He knocked on the door. Nobody answered. The windowless garage was shut; he couldn't see whether a car was inside or not. He walked around the property. The sky was dark. A storm was blowing in, bringing wind and rain that was supposed to turn to snow. He hoped the lakes froze early this year. He'd spent the summer building a new fishing house, and he was anxious to get it set up.
The farm was a nice little place. He remembered when old Samuel Griffin had lived there. Sam had died while feeding his hogs, and the hogs ate him. Nothing left for anybody to find but bones.
Hogs were weird that way. Especially in a feedlot situation. He knew a guy who'd just slipped and fallen. Before he could get up, a hog bit off his ear.
There was no sign of activity. Maybe it was better this way. Take him by surprise with a search warrant. That was if his suspicions were enough for a search warrant. He'd made some bad calls in the past, and the judge was getting reluctant to spit warrants out the way she used to. Damn woman.
From a crack in the living room drapes, Mason watched the police car drive away, smoke from the rapidly blown-out candles burning his throat. The girl—Gillian—was lying on the floor, unconscious from a blow to the head. Her fault. She shouldn't have tried to run for the door.
He'd known the police would come. He just hadn't thought it would be so soon.
Chapter 33
Anthony sat hunched over a desk in the corner of Elliot Senatra's office, going over the matches they'd come up with from the list of rose propagators. They'd narrowed it down to twenty-three men, not a figure Anthony was happy with, but they couldn't risk dismissing the remotest possibility. Mary, who Anthony didn't think had slept in days, was on the phone with Detective Wakefield. Time was their enemy, and she was desperately trying to pull together forty-six people in order to simultaneously send teams to the twenty-three remaining addresses.
The door flew open, and Elliot stuck his head inside. "A grave in Poplar Grove's been robbed," he announced. "And get this—the missing body belongs to Josephine Von Bryant."
Von Bryant. One of the names on the propagator list.
"Does she have a husband?" Mary asked. "Or a son?"
Elliot smiled broadly. "A brother. Mason Von Bryant."
The rental car flew down the country road, gravel and mud hitting the undercarriage.
"The turn should be coming up on the left." Mary leaned forward in the passenger seat. It was raining hard, and the rapidly clicking wipers could barely keep up.
Mason Von Bryant's house was located on the top of a hill, with an unobstructed view of the half-mile lane leading to it and the connecting highway. When planning their strategy, they'd decided it would be too risky for a parade of patrol cars to approach the house. Instead, Mary and Anthony were going in and would call for backup when needed. Parked along the highway two miles away was Elliot, along with four BCA agents, four police officers, six members of the SWAT team, and an ambulance. Even though it wasn't his jurisdiction, John Wakefield was also on hand.
"There it is." Anthony slowed and then turned the car onto a road with a PRIVATE PROPERTY sign. The narrow lane was deeply rutted, and he was forced to slow down.
He pulled up behind the garage and shut off the engine. Then he radioed Elliot and the waiting team to let them know they'd arrived.
He and Mary opened their doors and stepped out. Wind caught their raincoats, whipping them about their legs. Hunching their shoulders, they ran for the house and the overhang above the front door.
Anthony tried the doorbell, then knocked. When no one answered, he jiggled the knob. It was unlocked.
He looked at Mary with raised eyebrows. They withdrew their weapons from their shoulder holsters. She nodded, and he pushed open the door. With guns drawn and pointed skyward, they entered cautiously.
It was an old house. Wind shifted a curtain and crept into a crevice around the sash, sounding like breath being blown across the curved glass lip of a soda bottle.
Immediately in front of them was the kitchen where a table had been set with wineglasses and a cake. In a vase were red roses.
Seated at the table, her back to Mary, was a woman. Mary inched forward, slowly approaching her while Anthony kept his eyes on the living room and hallway.
Mary had come expecting to find Mason Von Bryant's dead sister, so she wasn't surprised to discover that the woman seated at the table was a frozen-faced corpse, an untouched glass of wine and slice of cake in front of her. The ice cream had melted, dripping to the floor to dry in a congealed puddle.
Was every traumatic event in her life going to feature cake? Mary wondered.
The body neither shocked nor frightened her.
She motioned to Anthony, and they scoured the lower story of the house, quickly and efficiently checking the living room, dining room, two bedrooms, and bath. Then they climbed the narrow, twisted stairs.
The ornate railing was covered with glossy, chipped white paint, the stair steps with a wool runner. The walls were smothered with overwhelming floral wallpaper, yellowed and stained with age. The house smelled like mildew and rotten wood.
In the doorway of the first bedroom, Anthony paused and tensed. Behind him, Mary looked over his shoulder. Reclining in a narrow twin bed, pillows at his back, dressed in light blue pajamas, was a man she assumed was Mason Von Bryant. He watched passively with emotionless eyes.
There was no dismissing the emptiness there. She'd seen it before. That kind of emptiness belonged to killers, to mass murderers. To people without souls or conscience.
Where is Gillian?
Is she still alive?
Those were the two questions foremost in her mind. If the case hadn't involved her sister, Mary would have said he'd most likely killed her the first or second day. But this was Gillian they were talking about, and Mary couldn't face the possibility that her sister was dead.
Beside her, Anthony sensed Mary's fear and apprehension, sensed the way she struggled with the scene as presented to them. These situations always fit a pattern, and her years of experience would be telling her that her sister was dead. Right now Mary was probably clinging to the few cases that fell outside the norm. Let this be one of those, he prayed, all the while afraid such prayers were useless. Gillian was dead. That's what his gut was telling him.
Both their weapons were trained on the man in the bed. Anthony pulled out his ID and introduced himself and Mary. "Are you Mason Von Bryant?"
"As a matter of fact, I am."
"Where's Gillian?" Mary asked, her voice neutral.
"Aren't beds the greatest?" Von Bryant asked, acting as if they had come to visit him. "I always feel safe in my bed."
Anthony remained focused on the man, watching for the smallest flicker of movement that would indicate a weapon. "Put up your hands."
Von Bryant slowly lifted his hands and held them high. "I always wanted to do that," he said, smiling.
He was like a kid, Anthony realized, like some thirteen-year-old kid. In a matter of seconds, Anthony went from anger to pity. And now, peripherally, he took note of the surroundings.
The room was done in cartoon animal wallpaper. Black-and-white photos covered one wall. A glance told him they were of Mason Von Bryant and variations of the woman downstairs. On the bed was a big stuffed bear and a purple elephant. Shelves held model cars, toy rockets, and arrowheads—all lined up neatly in rows. The sheets on the twin bed were faded and worn, but not so worn that Anthony couldn't make out characters from the 1977 Star Wars movie.
Jesus.
It was the saddest fucking thing he'd ever seen.
How did this happen? How did people get so messed up, so twisted around in their heads? The poor guy. Poor kid.
"Where's Gillian?" Mary repeated.
"I'm not afraid of dying," Von Bryant stated.
"We don't want you to die," Anthony said carefully.
"This isn't real. None of it's real, so it doesn't matter."
"Mason, this is real."
"I've always felt safe in my bed."
"You are safe."
"No place is really safe, is it? Don't you know that? No place. Not even this bed."
"That's not true," Anthony lied.
Mason cocked his head to one side. "Listen to the rain. Doesn't it sound peaceful? The way it's hitting the roof like that?"
Mary made a little choking sound deep in her throat, a sob that she tried to stop but couldn't.
She knows, Anthony thought. She knows Gillian is dead.
"Where's Gillian?" she suddenly shouted, extending her gun with both hands and taking a step toward the bed. "Where's my sister?" She was half-sobbing now, the gun trembling.
Anthony put a hand out to stop her and comfort her. "Careful," he warned.
"Everything sucks," Mason said.
Anthony could kinda see where he was coming from. Sometimes he thought it was just him and the business he was in. When you deal with evil every day, you tended to think life sucked.
"I understand," Anthony said.
"You?" Mason asked sarcastically. "You understand? Are you saying you understand what it's like to be me? Nobody knows what it's like to be me. Can I put my arms down? They're getting tired."
"Go ahead, but keep them above the sheets."
Mason lowered his arms.
"I don't know what it's like to be you," Anthony said. "But I know what it's like to be human. I know what it's like to wonder where this is all heading, and why. The world is a hard place to live in. That's all I'm saying. It's a hard place to deal with."
"I can't relate to you in any way."
"I don't expect you to."
"With your suit and tie and city haircut. You don't have any right to tell me the world is hard. You're the kind of person that makes it hard. Good-looking, efficient bastards like you make the rest of us look bad, make the rest of us look like shit."
"I'm sorry."
"It's too late."
"What do you mean, too late?" Anthony asked. Too late for Gillian? Or too late for Von Bryant?
Up until that point, Mason's movements had been slow and slothlike. Suddenly he acted with agile speed, pulling a handgun from under the sheets. But instead of turning it on Anthony or Mary, he turned it in his direction.
"He's going to kill himself!" Mary screamed.
She lunged. Before she made contact, his weapon discharged. The sound was deafening in the cramped room. The pressure of the expanding gases from the single bullet caused the bones of Von Bryant's skull to separate along the suture lines. Like a deflated balloon, his face caved in on itself.
"No!" She grabbed fistfuls of his pajama top. "No! You son of a bitch! NO!"
"Mary, he's dead!" Anthony tried to pull her back, but nothing registered. "He's dead! Let him go!"
His words finally sank in. She released him. With her sleeve, she wiped away the blood that flecked her face. "We need to search this place." She ran to the closet and jerked open the door. "We have to find Gillian!"
Anthony radioed Elliot. "Von Bryant's dead."
"What about Gillian?"
"We're still looking. Check the garage and outbuildings, plus the area surrounding the house."
"We're on our way."
Chapter 34
She was suffocating.
Had Mason known the holes he'd drilled in the refrigerator wouldn't be enough to keep her supplied with air? That would be something he would do, something gutless. Why not just kill her outright? Shoot her, or give her an overdose of his nasty drugs? Instead, he put her away. He shut the door and didn't plan to open it again. Forget about her. Pretend she didn't exist.
It was possible her body would never be found. Her poor mother would keep looking, year after year, waiting for news. And all the while Gillian would be here, stuffed in a fucking refrigerator.
She'd tried to be good. She'd even talked to his dead sister. But it hadn't been enough. No woman would have been enough for him, because no woman could live up to the woman who was already dead.
She'd been naive enough to think she could get through to him. How idiotic. How childish of her. She wasn't a negotiator. She hadn't been trained to talk someone into giving up. And now, in this eleventh hour, she could admit that after all these years, she was still trying to prove herself to Mary.
* * *
The basement was cold and damp, the floor was dirt, the walls wound around like catacombs.
"Gillian!" Mary shouted. "Gillian!"
She and Anthony hurried through the cramped space, ducking under wooden beams, their shoulders rubbing against stone and cement. One pass, and they found Mason's darkroom. No sign of Gillian.
Mary quickly looked around, her gaze moving over the photos plastered to the walls. There was Holly. Charlotte Henning. April Ellison. Underneath some of April's photos was a neatly printed word: BITCH.