Annie Seymour 01-Sacred Cows (27 page)
“Where are you taking me?”
I didn’t think Albert could sit still and stay mute so long.
We got off the highway at Exit 10, Route 40, and sped down to Whitney Avenue in Hamden. We turned right, going past the funeral home, the cemetery. I finally figured it out. They were taking me to Sleeping Giant State Park. Not being a hiker, or even remotely interested in spending an afternoon in the woods with the deer ticks and snakes enjoying nature, I’d never been there. Accidents happened all the time, hikers fell off rocks, kids got lost for hours at a time. I didn’t want to be a statistic.
“Do you know your way around here?” I asked when we pulled into a small dirt drive about half a mile from the main entrance to the park.
Albert gave the gun to Curtin and began putting on hiking boots. So he knew his way around.
“You could still cut a deal,” I cautioned him. “But once I’m dead, I bet all bets are off.”
“By the time they find you, I’ll be long gone,” he muttered, pushing me out of the car, my gun stuck in his waistband. He probably saw that in some movie or on TV.
Sneakers are completely useless in the woods. I kept slipping on the underbrush. My thoughts were ironically on how to maneuver, rather than on the gun. I still wasn’t 100 percent convinced that Albert could kill me, and I hung on to that when he forced me off the trail and into the forest.
Even if he couldn’t kill me, I’d never find my way out of this place and I’d probably die here anyway. A mountain lion or a snake would take me out. It was like that
Survivor
show on TV but without the cameras and the million-dollar pot at the end.
“Where is Mark Torrey?” I asked Albert as I stepped over a fallen tree trunk.
He shook his head.
“Oh, come on, Albert. Give me a break. Who am I going to tell?”
“He’s in Europe.”
“Can you narrow it down some?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because he’s got my life in your hands from way far away. Do you always follow his orders? How did you get to this point, holding a gun on someone? I thought you were a lawyer, a do-gooder, didn’t you want to get into my mother’s firm?” I couldn’t stop once I started.
“I should kill you here,” he said, but kept moving. I could hear the traffic then, and I saw some hikers in the distance. I supposed if we could see them, they could hear the gun.
“No, really, Albert. What’s motivating you? You must be getting some huge stash of cash out of this. Do you really think Torrey will let you have it? Do you really think Torrey won’t sell you down the river if he gets caught?”
He stopped, the gun suspended in the air between us, his finger stretching toward the trigger. I took a deep breath. This was every public official’s dream: Kill the reporter before she writes again.
But I wasn’t about to get shot. So in a moment of pure adrenaline, I lunged toward him, pushing his arm with the gun perpendicular to my person. The gun went off as we fell, and I rolled slightly, slamming my head against a rock.
“Hey, what’s going on over there?” The shout came from somewhere to my left, and I heard Albert scramble up. I opened my eyes to see him looking around on the ground, but a rustle of leaves caused him to glance up and take off back in the direction from where we’d come.
I turned toward the sound of footsteps, glad that someone had shown up to thwart any further attempt on my life.
Actually, it was more than one person. It was a whole fucking pack of Cub Scouts. Albert would have a hard time explaining how a bunch of little midgets in blue uniforms and yellow neckties kept him from doing me in.
“Are you all right?” The Cub Scout leader was leaning over me, and I could smell onions on his breath. The pack was laying back, obviously not Boy Scout caliber just yet. “We heard a shot. No one’s supposed to hunt here.”
I couldn’t explain that I was the intended target, not some poor unfortunate deer.
I sat up, dazed, wet drops on my face. I wiped them off with my sleeve and saw that I was bleeding. No wonder those kids were uncertain about me. I must have looked like hell.
It was good to know that I wasn’t mortally wounded, and that my abductor was gone. But it wasn’t that good. I was still out here, in the woods, with these little people and a guy who needed to brush his teeth. Albert would probably be waiting for me back at my apartment, or, worse, Curtin would be there. I hadn’t liked the look in his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I managed to sputter.
“You’re bleeding.” He turned to one of the kids. “First-aid kit.”
I didn’t want one of these little Cub Scouts touching me, much less applying bandages and shit that he’d get some sort of badge for.
“I’m okay, really,” I insisted. “I just need to get back.” Back where, I wasn’t sure, but I wanted out of the forest and fast. The Cub Scouts would be useful in that, at least, since unless there was pavement and a street sign, I had no sense of direction.
I got to my feet slowly, my head feeling like a train was rumbling through it.
“Where’s your pack?” the Cub Scout leader asked.
I shook my head. “Never take one along.”
“You really should bring one, at least bring some water.” I could see all the little Scouts nodding in agreement. This is why I dropped out of Girl Scouts. I didn’t have the pack mentality.
“Is your car in the lot?”
I nodded. They didn’t need to know what my real story was. It was way too complicated even for me.
Albert was probably discovering at this very moment that he had my personal items, not the tapes he was looking for. Mark Torrey would be pretty pissed off at him for botching the job so completely, so maybe he’d plan his own escape. Maybe.
My brain was working in overdrive and it was tiring me out.
I concentrated on the trees as we hiked down. They all looked alike to me, big branches, some leaves. What was the appeal of “getting back to nature”? I just hoped I didn’t see any large insects or wild animals.
If Albert didn’t kill Melissa and Allison and Mark Torrey didn’t kill them, then who did? Was it really David Best? Was it his roommate, the guy with the mole? He had a history, at least with me. And he didn’t even know me. What was his relationship with Sarah? She told me outright she hated Melissa, but I didn’t really believe her. She’d said it to see my reaction, and she probably did hate her on one level. But on another level, it was just typical girl jealousy. She wanted to be the pretty one, not just the smart one.
Stream-of-consciousness can be a dangerous thing.
The Cub Scout leader was talking to me. “Didn’t you hear the shot?”
I nodded.
“So you were here hiking alone?” He didn’t believe me, and I guess I wouldn’t, either. I must have looked pretty dreadful, judging from the looks on those Scouts’ faces. Since I didn’t have a mirror, I could only suppose my hair was even worse than usual, I had blood on me, who knows just how much, and I was still healing from my first attempted abduction. Christ, what was it Vinny found attractive?
“I got lost,” I tried. “I came up here with, well, someone else, who left me here. Must be playing some sort of trick on me.” I tried to keep my voice light, even laughed a little, a high-pitched twitter that didn’t sound altogether human.
It worried them. I think they thought I was some sort of escapee, not necessarily a criminal, but a crazy person loose in the woods.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“Probably.” Why lie?
“Are you still bleeding?” He came over to me, his eyes studying the side of my head. “Pretty nasty, but I think it’s okay.”
Thank you, Marcus Welby, MD. Of course I’m dating myself. Anyone in her right mind would want George Clooney instead.
He stopped asking questions, and we hiked in silence, and somewhere along the line I noticed we were on a trail. I wished they would’ve given up one of those walking sticks. When I saw the parking lot, my first reaction was to sigh with relief. My second reaction was that I had no car here. I wasn’t quite sure how to explain that to the Scouts. But Quinnipiac University was right across the street, and I could find a phone there.
“Oh, my car’s over there.”
“Are you a professor?”
Too old to be mistaken for a student. Shit. I nodded.
I could see he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press me for any more information. I thanked my little saviors and, after checking the parking lot and road for the white Toyota, ran across the street to the campus. I had no clue where I was going. I turned a few heads until some real professor stopped and asked me what the hell I was doing there. In those words.
“I need to find a phone. Someone played a prank on me and left me in the park, wounded.”
“You should call the police.”
If I had a phone . . . well, it wouldn’t do me any good to piss off anyone else today, so I kept my mouth shut and followed him to a pay phone.
No quarters. There was a stack of them in my bag at the Laundromat. But my phone card pin number was committed to memory. I dialed the only number I knew I could.
“Can I speak to my mother?” I asked her secretary.
“She’s busy, Anne.”
“It’s an emergency. Please.”
Her hesitation proved my voice matched the situation. “Okay.”
I waited, but not as long as I thought I’d have to.
“What’s wrong, Annie?”
I burst into tears. How pathetic. But it was probably the worst day I’d ever had, outside of my wedding day eons ago, and I was way overstressed.
“Please calm down and tell me what’s wrong.” She was getting even more worried.
Finally I composed myself. “I need someone to come pick me up. I don’t want to tell you on the phone.”
“Where are you?”
“Quinnipiac University.”
“Why?”
“It’s a very long story. Drive into the entrance on Mount Carmel Avenue and I’ll come out to meet you.” I didn’t want to chance it that Albert and Nicholas were lurking.
I hung up the phone and ducked into a building and found a restroom. It was even more horrifying than I’d imagined. My hair hung in knots; leaves and tree branches stuck out among the splotches of blood, which covered one shoulder and the front of my sweatshirt, not to mention the sleeve I’d wiped my cheek with. I turned the water on and let it steam before plunging my hands in. I scrubbed my face and hair after getting the leaves out. A huge welt covered in blood was beneath my hair just over my ear, obviously where I’d come in contact with the rock.
When I was as clean as I could be considering the venue, I straightened myself up and walked out as if I always looked like shit.
The car pulled up about ten minutes later, and I stumbled toward it. My mother rushed out and took me into her arms. Sure, she’s a royal pain in the ass most of the time, but she’s still my mom and I know when I need her I can count on her to be there. I was settled into the front seat next to her before she asked me what happened.
In a rush, it all came out, the cows, Vinny, Tom, Dick Whitfield, being forced to take a vacation, my will, the tapes, my abduction and survival. I didn’t tell her about kissing Vinny, some things have to stay private, but telling her Tom broke up with me would elicit more sympathy, so I kept that in.
“I told you to be careful if you were going to pursue going after Mark Torrey,” was all she said at the end. It was pretty fucking anticlimactic, if you ask me.
“He’s going to kill me,” I said matter-of-factly. “And we really need to find Vinny.”
“They lied to you about Vinny.”
“What?”
“Mark Torrey does not have Vinny locked up somewhere. I just saw him not half an hour ago, he was in my office. He was looking for you.”
I felt like an idiot. “I can’t believe I bought Torrey’s story, but when Vinny didn’t show up when he said he would, I didn’t know what to think.”
“You had no idea Torrey was lying.”
“But then where the hell was Vinny all day?”
My mother sighed. “I’m sorry, dear, but that’s my fault. I asked him to check some city records online for me, about Lundgren’s redevelopment project. There might be a tie-in to the investment scam. I offered him the use of the firm’s computer system, so he didn’t have to go back to his office. Well, it took longer than he expected. He said he tried to call you, but your line was busy.”
Probably because I was talking to Mark Torrey about my laundry.
“You have to call Paula, you know,” she said. “She’s been looking for you, too.”
“Do you have your cell phone?”
She handed it to me and I dialed Paula’s number. Voice mail. I opted not to leave a message. “Maybe it would be a good idea if I stay missing for a while.”
“But she should know you’re all right, and obviously Mark Torrey isn’t showing up at your rendezvous.”
It sounded so clandestine. A rendezvous. Kind of like a ménage à trois. All those French words made life sound like one big orgasm.
“Why don’t I go to your house and clean up first? I can call her and Vinny from there,” I said.
“You might need a doctor.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. Really.” I didn’t feel much worse than I had the last couple of days.
She was looking at me with that I’m-your-mother-and-I-know-best look, but I stared her down.
“You need some clothes.” My mother’s eyes took in my bedraggled figure.
I thought a minute. “We can stop at the Gap, you can run in, grab a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. You can drop me at your house.”
I waited while she shopped for me. The last time my mother bought my clothes was when I was twelve.
I didn’t even look in the bag until I got into her house. She pecked me on the cheek and made me promise to call Paula. “If you don’t, I will,” she warned.
I shed my clothes, turned the hot water on in the shower, and stepped in, basking in the steam. I was beet red when I got out, but I felt human again. I opened the Gap bag and stared.
I’d told her a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
I stared at the gray wool slacks and pink sweater twin set like they were aliens. On the back of the sales slip she wrote, “You’ll look better in this.” I doubted it.
I pulled them on, having no choice since she and I were so different in size and I couldn’t take something from her closet. The slacks actually hung nicely, the sweater was soft. But when I stared in the mirror, my hair, bruised face, and sneakers made the whole thing look like the sham it was. I looked like a bag lady who’d just ripped off the local thrift shop.