Left for Dead (20 page)

“I don’t see him now,” she murmured. “I—I don’t know…”

“I’m on my way. Call the police.”

She heard a click on the other end of the line.

With a shaky hand, Claire pulled down on the phone cradle. She had to do it twice, before she got a dial tone. She glanced out the glass doors again. Something caught her eye, just on the other side of the glass, near the door handle. Claire gasped and hung up the phone.

It took her moment to realize that it was merely a piece of newspaper that had gotten swept up in the wind. It fluttered away.

Claire ran to the pantry closet, and dug out a baseball bat. Harlan coached little league, and the closet was crammed with sports equipment. The bat clutched in her hands, she went from window to window on the first floor.

She didn’t see anything. But Claire kept looking outside, knowing all the while he was somewhere out there, looking in.

Tim stepped into Al’s room and found the older cop, sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed. Al had his kicked off his shoes and pants. He still wore his undershorts, black socks, and lime-green short-sleeve shirt. He had pulled the knot of his clip-on tie down to loosen his collar button, and the tie was flapped over his tie clasp like a long, knotted tongue. Al’s color was so sallow, Tim thought he was going to pass out.

The older cop had just used the bathroom. It was obvious from the wall of stench that hit Tim when he opened the hotel room door. He could hear the toilet tank still refilling.

Al had first felt queasy when they’d stopped by the police station following breakfast. Tim had known it was serious when Al cut short his bull-session with the sheriff after only an hour. They’d hurried back to the hotel. Tim had gone to his own room to fetch something for Al’s stomach.

That was when he’d gotten the call from Claire.

He was grateful Al hadn’t locked his door. He couldn’t afford to wait. Every second counted.

“Al, listen, here’s that Pepto-Bismol,” Tim said hurriedly. He handed the bottle to him. He tried not to breathe in the foul air. “Keep it. I need the car. There’s an emergency at the Shaws’ house. Where are the keys?”

Al pointed to his rumpled pants on the floor. “Shit, I’m dying,” he moaned. He guzzled from the Pepto-Bismol bottle like a drunk beginning a bender.

Tim frantically hunted through the trouser pockets until he found the keys. “I’ll phone you from the Shaws’ house,” he said, rushing out the door.

Tim ran to the car. Once inside, he peeled out of the hotel lot. Clutching the steering wheel, his knuckles turned white. He pressed hard on the accelerator, and sped most of the way toward the Shaws’ house. Leaning on the horn, he passed two cars, and ran a red light. Every minute in the car was grueling. He didn’t think he’d reach Claire on time. She’d sounded so scared on the phone.

It started drizzling, and he switched on the windshield wipers. But he didn’t slow down.

The car tires screeched as he turned down Holms Drive, then wound along the cul de sac. He didn’t see a single police car in front of the house. And the place looked so dark, not one light was on.

He pulled over to the curb, and jumped out of the car.

Please, God, let her be okay,
he thought, running up the driveway. He didn’t know what he’d find in that house. Did Rembrandt have time to make her over? Or maybe she’d been abducted again, and all Tim would find was a pair of discarded panties.

He pounded on the door, then tried the knob. Locked. He kept banging against the door, thinking all the while he was too late.

Tim stepped back, and glanced around. There had to be another way into the house. How had Rembrandt gotten in?

He stepped down from the front stoop. Just then, the door opened. Claire stood at the threshold with a baseball bat in her hand. She wore a blue bathrobe, and her hair was in tangles. “Oh, Tim, thank God,” she whispered.

She dropped the baseball bat, then rushed into his arms. Startled, Tim held onto her. He could feel her trembling.

“Are you okay?” Tim asked. “Where is he?”

“I’m all right,” she said in a small voice. She was crying. He felt her tears against the side of his neck. After a moment, her soft lips brushed against him there. Almost involuntarily, Tim held her tighter. He stroked her damp hair.

Eyes downcast, Claire pulled away. “Sorry,” she murmured, touching her mouth. “I—I just saw him for a second, out by the woods in the backyard. I think he ran off.”

“Did you call the police?” Tim glanced past her, at the open front door and the darkness inside. “What happened to the lights?”

Claire wiped the tears from her eyes, and let out a sad, little laugh. “Do you know how to change a fuse?”

Claire watched him through the sliding glass doors.

She’d run upstairs and quickly thrown on her clothes. Linda was due over at any minute. It wouldn’t have looked so good with her in her bathrobe and nothing else, and this handsome young cop paying a visit.

While pulling her damp hair back into a ponytail, she gazed out at the backyard. Like Tim, she carefully studied the woods for a sign of her secret admirer. She didn’t see anyone amid the trees and wild, overgrown shrubbery. Then again, that army fatigue jacket probably camouflaged him very well.

Tim stood at the edge of the forest area. He glanced her way, then gave a little wave.

Claire waved back.

She couldn’t believe she’d actually kissed him. It was only on the neck, but it was a kiss just the same. She’d been so caught up in the moment, and so relieved to see him, she wasn’t thinking. Still, if Sheriff Klauser or Deputy Landers were coming to her rescue, she wouldn’t have hugged or kissed them. It was just plain inappropriate.

Tim probably thought she was crazy, calling him up and screaming that someone was in her yard. She wondered if he really believed her about the stocking cap man.

Claire put on her trenchcoat, and grabbed an umbrella, then she stepped out the sliding glass door. She started across the lawn. Tim had been looking down at the ground, but now he glanced up at her.

“Do you have a camera I could use?” he called.

She stopped, and nodded.

“And a ruler or a yard stick?”

Claire retreated back into the house. She found a plastic ruler in the kitchen junk drawer, along with a disposable camera that had come free with a box of Crest White Strips. She brought them out to Tim. “You can keep the camera if you want,” she said. “It was free and hasn’t been used yet. Did you find something?”

“Yeah, footprints,” Tim said, pointing to the muddy ground.

Claire gazed down at the tracks. At least, she wasn’t crazy.

“I need to take pictures before the rain washes away these prints,” Tim explained. “Al might want to get a team over here to comb through these woods. This guy could have tossed away a cigarette butt, a gum wrapper, or something.”

Numbly, Claire watched Tim set the ruler by the footprints in the mud. She held the umbrella over his head while he took photos of the tracks.

Back inside, Tim tried to phone Al at the hotel. But the hotel operator didn’t answer.

He called Sheriff Klauser and reported that Claire had spotted someone in the backyard. “Possibly a prowler,” Claire heard him say into the phone. “Possibly Rembrandt.” He passed along the description she’d given him of the stocking cap man. “I think he might still be in the general vicinity,” Tim reported.

After he hung up the phone, Tim told her that the sheriff would patrol the area for her elusive stalker.

Upstairs, in the bathroom, Tim used a pair of rubber-handled pliers to unplug the hair dryer. He found exposed wires in the cord, near the plug, but couldn’t tell if the damage had been done before or after the dryer short-circuited.

“So this might not have been an accident?” Claire asked apprehensively.

He caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“Do you think my husband set it up?”

He shook his head. “I really don’t know, Claire. I can’t tell.”

He wrapped the cord around the hair dryer handle. “Let’s look at the fuse box. Where is it? In the basement?”

A flashlight in his hand, Tim started down the dark basement stairs. They couldn’t ignore the possibility that the stocking cap man had climbed through one of the basement windows and was waiting down there.

In the darkness, Claire hovered behind Tim. She kept one hand on the railing, and the other on his shoulder. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Tim shined the light along the wood paneled wall. He directed the beam to an easel with one of Claire’s paintings on it. “What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s nothing.” She nodded toward a door at their right. “The fuse box is there in the furnace room.”

Claire clung to his arm as they entered the darkened room. The flashlight’s beam cut through the blackness. Again, Tim aimed it along the wall, and the shadowy nooks behind the furnace. Claire showed him the fuse box.

He gave her the flashlight, and she directed it on the panel while he fiddled with a couple of switches. Claire kept her other hand on his shoulder. She was so afraid of being separated from him in this blackness.

Maybe it was the darkness and being scared that brought it on. But suddenly, Claire remembered lying across the backseat of a car. It was night. Her hands and feet were tied. Someone had slapped a piece of heavy tape across her mouth. She remembered breathing through her nose, and listening to the constant purr of the car engine. She’d been drugged, and couldn’t struggle or fight. All she could do was lie there. She watched fractured fragments of light coming through the side and rear windows—headlights from passing cars, and illuminated street signs. But most of the time, she was engulfed in darkness.

Tim flicked a switch. Claire noticed a dim light filtering through from the other room. It came from the kitchen upstairs. She moved into the rec room and turned on the overhead. “You fixed it,” she announced.

Tim stepped into the paneled rec room. Tiffany’s doll house was in one corner, along with some other toys. Claire’s paintings occupied the other corner. The one on the easel was a half-finished rendering of a woman sitting alone at a bus stop. Tim stared at it. “God, this is really good,” he murmured.

“Thanks. It’s been sitting there a few months,” Claire admitted. “That poor woman’s been waiting for the bus forever.”

Tim noticed a group of paintings leaning against the wall, one in front of the other. “Can I have a look?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was going to sell those at the local art fairs. The first couple of months, I actually sold a few to some tourists, another that’s now hanging in my dentist’s waiting room, and two more to Harlan’s friend, Walt. But Harlan thought it was a little undignified, and this part-time job opened up in the chemical plant’s accounting department. The money’s more steady.”

“These are fantastic,” Tim said, sifting through the pile of canvases. “I can’t believe your husband made you quit.”

“Well, he didn’t exactly
make
me,” Claire heard herself say. She remembered thinking at the time that it wouldn’t kill her to go along with what Harlan wanted for a while. She had tried the same reasoning with Brian.

“You know, I’m an artist myself.” Tim shrugged. “Well, actually a
semiartist.
I do cartoons.”

“What kind? You mean like political cartoons?”

He shrugged. “Well, sometimes they’re political. I have a comic strip that runs in a little Seattle weekly newspaper—and in a couple of other cities. It’s called
The Adventures of Private Eye Guy.”

“You mean in
The Sounder?
That’s you? You’re Tim Timster?”

He nodded. “None of the guys on the force know. I can’t believe you get
The Sounder
here.”

“Oh, when we were living in Seattle, Brian got hooked on
Private Eye Guy.
He subscribed to
The Sounder,
and had it mailed here.” She pointed to a half-open door at the other end of the rec room. “He’s got copies in his bedroom, right there.
Tim Timster.
I can’t believe that’s you.” Claire let out a little laugh. “Now, I know why I felt this connection with you.” She started to reach out and touch his arm, but hesitated.

He was gazing at her, and she could tell, he wanted to reach out to her as well.

“I—I guess we should go upstairs, huh?” she whispered.

He nodded, but didn’t move. “Claire?” he said finally. “I felt a connection too. But you’re married, and I—”

The doorbell rang.

Claire sighed. “That must be Linda.”

She gave Tim a sad smile, and gently put her hand against the side of his face. “Thanks for—being such a gentleman, Tim.”

The doorbell rang again. Claire turned and started up the stairs.

Linda frowned at Claire, then at Tim. “Did you call Harlan at the plant and tell him what happened?”

“Not yet, Linda,” Claire replied. “We phoned Sheriff Klauser. All this happened less than ten minutes ago. In fact, Tim—Officer Sullivan and I were just downstairs getting the electricity turned back on when you rang.”

Linda gave Tim a wary sidelong glance as Claire mentioned him by his first name.

Claire waved her friend into the kitchen. “C’mon in and pour yourself a cup of coffee. I think it’s still warm. The power wasn’t out that long. I’ll call Harlan right now, if you’ll excuse me.” She picked up the phone in the breakfast nook, and started dialing.

Linda poured a cup of coffee. She leaned against the counter and glared at Tim. “Lucky you just happened to be passing by,” she muttered.

Tim shook his head. “No, it’s like Mrs. Shaw told you. She called me, and I drove over from the hotel.”

“Funny that she’d call you, and not the police or her husband,” Linda said.

“I
am
the police,” Tim replied. “My partner and I are here specifically for Mrs. Shaw’s protection. It’s not so funny, Mrs. Castle.”

Claire kept the conversation with Harlan brief. Tim overheard her say—three times—that she was all right. Claire hung up and announced that Harlan was on his way.