Split Second Read online

  The smell of mud and decay gagged her. The dark squeezed around her. What shadows she could see were only enough to reveal how deep her earthly tomb was. It had to be at least fifteen feet to the top. She’d never be able to climb out.

  She struggled to stand, falling when the ankle refused to hold her up. A fresh wave of panic sent her to her feet again. This time she clawed at the dirt to hold herself up. She clawed at the wall. Chunks of damp earth came off in her hands. She could feel the worms slithering through her fingers.

  A shiver slid down Tess’s back. She remembered the voice. The voice that had led her to this hellhole. Had it all been a trap?

  “Who are you?” she whispered into the dark.

  The moans became muffled sobs.

  Tess waited. She slid along the wall, ignoring her throbbing ankle and refusing to sit back down. She glanced up, expecting her captor to be smiling down at her. Instead, there was a flicker of lightning.

  “Who are you?” she shouted this time. “And what the hell are you doing here?” She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer.

  “He…did this.” The voice came with effort, high-pitched and quaking. “Awful things…” she continued. “I tried to stop him. He had a knife. He…he cut me.”

  “Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?” Tess’s eyes tried to adjust to the dark, but she could see nothing but a huddled shadow only six feet away.

  “He told me he’d kill me.”

  “When did he put you down here? Do you remember?”

  “He tied my wrists.”

  “I can help you untie—”

  “He tied my ankles. I couldn’t move.”

  “I can—”

  “He ripped my clothes, then took off my blindfold. He said…he told me he wanted me to watch. Then he…he raped me.”

  Tess wiped at her face, replacing tears with mud. She remembered her own clothes, the misbuttoned blouse, the missing pantyhose. She felt nauseated. She couldn’t think about it. Not now.

  “He cut me when I screamed.” The woman was still confessing, her voice rambling out of control. “He wanted me to scream. I couldn’t fight him. He was so strong. My chest…he crushed my chest, sitting there on top of me. He was so heavy. My arms were pinned under his legs. He sat on top of me so he could stick…so that he could…he shoved himself down my throat. I gagged. He shoved farther. I couldn’t breathe. He kept—”

  “Shut up!” Tess yelled. She didn’t recognize her own voice, frightened by the shrillness of it. “Please just shut up!”

  Immediately there was silence. No moans. No sobs. Tess listened over the pounding of her heart. A liquid cold invaded her veins. Air continued to leak out, replaced by the rancid smell of death.

  Thunder grew closer, vibrating the earth against her back. The flashes of lightning lit up the world above, but didn’t make it down into the black pit. Tess stared up at the branches, eerie skeletal arms waving down at her in the flickering light. Her entire body hurt from trying to control the convulsions threatening to take over.

  The rain began, and Tess let her body slide down against the wall until she felt the mud sucking at her again. Her body began rocking back and forth. She hugged herself tight against the cold and against the memories, but both broke through anyway. As though it had been only yesterday, she remembered what it felt like. She remembered being six years old and being buried alive.

  43

  “I THINK Stucky may have taken my neighbor, too.”

  “Come on, Maggie. Now you’re just sounding paranoid.” Gwen sat in Maggie’s recliner, sipping wine and petting Harvey’s huge head. “By the way, this wine is very nice. You’re getting good at this.”

  A gourmet cook, Gwen enjoyed fine food and wine. When she had called earlier, offering to bring over dinner, Maggie had rushed out to Shep’s Liquor Mart to search the aisles. The clerk, an attractive but overly enthusiastic brunette named Hannah, had told Maggie that the Bolla Soave was “a delicious semidry white wine with touches of floral spiciness and apricot.” Hannah assured her that it would complement the chicken and asparagus en papillote that Gwen had promised.

  Wine was much too complex. With Scotch she didn’t need to choose from merlot, chardonnay, chablis, blush, red or white. All she needed to remember was Scotch, neat. Simple. And it certainly did the job. Though not this evening. The tension strangled her muscles and tightened her rib cage, squeezing and causing her chest to ache.

  “What do the police say about Rachel’s disappearance?”

  “I’m not sure.” Maggie flipped through the files Tully had given her, but couldn’t find what she was looking for. “The lead detective called Cunningham and complained about me barging in on his territory, so it’s not like I can just call him up and say, ‘Hey, I think I know what happened with that case.’ But my other neighbor gave me the impression everyone, including the husband, is treating it as though Rachel just decided to leave.”

  “That seems odd. Has she done this sort of thing before?”

  “I have no clue. But doesn’t it seem odder that the husband wouldn’t want the dog?”

  “Not if he thinks she ran off with someone. It’s one of the few ways he has left to punish her.”

  “It doesn’t explain why we found the dog in the condition we did. There was a lot of blood, and I’m still not convinced it was all Harvey’s.” Maggie noticed Gwen stroking Harvey’s head as though administering therapy. “Who names a dog Harvey?”

  He looked up at Maggie’s mention of his name, but didn’t budge.

  “It’s a perfectly good name,” Gwen declared.

  “It was the name of the black Lab that David Berkowitz believed was possessed.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes. “Now, why is it that you think of that immediately? Maybe Rachel is a Jimmy Stewart fan and named him after Harvey the six-foot invisible rabbit.”

  “Oh, right. Why didn’t I think of that?” It was Maggie’s turn for sarcasm. The truth was, she didn’t want to think of what might have happened to Harvey’s owner, or was still happening to her.

  “Why the hell isn’t the husband the prime suspect?” Gwen suddenly sounded irritated. “That would be a logical explanation.”

  “You’d need to meet Detective Manx to understand. He doesn’t seem to be approaching any of this logically.”

  “I’m not so sure he’s the only one. Here you are jumping to the conclusion that Stucky kidnapped her because… Let me get this straight. You think Stucky kidnapped Rachel Endicott because you’re sure he killed this pizza girl and you found candy-bar wrappers at both scenes.”

  “And mud. Don’t forget the mud.” Again Maggie remembered the mud with sparkling flecks on Rachel Endicott’s stairs. But what if Manx hadn’t bothered to collect it? And even if he had, how would she be able to compare the two? It wasn’t as if Manx would hand over a sample.

  “Okay,” Gwen said. “The mud I can understand, if you can make a match. But finding candy-bar wrappers at both houses? I’m sorry, Maggie, that’s a bit of a stretch.”

  “Stucky leaves body parts in take-out containers just for fun, to toy with people. Why wouldn’t he leave candy-bar wrappers, sort of his way of thumbing his nose at us? Like he was able to commit this inconceivably horrible murder and then have a snack afterward.”

  “So the wrappers are part of the game?”

  “Yes.” She glanced up. Gwen didn’t buy it. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Did you ever consider they could be a necessity? Sometimes people with diabetes keep candy bars to prevent fluctuations in their insulin intake. Fluctuations possibly caused by stress or an injection of too much insulin.”

  “Stucky’s not diabetic.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, quite certain, then realized their lab analysis of Stucky’s blood had never been tested for the disease.

  “How can you be so certain?” Gwen persisted. “About a third of people with Type 2 diabetes don’t even know they hav
e it. It’s not something that’s routinely checked unless there are symptoms or some family history. And I have to tell you, the symptoms, especially the early ones, are very subtle.”

  She knew Gwen was right. But she would know if Stucky had diabetes. They had his blood on file. No, she couldn’t imagine Albert Stucky being susceptible to anything other than silver bullets or maybe a stake through his heart.

  “How about the victims?” Gwen suggested. “Maybe the candy bars belonged to the victims. Any chance they’re diabetic?”

  “Too much of a coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “No, you’d much rather believe that Albert Stucky has kidnapped your neighbor, and took a real-estate agent simply because you bought a house from her. I have to tell you, Maggie, it all sounds a bit ridiculous. You have absolutely no proof that either of these women are even missing, let alone that Stucky has them.”

  “Gwen, it’s no coincidence that the waitress in Kansas City and the pizza delivery girl had both come in contact with me only hours before they were murdered in the same manner. I’m the only link. Don’t you think I want to believe that neither Rachel nor Tess were taken by Stucky? Don’t you think I’d rather believe they are both on some secluded beach sipping piña coladas with their lovers?”

  She hated that her voice could get so shrill. She went back to the pile, shuffling through the folders and trying to make sense of Tully’s disorder. She could feel Gwen’s eyes examining her. Maybe Gwen was right. Perhaps the paranoia skewed her rationality. What if she was blowing all this out of proportion?

  “If that’s true, then it would mean Stucky is watching you, following you.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible.

  “If he’s choosing women he sees you with, then why hasn’t he chosen me?”

  Maggie looked up at her friend, startled by the flicker of fear she thought she saw in the otherwise confident eyes. “He only targets women I come in contact with, not women I know. It makes his next move less predictable. He wants me to feel like an accomplice. I don’t think he wants to destroy me. And hurting you would destroy me.”

  She went back to her search, wanting to close the subject and dismiss the possibility. Fact was, she had thought about Stucky moving on to those who were close to her. Nothing would stop him from doing so if he wanted to up the ante.

  She dug out a brown manila envelope and started extracting its contents. It was the report from the airport authority and a police impound notice for a white Ford van. “Here it is. This is it. This is what’s been nagging at me.”

  “What is it?”

  Maggie stood and began pacing.

  “Susan Lyndell told me that the man Rachel Endicott may have run off with was a telephone repairman.”

  “So what’s your proof? Her phone bill?” Gwen sounded impatient.

  “This is an impound notice. When the police found Jessica Beckwith’s car at the airport, they found a van parked alongside it. The van had been stolen about two weeks ago.”

  “So Stucky stole a van and abandoned it when he was finished with it. What does that have to do with your missing neighbor?”

  “The van that was recovered belonged to Northeastern Bell.” Maggie waited for Gwen’s reaction, and when it was less than satisfactory, she continued, “Okay, it’s a long shot, but you have to admit, it’s too much of a coincidence and—”

  “I know, I know.” Gwen raised her hand to stop her. “And you don’t believe in coincidences.”

  44

  TESS couldn’t remember a night so long and dark and brutal, despite having a repertoire of many in her childhood. She sat curled in a corner, hugging her knees and trying not to think about her bare, swollen feet buried in the rancid mud. The rain had finally stopped although she heard thunder in the distance, a low rumble like a boulder rolling overhead. Was it the clouds that were preventing the sun from rising or had the madman made a deal with the devil?

  At times she could hear the woman moaning quietly to herself. Her gasps were so close. As the sky lightened, the huddled form began to take shape.

  Tess couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The woman across from her was completely naked. She had twisted herself into a fetal position, her skin slathered in mud, blood and feces.

  “Oh, God,” Tess mumbled. “Why didn’t you tell me you had nothing on?”

  The woman’s body shivered. No, she wasn’t just shivering. Her muscles looked to be in some sort of convulsions.

  “Are you in pain?” Tess asked, realizing how stupid the question sounded. Of course she was in pain.

  She ripped the blanket off her shoulders and draped it carefully around the woman. It was damp but the wool had somehow kept her own body heat from escaping all night long. Hopefully it wouldn’t make matters worse. How could it possibly make things worse?

  Tess kept a safe distance as she examined the horrible bruises, the raw cuts and torn flesh left from what looked like bites—human bites.

  “We need to get you to a hospital.” Another ridiculous thing to say. If she couldn’t get out of this pit, how could she get her to a hospital?

  The woman didn’t seem to hear Tess. Though her eyes were wide and open, they stared at the mud wall. Her tangled hair stuck to her face. Tess reached down and wiped a clump away from her cheek. The woman didn’t even blink. She was in shock, and Tess wondered if her mind had retreated inside herself, into a deep, unreachable cavern. It was exactly what Tess had done so many times as a child. It had been her only defense in combating the long stays of punishment that had exiled her to the dark storm cellar, sometimes for days at a time.

  She caressed the woman’s cheek, wiping mud and hair from her face and neck. Her stomach lurched when she saw the bruises and bite marks that covered her neck and breast. A raw gash also circled her neck. It looked like an indentation left from a rope or cord pulled so tight it had dug into the flesh.

  “Are you able to move?” Tess asked, but got no response.

  She looked up to survey the depths of their hell now that light seeped down to them. It was not as deep as she had initially thought—twelve, maybe fifteen feet at the most, about five feet wide and ten long. It looked to be an old trench, partially caved in with uneven sides. But there were fresh spade marks that told her he intended for this to be a trap.

  What kind of monster did this to a woman and then threw her into a pit? She couldn’t think about him. She couldn’t wonder or imagine, or it would completely paralyze her. Instead, she needed to concentrate on getting them out of here. But how the hell could she do that?

  There were enough gashes in the walls and jutting rocks that they could climb their way out, but she’d never be able to pull or carry the woman.

  Just as Tess reached to touch her shoulder, she saw what it was that the woman’s eyes were focused on so intently. Directly in front of her, buried in the dirt wall and partially unearthed by the rain was a human skull, the eye sockets staring out at them. And then, Tess realized. This wasn’t a trap at all. It was a grave. Their grave.

  45

  SHE wore another red silk blouse. She looked good in red. It emphasized her strawberry-blond hair. It had become a habit for her to stand in front of her desk, half sitting on the corner. Today, she didn’t bother to pull down the skirt hem that hiked up just enough to reveal shapely smooth thighs. Lovely, tender thighs that made him wonder what it would feel like to sink his teeth into them.

  She waited for him to talk while she scribbled in her notepad. He wasn’t the least bit curious about what the notes said. He was more interested in what her moans would sound like when he finally stuck himself inside her, thrusting deep and hard until she was screaming. He so enjoyed it when they screamed. The vibration felt like shock waves, like he was causing a fucking earthquake.

  It was one of many things he had in common with his old friend, his old partner. At least it was one thing he didn’t need to fake. He pushed the sunglass
es up on his nose and realized she was waiting.

  “Mr. Harding,” she interrupted his thoughts. “You never answered my question.”

  He couldn’t remember what the fucking question had been. He cocked his head to the side and jutted out his chin in that pathetic gesture that said, “Forgive me, I’m blind.”

  “I asked if any of the exercises I suggested have helped.”

  Sure enough. If he waited, people made it easy, supplying the answer, repeating themselves or doing whatever it was they had wanted him to do. He was getting good at this. Probably a good thing, in case it became permanent.

  “Mr. Harding?”

  He wanted to ask how long it had been since she had been fucked. That was, no doubt, the problem. Or perhaps she needed a few porn movies from his new private collection.

  He knew from his research that she was divorced, for almost twenty-five years now. It had been a short, two-year marriage, a youthful indiscretion. Certainly there must have been several lovers since, though, of course, those details weren’t easily accessible on the Internet.

  Now he could see her impatience growing. Finally, he said politely, “The exercises worked quite well, but that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “What good does it do to get myself…well, excuse the expression…to get my little general all hot, hard and bothered when I’m alone?”

  She smiled, the first she had surrendered since they had met.

  “We need to start somewhere.”

  “Okay, but I must object if you suggest I move on to blow-up dolls.”

  Another smile. He was on a roll. Should he tell her he’d like her to be his blow-up doll? He wondered how good a blow job she could give with that sweet little mouth of hers. He was certain he could fill it quite nicely.

  “No, I won’t make any more suggestions for the time being,” she said. “However, I would encourage you to continue with the exercises. The idea is to have a surefire method of arousal to fall back on should you find yourself wanting to perform with a woman but not able to.”