Much of what Leah would later recall of her arrival at the Robert Orville Johnson Correctional Center seemed to be wrapped in a haze of barbed wire and underscored with the scent of pine disinfectant.
Once inside the prison proper, Leah walked down one long, wide, brightly lit yet eerily quiet hallway after another, accompanied by a tall guard with thin lips, a tight drawl, and very bad skin. The floor was scuffed gray and white vinyl tile, the walls a pale tannish-yellow that had taken on a sallow tone over the years.
The guard spoke to Leah once, when she’d nearly walked past the doorway of the room they’d set aside for her use at the request of someone highly placed within the prison who’d been contacted by a personal friend from the FBI. The room into which Leah was directed was a narrow rectangle, windowless, the same jaundiced shade of tan as the hall. There was no carpet, nothing in the room other than a long, wide wooden desk, the center of which was positioned so that half sat on either side of a Plexiglas wall that divided the room and that would prevent physical contact between visitor and the visited. Two worn and weary straight-back chairs sat on either side of the desk. As she approached, Leah could see a veil of screening set in the Plexiglas.
Just like on TV, she could not help but think.
“It’s still not too late to change your mind,” Leah heard the guard say, his voice suggesting that she might be wise to do exactly that.
“Thank you, but I’m here now,” she told him as she sat down. She hesitated momentarily, then asked, “What happens next?”
“If you’re ready, I’ll tell them to bring him out.”
The guard—J. Wilbers according to the name on the hard plastic tag pinned to his shirt’s breast pocket—nodded to his right. Though why she’d want to see Lambert was beyond him. This one was the fourth visitor the famous killer had had this month, last week had been that lawyer lady from Los Angeles. Why so many good-looking women would come to see this monster was anybody’s guess. He—J. Wilbers—had never understood it himself.
“I’m ready.” Leah leveled her chin and her gaze and sat up just a little straighter on the hard chair.
Ready as I will ever be.
Leah’s eyes were fixed on the door at the back of the small room, beyond the screen where the empty chair awaited its occupant. Her heart pounded loudly, her breath came unevenly, but she wanted to watch him walk into the room, wanted to watch him as he watched her. Wanted to learn all she could from his body language. And she wanted to do it all without blinking.
For Missy’s sake, I will look him in the eye and I will not be intimidated.
The door opened, and a pleasant looking, handsome blond man peeked into the room almost playfully.
She nodded slowly and squared her shoulders just a tiny bit more.
“I’m so glad you came,” he said as he strode to her, smiling, his movements swift and deliberate. He had something folded in the crook of his left arm, and he placed it on his lap as he sat down.
Leah squinted slightly, as if her field of vision had narrowed and shrunk with each step he took in her direction. She’d seen his photo a hundred times, and so his handsome face, his blue eyes and soft cheeks, came as no surprise to her. She’d not, however, been prepared for the misplaced air of boyish innocence that seemed to surround him. The contrast between image and reality was ghoulish, in its way, and it turned her stomach.
Leah fought to keep her breakfast down and willed herself not to blink—not even when he spoke her name in such soft, intimate terms, as if addressing an old friend. Someone with whom he shared a history.
Leah swallowed, refusing to acknowledge that, like it or not, there was in fact something shared between them.
“Leah. It’s good to meet you.” He spoke as if they were exchanging pleasantries at a cocktail party.
The hairs on the back of Leah’s neck stood up, and she had the feeling that something without legs had just slithered across her skin. She felt her hands begin to shake and she clasped them together to keep him from knowing how unnerved she was by his apparent normalness.
Ray Lambert could have been the man who had held the lobby door for her that morning as she left the hotel for her drive to the prison. He could have been the man who sat next to her on the plane flying down from New York, or the man she bumped into at the dry cleaners yesterday morning on her way into the office.
Totally, utterly, terrifyingly normal.
And so good looking, with his wavy blond hair and clear blue eyes that now assessed her even as she stared at him.
The thought that someone who looked so sane could have committed such unspeakable atrocities stunned her.
Another wave of nausea washed over her, and Leah fought it back. She had this one chance. She could not back away from it—or from him.
“So.” He clapped his palms together lightly. “How was your trip?”
“Fine.” Leah’s voice sounded weaker, more uncertain, than she wanted, and so she forced herself to add something to her response, if for no other reason than to prove to herself she could be steady, she could take charge, could address the demon without faltering. “My flight was straight through so there were no delays.”
“Good, good. That’s a lovely pendant, by the way.” Lambert nodded at the amethyst that hung from a thin gold chain around her neck. “One of my sisters had one very similar. Of course, hers wasn’t real.”
“Was she wearing it when you slit her throat?” Leah asked coolly.
Lambert’s eyebrows rose slightly, though whether in surprise or amusement, Leah wasn’t quite sure.
“I brought something to show you,” he told her, smoothly ignoring her remark, and for a moment, Leah was almost frightened by the possibilities. She was relieved when he held up a hardcover book.
The Vagabond Killer was scrawled in lurid red across a white cover.
“This book was written about me,” he announced with no small amount of pride. “The author is a well-known private investigator. Have you read it?”
Leah shook her head, no.
Lambert held up the dust jacket so that she could see the author’s picture, and she viewed it curiously. The author—identified in the brief blurb as Ethan J. Sanger of White Bear Springs Camp in the state of Maine—had a face that might have been described as handsome had his eyes not been so darkly cold, his mouth so tightly drawn.
“Why,” Leah wondered aloud, “would anyone want to write a book about you?”
“Oh, any number of reasons,” Lambert said, amused once again. “Mr. Sanger had his, as I recall.”
Stroking the spine of the book as if it were a pet cat, Lambert leaned forward and made a show of looking at Leah’s hands.
“The last lady who came to see me had little American flags painted on the tips of her fingernails. Little red, white, and blue flags, partially unfurled.” He tapped one finger on the top of the desk that sat between them. “When she was here at Christmas, she had little sprigs of holly painted on them. No little flags for Leah McDevitt, I see. Not your style, eh? Even if you hadn’t bitten your nails down to the quick.”
When she did not respond, he grinned and added, “Of course, the other lady was a member of one of those ACLU-type organizations that is determined to protect my civil rights from violation. But now you, Leah McDevitt,” he leaned forward and lowered his voice, “something tells me not to expect to see you out there with the protesters at the prison gates the night they strap me down on the gurney.”
“You’re assuming I believe in the death penalty.”
“And could there be a chance you do not?” He sat back in his seat, his hands folded neatly and patiently upon the desk, watching her face.
Refusing to let him see anything of herself, to give him anything of herself, Leah shrugged and said, with as much nonchalance as she could muster, “What I think about the death penalty or anything else is none of your business. I’m not your friend, and I’m not here to make small talk or to entertain you. I’m here for one reason, Lambert, just one.”
“Ah, yes. Sweet Melissa.” He taunted her with a half-smile that spoke of intimacies she could not permit herself to even imagine.
“Don’t even speak her name.” In spite of her resolve, Leah’s facade began to crumble more quickly than she could repair it, and she hissed at him without even realizing that she was doing so.
“How can we then discuss the situation, if I am not to speak her name?”
Lambert was still smiling. At that moment, Leah wanted more than anything in the world to slap that smile from his face with one well-aimed, open-palmed smack. She’d never hit anyone once she’d passed through the terrible twos, had never believed that violence solved anything. Yet right at that moment, an open shot to Lambert’s baby-face held more appeal than anything else she could think of.
“You’re thinking of how good it would feel to hurt me,” he commented softly, matter-of-factly, as if he could read her mind.
“Yes. Actually, I am,” she replied calmly.
“How would you do it?” he asked. “Would you use a weapon?”
He leaned a little closer and asked, “And when would you stop? When I started to bleed? When I started to scream? When I lost consciousness? Perhaps when I stopped breathing?”
Leah pushed her chair back abruptly, sickened by his attempts to suck her into what to him was surely sport.
Raymond Lambert smiled with great satisfaction and said, “Some places you’d rather not go, Leah? Afraid you’ll find out we’ve more in common than—”
“We have nothing in common!” Leah started to stand up.
“Oh, but we do. We have someone in common.”
Leah froze and stopped caring if it gave Lambert pleasure to see her pain.
He motioned for her to sit down, and she did, slowly, her hatred of him at that moment building almost uncontrollably.
“That’s a lovely jacket, by the way.” Lambert slipped back into pleasantries. “That shade of blue suits you. Is that a new cut this year? Few of the women who visit me dress as well as you do.”
He regarded her silence for a long moment.
“I can see that you’re surprised that women voluntarily come to see me. It would shock you to know how many fans I have. How many marriage proposals I’ve received. How many visitors I’ve had lately.” He chuckled and shook his head. “No accounting for taste, is there, Leah?”
“Obviously not,” Leah snapped, recoiling at the thought of a woman seeking out the likes of Raymond Lambert for any purpose. Even her own. “Just being in your company makes me sick.”
“Ah, Leah, I enjoy the plucky spirit that you hide under that cool manner. I wouldn’t have expected that of you. It pleases me.”
“I couldn’t care less about what pleases you or what pisses you off. You told me you knew where my sister is. We can talk about that, or we don’t have to talk
at all.”
“Now, Leah, calm down.” Lambert’s tone was soothing, hypnotic. “You’re tense. Are you thirsty? I can ask the guard to bring you something cold if you—”
“Stop it!” Leah slapped her right hand palm down upon the desk with such force that the reverberations rippled along the length of her arm. “Everyone tried to tell me you’d play with me, but I thought since you were the one who initiated this contact in the first place, that you’d tend to business and be done with it. I can see I gave you more credit than you deserve.”
Leah rose from the chair and grabbed her leather bag from where she’d dropped it on the floor, angrier than she’d been in years and muttering as she turned to leave, “I’m wasting my time with you. This is nothing more than a sick game as far as you’re concerned. I’m not going to play anymore.”
“Why do you suppose your sister wore brown contact lenses?” he asked softly, stopping her in her tracks less than halfway to the door.
“What?” She half-turned toward him.
“I mean, she had blue eyes, right? Why did she wear brown contact lenses?”
In that moment, for Leah, the world had stopped.
“Curious, don’t you think?” Lambert continued. “Then again, I’m sure that you know why, but it was sure a surprise when one popped right out and just sat there on her cheek like a mole. Now, who would have suspected, blue eyes under those brown contact lenses.”
Leah had turned fully to face him.
“I see I have your attention now.”
“Where is she?” Leah whispered in a voice that was close to breaking.
“Why did she wear brown contact lenses?” Lambert repeated his question.
“Melissa had one blue eye and one brown. She had two sets of colored contacts, one blue, one brown. Sometimes she’d wear one, sometimes the other.”
“So sometimes she’d have two blue eyes, sometimes brown?”
“Yes.”
“Pity she chose the wrong ones that one time. Most unfortunate.” He shook his head slowly. “A fatal choice, it would seem—”
“What?”
“It’s of no consequence now.” He waved her question away.
“Where is she?” Leah asked again.
“First things first. Sit down, Leah. I believe we’ve a bit of business to conduct.” Lambert pointed to the chair and said, “Let’s chat about the reward.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“I’d rather you sat.” He watched her face carefully.
Leah sighed and sat down.
“Now. About the reward—”
Leah shook her head. “Not until I find Melissa.”
“No. What guarantee do I have that you’ll pay up, once you have what you want?”
“What guarantee do I have that you’ll tell me the truth if I pay the reward first?”
“Hmmmm. We have what I believe is called a Mexican standoff. Ever wonder why they call such situations—”
“No,” Leah cut him off, refusing to be lured back into unnecessary conversation. “Half now, half after I find my sister.”
Lambert considered.
“But first you have to give me some information.”
“What kind of information?” Lambert’s eyes narrowed.
“A general idea of where she is would do.”
“Upstate Pennsylvania, the western end, near Lake Erie and the New York border.”
“Anyone who saw me on Newsline would know where she was last seen. You’ll have to do better than that.” Leah dismissed him coolly. “Be more specific.”
Melissa, on her way home from Ohio State University for the summer, had dropped off her roommate in a town called Meadville, just south of Erie, and not far from New York. Missy had last been seen about ten miles over the New York border, at a gas station where she’d stopped to fill up and to make that last call home. It had been around eight-thirty at night, and Melissa had left a message on the answering machine at the townhouse in Manhattan that she thought she’d drive straight through. It was conceivable that she’d met up with her killer there, and he’d taken her over the New York border back into Pennsylvania.
“There are some very remote areas up there, you know. Miles of trails through the mountains, miles of dense woods. Some of the towns are little more than a crossroads. I guess that’s why the Amish have settled there. Large tracts of open land, little outside influence to corrupt their young.”
Leah wet her lips and swallowed hard.
“Are you telling me that Missy is in a wooded area near one of those little towns? Near one of the Amish settlements?”
“You asked me for some general information. Some good-faith information, as it were. Well, you have it. That’s all you’re getting for now.”
“I’ll have half the money wired to you when I get home.” Leah stood on unsteady legs.
“Send it to my attorney, Robert Miller, in Houston. He’ll get word to me as soon as the money arrives.”
“You’ll call me immediately after you’ve been notified that the money has been received and you’ll tell me exactly where to find her. After she’s been found, you’ll get the balance.”
“And I can rest assured that you will honor your debt?”
“I’m giving you my word. You’ll just have to trust me.”
“Would you extend such trust to me?”
“No,” Leah answered without hesitation.
Lambert laughed out loud.
“I agree to your terms.”
Leah signaled her readiness to leave to the guard who waited in the hallway beyond the door, his arms folded across his chest, as he watched a wall-mounted television.
“By the way,” Leah said as she turned toward Lambert. “What would a dead man do with fifty thousand dollars?”
Lambert stood and smiled that enigmatic smile once again.
“We all have our secrets, Leah. Even the dead are permitted to keep theirs …”