And then . . .
She’s here.
*
“I GOT A T LINE,” D.D. announced to Neil over the phone. Ethier and Larissa had vacated the office, given D.D. and Keynes space to work. She rattled off the information to Neil, heard the scratching sound of him taking notes. “Combine that with our other requirements, plus frequent destinations on Goulding’s GPS, and give me the address.”
“It doesn’t help,” Neil said.
“What do you mean, it doesn’t help?”
“I mean, nothing makes sense!” Her favorite redheaded detective sounded frustrated. “I’ve been over and over the vehicle’s list of frequent destinations. None of them match our location profile, with or without subway lines included.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” D.D. said.
“Told you so!”
“He had to have used his vehicle, right?” She paused, backing up and revisiting their original logic. Across from her, Keynes nodded encouragingly. “The night Goulding abducted Flora, he knocked her out, loaded her in his vehicle, drove her home. Right?”
“He knocked her out,” Neil supplied. “Meaning she didn’t know how he transported her home; she was unconscious.”
“But you can see that trip in his car, right? It would be his last drive.”
“Hang on. Okay, Friday night, car journeyed from downtown Boston to home address.”
“His abduction of Flora. Where, of course, he used his personal vehicle for transport. It’s not like you can take an unconscious girl on the T, or dump her into a taxi. So he’s gotta be using his vehicle for at least the initial kidnapping.”
“Okay,” Neil agreed.
“Parking garages,” Keynes mouthed across from her.
D.D. nodded, then repeated the words into the phone. “If Devon’s driving someplace all the time, he’d need to park. What about parking garage passes, memberships, something like that?”
A pause. She could hear Neil talking to someone, most likely Carol, on the other end of the phone.
“No monthly payments to a parking garage,” Neil reported shortly.
“Really? But that doesn’t—”
“Make any sense?”
Both she and Neil sighed heavily. They were close. D.D. could feel it. Just one last connection, deduction, and then . . . Flora and Stacey Summers at the mercy of Jacob Ness’s daughter. D.D. shuddered just thinking about it.
“Oh. Oooh,” Neil said suddenly.
“What?”
“Carol has a point. Maybe it’s not separate.”
“What do you mean?”
“The location, maybe it’s not unique. For example, we wouldn’t notice him driving to work, right? Because that’s his job, of course he’s going there.”
“He’s not holding four women in a nightclub,” D.D. said, though her gaze drifted up to the black-painted ceiling.
She shook her head. She was being ridiculous. They’d been here during the day, when the nightclub had shed its blue lights and was a tired but definitely very busy shell. Given the number of people passing through at any time, cleaning up, restocking, prepping, no way three kidnapped girls would go unnoticed.
“So not his job,” Neil was saying, “but another logical destination no one would think to question.”
D.D. got it: “Gym. He’s always working out. And most of those huge twenty-four-hour fitness clubs—”
“Are located in South Boston, near the water,” Neil filled in. “Where in the name of gentrification half of the area is being demolished and the other half rebuilt. I got an address for the gym. Even better, Carol says it’s right by some of the boarded-up tenement houses which are still waiting to be torn down.”
He rattled off the gym’s location.
“Thank you, Neil.” Then, not even grudgingly, “And you too, Carol.”
D.D. hung up the phone; then she and Keynes were on the move.
Chapter 47
I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU,” Lindy singsongs as she pads across the landing, through the right-hand doorway, deeper into the building after me.
I flee first. Forcing myself away from a locked door into the rest of the building. I think I’m in a living room. I can just make out the shape of a sofa, table, chairs. Maybe a ground-floor apartment, long and narrow. I try to create some kind of blueprint in my mind to guide me as I creep deeper into the gloom. The windows here must be boarded up as well. It’s the only way to explain the total darkness.
I make it through a second doorway into another shadowed hall. I halt on the other side, my back pressed against the wall. I still have my shard of glass from the broken window. I clutch it to my chest and try to get my breathing under control before the sound of my own panic gives me away.
Time to focus. Time to pull it together. I’m not Jacob’s terrified little mouse anymore.
I’m a woman with promises left to keep.
“I read all about your last day with my dad,” Lindy is saying now. Her voice comes from behind me, in the first room, I think, near the sofa. “Bullet through the head. Did he beg for you to do it? I knew if they caught him, he was never going back.”
I don’t say anything. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
I’m not tired. I’m not hungry. I’m not cold.
I am okay.
“I worried in the beginning. Thought the police might come looking for me. So I disappeared for a bit. Spent some time in Texas, Alabama, California. Saw more of the country. I figured Jacob would approve.”
Her voice is closer.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. I can do this.
“But you didn’t tell them about me, did you, Flora? You kept our time together to yourself. Our special little secret.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, bite my lower lip to silence the whimper. She’s right. I never told. Not that piece of the puzzle. The shame? The horror? I don’t know. But all survivors have their secrets. Things we can’t say out loud because that makes what happened too real, not just to other people but especially to ourselves.
Samuel suspected something. He dangled bait during our initial sessions. But I never gave in.
No one wants to be a monster.
And certainly, no one wants to talk about it later.
“I thought I would let you go,” Lindy continues now. She’s drifted to the left. Not moving forward, but now into the kitchen area, prowling around the table and chairs.
“But I just couldn’t. The fact you were still alive and doing well, while Jacob . . . I don’t expect you to understand, but I know that you, of all people, realize just how special Jacob’s and my relationship was. No one ever knew me the way he did. And no one ever accepted him the way I did. He was my father, and I was his Lindy, a special nickname he made up just for me, first time he saw me. Natalie belonged to my mother. But Lindy . . . I was his. And you, little bitch, had no right to take him from me.”
Her voice so close it’s nearly in my ear. She’s right behind me. Other side of the wall, I realize. No more breathing. I suck in all the air, hold it in my lungs, will myself not to make a sound.
“Last year, I decided it was time to get serious; I came looking for you. Paid a visit to your mother’s farm. She was easy enough to track down using the Internet. Did she ever tell you that, mention an old friend who stopped by? She’s a tight one. No matter what I tried, she wouldn’t answer any questions about you. Best I could get is that you lived in Boston. So I decided to move here too. Why not? Nice change of a pace for a southern girl like me. I got a job, prepared to settle in while I continued to look for you, and then . . .
“I met him. Devon. A man who didn’t even know what kind of man he was. But I knew. I recognized him immediately. And then, it was easy enough to bring him along. I set up the house, I let him make me its first occupant. Then I sent him in search of more playmates. Because a girl like me has certain appetites. As you know better than anyone.”
I shake uncontrollably. I hate the response. Primal. Visceral. But the more she talks, the more it all comes back. Those terrible nights. The noises, the taste of bile.
I’m not okay, I’m not okay, I’m not okay.