“Oh. Well, I’ll take care of it.”
Hannah began to frown. Perry was answering her, but he wasn’t really communicating. It was clear he wished she’d leave well enough alone. “The only thing is,” Hannah said, wondering how she could persuade him that she really did want to help both of them. “I’m sure you’ll do your best, Perry, but you may need some help. I’m really worried about Sherri’s mental state.”
“Why?” Perry reached the second light post and jotted down the measurement. Then he checked his rolling device again, and walked on toward the third light.
“I’m worried because she needs someone to help her through the days ahead. It won’t be easy.”
“She’s got me. That’s all she needs.”
Hannah stopped walking as Perry came to the third light post and jotted down yet another measurement. She really didn’t like his attitude. She reminded herself that she had to make allowances for the fact he’d grown up alone, with no father or mother to guide him, and he’d learned to rely only on himself. It was clear that he was determined to take care of Sherri and that was admirable, but she wished he’d accept outside help when it was offered.
Perry was moving toward the fourth light post and Hannah hurried to catch up. “I’m not trying to be nosy, Perry. Really I’m not. It’s just that Sherri told me she wants to keep her baby, and that’ll be very difficult for her. She said giving the baby up for adoption was out of the question.”
“She’s right about that.” Perry’s voice was hard. “Most of the kids at the Home were put up for adoption, but they didn’t get adopted. They stayed right there until they were old enough to go.”
Hannah waited until Perry had stopped to write down the measurement at the fourth light post, and then she tried again. “Isn’t there any possibility that Sherri could marry the baby’s father? She said she loved him.”
“No. There’s no possibility at all.”
“But she said he loved her, too. I don’t understand.”
They walked in silence to the fifth light post, where Perry jotted down the measurement. Then he turned to her with a hard smile. “He never loved Sherri. He was getting ready to cut her loose anyway. I warned her. I told her that he was a jerk and not to listen to him. I pointed out that we were only inches from making it, that the movie deal was our ticket out of here. So what did my stupid sister do? She got pregnant and waved that movie deal goodbye. She actually believed him when he said that she was his inspiration, and they were like Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.”
Hannah’s mind screamed a warning.
“I did the world a favor…at least the female half. He used women and then he threw them away. You should have seen his face when he saw the knife. He knew what was coming and he knew he deserved it, but he still sniveled like a baby and begged me not to do it!”
As she looked into Perry’s glittering and frenzied eyes, the signal from Hannah’s mind finally reached her feet. She whirled and ran as fast as she could over the hilly ground, not caring where she was going as long as it was away from the Bradford’s killer and danger.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He was gaining on her, which was no surprise. Hannah chided herself for one fleeting moment about not keeping up her exercise regimen at the gym, but kicking herself mentally would do no good now. Perry was ten years younger and about a thousand times more athletic than she was at her best. Her only hope was outsmarting him.
Hannah darted around two weeping willow trees. The selection was quite appropriate for a cemetery, but she certainly didn’t stop to dwell on that thought. She emerged from the green canopy that had hidden her for a few seconds and dashed across the road that divided the historic section of Spring Brook Cemetery from the resting place of the more recently deceased.
Of course he’d seen her. She’d expected that. But since it was physically impossible for her to outrun him, it might be possible for her to lose him among the crumbling old mausoleums and huge statuary.
She knew this part of the cemetery fairly well from her bicycle trips to the edge of town as a child. Hannah recognized the Ezekiel Jordan mausoleum with its four colors of granite and its grouping of seraphim artfully arranged by the steps leading up to the door. Since it hadn’t been erected on a hilltop or even a gentle rise of land, the first mayor of Lake Eden had been laid to rest in a structure with a floor built of granite slabs that were three feet thick.
No place to hide in the first mayor’s crypt. It would be locked anyway. The city preserved the graveside of its founder and the key would be under lock and key.
The Pettis family mausoleum was directly in front of her. Hannah remembered a missing block of granite at the back, providing access to the crypt itself, where brave kids used to hide in games of Hide and Seek. Hannah had not been a brave kid. But she wasn’t being chased by a killer back then, either. She raced around the building, heading for the farthest corner, and stopped dead in her tracks. The hole had been repaired. She couldn’t hide here.
She peeked out cautiously and saw him standing about a half-block away, looking toward the west and shading his eyes from sun. Had she lost him? Should she stay here as quiet as a mouse and wait until he gave up and walked back to his truck?
Hannah shuddered. She wasn’t quite sure what horrified her most, the idea that he would kill her or the thought that she’d be stabbed with Bradford’s knife. In any event, she wasn’t going to hang around to find out.
Carefully and quietly, she began to work her way west, hoping the bright sun that was midway between its apex and the horizon, would blind him to her presence. She’d passed the second mausoleum when she saw it, a way that she could hide from Perry. It was the Henderson family mausoleum. She knew that because Bud Hauge had repaired the metal walleye and attached it to the front of the structure. But it wasn’t the walleye that had caught Hannah’s attention. It was the door at the side of the structure. The padlock that normally secured it was open and the door was very slightly ajar.
She really didn’t want to go in. There was nothing less appealing than a dark final resting place furnished with cold granite slabs that were decorated with spider webs and slithery, slimy things, and inhabited, if you could call it that, by dead mouldering bodies. Hannah swallowed hard, repressed a shiver, and corrected herself. The only thing less appealing than the inside of the Henderson crypt was being cornered by the man who intended to make her into one of those same mouldering bodies!
Hannah pulled the door open. It took all the courage she had to step inside, but she told herself that the dead could hurt her a lot less than the living and to get on with it.
Once she’d shut the door behind her, Hannah felt faint with fear. She stood there breathing heavily for what seemed like hours until she heard another sound, a sound that made her blood run cold. It was the click of a padlock closing outside the door. Perry had discovered her hiding place and locked her in!
A sudden dizziness came over her. It made her lose all sense of direction. She knew her feet were resting on the floor…or were they? Was up really up? Was down really down? It was the sort of total disorientation people must feel in a sensory deprivation chamber.
She had to sit down and get her bearings. But where? Even though she’d been here for several minutes, her eyes had not adjusted and it was still as black as a tomb inside.
Of course she ignored it. Her mind wasn’t being very helpful at the moment. She had to concentrate on the positives in her situation. Yes, she was locked in, but she wouldn’t think about that. She was alive and unhurt, and that meant she had options. She couldn’t see, but she could still feel.
