were yelling at each other. She heard footsteps. Someone other than him was there. This was her chance. Her only chance.
She took the People magazine with Selena Gomez on the cover and rolled it up into a megaphone.
“Help!” she screamed. “I’m down here!”
She stopped and listened for movement, but there wasn’t any.
Next, she did what she had to do. It was her last chance. Her only hope. The stakes could not have been higher. If she failed, she would die.
She took the match she’d found up from the floor and ran it against the concrete, but nothing happened. Only a white line.
You have to light! she thought. Light! Please!
She tried it again. She could smell the scent of a burning match, but there was no flame.
God, why don’t you love me? she asked.
She thought of Elizabeth Smart. She’d made it. She’d found freedom.
The match lit and she held it the edge of the People cover. She knew that Selena had been through a lot of things in her life, and she would forgive her.
It was a torch. She was the Statue of Liberty. Emma Rose knew that the smoke would need to find the nose of someone who would help her. Someone upstairs. Someone yelling. For good measure, she took off her T-shirt and doused it with Sam’s Club diet cola and held it over her mouth and nose. Next, she carried the blanket to the chair under the furnace vent and lit it on fire.
If she died of smoke inhalation or even if she’d burned alive, it would be better than dying at the hand of the sicko who held her in the apartment. She held the Sam’s Club-diet-cola-soaked T-shirt and waited by the door. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t even that scared. She knew that whatever happened would be for the best.
Whatever happened, she would be free.
Grace stopped talking. She breathed in cautiously.
“I smell smoke,” she said.
“I don’t smell anything,” Peggy said. She was angry. Her face contorted. “I want you to leave.”
“We need the fire department.” Grace reached for her phone and Peggy shoved her, knocking it out of her hand. It spun across the floor like a gyro.
“Are you crazy?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Get the hell out of my house.”
“The smoke must be coming from the basement.”
“No, it’s not. I was cooking earlier. Get out of my house!”
Grace picked up the phone with one hand, and pulled out her police issue. She pointed the gun at Peggy.
“What’s downstairs, Peggy?”
She punched in 911 with her thumb and put the phone on speaker.
“I’m at 2121 North Howard and there’s a fire. This is Detective Grace Alexander with the Tacoma PD. I need backup, too. This is an emergency.”
Grace didn’t wait for the dispatcher response other than to hear that “help is on the way.”
By then Peggy was gone.
With her gun drawn, Grace made her way first to the kitchen, where the back door had swung open. The door to the basement was locked. She kicked at it, but it didn’t budge. She stepped back a couple of feet and fired in the lock. It took only one shot and the door was open. She turned on the light.
Smoke oozed from the slot in the steel door.
“I’m down here!” It was a scream, but it was soft, muffled. It was not Peggy’s voice, but even if it had been, Grace would have gone down there to get her. She wanted her in prison for what she’d done. Dying in a fire was too good for her sister’s supposed best friend.
Her murderer.
The basement lights were dimmed by the curtain of smoke and Grace called out to whoever it was who was trapped down there.
“I can’t see very well. Tell me where you are.”
Emma started banging against the door with her shoulder. She screamed out. “I’m here! I’m in here. In the apartment.”
The apartment?
Grace crawled on her hands and knees and found the door. Her hands felt for the knob, but it, too, was locked.
“Back away,” she said. “I’m going to fire my weapon to unlock the door.”
A muffled cry came through the wall. “Hurry.”
The gun fired and Grace pushed at the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“I’m going to try again. Please stay away from the door. Do you hear me?”
There was no response.
“Please stay away. I’m going to fire.”
Grace steadied herself in the smoke and shot once more. This time, the lock split and the door crashed open.
Inside, she found a teenage girl, unconscious and half naked.
Emma Rose was alive.
Paramedics carried Emma out on a stretcher into the yard, next to a maple that had already started to turn yellow. Flashing lights and sirens had turned what had been tranquil and beautiful into a nightmare of sorts. Several neighbors had gathered to gawk. One of them was a blond girl, young, pretty. She looked like an angel. When Emma looked up at her she smiled through the oxygen mask. She spoke, but no one could hear her.
“Thank you, Elizabeth Smart,” Emma said.
Grace Alexander sat on the back of the fire truck taking in some oxygen and insisting she was just fine.
“I need to call my husband,” she said. “We need to catch Peggy Howell. She’s responsible.”
The paramedic put his hand on her shoulder; it was a soft, reassuring touch. “Husband’s on his way. Your partner Detective Bateman’s over there.”
Grace looked over as Paul made his way through the chaos of the fire. A neighbor on the west side of the Howells’ house had the stream from a garden hose aimed at the roof of his garage, but that was hardly necessary. The Howell blaze was small, contained to the basement.
“We found the body. We found Emma’s kidnapper. Weird thing. Coroner says he’s been dead five days. Not long after he snatched Emma. This sick SOB.”
She got up. “What body?”
“Her son, I guess. Maybe a boyfriend. Two neighbors had differing ideas about the relationship.”
“Jeremy’s dead?”
“Yes, been dead a while.”
“Did you find his mother?”
“Sit tight. You’ve been through a lot today. But, yeah, we got her. Blues picked her up by the Safeway trying to buy, isn’t this ironic, a pack of smokes with a stolen credit card… Diana Rose’s Visa card.”
Grace felt so much relief, she felt her legs go weak. She sat back down. She wanted to call her mother, too. She wanted her to know that it was finally over. Peggy had been the killer. She’d betrayed them all.
“We found some weird shit inside the house,” he said, stepping back a little as an aid car left. “Good thing you’re sitting down.”
“What?”
“You think your mother was a Bundy collector? This gal had her beat tenfold. Photographs, letters, books, it’s like a murderbilia stage show gone wild in there. She even had cue cards for Ted.”
Grace didn’t understand. “Cue cards? What do you mean?”
Paul held one up in a plastic evidence bag. It was an index card, much like the kind her mother had used when she made Bundy flash cards. These were slightly larger and the writing on them was a sloppy printing.
TED: YOU ARE THE PRETTIEST BY FAR.
