The Prettiest One: A Thriller (45 page)

“Javy,” Hunnsaker said, “have the cops on the scene—”

Padilla interrupted her. “Hold on, Charlotte.” She could hear him talking with someone else for a moment, then he was back on the line. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

“Try me.”

“Someone claiming to be Josh Sommers just called 911 to report that someone named Caitlin Sommers has been abducted in a dark sedan and is probably being taken to one of two addresses.”

What the hell?

“Have you run the addresses yet?” Hunnsaker asked.

“No, I just got them.”

“Send units to both places. Tell them that the suspects are probably armed and dangerous.”

“Which suspects? Sommers? She’s apparently in a trunk, and the husband is in pursuit.”

“Everyone. Tell them everyone is a suspect. What are the addresses?”

Padilla relayed them to her.

“I’ll take Linden Road. It’s closer for me. You head to the other one. Let’s go find out what the hell’s going on here.”

The street was clear, so Hunnsaker whipped a U-turn and gunned the engine. Every fact she’d learned sent this case spinning in another direction. Why would a happily married suburban real-estate agent disappear for more than half a year, then turn up a suspect in a murder case in another state? What was this all about? Who the hell was Caitlin Sommers, really? Was she a bad guy or an innocent woman in the wrong place at the wrong time? How had she ended up in the trunk of a car? And what was going to happen to her if someone didn’t find her soon?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CAITLIN WALKED IN A DREAM. Time meant nothing. Each step was a slog through quicksand. Gauzy curtains of mist hung in her mind.

Who was pushing her from behind? Who was . . . she?

Her name was . . . Katherine? No, that didn’t sound right.

Katie? No . . .

Caitlin,
she thought.
I’m Caitlin
. She stopped and said it again, out loud this time. “I’m Caitlin.”

“Yeah, we already talked about that,” a man said from behind her. “Keep moving.”

“I’m Caitlin,” she repeated. “I live at 41 Ivy Street in Bristol, New Hampshire.”

“Yeah?” the man said. “I don’t give a shit. Now move.”

As she was pushed forward, Caitlin recited her Social Security number in her mind. Then her address again. Then her phone number, followed by her Social Security number again, and her address, and she repeated them until she knew who she was—really
knew
—and the curtains lifted and her breathing felt right and time resumed at its normal speed.

She had been on the verge of another fugue state, she realized, yet she had fought it off this time. She knew who she was. A hand pushed her through a doorway, into a living room, and she suddenly remembered exactly
where
she was . . . and then she saw him there, in the flesh, after so many years and so many nightmares, and wondered if she would have been better off if she had just let herself slip away.

Sitting in a La-Z-Boy was Darryl Bookerman.

There was no doubt about it. He looked like his sons. He looked like the Bogeyman from decades of nightmares. Bald, lumpy head. Deathly pale. Disturbing little doll eyes spread too wide on his skinny face. Though he was instantly recognizable, he looked older now, far older than could be accounted for by the twenty-two years that had passed since he had burned his image into Caitlin’s five-year-old mind. He had always been skinny, but he was even skinnier now, almost impossibly so. The years hadn’t been kind to him, for which Caitlin was unable to work up any sympathy. Prison probably hadn’t done him any favors, either. And it was plain that God or Nature or whoever was running the big show had probably been the cruelest of all to him. A plastic tube ran under his nose and over each ear, then down to an oxygen tank on the floor beside his chair. His face, which had always been thin, was caving in on itself. His cheeks were hollow. His eyes were black pits. And they were studying her. After several long seconds, he managed a smile. It turned Caitlin’s stomach.

“It’s you, isn’t it,” Bookerman said in a wet, sickly voice. “It’s really you. The one that got away from me so long ago. My pretty little one. And now I have you back.”

He slid a dry tongue over cracked lips.

“You were right, George,” Bookerman said. “This is a nice surprise. It doesn’t make up for Mikey, of course, but it’s nice anyway.”

His dead little eyes were still fixed on Caitlin. He just stared at her, looking her up and down. Gooseflesh rose on her skin. She felt small and naked. After he’d had his fill of gazing at her, after he’d feasted on the sight of her, he said, “It’s been twenty-two years, Caitlin. Like what you see?” He paused. “Yes, I’m dying. Unfortunately for you, though, I’m not dying fast enough, because I don’t need long with you. The docs say I’ve got maybe three months left. More than enough time, don’t you think? All I need are a few good minutes and I can die happy.”

The man who had identified himself as Chops, but whom his father had called George, said, “Don’t talk like that, Dad.”

“Shut up, George. I’m dying, and I’m dying hard. This cancer is a bitch. An hour ago, I was bitter as hell. I felt cheated. But now that my little Caitlin is here, somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s prettier than ever. Totally worth the wait. You have no idea how happy you’ve made me, George. And you, too, Caitlin. Come closer.”

Caitlin didn’t move until Chops pushed her. She took a few steps forward, then Bookerman said, “Stop there. I want to be able to see all of you. I want to take you all in before . . .” He trailed off. It looked to Caitlin like he had become lost in a reverie. Finally, he said, “You killed my son Mikey?”

Caitlin said nothing.

Bookerman frowned. “This isn’t going to be a pleasant night for you, pretty Caitlin, but it will be a lot less pleasant if you don’t start getting with the goddamn program, understand?” He coughed and hacked and raised a paper cup and spit something thick into it. “Now answer me,” he said.

Caitlin took a deep breath, then regretted it. The air tasted like sickness and decay. She said, “He was about to rape a woman and take a video of himself doing it.”

“Sounds like Mikey.”

“He tried to abduct me seven months ago.”

“I know. He did that for me.” Bookerman’s mouth contorted into something resembling a grin, though it bore a greater resemblance to the grimace of a long-dead corpse. “I thought of you every day, Caitlin. Every day I was in prison. Maybe even every hour. For twenty-two years. I dreamed about you every night. My pretty one. The one who got away before I got the chance to . . .”

Caitlin was relieved that he didn’t finish the thought. She couldn’t help but see the terrible synchronicity. While Bookerman was dreaming of her every night for all those years, she was having nightmares about him.

“I asked Mikey to find you, to keep track of you. When I got out of prison, I asked him to bring you to me. He told me that he tried but somehow you escaped from him. But then you just disappeared, Mikey said. Even the cops didn’t know where you were.” Bookerman shook his head. “I have to admit, that was a bad time for me. I thought you were gone for good, that I’d never see you again. How the hell did you end up here?”

“No,” Caitlin said, “how did
you
end up here? Didn’t they sentence you to thirty years? Without a possibility of parole, I thought. So why aren’t you dying in prison where you belong instead of dying a free man? Did you escape?”

Bookerman stared hard at her for a moment. She thought he might have been angry, but it was hard to tell because his eyes were so emotionless. The eyes of a mannequin. Or a shark. Finally, he said, “In a manner of speaking, I guess. Worked out a deal.”

“What kind of a deal would they give a murdering pedophile?”

He stared again but said, “There was never any evidence that I killed that little girl.”

“How about the pedophile part, then?” Caitlin asked.

Bookerman nodded. “That one’s tougher to argue with.”

“So why would they cut you a deal? How long have you been out?”

“Ten months,” Bookerman said. And then he told her how it happened. Several factors had contributed to an agreement for his release. First, he had been a model prisoner. He never even retaliated whenever other prisoners or the occasional guard abused him, sexually or otherwise. Second, and far more importantly, he had learned valuable information from a fellow prisoner, a kindred spirit—the whereabouts of the body of a missing boy who happened to be the son of a senator. Bookerman had nothing to do with that crime, but he knew enough of the details to convince the authorities that he could help them find the boy’s remains, which he eventually did. Third, he was dying now and dying fast. He was deemed to no longer be a threat to society . . . or at least, he wouldn’t be for long. And besides, the senator really, really wanted closure. So knowing that he had but months to live, and given that he had agreed to spend the rest of his life in the house his son from California would buy for him, and that he agreed to wear an ankle bracelet that would alert the cops if he stepped one foot outside of it, the authorities agreed to his release in exchange for the information they sought. Of course, the good guys must not have been terribly proud of their deal because they kept it all very quiet. And the second he was free, Darryl Bookerman instructed his son Mikey to bring Caitlin Sommers to him.

“And here you are,” Bookerman said, smiling that terrible smile again, though it ended at his thin lips and never came close to touching his eyes. He coughed and spit into his cup. “Thanks to my sons. They’re good boys.”

“The hell they are,” Caitlin said.

“Well, they’ve been good to me. George bought me this house. It’s crappy, but it’s home. And he flew out from LA just to see if Mikey was okay. And Mikey . . . he brought me food and stuff I needed, twice a week. Called me every night . . . right up until the day you killed him.”

Bookerman’s eyes were still dead, still emotionless, even when he talked about his son’s murder.

“Dad,” George said, “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m not sure how long you have.”

“Three months at the most,” Bookerman said. “We’ve been through this.”

“No, I mean tonight. With her. I doubt the guys she was with will find this house, but you never know. And maybe they’ll call the cops and the cops will find us somehow.”

“They won’t call the cops,” Bookerman said. “This girl here’s a killer. The last thing they’ll want is to bring in the cops, right? So I’m not worried about them. And I’m not worried about any guys she was with, either, because you’re here, George, and if they show up, you’ll take care of them.”

George nodded.

“And now, Caitlin,” Bookerman said with another flick of his tongue across his bottom lip, “it’s time for me to show you some of the things I’ve been thinking about doing for the last twenty-two years.”

Bix killed the headlights and slowed the Explorer to a stop at the end of the driveway of 1320 Linden Road. It looked a lot like the driveway to Mike Bookerman’s house—long, winding, leading to a secluded house. It was a perfect place for doing bad things if you wanted privacy.

Bix reached over in front of Josh, opened the glove compartment, and removed a 9mm handgun. He checked the magazine, then locked it back in place. Reaching up, he switched off the truck’s dome light so it wouldn’t turn on when the doors opened. He doubted anyone was watching—he didn’t think Bookerman, aka George Maggert, expected them to find this house—but it would have been stupid not to be careful. After walking for a few yards, they came to the first gentle bend in the driveway and saw the house . . . and the dark sedan parked in front of it. The ranch house sat on maybe half an acre of scraggly grass, with the yard surrounded by trees. They decided to circle around the building at a distance, along the edges of the dark yard, and approach it from the back. Bix silently thanked the thin crescent moon and gray clouds enshrouding it.

There was a light on in two windows on the near side of the house, and Bix made straight for them rather than continue around back. He knew how difficult it was to see out into darkness from inside a lighted room. To anyone inside, the windows would look like black squares. Bix didn’t think they’d be seen unless they put their faces right up to the glass. And as it turned out, they didn’t need to. They were still fifteen feet away when Bix saw very clearly into the living room, where George Maggert/Bookerman was sitting on a sofa beside Caitlin. He had a knife against her throat. They were both looking straight ahead of them. Then someone else walked into Bix’s view. Someone thin and tall but stooped by age, and possibly more than merely age because he carried an oxygen tank in his hand as he shuffled slowly toward Caitlin.

Josh said, “My God, is that . . . ?”

“Yeah,” Bix said. “I don’t know how the hell it’s possible, but Darryl Bookerman has Katie again.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CAITLIN FELT THE KNIFE AGAINST her throat. She felt the tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt fear and despair. She felt sad that her life would end in this terrible way, at the hands of a pathetic, twisted old man. She felt a searing hatred for Darryl Bookerman . . . for what he had done to the little girl he had abused decades ago, and to Kathryn Southern, who was never found. She hated him for supplying his sons with the defective DNA that made them grow up into soulless creatures like him. Or maybe they’d been adopted long ago by a decent family and had been given every chance to lead normal lives one day, but their father’s legacy had been impossible for them to escape. Either way, Caitlin blamed Darryl Bookerman for what his sons became. But she also hated the sons for what they had done for their father. She wondered if Darryl had abused them. If so, that was sad, but it didn’t excuse their behavior.