The Bubble Gum Thief (31 page)

April 10

The rough concrete floor felt cold against her cheek. Waking, Dagny took a deep breath. It smelled like old magazines, chlorine, and mold. Other than the faint hum of a fan in the distance, it was quiet. A basement, Dagny surmised. She pushed herself up to a sitting position. It was too dark to see. There were no windows. No light seeped under doors or around corners. She heard something scamper across the floor, just a few feet away. A mouse, maybe. Or a rat.

She reached under her blouse and felt the wound on her chest. It had scabbed over—too small to be a bullet wound, more likely a tranquilizer dart. Had it been hours? Days? She didn’t know.

Dagny didn’t have the strength to stand, so she started to crawl. It only took her a few strides to reach a wall. She placed her fingertips against the rough brick and moved slowly along it until she reached the corner of the room. Further along the perimeter, she found a small cot. The mattress was only a couple of inches thick and was covered by a rough wool blanket. On top of the cot was an empty metal bucket. Continuing her crawl, she reached another corner, then started to edge along the next wall. Ten feet
later she reached out her hand and felt the slick, polished shine of his right shoe.

“Hello, Dagny.” His voice was deep, and it glided over the sound of the fan. “Did you sleep okay?” Soothing, yet eerie. Highly enunciated. Practiced, perhaps. Rehearsed.

She grabbed hold of his calf and tried to pull him down. “You’re in no condition to do that,” he said, stepping out of her grasp. She swung for his leg but missed. She was too tired to chase his voice.

“Who are you?”

“What, no pleasantries first?”

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“Now, now, Dagny, I’m not about to do your job.” He was pacing now. The wood soles of his shoes were clicking against the concrete floor with the regular beat of a metronome. “I didn’t bring you here to answer questions.”

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“I like you, Dagny. I like you very much. But I’m concerned for you.”

“I doubt that very much, Altamont.” She used the name he’d used with Waxton.

The man stopped pacing. Maybe he was surprised that Dagny knew his pseudonym.

“What happened to my partner?”

“Victor? If I had any faith in him, Dagny, you wouldn’t be here right now. Sure, the kid meant well, with that scene in the store, with the bathroom scales and all. But he’s no match for you. Don’t worry about Victor. Victor is fine.”

He’d been watching them in Cincinnati. “Why am I here?” Dagny asked.

“You’re here because you’re sick. You’re here so I can help you get better.”

“I don’t need the help of a murderer.”

“When you need help as much as you do, Dagny, you take it from wherever it comes.” He started pacing again.

“So first you try to run me down, now you want to save me?”

“I never tried to run you down.”

“In Cincinnati.”

“I never tried to run you down.”

She was losing patience with this. “Why did you kill Michael Brodsky?”

“Now
that
is a very good question. But I’m not here to answer questions, and you’re not here to ask them. You’re here to eat.” Dagny felt something hit her hand. A tray. On top of the tray, a plate. A sandwich and some pretzels. A chilled plastic bottle, turned on its side, covered in condensation. “I expect you to eat everything I feed you.” The taps of his shoes receded.

“And if I don’t?”

A couple more taps and the swish of a pivot. “You’re of no use to me unless you’re well.” More clicks against concrete, and then the ping of shoes climbing a metal staircase. A pause. “The door is steel and bolted. I have cameras and microphones planted around you, so I’ll be watching. I’ll turn the light off whenever I come down here—I have infrared goggles, so I can see you. There’s no bathroom—that’s what the bucket is for. If there’s something I can do to make your stay more comfortable, just ask. You’ve done nothing to earn my enmity. I know I’ve done much to earn yours.”

She heard the turn of a handle, and saw a sliver of light at the top of the steps. And then there was a blinding light. She closed her eyes and covered them with her arm. It felt like a giant spotlight, the kind they use on car lots to announce clearance sales, or at prisons, to catch escapees at night. Slowly she opened her eyes, squinting. It was just a single bare bulb, hanging from the ceiling.

When her eyes adjusted, Dagny looked around. Four brick walls made a twenty-foot square. No windows. A metal staircase rose at the far corner, a steel door sat at the top. The ceiling was
eight feet high and made of concrete. In the center of the ceiling was a small, round grate; the fan suspended above it kicked on, whirring again. Cameras were mounted in the four ceiling corners. Apart from the cot, the bucket, and the hanging bulb, the room was empty.

“Eat!” His voice bellowed from a speaker lodged above the grate but beneath the fan above her. She pushed herself off the ground, grabbed the tray of food, and walked back to the bed. Turkey on rye. Not just the processed turkey from the local deli, but chunks of actual turkey. The kind of sandwich she used to eat the day after Thanksgiving, back at her parents’ house. The bread was fresh and thick. Warm. Homemade.

“Eat!”

She raised the sandwich to her mouth and took a bite, then another. Soon, the sandwich was gone, then the pretzels and water, too. When she finished, he commanded her to leave the tray at the bottom of the stairs. She carried it over and set it down, then walked to the top of the steps and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. She climbed down the steps and stared into one of the suspended cameras. “How do I know Victor’s okay?” she yelled.

His voice came through the speaker. “I would never lie to you, Dagny.”

Lying was beneath him, but murder was fine.

She lay on the cot, her eyes fixed on the metal grate above her head, watching the oscillating fan and thinking about Victor. When she’d seen him on the ground and Murgentroy with the rifle, she’d assumed that Murgentroy had been the shooter. But maybe Altamont—or whoever he really was—had shot Victor with a tranquilizer dart, and Murgentroy had drawn his rifle in self-defense. That made sense. Victor had screamed before she’d heard any gunshots. Maybe he’d screamed when Altamont hit him with a tranquilizer dart, and then Murgentroy came out with
his rifle and fired twice at Altamont before Murgentroy himself was felled by another dart.

Or maybe Altamont had shot Murgentroy with a gun. Maybe he and Murgentroy had each fired a shot, and only Altamont had hit his target. Or maybe Murgentroy had fired off two shots but missed with both, and Altamont had used a silencer on his gunshots. In which case, both Victor and Altamont could be dead.

Or maybe Murgentroy was Altamont. But that couldn’t be. Murgentroy hadn’t shot her—he’d fallen to the ground before she was hit.

It was all a blurry haze. Altamont had said that Victor was fine. For some reason, she believed him.

An hour or two or ten later, she was still staring at the fan, and wondering why he needed her to be healthy. Maybe it was all a game to him and he needed an adversary on the other side. But there were plenty of worthy adversaries. Fabee was a good enough foil. Or Jack. Even the Professor was a worthy enough opponent. Why did Altamont care about her? Maybe it was personal. Perhaps someone from her past? No one she knew matched the profile—it had to be someone intelligent and educated who was knowledgeable about art, reasonably wealthy. She didn’t know anyone like that. (Well, Mike had been all of those things.)

So why her? Was he attracted to her? Some criminals were known to develop a romantic attachment to the female investigators who worked their cases. Dagny remembered reading about a murderer in Manhattan who was caught leaving flowers at the front door of the lead homicide investigator. But Dagny’s captor seemed genuinely bothered by the necessity of healing her. She doubted there was romantic interest.

Dagny looked up at one of the cameras, wondering if he was watching and listening. “Can I get something to read?” she asked, testing his willingness to accommodate. A few minutes later, the
light turned off and the door opened. There was a thump on the ground. When the lights came on, Dagny found a few magazines and a couple of novels at the foot of the stairs. She brought them back to her bed.

The novels were about serial killers—one by Patricia Cornwell, the other by Jeffery Deaver. The magazines were recent issues of
Cooking Light, Sports Illustrated
,
Rolling Stone
, and
Newsweek
. The
Newsweek
cover pictured a colorful pack of bubble gum and the words “The Bubble Gum Thief: The Latest in Serial Murder.” Had the story become this big?

The article was a paean to the glory of Justin Fabee. It began:

FBI Assistant Director Justin Fabee oversees the investigation. The 39-year-old Texan is a tall, thin man, with a piercing stare and a sharp mind. Instead of running the investigation from the FBI’s headquarters in Washington, DC, Fabee has taken a hands-on approach, inspecting each of the crime scenes and personally interviewing witnesses. “If you’re afraid to get your hands dirty, then you shouldn’t be in this line of work,” he explains in an accent straight from the West Texas plains. “I’m an assistant director now, but a special agent always.” This kind of dedication has earned the admiration and respect of many Beltway insiders. Catching BGT before he strikes again could catapult Fabee to the top of a short list to become the next FBI director. “I don’t think about that, not one bit,” Fabee says. “I just think about how we are going to catch this guy.”

Dagny surreptitiously tore the page from the magazine, folded it into a small rectangle, and stuffed it in her sock. Maybe his fingerprints were on it, and maybe it would matter, if she ever escaped.

She spent the next few hours studying the walls, the ceiling, the stairs—trying to find some way out, some flaw in the design—but there was none. Occasionally she’d look down at her wrist, only
to be reminded that he’d taken her watch. Without it, she couldn’t tell if time was passing quickly or slowly.

When he turned off the light and delivered dinner, she figured it was evening. The bulb flashed on to reveal sausage lasagna and a mixed-greens salad covered with goat cheese, walnuts, dried cranberries, and a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Nine hundred seventy-six calories. Plastic silverware. No beverage. “Something to drink would be nice!” she yelled.

A few seconds later, the light went off, and when if flashed back on, there was a bottle of Dasani on the floor. She twisted off the cap and drank. It was cold and refreshing. She picked up the plastic fork and tore into the lasagna. It was good—very good. Made with fresh mozzarella. She tried the salad. The greens were fresh, crisp. When he turned off the light again and came for the dishes, she tried to engage him. “Dinner was good. Did you make it yourself?” He didn’t answer.

A few hours later, he killed the light again. Over the speaker, he said simply, “Good night, Dagny.” Maybe he had drugged her, because it wasn’t hard to fall asleep, even on the cold, hard cot.

When she woke, the light was already on and breakfast was waiting—a ham and spinach omelet, with bacon and melon on the side. She ate the melon and then set the tray on the floor.

“Finish it.” The voice reverberated through the speaker.

She needed to engage him. “How did you learn to cook?”

“Just eat, Dagny.”

“I’ll eat if you tell me how you learned to cook.”

Nothing for a few seconds. And then: “Do you know how long it takes to become accustomed to bad food?”

“No.”

“You never become accustomed to it. Now eat.” And she did.
On the third day, she felt a little stronger. In between her meals, she passed the time doing sit-ups, push-ups, and jumping jacks.

When she’d worked in New York, her office had been on the seventy-third floor. The elevator ride took nearly a minute—more if there were stops along the way. When that elevator door would finally open on her floor, she’d burst out like a SWAT team did on a raid. Now she was living in an elevator that didn’t make any stops. Much more of this and she’d go crazy.

After dinner, the lights went dark for a minute, and then a lone cupcake on a tray appeared on the floor. A small lit candle dotted its center. It was April 12, her birthday. Thirty-five years old. She made a wish, blew out the candle, and ate all 300 calories and 14 grams of fat.

Dagny grabbed the Patricia Cornwell novel and climbed onto the bed. She pretended to read, even turning the page every couple of minutes, while she plotted an escape.

After another day of eating, exercising, and plotting, she woke feeling vibrant and energetic. Breakfast was waiting, and she ate all the French toast he left, even though it had been dusted with powdered sugar. (She didn’t, however, use any of the maple syrup that had been provided in a small cup on the side.) Lunch was chicken potpie, and though she knew it was full of fat, she didn’t complain.

After lunch, Dagny pulled the cot to the middle of the cell and stepped onto it. She stretched her arms up to the grate in the ceiling. Standing on her toes, she was able to feel the grooves on the plate that covered the duct. Tugging on the edge of a groove, she tested the grating. It was solid. Strong. Dagny removed the belt from her pants and looped it through the grating, then back through the buckle. She tugged it tight so that the belt buckle was flush with the grating. Then she tied the other end of her belt around her neck.