Freak (31 page)

The property appeared to be abandoned. The grass was mixed with weeds as high as Jerry’s shins and the house’s exterior was peeling. A few of the shutters hung askew and a fading, warped wraparound porch framed dirty windows, some with cracks. Parked off to the side was an old blue Ford pickup, missing a bumper and a wheel. The house had apparently been in Cavanaugh’s family for three generations, though it didn’t look as if anyone had lived in it for years. Apparently Doris Wheaton, currently buried in the Heavenly Rest Cemetery,
had been the last resident. She’d moved into a nursing home fifteen years earlier, and nobody had lived in it since. The town of Concrete was just too rural.

But behind the old house, Lake Shannon sparkled. The light from the full moon rippled off the waters, and there was a sense of calm and tranquillity. This could be a beautiful place if someone was willing to spend some money on repairs and maybe donate a little elbow grease.

Jerry took the steps up to the front entrance quickly and pounded on the door. No answer. Torrance followed suit, shouting, “Open up! Police!” but again, no answer.

With a grim look at Jerry, Torrance pulled out his gun and thrust his shoulder into the wood. The door opened with a cracking sound.

“I could live the whole rest of my life without ever having to break through a door again,” Torrance said drily, rubbing his shoulder. “It’s not like it is on TV. That shit hurts, pal.”

Jerry heard him speaking but his brain didn’t bother to interpret the words. He was too focused on looking for Annie. With Torrance’s Glock in hand, he stepped inside the house and looked around, ears tuned for any possible sound.

There were no curtains on any of the windows and the electricity didn’t work when Jerry flicked a few of the switches. The moonlight streaming in through the dirty windows was the only light inside, so he pulled out the pocket flashlight he always kept with him and switched it on. Torrance had his Maglite and the two of them proceeded to scope the house quietly.

They split up, Jerry taking the right side and Torrance the left, meeting back in the middle a moment later.

“Nothing?” Torrance asked quietly.

Jerry shook his head. Unless cobwebs counted.

They took the stairs, again splitting up, and again, neither man found anything. The house was sparsely furnished, the decor dated, and most of the closet doors were open, making it very quick to check.

“Maybe there’s a shed out back or something,” Torrance said.

Taking one last look around, Jerry nodded. The two exited the house and headed toward the backyard.

There was an old woodshed with windows and peeling paint, but it was stuffed so full of junk there was no way a person could be inside. Scoping the rest of the backyard with his frustratingly small flashlight, Jerry heard Torrance’s voice.

“Found a root cellar!”

He sprinted over to where his ex-partner was, and in the ground there was, indeed, a root cellar. And the long grass surrounding it looked disturbed, as if someone had been there recently.

Oh God if she’s inside please God let her be okay please God please
. The thoughts, scattered and almost incoherent, traveled through Jerry’s mind at the speed of lightning.

“It’s padlocked,” Torrance said. “We can break it, though. The warrant is for the entire premises.”

“Do it.”

“Watch yourself.” Torrance aimed his gun and squeezed.

The heavy cellar door lifted an inch as the padlock blew off, then settled back down again. Jerry reached forward and pulled the door up and open, and stared at the long steps leading underground. It was pitch black.

“You want me to lead?” Torrance asked.

Jerry didn’t bother to answer. He was through the doorway and down the stairs before Torrance could say anything else.

*     *     *

The first thing that hit him was the damp smell.

The second thing that hit him was that with the door closed, there would be a total absence of light. He couldn’t imagine Annie down here. The cellar would be cold and dark and terrifying.

Behind him, Torrance shone his flashlight over the walls and located a string hanging from the root cellar’s ceiling. Torrance yanked on it and the room—surprisingly larger than Jerry expected—flooded with dim light from the bare bulb. There was obviously a generator somewhere, since the property didn’t seem to have electricity.

The cellar was filled with crates, cobwebs, and boxes of something that smelled like it was rotting. Someone had also vomited recently, judging by the odor. Jerry flicked his small flashlight onto everything, but he wasn’t being methodical enough about it—his light was haphazardly illuminating the space around him. He couldn’t seem to slow himself down.

Torrance spotted the body first. “In the corner.”

Those had to be the worst three words Jerry had ever heard, and his heart stopped. His legs suddenly felt like they weighed a thousand pounds and he couldn’t seem to bring himself to move forward. He could see the body crumpled in the corner, away from the light. A pair of legs were visible from behind a stack of crates filled with canned vegetables.

“Is it—” He stopped, unable to finish the question.

Torrance moved forward quickly. He stepped around the crates, not wanting to disturb the scene. It was probably a good thing he was the one checking and not Jerry, who would have knocked the crates over in his quest to see who the body belonged to.

“It’s not Annie,” Torrance said, and Jerry felt his knees give out from the surge of relief that hit. They were the best three words he could have heard right now. “It’s Mark Cavanaugh.”

Jerry, legs now finally working, came up behind his ex-partner and shone his own little light down. Yes, it was indeed the former prison guard. Mark Cavanaugh, eyes wide open in surprise, was lying on his side. He looked ten times less handsome with his normally sharp features slack and pallid.

But then again, nobody looked good dead.

The CO was lying in a pool of something liquid, something that looked black until the light from the flashlight hit it, revealing it to be a deep, rich red. Blood, of course. Lots and lots of it, seeping from the deep gash at the man’s throat, which might have mirrored Jerry’s own a year earlier.

Normally Jerry would have been repulsed at the sight of that gaping wound, but his relief that the body wasn’t Annie’s outweighed any other feeling he might have had at this moment.

“She cut his throat.” Torrance’s voice was full of wonder. “Can you fucking believe that? Ballsy bitch. Guess she didn’t love him after all.”

“You should call it in.”

Torrance nodded and stepped away. He pulled out his phone, but before dialing, he looked at Jerry and said, “I’m happy it’s not Marianne. Or your friend, Sheila.”

Jerry nodded, and Torrance called in the murder.

His former partner was back a moment later, his face even grimmer than before.

“What?” Jerry said.

“They got an ID on the body this morning, the one from the motel. The vic’s sister filed a missing persons report. Guess who it is.”

“I’m in no mood for guessing, Mike.”

“Elizabeth Lee Cavanaugh.”

Jerry froze. “Cavanaugh’s married?”

“Well, obviously not anymore. When Elizabeth didn’t show up to work today, the sister got worried, because apparently Cavanaugh’s been on a bender and he’s a mean drunk.”

“So he killed his wife and covered it up, making it look like Jeremiah Blake did it?”

“That’s my guess, yeah. Cavanaugh’s got motive—he’s in love with Maddox. And if he was drunk, it’s likely he didn’t even know Jack the Zipper had been arrested.”

They spent the next few minutes looking around the cellar for clues. There was nothing to even indicate the women had been here, except . . .

A small object—very small, about the diameter of a quarter but much thicker—was caught in Jerry’s flashlight beam. He stepped forward and squatted down, careful not to touch it. But as the realization of what the object was hit him, he felt his legs go out from under him again, and it was all he could do to keep his balance. He picked it up, staring at it with growing horror.

It was a tiny pot of Marianne’s lip balm. The one she special-ordered from Paris, the one she was so fanatical about that she always had a pot in her purse, her car, and at home scattered throughout various rooms in the house. He’d know it anywhere. And he’d bet his left nut that Marianne had managed to leave it behind on purpose.

So that he’d know.

“They were here.” He spoke quietly to Torrance, who sighed deeply from somewhere behind him. “Jesus Christ, Mike, they were
here
.”

“I’m sorry, pal.” Torrance’s voice was heavy with regret.

Jerry heard him make another call, his former partner’s gruff tone softening as he murmured information into the phone. He heard Marianne’s name spoken, twice.

Jerry knew he needed to move, but again, his legs and arms wouldn’t cooperate. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. He felt like a deer in the headlights, only there were no headlights, just this darkness around him, and the cold, dank smell of the cellar, and his absolute terror that his wife was in the hands of a serial killer.

MARIANNE’S FACE WAS
white as a sheet and she was having trouble breathing. Forget panic attack. Sheila was certain her friend was having a heart attack.

The two of them were tied up on the floor of an old van, Mark Cavanaugh’s Durango having been left back at the house. Abby knew what she was doing—the van had obviously been prepared in advance.

Their legs were also bound with zip ties now, and it was impossible to move. They were covered with an old quilt that smelled like dirty gym socks, and while Sheila could breathe, the hot, stinky air made it difficult. Pressed up tight against Marianne, she could smell her friend’s apple shampoo mixed with sweat, and the combined odors were stifling. Sheila tried to wiggle her body against Marianne so that she was flat on her back, which might make the air feel fresher. But with no usable limbs, changing positions even slightly was an impossible feat.

“Just pull over and let her out,” she yelled again to Abby, but her muffled quilt-covered voice wasn’t carrying well over the loud music.

Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” was playing on the radio, a song Sheila normally loved, though she knew she would never
be able to listen to the song after this. Abby was singing along at the top of her lungs. Circumstances notwithstanding, her singing voice wasn’t bad. Low and husky, a lot like her speaking voice.

“Abby!” Sheila shouted again through the thickness of the blanket. “Listen to me! Marianne is having a heart attack! She can’t breathe! Pull over!”

Abby turned the music down and a short silence followed. Suddenly all Sheila could hear was her own breath peppered with Marianne’s shallow breathing beside her.

“What’s the problem back there?” Abby sounded annoyed.

“Pull over.” Sheila spoke in her best authoritative voice, strong and crisp and even. “Marianne is having a heart attack, Abby. She is going to die.”

“No, she’s not.” From the front seat, the younger woman’s tone was dismissive. “She’s in severe panic mode. It just feels like a heart attack. Don’t worry, I’ve seen it happen a hundred times before.” A snicker. “Okay, well maybe not a hundred times, but who’s counting.”

“You don’t know that. She could be in real trouble.” Sweat ran down Sheila’s head in rivulets from the heat of the blanket and lack of air flow. Beside her, Marianne moaned.

“And so what if she is?” Abby’s voice turned icy. “So fucking what, Sheila? What did you think was going to happen tonight? You think we’re all going to the spa for mani-pedis? You think we dragged your asses up and out of that stinky root cellar and stuck you in the back of this shitmobile so we could all go joy-riding?”

Sheila sucked in a breath. So Abby really was going to kill them. It took her a moment to bring herself to speak. “What did you do to Mark Cavanaugh?”

A long silence.

Back in the root cellar, Abby had knocked them both out again by injecting them with yet another unknown substance. By the time she and Marianne had regained consciousness, they were in the back of this old van. Sheila had no idea how long they’d been driving. What she did know was that Cavanaugh had to have helped get them into the vehicle—no way was Abby strong enough to move them out of the cellar all by herself.

And yet, the prison guard was nowhere to be seen.

“Did you kill him?” Sheila asked.

Abby stayed silent. Sheila was going to assume her silence meant yes. And since she wasn’t turning the radio back up, it was also safe to assume she was interested in hearing what Sheila had to say.

“I thought he was your friend,” Sheila said.

Abby laughed. The sound was humorless, harsh, and brief. “Mark was an idiot, and a drunk. He almost fucked everything up for me. It was all going according to plan, but he got blitzed last night and killed his nagging bitch of a wife. And then he panicked and tried to make it look like it was Jack the Zipper who did it, not realizing they’d already caught the guy. It points the cops right to him, and by extension,
me
. I wasn’t very happy about that. So yeah, I killed him, Sheila. Friends are so overrated.”

“What about lovers?”

“Dime a dozen.” Abby said this breezily, but Sheila could hear the edge beneath it.

“Especially now that you’re free.”

“Especially.”

“But for how long?” They hit a bump in the road and something sharp on the floor of the van jabbed into Sheila’s side. She tried to worm away from it. “How long until they find you? By now there’s a massive manhunt. Why not just do your time?
Your sentence wasn’t that long. You might have been out in three years with good behavior.”

“Or I would have had to do the entire eight,” Abby said, and Sheila could tell her teeth were clenched. “And anyway, what are three years of your life worth to you, Sheila? Life is fleeting. I know that better than most. One day we’re here, the next day we’re snuffed out like birthday candles. I could fall down the stairs at Creekside, break my neck. Or one of those lowlife women could stab me in my sleep. Is that how I want to go? Every minute we live is a minute we’re closer to death. Three more years in prison?” Another humorless laugh. “Might as well have been a life sentence.”