would make sense because Drake was at the ball game with Spencer. Maybe he brought Drake to the game to hand him over to the shooter.
Without any way to be sure, she had to play it safe. She followed close and waited for her opportunity.
They neared a large door that sat open, people exiting through it to the outside. It felt like they were running with half the people of Toronto on their tail.
At the last second, before they exited the stadium, Sarah grabbed Drake’s arm and leaned in close. “Come this way. Trust me or you’ll die.”
She yanked him to the side and lost Spencer in the crowd within seconds. More than twenty heads separated Drake and Sarah from Spencer when he turned around and tried to locate them. She ducked her head and got Drake to bow at the waist.
Twenty feet into the new corridor, she spotted another exit sign.
“This way.”
Sarah cautiously opened the door, which was unobstructed and led to the outside. They stepped into the summer sun and walked away from the stadium with no one on their tail, and no one knowing where they were.
Chapter 10
Elmore dipped the mop in the bucket and continued scrubbing the basement floor. With each swing of the mop he collected more blood, slowly removing proof that Jackie had ever been in his home. Later he’d wear protective clothing and use various bleaches and ammonias to finish cleaning her cell. The mattress would be burned and every piece of clothing he wore. Not a single CSI unit would ever be able to prove Elmore used the cages for anything other than role play with his panty photos that he shipped out weekly, which was a licensed, legitimate business.
He wondered how Sarah would hold up being locked away from the world. Maybe she would tell him things. Prophecies like she did for other people.
Jackie had been the longest girl he’d kept prisoner, coming in at six months. Maybe he’d keep Sarah longer. He could make an exception if she proved to be a good girl.
He had read a biography on serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy and remembered a quote that Ann Rule had said. Something about Ted being a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure in another human’s pain and the control he had over his victims to the point of death, and beyond. Elmore couldn’t believe that. Of all the brilliant people he had read about, Ted was once married and functioned well. Sure he did mean things, but who didn’t nowadays?
Elmore wasn’t beyond caring. He knew some of the things he did were wrong, but he wasn’t sadistic. He cared about his girls. If they did what they were told, they enjoyed their stay with him. It proved to Elmore that he had an ability to care. He derived pleasure from their pain because they deserved it. Like disciplining a child — if it was necessary, then so be it — he would enjoy teaching them.
He offered his girls the ability to control their future. If they did what was required of them, things got easier.
It was time to change the water in the bucket. Elmore lifted it and walked to the basement sink in the far corner.
What about Dali? What if he hadn’t painted a single canvas? It would be interesting to see what a novel would have been like had Dali written instead. On the contrary, what if Edgar Allen Poe had only painted and never wrote a single word? How mad and dark would his paintings have been?
This, Elmore understood, described him. He was an artist of sorts. One that dealt with flesh and the human condition. He knew he was brilliant because everyone had needs and yearned to have them fulfilled. For Elmore, it was easy because he simply took the needs that required fulfillment. That alone placed him above the rest.
With the bucket filled with fresh water, he returned to the area where Jackie had bled out.
He recalled the day when he was twelve and his mother had stopped him from painting anymore images of women with injuries. He had explained that it showed fragility and beauty in one image. She had projected that he wanted to hurt women.
“Well, you were wrong, mother dear,” he said to the empty basement. “I didn’t want to hurt women, and never have. They do it to themselves. I’m only the messenger. The female condition has nothing to do with me.”
He continued mopping and scrubbing for the next hour until it was time to take a break.
After cleaning his hands aggressively, he headed to his office and fired up his Mac where he began his routine browsing. First the financials of his vending machines in Japan. Then to Twitter to browse the newspapers that had defined his life.
Newspapers, the broadcasters of everyone’s dirty laundry. Death and mayhem. When he was twelve, after he wasn’t allowed to paint anymore, he had taken up reading the local newspaper and it had completely redefined him. It soon became an obsession. Across Toronto, rape after rape took place and got front lines in the Toronto Sun Daily. It aroused him to read all the details of how a man had gone after what he had wanted and taken it. The truth, Elmore felt, was that it belonged to him. That was why women were created and, at that early age, Elmore realized that he would one day be the same way. But he’d be smarter about it and make sure he never got arrested because it was socially unacceptable to have sex with a woman against her will. They enacted laws against it to protect women, yet it still happened every day. Politicians did it and got away with it. For the right price, you could buy anything you wanted in large cities like Toronto. But Elmore would never pay. Paying for something you could take belittles the spender.
While waiting for the Toronto papers to load on his screen he examined the last nails he’d ever get from Jackie. He placed them in the black container and closed it for later use.
With his right hand on the mouse, he used his left to pick at the scab on the side of his head and wondered what the next girl would look like. The excitement leading up to the caging of his next subject caused him to be permanently aroused.
“Days, it’ll only be days, and then I’ll have a plaything again,” he whispered out loud.
Across the room Sarah Roberts’ face stared back from all the pictures he had plastered on the walls. He smiled at her and blew her a kiss.
“One day…”
The computer screen filled with the latest news.
The image of Sarah Roberts stared back at him from his monitor.
His eyes widened. The nail on his scab stopped scratching and pushed down on the piece he’d been working on.
The caption said there had been a stampede at the Rogers Centre, and the root of the problem had been the failed apprehension of one Sarah Roberts by American authorities.
He couldn’t believe it. The scab fell away in his fingers and blood trickled down the side of his head.
This was his chance. Sarah Roberts had surfaced in Toronto. She was downtown. It couldn’t have been set up better. If things went well, he could have her locked up before the end of the day.
He looked again at her face on the Sony JumboTron at the Rogers Centre.
“Yes. Sarah Roberts. That’s you. How pretty.”
American authorities. What do they want with her? Why are they up here in Canada hunting her?
He’d have to play that angle if he needed it.
He turned off his computer and headed upstairs to get dressed. He would finish cleaning the basement after he had Sarah. She took priority now.
He reveled in the odds. How was it possible that Sarah could be in Toronto?
He changed into his authentic Toronto Police uniform and donned a suit over that. He grabbed his police scanner off the bureau and got behind the wheel of his four-door sedan that resembled an unmarked cruiser with its Plexiglass shield between the front and back seats. He drove off his property with thoughts of Sarah.
“Sarah, it’s only a matter of time now.”
