Sleep Tight

Chapter 26

Gillian struggled for breath, fear sending her heart rate several notches higher, her chest rising and falling in accelerated panic.

Had Holly gotten up as soon as they left and called the police? If so, cops would be swarming all over looking for her right now.

And the guy. The guy driving the car. Not Gavin. Definitely not Gavin. Was it Tate? What the hell was going on?

Bile rose in her throat. She thought about Charlotte Henning choking to death on her own vomit.

Calm down.

She forced her muscles to relax and started counting to regulate her breathing.

Don't think. Don't think about anything but staying calm.

Holly waited until she was sure fifteen minutes had passed.

Then she waited another ten.

With her mouth and wrists taped, she struggled to her feet, shoving her forehead against the couch as she pushed herself upright.

After repeated tries, using her elbow and the side of her bound arm, she was finally able to get the doorknob unlocked and turned. In her socks and sleep T-shirt, she ran across the frost-covered yard into the street.

Every part, of her wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but the only sound that came out was a muffled roar from deep in her throat.

The street was deserted. Two blocks away were some college hangouts-Chinese restaurants, cafes, bars, and bookstores. Even though it was early morning and nothing would be open, she ran in that direction, unmindful of the near-freezing temperatures.

She heard a car in the distance, heard it slow, heard it turn.

Was it him, coming back?

She wanted to jump behind a mailbox and hide. But Gillian was in trouble. She forced herself to remain in the center of the street. The car came at her, then, at the last minute swerved, honking the horn as it disappeared into the darkness.

She turned and hurried back in the direction she'd come, running to the porch of the first house she saw, using her elbow to ring the doorbell. She rang it and rang it and rang it until an angry man jerked the door open.

"What the hell's going-?" He stopped. "Oh my God. Judy. Come here!" he shouted behind him. "Judy!"

Holly jumped up and down and shook her head. Take off the tape. Take off the tape!

"Hold still," he said, "an' I'll pull that off. This'll hurt."

I don't care! Just do it! Do it!

He ripped off the tape. At first she felt no pain; then fire spread across her face. She began shouting. "Call the police! Call the police!"

By that time his wife had shown up and joined her husband in his horrified reaction. "Oh, you poor dear. You poor thing." She pulled her into the warmth of the house. "Her hands are taped, John. Get a knife. Hurry!"

"No! Call the police!" Holly shouted. "You have to call the police-NOW!"

"Okay, honey. We will. Let's get you loose first."

She was about ready to kick somebody when the husband handed his wife a knife. "You cut her loose. I'll call."

While the guy dialed 911, his wife worked on Holly's hands. As soon as the tape dropped away, Holly pounced for the phone. She tried to grab it from the man, but her fingers were numb. He held it to her ear while she composed herself enough to tell the dispatcher what had happened.

Gillian lost all sense of time. It seemed that she'd been in the trunk for at least an hour and a half, but she was in no state to confirm such an opinion. That didn't keep her from trying to figure out how far from Minneapolis a ninety-minute drive could take her. Going south, they could be all the way to Iowa. Going east, into Wisconsin, past Eau Claire.

The last thirty minutes had been spent bouncing over a rough road made of gravel or dirt, judging from the dust drifting in the cracks. There had been several turns, several times when she thought they were at their destination, only to feel the weight of the car shift as they rounded another corner before accelerating again.

They went up a steep hill to eventually level out, slow, then stop.

The engine was shut off.

She heard a car door.

She listened to footfalls approach. Heard the key in the lock.

The trunk opened.

Mary had been in the business long enough to know a call that came before sunrise was never good. But having a case that was all but settled left her thinking the ringing phone had to be Anthony, calling too early from the East Coast, maybe with a new case that required her immediate attention. When she realized it was Elliot Senatra on the other end of the line, she was doubly puzzled.

"I have some bad news."

He sounded upset. She immediately ran through a short list of the people she cared most about: her mother, who was in the house with her; Gillian; and Anthony. She latched on to the last name. Had something happened to Anthony?

"Gillian has been abducted."

She pushed herself up in bed, thinking she must have misunderstood. "Say that again."

"Gillian's been abducted." He told her that Holly had spent the night with her sister, and someone had broken into the apartment. "Holly swears it's the same guy who kidnapped her."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm on my way to your sister's. Wakefield's already on the scene."

"Where's Holly?"

"She's been taken down to the station to get her statement."

"I'll be there as quickly as I can."

She hung up.

Shit. Oh, shit.

She opened her mobile phone and punched number one. As soon as Anthony answered, she began blathering, trying to tell him what she knew in one sentence. She stopped and took a breath, realizing she was close to tears, close to flipping out. "I'm not thinking straight," she said, her throat tight. "Christ. This is bad, Anthony. Really bad." The phone call had taken her back to another time when she'd felt hopeless, the time Fiona had been killed. She pressed her lips together, then asked, "Will you come?"

"I'm on my way."

She fought off a fresh wave of tears. "When?"

"Soon. Today. This afternoon, if possible."

"Thanks."

She disconnected, then went to give her mother the news.

Blythe was already standing in the hallway. "I heard," she said before Mary could say anything. "Where? When?"

Blythe followed her back to the bedroom.

"Someone broke into her apartment." Mary began throwing on clothes-a pair of jeans. A shirt. A sweater. "About an hour ago. Holly Lindstrom was there. She thinks it's the same guy who abducted her."

"I don't understand. I thought Gavin Hitchcock did it. Isn't he in custody?" She covered her mouth with one hand, eyes large with shock and disbelief. "What about the photo? What about the girl he tied to his bed?"

"I don't know." Mary strapped on her gun. "Maybe I was too anxious to find Hitchcock guilty," she said miserably.

"Where are you going?"

"Gillian's apartment. After that, I'm going to talk to Holly."

"I'm coming with you."

Mary didn't like the thought of her mother being at the scene of the crime, but she also knew she had every right to be there. "The police will probably want to take our statements."

Mary drove too fast through streets that* were beginning to show signs of life even though the sun wasn't yet up. They rode in silence until Blythe broke down.

"I can't believe this is happening again. What's wrong with this world?" she said, her voice choked with tears. She shook her head. "After Fiona died, I should have moved. I thought about it, but I didn't want to leave here. And the law of averages was on our side. It's like when I know you're going to be flying, and I worry about the plane crashing, then I hear about a crash somewhere else, I think, Okay, there's the one plane crash. Now I can relax because I know your plane isn't going to crash. And then I feel guilty. Because of all the people on the plane, but I can't help feeling a little less worried for you. Oh God. I'm babbling."

"That's okay."

Mary turned down the street that led to Gillian's apartment. As she spotted the crime van, her stomach dropped. Blythe was right. This couldn't be happening.

They had to park two blocks away. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung around the front yard, all the way out past the sidewalk.

"It looks like somebody's been murdered here," Blythe said.

"Nobody's been murdered," Mary reassured her. "They've cordoned everything off so no evidence is destroyed."

A police officer stopped them before they got to the yellow tape. Mary flashed her ID. "We're also the mother and sister of the victim."

They were allowed to pass.

Wakefield met them at the door. The loss of Gillian had left its mark on him too. "He cut the window with a glass cutter, removed the glass, and unlocked the lock."

"Any leads?"

"We're working on fingerprints, but so far the ones we've lifted are all small. Women's, most likely. This asshole's too smart to go without gloves."

"Anybody see or hear anything?"

"We have officers canvassing the neighborhood, but so far nothing. People aren't too cooperative this time of the morning."

"What about Sebastian Tate?"

"His roommates don't know where he is. Say he hasn't been home in two days, but we've got every cop in the state looking for him."

Inside the apartment, technicians were dusting for prints and collecting evidence. A couple of detectives stood with tablets in hand, making notes and taking the statements of the first officers on the scene.

Senatra separated himself long enough to give Mary's arm a comforting squeeze and tell Blythe how sorry he was. Then he got back to work.

"What about Holly?" Mary asked Wakefield. "You said she thinks it's the same guy."

"She seemed sure of it. If it is, it means he followed her here. Then, for some reason he took Gillian instead. Holly claims she ran for help as soon as the kidnapper left with your sister. The first officers on the scene were here within two minutes of the 911 call. At that time, six patrol units surrounded the area, but didn't find anybody."

"Did Holly have a description of the car?"

He shook his head. "Which makes me wonder how quickly she really went for help."

"Is she still at the station?"

"Let me check." He called the police station, then nodded to Mary. "Don't let her go," he said into the phone. "I have an FBI agent here who wants to talk to her."

Leaving Blythe with Wakefield and Senatra, Mary hurried back to her car and headed downtown to City Hall and the police station.

She immetliately found inconsistencies in Holly's story. Sometimes in cases in which somebody was left behind, or someone escaped uninjured, guilt played a part in their account of what happened. Mary suspected that's what was going on with Holly. Mary also suspected that the time between the kidnapper's departure and the time Holly actually went for help was longer than the "minute at the most" Holly was describing.

"Would you mind if I spoke to her alone?" Mary asked Holly's parents.

"Our daughter's been through an awful lot," Mrs. Lindstrom said. "We'd really like to take her home now."

"It's okay," Holly said, looking up. She was dressed in jeans and a yellow sweatshirt. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and there were raw areas on her cheeks where the tape she was bound with had ripped the skin away.

When they were alone, Mary said, "I know this is hard for you, but you need to tell me exactly what happened in just the way you remember. You may have information you think isn't important, but sometimes it's the things that seem unimportant that help solve a case," she added gently. "And sometimes it's the little things that don't seem important-things like time-that can send investigators in the wrong direction. Gillian is my sister. I want her back as quickly as possible."

Mary pulled out a chair and sat down on the same side of the table with Holly. "Do you know that most victims of home invasion don't call the police as soon as their assailant leaves? In most cases, the assailant will tell them not to call-and they don't. They might be in shock, and most of them are afraid he'll come back, or afraid that he hasn't really left. It's impossible to think straight in that kind of situation. You're running strictly on survival mode, and that mode is telling you to lie low and not make a sound. So, Holly… if you didn't go for help right away, nobody will blame you. Nobody will think poorly of you for doing what your natural instincts were telling you to do."

Holly stared at her pop can, turning it in her hands.

"You waited to go for help, didn't you?"

"He told me to wait fifteen minutes."

"I'll bet you waited longer, just to be sure."

Holly continued to stare at the can, as if finding it the most interesting thing in the room. "I think maybe I did."

"How much longer, would you say?"

"Five minutes. Maybe ten."

"Thanks, Holly. I appreciate your honesty." Mary called Wakefield and updated him on the time element.

"No need to have these guys beating the bushes around here," he said. "Sorry, Mary. That means he's gone."