Rebel yell was first heard, then through the outlying farms and past the Confederate Cemetery.

“It was him, Tate,” Bett said, breaking a long silence.

“Who?”

“A man came to see me. He said he was her therapist but he wasn’t.”

“It was Matthews?”

“He called himself Peters.”

“His son’s name was Peter,” Tate mused. “That must be why he picked it.” Glanced at her. “What happened?”

She shook her head. “He seduced me. Nothing really happened but it was enough . . . Oh, Tate, he
looked right into my soul. He knew what I wanted to hear. He said exactly the right things.”

You can talk your way into somebody’s heart and get them to do whatever you want. Judge or jury, you’ve got that skill. Words, Tate. Words. You can’t see them but they’re the most dangerous weapons on earth. Remember that. Be careful, son.

She continued, “He’d called Brad. I think he pretended he was a cop and told him to get to my house. We were together on the couch . . . I was drunk . . . Oh, Tate.”

Tate put his hand on her knee, squeezed lightly. “There was nothing you could’ve done, Bett. He’s too good. Somehow, he’s done all of this. Dr. Hanson, Konnie . . . probably Eckhard too, the teacher. Just to get even with me.” They drove on in silence. Then Tate realized something. “You got here too quickly.”

“What?”

“You couldn’t have been in Baltimore when you got my message.”

“No, I got as far as Takoma Park and turned back.”

“Why?”

A long pause.

“Because I decided it had to stop.” Instinctively she flipped the mirror down and examined her face. Poked at a wrinkle or two. “I was running after Brad and I should have been going after Megan.” She continued, “I realized something, Tate. How mad I’ve been at her.”

“At Megan? Because of what we heard at the Coffee Shop?”

“Oh, Lord, no. That’s
my
fault, not hers.” She took a deep breath, flipped the mirror back up. “No, Tate. I’ve been mad at her for years. And I shouldn’t’ve been. It wasn’t her fault. She was born at the wrong time and the wrong place.”

“Yes, she sure was.”

“I neglected her and didn’t do the things I should have . . . I dated, I left her alone. I did the basics, sure. But kids know. They know where your heart is. Here I was, running after Joe or Dave or Brad and leaving my daughter. Time for that to stop. I’m just praying it’s not too late.”

“We’ll find her.”

The roads were deserted here and the air aromatic with smoke from wood cooking fires, common in this poor part of the county. The Volvo streaked through a stop sign. Tate skidded into a turn and then headed down a bad road.

“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” she asked.

“We sure are. They don’t put out all-points bulletins anymore. But if they did we’d be the main attraction in one.”

“They don’t know my car,” Bett pointed out.

He laughed. “Oh, that took all of thirty seconds for ’em to track down. Look, there. That’s his place.”

Matthews’s small bungalow was visible through a stand of trees some distance away. A rusting heating-oil tank sat in the side yard and the stands of uncut grass were outnumbered by patches of red mud. The house was only two miles away from Tate’s farm. A convenient staging point for a break-in and kidnapping, he noted.

“What are we going to do?” Bett asked.

Tate didn’t answer her. Instead he took the gun out of his pocket. “We’re going to get our daughter,” he said.

Thirty yards, twenty, fifteen. Tate paused and listened. Silence from inside Matthews’s house.

He smelled the scent of wood smoke and pictured the kidnapper sitting beside the fireplace with Megan bound and gagged at his feet.

The shabby house chilled his heart. He’d seen places like it often. Too often. When he was a commonwealth’s attorney he’d always—unlike most big-city prosecutors—visited the crime scenes himself. This was what detectives dubbed a section-sixty cottage, referring to the Virginia Penal Code provision for murder. Shotgun killings, domestics, love gone cruel then violent . . . There were common elements among such houses: they were small, filthy, silent, brimming with unspoken hate.

The Mercedes wasn’t in the drive so it was possible that Matthews hadn’t heard the message from the police. Maybe Megan was here now, lying in the bedroom or the basement. Maybe this would be the end of it. But he moved as silently as he could, taking no chances.

He glanced through the window.

The living room was empty, lit only by the glow of embers in the fireplace. He listened for a long moment. Nothing.

The windows were locked but he tested the handle on the door and found it was open. He pushed inside, thinking only as he did so: Why a fire on a warm night?

Oh, no! He lunged for the doorknob but it was too late; the door knocked over the large pail of gasoline.

“God!”

Instinctively Tate grabbed for the bucket as the pink wave of gas flowed onto the floor and into the fireplace.

“What?” Bett cried.

The gas ignited and with a whoosh a huge ball of flame exploded through the living room.

“Megan!” Tate cried, turning away from the flames and falling onto the porch. His sleeve was on fire. He slapped out the flames.

“She’s in there?
She’s in there?”
Bett shouted in panic and ran to the window. Scrabbling away from the flowing gasoline, Tate grabbed Bett and pulled her back. He covered his face with his hand, felt the searing heat take the hairs off the back of his fingers.

“Megan!” Bett cried. She broke the window in with her elbow. She peered inside for a moment but then leapt back as a plume of flame burst through the window at her. If she hadn’t leapt aside the fire would have consumed her face and hair.

Tate ran around the back of the cottage, broke in the window in one of the bedrooms, which was already filling with dense smoke.

No sign of the girl.

He ran to the other bedroom—the cottage had only two—and saw that she wasn’t there either. The flames were already burning through the bedroom door, which, with a sudden burst, exploded inward. In the light from the fire Tate could see that this wasn’t a
bedroom but an office. There were stacks of newspaper clippings, magazines, books and folders. Maps, charts and diagrams.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Bett came up behind him. There was a burn on her arm but she was otherwise okay. “Tate, I can’t find her!” she screamed.

“I don’t think she’s here. She’s not in either of these rooms and there’s no basement.”

“Where
is
she?”

“The answer’s in there,” he shouted. “He only set the trap so nobody could find any clues to where he’s got her.”

He picked up several bricks and shattered the glass-and-wooden grid in the window. “Oh, brother,” he muttered. And climbed inside, feeling the unnerving pain as a shard of glass sliced through his palm.

The heat inside was astonishing, smoke and embers and flecks of burning paper swirling around him, and he realized that the flames weren’t the worst problem—the heated air and lack of oxygen were going to knock him out in minutes.

He raced to the desk and grabbed all the papers and notebooks he could, ran to the window and flung them outside, crying to Bett, “Get it all away from the house.” He went back for more. He got two more armfuls before the heat grew too much. He dove out the window and rolled to the ground heavily as the ceiling collapsed and a swell of flame puffed out the window.

He lay, exhausted, gasping, on the ground. Dizzy
and hurt. Wondering why on earth Bett was doing a funny little dance around his arm. Then he understood. The file folder he held had been burning and she was stamping out the flames.

The sirens were getting closer.

“Great,” he muttered. “Now they’re gonna add arson to our rap sheets.”

Bett helped him up and they gathered all the notebooks and files he’d flung into the backyard. They ran to the car. Tate started it and skidded out of the drive, passing the first of the fluorescent green fire trucks that were speeding toward the house.

They turned north and drove for ten minutes until Tate figured there was no chance of being spotted. He parked near a quarry in Manassas. A grim, eerie place that looked like it should have been a serial killer’s stalking ground though to Tate’s knowledge there’d never been any crime committed here worse than pot smoking and drinking beer and sloe gin from open containers.

Tate and Bett pored over the singed files and papers, looking for some clue as to where Matthews might have taken Megan.

The files were mostly articles, psychiatric diagnostic reports, medical evaluations. He also found surveillance photos of Megan. Dozens of them. And of Tate’s house and Bett’s. Matthews had been planning this for months; some of the pictures had been taken during the winter. In one notebook Megan’s daily routine was described in obsessive detail.

More patient notes.

More articles.

More diaries. With shaking hands Tate and Bett read through them all but there was no clue as to any other buildings, apartments or houses where he might have taken the girl.

“There’s nothing,” Bett barked in frustration. “We’ve looked at everything.” Tears on her face.

Tate gazed at the mess of scorched papers and files on their laps. His eye fell on a patient diagnostic report. Then another. He flipped through them quickly. Then read the name and address of the hospital where the patients had been evaluated.

He snatched up his cell phone and, eyes on one of the reports, made a call to directory assistance for Calvert, Virginia. He asked for the number for the Blue Ridge Mental Health Facility.

“Please be out of order,” he whispered.

“Why on earth?” Bett asked.

“Please . . .”

“We’re sorry,” the electronic voice reported, “there is no listing for that name. Do you have another request?”

He clicked the phone off. “That’s where she is. An old mental hospital in the Shenandoahs.” He tapped the reports. “Matthews was a shrink. I’d guess he was on the staff there a few years ago. It’s probably closed and that’s where he’s taken her.”

“You sure?”

“No. But it’s all we’ve got.”

“Go, Tate.”

He pulled onto the highway and steered toward the interstate. Thinking with frustration that they’d
have to drive the entire way right on the speed limit. They could hardly afford to be stopped now.

•   •   •

Glass knife in front of her, Megan walked through the hallways.

There was silence, then the shuffling of footsteps. More silence.

I hate the quiet worse than his footsteps.

I’m with you there,
Crazy Megan shares.

Then the steps again but from a different place, as if the intruder were a ghost materializing at will.

Five minutes passed. Another noise nearby, behind her. A sharp inhalation of breath. Megan gasped and turned quickly. Aaron Matthews was twenty feet away. His eyes widened in surprise. She stumbled backward and fell over a table, went down hard. Grunted in pain as the edge of the table dug into her kidney.

Despite the pain, though, she leapt to her feet, lifting the knife threateningly. She assumed he’d charge at her. But he didn’t. He merely frowned and said, “Oh, my God, Megan, are you all right?”

Crouching, eyes fiery, breath hard, gripping the cloth handle of her wicked knife. Staring at his dark eyes, his large shoulders and long arms. Why wasn’t he coming at her?

She glanced behind her.

“Wait,” he said with a heart-tugging plea in his voice. “Please, don’t run.
Please.”

She hesitated.

He sighed. “Oh, I know you’re upset, Megan, honey. I know you’re scared . . . You hate me and you have every right to. But please. Just listen to me.”
He held his hands up. “I don’t have a knife or gun or anything. Please, will you listen?”

His eyes were so sincere, radiating sympathy, and his voice so imploring . . .

“Please.”

Megan kept her tight grip on the knife. But she straightened up. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “I’m listening.”

“Good,” he said. And offered her a smile.

“I didn’t know you’d gotten out of your room,” Aaron Matthews said.

“Cell,” she corrected bluntly.

“Cell,” he conceded, watching her eyes carefully. “But I should’ve guessed.” He laughed. “You’re the independent sort. Nobody was going to lock you away. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

Matthews noted how she fixed her gaze on his eyes. How her pale lashes stuttered when he’d said the word “love.”