Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I run to Grant, and I’m halfway there when hands grab me from behind. An arm slaps over my mouth, a forearm in a thick parka sleeve. Then something presses against the side of my belly.
“That’s a gun, Casey,” a voice says. “Go on, look down and check.”
His grip eases just enough for me to look and see Yolanda’s gun digging into the side of my protruding stomach.
“You fight, you try to scream, you do anything except what I tell you to do, and I’ll fire this gun. You know that’s not an idle threat. You saw what I did to Lynn, and you are a good enough cop to understand how much I’d enjoy pulling this trigger and watching you as your baby dies inside you.”
Rage explodes, so intense I can’t breathe. But I don’t move. I do not move one muscle because I know the truth of his words. He let Lynn die without a gag because he enjoyed her terror and agony while she desperately screamed for help. He’d happily watch me with a gunshot wound to my stomach, desperately trying to save my baby, knowing I can’t. And the best part of all? It’d be my fault. He warned me, and I didn’t listen.
I remember what Yolanda said when she woke. How she’d realized I was right about why Lynn didn’t fight harder. Because there is a point at which you absolutely do not fight back. And this is mine.
When the rage clears enough for me to see, my gaze lands on Grant, slumped forward, dead. His hands have fallen from his throat, and there’s a gash in his jugular. Jerome came up behind him through the thick trees, while Grant was talking—while he was talking about wanting time alone with his wife’s killer—and Jerome reached around the smaller man and sliced his throat open.
“Nicely done, isn’t it?” he says behind me. “My stepdad would be proud. He always told me those hunting lessons would come in handy.”
It is Jerome behind me. I know that even if I can’t see him. Even if his voice doesn’t sound like I’ve ever heard it. Because that was Marlon, and this is Jerome.
The gun digs into my side. “Start walking. Back toward the lake.”
For a second, my knees lock. Head away from town? Hell, no. Then I feel that gun, and I remember something.
Twenty minutes.
Anders said he’d give me twenty minutes. Then he’d come looking for me. He’ll come, and he’ll find Grant.
I nod and start walking, moving slowly. When I speak, I keep my voice low, to be clear I’m not trying to summon help. “I’m having contractions.”
“Yep, I figured that. I saw the way your face was scrunching up when you were listening to him prattle. Not an attractive look, Casey.”
“I just wanted you to know, in case I make any sudden moves.”
He gives a low laugh. “You mean that you want me to know so you can make a sudden move and get away from my gun.”
“No,” I say firmly. “I won’t do that.”
“But you can try, if you like. I don’t mind. You try something, and I shoot you in the stomach and kill your baby. That would be fitting, I think. You’re such a go-getter, Casey. Poor Eric could barely get you to slow down. Let me kidnap and murder you? Never. You’ll fight to your dying breath, because that’s the kind of woman you are.”
I say nothing. I don’t need to. He’s having too much fun on his own.
“I have another plan for you,” he says. “A more elaborate scenario. I’d rather stick with that, but if you try anything, I will happily make the adjustment. Shoot you in the belly and then kill you the way I want, after you experience your baby dying inside you.” He pauses. “Babies do feel pain, right? At this stage, certainly.”
I grit my teeth and force myself to walk as another contraction surges.
“Let’s not talk about your baby dying in horrible agony,” he says cheerfully. “You must have questions.”
I want to say no. I can tell he’s eager to give answers. That’s the type of killer he is—so damn proud of his work. On the one hand, he’s smug about never having been caught. Hell, as far as I can tell, his victims’ deaths haven’t been investigated. That has to be very satisfying… but also very un satisfying because no one knows how clever he’s been.
But here’s his chance. Someone he can tell. Better yet, someone who hunted him and lost. Predator turned prey. An audience who won’t live to reveal his secrets.
I want to refuse to be that audience. Deny him and watch him choke on it.
But I can’t take that risk.
I told Yolanda that Lynn went along with her killer likely hoping she’d see an opportunity to escape—or someone would hear her screams. Yolanda went along with him and did get a chance to escape. Now I must do the same. Play the good victim. The cowed victim. Wait for Anders.
“It was Yolanda all along, wasn’t it?” I say. “You never wanted Kendra or Lynn. Yolanda was the target.” Too late, I realize that I’m bringing up the one who got away, and I quickly add, “And now she’s dying. Will is taking her back to the clinic, but she’s not going to make it. She was out there too long.”
He laughs softly, the sound thrumming with satisfaction. “Clever, clever Yolanda. Escaped and thought she was safe. I knew she wouldn’t get far. Then I heard your bunch found her, and I thought maybe she’d survived.”
“She won’t,” I lie. Then I add more horror, to feed his hunger for it. “Even if April works a miracle, she’ll lose her hands to frostbite.”
“Then you know what? I hope April does save her. Can you imagine Yolanda without hands? She’d grab the nearest scalpel and finish the job. Well, no, I guess she couldn’t grab anything, could she?”
His laugh grates through me, and it takes all my willpower to keep walking.
“Turn here,” he says. “We’re heading onto the lake.”
Good. It’ll be easier for Anders to spot me out there. I make the turn toward the snow-covered ice.
“To answer your question, Detective, you’re half right. Yolanda was my preferred victim, but obviously I was fine playing Russian roulette with those drinks, letting the victim self-select, so to speak. If I’d been set on Yolanda, I’d have gotten Yolanda.”
“Instead you got Kendra.”
“Which was a disappointment. Of the three, she was my last choice. Yolanda thinks she’s tough, but you can smell money on her, however much she tries to hide it. Tough in a boardroom but not out here. Kendra is different. Even drugged, she’d have been a handful. So when I had the excuse, I let her go.”
“And Lynn?”
“Happenstance,” he says. “That storm hit, and she was in her shop. I waited for the storm to whip up, and then I let myself in the back door, where no one could see me. Then I did a bit of theater, acted as if I’d seen someone through the windows, thought she’d be gone for the storm and a thief was taking advantage. Can’t help playing cop, ha-ha. She notices the two beer bottles in my hand. Yeah, I was going to hunker down with Will, but the way this storm is blasting in, I’m never getting to his place. Don’t suppose you’d like to share a beer, wait out the storm? Of course she does. Even lets me open them and slip something in hers. Oh, sure, she was the one telling women to be careful, but that doesn’t apply to good ol’ Marlon. So we drink our beer and talk, and shit, the storm’s getting worse. I’d better walk you home.”
He pauses to tell me to turn right. That’s not the direction I want to go. Straight ahead or to the left, it’s open ice, where Anders would easily spot us. Rocks and trees cut into the lake to the right, forming a secluded peninsula. But I can’t hesitate. Hesitation will make him think, and I don’t want him to realize help is coming.
He resumes his story without prompting. “So I help Lynn through the storm. She’s a little woozy, but just laughs it off, blaming the beer. We get close to her residence building and, shit, I’d better not let Grant see me bringing you back. Wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea, ha ha. You okay if we go around the back? Then I can watch you go inside, make sure you’re safe. Sure, that’s fine. Only by then, the snow is coming in so hard we can’t see our hands in front of our faces. That makes it almost too easy. We’re out in the forest, surrounded by trees, before she even realizes we’re off target. Whoops, shit, better double back… only she’s too woozy to realize that I take her in a circle and then keep heading out to the lake, where everything’s set up. I don’t think she even understood something was wrong until I pulled the knife and told her to undress. Even then, she thought it was some weird sex thing and told me, very politely, that she wasn’t interested.”
He barks a laugh. “I should have been insulted. She’s been chasing half the guys in town, and she turned me down. Poor Lynn. Always just a little too eager to please. When she realized I was serious, that clothing came off fast, and I was invited to do whatever I wanted. Just get it over with and let her go. I did what I wanted. Don’t think it was what she expected.”
He chuckles. “You should have heard her scream, tied up on that ice. Oh, she struggled in the beginning, but between the drugs and the hypothermia, her mind went fast, and all she could think to do was scream for help. Scream for you and Eric. Scream for that useless waste of a husband. Scream and scream and scream. It was fucking delightful. ”
I bite my lip hard to keep from lashing out. Then a contraction starts, and this time it’s so strong that I have to stop walking, heaving breath.
“Keep going,” he says, gun barrel digging into my side.
“Just… just a minute. They don’t—they don’t last long.”
The contraction has my knees wobbling. I just want to sit down. No, I want to squat, with the overwhelming urge to find a toilet, as ridiculous as that seems.
Except it’s not ridiculous at all. I want to bear down, in any way I can. The next phase of labor. When my child is ready to be born.
Tears prickle my eyes.
Not yet, baby. Please. Not yet.
Jerome pokes me before the contraction has even finished. He’s making sure I don’t use them to slow us down. Which, yes, would have occurred to me after the agony of this one passes.
I resume walking. It’s a shuffling stride, and that’s not me dragging my heels. Even after the contraction passes, my legs feel like rubber, from relief now, my body getting a break before the next contraction hits. Only it’s not the same as before, when the contraction passed and I felt mostly fine. My stomach twists, and I’m not sure if it’s nerves or nausea.
I want to stop walking. I need to stop walking.
If I take one more step in these soaked sweatpants…
I mentally slow down. My sweatpants and panties are wet, my thighs chafing. I hadn’t even noticed that until now. It feels as if I wet myself.
My water broke, and I never realized it.
All things considered, that’s hardly a shock.
“I… I need to sit down soon,” I say.
“You will. Just up ahead.” His free hand reaches over my shoulder to point. I follow his finger and realize he’s leading me around that peninsula. To a secluded spot where Anders won’t be able to see me.
My knees lock involuntarily.
“Uh-uh.” Jerome digs the gun in. “None of that.”
“I… I don’t think I can go any further.”
“You will. Or I pull this trigger, and if you’re hoping that means Will’s going to hear it and come in time to save you…” He leans down to my ear. “ Tsk-tsk. Such a bad mother already. Willing to sacrifice her baby to save herself.”
I bristle, and that makes him laugh.
“Oh, don’t be so offended, Casey,” he says. “I know you’d never do that. Which is what makes this so much easier. And I also know that we have a limited amount of time together before Will rides to the rescue. It’ll take him a while. First, he’s going to find Grant, and that’ll slow him down. Then he needs to track us, and the fact that we retraced our steps partway is going to screw up what little tracking ability he has. He’ll get here. Eventually. But you know who I’m really hoping shows up?” He leans to my ear again. “Your husband.”
I must flinch, because he laughs before continuing, “Yep, my ideal scenario has Will Anders blundering around before shouting for Eric, who’ll track us easily. Then he’ll show up and… No, let’s save that part. For now, yes, I know you don’t want to go where I’m leading you. But I also know you will, because you don’t have a choice.”
He moves the gun barrel, and I resume walking. I’m moving slow, hissing in pain that’s only fifty percent feigned.
He digs the barrel into my stomach. “None of that shit, Casey.”
“I’m really having trouble. My water broke.”
“Oh, did it? And I suppose when I question that, you’ll want me to check, which gives you a chance to do something. Not sure what you’ll do, since you don’t have your gun, and you’re a little unwieldy right now, but even if your water did break, I don’t actually give a shit. Walk.”
I continue the way he’s prodding me. We soon disappear into the curve between that peninsula and the shore.
“Over here,” he says. “Remember this spot?”
It takes a moment. Then I do. We’d come ice fishing here just last month—Dalton, Anders, Marlon, and me. The remains of our party are still here, in the cut logs we’d sat on.
I slow. “That ice won’t be safe.”
“I know. That’s the point.”
My knees lock. Ahead, I can see the spot where we fished. Anders and Marlon had gone out ahead to make the hole, and instead of making a bunch of ten-inch holes, they cut a single big one, nearly three feet square. I’d laughed at that. A couple of big guys proving their strength with an epic ice-fishing hole… when small ones would have been fine and much safer.
That hole has iced over, but I can see the divot of it, and that ice won’t be more than a few inches thick.
“Walk around the hole,” Jerome says with a dramatic sigh. “Sit your ass down on that stump, and if you think of trying anything, let me remind you that I’m an excellent shot and that stomach of yours makes a very prominent target.”
He is a very good shot. He’d gone hunting with us a few times, and we never questioned his skill with a gun because he was supposedly ex-military. Now I know the skill comes from hunting with his stepfather instead.
“Hands up,” he says. “Walk to that stump, face me, and lower your ass onto it.”
I do as he says. As soon as I start to squat to sit, my body screeches in joy. I’m finally getting into the right position. I clamp my legs shut, as if that’s going to help.
“You were always my first choice,” he says. “If I could have picked anyone, it’d have been Detective Casey Butler. There’s a certain thrill to taking down prey that thinks it’s smarter than you. But with that bun in your oven, Eric wasn’t letting me get near you, and if he wasn’t around, there was Will, your sister… everyone keeping such a close eye on Casey.”
“Yolanda made a decent substitute, though,” I say. “Especially since she turned you down.”
His cheek tics, and I try not to smile. I might not have wanted to piss him off earlier, but I’m away from that gun barrel now. I can see his finger isn’t on the trigger. That hunting experience also ingrained trigger control.
He covers the reaction with a smirk. “Sure, that’s the answer. The killer who targets women who turn him down. Such a cliché.”
Another contraction. I struggle to think past it. I can’t pause. I must keep him talking.
“Did Emma Kim turn you down, too?”
He blinks at the name of the girl he locked into a high-school bathroom.
“Nice work, Detective, but no. I was just a curious boy, and Emma was a convenient target for that curiosity. Not that kind of teenage curiosity, though. Mine is a little more complicated.”
He’s lying. He’s trying to lift himself above the “common killer.” Act like he didn’t make a move on Emma. Like she didn’t reject him. That would be passé, the teenage boy held hostage by his hormones. He was more complicated.
He continues, “As for Yolanda, that was feigned interest. She isn’t my type. I knew I’d be rebuffed, and so I could play the potential suitor, interested but not aggressive enough to be a suspect in her murder. If I liked her and hoped for a relationship, why would I kill her? It was cover.”
He’s full of shit. Or maybe full of self-delusion. From the articles I read, Emma Kim had been a lot like Yolanda—smart, opinionated, and far more focused on her future than romance.
She’d rejected Jerome. I’m sure of that. Then he’d realized he’d dodged a bullet there—if she’d told friends he’d pursued her, he’d have been a suspect. So I doubt his other victims had any connection to him. Until Yolanda, because in a town this small, everyone has some connection to you, so he might as well let his bruised ego pick a victim.
Would I have suspected him if Yolanda died? Yes. My attention would always turn to a rebuffed suitor, however gentle his pursuit.
He’s looking at me. Waiting for a response.
“What did you do to Martin?”
Something flickers over his face. Actual regret? It vanishes as he finds his sneer.
“Martin was a fool,” he says. “All that time in the army, and he was still too much of a coward to deal with that Nazi. He couldn’t even bring himself to kill the guys who kidnapped him.” He shakes his head. “Weak.”
“He told you he was coming to Haven’s Rock, didn’t he? He wanted someone to know, and he trusted you.”
The smallest flinch.
I push on. “But you were in trouble yourself. You messed up and the police were closing in, so you snagged his ticket.”
It’s a guess, but a flicker on his face shows I’m right.
I have a moment here, where he’s distracted, but it’s not enough. I can’t fight him in my condition, and a momentary distraction won’t keep him from shooting me as I lumber away across the ice.
I resist the urge to shift my weight on this log. I’m uncomfortable, something deep in my brain screaming at me to move, to get into position, to be ready, but if I fidget, even a little, he’ll mistake it for nerves. I will myself to stay calm and still.
“Sweating a little there, Casey,” he says.
“Because I’m having a damn baby,” I snap. He’s right, though. I’m trying to cover up the signs of my discomfort and growing panic, but I can’t hide the physiological tells—my face reddening and sweat dripping under the hem of my wool hat.
“Well, then, let’s get on with it.” He turns to that wide divot in the ice. “Lie down there.”