It seemed unnecessarily cruel for anything to impede her progress now. In a more benevolent world the door would have opened by magic as soon as the bolt was retracted.
Of course, in a more benevolent world she wouldn’t have been held prisoner in the first place.
She pulled harder. With a reluctant sigh of hinges, the door yielded.
Slowly it swung inward under her hands… halfway clear of the jamb now… completely clear… a half inch of space between door and frame It stopped.
Though she pulled desperately, the door would open no farther.
Crouching, she peered through the narrow aperture, and her heart twisted.
A chain. Her abductor had installed a security chain.
“Damn it,” she whispered. “Oh, damn it, that’s not fair.”
The chain links, heavy and thick, would challenge even a good-sized bolt cutter. No way she could hope to snap them.
She curled both hands around the edge of the door and yanked at it. If the screws securing the chain weren’t imbedded too deeply, she might be able to jar them loose.
After straining every muscle in her arms and shoulders, she concluded that the screws were fastened immovably to the wood.
Defeat the chain, then. There had to be a way. If she Outside, the rumble of an engine.
She recognized that sound. The motor of the van or truck that had transported her here.
He was back.
Oh, Jesus, close the door, close the door!
She closed it, but the bolt was still retracted. He was certain to notice that.
The engine was silent now. The vehicle had been parked.
She jabbed the narrow end of the comb into the clearance between the door and jamb, pried at the bolt, trying to reverse what she’d done a minute ago, dig the bar out of the faceplate and insert it in the jamb socket again.
Upstairs, the creak of a door.
Footsteps on the ceiling.
The bolt slid partway out of the latch assembly, but still it was not engaged in the socket.
The footsteps now directly above her.
She pressed harder. The spine of the comb curved.
Thump-thump-thump — she heard him descending the cellar stairs.
Frantically she levered the comb, the pointed tip scratching like an agitated pencil. The bolt eased forward another fraction of an inch, just enough to sink into the socket in the striker plate…
And the comb snapped.
Its narrow end, broken off, slid down the crack, disappearing under the door, out of reach.
A double thud of footfalls. He was in the cellar, approaching the door.
Just in time she remembered the peephole.
She pushed herself upright and retreated to the rear of her cell.
The single percussive beat startled her. She needed a second to identify it as the rap of his hand on the door.
“I’m back, Doc.” The familiar raspy voice, muffled by two inches of solid mahogany.
Half of the comb was still in her hand. As casually as possible, she turned slightly, concealing it from his view. “I heard.” Her voice was steady, betraying nothing.
“Put on the blindfold.”
“Yes. Of course.”
She leaned over the cardboard box and made a show of rummaging through it as she hid the comb inside.
Her gaze traveled from the box to the floor nearby, where there was a small, telltale pile of tortoiseshell shavings.
“Can’t you find it?” he demanded.
“Yes. Yes, here it is.”
She took out the blindfold, then stepped away from the box. With a nonchalant scuff of her shoe she scattered the shavings.
One problem taken care of.
But when he opened the door…
Her heart kept up a frantic staccato rhythm. The palsied shaking of her hands made it difficult to knot the blindfold in place.
When he opened the door, he might see it. The piece of the comb under there.
Impossible for her to explain away the tool as anything innocent. If he noticed it, she was dead.
“Hurry up,” he ordered.
Quickly she finished fastening the cloth over her eyes. She groped for the chair, found it, and sat.
“Ready,” she called. The chilly finger tickling the base of her spine was a trickle of sweat.
Rattle-a key. Clunk of the bolt retracting. Rasp of hinges.
Footsteps in the room.
The chair opposite hers scraped the floor, then protested as he sat.
He hadn’t seen the comb. Thank God.
She might live a little longer, then.
She’d lost her best chance of escape and broken the tool that had made it possible, broken it probably beyond repair, but at least, this night, she wouldn’t burn.
“Excited, Doc?” he asked softly.
“What makes you say that?”
“You seem… on edge.”
“I’m always a little tense when I’m working.” The lie came fluently. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? To start our work together?”
“Of course it is.” His chair creaked as he leaned forward. “As of this moment, Doc, our first session has officially begun.”
21
Our first session. The words stirred a cold queasiness in the pit of her stomach.
She wished she could see the man before her, read his face. Difficult to analyze him without the nonverbal clues that often spoke louder than even the most candid testimony.
Well, she would manage. Would have to.
With effort she forced her mind into clear focus. He would judge her skills by her performance in this encounter. If she was found wanting, she might not get a second chance.
“All right,” she said slowly. “I’ve read the newspaper stories you left me. I’d like to discuss what it was like for you when you did those things. What you were feeling each time you… kidnapped a woman.”
“Burned one, you mean. Kidnapping was merely an unavoidable preliminary.”
“Burned one. Yes.”
“Don’t be afraid to speak plainly. I can take it.”
He sounded relaxed, almost cheerful. That state of mind was unlikely to last.
Therapy was not fun. Though it might seem like a game in the beginning, it quickly turned serious and, often, uncomfortable. Her style of analysis was aggressive, probing; to save time, to compress months of work into hours, she made intuitive leaps and challenged the patient to keep up. It was a method that got results, but it didn’t always make for restful exchanges.
She wondered how he would react when the first nerve was struck.
“I’ll try to refrain from euphemisms in the future,” she promised. “Now tell me about this compulsion to kill. Does it come on gradually or all of a sudden?”
“Gradually.”
“How does it start?”
“With physical sensations. Coldness in my fingers. Heat at the back of my neck.”
“Do your fingers get numb?”
“No. They tingle.”
“Painful?”
“Disturbing, that’s all.”
“Any other symptoms?”
“Sometimes… I hear a sort of chiming. Distant. Like ringing in the ears but more elusive. Hard to describe.”
She frowned. The symptoms he’d described were suggestive of the aura phase that marked the onset of an epileptic seizure. She’d experienced similar reactions in childhood.
The notion that an epileptic might imitate Frankenstein’s monster, blindly wrapping his hands around a terrified maiden’s throat, was an irresponsible myth. But in the case of a profoundly disturbed individual, someone already showing homicidal tendencies, a prolonged status seizure of the partial or focal type-a fugue state-might permit his suppressed aggressive feelings to rise uncensored to the surface.
It was possible. But she didn’t intend to raise that hypothesis with him, at least not yet. If he believed that a pill could cure all his problems, he wouldn’t need her anymore.
“Other than physical sensations,” she asked, “are there any other feelings-emotions, moods-that you associate with the murders?”