"Did you see him? See his face?"
"No. I was afraid to turn around. One time . . .when I was waiting for a light to change ... I looked in the mirror, but it was dark in the backseat."
"Then what happened?"
"He made me drive to this deserted place where his car was parked."
"Did you know where you were? Did you recognize the area?"
She shook her head. "I was too scared. All I was thinking about was dying. I knew this was the guy, the Lucia guy, and I knew he was going to kill me. The only thing I remember is that we pulled up behind these huge cement things. You know, those things you see by railroad tracks."
"Grain elevators?"
"Maybe. I'm not sure. I'm a townie. I don't know anything about that stuff."
"Did you go over any railroad tracks to get there?"
"I don't remember. I think. Oh, I don't know. Sorry."
"That's okay. Then what happened?"
"He taped my mouth and hands and made me get in the trunk of his car."
"Did you see the vehicle?"
"It was dark, really dark. But the trunk was big. It wasn't any little compact thing, that's for sure."
"When he was taping your mouth, did you see him at all? Even a little bit?"
"I could kinda make out a dark shape, and maybe a lighter area that would have been his face, but that's all."
"Did you get a sense of how tall he was?"
She thought a moment. "For some reason, I thought he was taller than me. Maybe close to six feet."
"How about his voice? A lot of times we can get a sense of how large a person is by the voice. Was his voice deep? Or high-pitched?"
"I don't know. I was too scared to notice. Maybe average. I don't know."
"What about an accent? Or possibly poor grammar? Did he sound like someone who was well educated?"
She gave it some thought. "I didn't notice anything weird about the way he talked, but like I said, I was scared. And he didn't say much. A few commands like, Drive. Turn right. Pull up there. Get out of the car. I was so scared that a couple of times I didn't hear him, and he got mad and yelled it again." Holly suddenly felt like crying. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I can't remember anything when it just happened a few hours ago. I feel so stupid. I'm not helping at all, am I?"
"You're helping immensely. You've already told me that he's most likely white, fairly tall, no strong accent, and drives a large car—a car that may have left tracks near a grain elevator. Don't feel bad about not being able to answer my questions. Don't apologize for being human and responding like ninety-eight percent of the population. It's a documented fact that when a person's heart rate reaches a high level, it becomes almost impossible to hear and even more impossible to comprehend what we're hearing. I'm going to continue to ask questions, but please don't worry if you can't supply an answer. Just be proud of yourself for having the guts and initiative to get away from him. That's something no one else has been able to do, because unfortunately it's also human nature to become passive when presented with such a situation. We tend to freeze and wait when facing the unknown. You didn't allow yourself to freeze—which is why you're alive. You are an amazingly strong individual," the agent told her sincerely. "And just the fact that you got away is going to help us catch this guy."
Her words of encouragement assuaged some of Holly's tenseness and made her fear recede. She had gotten away. That was pretty damn impressive.
Agent Cantrell glanced through the notes the police had taken, then up at Holly. "I know it may be impossible to answer this, but did you get any sense of how far you may have ridden in the trunk before he stopped to check on you?"
The mental block Holly had subconsciously erected when she'd been speaking with the police evaporated. All at once she was able to put herself back there, in the trunk.
"It smelled so bad," she whispered. "Like something rotten. Like something dead." She picked at the green scrubs she was wearing. "I'd let you smell my shirt, but the crime scene people took it. They picked things out of my hair too. And cut my fingernails—in case there was any evidence under my nails."
"They're very efficient."
"It was the Lucia Killer, wasn't it?"
"We don't know. The only way to substantiate that theory would be to link him to the other crimes."
Holly knew they couldn't assume the guy was the Lucia Killer without facts. She'd already been told that. It seemed stupid, when everybody was thinking it was him. "They asked if they needed to get a rape kit, and I told them no. I don't think they believed me at first until I yelled and cried. Anyway, I started thinking that maybe there was a dead person in there with me. In the trunk. The more I thought about it, the sicker I felt. Pretty soon I started gagging and even threw up. It shot out my nose or I would have choked to death. A little later the car stopped and the trunk flew open. The guy made some weird sound, like maybe he was upset or scared or something; then he pulled the tape off my mouth and put a hand over my face. Right away I wanted to scream, but then I realized he was checking to see if I was breathing." She paused, thinking about how she'd tricked him. "I love to swim. I swim all the time. I can hold my breath, like, forever—so I held it. He slammed the trunk and took off. We drove for a long time. Or it seemed like a long time. Then he stopped and opened the trunk again. This time he cut the tape from my wrists and pulled me out."
"Then what happened?"
"He drags me through the woods, all the while I'm playing dead. It's dark. Pitch black, otherwise he would have known, but the darkness helped, I think. But I know he's going to kill me. He cuts off my jeans. Slash, slash, rip, rip, and they were off." She hesitated a moment, wondering if she wanted to mention what happened next. She hadn't told the police.
"He took pictures of me."
"Pictures?"
"Yeah. The flash went off in my face. Two, maybe three times."
"Did the camera make a sound? Or was it silent?"
"I heard something. Kinda like my 35-millimeter camera, but faster. One shot after the other."
"Then what?"
"He starts fiddling with his own clothes. I can hear the sound of a belt buckle and a zipper, and I know he's going to rape me. He thinks he's going to have sex with a corpse. What do you call those people? Who have sex with corpses?"
"Necrophiliacs."
"Yeah. I saw a movie once about a girl who worked at a morgue and had sex with the dead bodies. Anyway, that's what he was thinking was going to happen. And I knew I couldn't play dead any longer, so I jumped up and ran. I just ran. . . ."
Holly could still hear him behind her, panting, ripping through the underbrush. She remembered making so much noise. Too much noise! But she couldn't slow down. No way could she slow down! The sound of her own heart was drumming in her head. She heard the air being sucked into her lungs. Even though branches tore at the flesh of her bare legs, she felt no pain. All she thought about was moving, getting away. She was fast. She was young. She was scared shitless. She could beat him. She could outrun him. She just had to keep going. Keep moving.
She didn't know how far she ran, or for how long. All she knew was that she couldn't stop. There was no way she could stop. Even when she no longer heard sounds of pursuit, she kept going. He could still be back there, moving silently. Because he could move silently. He'd already proved that when he'd surprised her getting into her car. So maybe he was still behind her. Moving silently over the forest floor, silently over skeletal leaves and tiny ferns and dark earth.
Suddenly she saw lights in the distance. The night was foggy, but she was able to pick up the sound of a single car rolling down the highway.
Was it him? Had he gone back for his car, and now here he was, ready to cut her off? She voted against revealing herself, but her body moved of its own accord. Before she could stop it, she stood at the side of the highway with a pair of headlights cutting through the fog, blinding her.
This could be the end, she thought distantly. The end of my life.
She thought about her parents, about all they'd done for her. She wished she hadn't been so nasty to them the last couple of years. What was the point? What had she been trying to prove? It seemed so stupid now.
The car stopped but remained idling. Someone stepped out and began to move toward her. She could make out the shape of a man, his legs scissoring black silhouettes against the light. How would she know if it was him? His face would tell her nothing. Seeing him would do no good. This could be him and she wouldn't even know it. Pretending to be stopping to help. Hadn't she seen that trick in a movie?
Turn around.
Turn around and run back into the woods.
But his voice was young and compelling. He said he was driving a truck.
Let me see it. Step aside so I can see it!
It was a truck. A crappy, rusty, wonderful truck! And he was practically a kid! Nice, horrified, just as frightened as she was.
"Todd," Holly told Agent Cantrell. "He said his name was Todd."
"Yes, I met him in the hallway. I'm going to be talking with him shortly."
"He yelled at me to run, like he was suddenly scared to death." Now that she thought about it, it was funny. Really funny. She laughed, a hand to her stomach. "Here I was the one who'd been kidnapped, almost raped, almost killed—yet he was scared. I think he said, 'Let's get the hell out of here!' in this high- pitched voice. Yeah, that's what it was. Let's get the hell out of here! Oh, my God," she gasped. "That is so funny! Isn't that funny?" she asked, waiting for a reply.
Agent Cantrell stared at her a moment as if weighing her words. "I'm guessing you had to be there."
Chapter 17
Detective Wakefield called a private emergency meeting five hours after Mary's interview with Holly Lindstrom. Present in the first-floor room of the Minneapolis Police Department were Wakefield, Mary, Anthony, and Gillian.
"What's your opinion?" Wakefield asked the two FBI agents. He was popping antacid tablets and clutching a stained coffee mug that said WISHIN’ I WAS FISHIN'. "Do you think this wacko who kidnapped the Lindstrom girl is the same guy who's killing women and cutting out their eyeballs?"
"Without more evidence," Anthony said, "we have nothing to tie them together."
"You're profilers. You were called in because we don't have enough evidence. Can't you just come out and say what you think? That's why I wanted only the four of us here. This is completely off the record, but I have to know what you're really thinking, and I have to know it now. Not tomorrow. Not in a week or ten days, or whenever the hell you can get those guys at Quantico to sign off on another profile. Let's quit beating around the bush about this. Let's cut through that FBI red tape and tell me what you think."
Mary looked at Anthony. To anyone else his expression may not have seemed to change, but Mary understood he was agreeing to go against protocol. She turned back to Wakefield. "Off the record," she said, "we think it's the same guy."
Wakefield let out a deep breath. "Thank you. That's all I wanted to know. Now let's proceed. We've got people out combing the woods where the Lindstrom girl was picked up. They found some footprints they're making casts of as we speak. They've also found some strands of hair caught on branches. But so far no torn clothing and no tire tracks."
"Holly said he took photos of her." Mary sat down in an unforgiving plastic chair. Anthony stood nearby, a hip against the window ledge, feet crossed at the ankles. "I doubt he'd want to take his film in to get it developed, which means he's probably processing it himself."
"Sebastian Tate's taking darkroom classes," Gillian offered, contributing for the first time.
Wakefield took a sip of coffee, then grimaced as if he knew it was going to hurt when it hit his stomach. "Tate's still on the suspect list. With the earlier profile we've been able to narrow the names down to roughly twenty. Have detectives out interviewing all twenty right now."
"We can't concentrate exclusively on the list," Mary said. "The killer might not be on it. I think we need to broaden the net."
"I agree," Anthony said.
Wakefield let out a groan. "You know how many people are into photography in the Twin Cities area? How many people have their own darkroom? We'll have Research go through data from places that sell darkroom equipment, but there are probably thousands. Still," he added reluctantly, "at this point, the photography angle seems to be all we got."
"Anthony and I have discussed this, and our opinion is that he'll try to come after Holly," Mary said. "She represents the one who got away. Not only physically, but romantically as well."
"That's my feeling too," Wakefield agreed. "He's going to be pissed off. This girl has to be watched. She has to be protected."
"Have you explained the danger she's in?" Anthony asked.
"I thought I'd give her until this afternoon to equalize, then hit her with the bad news. Unfair as hell, but there it is. She's a target."