The Last Dead Girl (36 page)

T
he traffic lights were dead along Erie Boulevard. Emergency crews had put up temporary stop signs at the intersections. The rain battered them and the wind threatened to topple them over. We made slow progress heading east toward Bloomfield Street.

Warren Finn had kept to himself ever since I told him about Neil Pruett. But when we pulled up to one of the stop signs—wipers slapping at the rain, a lost umbrella blowing through the street—he broke his silence.

“We should have the gun,” he said.

He meant the Makarov pistol. I could think of lots of reasons why we shouldn't have it: Warren might be a little too eager to use it. Neil Pruett could be innocent. Even if we had it, we'd be foolish to rely on it. I'd never tested it. I didn't know if it would fire.

On the other hand, if Pruett was guilty, then he had a gun of his own—the one he took from Simon Lanik. The mate of the one that was resting in the middle drawer of Jana's desk.

“We can get the gun,” I said to Warren, “but I'm holding on to it.”

“Whatever you say.”

I turned north at the next intersection and we made a detour to Jana's apartment.

•   •   •

T
wenty-five minutes later, when we came at last to Bloomfield Street, a strobe of lightning lit the sky. We rolled past the pale blue house and there was a car at the curb in front, but it wasn't Neil Pruett's.

The time was well after midnight. I parked the truck down the block. Warren and I walked calmly through the wind and rain. We had our flashlights and I had the gun in my pocket. I also had a steel pry bar from the bed of the truck. I carried the pry bar for the same reason I carried the gun: just in case.

Dark houses all around us. Windows like empty eye sockets. We climbed onto the porch of the pale blue house and knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again.

“He could be sleeping,” I said.

Warren looked skeptical. “Do you think he's sleeping?”

“I think he's not home.”

Warren reached for the pry bar and I let him take it. He worked the end into the seam between the door and the jamb, just above the level of the lock. One hard shove was all it needed.

Inside, we turned on our flashlights. There were pillar candles on a coffee table, recently extinguished. Their blackened wicks floated up from pools of liquid wax. I motioned for Warren to keep still. We listened. No sound but the storm.

Warren aimed his light at a mirror leaning against a wall. The beam shifted higher and found a series of small holes punched in the drywall—arranged in three lines to make a letter K.

“That's not normal,” he said.

I noted the bow on the sofa. Two wineglasses on the coffee table. I beckoned to Warren and we moved together through the house, keeping our flashlights aimed at the floor.

Dining room. Kitchen. Dirty dishes overflowed the sink and filled the counter. We moved upstairs. Three bedrooms. Two abandoned, one in use. An unmade bed. Clothes tossed around carelessly. I looked under the pillows, felt under the mattress, opened the drawers of the night table, thinking I might find Simon Lanik's pistol. I didn't find it.

We went down to the basement last. Boxes and old furniture. A file cabinet. No torture chamber. No evidence that a killer lived in this house.

We returned to the first floor. Warren drifted away from me. I aimed my light around the living room, thinking. The candles on the coffee table suggested that we had missed Neil Pruett by mere minutes.

He must have had a good reason to venture out on a night like this.

I wandered into the kitchen and found Warren snooping through the drawers and cupboards.

“You're leaving fingerprints,” I said.

He sighed a put-upon sigh. Grabbed a dish towel and started wiping down knobs and handles. I looked around for something that might tell me where Pruett had gone.

Warren finished with the towel and tossed it over the back of a chair. His flashlight beam played across the kitchen table. He aimed it at the refrigerator door, at the trash bin.

I stood by the counter and the soles of my feet hurt. The small of my back too—the place where the bull had gored me. I thought I'd left the bull behind, but I had a feeling he wasn't very far away. He was here, in this house.

Warren had left one of the drawers half open. I pointed my flashlight inside and saw silver: knives and forks. And something not silver.

I opened the drawer all the way. Removed a small cardboard box. Emptied it onto the counter.

Popsicle sticks.

“It's him,” I said quietly.

Warren didn't hear me. He was shining his light into the trash bin. He reached in and pulled out a slip of paper. A receipt.

“Pruett went to a hardware store today,” he said.

The bull was very near. I remembered talking to Neil Pruett late that afternoon. Hearing him tell me he had used my truck to run errands. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“What did he buy?” I asked.

Warren handed me the receipt and I read it.

The bull ran the tip of his horn along my spine.

“No,” I said. “Son of a bitch. No, no, no.”

•   •   •

D
arkness everywhere.

Neil Pruett stepped out of his shoes.

He had a penlight that fit in his pocket. He clicked it on and let the narrow beam lead him to what he wanted. He listened to the muffled sounds of the storm, and streaks of rainwater trickled down from his hair, along his temples, to his neck. The beam found a row of drawers.

The first one he tried held rolls of tape. Scotch tape. Masking tape.

Packing tape.

Exactly what he needed.

He trailed the beam along the floor: kitchen tile and then white carpet. A shimmer of lightning came through a pair of sliding glass doors. The thunder boomed as he crossed the threshold of the bedroom.

He clicked off the penlight and stood silent beside the doorway.

His eyes adjusted to the dark. He could make out shapes. The solid mass of the bed. A quilt spilling onto the floor. A sheet covering a sleeping form.

He could hear her breathing.

The bed was a queen, big enough for two, but she was sleeping alone, in the middle. Neil walked around to the far side. He put the roll of packing tape on the night table. He laid down the penlight and sat on the edge of the bed. Pulled the Makarov pistol out of his sock.

Sophie Emerson stirred and rolled onto her back. She touched his arm.

“Dave?” she said.

Barely awake.

Neil picked up the penlight and clicked it on. He wanted to see her. He'd never been this close. She had beautiful skin, like Sheila Cotton. She had chestnut hair that flowed in soft waves over her pillow.

She squinted into the light. Waking up fast. Neil returned the penlight to the night table, standing it on end so the beam shone on the ceiling. He covered her mouth with his left hand and pressed the muzzle of the Makarov against her forehead.

“I'm not Dave,” he told her.

Sophie Emerson tried to scream.

“Don't,” he said.

He watched her realize what was happening. Gave her a chance to catch up.

“You have questions,” he said. “There's no time now, but later on we'll talk.”

He watched her debating whether to struggle or give in. He pulled the gun back a few inches, to give her a better view of it. To help her decide.

“It'll be fine,” he said. “I know a place we can go.”

•   •   •

K
eys.

I still had the keys to the old apartment. Sophie's apartment.

We drove there in five minutes, Warren Finn and me. I didn't pay much mind to stop signs. I swept into the lot in the beating rain and the truck's headlights showed me Sophie's car, in its usual space. My heart sank. I'd been hoping to find the space empty—hoping she was at the hospital.

I remember a squeal of wet brakes and sprinting through the rain. Warren following. I remember coming to the building's outer door and using one of my keys to open it. Then charging down the hallway and up a flight of stairs, flashlight beams bouncing wildly over the walls. Then another key to let us into the apartment.

Unnatural quiet. Nothing out of place. But everything looked wrong in the roving beams of light. I broke the quiet, calling Sophie's name. No answer.

I crossed into the bedroom. White sheets. Empty bed. Still nothing out of place except for a lamp on a night table with its shade askew. As if it had been knocked over and put back carelessly.

And one other thing: Sophie's cat's-eye glasses on the floor.

“He's got her,” I said.

Warren joined me. “Are you sure?”

I pointed my light at the glasses. “She wouldn't leave them.”

Pruett had her, and I was the one who gave her to him. I let him in. I had given him the keys to my truck that afternoon—I had given him all my keys, because they were all on the same key ring. And he had taken them to a hardware store and made copies.

“He walked right in here,” I said. “She never had a chance.”

Warren picked up the glasses. “She'll want them when we find her.”

I had my cell phone out, but there was no reception. The storm. I punched 911 anyway and watched the screen.
CONNECTING
,
it said. And then:
CALL FAILED
.

Warren spotted the landline on the night table and picked up the receiver. I watched him hold it to his ear and shake his head. No dial tone.

“It's just us,” he said. “Where would he take her? Back to his house?”

No, I thought. All those neighbors. Why risk it? Especially if you knew about a better place. A ready-made prison.

“The farm,” I said.

•   •   •

P
itch-black.

Sophie Emerson listened to the tin-roof sound of the rain, to the hiss of the tires on the wet road.

He had taped her wrists together behind her back. Her captor. She didn't have a name for him. He had taped her mouth too, but not her legs. He had left them free and marched her down the darkened stairwell and out of the building—in nothing but the scrubs she'd fallen asleep in, no shoes—and he had forced her into the trunk of his car.

No one on the stairs or in the hallway or outside. No one to see.

She lay on her side and twisted her arms against the tape. Twisted them until they hurt.

The tape held.

The car began to slow down. Rolling onto her back, Sophie used her bare feet to push against the lid of the trunk. It didn't budge. The car accelerated again.

She was breathing fast through her nose. A raspy sound. She didn't like it. The air was stale and the trunk smelled of spare antifreeze and motor oil. She thought she might pass out. A bad thought.

But breathing was something she could control.

She turned onto her side again. The floor of the trunk had a wet-carpet smell. Not so bad. She focused on her breath. Felt it slow.

When she had it under control, she went to work on the tape over her mouth. She rubbed it against the carpet. Tried to peel it off.

•   •   •

W
e sped west on Erie Boulevard, driving into the wind. The traffic lights were still dark; all the intersections were four-way stops. I honked the horn as we tore through them.

We passed a minivan driving slow and left a spray of mist in our wake. Warren Finn eyed the road ahead and braced one hand against the dash. The minivan flashed its high-beams, angry.

Half a mile on, we hit a puddle that spanned two lanes. Black water boiling in the rain. The truck hydroplaned. It spun a hundred eighty degrees, three sixty; it jumped the curb of a convenience-store parking lot. I watched us heading for a pair of glass doors. I turned the sluggish wheel, hit the brakes hard.

The front end of the truck jerked to the left. The back end snapped around and slammed through the glass.

The wind vanished and the rain hung motionless in the air, and there was nothing but the truck rocking gently side to side. A few long seconds passed. Warren Finn drew his hand away from the dash and twisted around in his seat to survey the damage.

“You're good,” he said.

The truck still swayed. I swayed with it. Left right, left right. The minivan pulled into the lot—the one with the angry high-beams. The driver climbed out. I thought he looked worried.

“Time to go,” Warren said.

He sounded confident and sensible and levelheaded. I decided to take his advice.

When I pressed the gas pedal nothing happened.

“It stalled,” Warren said.

I pushed the pedal some more. The minivan driver came closer.

Warren shifted the truck into park and reached over to turn the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life. The minivan driver stopped in his tracks.

Someone said, “Let's go.” Warren again.

The world came roaring back like the engine. The wind blew and the rain fell.

I shifted us into drive and hit the gas.

•   •   •

S
ophie felt every curve in the road, every crack and pothole. She knew the moment when the car drifted onto the shoulder, when it moved onto gravel. She felt it rumble to a stop.

The motor went silent. A car door opened and shut. Footsteps. A key slid into the lock of the trunk.

•   •   •

N
eil Pruett raised the lid of the trunk and was met with a burst of movement—the girl kicked out at him with both feet. One of her heels struck the burn on his right hand, his gun hand. The Makarov pistol went flying.

He whirled around to find it in the dark, slipped on the wet gravel and fell. A flash of lightning revealed the pistol, just out of reach. He scrambled for it, snatched it up.

Turned back to see the girl on her feet, out of the trunk. The tape gone from her mouth, but her arms still bound behind her back. She stepped toward him and launched a kick at his face.