Lisa jumped to her feet. “If you guys are going to start talking serial killer, I’m out of here.” She looked at Rachel. “Give you a ride home?”
Rachel nodded. I waved at Lisa on her way out. “Call me tonight.”
“Okay. It’ll be late. I’ve got a date.”
Of course she did. “Don’t kiss anything I wouldn’t.”
“That-” She stopped, made an erasing gesture with her hands. “Too easy.”
After they were gone, Patrick began his subtle probing. Apparently he had been chosen as point man. Darcy and the chief sat quietly behind him.
“I know no one has specifically asked you about what happened yet,” he said.
“True.”
“And I’m sure it’s the last thing in the world you want to talk about.”
“True.”
“But the doctors say you may be here for weeks, and we just can’t wait that long. What can you tell us about him?”
“He was very weird, Patrick. Babbling. I think our theories about multiple personalities must be right. He was talking to a voice I couldn’t hear, acting as if it were controlling him.”
He pondered a moment. “We’ve neither seen nor heard any trace of him since you were kidnapped. There’ve been no more killings or abductions. No letters or phone calls or packages.” He smiled a little. “We were wondering if maybe you’d killed the bastard.”
“I wish.”
Patrick grew quiet. I knew what was on his mind. “Susan… we’ve seen the pictures.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
“The media got them, too. But to their credit, they haven’t run them, not in the papers or TV. But they have… talked about them.”
I closed my eyes. I felt even more naked, more exposed. More raped. But what did I expect? Deference from the media? Right, and a Corvette for Christmas.
“Does Rachel know?”
“She hasn’t seen the pictures, but… she must’ve heard or read something.”
And the custody judge who already thinks I’m unfit, too, no doubt.
I looked across the room at Darcy. Had he seen those lovely glamour shots? Would he understand them if he did? Impossible to know. But when I peered into those expressionless eyes, I was sure I saw something. If not a total comprehension of how I had been compromised, then at least a knowledge that I had been hurt. And a sorrow. For me.
“I want to assure you,” O’Bannon said firmly, “that this will not in any way affect your consulting relationship with the LVPD. As soon as you’re released, if you want to continue working, we want you.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
“Although I think it might be best if we took you off this case.”
“No way in hell.”
Silence.
“Look, I wasn’t drinking. I don’t care what it looked like in those pictures. I wasn’t drinking.” At that time.
“Susan-”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t drink!”
Patrick grinned, damn him. “I know.”
“You-do?”
“Blood test. Your blood alcohol was a big fat zero. If you’d been drinking, we’d have found a trace, even after all the time you spent out in the desert. He used his drug on you.”
Thank God I managed to resist Edgar’s little bottle of temptation. “So I can stay on the case, right?”
I could see O’Bannon wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t going to argue with me. While I was stretched out in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, I had the upper hand. Momentarily.
Darcy was the one who broke the silence. “Why didn’t they bring you ice cream? When you’re in the hospital, they’re supposed to bring you ice cream.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “As soon as I get loose of this joint, Darcy, you and I are going on a custard binge. We need to make up for all those potential Very Excellent Days I missed.”
“Is there anything more you can tell us?” Patrick asked. “Did you see his face?”
“Yes. And as it turns out, I’ve seen him before. But he was disguised. He’s smart, Patrick. Smarter than we ever realized.”
“I think that has become abundantly clear. It’s just unfortunate that you were drugged. I wish to God we knew where he took you.”
I drew in my breath, wriggled up against my pillow. I had to seem strong for this. “I know where he took me.”
“What?”
I let the memories trickle in, unwanted as they were. The rushing of water, even when I was flat on my back on his table. We were near the dam, even then. And I saw enough of the interior to make a pretty good guess about the exterior. “Approximately. I can find it, anyway. But I want to go with you.”
“Susan-he could still be there.”
“No. He’s smart, remember? He’s gone somewhere else.”
“But you can’t be sure-”
“Oh, yes,” I said, hoping my resolve was evident. “I can be sure. But we still might find something of interest. Now how fast can you get me out of here?”
“Susan, the doctors say-”
“I don’t care. We have to act fast. And no, I can’t give you directions. I have to go.”
“Susan, you’ve been through a horrible ordeal.”
My eyes narrowed. “And I want to make sure Edgar never has a chance to do that to anyone else. Ever.”
The doctors pitched a fit, but I lied through my teeth and told them I felt fine, and eventually the need to track down this maniac won out over medical prudence. They gave me some pills to help with the pain and a few hours later I was in a car with Patrick trolling around the dam, searching for something I recognized. I knew I could find it. And I did.
“This is it,” I said.
I was certain I was right, even though I’d never seen it from the outside. It was a small cabin, a shack, really, stuck in some of the scrubbiest country you could imagine, not far from the Hoover Dam. The spindly trees and faint vegetation weren’t enough to make anyone forget we were in the desert. The joint was probably intended as a weekend retreat for boat or fish fans. “Let’s go.”
“We need a warrant,” Patrick cautioned.
“You’re a fed. Don’t you carry them around in your back pocket?”
“No. But I can send a fax via my cell phone. And my address book has the numbers of a lot of judges.”
Well, that wasn’t too shabby. Granger put a phalanx of officers around the perimeter, and we waited.
An hour later we were inside.
The ground level was perfectly ordinary. Tacky furniture, no food, a dinky television. But I knew there had to be more. It didn’t take me long to find the basement door. It was locked, not that it mattered.
The light switch didn’t appear to work, so we had to resort to those cool pencil-thin flashlights like you see cops use on television. It was dark and dank, stereotypically basement-like. There was no wind, but I felt a chill just the same. I usually got my impressions from people, not places, but this little dungeon had a palpable ambiance. It was terrifying, threatening, oppressive. Insane.
“Maybe you should stay upstairs,” Patrick whispered to me.
No. In truth, I still felt weak, nauseous, barely able to stand, but I wasn’t going to let them shut me out. I inched forward, shining my light ahead. The more I saw of this room, the more I recognized. The warped wooden walls. The high window, probably the only source of exterior light-and the passageway for the sound waves that brought me back here. The table. His goddamn table with the restraining straps. And there was a stench. A putrid, almost unbearable stench.
I heard a sound, sprang around. The beam of my flashlight crisscrossed the room. Just Granger, creeping up behind me. This was a big basement, I saw now. Maybe it was just an illusion, but it seemed as if it was bigger than the house. Like it stretched on forever.
Then I jumped. Way up in the air, like a human bottle rocket. Dropped the flashlight and everything. And I had practically been expecting what I found. But that isn’t the same as seeing it.
There was a body hunched behind the table. A corpse. My God-had she been there the whole time I’d been held down here? The whole time he’d been playing with me?
It was Fara Spencer. Her eyes were wide open, her face frozen in an expression of fear or panic or whatever her intense final horrific emotion had been. Her skin was gray and seemed stretched, barely covering the prominent bones of her chin and cheek. She was naked, with a huge blood-caked cavity in her chest. She’d been decomposing for more than a week, but you could still tell who it was. Even if you wished you couldn’t.