The Angel Maker - 2 (14 page)

It was.

The structure was thirty feet long and about as wide. At the far end, rain leaked in across the poured-cement floor. The canopy of corrugated metal that arched overhead reminded the woman of an airplane hangar. Rain beat down on it like hailstones. Her ears rang from it. She had awakened in a cage-a dog pen, she now realized by looking around. Constructed of chain-link wire mesh and galvanized pipe, the cage appeared to be about eight feet long by four feet wide, and too low to stand up in. There were dogs in nearly all the cages. She was naked, lying on a brown burlap sack. She had no idea what time it was, who she was 'where she was, or what had happened to her. Some kind of nightmare. The reality of her situation slowly seeped in. She remembered the two men in her house. She remembered the needle in her arm. She tried to sit up. Pain screamed from her side; her arm tangled in an I.V. tube. She recalled a devastatingly bright light and another warm surge of drugs. Again, she tried to sit UP, the pain even more intense.

Her hand fell to her side, and she felt the bandage there.

Panic overcame her. Dogs. A cage! Naked. There was a bucket behind her, a roll of toilet paper alongside of it. Against the wall, an automatic waterer. The IN. bag was clamped to the overhead wire of the cage. Drip, drip, drip: She could see it feeding her. She rolled to get a better look at the bandage. It was several inches long, redness seeping into the skin around its edges. She felt overtaken by a sudden burst of nausea, rolled to her side, and vomited.

Had she awakened before this? She couldn't remember. She felt completely disoriented. There was nothing here that fit into her reality. it was almost as if this were happening to someone else. She really had believed it to be some kind of intense nightmare at first, one of those in which everything is too real, tactile, painful, and emotionally all-encompassing. But there was no question as to the reality of her situation. If she had awakened prior to this, her situation had not taken hold. Only now, as the dogs began stirring in their cages, as the pain in her side reached an excruciating level, did she begin to grasp her circumstances.

She began to collect herself. There were eight adjacent cages against each of the Quonset hut's two long walls, a cement aisle separating them. The building's only door was to her right. Her cage was sandwiched between two others that were empty. At the far end of the building, to her left, a cage was stacked high with sacks of dog food. Across the aisle to her left a gas heater suspended from the high ceiling emitted a warm wind which blew directly onto her. Perhaps, she thought, that heater explained her placement in this particular cage.

She counted twelve dogs. Some of them carried partially healed scars. She felt dizzy at the sight of those scars. A kennel?

She sat up, slowly, overcoming the pain, driven by the need to get out of here. There was a weight on her neck. She grabbed for it, tugged, but it was thick and heavy. A collar of some sort. Only now did she realize all the dogs were also wearing such collars. Big collars, with a heavy black lump attached.

She knew what that lump was-a battery; she understood the purpose of these collars. She pulled at it again; her fingers touched a small padlock-it was locked around her neck! She panicked. She crawled on hands and knees over to the chain-link door and grabbed hold. Her collar sounded a brief electronic alarm. It failed to register on her mind as a warning, instead, invoking further panic. She shook the cage door violently.

A jolt of electricity flashed from her neck to her toes like scalding water. Pain as sharp and severe as any she had known.

She let go, fell back, and cried out at the top of her lungs.

The dogs leapt to their feet in unison and barked so loudly, so vehemently that it deafened her. Sharon Shaffer clasped her hands to her ears and screamed again, tears pouring from her eyes. The dogs roared on.

Perhaps this was hell, she thought. Perhaps she had died and gone to hell.

As Michael Washington tentatively entered the clearing that held a cabin and a Quonset hut, he heard a sickening cry that cut him to the core. A woman' It was immediately followed by the vicious barking of dogs, but he felt almost certain that he had heard a woman. Perhaps it was nothing more than his active imagination, he thought. He had, after all, only minutes before been thinking about the weirdos who lived in places like this.

One of the newspaper stories that lodged in his mind was that of a father and son who had kidnapped a woman backpacker, keeping her in chains, raping and torturing her until authorities finally raided the camp. Had he merely projected the terror of that story onto what he had heard?

Or was there a woman trapped in there with a bunch of dogs?

He broke into a run. A minute later he reached the far end of the structure. The building's only door held an enormous padlock. Locked, with dogs inside? Why? He banged loudly on the door and pressed his ear to its cold metal.

There were so many dogs barking it was impossible to be sure exactly what he was hearing. And yet that sounded like a woman calling for help.

He abandoned his pack and ran toward the cabin, stopping abruptly before he reached it, because it occurred to him that if it was a woman's voice, then whoever was inside that cabin was responsible for her being there.

He returned quickly to his backpack, scooped it up, and made for the woods. He hunkered down and took a minute to collect himself. By all appearances the cabin was unoccupied, but the car tracks in the mud indicated this place was frequented often; and by the look of several of the tracks, recently.

How long would he have to check this out? He left his backpack in the woods, returned to the structure, and circled it fully.

Only the one door. Hinges on the inside. You'd need a stick of dynamite to break that padlock. He circled again, beating on the walls to check their construction-too stout to hope to bust up. At one point, he thought he heard that voice again-he was sure of it-but those dogs were so loud! The frustration drove him to a frantic circling of the building. Around and around.

He finally caught himself and stopped.

He had to get help. That was all there was to it. He ran along the very edge of the primitive driveway that led to the farm, alert for any cars ahead of him, prepared to hide in the woods if he saw any. The driveway-the road-was the most obvious route to follow: Somewhere out there was civilization, and this had to be the fastest way to it.

The more he ran the quicker his pace, driven by adrenaline, driven as if pursued by someone.

The driveway, a half-mile long, joined a dirt road challenged on its edges by weeds. He followed this road to the right, convinced not only that town was this way-the sun lay to his right; he had to be running south-but also that his car was parked somewhere in this general direction.

He tried to think this through. Whoever lived in the cabin was gone. He decided that if a car approached from in front of him a car returning-he would hide. But if a car or truck happened to approach him from behind-a car headed south, a car headed out of here-he would flag it down. He prided himself on his logic; the fact that he was able once again to think clearly restored some of his confidence and helped to calm him. He pumped hard and continued to run.

As time wore on, he considered flagging down any car he saw.

He encountered an intersection and then immediately another one.

Here finally was an obvious landmark, but he had left his map in his pack! He sized up the dim glow of the retreating sun and continued south toward eventual civilization.

Elden Tegg was on his way to the farm to check his patient when he first spotted the boot prints coming down his road. These tracks stretched in a length and stride that indicated a hard run. His heart began to beat frantically. His cabin and kennel were at the end of this dirt track, nothing else. Nothing else!

Fresh tracks at that, he realized.

Maybeck's warning of the night before echoed in his head. "The police!"

He drove quickly, skidding to a stop as he reached his property.

The boot tracks led directly from the kennel!

For a moment he found it hard to catch his breath-him, Dr.

Calm!

He leapt from the car, following the prints like a trapper, his fingers groping for his keys. Self-control was all-important.

His strength. He settled himself and observed the scene before him.

Whoever it was had stopped in front of the kennel door, but there was only the one set of tracks: He he hadn't made it inside. Tegg lost the prints in or s the grass around the side of the structure. His mind through a dozen possibilities, but he didn't race like where any of them led: back to those tracks.

He unlocked the door, hurried inside and breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his captive in her cage, locked up tight.

Bewildered, she didn't utter a word before he left and locked the structure again.

How old were these tracks? Minutes? Hours? He had not seen anyone on the road, but there were dozens of roads out here.

Was he too late? Had the intruder taken a different road than he?

He jumped back into the Trooper and headed down the road as fast as the car would safely take him.

He followed the tracks on the edge of the road like a bloodhound.

At the end of the lane they turned right. So did Tegg.. These boot prints dragged on for what seemed like miles, the distance between each print narrowing and after a while indicating the hiker was walking. Good, Tegg thought, walking is slower. He was still extremely nervous, once nearly foreign condition for him, but one that was beginning to seem familiar. He took long, deep breaths and calmed himself.

He reached the double-triangle intersection, where the aqueduct crossed the South Fork, and saw at once why he had not passed the hiker on the way in: He had followed the roads due south, but had taken the fork that eventually wound its way east to the reservoir. There was a lot of open road out here. Tegg drove faster, worried now. There might be people at the reservoir. He didn't want this hiker reaching anyone.

He rounded a long, sweeping corner. A hundred yards ahead of him, he spotted the hiker.

As the hiker heard the vehicle, he-a black man-turned and waved his arms frantically. Tegg felt the blood pounding in his ears.

He slowed the vehicle and rolled down his window. The hiker was young and handsome, with anxious eyes. "Please," the young man pleaded. "I need a ride. I need some help."

"Help? Are you in trouble?"

"Please!" Tegg said, "Hop in," releasing the car's power door lock, wondering how next to handle this. As the boy climbed in, Tegg felt charged with a keen sense of power. He couldn't weaken.

He couldn't allow his fear to show. He asked his passenger to buckle up. He took control. "Where are we?" the young man asked. "Are you lost?"

"Among other things. My car's out here somewhere."

"Engine trouble?"

"No." The boy hesitated. He asked carefully, "Are you from around here?"

Tegg considered this briefly. A test. "No," he answered. "I have some work out at the reservoir." He pointed. "The reservoir is this direction?"

"'Yes, it is."

"Stop the car!"

Tegg slowed. "Problems?"

"I have to go the other way." He shook his head.

"Oh, man, did I ever fuck up."

Tegg slowed the car to a crawl. "Can I help?"

"Could you?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly feel right about abandoning you out here. What exactly is the problem?"

Hysterical, Michael Washington ranted and raved about being lost, about dogs, a woman's voice, and needing help. Something linking sexual perverts to backpackers. "Calm down a minute,"

Tegg said, trying to convince himself as much as his passenger.

He pulled to the side of the road. Stopping the car won the boy's full attention. Little people were so predictable. "I'm telling you, there's a woman up there who needs help!"

"You saw her? " Tegg wondered if his heart could endure this.

The wheel was slippery from the sweat on his palms. He let go of the wheel.

An expression of doubt crossed the young man's face. It dissipated quickly as he reminded himself emphatically, "The barn was locked."

"A barn?"

"More like a small hangar. A Quonset hut. There were dogs."

"A kennel?"

"It was a woman, I'm telling you."

Tegg explained, "Well, we can be at the Sheriff's in about thirty minutes. Or we could call." He pointed to his cellular phone. "I can get a clear signal a few miles down the road. But you better have your story straight."

"Meaning?"

"Your name?"

"Michael."

"Michael, have you ever heard a cat at night? Hmm?

Have you ever heard that peculiar screaming of a cat during fornication and thought you heard a woman?" Now Tegg's hitchhiker looked puzzled. "Don't get me wrong-Im not telling you what you heard. I wasn't there. You're the one who'll explain it to the Sheriff, but you mentioned dogs and that made me think of cats and how much they can sound like a woman. A woman screaming. Cats fornicating. A mountain lion can sound that way. What was it you said you heard?"

His passenger didn't answer at first. Then he stated emphatically, "I heard a woman scream."

Tegg added, "I don't know how you feel about involving the cops, but they're not my favorite people. Were you on private property? Was that property posted? Did you have the owner's permission to be there? They ask you things like that. Don't forget that."

"I know that. I also know what I heard."

"And you're prepared to deal with them? Fine." Tegg went through the motions of pretending to engage the car. "You ask me, cops are stupid. They're little people."

"What choice is there? I have to do something." He added, "And what about those dogs?"

Tegg nodded. The important thing was to remain in control, to give this person the sense that he, Tegg, had all the answers, even though he was making this up on the fly. The key to such manipulation was in allowing the other person to believe that all the good ideas were his. To fill in gaps that were never left in the first place. For so many animals in the wild, the key to survival, the way they snared their prey, was through convincing camouflage. Tegg knew his most effective camouflage was to appear to be this man's friend. How quickly we place our trust in those we like. And Tegg could be quite likable when he tried. "Listen, if you're saying I should go back there with you," Tegg suggested, "I suppose that makes some good sense.