DIVA (37 page)

“ASAP. Anything you get on Benjamin Stoltz will be a huge help.”

“Right.” And after a moment’s hesitation, “Be careful, Frank.”

“I will. Call me soon as you get anything.”

______

Thirty minutes later he stood at the foot of Belinda’s bed, his gut churning worse than before. Tangled sheets lay in a heap at the foot of the bed. Five minutes ago a SWAT team had powered their way into her house. Nobody home, no sign of a struggle anywhere. And no tips from the bulletin Vobitch had given the radio and TV stations about an armed man with a female hostage driving a white Ford E-series van.

Morgan Vobitch stomped into the room, his head thrust forward like a silvery-haired buffalo, his face a study in frustration. “Dirty skillet in the sink, two mugs on the table, looks like they had breakfast. Fucker might have been here a while.”

He didn’t want to think about what that meant. They left the bedroom and went downstairs. Voices floated through the house, members of the SWAT team and other police officers. When they entered the kitchen, a crime scene technician was dusting Belinda’s butcher-block table for prints. Two ceramic mugs in clear plastic evidence bags stood on the kitchen counter. A Teflon-coated frying pan with bits of egg sat in the sink.

The sight of it made him sick. Rejected stalkers were unpredictable. Volatile and dangerous. Silverman had broken into Belinda’s house and forced her to cook breakfast for him. Had poisoned Ziegler for firing him. Given the slightest provocation, he’s kill Belinda too.

But why hadn’t he killed her here?

“He must have heard what I said to her,” Frank said. “He knows we’re onto him. He’s taking her someplace so he can fuck with her.”

Vobitch raked fingers through his thatch of silvery hair. “Yeah, but where? Maybe someone will spot the van and call us.”

Frank’s cell rang. He checked the ID and answered.

“I just talked to the sister,” Kelly said. “Benjamin is her brother, but she said they’re not close. She hasn’t seen him in years.”

“What about the rest of the family? Any other siblings?”

“No, just the two of them. Rachel said her mother died in 1990.”

“Her mother died of what?” he said, eyeing Vobitch, who was listening intently.

“Parkinson’s Disease. Rachel said she’d been in a wheelchair for years.”

“What about the father?”

“When I asked if Carl Stoltz was her father, she hemmed and hawed at first. After I pressed her, she admitted he was. But he’s dead, too. Rachael said he died six years ago in 2000.”

“She tell you how the father died?” he said, eyeing Vobitch.

“She said he was an alcoholic. This family is royally fucked up.”

“Her brother is that’s for sure. What else did she say?”

“She kept asking why I was calling her. I said we needed to get in touch with Benjamin. I asked for his phone number, but she said she didn’t have it. Sorry I couldn’t get more.”

A cloud of disappointment engulfed him. “Thanks Kelly. You did what you could.”

“What’s the situation there?”

“The house is empty. No sign of a struggle. They’re gone.”

“Not good,” Kelly said.

“Not good,” he echoed. “Gotta go. Keep in touch.”

To Vobitch he said, “Kelly talked to the sister. Not much help there. Both parents are dead. She’s not in touch with the brother.”

Vobitch raked his fingers through his hair. “So now we wait.”

Acid chewed his gut. Waiting was not an option.

Silverman had Belinda. He would torture and rape her first.

Then he would kill her.

CHAPTER 38

She wiped herself with the toilet paper he’d given her, grateful for an amenity she normally took for granted. But nothing was normal now. He’d told her not to flush the toilet. The water was disconnected. No electricity either. The hot humid air inside the bathroom reeked of mold, and the sweatshirt she’d pulled over her pajama top gave off the sour stink of fear.

She wished she’d put on sensible clothes and shoes, but she’d been too terrified. He had threatened to put her in his van in her pajamas if she didn’t dress fast enough. He didn’t even have the decency to let her change in the bathroom, so she’d slipped her feet into the worn leather sandals she used for slippers and pulled a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts over her baby-dolls.

The man was insane. Shaving his head. Wearing black paramilitary garb like a soldier in a war movie. But this wasn’t a movie. It was real. Tears stung her eyes. The thirteenth anniversary of the accident that killed her family had brought nothing but disaster. Her premonition was about to come true: She would die before achieving her musical goals like her brother.

She struggled to calm herself. She had to escape. Five minutes ago when he’d dragged her inside through a side door, sullen gray clouds obscured the sun. A fence bordering the driveway blocked any view of the adjacent house. This one, a two-story structure with a central staircase, had been gutted. A five-foot-high watermark from the Katrina floodwaters darkened the mold-blackened studs, and debris littered the floor of the uninhabited house.

Uninhabited. She shuddered. That’s why Silverman had chosen it.

If she screamed would anyone hear?

Every muscle in her body ached. Her fingers were shards of ice and her mouth felt like burnt toast. She ran her tongue over her teeth, trying to get rid of the disgusting taste, and stared at her image in the grime-streaked mirror over the sink. Tangled hair and sallow cheeks, barely visible in the faint light filtering through a frosted-glass window high on the wall beside the toilet.

Maybe she could break the window and escape.

“Hurry up, Belinda. I’m waiting for you.”

His sing-song voice, outside the door. No way could she break the window, climb through it and run. He would hear the glass break and catch her before she could escape. She didn’t dare make him angry. If she did, he might watch her the next time she used the bathroom.

She opened the door. Her stomach lurched.

Her captor was leaning against a stud opposite the door, leering at her. “Too bad your boyfriend called. We could have had our fun at your house.”

She tried to swallow, but her mouth was a thick ball of cotton.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

His eyes blinked slowly like a Gila monster. “Seems like you’ve got lots of boyfriends. Renzi, for one. Who was the guy at the train station?”

“Train station?” What was he talking about?

“The good-looking young guy with the dark hair and beard.”

Sweat trickled down her back. He had followed her to the train station on Saturday morning. “That was Dean Silva, Jake’s partner.”

“Partner? Ziegler was gay?” said the man who called himself Barry Silverman. The man Frank said was Benjamin Stoltz. Rachel Stoltz’s brother.

“Yes.” Her legs trembled and her body sagged. She gripped the doorjamb to keep from falling.

“You look kinda shaky, Belinda. Come sit down and tell me about Jake and his faggot partner.” Gesturing for her to walk in front of him.

Bile rose in her throat. The last time she walked in front of him she had wound up on the floor. Vile memories assaulted her. His disgusting tongue in her mouth. His fingers probing her crotch. His rubbery-red lips kissing her.

He was crazy. Crazy enough to kill her. She had to get away.

“Could I please have some water? I’m very thirsty.”

His pale blue eyes hardened. “I’ll get you some water in a minute. Go.”

She walked down the hall, eyes focused on the floor to make sure she didn’t trip. A creepy sensation crawled down her neck: his evil presence behind her. At the end of the hall she entered a large open space.

Venetian blinds covered windows on two of the walls. In the center of the concrete slab floor, two boxy chairs without legs faced each other, the foam-filled kind that unfolded into beds. When she was at Juilliard she’d bought one in case a friend wanted to stay over.

No one had. She’d had no friends at Juilliard, only competitors.

He shoved her toward one of the chairs. She sank down on it, grateful to rest. Grateful he hadn’t unfolded the chairs into beds. Grateful he wasn’t asking her to kiss him. Or worse.

He strode to a Styrofoam ice chest on the floor, raised the lid and took out two bottles of water. Beside the ice chest was a large olive-green knapsack. An ugly-looking rifle stood in the corner, its muzzle aimed at the ceiling. It looked like the ones she’d seen terrorists use on TV. A sick feeling soured her stomach. She knew he had a knife. Now she knew he had a rifle.

Maybe he had other weapons. She didn’t want to think about what weapons he had. Or what he might do with them.

He came over and handed her a bottle of water. “There you go, Belinda. All the comforts of home.” He sat down on the other chair and stared at her.

“Thank you.” With trembling hands, she unscrewed the cap.

“Barry. Did you forget my name?” His pale blue eyes bored into her, laser-beams of anger.

“No, Barry, I didn’t forget.” She gulped some water. She had to be smart, had to placate him. Had to take his mind off sex.

“Tell me how you learned to play the piano so well . . . Barry.”

His eyes lit up and he smiled. “You really think I play well?”

“Very well. Where did you study?”

“I started lessons when we lived in Rhode Island,” he said, nodding his head as if he were listening to some sort of music.

“Whereabouts in Rhode Island?”
Keep him talking.

“Just a rinky-dink little town. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.”

“Was that where you and Rachael—” She stopped.

He gazed at her, expressionless. “You remember Rachael, huh?”

She forced a smile, worked hard to make it seem genuine. “You must have started young, playing as well as you do.”

“Rachael started violin when she was five.” He smiled, but his pale-blue eyes were cold and full of rage. “I didn’t start till I was ten. If I’d started at five, I might have been another Van Cliburn. He started piano when he was three, soloed with the Houston Symphony when he was twelve. You think I’d have been as good as Cliburn?” He held up his hands and spread his fingers. “I can reach and octave and a half.”

She didn’t want to look at his fingers, didn’t want to remember them probing her crotch. Without thinking, she said, “Cliburn was a natural.”

And silently cursed herself for the careless remark.

His smile disappeared. “That’s what they said about Rachael. Bullshit. She’s nothing like you, Belinda. You put your heart and soul into the music. Rachael’s got no heart. Got no soul either.”

What an odd remark.
It sounded like he hated his sister. Why was that, she wondered. And realized he was staring at her, waiting for her to speak. “You started piano lessons when you were ten?”

“Bet your ass I did. Ma got me a teacher. Pa didn’t like it. He loved listening to Rachael play. She was way ahead of me, years of lessons and a prodigy to boot. Pa used to call me a sissy. Boys aren’t supposed to play piano, they’re supposed to play with—”

He gulped some water and gazed at her, expressionless.

“You went to school in Rhode Island?” Anything to keep him talking. Her hands dampened with sweat. She had to kill time until someone rescued her. But how would they find her? Even if Frank understood the clue she’d given him about the whisper, he would be looking for Silverman’s white van.

But his van wasn’t white now, it was black.

“Yes, and it sucked. All the kids in my school were stupid. They hated classical music. They were into country.
Hee-haw
!”

His sing-song voice was driving her crazy, and no one was going to save her from him. She had to save herself. And she would. Or die trying. Anger welled up inside her. She would not allow this evil man to defeat her. She knew how to manage fear, had done it many times. She focused on her breathing, took deep breaths down to her diaphragm. Her heartbeat slowed.

“Later we moved to Boston,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Rachael had a great violin teacher. She got into the New England Conservatory prep division when she was ten. Not me. Daddy-O said I wasn’t good enough.”

“Were your parents musical?”

He burst out laughing. “Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” He stared into the distance, seemingly lost in thought. “On Saturdays me and Ma used to listen to the Met Opera on the radio.”

“What about your father? What did he do for a living?”

Fury darkened his face. “None of your fucking business.”

She reeled back as though he had slapped her. One minute he was laughing, the next he was an enraged bull.

He brayed a laugh. “Gol-ly! That wasn’t very nice of me, was it? Here you are asking about my family, and I go and bite your head off.”

He rose and extended his hand. “Come on. Let’s have some fun.”

Her mind flooded with vile images, and her heart pounded her ribs like a panic-stricken animal.

CHAPTER 39

Albert Schumacher raised one slat of the Venetian blind and studied the black van in Joe Landry’s driveway across the street. Joe and the missus had flown to Chicago to escape Katrina, paid a contractor to gut their house, said they’d never be back. It wasn’t on the market yet. Last week when Joe called, he’d said he was waiting on the Road Home people to settle their claim.

Twelve houses on their block had taken five feet of water. Now only three were occupied, so Albert had to stay vigilant, looters roaming around looking for vacant homes to rob. Here it was broad daylight and some thug was in Joe’s house doing God knows what.

He went to the hall closet and got out his shotgun. He might be seventy-two, but he was no pushover, not with his Winchester Select Model 101 with the lightweight barrels and the brass-bead front sight. He took the shotgun in the kitchen, poured himself another cup of coffee and glanced at the small TV on the counter. He kept it on all day, tuned to a local channel, the voices keeping him company.