CHAPTER 44

Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

RORY WATCHED FROM THE PANTRY AS THOMAS PULLED A STOOL TO the center of the porch. He fidgeted with the noose overhead. Finally he mounted the stool, hooked the nylon around his neck, and slowly lowered himself off the stool while Catherine simultaneously rose into the air across from him, like a magician levitating his subject. The sight stole what little breath Rory had left.

Through the crack in the pantry door, Rory witnessed the strange scene play out before her. She had reconstructed cases that dealt with the despicable practice of autoerotic asphyxiation, and had read articles about the perverted individuals who reached sexual gratification from its practice. But the scene unfolding in front of her was something entirely different. It was not sexual in nature, but perverted in another, more disturbing way. The high Thomas Mitchell was reaching came not from any perverse use of sex, but rather from the pleasure of watching another die.

Rory saw Catherine’s legs dangle limply as she rose, the weight of Thomas’s body on the other side of the pulley system dragging her upward. Rory remembered the dual pulley system Angela had drawn in her notes chronicling what she had discovered in Thomas’s warehouse. He had re-created that system here in his cabin, and across from him now was his wife’s only friend. Someone who he surely believed had helped Angela disappear forty years earlier. How terribly wrong he had it, Rory thought.

As he lowered himself in a slow, guided movement, he kept one foot on the stool as a fail-safe, placing his weight back onto its surface when the tension became too great and he neared unconsciousness. When he put his weight back on the stool, he rose higher and allowed Catherine to sink back to the ground. Rory watched the eerie seesawing while the classical music blared through the cabin.

When she saw Thomas take his weight off the stool again and sink downward, coming to a rest twelve inches from the cabin floor, with the noose tight around his neck and his face boiling to a deep crimson, Rory felt the pull in her chest. It was as powerful as when she was a child at Greta’s farmhouse. She quickly pushed open the pantry door, the sounds of her movements camouflaged by Mozart. She reached into the pocket of her coat and retrieved the Dark Lord Swiss Army knife. Unfolding the device, the blade caught the light from the porch. Her movements as she charged through the porch door startled Thomas, who worked frantically to gain leverage on the stool under him. His bloodred face took on another shade, deeper now. Purple.

He worked to gain footing on the stool, his legs flailing until his right foot touched the top surface. If given another few seconds, he would have had the stool underneath him and the pressure relieved from his neck. Rory made sure to take those seconds from him. She walked slowly over to him, their eyes meeting—hers calm and calculating, his bulging and panicked. For once Rory had no inclination to avoid eye contact. She thought of Aunt Greta alone in her room the night Thomas had found her. She thought of the women buried beneath the ground behind the cabin. She thought of Catherine. She thought of Angela.

Rory folded the Swiss Army knife closed. She wouldn’t need it after all. Just as Thomas placed his foot on the stool, Rory kicked it out from under him. His body dropped down a few inches, recoiling with the jolt. She watched as he reached for his neck, trying unsuccessfully to pry his fingers between the noose and his skin. As he thrashed about, Rory took a good, long moment to stare at him before whispering in his ear. His bulging eyes appeared to widen; then she turned to tend to Catherine.

She couldn’t leave her strung up like cattle. It took a few minutes before Rory had her body lying peacefully on the ground of the porch. Then, with Thomas still meekly thrashing, she walked into the kitchen and lifted the phone from the cradle. The card had been stuck into the crevice between the phone jack and the wall. Rory dialed the number, waited for a voice to answer, and then laid the phone on the kitchen table.

When Rory finally walked from the cabin, she left the front door open. She could still faintly hear Mozart’s Requiem when she reached her car.