“For chrissakes.” The man wrapped his hand around his upper arm, where she had bitten him. “I told you before, I’m not doing anything to you. You’re going to stay put for tonight. I’ll let you go tomorrow.” He paused. “Or Monday, at the latest.”
“You’re going to let me go.”
“I’m not the bad guy here. Christ! All I wanted to do was talk with your brother about buying some of the Haudenosaunee land. I didn’t know he had his own sister locked up in some kinky game of hide-and-seek.”
“That’s not what was going on!” She was grateful for the tears rising in her eyes. It meant she could still feel grief and outrage. “My brother was protecting me.” At some point between seeing her brother’s face in the tower and facing his murderer here, she had come to accept that Eugene hadn’t discovered she was missing and come creeping in to rescue her. He had put her in the tower, given her a bucket and blankets and food, and if she couldn’t imagine the reason right now, it didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
“Okay, then I’m protecting you, too. In better style, I might add. I’m leaving your gag off, for one.”
He didn’t have any duct tape. Not that she was about to point that out to him.
“There’s a washroom over there.” He pointed toward a dark shaft of a doorway at the far edge of the room. “It’s not in great condition, but it works. And I’ll bring you something to eat and a sleeping bag later. There’s even two cases of your family wine by the door. Be good, and you can have some later on.”
Along with grief and outrage, she could still feel amazement. His tone of voice clearly invited her to admire his generosity. To thank him. He stared at her, expecting some reaction. She didn’t know what to give him. He huffed and turned away. “You’re next to the kill,” he said over his shoulder, and for a moment she had an image of a serial killer’s dumping ground, before common sense reasserted itself. The kill. The river. “You can’t be heard, so don’t bother to wear your voice out yelling.” His figure blurred into the darkness at the other end of the building. “I’ll be back later.” His voice floated through the dusty air.
She expected to see a blaze of light as the wide door-a type of loading dock, she recognized now-slid open. Instead, she heard a muffled thunk and click from another, smaller, unseen door. She was alone.
She waited, unmoving. Was it a trick? Did he want to toy with her before doing whatever it was he was going to do with her? Her proximity to the river suggested several unpleasant possibilities. She could hear it more clearly, now she wasn’t focusing all her attention on her captor. Water gurgled and swished directly below the wooden floor, and to her left she heard a steady rumble and hiss, water falling, fast, over an obstacle.
She waited some more. Minutes passed. More wings overhead. Birds. She hoped they were birds. The idea of sitting in this echoing space as the sun went down, surrounded by flying creatures that weren’t birds… she shivered. Then caught herself. She was thinking of the future, wasn’t she? At least, a future a few hours from now.
Her heart, painful, tender, hopeful, resurrected itself in her chest. He had really gone. She had time. She had an entire warehouse of possibilities. And tucked inside her sleeve, she still had the sharpened iron rod from the door hinge. She stood, a movement that was much easier from a crate than a floor. Better get started.
John Huggins was ticked off. “You mean it wasn’t Millie van der Hoeven?”
“No,” Russ said for the third time. He was in van der Hoeven’s study, sitting in the dead man’s chair, using the dead man’s phone. He was not a happy man at the moment.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” There was a pause. “I didn’t just decide to call off the search, you know. Mr. van der Hoeven told me his sister had been found. If anybody’s screwed up here, it’s him.”
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Eugene was… mistaken. Did your searchers leave all together? Or did they straggle out one by one?”
“No, we always do a head count and equipment check before we break a search. We all left together.”
“What time was this?”
“Half past twelve or thereabouts.”
Right around the time when Becky Castle was being taken to town in the ambulance. “Did any of you see Eugene van der Hoeven?”
“Sure. He came out and thanked us all for our help.”
“Was he inside or outside when you left?”
“Inside. He went inside after he spoke with us. I figured he was fixing to head out to the hospital to be with his sister.”
“Did any of your team go inside the house before they left?”
There was a stack of catalogs by the phone. Russ picked up the top one. Hunting gear. He flipped through a few more. L.L.Bean, Eddie Bauer, army-navy surplus. It made sense. A man like Eugene van der Hoeven, phobic about leaving his house and grounds, probably did all his shopping over the phone.
“No. What the hell’s going on?”
Russ uncovered another catalog. “I can’t say right now. Did you notice anything odd or unusual, anything at all, in the time between breaking the search and leaving?”
“No.” Huggins paused, then said, “Yes. Sort of. When I was driving down the road to the county highway, I passed a car coming up. It wasn’t actually coming up right then. It had pulled off as far as it could to let us through. We make quite a wagon train when everybody’s truck starts rolling.”
“What sort of car?”
“It was a black Mercedes. Looked kind of new, but you know how they are. Hard to tell.”
“Do you know the model?”
Huggins laughed. “Do I strike you as a guy who spends a lot of time around Mercedeses? Ask me about Chevys, then I can help you out. It was a four-door hardtop, New York plates, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Did you see who was in it?”
“Some guy. I couldn’t make out any details from my angle. I ride a lot higher up than that Mercedes.” His voice turned serious. “Look, if Millie van der Hoeven is still missing, do you want me to reassemble the team?”
“You got your dog handler back?”
“She’s on her way down from Plattsburgh right now.”
Russ thought for a moment. “We’re in the middle of an investigation, so I can’t have your people up here until we’ve cleared the scene. But put everyone on hold. Especially the dog handler.”
“Okay.” Huggins was clearly consumed with curiosity, and only his image of himself as a hard-bitten professional was keeping him from breaking down and begging Russ to tell him what was going on.
Russ said his good-bye and got off the phone. Outside, Lyle MacAuley was squatting in front of the third bay of the garage, squinting at the garden cart stowed there.
“What do you think?” Russ asked.
“It’s been used. Today. Look.” He pointed to where a torn blade of grass, still green, clung to a dab of dark soil. “That’s fresh.” He stood, stretching. “I don’t need some fancy-pants statie technician to tell me that. And take a look at the handle.” He pointed. “Smear of blood.”
“Yeah, I noticed that as well.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t see any open injuries on Ed when I took him into custody.”
“What about van der Hoeven’s body?”
Russ shook his head. “I asked Emil Dvorak to get the preliminary results to us as quickly as possible. There’s something about this whole situation”-he waved, indicating the cart, the house, and the wide woods beyond-“that sticks in my craw.”