The Lonely Mile (17 page)

She looked up at him, saying nothing, and her piercing blue eyes seemed to turn frosty and hard. Bill felt a sense of unease, and then she broke his gaze and glanced down at the floor, moving back a half-step, putting some distance between their bodies. “Angela…” he said gently.

“I travel a lot,” she said quietly. “I’ve been working this I-90 Killer case for a long time, seemingly getting nowhere. I just wanted…I don’t know. I just thought maybe we could share some of the burden of pain rather than each shouldering it separately. I—I’m sorry…”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I understand.” Agent Canfield turned and walked back down the short hallway toward the apartment’s front door, saying nothing more, Bill following a step behind. She reached for the door handle, and Bill said, “One question, Angela, you know, since you’re here.”

“Yes?” The coldness seemed to have disappeared from her eyes, and Bill decided he must have imagined it. She was right about one thing: she certainly was under a lot of pressure.

“Be honest with me. What are the chances we’ll find Carli alive? And don’t give me the FBI party line. I want your honest opinion as an investigator.”

Angela said nothing for a moment, and Bill thought she was going to walk out the door without answering. He waited, watching her pulse beat slow and steady under the delicate skin of her neck. Then she spoke. “Everything I told you yesterday was the truth. I believe there is every chance Carli is still alive. And I believe there is every chance we’ll find her. We just need one break. And we’re going to get it.”

Bill nodded and wondered for a moment about what a relationship with this driven young woman would be like, reaching the obvious conclusion in seconds: that he would never find out. Once Carli was located and returned safely to her family—Bill refused to acknowledge any other possibility—Special Agent Angela Canfield would disappear, either continuing her search for the I-90 Killer, or onto another case if they were fortunate enough to catch the crazy sociopath.

One way or the other, she would soon be gone, and Bill would go back to his old life, managing his two hardware stores alone and in anonymity. He smiled at her and she locked eyes with him for a moment, her expression giving away nothing. Then she slipped through the door and was gone.

Bill stood in his kitchen for a long time, thinking about lonely FBI agents and lonely, desperate fathers and especially about lonely, frightened, lost young girls. Then he padded down the hallway and into his bedroom, alone this time, and slid into bed under a light blanket. He was convinced sleep would remain elusive for hours, if not for the remainder of the evening.

But he
did
fall back to sleep. It took a long time and plenty of tossing and turning, but eventually, sheer exhaustion overtook him, dragging him into an uneasy slumber, where his body was technically asleep but he teetered just below the level of wakeful consciousness. And the dreams returned again, in all their strange, colorful, jangling glory, torturing Bill with near-remembrances and tantalizing flashes of hinted significance.

The vivid sequences, with their too-bright colors and knife-sharp edges, all right angles and disturbing images, were similar to the ones he had endured a couple of nights ago—long, nonspecific nightmares in which he was torn apart, suffering and anguished. The enemy in these remained the same faceless, shadowy nemesis as before.

Interspersed among these dreams were once again shorter visions, the ones he had thought of as “dream-commercials” before. Slow-motion replays of his actual confrontation with the I-90 Killer, snippets of memories from those fateful two or three minutes that he could not get out of his mind.

It was these shorter dreams that caused Bill to bolt awake in bed, sweating and shaking, straining to remember all of the details and yet unable to manage it. There was something of significance hidden among all the distorted images his brain was showing him; something that would make a difference in some way; something that would matter. He had no idea
how
it would matter, only that it would.

The dreams kept coming, slowly, tortuously. They were like Grade B horror movie zombies, shambling along, stiff-legged, toward some seemingly random destination. Bill would suffer unconsciously as long as he could stand it, until finally his mind would force his body awake. He would sit up in bed, desperately trying to recover the rapidly receding memories of his nightmares, ignoring the pounding headache attacking his temples, trying to glean the nugget of significance he knew was there in the dreams, but unable to do so.

With Carli missing, Bill had expected the night terrors to return, but it was frustrating suffering through them repeatedly without gaining any insight into their significance. Bill felt certain they contained the secret to rescuing Carli, if only he could read the clues his subconscious mind was trying to feed him.

There he was, watching himself aim in slow motion at the back of the I-90 Killer as the man attempted to spirit away the young girl, knowing he should just shoot the kidnapper but instead issuing the shouted warning to stop, the warning he now regretted with his entire being.

There he was, reaching for the girl’s shoulder to pull her to safety behind his own body, knowing the I-90 Killer was going to shove the girl at him and make his escape, but unable to change the sequence of events.

There he was, in stifling heat more appropriate to August than May, leaping down the four steps to the rest area parking lot, desperate to catch up to the I-90 Killer, knowing he would not, but trying anyway.

There he was, watching helplessly as the man motored past him toward the safety of the interstate in his shabby box truck, at least a decade old, carelessly repainted, and belching blue smoke, and—
there!

Bill sat up in bed, ramrod stiff, not sweating and frightened this time but sweating and excited. Hopeful. Insanely, unreasonably hopeful. He forced every detail of this latest snippet of the encounter with the I-90 Killer into his memory banks, knowing he was hanging halfway between wakefulness and sleep, determined not to lose what he had just seen in his dream to the fading half-light of burgeoning consciousness.

Electricity coursed through his now wide-awake body. What he had just seen might hold the key to saving Carli.

CHAPTER 38

CARLI KNEW HER FATHER would come for her, so she did what she had to do. She smiled and pretended to accept her captor’s advances. She tried to convince him that the thought of his disgusting hands all over her body was anything other than repulsive. She tried to convince herself that the thought of having sex with a stranger—and a sociopathic serial kidnapper/killer at that—who was at least twice her age was anything other than sick.

So she smiled at him and told him she wanted to clean up first.

And that much, at least, was true. She really, really wanted to wash up. She had sweated rivers, first from the unseasonable May heat, and then from terror. Her clothes felt damp and filthy, and although there wasn’t much she could do about that, the idea of running a washcloth over her face and maybe under her arms felt like heaven. Plus, if he agreed to allow her to freshen up first, it would delay the inevitable moment when he would place his nasty, disgusting rapist hands on her and do the things to her that she could not bear to think about.

And every second she delayed was one second closer to the moment when she would look up from her dirty, disgusting bed and see her dad. That’s what she told herself because that’s what she knew to be true.

She was marginally surprised when her captor actually agreed to her request. She had been certain he would snicker and tear her clothes off, doing the things he wanted to do without regard for her desires. After all, he had kidnapped her in order to do these things, why would he suddenly consider her comfort?

But he had agreed. He actually seemed to believe this elaborate fantasy he had constructed where the two of them were some bizarre, modern-day Romeo and Juliet, holding hands, partnered together against the rest of the world. That was fine with Carli. Maybe she could continue to use his insane fantasy against him.

He had unlocked the cuff from the bedpost and led her to the basement stairs, supporting her by the elbow like some twisted suitor, like some undead freak straight out of a Roger Corman movie.

She tried to pretend not to mind. She tried to pretend the feel of his hand on her body didn’t make her skin crawl, that it was not the worst, most horrifying thing she had ever experienced. She needed to focus on the positive: Her diversion was working. It was working! He was bringing her to the bathroom to clean up, which meant he was not raping her. Yet.

And every minute that passed where he wasn’t raping her brought her one minute closer to being rescued by her dad. She believed it. She had to believe it.

They reached the partly closed wooden door at the top of the stairs, and the I-90 Killer nudged it open with the toe of his shoe. “So, you said your name is Martin?” she asked, hopefully in a voice that sounded calm and sincere, trying to keep him occupied, trying to show an interest and feed into his crazy, romantic fantasy.

“That’s right,” he said. She hoped by making a connection with him she would somehow humanize herself to him, maybe make herself a little less disposable. She knew it was unlikely. Carli had seen plenty of news reports over the last three-and-a-half years about the I-90 Killer. He had kidnapped, raped and, the authorities believed, murdered over a dozen girls, and those were just the ones they knew about. How do you humanize yourself to an inhuman monster?

She allowed herself the illusion of hope, that, perhaps, he had made up a name and not used his real one. Because if he had told her his real name, it could mean only one thing—he would never release her, never allow her to describe him to the police or tell them his name or in any way implicate him. He would use her, and then, when his bizarre fantasy began to bore him, he would send her off to her “final destination,” as he had put it. Undoubtedly, that meant killing her and dumping her body into a shallow grave as he had presumably done so many times in the past.

But her delaying tactics were working. She told herself to focus on that. They were working. Take it one second at a time, because every second that passed brought her one second closer to rescue. She took a deep, shaky breath and walked through the door and into the madman’s house.

The kitchen was even worse than she remembered. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. A layer of grime covered the kitchen floor, which looked like it hadn’t seen the business end of a mop since before Carli was born. Dozens of empty, frozen dinner boxes littered the kitchen, some resting inside a grimy trash barrel but most scattered around the floor in the vicinity of the trash container, as if Martin couldn’t be bothered to take the time to aim properly. It looked as though a bomb had gone off at the box factory and their stock had come floating down in a random pattern, like snowflakes during a blizzard, into the kitchen.

This guy was a pig. Carli didn’t know why that should surprise her. She already knew he was a kidnapper, a rapist, and a murderer, so why would she expect him to be some sort of Martha Stewart where housework was concerned? Martin led her across the room toward a dimly lit hallway, which terminated at the front door. To the left was a staircase, and to the right, Carli couldn’t tell. Maybe the bathroom. It would make sense, since that was where she had requested he take her.

She didn’t know what she expected would happen when she reached the bathroom. She would pee, then wash up, taking as much time as possible. But then she would be right back at square one, trapped in a decrepit house with a love-struck psycho waiting to rape her.

She tried to think. What could her next move be? “Gee, honey, I want to wash up before we make beautiful music together,” was a start, but then what?
Come on, Carli, think!
But it’s so hard to think straight when you’re scared to death.

As hard as she tried, she couldn’t get past the horrifying visualizations of what might be in store for her. It was kind of funny, in a sickly, ironic way. Carli Ferguson was a virgin. She’d had a couple of opportunities to go all the way, but neither of the two guys had been special enough. She wanted her first time to be something more than nervous fumbling in the back seat of some minivan.

And now, the thought that not only would her first time not be special, but it would be a rape committed by a thirty-something murdering pervert was causing Carli’s brain to seize up. Then she passed the crazy psycho’s kitchen table and everything crystallized in an instant. She almost couldn’t believe her eyes. Nestled among three, dirty plates caked with some sort of hard-packed glop that looked like it might have once been spaghetti sauce, a couple of dirty glasses, some silverware and, ew, a Penthouse magazine—what was a Penthouse magazine doing on the kitchen table?—was a single, unwashed steak knife.

This was her chance. Never mind cleaning up in preparation for her impending rape, suddenly here was the break she had been praying for. It might be the only one she was going to get. The knife had a serrated blade, maybe six inches long, with a square-looking pearl-white handle. Carli had about a half-second to decide what to do and then she would be past the table and her chance would be gone.

The I-90 Killer was paying no attention to his kitchen table. He was paying no attention to anything; he was probably anxious to get her into the bathroom and back out again so the fun could begin. Carli made her choice. It was no choice at all, really. She yanked her arm hard, pulling the open end of the handcuffs out of the man’s grasp and ignoring the pain radiating outward from her already injured wrist. She leapt for the table and grabbed the knife.

Then she spun on her heels and faced her attacker, lunging with everything she had, aiming at his midsection. She was going to gut him like a fish.

CHAPTER 39