Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Forty-five

Make it stop, Ellen prayed silently. Dear God, just make it stop. But no matter how hard she prayed, the agony in her leg seemed only to grow worse. When she’d first seen what the man had done, when she’d first looked down at the raw, bleeding muscle that lay exposed where the man — the monster—had cut the small tattoo away from her thigh, she’d barely believed it could have happened at all. But as she watched blood ooze from the gaping wound and felt the pain radiate out from her thigh until it had spread through her entire body, the truth quickly sank in. It wasn’t a man who had taken her at all.

It was a maniac.

Which meant she’d have to deal with him as a maniac.

It was that realization, almost even more than the pain where he’d hacked her skin away, that made her want to simply give up, to fall back into the unconsciousness from which she’d awakened only a few hours ago.

Or was it only a few minutes?

And what did it matter anyway? Even if she fell back into the blackness, she’d only wake up again to the nightmare that was not only hers, but that of the two girls as well. So she’d forced aside the urge to escape back into unconsciousness, closed her mind to the agony in her leg, and tried to clear her head.

She was no longer in the room with the table and chairs. After he’d cut her leg — and after finishing with the hideous parody of a tea party — he’d carried and dragged her down a steep flight of stairs, through some kind of tunnel, and into a cold, dank chamber with bare mattresses on the floor and manacles chained to the walls.

A dungeon.

He manacled her wrists, then left her alone, not even bothering to replace the tape he’d torn from her lips for the “tea party.”

A few minutes later he brought Lindsay in, and manacled her as well.

He was gone longer after that, and when he returned, he carried the other girl — holding her almost tenderly — and when he put her down, she didn’t move.

Was she unconscious or—

Ellen didn’t allow herself to think it.

The monster — for that’s what she now knew he was — chained the unconscious girl as securely as he’d chained Lindsay and her.

At last, he’d finished securing the girl, taken his light up a set of wooden stairs and vanished, leaving them in absolute, claustrophobic blackness. Then all the nightmarish fears that Ellen had ever experienced came roaring back.

Now she found it almost impossible to breathe. Panic rose inside her as the darkness closed around her, and for a moment she almost gave in to it, almost began screaming and thrashing.

Instead she concentrated on slowing her breathing, forcing herself to relax her body, limb by limb. She blocked out the blackness, instead visualizing a perfect day at the beach.

And there, in her mind’s eye, she saw Emily, playing happily in the sand.

The panic surged forth again.

Relax, or you’ll hurt yourself. As long as you’re here, there’s nothing you can do for her. And it isn’t just Emily, either. Think about Lindsay. If you can’t help Emily, at least you can help Lindsay and—

What was the other girl’s name? The question itself seemed to turn the tide against the panic, and finally she began to think.

She took a deep breath, and the panic further loosened its grip on her. “Lindsay?” she said, her whisper sounding to her like a shout in the silent darkness. When there was no response, she repeated the single word, more loudly this time.

A moment later there was the sound of chains rattling somewhere to her right. “How do you know my name?” a faint, almost lifeless, voice asked.

“I saw your picture on television. My name’s Ellen Fine.”

More rattling.

Ellen imagined the girl struggling to sit up. “Your mom is hunting for you.”

“You saw my mom?” A little more life in the voice now.

“She’s been on TV, trying to find you.”

There was a silence, then: “H-How long have I been here?”

Instead of answering the question, Ellen countered with her own: “Who’s the other girl?”

“Shannon,” Lindsay whispered.

The name meant nothing to Ellen. “Does he give you anything to eat or drink?”

“Sometimes. But I don’t even know—” Lindsay’s voice caught, and Ellen could hear her choking off a sob. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow and she made no attempt to mask her fear. “I don’t even know what time it is, or what day it is, or anything else. I just—”

Her voice broke again, but this time Ellen was ready. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “We’re going to get out of here — there are three of us and only one of him. We can do it if we have a plan, and if we work together.”

No response. Then, in the quiet, Ellen could hear Lindsay crying, a sound that brought back memories of Emily, frightened of a nightmare, sobbing in the darkness of her room.

Only this was not a nightmare.

This was real.

“Listen to me, Lindsay,” Ellen said. “It’s going to be all right. We’re going to get out of this.”

There was a sniffle, then Lindsay uttered a single word. “How?”

Desperately, Ellen cast her mind back to the moments after she had awakened to the surreal scene in the room with the tiny table and chairs and the grotesquely leering smiles she’d seen on all the faces around her. And she realized what they had to do.

“We have to give him what he wants.”

“But I don’t know what he wants,” Lindsay moaned.

“Of course you do,” Ellen told her. “Think of the smiles, Lindsay. And think of what he said. He called me Mommy, and he kept talking about how happy we all were. Don’t you see? He wants a happy family. He wants us to be his family, and he wants us to be happy. So here’s what we’re going to do…”

Slowly, uncertain if Lindsay had enough energy left even to understand, let alone follow it, Ellen began to explain her idea.

Andrew Grant raked his fingers through his hair, tried to slow the thoughts that were tumbling chaotically through his mind, then leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. There were a million things that had to be done, but if they weren’t done in the right order, everything could — and undoubtedly would — turn into a disaster.

With the third deep breath, he felt his mind begin to clear, and he began to assess the situation.

For the moment, the powers-that-be had given him interjurisdictional authority, which presumably meant the guys in Smithton would have to cooperate with him, at least until the FBI guys arrived. And, for now at least, the guys in Smithton had given him everything he’d asked for, though what they had wasn’t much. Still, it was enough that he’d at least be coherent at the press briefing scheduled for nine o’clock.

According to the big clock on the wall, it was now 8:38.

It was going to be a long night.

First things first.

Seventeen minutes to figure out exactly what he was going to say, and then…

Then it would be a very long night.

A couple of patrolmen who had been called in more for show than because anyone expected them to do anything tonight were grumbling in a corner, and half a dozen reporters were already in the lobby, glancing impatiently at their watches every few seconds as they waited for the briefing to begin. To Andrew Grant, they looked like nothing more than a flock of circling vultures waiting to descend on a corpse, and if he made one false step, the corpse they descended upon could be his. Eyeing them balefully, he decided that maybe the briefing would start on time and maybe it wouldn’t.

The telephones had been ringing steadily since word of Ellen Fine’s disappearance had gotten out that afternoon, and they hadn’t slowed yet. The reporters seemed to have put two and two together at least as quickly as the two police departments involved, and into the evening the local talk radio stations had done their best to whip the public into a frenzy. It worked: apparently everyone on Long Island had seen someone who looked “suspicious” at an open house sometime over the last year or so.

The talk jockeys had even come up with a name for the guy: Open House Ozzie. Well, maybe if it got bad enough, they’d both wind up in one of Ann Rule’s books, and he would become a character on a TV miniseries.

More likely, he’d get fired for being the obtuse dunderhead he now felt like. Why couldn’t he have at least listened to Kara Marshall, instead of insisting her kid had just decided to take off?

The office walls seemed to be closing in on him.

He took his mug to the coffee machine, filled it with the dregs of the lunchtime coffee, then took the curse off its bitterness with a double shot of sugar and powdered cream and slowly made his way back to his desk. Stirring the sludge in his cup, he relegated his mistakes to the back of his mind so he could concentrate on getting it right from here on out.

The first priority, of course, would be to keep anyone else from vanishing from their own homes after an open house. He needed to get the word out that three abductions had taken place after open houses on Long Island — within fifteen miles of each other, in fact — in the past month.

And this was Sunday night; for all he knew, another abduction had taken place today, making it four. He needed a detail to work on that. O'Reilly and Murphy could handle it, along with the guys who first responded to Shannon Butler’s disappearance in Mill Creek.

He scrawled a note on his yellow pad.

The next thing was to find Shannon, Lindsay, and Ellen. He’d handle that one personally. Rick Mancuso remained at the top of his list of probable perps, but primarily because he didn’t have any other names on the list so far. Mancuso had been cooperative enough, but the guy didn’t have an alibi for any of the nights after the disappearances had happened.

Which didn’t mean nearly as much as the general public thought it did.

Still, there was no reason to hold him.

And so far, at least, there weren’t any bodies, so it was just possible — and now he knew he was grasping at straws — that all three victims actually had just taken off.

And pigs could fly, too.

Taking yet another deep breath, Grant signaled to one of the guys who’d been called in from their Sunday dinners. “I want every logbook from every open house from every agent in a thirty-mile radius. For the last month or so.” The patrolman, who’d only been with the department for three months, gaped at him.

“But that’ll take all night.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “So people won’t go to bed. Too bad. Just do it.”

As the patrolman went off to find a phone, Grant set two more patrolmen to work on the local agents: faxing, calling, and following up on everybody who had signed in at the Fine, Marshall, and Butler open houses. Not, of course, that this guy would have signed in, but you had to go through the motions, and who knew? Maybe the guy wasn’t nearly as smart as Grant thought he was.

He sipped his coffee and winced at the nastiness of it while he prayed to the gods of caffeine that it would keep him sharp through the night.

Then he turned his attention to his third priority: dealing with the press while at the same time keeping the spotlight off himself.

This was going to be a media circus. Once the FBI arrived, it became their baby, and they didn’t have far to come. They’d be here by morning, telling him and everybody else what to do. Between now and then, he would be in the spotlight, and he’d better look good.

Or, in the best of all possible worlds, find those girls.

Grant checked his watch. Five minutes left. He could feel the energy rise in the building as the briefing room filled up, and in a couple more minutes he’d be at the podium, his lieutenant sitting in the audience, observing him.

If he was lucky. If he was unlucky, the chief himself would have come down to watch.

Shit.

He took a last gulp of the mud in his coffee cup, grabbed his legal pad, and stood up to go deal with the press, which until today had never been more than old Marguerite Gould, who delighted in making public every minor disturbance Smithton and Camden Green and every other town on the north shore ever experienced, even if it was only a dog running loose in the park. Tonight, Marguerite probably wouldn’t even be able to get a question in edgewise.

Billy Ferguson poked his head around the corner.

“Sarge?”

“I’ve got a briefing.”

“I know,” the patrolman said, “but look at this here.” He held out the guest book from the Butler open house. “Mark Acton — you know, the agent who held the Marshall open house?”

Grant’s attention was instantly riveted on the kid. “Yeah?”

“He was at the Butler open house.”

Goose bumps rose on Grant’s arms. Acton was a real weasel. “Was he at the Fine open house?”

The patrolman shrugged. “I don’t know. If he was, he didn’t sign the book.”

Grant’s eyes narrowed and his lips tightened into a hard smile. “Go get him.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man’s face disappeared.

Feeling better now, Grant shrugged into his jacket, smoothed his hair, and picked up his yellow pad. Now, at least, he had a real suspect.

Mark Acton — a guy who had given him a bad feeling the moment he met him. And if there was one thing he’d learned over all the years he’d been a cop, it was this:

Always trust your feelings.

The light woke Ellen. That and a moan from Shannon, the first sounds she’d heard from the girl.

He was back.

Ellen’s heart began to hammer in her chest again. How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? Not days, but how could she know, really? Not that it mattered. The only thing that mattered now was to keep her mind clear and stick to the plan.

Whatever happened, she had to stick to the plan and pray that Lindsay had not only understood, but had the strength and the will to go along with it, too.

Banishing the last tendrils of sleep that clung to her mind, and ignoring the knot of fear forming in her belly, she sat up on her mattress, tucked her legs beneath her and leaned on one arm, trying to make herself look as relaxed as if she were lounging on a picnic blanket. The wound in her leg shot a stab of pain through her as she dragged it across the coarse mattress, but she stifled the scream that rose in her throat as the light from the trapdoor opening illuminated the man in silhouette. Then it went dark again for a moment, until he turned on a beam of light. She squinted into it as he came down the stairs and moved toward the dark chamber. As he approached, she spoke.

“Is that you, honey?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound as artificially bright to him as it did to her. “How was your day?”

The man stopped in mid-stride and turned to her, his grotesque mask smiling at her even in the indirect illumination of his flashlight.

“Did you bring something I can make for dinner? I haven’t had a chance to get to the store, and the girls are hungry.”

The man reached into the darkness, and a moment later the dungeon was flooded with light from a naked bulb overhead. Now Ellen could see the madness in his eyes. “Be quiet,” he said, but she thought she heard a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

“Don’t be like that, sweetheart. The children need to be fed. That’s why they haven’t been happy the last few days.”

Suddenly the man’s eyes were blazing. “Stop that. Stop that! You’re ruining everything!”

“Daddy?” Lindsay’s voice sounded so tiny, Ellen almost didn’t hear it at all.

The man wheeled around, but instead of unshackling Lindsay, he went to Shannon, undid her chains, then picked her up and walked through the door into the tunnel.

“He didn’t tape her mouth,” Lindsay whispered.

“Maybe he doesn’t think he has to,” Ellen whispered back. “And maybe he’s right — maybe she can’t speak anymore.”

A moment later he was back, leaning over Lindsay.

Ellen heard her whisper something to him, then he unlocked the shackles from her wrists and jerked her to her feet. As he guided her toward the mouth of the tunnel, she made no move to resist.

Was Lindsay going along with her plan, or had her will finally given out?

When he came back again, Ellen smiled up at him, but just as she started to say something, he slapped her hard, then muffled her yelp with a hand clamped over her mouth, pressing so hard that when she opened it to sink her teeth into his palm, they sank into her own lips instead. As the taste of blood filled her mouth, he pressed a length of duct tape across her lips. Doing her best not to react against the slap and the stinging of her cut lip, Ellen forced herself not to resist as he put a noose around her neck. Only after he’d tightened it did he loosen her chains. When she was free, though, he yanked on the rope, clearly irritated.

Giving no sign that anything extraordinary was happening, Ellen got to her feet, forced herself to ignore the agony in her leg, and walked alongside him through the tunnel.

The two girls sat at the little table, their hands and legs tied as usual, but for a change they did not have tape on their mouths.

Lindsay’s eyes met Ellen’s for an instant before fixing on their captor. “Don’t tie up Mommy,” she said, her voice perfectly even. “I need her to brush my hair.”

Ellen offered a silent prayer of thanks as Lindsay actually managed to smile while speaking the last words.

The man gazed first at Lindsay, then at her, and Ellen felt a tiny flicker of hope. But then he shook his head, and she knew she hadn’t managed to act as convincingly as Lindsay. “She’s not here for you,” he said, the softness of his voice somehow increasing its menace. “She’s here for me, like she always should have been!” He pushed her down hard in the same tiny chair she’d occupied earlier, taping her legs to those of the chair. Just as he was finishing, a barely audible voice drifted across the table, and Ellen’s pulse was suddenly racing.

“I love you, Daddy,” Shannon whispered.

The flame of hope that had all but died inside Ellen a moment ago suddenly brightened. Shannon wasn’t unconscious, and she’d heard, and understood, and was playing along!

But then the man cried, “Don’t call me that!” Crouching low so his face was almost touching Shannon's, his voice shook with fury. “I’m not your father! Don’t you dare call me ‘Daddy'!” He glowered at Ellen. “Why don’t you do what you’re supposed to do? Why don’t you ever do it?”

Ellen shrank back as he came around to her, pulled a red marking pen from his pocket, grabbed her hair and jerked her head back. She felt the pen moving over the tape that covered her mouth, and a moment later he roughly released her hair. “There! Mommy looks the way she always looks, no matter what might be happening. Keep smiling, Mommy! Just keep smiling, and act like everything’s just fine!”

Ellen nodded again, but now he seemed to have lost interest in her, moving around to Lindsay and gently stroking her hair. “You want me to brush your hair?” he whispered. He stroked Lindsay’s head one more time, then ran his fingers down Lindsay’s cheek, and Ellen could see the girl trying not to cringe as his whisper turned to a snarl. “Or is this what you want me to do?” His eyes fixed on Ellen once more. “You never saw, did you? But this time you’ll see! This time I’ll make you see!”

Ellen froze, certain that any reaction she might show would only make things worse.

“She’s so beautiful,” the man said, his fingers trailing down her neck and her shoulder. “At least on the outside.”

“Daddy?” Lindsay whispered.

“Don’t call me that!”

“I–I’m sorry,” Lindsay stammered. “I just want you to love me as much as I love you.”

The man’s eyes fairly glittered. “Love?” he asked, his voice dropping once more to that menacing whisper. “Is that what you thought? Is that why you always smiled?”

Lindsay nodded, apparently oblivious to the danger in his voice. “Don’t you want me to love you now?”

Ellen froze. What was Lindsay saying?

Then Shannon spoke. “Me, too,” she said.

Don’t, Ellen silently commanded. Figure out a way to make him untie me. But don’t do this! Don’t!

The man was gazing at the girls through glazed eyes.

“We love you,” Lindsay said, her voice taking on a seductive tone that utterly belied her age. “Won’t you let us show you how much?” Now her voice dropped to an enticing whisper. “Please?”

The man produced a knife from his pocket — the same rusty, bloodstained knife he’d used on Ellen’s leg earlier, and slit the tape on Shannon’s legs and arms. Then he helped her to her feet.

Though she was so weak she could barely hold her head up, Shannon reached out toward Lindsay. “Her, too,” she whispered. “We both love you… both of us… ”

The man’s eyes gleamed. “Yes,” he said. “It’s time you showed Mommy how much you love me, isn’t it?” He turned to Lindsay, but before he could cut the tape that bound her, Ellen saw Shannon’s body tense, and in that instant she knew what Shannon was going to do.

No, she silently pleaded, again trying to reach out to Shannon with her mind, but knowing it was useless. Wait until Lindsay is loose! But it was already too late. Before even one of Lindsay’s limbs was free, Shannon mustered what little strength she still had and struck out at the man, her foot catching his groin.

He doubled over and fell to his knees, and now both Lindsay and Ellen were struggling against their bindings.

Shannon threw herself onto the man and started to pull his ski mask off, but the surgical mask tied over it held it just long enough. Enraged by the attack, he lurched to his feet and slammed his back into Shannon, crushing her to the wall. Ellen heard a gasp as air exploded from the girl’s lungs. Shannon’s grip loosened and their captor shook her off, letting her fall to the floor in a broken heap.

“Your fault,” the man rasped, wheeling to glower at Ellen once more. “See what they did? And they call it ‘love.’ But it’s not love! It’s not!” As Lindsay Marshall screamed, his foot lashed out at Shannon, smashing into her ribs. Then, as Lindsay screamed even louder, he drew his foot back and struck again, this time crashing his boot into Shannon’s head so hard her neck snapped.

As Shannon lay still on the floor, and Lindsay’s screams gave way to choking sobs, he loomed over Ellen again, breathing hard, his eyes glinting with fury. “Your fault,” he whispered. “All your fault.” He leaned closer, and terror gripped her. Emily, Emily, Emily. I’m going to die, and I can’t even say good-bye to my baby. “You failed! You! You didn’t do the only thing you were supposed to do!” He jerked furiously on the noose around her neck, and she felt her breath cut off and her eyes bulging.

The light in the room began to fade.

Then, from above her, there was a howl of anguish, and abruptly the tension on the rope was gone.

“I hate you,” the man whispered. “I hate you all, and I never want to play with you again!”

He vanished down the steps that led to the tunnel. Ellen coughed through her taped-up mouth, choking, trying desperately to fill her lungs with air. It took almost a full minute, breathing heavily through her nose, until the red globes cleared from her vision and her panic began to subside. She looked up then and met Lindsay’s eyes across the table.

Neither of them dared look down at Shannon. What have I done? Ellen thought. Dear God, what have I done?