Chapter 21
1
1:00 PM.
Someone is walking toward Corrie, stepping carefully across the beams laid on the concrete floor. She turns her head as far as the tape around her neck will allow, which isn’t far. She’s not quite choking, but it’s like breathing through a tube. It makes the headache from whatever Gibson dosed her with that much worse. She can’t believe this has happened to her. And that it happened so fast.
It’s a dark-haired woman in a pants suit, but the rink is so shadowy that Corrie can’t make out her face at first… but when she speaks, Corrie recognizes that low, slightly husky voice. She heard it once before, in Reno. Telling her to suffer not a woman to usurp the authority of man. First Timothy, bitch .
“Hello, Corrie Anderson. This time I know who you are. And I bet you know who I am.”
Corrie does. It’s Christopher Stewart.
Stewart drops to one knee in front of the penalty box and stares at her the way a scientist might study a test animal that will soon be sacrificed to the greater good. Which is exactly what Corrie feels like. Her terror is overlaid by surrealism. She could almost believe she’s having a terribly vivid nightmare, because how likely is it that she should be drugged and taken prisoner by one obviously crazy man only to be confronted by another?
“He didn’t kill you,” says the man in the wig. “He killed the other one, but not you.”
Stewart half-turns and holds out his hand like a game-show host displaying tonight’s big prize. Corrie sees a shape lying on the crisscrossing beams at what was once center ice. Almost melting there. She realizes with growing horror that it’s a dead body, and further realizes that what she’s smelling isn’t just the residue of whatever this lunatic drugged her with.
As if reading her mind, Stewart says, “The poor girl is starting to stink, isn’t she? I could even smell it outside.”
Please let me go, I’m not the one you want , Corrie tries to say, but of course nothing comes out through the hole in the tape but muffled sounds that bear no resemblance to actual words.
“Killed the other one, but not you,” Stewart repeats. “And I think I know why.”
Even with her headache and still woozy from the shot, Corrie thinks she also knows why. Stewart says it for both of them.
“You’re bait .”
2
1:15 PM.
Trig returns to the Mingo and backs the Transit van up to the service entrance door. He goes inside the little kitchen, sees Corrie’s shoe, and stuffs it deep in the trash. She won’t be needing it again.
He takes the stairs, not wanting the Black singer and her dressing person to hear the elevator, know he’s back, and come down with annoying requests. He’s got his own business to attend to, his own plan. Which is crazy, of course. He knows that. He’s read that the odds of winning two dollars on a one-buck scratchoff ticket are four to one. He thinks the odds of this scheme working are considerably higher. Not astronomical, human nature being what it is, but high. Maybe fifteen to one.
I’ll get some of them, no matter what. If I could talk a potentially hung jury into convicting Alan Duffrey, I can get at least some of them.
“I was positive he was guilty,” Trig says as he reaches the top of the stairs. “Positive.” But there was plenty of blame to go around. Plenty of fault. They should have had the courage of their convictions. They shouldn’t have buckled. Shouldn’t have flinched.
Lowry saying let’s vote again, I’m losing business at my store, and that time he finally voted guilty. That just left Bunny. How did I do it? How did I talk them around?
“I just channeled my father,” he says. “It was easy.”
He can hear women’s laughter from the third floor. Sista Bessie and the skinny one, Alberta what’s-her-face. He goes into his office. He pats his sportcoat pocket to make sure he’s got Corrie’s phone. He has a call to make on it, but that’s for later. Right now he checks his computer for the numbers of Sista’s band and support staff. Barbara Robinson’s name and number were a late add, but as his daddy used to say, better late is gooder than never.
Trig picks up the ceramic horse. Caresses it. It’s sort of a good luck charm. Daddy said Trigger was a palomino. Expensive horses to buy, and Daddy also said that Roy Rogers had Trigger stuffed when he died, which somehow seems like bad luck, but never mind that.
Trig calls Barbara, and Robinson answers on the second ring. In the background he can hear laughing voices, shouts, and the tink sound of metal bats on balls. He deduces she’s spending her off day at Dingley Park.
Trig has thought of and rejected half a dozen pretexts to bring Barbara Robinson back to the Mingo before realizing that he doesn’t need one, not really. He just has to sound suitably serious.
“Hi, Ms. Robinson. This is Don Gibson, the Mingo Program Director?”
“Hi. What can I do for you?”
“Well… Ms. Brady is asking for you. She’s here at the Mingo.”
“What does she want?” The sounds from the ballfield are fading as she walks away from them. She’s caught his sober tone. Good.
“I don’t know,” Trig says. “She won’t tell me. She’s in her dressing room, and it sounds to me like she’s crying.”
Barbara says, “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“Thank you,” Trig says. “I think that would be best. I’ll wait for you at the service entrance and let you in.”
Easy as that.
He ends the call, opens his desk drawer, and removes a slim black leather case. In it are six more hypodermic needles loaded with pentobarbital. He doesn’t expect to need all of them, but always safe, never sorry. He plucks out one of the capped-for-safety needles and stows the case in his pocket.
3
1:35 PM.
Holly is entering the lobby of the Garden City Plaza Hotel, having made her way through the growing crowd outside—fans of Sista Bessie, fans of Kate, people hating on Kate. No one pays any attention to Holly, which is just the way she likes it.
Halfway across the lobby her phone rings. It’s John Ackerly. “Hey, Holly, how are you?”
“Fine. And you?”
“It’s been an exciting day at Happy.”
“What happened?”
“Obstreperous drunk. He did some damage—to the bar, not to me—and the cops took him away.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Not the first time for something like that, won’t be the last. I called because I talked to an old guy named Robbie at a meeting last night, and again just before the shit hit the fan. He said the guy you’re looking for—”
“That Izzy’s looking for,” Holly says.
John laughs. “Calling bullcrap on that. I know how you roll—once you start, you don’t quit.”
Holly doesn’t dispute this. “Go on.”
“Robbie remembered something the guy said. ‘Try to get someone to clean up elephant shit at ten in the morning.’ Or words to that effect. It was at a meeting and got a big laugh. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No.” And it doesn’t. Except it makes her recall her trip to the auditorium the night before. Why, she doesn’t know. She thinks of pulling up in the employees’ parking lot in her boat of a Chrysler. Sista Bessie’s tour manager and the Mingo’s Program Director waiting to meet her.
For a moment she almost has whatever has been eluding her, but before she can grasp it, she’s back on how great it was to watch Barbara dance and sing while the band got its groove on… and it’s gone.
“Well, I told you what I heard,” John says. “All I can do. I’m leaving the bar early and meeting up with Jerome. We’re bringing Sista Bessie to the hotel. Don’t hate me for hanging out with the stars.”
“I’ll try not to,” Holly says.
“Jerome’s riding with her to Dingley Park. Doing the bodyguard thing.”
“Bodyguards everywhere,” Holly says. “We are busy people.”
“But nobody has to clean up elephant poop,” John says, and again she almost has it… has something, anyway… but it slips away again. Give it time , she thinks. Give it time and it’ll float to the surface .
Then she thinks that’s what they say about drowning victims.
4
1:50 PM.
To Trig it’s like the second performance of a play. This one goes a little smoother, as second performances tend to. Barbara arrives in an Uber but sends it away, which solves one problem. She speed-walks to the service door, gives him a quick smile, and hurries inside. He grasps her around the waist and shoots her up— déjà vu all over again. She struggles, then sags into unconsciousness.
Trig bundles her into the Transit van and binds her as he bound Corrie, only this time also duct-taping her to a side stanchion so she can’t roll around and kick the side of the van when she comes to, perhaps attracting attention. He pops her purse into the Giant Eagle bag along with Corrie’s phone, more rolls of duct tape, and a large can of Kingsford charcoal lighter fluid.
Trig thinks of his father saying Practice makes perfect . He used to say that when they were facing off in the driveway, Trig with his own little hockey stick. His father would flick the puck at him and thump him a good one on the arm every time he flinched away.
Practice makes perfect .
And: Gone. That’s all you need to know .
“And I did know,” Trig says.
The young woman’s eyes flutter but don’t open. The breathing through her nose is snotty but regular. Trig drives to the Holman Rink.
Two down, two to go.
The big ones.
5
1:55 PM.
Holly has just downloaded an article to her laptop when there’s a light knock on her door. It’s Kate. “No press conference this afternoon. I’m holding my fire for tonight. What are you up to?”
“Backgrounding Christopher Stewart. And his church. It may help.”
“Background leads to foreground? Is that it?”
“Something like that. Do you need me?”
“No. I’m going to put the DO NOT DISTURB on my door and take a power nap. Corrie’s still out shopping. Poor girl can use a break. I’ve been running her ass off.”
Not exactly the way Holly would have put it, but accurate enough. “Do you want me to give you a wake-up?”
“No need, I’ll set my phone.” She bends over Holly’s shoulder to look at the screen. “Is that them? The Church of One Hundred Per Cent Jesus, or whatever they call themselves?”
“Yes. This one’s from the Lakeland Times , in Minocqua, Wisconsin.”
The headline reads, BARABOO JUNCTION CHURCH HOLDS PRAYER VIGIL AT NORMA KLEINFELD CLINIC. The accompanying photo shows two dozen people kneeling in the rain. Lined up behind them on the sidewalk are placards showing bloody fetuses and slogans like I ONLY WANTED TO LIVE and WHY DID YOU KILL ME?
Holly taps the screen. “This is Christopher Stewart, your stalker. The man next to him is the one I talked to while you were swimming. Andrew Fallowes. I don’t know for sure if he wound Stewart up like a little clockwork toy, but I think he did.”
She turns and is surprised to see tears in Kate’s eyes.
“No one wants to kill babies.” Kate’s voice is hoarse and unsteady. “No one in their right mind, anyway.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to put a hold on your appearances until Stewart is caught?”
Kate shakes her head. “We keep on.” She wipes her eyes in a fast, angry gesture. “And you didn’t see that.”
“See what?”
Kate grins and gives Holly’s shoulder a light squeeze. “That’s the right attitude. Hold onto it. I’ll be up by four-thirty. Five at the latest.”
“All right.” Holly turns back to her laptop. Background leads to foreground . She likes that.
“Holly?”
She turns. Kate is in the doorway.
“It’s not easy being the bad bitch. The devil-dog. Do you know that?”
“Yes,” Holly says.
Kate goes out.
6
2:15 PM.
Sportcoat Man returns. He brings in another one, also young and barely conscious.
Once he’s in the arena, Chrissy returns to the doorway. She knows it’s dangerous, but she has to see. She watches as Sportcoat Man binds the new one to the penalty box’s other post. He then takes a picture of Corrie Anderson with one phone and the new arrival with another. When he straightens up, pocketing the phones and saying something to the new one, Chrissy catfoots back to her hiding place behind the snackbar.
Once Chrissy is sure Sportcoat Man is gone, she walks into the arena and goes to one knee in front of the new one.
“I have nothing against you. I want you to know that.”
The young woman’s mouth is taped shut, but her eyes are easy enough to read: Then let me go!
“I can’t free you. Not yet. Eventually I may be able to.” She repeats, “I have nothing against you,” and walks back into the lobby to wait for the one she wants. The one that God, working through the agency of Sportcoat Man, is going to deliver to her. Chrissy is sure of it.
The two women can’t even look at each other; the tape around their necks is cruelly tight. Barbara can press her shoulder against that of the other woman. And the other woman presses back. It’s not much in the way of comfort… but it’s something.
7
2:30 PM.
Trig has barely returned to his office at the Mingo when the scrawny Black woman, Alberta what’s-her-face, gives a token rap on the door and then walks in uninvited. She’s got a sparkly dress over her arm.
“Betty nappin,” she says. “Wants you to wake her up around four-thirty. I got to let this dress out back at the hotel. She gettin so fat .”
“Do you need me to call a—”
“A ride? Already got one, he should be waitin. Damn well better be, cause time is tight . Four-thirty, mind. Don’t forget.”
Ordinarily Trig would be irritated at being treated like a flunky, especially by someone who’s a flunky herself, but this afternoon it doesn’t bother him. Too many things to do, too many balls in the air.
What if they get free somehow?
That’s stupid, the kind of thing that only happens on TV shows. They’re trussed up like turkeys.
“Grocery day?” the scrawny Black woman asks. She flashes many white teeth in an alligator grin.
“What?”
“I ast if it’s grocery day.” She points beside his desk, and he sees he’s brought in the Giant Eagle bag. Wasn’t even aware of it.
“Oh… no. Just a few things. Personal things.”
“Few scanty things?” The alligator grin widens and she waggles her eyebrows like Groucho Marx. What is she implying? He has no idea. Then the grin winks off like a neon sign. “Just kiddin witcha. Don’t forget my gal Betty.”
“I won’t.”
The Black woman leaves. He hears the whine of the elevator going down. Sista Bessie is snoozing in her dressing room. That’s good. Very good. And he’ll wake her up, all right. Yes indeed, she’ll get the wake-up of her life. He could do her right now, the place is empty and no one would hear the shot, but she needs to sing the National Anthem. It will be her swan song. The signboard needs to change at 7:17, while the game is going on at Dingley and at the Mingo the crowds are wondering where the hell Kate is.
In a weird echo of Chrissy Stewart, Trig says, “I have nothing against any of you. You’re just…” What? What are they? The right words come to him. “You’re stand-ins. Proxies. Surrogates .”
The murders have to happen at the Holman Rink, because that was where Daddy told Trig that his mother was gone, which meant never coming back, which meant dead, which meant Daddy killed her. The Holman Rink was where Trig finally understood that fact. Did not run off, as Daddy told the police.
It would be nice to believe that it was Daddy who made Trig an alcoholic. That made him a murderer. That made him the one who had badgered the three holdouts on the Duffrey jury to give in and vote to convict.
None of those things are true. He was a drunk from the first drink and a serial killer from the first murder. Finding out that Duffrey had been falsely convicted, then murdered in prison… that was like the first drink. A pretext. He has a character flaw, it is intractable, and will only end with the death of the guiltiest one of all. Which is him.
But it still must end at the Holman Rink, and it must end— will end—in fire. The next call will go to Kate McKay, but not for a little while. Let tonight’s big game on the other side of the park get closer. And let him think of exactly what he will say to her to make her come… and make her keep her mouth shut. He suspects these things may turn out to be quite easy. He has seen YouTube vids of her in action, and knows her for what she is—a woman used to doing things herself, and used to getting her way.
C’mon , Trig thinks. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon .
8
3 PM.
In Dingley Park, off-duty cops and firemen are bringing in beer in coolers and nips in the pockets of cargo shorts. PD and FD who are on duty are also drinking. The carny atmosphere spreads under the warm sunshine, and the trash talk grows thorns.
Izzy gets a soda and makes some calls, hoping that either Bill Wilson (aka Trig) or Christopher Stewart has been apprehended. No luck. She looks around for Barbara, but Barbara has left. She does see George Pill, who points at her, then grabs his crotch. Stay classy, George , Izzy thinks.
In her hotel room, Holly has given up on research—Real Christ Holy is just too depressing—and stands looking out the window. She has seen something… or heard something… and until she can recall it (and hopefully dismiss it), it’s driving her buggy.
I drove to the Mingo. I parked in the service area beside a white van. I went to the door. The bald man, the tour manager, said we all love Barbara. He said she sings, she dances, she plays the tambo on the beat, she writes poems… what can’t she do? He said a star is born. What does that mean? What can it mean? Holly knocks her knuckles on the side of her head. “What am I missing?”
In the large third-floor dressing room of the Mingo, Betty Brady is asleep on the couch and dreaming of her childhood in Georgia: bare feet, red dirt, a dime bottle of Co’-Cola.
Arriving at the Garden City Plaza Hotel, Alberta Wing surveys the growing number of pro-life protestors on the far side of the street and wonders how many of the neatly groomed white women in that crowd would be willing to give birth to a stone-blind baby amid the trash and discarded liquor bottles behind the Dilly Delight Smokehouse in Selma, Alabama. Before setting to work on the dress Betty will wear tomorrow night, she lets out the sequined bellbottoms her old friend and homegirl will wear to sing the National Anthem in a few hours. Your booty gets much bigger, you won’t be able to get it through the door , she thinks, and laughs. She puts the bellbottoms on a hanger along with the starry sash Betty means to wear around her middle. Once the song is sung, Bets will duck into her dressing room—a little cubicle set aside for her in the equipment shed—and put on some jeans and a hoodie, which Alberta also puts on a hanger. She thinks of the white Program Director’s guilty expression when he looked at the grocery bag, and wonders what he had in there. She has to laugh.
At Happy, John Ackerly is ready to turn things over to his stand-in, Ginger Brackley. Across the broken backbar mirror he’s tacked a checked tablecloth and written on it with a Sharpie: WE HAD A SLIGHT ACCIDENT. “I’m doing this for you, so you better get her autograph for me,” Ginger says, and John says he’ll try.
In his apartment, Jerome puts on his best black pants, a nice blue cotton shirt, a thin gold chain, and black hightop Converse sneakers (a bold touch). He puts some shea in his hair—just a bit—and is ready two hours early, but too excited to even think about writing or researching Army of God churches. He tries Barbara, but her phone boinks immediately to do not disturb. When invited to leave a message, he tells her to turn her damn phone back on because he wants to meet her at the game.
In the Holman Hockey Rink, two bound women wait on hands and knees as the minutes crawl by.
Behind the snackbar, Chrissy is also waiting. She knows who the kidnapper is. The media even has a name for him: the Surrogate Juror Killer. Sportcoat Man is also God’s servant, although he doesn’t know it. If he comes back with Kate McKay, this can end. Chrissy thinks she might even be able to get away. Surely it’s not wrong to hope.
9
3:50 PM.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away—actually the Gibson driveway in the early 1990s—Daddy would flick a hockey puck at his little Trigger, who would be dressed in a child-sized Buckeye Bullets uniform, complete with goaltender’s helmet… and Daddy would flick it hard. If Mommy saw, she’d shout out the kitchen window, You stop that, Daniel! Called him Dan or Danny most of the time, Daniel only when she was mad at him. Which happened more and more often. Once she was gone , there was nobody to make Daddy stop. Practice was hell, and hell went on. Practice makes perfect , Daddy would say, and every time Trig shrank from the puck, Daddy would yell, Don’t flinch! Don’t you flinch, Trigger! You’re a goaltender just like Cujo, just like Curtis Joseph, so don’t you flinch! And when Trig couldn’t help it, Daddy would give him a look of disgust and say, Get after it, Useless. That’s another goal for the bad guys. And Trig would have to go out in the street to get the puck.
“Don’t flinch,” he murmurs to himself as he takes Corrie Anderson’s phone from the grocery bag. “Don’t you flinch.”
If the McKay woman calls the cops… or tells her skinny little bodyguard, who will probably convince her to call the cops… everything will collapse. No way around it. But there is a certain grim irony in what he’s about to do, which he appreciates. Making the Duffrey jurors feel guilty was only a pretext (he realizes that now), and probably useless, but now everything depends on more convincing, and inducing a very real sense of guilt. He thinks: Only guilt can make this work.
The puck is flying. It may hit him in the mouth, but he will not flinch.
He makes the call.
10
3:55 PM.
Kate has her phone silenced, with three exceptions: Holly, Corrie, and her mother. Her ringtone wakes her from paper-thin sleep and a dream of plucking daisy petals with her mother as a child: loves me, loves me not . Kate gropes for the phone, thinking, It’s Mom, she’s worse. As long as she’s not dead. Roselle McKay, so young and beautiful in her dream, is now elderly and bald and sick from a combination of chemo and radiation.
Kate struggles to a sitting position and sees it’s not Mom, which is a relief. It’s Corrie. But when she answers, it’s not Corrie who speaks to her.
“Hello, Ms. McKay.” A strange male voice. “You need to listen to me very careful—”
“Where’s Corrie? Why have you got her phone? Is she all right?”
“Shut up and listen.”
Politicians and pundits across America could testify on how hard it is to silence Kate McKay, but the imperative in those four words—the savage imperative—does it.
“I have your Ms. Anderson. She’s tied up and gagged but unhurt and alive. Whether or not she remains alive depends entirely on you.”
“What—”
“Shut up. Listen to me.”
“It’s you, isn’t it? Christopher Stewart.”
“Ms. McKay, I can’t waste time telling you to shut up, so the next time you get off the subject at hand, I’m going to put a bullet in Ms. Anderson’s knee and she’ll never walk straight again even if she lives. Do you understand me?”
For once in her life Kate has no idea what to say, but Holly (were she there) would recognize the deer-in-the-headlights expression Kate was wearing when the man holding the baseball bat came at her.
With what might be a certain dry humor (how grotesque), her caller says, “If you understand, you can say yes.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll send you a picture of Ms. Anderson so you know she’s all right. So far. You will come to the Holman Hockey Rink, in Dingley Park. By the time you arrive, there will be people coming into the park from Buckeye Avenue and Dingley Plaza to attend a charity softball game to be played there tonight, but the Holman Rink is on the other side of the park, abandoned and condemned. Take Service Road A. Your GPS will show it to you.”
She chances an interruption. “Sir… Mr. Stewart… there are tons of people in front of the hotel who know what I look like.”
“That’s your problem, Ms. McKay. Solve it. Use the brain God gave you. I want you at the rink between five-fifteen and five-thirty. That fifteen-minute window is the key to Ms. Anderson’s survival. Get there earlier or later, and she dies. Tell anyone, anyone at all , and she dies. If you come, and come alone, you both will live.”
“Are you—”
“Shut up. If you ask me even one more question, I won’t bother with putting a bullet in her knee, I’ll kill her right now. Do you understand that?”
“Y-Yes.”
When was the last time she stuttered? College? High school?
“Let me recap. Holman Rink, between five-fifteen and five-thirty, which is approximately seventy-five minutes from now. If you don’t show up, she dies. If you tell anyone and I find out—I have my ways—she dies. Show up accompanied by someone else, she dies. Understood?”
“Yes.” She’s awake now, all the interior lights on and turned up to bright. Is this Stewart? She can’t understand why it would be anyone else, but he sounds older than the man looks in Holly’s photographs.
It must be him .
“Show up according to my instructions, and you both walk away unharmed.”
Sure , Kate thinks, and we won in Vietnam.
The phone goes dead, but six seconds later it vibrates as a text comes in. She opens it and sees Corrie duct-taped, almost mummified, to a steel post coated with peeling yellow paint. Her eyes are wide and full of tears. Her mouth has been sealed with duct tape wound around the back of her head and Kate thinks—funny how random thoughts intrude—that the tape will pull out chunks of her hair when it comes free. That will hurt… but only if she’s alive to feel it.
Now she begins to feel anger. She thinks of Holly, then rejects the idea, and not just because her caller has his ways . Holly is good at her job—the speed with which she kicked the folding chair in front of that rampaging bull of a man confirmed that—but this particular monstrosity would be beyond her. She looks like a strong gust of wind would blow her away, she’s rather timid, and—face it—she’s getting on in years.
Besides, Kate wants to handle it herself.
She wishes she had bought guns for her and Corrie; this might not have happened if she had insisted that Corrie carry a piece, but in the onrush of events she never even tried. What she does have is the Sabre Red Pepper Spray Holly supplied her with.
She looks long and hard at the picture Christopher Stewart has sent her (because it must be him, who else). Corrie taped to a steel pole like an insect caught in flypaper. A breathing-hole punched in the tape over her mouth. Corrie, who has already had bleach thrown in her face and could have inhaled a deadly poison, except for her own quick wits. Corrie looking like a horror movie actress about to be sacrificed to a horror movie killer—not the Final Girl but the Second-to-Final Girl, the one who gets fourth billing in the credits.
She writes a brief note to Holly and sticks it on the suite’s bedroom door with one of the Dr. Scholl’s callus pads she keeps in her purse. Then she picks up the hotel phone, identifies herself, and asks for the hotel manager. When he’s on the line, she says: “How can I get out of here without being seen?”