I pulled the broken door out of the way, then cautiously entered. The room’s interior was black, and I scratched the wall for a light switch. Finding none, I took another step forward, then heard a static-filled voice.
I listened hard. It was a police operator talking to a cop in a cruiser. Vorbe had been using a scanner to monitor patrol cars in the area.
I moved forward, the darkness as frightening as any imagined monster. Something touched the tip of my nose, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I reached out, and grabbed the thing that had touched me. It was a beaded metal cord that hung from the ceiling. I tugged on it, and a fluorescent light flickered to life.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I found myself standing in a two-car garage. The garage door had been replaced by a brick wall, while the other three walls had been lined with cork, soundproofing the interior.
I did a slow one-eighty. On the other side of the garage was a long wooden table with a young woman lying across it, her arms and legs bound by leather straps. Her skin was pale and white, and her eyes were tightly shut.
It was Heather Rinker.
I crossed the room and stood beside her. My hand gently touched her forehead. Her skin was ice cold, her body lifeless. The memory of Heather playing one-on-one with Jessie in the driveway of my old house flashed through my mind.
Buster jumped up on the table. Before I could pull him down, he began to lick Heather’s face. Her eyes snapped open, and she stared up at me.
“Oh, my God, Mr. Carpenter,” she whispered.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. My fingers undid the straps holding her prisoner. Heather tried to sit up, only to fall back on the table.
“Take it easy,” I said.
“Where is Mr. Vorbe?” she asked.
“In the other room.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“He’s not going anywhere. Tell me what happened.”
“I went to the grocery to buy some food, and he invited me back to his office for coffee. The next thing I remembered was waking up here.”
“Where’s Sampson?”
“In the closet. Sampson wouldn’t stop fighting with him, so Mr. Vorbe tied him up. He tried to save me, Mr. Carpenter. My baby tried to save me.”
Going to the closet, I opened the door. Sampson sat on a chair inside the closet, his arms and legs tied down with twine. A piece of duct tape covered his mouth. I had seen people die this way, and I choked back the rage building inside me.
“Hi, Sampson. My name is Jack,” I said.
Sampson looked at me, blinking tears. I put away my gun so as not to scare him any further, and gently pulled away the duct tape. Buster appeared by my side.
“This is my dog. His name is Buster. Do you like dogs?”
Sampson nodded. Buster entered the closet, and licked Sampson’s face.
“Where’s my mommy?” he asked.
“She’s right here. I’m going to take you to her.”
“Mommy!”
“I’m here, honey,” Heather called back. “Everything’s okay.”
I undid the twine while looking into his perfect little face. Every stupid thing I’d said and done in the last several days now seemed worthwhile. Sampson crawled into my arms, and I carried him across the garage to his mother. It was a perfect ending, until I heard Vorbe scream from the other side of the house.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“ P lease don’t leave us, Mr. Carpenter,” Heather begged me.
I heard a second scream, louder, more intense. I had to find out what he was doing. I snapped my fingers, and Buster lay dutifully on the floor.
“My dog will protect you and your son,” I said.
I ran back into the house. Passing through the living room, I saw dots of blood on the tiled floor that hadn’t been there before. The shotgun was missing from the couch, as was the box of bullets.
My eyes followed the bloody trail. It went through the living room to the broken slider, and out to the backyard. I nearly let out a yell. I’d handcuffed Vorbe to the refrigerator, something I’d done with countless suspects. He couldn’t have freed himself.
I entered the kitchen clutching my Colt with both hands. The handcuffs were still attached to the handle on the refrigerator door. Lying on the floor beneath them was Vorbe’s blood-soaked hand, along with the butcher knife he’d used to cut it off.
I made it into the living room before I threw up. Through the broken slider I could hear the shrill cry of police sirens carrying through the warm night air. They were too far away to bring me any comfort.
I took several deep breaths, and tried to get my strength back. My eyes fell upon a photo album lying on the coffee table. There had been no examples of Vorbe’s work hanging in the studio, and I flipped the album open to the first page. A young woman stared back at me. Her eyes were shut tight, her mouth wide open. She was dead.
I riffled through the album. It was filled with head shots of other dead women, their poses identical to the woman on the first page. There appeared to be two dozen photos in all, although there could have been more.
I went outside, and tried to determine where Vorbe had gone. I didn’t think he’d gone back to the supermarket, and I went around the side of the house to the front yard.
Standing on the curb, I gazed up and down the street. It was lit up by streetlights, and I saw a gang of long- haired kids trying to break their necks on skateboards and a few older couples walking dogs. Then it hit me what Vorbe was going to do.
He was going to steal a car.
With a car, he could hit the highways and disappear in rush-hour traffic. Florida had thousands of miles of back roads, and most criminals knew how to navigate them. I was going to lose him if I didn’t act fast.
I looked in the street for blood. I found a few drops and followed them to an intersection at the block’s end, where I saw a mob of men in shorts and T-shirts standing in a driveway, beating the daylights out of someone. As I ran toward them, my cell phone rang. It was Burrell.
“I got your message. What’s going on?” she asked.
“I found our killer. It’s the grocery store manager.”
“Where are you?”
I looked over my shoulder, and read the names off the signs on the corner.
“I’ll be right there,” Burrell said.
The men had surrounded Vorbe, and were trying to capture him. Two of the men were pointing handguns at him, the rest throwing punches and kicks. Vorbe was fighting back using a Brazilian form of martial arts called capoeira, his body spinning like a top. His bloody stump was wrapped in a towel, the wrist tied with an electrical cord in a makeshift tourniquet. It didn’t seem to be slowing him down.
I edged into the crowd. These guys didn’t know me, nor I them.
“Where’s his shotgun?” I asked.
A blond guy chugging a beer nodded toward the grass. “Son-of-a-bitch knocked my wife down as she was getting out of her car with the groceries. I came out, and took his gun away. Then the fun started.”
I watched Vorbe take his punishment. He continued to swirl around the mob, using his one good hand and his
