The Zero Night

31

Chelsey Webster lay on her back in an indentation dug out of the gully. It resembled a shallow grave. There were mounds of dirt and dead leaves piled around the hole, as if whoever had brought her here had intended to bury her, but then left her uncovered instead for the wolves to find. One of the search dogs had zeroed in on her scent — or on the aroma of urine and feces soiling her clothes — and led a police officer with a flashlight directly to her.

She wore what she must have been wearing when she’d been taken from her house. A rose-colored turtleneck. A bulky sweater. Wool slacks and heavy socks, but no shoes. All her clothes were muddy and soaking wet now from the daylong rain, but before that, they would have given her a small bit of protection while she was outside. That was probably what had kept her alive. She was gagged with an old T-shirt in her mouth and gray tape, allowing her to make nothing more than desperate whimpers. Her wrists and ankles were tightly bound with tape, too. Wherever skin showed, it was black with dirt, and her face was bruised. Her body wasn’t secured to anything, but the hole had been dug on a slope above a narrow creek. If she’d struggled enough to roll out, she could easily have drowned in the water.

Maggie knelt beside her. She squeezed Chelsey’s hand, which was ice-cold. She could feel the woman trembling. Guppo and the other cops and the dogs pressed close in around her, and Maggie waved them back to give her more space and to begin to establish a perimeter for the crime scene. She looked for injuries beyond the bruising — cuts, abrasions, broken bones, knife or gun wounds — but she didn’t see any signs of additional trauma. The woman’s face was sunken, and she looked dehydrated. In the beams of a dozen flashlights, her eyes were wide open and scared.

But she was alive.

“Mrs. Webster, my name is Lieutenant Maggie Bei with the Duluth Police. We are very, very glad to see you. Don’t worry, you’re safe now. An ambulance will be here soon. They’ll get you to a hospital so the doctors can check you out and clean you up. Rather than carry you out immediately, we’d like to wait and let the paramedics examine you to make sure you’re safe to move. But we’ll stay right here until they arrive. Do you understand?”

Slowly, with some confusion on her face, Chelsey nodded.

“My apologies for the bright lights,” Maggie went on. “You might want to close your eyes if that’s more comfortable.”

Chelsey did, and Maggie used her camera phone to take a series of pictures and videos of the scene. When she had a rough photographic record of the area, she gestured at Guppo, who handed her two thick blankets he’d retrieved from the squad car.

“Let’s see if we can keep you a little warmer while we wait, okay?” Maggie said, spreading the blankets over Chelsey’s body. “I know the tape is uncomfortable, but I don’t want to remove it myself, because your skin is probably pretty raw where you’ve been bound. Better to do that at the hospital. But I’m going to cut a slit across the tape on your mouth and see if I can get that shirt out, okay? That should help you breathe a lot easier.”

Again Chelsey nodded. Her eyes were open again, despite the harshness of the light shining down on her.

Maggie extracted a Swiss army knife from her pocket and carefully cut an opening in the tape that was stretched across Chelsey’s face. With her fingers, she gingerly nudged the flaps of the tape apart, until the gap was wide enough for her to slowly pull the sodden shirt from Chelsey’s mouth. She did it inch by inch, gauging the woman’s reaction, ready to stop if Chelsey showed any signs of pain or choking. She didn’t. The shirt itself was wet and dirty and flecked with traces of blood. When it came free, she handed it to Guppo, who deposited it in a plastic evidence bag.

Chelsey took a gulp of fresh air and coughed raggedly. Maggie was afraid the woman would vomit, and she helped her up by her shoulders and held her until the coughing fit passed. Then, gently, she laid the woman down on her back again.

“Are you able to talk at all?” Maggie asked. “Don’t strain yourself. Just give me a yes or no, and that’s it.”

The woman cleared her throat, wincing as she did. “Little bit.”

“That’s okay. Give it time.”

She heard trampling in the brush and saw another officer arriving from a squad car at the road. The cop held up a hand with five fingers spread wide.

“The ambulance is five minutes out,” Maggie told Chelsey quietly. “It won’t be long now.”

“Thank you.”

“Like I said, you don’t have to talk. Save your voice. If you’re up for it, I’ll ask you a few yes-or-no questions, and all you have to do is nod or shake your head. Is that okay? Don’t worry if you’d rather wait. We don’t have to do this now.”

Chelsey hesitated, then nodded her approval.

“Good. I appreciate your help. Mrs. Webster, I know this has been a terrible ordeal, and we’re incredibly relieved to find you. Can you tell me, do you know who did this to you?”

The woman shook her head. Her voice cracked as she tried to talk. “Hood.”

“The kidnapper was wearing a hood?”

She nodded.

“Was it a man?”

Another nod.

“Did you hear his voice? Did he speak to you at all? Or did you hear him speaking to anyone else?”

She shook her head.

“Was there more than one man?”

Again she shook her head.

“One,” she murmured. Then in a shaky voice she added, “Knocked me out.”

“He hit you?”

She nodded.

“Do you have any idea how long you’ve been here in the woods?” Maggie asked.

Chelsey shook her head again.

“Your husband returned from Rice Lake late on Tuesday evening,” Maggie went on. “He was with his parents, do you remember that? Was that the night you were taken?”

Chelsey closed her eyes and nodded.

“Did the kidnapper take you straight here?”

She shook her head and spoke again. “Later.”

“Do you know where you were kept initially?”

“No.”

“It’s okay. Just nod or shake your head. Did the same man take you out here to the woods? Was it the man who abducted you from your home?”

“Not sure. Think so.”

“Your husband says he talked to you on Thursday night before he delivered the ransom money to the kidnapper. Do you remember talking to him?”

“Yes.”

“So you were taken out here after that? After that call?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember if it was the same night?”

“Not sure.”

“If it was Thursday, that would mean you’ve been out here for four nights. Does that sound possible?”

“Don’t know. Maybe.”

“All right. Thank you, Chelsey. I won’t ask you anything more for now. You just rest.”

Maggie listened to the quiet of the forest. Distantly, she heard the overlapping wails of sirens getting closer. She stood up again. She studied the hole in which Chelsey had been placed, near the base of the sharp gully, several hundred yards from the nearest road. Chelsey wouldn’t have lasted much longer outside. Either the wolves would have found her, or she would have succumbed to dehydration. It was a miracle they’d gotten to her in time.

In all the thousands of square miles of Northland woods, they’d found their way to the right place. Because Gavin had been in the same place days before the kidnapper had brought his wife here to die.

There were no coincidences.

She stared down at Chelsey Webster again. Why was she alive?

The kidnapper had driven her here, dragged or carried her through the woods, dug a hole for her body — and then failed to kill her. He hadn’t strangled her, or shot her, or cut her throat, or buried her alive. Instead, he’d left her. As if, when it came to that horrible moment, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t murder this woman. He could leave her to suffer a slow, agonizing death, or a death at the hands of animals who would have torn her apart. But he couldn’t deliver the blow himself.

Maggie thought to herself: Like a husband.

She heard the woman trying to talk again, and she knelt beside her. “What is it, Chelsey?”

Her mouth made nothing more than a low mumble. Maggie leaned close enough to make out what she was saying.

“Gavin,” Chelsey whispered. “Where’s Gavin?”

“You’ll see him soon. We talked to your husband. He knows you’re alive, and he’ll see you at the hospital.”

“Gavin,” Chelsey said again.

Then she closed her eyes and didn’t say anything more.

Serena sat in the darkness. She breathed in; she breathed out. Her last drink had been near one o’clock in the morning the previous night, and now it was almost ten o’clock. The time ticked toward midnight. She still wanted a drink, but that was nothing special. She always wanted one. She’d wanted one every night for 6,608 nights. But she was alone now, and alone was dangerous. She felt an impulse to get up and go outside, to drive back to that bar in West Duluth, to sit down in front of Jagger and order another Absolut Citron. The pull was like a magnet. Her brain came up with sweet, seductive lies for why she should give herself one last night.

This day was already a loss. The count was still at zero. Nothing would change that. So why resist? She could allow herself one more drink. Or a few drinks. A final farewell. She could quit at 11:59 p.m., and then tomorrow she would be free.

Lies.

Her purse was on the table next to the sofa. Her car keys were inside her purse. You know you want it, darling.

The voice inside her head, the voice telling the lies, belonged to Samantha. Her mother had always been the queen of excuses. In the shadows of the cottage, she imagined Samantha sitting in the opposite chair near the fireplace. Young again, the way she’d been when Serena was only fifteen. Perfect. Lush blond hair. Bright white smile. Dressed to kill in a red dress that bared her thighs. Only the eyes gave away a hint of recklessness, madness, lack of control.

“Come on, Serena. Let’s go to the bar. You and me. It’ll be like the old days.”

Serena breathed in. Breathed out.

“That bartender. What’s his name? Jagger? He’s a juicy one. If you don’t sleep with him, I will.”

And then: “One drink, baby. Do it for me. What the hell harm can one drink do?”

And then with a hiss from her forked tongue: “You owe me, sweet child of mine. You left me, you walked away. You let me die on a bench alone. And now you won’t even have a drink with me?”

The words shot into Serena’s head like the bullets of a gun.

Her hands curled into fists. She got up from the sofa, but she left her purse where it was. The purse with the car keys. She walked across the great space to the empty chair and stared down at Samantha.

“I still love you,” she murmured.

“If you love me, you’ll buy me a drink.”

“I’ve finally figured out that I’ll never stop loving you.”

“Daughters don’t run away from their mothers.”

Serena sank to the floor. She bent forward until her cheek lay on the cushion of the chair, and she could feel its warmth, as if she were doing what she’d done so many times as a child, laying her head on Samantha’s knees.

Then came the hardest one of all: “I forgive you, Mother.”

She hesitated. Did she really mean that? Was she telling herself the truth?

“I forgive what you did. It doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make me forget a moment of it, it doesn’t make you less evil, but I forgive you.”

The words were like a breath of wind that could blow away the dust. With that, Samantha was silent and gone, and Serena was alone. The empty chair was an empty chair, and the voice in her head went away. She stood up in the darkness, feeling an urge to scream with joy. She wanted a drink, but she wasn’t going to have one.

Not tonight.

The future was something else. The future was a lot of days strung together, and Serena was no fortune-teller.

But not tonight.

Then she spun as she heard a loud knocking on the cottage’s front door. It was an urgent knocking, the kind that said something was wrong. She ran to the door and ripped it open.

Cat and Delaney stood side by side on the porch.

The first thing Serena saw was blood.