“What do you expect? You kidnapped my daughter. Don’t worry about your hand. I can fix it.”
“You stay the hell away from me.”
“Whatever you say.” He walked over to the window and looked out over the gulf. There were more lights now, ships making steady headway, oblivious to the drama unfolding in the glittering tower on the beach.
“That’s Joe talking,” he said, thinking aloud. “About who stays with whom, I mean. I’ve talked to him less than five minutes, but I know one thing about him. He loves the macho thing. He’d like nothing better than to be here rubbing my face in it. That’s half the point of all this. So, if he’s not here… he’s somehow rubbing my face in it more by being there.” Will turned back to Cheryl, who jerked up the pillow. “How could he be doing that?”
“You think he’s tearing up all your precious paintings or something? That’s not Joey.”
Will pulled a chair over beside the bed. “I want you to tell me everything you know that is Joe, Cheryl. Start talking.”
“I’m not telling you shit. You’ll find out more than you want to know when he calls back and I tell him what you did.”
Another black wave of rage rolled through him. “If you can talk.”
She laughed outright. “There’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t been done before, Doctor. I mean nothing.” She tossed the pillow aside, exposing her breasts and the relief map of bruises. “Face it. Joey’s got you beat, right down the line.”
In an upstairs bathroom of the McDill mansion, Margaret McDill sat at a vanity table, taking off her makeup with cold cream. She looked into the mirror at her husband, who hovered in the door behind her like an accusing ghost.
“I refuse to discuss it,” she said. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Dr. McDill gave a long sigh. “I just want to-”
“What? Drive me back to a bottle a day?” She threw a mascara-stained Kleenex onto the floor. “I can’t stand this, James. It’s sadistic!”
“Margaret, for God’s sake. I’m just trying to understand.” He took a deep breath and pushed into forbidden territory yet again. “Is there something more? Something I don’t know about?” He’d asked this before and been rebuffed. Tonight he would press it. He had to. “Did this man hurt you?”
“Hurt me?” Her lips tightened to white. “Did he hurt me?”
“I’m your husband, Margaret. I only want to help you.”
She whirled from the mirror, her eyes wild. “All right! All right! You want to know why I won’t report it? Because he raped me.”
McDill flinched.
“He raped me, James. Do you feel better now? Is that what you wanted to hear? What you want to tell the police? All the gory details?”
McDill stared openmouthed at his wife.
“He told me to take off my clothes and I did. He told me to kiss him and I did. He told me I’d have to do things I’d never done before”-she covered her face with her hands-“and I did. I did. And I’d do it again! All I could think of was Peter. They had my baby!”
She exploded into unintelligible screams, thrashing her head and arms until McDill rushed forward and, oblivious to the blows he was taking, hugged her so tightly that she couldn’t move. He spoke in a reassuring voice as she continued to shriek.
“It’s all right, Margaret…It’s going to be all right. You didn’t do anything wrong. You did nothing wrong.” Tears stung his eyes. “God help me, I thought it might be something like this. It’s all right.. ..”
As her screams subsided, Margaret descended into a near catatonic state.
“Can you hear me?” asked McDill. “Margaret?”
She nodded like an Alzheimer’s patient.
“I’m afraid the same thing is happening again. Do you understand? To another family. Another mother. Another child.” He took her firmly by the shoulders and peered into her eyes. “We can’t let that happen. It wouldn’t be Christian. Would it?”
Margaret slowly shook her head, her eyes glassy.
“I’m going to call the FBI,” McDill said. “But we don’t have to tell them anything about what happened to you. You understand? It’s irrelevant to the situation.”
His wife’s only response was fresh tears sliding down her cheeks.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he assured her. “More than I ever have.”
McDill pulled her close. When he squeezed her shuddering body, something inside him came loose. Something came loose and a fearful darkness poured out. James McDill read the Bible every night, no matter how tired. He went to church every week, taught Sunday school to his son’s class. He spent every day but Sunday bringing people back from the edge of death with his hard-earned skills. But when he thought of the faceless man who had brutalized the girl he had loved since high school-the mother of his child-something deeper than reason spoke from within him. Something deeper even than God. When he opened his mouth, what emerged was a whispered vow.
“I am going to kill that son of a bitch.”
SIX
Being forced to leave Abby behind had shattered Karen. She sat in the Expedition in a sort of detached haze, like a disembodied brain floating in ether. She was wearing the blindfold again, but she sensed that there was little traffic. The whooshes of cars passing were far apart.
“You taken a vow of silence or what?” asked Hickey.
Karen let her mind reach into the starless night beneath the blindfold.
“Hey. I’m talking to you.”
The voice was like a face obscured by fog.
“You’re upset, I know. But it had to be that way. You’ll get over it.”
“I’m not sure I will.”
“See? You can talk.”
She heard him light another cigarette. The smell of burning tobacco filled the air.
“You can take off the blindfold now.”
“I prefer it on.”
“I prefer it off.”
Karen unwrapped the scarf. The dash lights shone like a coastal city viewed from the sea. Glancing up, she saw that the digital compass between the visors read “E” for east. That was information she could use. They were on a two-lane road, and she knew by the speed and sound of the outgoing trip that they had driven on an interstate for at least half an hour after leaving Jackson. That left two options: they were still on I-55, which ran north and south, or they had turned onto I-20, which ran east and west. That meant Abby was being held somewhere south of Jackson and west of I-55, if Hickey had taken that interstate. If he’d taken I-20, it was harder to make assumptions. But if he left the blindfold off, she might soon know for sure. She decided to make an effort to keep him in a good mood.
“Thank you for letting me give Abby the shot.”
Hickey rolled down his window a crack and blew cigarette smoke outside. “That’s what I like to hear. Gratitude. You don’t see much of it these days. It’s a forgotten courtesy. But you’re an old-fashioned girl. I can tell. You know how to show appreciation for a good deed.”
Karen waited a moment, then looked left. Hickey’s profile was like a wind-eroded boulder. Heavy brows, the nose a bit flat, the chin like an unspoken challenge. It looked like a face that could take a lot of punishment, and probably had.
“We’ve got a whole night to kill,” he said, glancing away from the road long enough to find her eyes in the dark. “Why make it like breaking rocks, you know? Let’s be friends.”
Her internal radar went to alert status.
