The Silent Girls (25 page)

Chapter 55

R
ATH
WAS STARTLED
to find Felix in the Scout; he’d forgotten all about him. He fired up the engine as another text came in from Grout.

FYI This is from a crime Halloween ’85

Rath studied the pic. If he hadn’t known otherwise, he’d think he was looking at the carving in Julia’s body. Rath knew who the boy was in the first pic. The pieces fell in place: shards of the frail and ghostly bones of facts, from which he pieced together the skeleton of the monster. He could envision the monster: how it lived, what it preyed on and why, the conditions needed for its survival, its lair. He knew where Mandy was. And Rachel.

He could only hope they were alive.

If Rachel had been taken just after the meeting, the monster would know by now she was not what he needed. She was useless. Dispensable.

The Scout skated on the steep, icy hill. Rath countersteered, but the Scout drifted sideways, picking up speed as it spun around on itself, sliding backward, shuddering and threatening to flip. Rath, powerless, let the Scout skim along until it jammed hard against the guardrail and stopped with a crunch of metal.

Felix gaped at him, terrified.

Rath righted the Scout, turned it around, and headed back down the hill, as fast as ever.

In town, he stopped and shouted at Felix, “Get out!” and Felix got out bewildered.

Rath didn’t need or want the boy along for this.

Chapter 56

T
HE SNOW LAY
deep, virgin, unmarred on the dark road as the white madness heaved against the windshield. The wipers groaned. If they quit, Rath would be stuck.

Rath drove over a covered bridge spanning Canaan River, the road turning from asphalt to dirt as the Scout’s back end slid, then trundled up the steep dirt road. Hemlocks bowed under the weight of wet snow, choking the road down to a dark throat. Ahead, a stately, wood-carved sign proclaimed:
RAVE
NS WAY. PRIVATE. TURN BACK
.

Rath turned onto Ravens Way.

The road grew steeper.

Every quarter mile or so, Rath passed a driveway that went back into an estate, each residence announced with an ornate sign. He saw no lights in the trees. Was the power out? Rath drove, his hands gripped on the wheel like an old-time sea captain at the helm on monstrous seas. The wind rocked the Scout on its sad springs and swept the snow to obliterate visibility.

Slowly, out of the snow, a wrought-iron gate with colossal marble columns materialized. Rath tapped the brakes, and the Scout slid greasily to rest before twisted black bars that rose twenty feet into the night air, tapering to fearsome points. Atop the inner spire of each gate sat a raven sculpture, their savage beaks open wide, calling to the sky. At the center of the gate, the number 4915 was shaped of more wrought iron. Rath wondered why the numbers jumped so much from the last residence, whose sign read 795. The new address numbers for the fire and emergency folks was a fiasco.

He killed the headlights and engine.

The wind bayed in the trees, laces of fine silver snow spilling down.

The Scout’s radiator pinged.

Rath took his .22 revolver from the glove box, snapped open its cylinder, and walked it around with his fingers. The brass rounds winked under the cab light. He sneaked out of the Scout and shut the door softly. The night air had a brutally cold edge to it that penetrated his jacket and stung through his jeans.

At the gate, he feared floodlights would flash on, or a surveillance camera would capture him, triggered by motion sensors. He looked for a way around the gate, but the iron fortress disappeared into the woods.

Rath threw a snowball at the gate. No lights came on. He threw several more snowballs along the entrance gate. The world remained dark. The power must have been out.

Scurrying to the marble pillar, he felt above his head, fingers aching with the cold, until he found a crevice. He fixed his fingers into claws and pulled himself up, pushing off with the toe of his boots and groaning. He inched his way up.

He was nearing the top, feeling around with deadened fingers, when his boot slipped, and he slid downward. His chin cracked hard on the stone, and his vision exploded with a lightning flash. He held on and caught his breath, waiting for his vision to return. Then began upward again.

When he at last gained the flat-manteled top of the pillar, he perched on it like a gargoyle, looking back to see his stark tracks in the snow.

There was nothing he could do about them. If Langevine was not home and drove up after him, he’d see Rath’s Scout and tracks. But by then, Rath would be waiting for him.

Rath draped over the other side of the wall, dangling. It was his fingers that gave way this time as he plummeted to the ground in a heap. His revolver came loose and spun away in the snow. He felt around for it, his pulse beating fast. He found it and blew snow from it and tucked it back in his waistband. He stood gamely and loped along the edge of the drive.

The drive ribboned lazily, as if to build drama for what was around each next bend. When the house came into view, it was, indeed, dramatic. It rose out of the dark and snow, into view. Except it wasn’t a house. It was a Gothic stone manor that would have been more at home among the moors circa 1867. The drive swung in front in a continuous sweep that brought it back on itself, in the center of which a Gothic marble fountain with a winged angel bubbled and steamed.

Rath felt insignificant. The wind blew motes of snow around him. The manor’s dark windows shimmered like mercury. So many rooms. So many chambers and hallways and doors. He had to find a covert way inside. He could not simply knock. Surprise was key. How would he find them, Mandy and Rachel? He thought about calling Sonja, but he was out of cell range. He should have called. He should have told Felix where he was headed. But he hadn’t. No one knew where he was.

His jaw was stiff where he’d cracked it on the marble stone.

Snowflakes melted in his eyelashes to blur his vision. Gauging by its vaulted leaded windows, the manor was three stories tall, each story at least fifteen feet in height. A watch tower with a marble balustrade sat at each end of the manor, perhaps three hundred feet apart. Rath walked to Tudor doors, set back in an imposing, shadowed, marble alcove, each door’s tiny rectangular windows adorned with Roman-cross iron hinges and an iron-ring door knocker.

He studied the immense Tudor doors, whose wood was as dark as dried blood. Where was the crack in the manor’s armor? How could he get inside? A structure of solid stone and hardwood doors as thick as cinder block, first-floor windows far out of arm’s reach.

He was just stepping off the walk to peer along the shrubbery skirting the front wall when the yard lit up like daylight. He froze and pushed back in the shrubs, leaving behind clear boot tracks in the snow.

The wind cried, his heart dropping into his gut. And over the crying wind, another sound: the sigh of hinges as the front door swung open.

Rath slid his hand down to the revolver’s cold handle and waited. A shadow stretched on the walk nearby like a long, accusing finger.

Another sound, dampened by the rising wind. A snuffling.

A dog appeared. Feet away. Black and packed with powerful muscle, its tail shorn to a blunt thumb of fur. A Rottweiler.

Rath slipped the revolver from his waistband. The dog lifted its wet, leathery nose to the swirling wind. Snot drooled from the nose as it worked eagerly in the air, the dog’s blunt, triangular ears cocked forward, its massive chest seemingly carved from black granite. The dog rolled its upper lip back to reveal a jaw like a bear trap. It growled and swung its head toward Rath.

Rath held his breath, set his thumb on the revolver’s hammer, inching it backward.

The dog stepped, tensed, growling. Gearing to lunge.

“Come inside,” a voice said, freezing Rath in place. The voice had a shrill sting to it. The dog whined, muscles rippling below its coat. “
Inside,
” the voice cried. The dog locked eyes with Rath. Its ears flattened.

“
Inside!
”

The wind sagged, and the night fell silent and still.

“He’ll tear you apart,” the voice said, emotionless now, tempered and cool. “If
you
don’t come inside. Show yourself. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to command him to
contain
you.”

The voice was talking to
Rath.
Not the dog.

“He’ll be on you in a blink, and I’m afraid while we have him trained well to attack, he’s frightfully difficult to beg off once he’s set his teeth into an intruder. I’ve phoned the state police. They won’t be here for a good half hour. In that time, Brutus will either have made a meal of your innards or you’ll have frozen to death. So. Please do. Come. Inside. We’ll wait for the police in here, where it’s warm and civilized, shall we?”

The police? Why would he call the police if he had Rachel and Mandy inside? Unless he thought Rath was just some trespasser. A nuisance. He could not know it was Rath in the hedges. Still, would he want the cops here under any circumstances if he were holding girls here? Unlikely. Still. Rath tucked the pistol in the back of his waistband. Let the cops come. But he needed a story. Fast.

“I’ll give you to the count of three,” Langevine said.

“Call the dog off,” Rath said.

“Step forward where I may see you.”

“Call him off.”

“Not till I see you and know I am under no bodily threat.”

“It’s me. Frank Rath.”

Rath blinked, his eyelashes heavy with ice crystals. He heard a faint snap.

The dog sat, and its jaw went slack and sloppy, all dopey jowls, its muscles slackening.

“Dear me!” Dr. Langevine said. “Mr. Rath! Get out here where I can see you. It’s scandalous to be out in this maelstrom! Whatever are you doing?”

Rath crept out from the bushes, his flesh crawling.
Play it dumb
, he thought. He gave Langevine a meek look, cupping his hand over his eyes against the blowing snow.

“My word!” Langevine said, and snapped his fingers twice. The dog heaved itself to its feet and clomped inside with a lazy moan, its balls swagging back and forth.

Langevine glided out in slippers that looked like bear paws and holding the collar of a plush bathrobe to his turkey’s throat. His big, round eyeglasses fogged up.

Rath did not move, the revolver pressing into his spine as Langevine whooshed toward him. “Come in, come in! Heavens!” Langevine exclaimed, his voice bubbling with apology and decorum. Before Rath knew what to do, Langevine had slipped his arm through Rath’s own and was ushering him in like a father giving away the bride.

Inside, Langevine shut the door, the echo of it sounding all too much like a door slamming behind a death-row prisoner. Stepping inside the great hall with its flying ceilings was like stepping into a cathedral, a hush falling over him and granting a sense of privacy and reverence. The checkerboard floor of veined white and dark green marble gleamed beneath crystal chandeliers suspended high above, lit weakly, as if by a backup generator. Antique pieces of dark wood and royal blue upholstery, benches and settees, lined each wall. A grandfather clock stood at the far end, its
tick tock
floating up from the hush like the manor’s heartbeat

Langevine’s face was as undefined as a charcoal sketch in the ill lighting. A shadow of a Roman cross spread across the floor, caused by the outside lights shining through the Vermeer pattern of the leaded window high above.

Langevine faced Rath with his hands on his hips. “What the
devil
are you
doing
?” he inquired, seeming genuinely mystified. “You scared me half to death, Mr. Rath.”

“I came to ask a few more questions, and—”

“You indeed pick the most inclement of conditions to visit.” His tone was convivial, percolating with easiness, not the least bit tense or tight with guilt or suspicion, just simple curiosity and bafflement.

“I apologize,” Rath said. What was going on here? Had he pegged it all wrong? No. No way. Langevine had to be the boy in the photo, and—

“It’s nothing to me,” Langevine said, his shoulders quivering in a sudden, spastic manner, like a bird shaking water from its wings. “I was just nesting next to my toasty fire, indulging in a trashy novel and enjoying a nip. It’s not I who braved the elements.”

“When questions pop into my mind, I have to ask them. Otherwise, I’m haunted.”

“You should have phoned and saved yourself the adventure. I’d have been happy to answer.” Langevine delved his fingers into his deep beard, pulling at it as if a sage philosopher.

“I felt it best to ask in person,” Rath said.

“I quite understand. After all,
I
can’t diagnose my patients by speaking to them over the phone. I need to see them to ask the right questions. Hypochondriacs aside, of course.” He smiled and scratched Brutus’s head. “But why ever didn’t you call to say you were on your way, I’d have fixed you a nip, too. And why ever were you hiding in my bushes? It is peculiar, I have to confess.”

Rath’s mind spun. He was off course now, knocked unsteady by this unforeseen turn, the congenial welcome and breezy manner of Langevine. He’d have known better what to do if Langevine had sicced the dog on him, or if Langevine himself had brandished a weapon or acted defensive or suspicious in any way. The questions Langevine asked were prying, but he had every right to pry; it was, after all, Rath hiding in the bushes and coming unannounced. Still, Rath didn’t like it. It felt like a performance. If it was, Langevine had a career waiting for him on Broadway.

“I tried to call, but my cell had zero bars,” Rath said.

“This state could stand to dip its toe a bit more in the twenty-first century, yes?”

“That it could. And I
had
knocked. Before stepping in the bushes.”

“Oh?”

Rath nodded. “Likely not loud enough. For the racket the wind was making.”

“I doubt I’d hear a knock back where I was. Did you actually scale the gate?” He let out what could only be called a giggle.

Rath shrugged,
guilty as charged.
“Yankee ingenuity,” he said. “I’d not expected a gate like that. But I’d come all this way in such shit conditions, and it’s still quite early in the evening, so, I climbed it.” He shrugged.
I’m a dope.

“But,” Langevine said, “why were you in my shrubs?” There was nothing, not a speck of indication on Langevine’s face or in his body language or eyes that betrayed the notion that he thought Rath was a threat, there for his daughter, or that, in fact, Langevine had anything to hide at all, whether he suspected Rath knew about it or not. He simply looked like a man whose sleepy weekday evening had been abruptly interrupted by an unexpected visitor on a night of godforsaken weather that no one in their right mind would brave; and he was acting his best to be understanding and cordial. In other words, he was behaving normally. It was Rath who was not, and who was on defense.

“After I knocked,” Rath said, “I attempted to look into a window, see perhaps—

I thought maybe there were some windows behind the shrubs or another entrance I could knock on. Then the yard lit up, and”—Rath glanced at Brutus—“he sauntered out, and I froze. I don’t care for mean dogs.”

“He’s not mean. Are you Brutus?” Langevine said, scratching the dog’s ear.

“I thought you said—”

“That was when I thought
you
were an intruder. I’ve been known to fib, if circumstances warrant. But. He’s harmless. He acts the part. But. We’re a long ways up here; isolated, nothing to the west or east or south for miles. Behind the house, you could tramp for miles before you hit a road. But given the slim odds that someone would actually do something
bad,
I can’t balance that against the cost of a lawsuit if I were to have a killer dog on the property and the errant UPS man got gobbled up!” He giggled again, slapped Rath on the back, and said, “Come relax by the fire while we wait for our friends, the state police.”