Chapter 28
As a precaution, I’d texted Slidell, briefly describing the contents of the thumb drive. I received no reply. Which did little to allay my concern.
I also heard nothing further from Katy. Hoped that meant all was calm on the Ruthie front.
The next morning, I woke jumpy as hell and unsure why. Noticing my agitation, Ryan suggested an outing involving physical activity. Despite the heat, we spent the day biking the Blue Line Rail Trail through the city.
Every couple of hours I stopped to give Katy a call. Got no answer and assumed she and Ruthie had gone off on one of their adventures.
That evening, exhausted from pedaling the eleven-mile route, Ryan and I opted for takeout sushi at home followed by an old black-and-white film.
It was Ryan’s turn to pick and, predictably, he chose a western, My Darling Clementine. Though the genre isn’t my favorite, Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp was proving worth the watch.
A watch that was constantly interrupted.
The opening credits had barely faded when Katy phoned to ask if Ruthie was with me. Or if I’d heard from her.
My response was a double no.
She called again at nine. At nine-thirty.
I gave the same answer both times, with growing unease in my voice. Katy assured me that all was copacetic, probably just a crossing of wires.
Earp was heading for the big shoot-out at the corral when Katy rang again, now obviously distressed. Ruthie remained whereabouts unknown. She hadn’t called and wasn’t answering her mobile. Her voice mailbox was full and accepting no messages.
Seriously worried now, I advised my daughter to check Ruthie’s room for contact information, then use what she found to phone the kid’s friends. Katy was appalled at the idea of such an invasion of privacy.
Twenty minutes later she reported that the only numbers she’d scored were for Lester Meloy and Danielle Hall. She’d tried both. Neither had answered.
By midnight Katy was distraught and wanted to alert the cops. Her uncharacteristic anxiety goosed my apprehension to the level of real fear. I kept thinking about the thumb drive. About the home intrusion. About Ruthie being only seventeen.
About a serial killer on the loose.
Picking up on my vibe, not to mention all the phone calls, Ryan insisted on a full explanation. Which I belatedly provided.
When I finished, he chastised me for not confiding in him from the outset.
Big surprise. Then he suggested we offer to search the neighborhood around the Annex on the odd chance Ruthie had headed our way.
Katy accepted, with far too much emotion.
Said she was working the streets near her town house.
Praying that we were all overreacting, I dug two flashlights from the pantry and checked that their batteries and bulbs were functioning. One lit up bright and eager. The other came on but looked a bit iffy.
Handing the good flash to Ryan, I grabbed my keys from the kitchen counter and we left the Annex. Birdie watched, astounded at the unusual wee-hours departure. Maybe.
Outside on the driveway, Ryan proposed we split up to double our impact. I could cruise in my car while he searched on foot.
Searched for what? A dropped purse? A lost shoe? A body?
Surely not that.
I agreed to Ryan’s plan, but with the roles reversed. He rejected that idea. I argued that I was familiar with the sidewalks and yards in my hood and could better spot anything that seemed amiss. Reluctantly, he conceded the logic in that.
The night was velvety soft, the air alive with the efforts of millions of crickets. From far off on Queens Road, muted traffic sounds added to the closing-days-of-summer sonata.
Trudging down the circle drive, I was hyperaware of the total blackness enveloping the grounds of Sharon Hall.
While the aesthetic parts of my brain are all in for quiet and quaint, the more practical portions question the wisdom of an HOA ban on any exterior light having more wattage than a smartwatch face.
I’d gone only a few yards when I heard an engine turn over at my back. Seconds later, headlights sliced through the darkness surrounding me.
Moving to the edge of the drive, I watched Ryan pass, then slowly descend. A brief pause at the bottom of the slope, then he turned right and disappeared up the street.
For a few minutes I peered into clumps of bushes and beneath leafy trees, shining my feeble light into crevices that revealed nothing. Wandering farther into the adjacent lot, I’d taken no more than a couple steps downhill when pain exploded in my lower back, just above my right kidney.
My arms flew up and my stride lengthened as I struggled to regain my balance.
A futile effort.
Three wild steps, then I lost control and went down. Hard.
Air exploded from my lungs as fire from the kidney strike shot up my spine and into my neck and chest. A bomb detonated in my skull when I hit the ground.
An eternity passed as I lay motionless, willing my spasming lungs to relax. More likely, it was half a minute.
When finally able to breathe, I placed trembling palms on the pavement and pushed up onto my elbows. I was still gathering my wits, simultaneously sweating and shivering, when I heard a soft, staccato scraping in the distance. Almost imperceptible at first, the muffled sounds slowly grew louder.
Closer.
Faster.
“Sacrebleu!” Ryan’s disembodied expletive came out of the darkness.
Then he was squatting beside me.
“T’es-tu fait mal?”
When stressed, Ryan often reverts to the language of his childhood. As usual, he was unaware that he was doing so now.
“I’m fine,” I said, not totally sure that I was.
“Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?”
Clueless myself what had happened, I offered no explanation.
“Can you walk?”
“One way to find out.”
Ryan reached down toward me. Rolling to my back, I gripped his hands, drew my feet to my butt, and gingerly sat up.
“Did you trip?” Ryan asked.
“I… I’m not sure.” I didn’t think so.
“You’ve done a spectacular job on your jeans.”
I looked myself over. He was right. Even in the dark I could see that the denim was shredded at both knees. Raw skin showed pale and bloody beneath each gaping hole.
To say I felt stupid would be like saying the Decca execs regretted choosing another band over The Beatles.
“I’m missing a sandal,” I said, hiding my humiliation.
I heard a joint pop as Ryan rose to his feet. Gravel crunched as he searched the drive.
Then, from a few yards uphill, “Bingo.”
Seconds later Ryan handed me the flyaway footwear. Useless now, since the left ankle strap had been ripped from the sole.
“Do you want to try standing?” Ryan asked.
“Sure,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
The same pair of strong hands gripped me under my pits. One minor stumble, and I was upright. Seconds later we were trudging uphill, me brushing dirt and grass from my belly and butt, Ryan arm-draping my back for support.
Once inside the Annex, I phoned Katy. She’d had no word from Ruthie.
“I’m going to call it a night,” she said with an exasperated, perhaps exhausted, sigh.
“Oh?”
“Before Ruthie came to Charlotte her dad warned me that she’d pulled this kind of shit before.”
“Taking off without leaving word?”
“Yes.”
“Not cool.”
“Not cool at all,” she agreed.
“Now what?”
“I’m out of ideas.”
What could I say? While it may have been wishful thinking—a part of me didn’t dare contemplate otherwise—I assured Katy that all would be well and promised to take action in the morning if Ruthie hadn’t appeared. Wanting no fuss, I didn’t mention my tumble.
Then I hurried upstairs to shower. Insisting that I leave the door ajar, Ryan stripped to his jockeys, got into bed, and clicked on the TV.
While the hot water pounded my body and stung my abraded elbows and knees, and the muted sound of baseball play-by-play rose and fell in the next room, I ran through the incident again and again.
What the hell had just happened?
Had I simply face-planted?
That seemed unlikely. I’d been proceeding very carefully, aware of the slope.
Had I tripped, as Ryan suggested?
Again, unlikely. I’d scanned the ground as he and I returned to the Annex. Seen nothing larger than a twig.
I recalled the sense of a sudden spasm in my lower back.
A muscle cramp?
A thrust?
Was it possible I’d been pushed?
If so, by whom?
If I’d been pushed, had it been random, a case of my being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had I crossed paths with an intruder? With a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t? With a startled animal?
A gut-clenching alternative capered into the mix. One that had arisen cold and ugly as I lay on the ground.
Might the doer be the creep nailing decorated corpses to trees? Might this sicko be so incensed at the disruption I’d caused to his hobby that he’d kidnapped my niece?
Realizing such musings were pointless, I turned off the spigot, got out, and wrapped myself in a towel. Minutes later, hair de-tangled, face moisturized, teeth brushed, I joined Ryan in bed.
“You good?” he asked, face crimped with concern.
“Just a banged knee,” I said.
“Should I buy you a helmet?”
“Hilarious,” I said.
“You smell good,” he murmured, drawing me close.
“Thanks.”
“I’m crushed. The Bird wants no part of me.”
“That’s odd.” It was. My cat adores Ryan.
I called Birdie’s name.
No cat appeared.
“Birdcat,” I tried again.
Nothing.
“I didn’t forget him outside, did I?”
“You did take a hit to the noggin.”
Throwing back the comforter, I got up and checked the other upstairs rooms. Finding no cat, I hurried downstairs, repeatedly calling his name.
Nothing.
I probed the shadows of the hallway with moment-long sweeps. The parlor.
Entering the dining room, I noticed that the swinging door to the kitchen was closed.
Had Ryan done that? I always left it open.
Tiptoeing to it, I pressed my ear to the wood.
Heard only silence beyond.
I know the Annex as well as I know the lines on my face. The creeks and groans of her worn floorboards. The hum of air blowing through her old-fashioned vents. The clicks and taps of her outdated pipes.
My gut tightened.
The silence beyond the old door was wrong.