Twenty-six

“What do you mean, she’s not there?” Mitch snapped at the Chicago agent who’d had the misfortune to call his counterpart in North Carolina with news he didn’t want to hear.

“Hey, Peyton, don’t yell at me. You called me at ten thirty, I was here, at her hotel, by eleven fifteen. She’d already checked out.”

“Sorry, Chuck. I don’t suppose the desk clerk knows where she went.”

“The desk clerk came on at eleven. He wasn’t even here when she left.”

“Thanks. I owe you.” Mitch hung up and blew out a long hot breath of frustration.

Where the hell was Regan? Why wasn’t she returning his calls?

Mitch walked outside and leaned on the porch rail. He’d checked the airlines only to find that she’d cancelled her ticket to Norfolk, and the car she’d had waiting for her as well. Where would she have gone?

And why wasn’t she telling him?

He opened his phone again to check for messages, but his voice mail box was still empty.

Why would she have cancelled her ticket out of Chicago?

Maybe, it occurred to him, because she wasn’t leaving Chicago this morning. Maybe she’d decided to call on Dolly Brown after all.

He went back into his room and sat at his computer, determined to find the right Brown if it took him all afternoon.

It pretty much had. By the time he’d found Dolly and explained who he was, Regan had already left for the airport. But at least he knew where she was going. She was flying into Philly, and from there had a charter to Princeton Airport.

“Do you know why she changed her mind?” Mitch had asked Dolly.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her that,” Dolly had responded.

“Did she have a good visit?”

“You’ll have to ask her that, too,” Dolly had said, right before she hung up.

I can see where the woman gets on Regan’s nerves, he thought as he dialed the number for the Landry farm. At best, he thought, Bliss would still be there and could take a message. At worst, he could leave a message for Regan on her answering machine.

He’d almost given up on hearing a live voice when the phone was picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Bliss?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Mitch Peyton, I’m a friend of Regan’s. Is she there?”

“No, she isn’t.”

“Well, do you know what time she’ll be there?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Well, you do know that she’s going home today, right? Have you spoken with her today?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Well, would you tell her to call me right away, as soon as she gets there? She has the number. Tell her it’s very important.”

“Sure. Okay.”

“Thanks.” Mitch hung up, wondering why Regan was so high on her assistant. The woman had all the personality of a shoe.

He took a bottle of water from the bag he’d brought back from the drugstore earlier that morning, opened it, and took a long swig. He pulled up a map of the United States on his computer screen and stared at it. If he were Erwin Capshaw, where would he be?

Ten minutes later, he was still asking himself that same question. Finally, he had to admit he’d never have the answer. He didn’t know Capshaw, didn’t know how he thought. There was only one person he knew who did. He called her back.

“Any chance you could join us on this job?” he asked Dorsey when she picked up. “I don’t know this guy. None of us do. I’m thinking we’ll find him sooner if you’re in.”

“If you can clear it, I’m there,” she told him.

“I can clear it,” he told her. “How soon can you get here?”

“I can be there by tomorrow morning.”

“Not soon enough. I need to know where he is, what he’s thinking.”

“Hey, I don’t need to travel out of state to help you there. He’s thinking he wants what he wants. He’ll go wherever he has to go to get it.”

“Thanks, Dorsey. I have no idea what that means.”

“You think he wants to talk to Regan? He’ll go where she is.”

“How will he know where to find her?”

“You’re kidding, right?” She made a tsk sound. “He’ll go to a library or a bookstore and he’ll look up her books. He’ll read her bio and every damned thing he can find out about her until he figures out where she lives. It may take him a while, but trust me, if he’s determined to find her, he will.”

“Thanks, Dorce. That’s what I needed to know. Talk to you soon.”

His next call was to the Plainsville police.

 

“You did real good, hon.”

Bliss’s unexpected visitor patted her on the back and she visibly cringed.

He laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. I told you. You help me, I’ll help you.”

He pointed to a chair in the study where’d he chased her when he’d arrived at the Landry farm around noon.

“I want you to sit there, and I want you to stay there.”

She sat, never taking her eyes off him.

When he approached her with the length of rope, she opened her mouth to scream. He slapped a hand over her mouth and whispered in her ear, “That kind of behavior isn’t good for your baby.”

He wrapped the rope around her ankles.

“Both hands behind your back. And if you don’t make me tell you again, I won’t tie your wrists as tightly as your ankles.”

He looped the rope around her hands and pulled. Before she could protest, he tied a scarf he’d taken from Regan’s dresser upstairs over her mouth.

“Now, I’m going to do a little more exploring,” he told her, “and you’re going to wait patiently for me to come back. If you’re a good girl, I might even let you have a few sips of water later.”

He ruffled her hair and pretended not to notice that she’d drawn back from him again.

Well, what do you expect, he told himself as he went up the main stairwell. You blow in here, you scream in her face, interrogate her, tie her up, make her answer the phone at gunpoint. Oh, and yeah. You shoot her husband when he comes to pick her up. That would make any woman a bit touchy.

He poked from room to room, studying the way people lived in this house. From the master bedroom, which looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time, with its empty closets and dresser drawers, to two connected rooms that were probably used as guest rooms, since there was nothing personal in either of them. No books, no photos. Nothing that your average person would normally keep in their rooms.

Not that he’d know firsthand what normal people did, or kept in their private spaces. He’d seen magazines, though, and movies. Neither of these rooms appeared to be anyone’s private space. Then there was Regan’s room.

It was high-ceilinged and looked out across the fields to the pond. The furniture was painted white and had some kind of vines painted on it. This room had framed photographs, lots of them. He stared at each one, and followed Regan through her childhood to her teen years, then into young adulthood. Photos of friends, her parents, several with dogs.

He studied the images without emotion.

See, he told himself. That’s what I’m talking about. Normal people. Normal rooms.

From her window he could see some kind of flowering tree that dropped large white petals on the ground, and behind that, grapevines grew over an arbor. He opened a window and let in the scent of wild roses and honeysuckle. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, the scent sending him somewhere back a long way in time.

Well, no surprise there. Today he’d spent more time looking back than he had in years. It was painful, mostly. Most of his memories hurt. But it was okay. He’d have to face it, all of it, since he’d need to remember those things if he was going to share it with Regan. She was going to need it for the book.

He went back downstairs and wandered, sitting first on the camelback sofa in the formal living room—which he found too stiff for his taste—and then on the well-worn slip-covered sofa in the family room, which was a little too soft. He started back to the study, where the leather sofa had been just right.

Just like the those bears, he chuckled.

“And here’s Goldilocks,” he said as he came through the door.

Bliss had tears running down her face and she was beginning to shake.

“Now, listen,” he told her. “You like that baby of yours, right? You want that baby to be born, right?”

She nodded her head up and down, sobbing.

“Then you are just going to have to get hold of yourself, hear me? Don’t piss me off.” He sat on the sofa opposite her. “Crying pisses me off. You know what my old man used to do when my old lady cried?”

He lifted his feet and rested them on the hassock.

“He’d smack her. ‘You want to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.’ And he did.” He looked at Bliss, whose wide eyes seemed even larger. “Do not make me give you something to cry about, okay? You’re a nice girl, I can tell you are. Don’t piss me off.”

He rested his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. After a time, Bliss’s sobs had softened into sniffles, and then, eventually, stopped. He was really glad she had quit. He couldn’t have taken five more minutes of that choking crying she was doing. At least now she was settling down, which was a good thing. The last thing he wanted was for Regan to come in and think he’d been abusing her assistant.

Shame he’d had to shoot her husband, but damn it, the guy wouldn’t go away. He kept banging on the door, over and over. And of course, once he’d shot the husband, the wife proceeded to wail for an hour. Only threats of harm to that baby she carried were keeping her in line.

He was standing in the window looking out toward the road when he first saw the headlights. There was no missing the light bar on the roof, even though the lights were turned off.

“We have company, missy.”

He turned back to Bliss and said, “We’re going to need an award-winning performance from you, you understand? That’s the police out there. If you don’t say what you need to say to make them go away happy, I will blow your head off. At that point, I will have nothing to lose, so if you die, your baby dies. I won’t give a shit, you hear me?”

He was untying her hands and feet as fast as he could. He pulled her to her feet and pushed her to the side door.

“I asked you if you understood?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Then open the door. And do not forget for one second that I am only one step behind you.”

Bliss did as she was told.

“Hi,” the young police officer said when she opened the door. “You Miss Landry?”

“No. I’m her assistant. She’s out of town.”

“Know when she’ll be back?”

“I spoke with her earlier in the day, but she wasn’t sure when she’d be home. Something about connecting flights.”

“That your car there in the drive?” He shined the light on it.

“Yes.”

“Have you been here all day?”

“Yes. Since around eight this morning.”

“Notice anything unusual?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Are you here alone?”

“Yes. What’s this about?”

“It’s just a precaution. We got a call from the FBI, seems there’s a fugitive who might be headed here. It could be an overreaction on their part, but it’s probably not a good idea for you to be out here alone.”

“Actually, officer, I was just getting ready to leave. I just need to check the doors and set the alarm.”

“Would you like me to wait for you?”

“Oh, no. That’s not necessary. I won’t be a minute.”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“I’m positive. Thanks anyway.”

“Close the door slowly,” Capshaw whispered in Bliss’s ear.

She did as she was told.

“You’re really a very good liar, you know that?” He slid the bolt to lock the door. “I’ll bet you lied a lot as a kid.”

He watched out the window, the gun to the back of Bliss’s head, until the patrolman got into his car and started the engine. Capshaw watched the taillights disappear back down the drive.

“Now, back into the study with you.”

“May I have some water?” Bliss asked, her voice shaky. She’d been sweating heavily since he’d raised the gun to her head.

“Oh, I suppose so. You were a good girl.”

He followed her into the kitchen, where she took a bottle of water from the pantry and opened it, and drank it half down.

“You want to slow down with that,” he told her, gesturing with his gun in the direction of the hall that led back to the study. “You drink that too fast, you’re going to get sick.”

Back in the study, he retied her ankles and hands.

“I’ll leave the gag out if you promise to be quiet,” he told her.

“I’ll be quiet,” she whispered.

“That means no crying either.”

“I promise.”

He settled back into the soft leather. This really was the life. He’d thought the Windham Inn was a pretty sporty place, but this place, this was where it was at as far as he was concerned.

From across the room, he could see the shelves upon which Josh Landry’s books were displayed. The guy sure had written a lot of books. Of course, Capshaw’d heard of him. Everyone knew who Josh Landry was. He wrote all those books about killers. He must have sold a lot of books, to afford a place like this.

Well, who’s to say I can’t do the same? I know lots of killers. I could write me up a couple of books, buy myself a crib like this…

Who am I kidding? I got a dead guy in the backyard and before the night is over, I’ll probably have a dead woman in here.

He looked back over his shoulder at Bliss, whose eyes followed his every move.

There’s no way I can talk my way out of all this, he told himself. The best I can hope for is that I get my story told, and then maybe disappear.

He was just thinking of places he could go where maybe he could hide for a while, places where maybe the FBI wouldn’t look for him, when lights reflected onto the window. He looked out and saw the white sedan driving up the long dark lane. He watched as the car came to a stop near the back porch. Regan got out and slammed the door, then walked directly toward the side door.

“You will be quiet, hear? Don’t make a sound. If you try to warn her, it will be very bad for you and your baby.”

He went quietly through the hall and flattened himself against the wall. The kitchen light turned on, and he heard something thud as it hit the floor. Her bags, he thought. She stepped into the hall and called Bliss’s name. When there was no answer, she walked around the corner and came face-to-face with the man Kendra had sketched.

“Welcome home, Miss Landry,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”