Dark Dreamer (16 page)

“Where’s Vernell?” Cara knelt on the seat and wiped the fog from the rear window.

Phoebe contemplated going all vague on her, but Cara could tell when she was lying. “In that SUV.” She pointed to the Explorer.

Cara looked satisfied. “Good. This is exactly the right place to be, then.”

“Whatever.” Phoebe knew better than to argue when Cara’s stubborn streak took over. Secretly, she was pleased. She wanted to see what happened, too.
Just hold on, June.
She hurled the thought into the ether, hoping it would find the woman trapped in the cage. “I hope they shoot him dead,” she said.

Cara cast a startled look her way. “Unusually bloodthirsty for you, sweetie.”

“He doesn’t deserve to live.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Cara stiffened. “Oh shit, Vernell’s getting out of the car. He’s probably coming to give us an earful.”

“No. He’s going over there.”

Phoebe scrambled onto her knees and peered out the back window with Cara. As Vernell crossed the road, five men in body armor ran around the front of the house. He pressed the door bell and waited, then pressed it a couple more times. The seconds crawled by, then he made some kind of signal, and heavily armed men with shields converged from all directions, running, crouching, guns at the ready. Vernell stepped back from the door, stood to one side, and took a gun from beneath his coat. At his command, a group of agents jogged up the front steps and flattened the door inward with a battering ram. Phoebe heard shouts of “FBI,” and the agents stormed the house.

“God, I wish I could get footage of this,” Cara said. Heedless of the danger, she wound down the side window and stuck her head out.

Phoebe looked at her watch. It was now 4:30 pm. The guy they were after would be here any minute. She gazed at the house, astonished to see armed FBI agents materializing from nowhere. About ten of them with enormous guns ran past the car and took up firing positions behind several cars grouped on the other side of the road. Where were all the residents?

“I guess everyone’s been told to stay indoors.” Cara answered the question as if she’d had exactly the same thought.

“Get your head in the car,” Phoebe urged. “What if there’s shooting?”

As if to support her plea, a sharp knocking sound shook the Chrysler, and Cara dived back inside, yelping, “What was that?”

They both craned around. A black-clad agent opened the driver’s door and stuck his head in. “Ms. Golden. The SAC wants you.”

“Now?”

“Right away. Put this on.” He thrust a bulletproof vest over the seat as if Phoebe would know what to do with it.

Cara took the vest and tugged it down over Phoebe’s head. It was amazingly light.

“Are you sure this stops bullets?” Phoebe asked.

The agent gave her a patient look. “Let’s go, ma’am.”

They ran across the road and into the tree belt, then up to the house. Phoebe steeled herself, expecting to be sent away from the scene in disgrace. There was probably a little old lady living there who had now dropped dead of a heart attack. The basement probably had nothing in it but a few mice hiding from the cold and some dusty old walking frames. Countless FBI personnel had traveled here on taxpayers’ dollars. What if it was all for nothing?

Vernell was waiting inside the front door. As soon as she got inside, several agents propped the door back into its frame. Vernell took Phoebe’s elbow and guided her through a group of his colleagues. To her surprise some of them were women, and she felt a little silly, having assumed everyone carrying a gun must be male.

Someone shouted, “Upper level secure.”

Another shout. “Take up positions.”

“Did you find her?” Phoebe asked.

“The cage is empty.” Vernell sounded strained.

“Empty?”

The full meaning of that simple answer loomed like a fog bank before her. They were too late. June had been alive, unlike the others, and Phoebe had failed her. Tears blurred her vision. Had he killed her last night after she and Iris visited? Had he sensed something, smelled impending danger like an animal?

“She has to be here somewhere,” Vernell said bleakly. “You saw him last night and so did the next-door neighbor. He went to work as usual this morning. He hasn’t had an opportunity to dump the body yet.”

“That’s why you want me here. To speak to her now that she’s dead—to find her?” Phoebe felt a crushing sadness.

“Do you need your sister?”

She didn’t, but the thought of Cara out there in a car if there was some kind of gun fight made her nervous. “Yes, if she could be here afterward.”

Vernell said something to one of his team and led Phoebe to a door at the rear of the house. “I’m sorry you have to see this,” he told her.

The room was lit by a single fluorescent tube dangling from a low ceiling. An ozone layer of terror and despair hung in the air, mingling with the stench of urine and feces. Phoebe covered her mouth and nose. Her flesh crawled as they approached the cage. She took in chains, bloody bedding, empty plastic water bottles.

“He’ll be coming home soon,” she said, sickened.

“You’ve nothing to fear. We’ll have him as soon as he steps out of his van.”

“We could do this later, if you want,” she suggested, needing to get back outdoors. “I mean, after he’s been arrested.”

Vernell shook his head. “Once the forensics team is in here, we won’t have access for some time.” There was unmistakable urgency in his tone.

Responding to it, Phoebe entered the cage and felt her breath cramp in her lungs. Her legs folded and she sank onto the filthy blanket. She was freezing cold. Hunching into a corner, she pulled the blanket around her and stared at a small grille high on the opposite wall. Through it she could see the sky fading as dusk approached. She stared at this tiny slice of the outside world until exhaustion made her lie down. Her eyelids drooped and merciful darkness claimed her. She would refuse to wake, she thought. To be awake was to know, and to know was unbearable.

Powerful hands gripped her shoulders. She lay limp, refusing to be present in her body. She could hear a male voice, but it seemed far away. Her head jerked to one side and a searing pain made her gasp.

“Yeah.” The voice grew closer. “That’s right, bitch. You don’t get to choose when you get lucky.”

Pain radiated from her center, sucking at her like a riptide, and she imploded into an agony so intense, all she could do was surrender to its terrible power. Then she was aware of being dragged, her bare heels moving across cold steel wire before scraping on concrete.

“You’re going to spend some time thinking about how you’re gonna make this up to me tomorrow, or it’s over. If there’s one thing I don’t have to put up with, it’s a boring bitch who can’t talk nice when the man of the house gets in from work. Understand?”

She was lifted then and dumped into a cold hard box. A loud metallic bang made her open her eyes. There was no light. She wanted to move but she couldn’t. All she could do was breathe. In some strange way the darkness and the silence, and the metal walls around her, felt safe. Safer than the cage. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she thought of her mother.

Warm arms held her suddenly. A hand stroked her hair. Phoebe opened her eyes and stared up at Vernell. She summoned her voice from deep within the prison of her chest. “I know where she is.”

Vernell helped her out of the cage and Phoebe led him across the concrete floor to a shadowy corner of the room. He scanned the area with his flashlight, finally training the beam on a long steel rifle box.

“Jesus,” he choked out.

Leaving Phoebe standing in the shadows, he ran to the bottom of the stairs and bellowed, “Get some bolt cutters down here.”

Within seconds a powerfully built agent appeared. Vernell shone the flashlight down onto a padlock, and the agent snapped this off effortlessly. Thrusting his flashlight at Phoebe, Vernell wrenched open the lid and frantically placed a hand on the neck of the naked woman inside.

“She’s alive!” His cry was shrill. “Paramedics!”

Disbelieving, Phoebe stared at the motionless woman, then reached inside and took an icy hand in her own. “You’re safe now, June,” she said.

June’s eyes opened, blinking against the light. She didn’t say a word, but the fingers in Phoebe’s grip fluttered.

CHAPTER NINE

Rowe dropped a servants’ pay book on the coffee table in front of her and adjusted up the sound on her TV so she could watch the evening news. As always, she wondered why she bothered. She could have written the items ahead of time herself—the daily insurgent car bombs in Iraq, the latest football celebrity rape accusations and Hollywood couple splits.

She shared some nachos with Jessie and Zoe and stared gloomily at the photo of Juliet Baker. The Disappointed Dancer was a poor substitute for Phoebe and Cara. It had only been a few days, but Rowe missed her neighbors. Trying not to fall in love with either of them sure as hell made life interesting.

A sound bite called her attention back to the screen and she cranked up the volume. The caption read
FBI Arrests Alleged Serial Killer.
A reporter at the scene breathlessly recounted how a New Hampshire house was stormed and a woman rescued alive. An African American FBI agent in a fine tailored suit gave a brief interview. The camera panned around milling feds in body armor and showed a big guy with a crew cut being led off in handcuffs.

Some kind of scuffle ensued when the suspect kicked one of the feds. The camera man rushed in for a closer shot. As the camera jerked its way toward the action, Rowe was startled to see Phoebe and Cara standing on the sidelines next to the tailored agent who gave the interview. The camera was only on them for a moment, but there was no mistaking the Temple twins.

Suddenly the name she had seen flashed on the screen minutes earlier registered fully. Special Agent In Charge Vernell Jefferson. Was this the same Vernell who sent flowers to Phoebe? It had to be. So the gesture was work related, a thank-you from her boss. Rowe cast her mind back to a conversation she’d had with her neighbors before they left for Quantico. They’d made it sound like Phoebe had a few boring meetings to attend and Cara was going sightseeing. Obviously Phoebe had downplayed her involvement in a big investigation.

Rowe was impressed. Her neighbor could not be entirely flaky if she was at the scene when an arrest was made in a high-profile case. But what was Cara doing there? Rowe could not imagine that the FBI allowed friends and family of staff to tag along for the ride. Intrigued, she thought about calling Cara on her cell phone. The day they’d left Islesboro, Cara had given Rowe a set of house keys and her cell phone number in case of an emergency. At the time, Rowe had sensed an unspoken invitation.

Did she want to hook up with Cara? How would Phoebe react if her sister and Rowe got involved? She depended on Cara a great deal. Would she see a lover as some kind of threat? Were the twins single because introducing third parties into their dynamic was a nightmare? Entirely possible. And Rowe could live without that kind of drama, thank you.

Steering her mind away from temptation, she picked up the servants’ pay book once more and returned to the pages that had caught her eye earlier. Becky O’Halloran had started work for the Bakers in 1910. One of several servants, she was paid $5.50 a week plus food and accommodation, good money for the time, according to the comments written in the front of the book, presumably by Mrs. Baker. Servants’ wages had gone up because employers suddenly had to compete for staff with hundreds of new factories. The cook earned more than twice as much, Rowe noted. The Bakers didn’t have a large staff at their summer home—no housekeeper or butler. They appeared to employ the cook’s husband for odd jobs, and there were two other maids, both paid even less than Becky.

The last time Becky had signed the pay book was on December 7, 1912, just two days before Juliet was found dead in the snow. In the first entry for 1913, someone had written “O’Halloran no longer in service.”

What was the significance of the maid’s disappearance and what, if anything, did it have to do with Juliet’s death? Had Becky run off with Juliet’s lover? Rowe doubted it—if the guy had planned to marry Juliet in the hopes of money, he certainly wouldn’t elope with a servant. Maybe she’d left for the reason many housemaids did back then, dismissal when they fell pregnant to their master. If old man Baker had fathered a child with the widow next door, maybe he was also unfaithful to his wife with the servants. Had the lady of the house found out and sacked Becky? That was the norm in those days.

Perhaps Becky had disappeared to the nearest big city in the hopes of getting rid of the “problem.” Had she suffered a backstreet abortion and died, as thousands in her situation did? If so, that would explain why her mother had never heard from her again. Rowe pictured a frightened young woman collecting a month’s pay and leaving Islesboro on her way to an unknown fate. How did she get where she was going? Had she walked in the snow to the village? Surely not. Someone must have picked her up. That’s why people had assumed a young man was involved.

So, on December 8, finding her maid had vanished, Juliet had wandered from the house. Was she looking for her? Did she play some kind of role in Becky’s departure? Were the two youngest women in the household allies across the barriers of class? Had they come up with a plan together only to have it go wrong? Was Juliet actually trying to run away when she crept out into the merciless winter that night?