The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (31 page)

"Don't gape at me
as if I were some vampire returned from the grave!" he snorted. "I
never died, despite the melodramatic piece in the cemetery. It was
very sentimental no doubt, worthy of a Shakespearean drama. You were
clutching my gravestone, tears streaming down your face, listening to
me as I hid behind a tree and mimicked my own voice."

"But—"

"Oh yes, I
pretended that my neck was broken in May as you clutched me to your
breast and then ran shrieking down the street. When the ambulance
drivers took me to the hospital, I bribed them to act as if I were
dead. A doctor in my pay dragged out an unidentified body from the
hospital morgue. He declared that anonymous body dead in my name. He
had the other body cremated for my funeral. You never saw my corpse
lying in the church in state, now did you? No one did, not even my
parents."

She groaned.

"The whole while, I
was lying low, making plans for Doc Ernie McCollough's
reincarnation."

Chapter 11

"Doc had dark hair.
He had dark eyes. You have blond hair and blue eyes." Bianca found
her tongue.

"After I supposedly
died, I flew to Rio using a new, fake British passport that I had
purchased for a hefty price on the black market. It told me that my
new name was Byron Kingsley. Byron Kingsley might have been a British
dentist who just passed away. I didn't mind."

Doc laughed at his
own cleverness.

"I met the
Brazilian business people as well as the foreign doctors I'm going
to be dealing with in Rio. I found a job at the local hospital there
and took a crash course in Portuguese. I was talking to my chief
Brazilian contact this afternoon all the way to Smith's Airfield. I
paid dearly to have facial reconstruction done in the hospital in
Rio. It's the sort of thing that actors and spies do. It was such a
good job that I could fly back to St. Simons Island, meet the
Shipleys, hobnob with my old friends, even meet my own parents and
siblings, and nobody recognized me.

"But—"

"I had a new voice
as well, thanks to the acting lessons I took in Rio after I got out
of the hospital. I thought I should talk like a Brit to match my new
passport." He switched back to his British accent.

"But—"

"Working out in the
gym developed some shoulder muscles that I didn't have before
either." He stretched out an arm to show off his torso. "I have
to be careful to wear long sleeves and long pants. I didn't want
anybody to see the injuries I suffered when falling down the stairs
at the Shipleys' house in May."

He pulled up his suit
pant leg to show Bianca a scar.

"This summer I was
able to go back to the same old Brunswick Memorial Hospital and sign
on for another internship. Nobody had the slightest suspicion. Like
you, they thought Doc was dead. I have to remember to wear my
contacts so my eyes are blue. I have to dye my hair once a week so
that none of the roots grow in dark. I have to shave a lot, too. You
might notice I spend a lot of time in the bathroom."

Harry had been right!
When he had warned Bianca that night at the party at the Cloister
Hotel, she should have listened. He had told her that there was
something suspicious about Dr. Byron Kingsley. He had no friends. He
was a loner. He was buying blond hair dye at the drugstore and
working out at the gym in long pants and long sleeves in the hot,
humid summer weather.

When Harry had called
and told her that there was nobody by the name of Byron Kingsley
except a dead British dentist, Bianca should have known that
something was wrong. Yesterday she'd been on that medication that
had fuddled her brain. It was hard to remember exactly what Harry had
told her now. Bianca had not even recognized him on the other end of
the phone! Only now could she recall his voice.

"What do you want
with me?" Bianca swallowed hard.

He lifted the child
off Bianca's lap and lowered her on to his. Little Katie started
wailing at the top of her lungs. She flailed her arms and legs wildly
about, dropping her toys onto the floor.

Bianca snatched the
child back without thinking. She picked up Little Katie's toys.

"I'm kidnapping
Little Katie Shipley. Just as you are, my dear," Doc answered.

"We? Kidnap Little
Katie? I — I would rather break my own neck."

"We left a ransom
note on the coffee table for the Shipleys to find — or rather for
their servants to send to them in London. It's very explicit. A
cool five million will be fine, thank you, all in cash to be conveyed
by a system I've researched that can't be traced."

"But Katie —"

"The child will be
returned safe and sound. We'll hire somebody to drive her to Mexico
City and put her on a plane. It wouldn't be safe to send her back
directly from Rio. I might be traced. She won't have her skin rash
by then. Why, she won't have any traces of it by tomorrow morning!"

"How do you know?"
Bianca pressed.

"The skin rash was
caused by a poison I prepared at the hospital's medical lab. It was
a mixture using croton oil as the main ingredient."

"Croton oil?"

"Yes, mayapple —
croton oil's other name — is harvested in the southwestern United
States. I stopped there on my way from Rio to St. Simons Island last
month. I rubbed it on the insides of Katie's clothes whenever I was
over at her house with Dr. Rankin or you. The dose was strong enough
to cause a skin rash, not strong enough to kill her if she ingested
it by sucking on her clothing."

"Mayapple?"
Bianca had not heard of that name either.

"The first signs
appear almost immediately. It causes blistering. If taken orally in a
strong enough dose, it can kill you. I made sure I mixed in only
enough mayapple to cause a severe rash."

With a sense of
desperation, Bianca glanced out the window into the darkness. She
looked back at him again.

"If you notice,
we're flying south. We're not headed northeast to London."

The lawyer handed Doc
a paper. Doc gave it to Bianca. "This is a Xerox of the ransom
letter we both signed." He explained as if lecturing about overly
complicated matters to a child.

"I never signed it.
I—"

"Don't you
remember the stack of papers that I gave you yesterday at the
Shipleys' house? The ransom note was among them."

It was just too
terrible to be true. She tried to tear it up. He snatched it away
from her first.

"Remember, it's
only a Xerox, not the original. Right now, it's the only copy we
have."

"The Shipleys would
never believe I'd kidnap Little Katie! I've always protected
her."

"When they get our
marriage announcement in the mail, sent from my old address at the
apartment, they will believe it. They know how sweet you are on Dr.
Byron Kingsley. That's how the ransom note is signed. I have no
intention of letting them know I'm really Doc Ernie McCollough come
back from the grave to haunt them. Just you, sweet." He caressed
her cheek. "I shall remain dead to the rest of the world."

She shrank away.

"Why so shy? After
all, we're legally married. I had you sign the marriage license
yesterday before we left. I didn't forget a detail. Not even the
blood tests — though mine had to be faked. I don't want them to
use DNA testing to identify me and trace me through that."

He slipped his arm
around her shoulders and pressed her lips against his. She tried to
wriggle away. He wouldn't let her. He concluded his kiss by putting
the pen back in her hand.

"Sign the marriage
certificate!" he barked at her. "That's the last detail to make
everything perfectly legal and binding."

"But what is she
doing here?" Bianca pointed at Marianna, who was leering at her
from across the cabin.

"I hired Marianna
and Rick Roscoe to work for me, just as I hired the Harry
look-alike." He glanced across the aisle at the guy who had brought
him the rings. "I needed to get Harry out of your head if I was
going to get anywhere. What better way than to pretend Harry was
fooling around? That was accomplished by employing someone who looked
like him at a distance. He posed in the tub with Marianna. I took the
photos."

Marianna blew Bianca
a kiss.

"But — but I
heard Marianna answer Harry's phone in his dorm room!"

"She had a key
made. She let herself in and answered his phone when he was in
classes. Harry was none the wiser."

"You hired Rick
Roscoe? Did you know he tried to kidnap Little Katie himself on the
day that she came down with the rash?"

Doc chuckled. "I
paid Rick to try to kidnap Little Katie. Who knows? It might have
worked. You might have been able to take Little Katie to the movies
and hand her over to me that night when Rick drove you up to the
Shipleys' house and held a gun to your head. We might have left for
Rio sooner. It was my back-up plan in case the mayapple didn't
work."

"Your back-up
plan?" Bianca could not fathom just how intricate Doc's plot was.

"By the time Rick
brought you to the Shipleys' house, I
knew the mayapple was working beautifully. If you remember, I stood
there on the doorstep pretending that I was waving goodbye to Dr.
Rankin. Really I was signaling Roscoe that I didn't need him there
any more. I assumed he had already snatched the passport in your
suitcase by then. My plan to abduct you on the way to London was
already well under way."

"Rick returned to
threaten me again in the window well of the school, the day the power
went out."

"I wanted him to
terrify you so you were more completely in my power," Doc boasted.
"I wanted you to flee the school that day and never return. I
followed you to the cemetery and pretended that my spirit was talking
to you from the grave."

"Where is Rick,
anyway?" Bianca looked around. She had not seen him since she had
boarded the plane.

"He's up in the
cockpit with his buddy, the pilot that I bribed to fly us to Rio.
Manuel comes from Brazil. He's such a slime that he and Rick took
to each other right away. They think alike. Of course, Rick is on
hand in case I need him back here at a moment's notice."

So that was why
Bianca hadn't seen Rick in hours! She shouldn't have asked. It
didn't exactly make her feel safe to know that the pilot thought
like Rick Roscoe.

"Were you the one
who tried to kidnap Little Katie on the night after her second
birthday party? You chased me off the yacht?"

He nodded.
"Everything could have been very short and sweet if you hadn't
escaped me then."

"You murdered the
bodyguard, Tom Jones?"

"That was an
accident. I wanted to defend myself when he challenged me and asked
who I was, trying to board the yacht in the middle of the night. My
bullet went wild."

So Doc had slain his
second victim! First it had been Mrs. Ingersoll. Now it was Tom
Jones.

"You chased me up
the lighthouse tower?"

"I rescued you,
didn't I? I made sure I was on the ambulance and made certain it
was around the corner at dawn. I had it stocked with a sledgehammer
in case the door was somehow locked. I brought a fireman's net. I
carried you down the stairs after crawling out on the roof after you
myself."

That had been the
beginning of Bianca's severe relapse into feeling all these fears.
She had thought that she'd overcome them this past spring. The
lighthouse episode had made her nervous about heights for the first
time.

"You tied me to the
tree so the alligator could chew on my shoe?"

"Alligators have no
brains. They are easy to scare away. I had to make Byron Kingsley
look like a hero rescuing you so you would fall for my charms right
away. I was careful not to tie your gag too tightly, so you could
scream."

"You were the one
in the elevator in the library, the one who put your fingers around
my neck?"

He caressed her
throat. "I didn't make red marks."

"What about Mike
Fellini? Did you tell him to clap me into a coffin in the cemetery?"

A nasty look suffused
Doc's face. "Fellini? I never have anything to do with Harry or
his jailbird brother if I can help it. Doc Ernie McCollough doesn't
stoop that low."

His tone made Little
Katie cry. Bianca had to dry the little girl's tears.

"I'm running out
of patience with you, dear. Now sign our marriage certificate!" he
thundered.

Shakily she picked up
the pen and signed: "Bianca Winters".

"The state of
Georgia now allows you to sign whatever name you like, maiden or
married. They like to be modern and don't care what name you use as
long as you are consistent. I'm more old-fashioned. I insist you
sign Bianca Winters McCollough."

She humored him. She
didn't want him holding a gun on her, let alone Little Katie. She
didn't like the idea of guns at 30,000 feet. Now that she knew
Ronnie was really Doc, she was positive that he was capable of
anything — anything at any time.

Doc snatched up the
marriage certificate as soon as she had added "McCollough" to her
name. He glanced at her signature with a smile.

"That will be the
last legal document we will file with the state of Georgia. It will
arrive in Georgia in a plain brown paper envelope from an anonymous
address in Mexico. From now on it's Brazil for everything! I
thought of getting married by a priest in Rio. But I wanted the folks
back home to know that you were mine in every sense of the word —
especially that Harry creep."

Doc passed the
marriage certificate on to his lawyer friend to file away in his
briefcase full of stacks of legal documents.

Doc said something to
the lawyer in Portuguese. They smiled in triumph and shook each
other's hands. Doc patted the lawyer on the shoulder. Doc got out a
wallet that was fat with one-hundred-dollar bills. He had handed the
guy who looked like Harry a cool one hundred earlier. He handed the
lawyer a wad of one-hundred-dollar bills right now.