a minute.’
‘Hurry, just hurry!’
I went back into the garage and found a crowbar, then set to work on the lock. It took a couple of minutes, but eventually it broke and I opened the trapdoor.
The cell was about six feet deep and roughly square. Anna Kore was chained to the eastern wall. There was clear plastic sheeting on the ground beneath her, and a slop bucket in the corner. She wore sneakers, oversized jeans, and a man’s sweater, and had wrapped her upper body in a blanket to ward off the cold and damp, despite the layers of insulation that had been laid into the walls and on the ground under the sheeting. She had a small battery-powered lamp for illumination, and there were magazines and paperback books scattered around her. She raised her arms to me.
‘Get me out!’
I turned to get the ladder, and heard a sound from outside. It was a vehicle approaching, and then the engine died and all was quiet again.
‘What is it?’ called the girl. ‘Why aren’t you coming to get me?’
I went back to the edge of the trapdoor. ‘Anna, you have to stay quiet. I think they’re here.’
She gave out a little mew of fear. ‘No, don’t go. Get the ladder. It will only take a minute. Please! If you go, you won’t come back, and I’ll be left here.’
I couldn’t stay. They were coming. As I moved away, Anna Kore began screaming, the noise carrying up from below and echoing off the walls, and I did something that broke my heart: I closed the trapdoor upon her. Her cries grew muffled, and when I climbed back into the garage I could not hear them at all. The breeze had picked up, and the sheets billowed and snapped, obscuring my view of the yard beyond. I had hoped that the return of either Mrs. Shaye or her son was a coincidence, but as I was climbing through the connecting door I spotted the little wireless sensor beside the lower hinge. I had broken the circuit by opening the door. It had probably sent a message to one or both of their cell phones, and so they had known that someone was on their property.
I had just reached the hood of the truck when the first shot came, blowing a hole through one of the sheets and blasting the wall to my left with shotgun pellets. The second shot struck the hood and knocked away the supporting rod. I saw a figure in overalls moving between the sheets, and caught a glimpse of Pat Shaye’s face as he pumped the shotgun and took aim for a third time. I threw myself to the ground and started shooting.
The bullet took Shaye in the right thigh. He stumbled into one of the sheets, and I saw the form of his body pressed against it. I fired again, and this time a roseate stain bloomed against the white. The third shot brought him to his knees and he dragged the sheet down with him, gathering it around him like a shroud as he fell. The shotgun lay in a puddle beside him as he struggled weakly against the material, the blood and oily water spreading across the whiteness of it.
I heard a woman scream. Mrs. Shaye appeared from the side of the house, and then was lost to me in the billowing of the sheets. Like a movie projected with damaged frames, I saw her move through flickers of white from the corner to the center of the yard, pause for a second as she took in the sight of her son wriggling in his cocoon, then – another white flash, another moment lost – make for the shotgun. I gave her no warning. The bullet struck the house behind her, but when I tried to fire again the gun jammed, and she was almost at the shotgun. I was already looking for cover when Gordon Walsh appeared from the side of the house, his gun raised.
‘Police!’ he said. ‘Put your hands in the air.’
Mrs. Shaye stopped in her tracks. She raised her hands and fell to her knees, but she no longer had any interest in the weapon. She simply inched her way across the yard on her knees until she reached her dying son, and she wrapped her arms around him as he shuddered against her in his death throes. Walsh did not try to stop her.
Only when her son ceased to move did she start to cry.
While Walsh kept an eye on Mrs. Shaye, I raised the trapdoor and let down the ladder into the cell. Mrs. Shaye had confirmed with a nod that both she and her son had keys to all the locks, and I used her set to free Anna from her chain. She climbed from the hole and emerged blinking into the fading light, then sprang at Mrs. Shaye. Her left hand tore a clump of hair from the older woman’s head, and her right raked four parallel cuts down her right cheek before Walsh and I could drag her off. I led Anna into the yard, and her eyes found the shrouded form of Patrick Shaye.
‘Is he dead?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
Anna said something else to me, but I could not understand her words.
‘What did you say?’
‘Don’t leave her down there,’ she repeated. ‘The other girl. Please don’t leave her down there.’
‘What other girl?’ I said
‘She’s in the hole,’ said Anna. ‘I saw her bones.’
And still Mrs. Shaye said nothing, and silent she would remain until they came to take her away.
40
All that we subsequently learned was pieced together from what Anna Kore told us, itself a product of overheard words, snatched sentences, and the words of Pat Shaye when he came to her at night, whispering to her as he touched her. He had taken her in the parking lot, a crime of opportunity made easier by her familiarity with him, but his mother had provided him with an alibi when the police questioned everyone. She had been angry with him, though, Anna had said. They had kept her in the house that first night, and she had heard them arguing.
‘You don’t shit on your own doorstep,’ Mrs. Shaye had told her son. ‘There’ll be questions. They’ll be looking for her.’
But Pat had been overcome with desire because the other girl had died. Anna didn’t know her name, or where she’d come from, but they’d had her for a while: a year, she thought, maybe a little more. That was how they worked, how
And the other girl, the one who has grown too old? Well, you do with her what you do with anything that’s too old and needs to be replaced. You throw it away, or you bury it.
Except the girl had died before her time. Anna didn’t know how, or why. Mrs. Shaye had told her son to give it a rest for a while, to use porn, whatever it took. She was worried about creating a pattern, leaving a trail that could be followed. That was why they always kept the girls for so long.
But Pat had seen Anna Kore, and desire had become action.
Such needs he had, such needs.
He’d tried to rape her that first night, but she’d fought and fought. She’d fought so hard that she’d hurt him, and hurt him badly. Her mother had taught her how to do it, because her mother had lived around violent men. She’d told her daughter that, if it ever came down to it, she had to be as cruel and merciless as she could imagine. The eyes were best, her mother had said. Aim to blind. But Anna couldn’t get close to Pat’s eyes, so she’d gone for the next best thing. She’d gripped and twisted his testicles, digging her nails into them, and she’d injured him down there, leaving him screaming in agony. His mother had been forced to help him from the room, and Anna’s punishment was to be put in the hole, down where the dead girl lay. It hadn’t been used in a while, and the insulation was bad, but they wanted her to know that she’d done wrong, and doing wrong brought consequences. So Pat Shaye had repaired the insulation, and while he worked he told her of all the things that he was going to do to her once he had recovered, of how he was going to rape her for days once the pain went away, maybe even rape her to death and then find another girl, because there would always be other girls.
But then something had happened. When Pat came down to feed her on that last day he was worried, but he still found it in himself to torment her just a little.
‘You were almost rescued, honeybunch,’ he said. ‘The chief came, and I found him snooping. If I hadn’t returned in time, well, who knows? You might have been out of here. So close, uh, honeybunch? So close. Then again, the chief, he might have joined in, because he likes them young. Still, we’ll never know.’
Then he’d touched himself while he stood over her.
