No. No. No. Leo maneuvers his car and gets lucky with a green light. He wants to stay back but not too far back. And the way Riley’s driving now, it won’t be long before Leo loses him. No, no, can’t lose him-
He’s turning. Up ahead, two blocks ahead, his car maneuvers into the right-turn lane. Leo tries to make out the street, flooring the accelerator. Then he sees it.
Riley is getting on the highway, heading south.
I speed through the Mansbury College campus, the images surreal to me now, everything the same but everything so very different. The campus is largely deserted, as it was this time sixteen years ago. Next week will be the beginning of summer school. The question is, will they find another body?
Bramhall Auditorium takes up half the block, a dome-topped structure arising from a large concrete staircase, a threshold supported by granite pillars, with a manicured lawn to each side. I pull up to the curb and kill the engine. I reach under the car seat, pull up the carpet, and remove the ordinary kitchen knife, with the five-inch blade, that Terry Burgos used to remove the heart of Ellie Danzinger and to slice Angie Mornakowski’s throat.
At least, that’s what I thought. When I removed the knife from its encasing on the Wall of Burgos in my basement this morning, I had to admit that I was no longer sure about that.
Sixteen years ago, I emerged from a car very close to this precise spot. And my life changed.
Last time, the place was surrounded with police officers and technicians, residents of the town pressed against the police tape, and six dead women lay inside. This time, if I’m right, there is only a victim inside, and she’s still alive. And there are no police. It’s what Koslenko would want. I couldn’t risk bringing in McDermott or anyone else.
I put the knife into the inner pocket of my sport coat. I don’t own a handgun and couldn’t get one on short notice. I could have brought any number of kitchen knives, but maybe, just maybe, this particular one will come in handy.
I say a quiet prayer to a God I have neglected and get out of the car. The building looks undisturbed, vacant. This week-the sixteenth anniversary of the murders-is one of the few weeks of the entire year that the entire Mansbury campus is shut down.
I turn, as if to look back at my car, and do the best I can to look around me. Is Koslenko here? Is he watching me? I will only have one chance to do this. I have to play this right.
Which means, ignoring the internal turmoil, I take the stairs slowly, with confident authority.
There are three entrances. Front door, a maintenance entrance on the east, and a service door for deliveries in the back-north-side. I try the massive front door. Disappointed, but not surprised, that it’s locked.
I walk around to the east side of the building.
LEO PULLS UP TO the north side of the auditorium-the rear side-leaving his car in the adjacent parking lot. He runs up a ramp and goes to work on the service door with his tension wrench and short hook. The dead bolt slides open and he pulls the handle, entering the darkness.
THE EAST-SIDE DOOR has only an internal push bar. Nothing on the outside but a flat, rusted door. I couldn’t open it with a cannon.
I walk on uneven, sloping ground to the rear of the building and freeze as I turn the corner.
There is a single car, a Toyota Camry, in the back lot.
I sprint with everything I have left, stifling emotions, toward the only door, at the top of a small ramp. I grab the handle, try again, with a prayer, and open it. I’m inside.
My eyes adjust to the dimness and sweep a spacious room, a storage area, large refrigerators and floor-to-ceiling shelving filled with boxes. I run through the room into a large kitchen, sinks and stoves and more refrigerators. To my left are a staircase and an elevator.
I rush up the dark staircase and push open the door into light on the ground level. A large, ceremonial room, draped in red and gold, with antique furniture, with sunlight filtering in through large windows. My heart skips a beat. I know this room. The reception area, the anteroom to the auditorium. Forgetting my role as the cool authority figure, I run through another door and I’m in familiar territory, next to the large stage and podium in Bramhall Auditorium, natural light pouring into the theater. I sprint through the aisle, passing the very chairs where Detective Joel Lightner and Chief Harry Clark sat with me, recounting the grisly details of six slaughtered women. I reach the foyer and look to my left, at the door that leads to the basement, to the janitor’s supply room.
I reach the door, which I know for a fact is a dead bolt that would ordinarily be locked, and quietly open it.
He’s expecting me.
52
LEO OPENS the last door in the basement. He passes the chain-link lockers on the short wall and the shelving units, heads to the large storage lockers on the far wall. He stops a moment and listens. He hears nothing. He opens the middle locker and looks down.
Shelly Trotter does not look up at him, but her bleary eyes show some trace of recognition. She has received two heavy doses of gamma hydroxybutyrate-GHB-enough to keep her in a thick fog since yesterday morning, when he first subdued her in the shower. Her wrists and ankles are handcuffed, with another set of cuffs linked to the wrist and ankle cuffs, contorting her body into a forced, rounded triangle and allowing her to fit, just barely, into this oversized locker that normally holds a snowblower, shovels, and the like. A locker that now holds only two things: Paul Riley’s love, and a Barteaux heavy-duty, twenty-six-inch, high-carbon spring steel machete.
A painful body position, he knows, one they used occasionally in the Soviet Union to coerce the unwilling, to break the spirit through elongated periods of discomfort. But her pain is irrelevant to him. He had to leave her for extended periods and had to be sure she couldn’t move. She has, in essence, been in a forced coma since he took her from her apartment.
Shelly Trotter, Shelly Trotter.
He can see, now, that she would not have been able to act, notwithstanding the handcuffs. The GHB has worked well. Her head bobs, she groans but is unable to speak. The sweatpants he dressed her in are soiled from her bodily functions, the pungent odor fighting the antiseptic smell of the cleaning materials. Her curly hair is flat against her head. Her lips move but she doesn’t speak, a line of saliva falling from the corner of her mouth.
He unlocks the third set of cuffs, the ones that link the restraints on her wrists and ankles. Her body reacts, straightening out as best it can in the confined quarters. He slides her out of the locker. He will not remove the cuffs on her wrists and ankles. He debates, for a moment, whether he should give her a third dose of the paralyzing drug but decides against it.
He hears a noise, a faint echo in the hallway, the pitter-patter of footsteps on stairs. He stands quickly and freezes, controls his breathing, listening. He hears the creak of a door
