The Serial Killer's Wife (21 page)

CHAPTER 39

F
OR
THE
FIRST
mile or so neither of them spoke. Todd wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and sat at an awkward angle, his butt pointed toward the door, his shoulder pushed into the seat, watching the road behind them as he gripped onto his leg, grimacing.
 

Then, abruptly, Elizabeth jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, the Prius skidding to a halt on the side of the road.
 

Todd, wide-eyed, stared at her. “What are you doing?”
 

“We have to go back.”
 

“What? Why?”
 

“That’s
him
. We need to go back, catch him, call the police.”
 

“
Catch him?
Elizabeth, this isn’t a game of tag. That guy just shot me.”
 

She looked at him for the first time, really looked at him, and said, “Elevate your leg.”
 

“What?”
 

“Put it up on the dash. Lie back down in your seat. You need to elevate the wound above your heart to control the bleeding.”
 

“How do you know that?”
 

She turned toward the backseat, searching for something to use as a tourniquet.
 

Todd said, “What are you looking for?”
 

“Give me your shirt.”
 

“My shirt?”
 

“Goddamn it, Todd, hurry.”
 

He started undoing his shirt, fumbling with the buttons. Elizabeth told him not to worry about it and yanked it open, sending several buttons flying around the car. Todd struggled out of the shirt, and she took it and wrapped it around his leg, pulling it as tight as she could.
 

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “The police will be responding any minute.”
 

“But isn’t that what we want?”
 

She thought about it for a moment. “No.”
 

“What do you mean,
no
?”
 

“By now Clarence will be long gone. Our main priority is to save Matthew.”
 

“You mean
your
main priority. Jesus Christ, Elizabeth, I just got shot.”
 

She found a rip in the fabric of his slacks where the bullet had entered. She tore it open enough to inspect the wound.
 

“It doesn’t look too bad.”
 

“Are you kidding?”
 

“The bullet obviously didn’t shatter any bones and it’s definitely not lodged in there. You were basically just grazed.”
 

Todd sucked air in through his teeth. “That’s comforting. How do you know all of this stuff anyway?”
 

An eighteen-wheeler roared past them, rocking the hybrid, and Elizabeth placed the car back in gear.
 

“What are you doing?”
 

“I told you. We can’t stay here.”
 

“You’re actually going back?”
 

“No. Clarence is long gone by now.”
 

“What about my leg?”
 

“We’ll take care of it.”
 

She pulled back onto the highway and they drove for less than a minute before two cop cars whipped past them in the oncoming lane.
 

Todd said, “How did he find us anyway?”
 

And that was the question, wasn’t it? How
did
Clarence find them? How was he able to sneak up on her like that, without even making a sound, sneak up on her like they were old friends and he wanted to spook her for fun?
 

“Foreman,” she said.
 

“What? You think he tipped him off?”
 

She shook her head again. “No, we have to call him. The police will find the room is registered under his name. They’ll go looking for him. Here, give me the phone.”
 

Todd offered up the BlackBerry and she grabbed it, pressed the button for the stored numbers—Foreman’s was the only one listed—but then paused. Her left hand on the steering wheel, her right hand holding the phone, her gaze shifted past the phone’s glowing screen to the glowing navigation screen on the dashboard.
 

“GPS,” she whispered.
 

Todd still hadn’t moved from his position, his leg elevated on the dash, his hands holding the makeshift tourniquet in place. “Huh?”
 

“He’s tracking us by GPS.”
 

“How do you know?”
 

“This phone—it’s GPS enabled. He can track us wherever we go as long as it’s turned on.”
 

“So let’s get rid of it.”
 

“We can’t. We need it in case he calls.”
 

“Turn it off, then. If he calls, he can leave a voicemail.”
 

Todd’s words dripped of sarcasm, but she knew he had a point. And thinking this now, she wondered why Clarence hadn’t called yet.
 

Foreman picked up after three rings, his voice hesitant and sleepy. “Hello?”
 

“Mike, it’s me. There’s been an incident.”
 

She quickly filled him in on the events, and when she was done, Foreman said, “Oh my God. Is Todd all right?”
 

She glanced over at him. “He is for now. Listen, since you paid for the room, the police will come for you.”
 

Foreman didn’t answer.
 

“Are you there?”
 

“Yes,” he said, sounding more exhausted then ever. “I ... I can go for a long drive, I suppose. Disappear for a little.”
 

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
 

“No, no. Don’t be silly.”
 

“Mike—”
 

“Where will you go now?”
 

“New York, I guess.”
 

“If you’re going that way, maybe your brother can help you.”
 

“Mike—”
 

“At least call him.”
 

“When this is all done and over with, sure, I’ll call him.”
 

“He might be able to help.”
 

Elizabeth didn’t want to get into this with him. She said, “I have to go. Keep your phone on you. We’ll call when we hear anything.”
 

She disconnected, not wanting to continue the conversation. She didn’t want to think of her brother, not now, not with everything that had just happened. She only wanted to—

The BlackBerry rang in her hand. Without thinking she placed it to her ear and said, “Mike, please, it’s best if you don’t ...”
 

She understood quickly that it wasn’t Foreman on the other line. There was a different quality to the background noise, a vacuous silence that seemed infinite.
 

“Hello?”
 

More silence.
 

She swallowed. “Clarence, I—”

“No more games,” said the dark robotic voice.
 

There was another moment of that deep silence, and then the phone went dead in her ear.

CHAPTER 40

J
UST
BEFORE
ALLENTOWN
,
they managed to find a vacant gas station bathroom. It was an old Sunoco, already closed for the night, the time now nearly three o’clock in the morning. Elizabeth parked the Prius around back. It was dark and secluded enough from the sporadic traffic on the highway that nobody would see them. Elizabeth told Todd to wait there and went up to the door at the back of the gas station. It was locked just like she thought it would be, a simple clasp held in place by a padlock, and she used the claw of the hammer she’d purchased earlier at Walmart to tear the clasp off the door.
 

Surprisingly the bathroom was not as disgusting as she had feared it would be. The floor, the toilet, the sink, even the mirror—they all looked as if they were cleaned regularly, the only sign of disarray the single light bulb in the ceiling flickering every couple of seconds.
 

She helped Todd out of the car, giving him support as he limped inside, then went back to the hybrid for the rest of the supplies she’d picked up at the store. Four bottles of hydrogen peroxide, five packages of sterilized gauze, and two elastic bandages. It was probably more than she needed but she didn’t want to take any chances.
 

The first thing they did was get him settled on the floor. He had kept pressure on the wound for the past two hours, enough to make sure it had clotted properly, and there had been no more bleeding. But still they had to get him out of his pants, and once they managed to lower him to the ground so his back was against the wall, Elizabeth used scissors to carefully cut his pants off.
 

Then she opened one of the hydrogen peroxide bottles and said, “This is going to sting,” and poured half of it on the wound.
 

Todd gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, but managed not to cry out. He produced a low moaning sound and squeezed his fists tightly together.
 

It didn’t take long to clean and bandage the wound. Like Elizabeth told him earlier, it was only a graze.
 

“You’re lucky,” she said.
 

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment, the light bulb above them flickering. “To be honest, I’m starting to regret bringing you those flowers.”
 

She looked up at him sharply, not sure what to say. But then she saw him grinning, and she found herself grinning too.
 

“Thank you,” she said.
 

“For what?”
 

“For everything. For putting yourself between me and Clarence. That was very brave of you.”
 

He shrugged. “That’s just what us guys are supposed to do, right?”
 

“I’m sorry this happened.”
 

“It’s not your fault.”
 

“Yes, it is.”
 

“It was me who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
 

“It was a sweet gesture, bringing me those flowers.”
 

“Yeah, and now look what it got me.”
 

“I said I was sorry.”
 

“I know. And I said it was my fault.”
 

“But it’s not.”
 

“It is. It’s my fault because ...”
 

She was cleaning up the bloody gauze, putting them in the trashcan, and turned to him. She opened her mouth to ask what he meant to say when she saw the look in his eyes, the sudden solemnity, and knew immediately what he was going to say.
 

“Because,” he said, “I’m in love with you.”
 

Elizabeth didn’t say anything.
 

He shifted his eyes away, suddenly looking embarrassed. “I know we haven’t been together that long, at least for people our age, but I ... I love you. I’ve felt it for a while now. And even after everything that’s happened these past two days, even after learning about your hidden past, those feelings haven’t gone away.”
 

Elizabeth was moving before she knew it, walking toward Todd, lowering herself down onto the tiled floor beside him. She opened her mouth, shut it, opened her mouth again, trying to find the right words, the right thing to say, but before she could say anything Todd leaned forward and kissed her. It was a simple but meaningful kiss, and when he leaned back to look at her she leaned forward and kissed him. This time it was more passionate, their tongues darting between each other’s lips, and she placed her hands on his chest, on his arms, on the back of his neck, moving them around his body. In the back of her mind she knew this was wrong, that she shouldn’t be doing this while Matthew was still abducted. But so much had happened not only over the past two days but the past five years, all the secrets she had kept, all the lies she had told, all the times she had kissed Todd and wanted to go further but never had, and now here he was, the man who had taken a bullet for her, and she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anyone else, and their kissing became even more passionate, even more frantic, his hands on her now, moving up her arms, over her chest, and it wasn’t until one of those hands slipped underneath her shirt and felt her skin, the scars, did she stop kissing him and immediately pull away.
 

They stared at each other then, neither one of them saying a word, while that light bulb flickered above, momentarily bathing them in complete darkness.

CHAPTER 41

A
T
NINE
O
’
CLOCK
that Sunday morning, Elizabeth and Todd took the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan.
 

The sky was dark and filled with rain. It had been raining for the past two hours and had only gotten worse. They had decided to bypass the turnpike—fearing too many state police—and had instead gone up toward Allentown and taken I-78 east.
 

Despite his injury, Todd drove. He said as long as he didn’t put too much pressure on his right leg, it didn’t hurt. He wore the new slacks and sweatshirt Elizabeth had purchased when she bought the rest of her supplies at Walmart. Elizabeth herself was dressed in new clothes: jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and raincoat and a Yankee’s baseball cap. She had also bought a cheap purse. Inside the purse was one of two throwaway phones. Todd had the other phone.