The exact reason for Oliver’s disappearance is unknown, though Mr. and Mrs. Connor acknowledged having an argument with their son on the night he left.
Oliver’s departure reportedly contributed to a rapid deterioration of his mother’s health. Lydia Connor remains under medical care at Tucson Medical Center.
A hospital spokesman declined to state whether or not Mrs. Connor had been informed of the loss of her husband and son.
Walker looked at the article for several minutes, long after he had absorbed its contents. He thought of Annie and Erin, orphaned in a fire at the age of seven, adopted by their Aunt Lydia.
How long had it been before they learned of the ugly tragedy in their foster mother’s past? Did Lydia hang photos of Lincoln and Oliver around the house? Did she display keepsakes of them on the shelves? Were the girls forced to hear stories of the foster brother who’d died when they were two years old, and had they justifiably concluded that the whole world was insane?
No wonder Annie clung so tenaciously to her sister… and jumped instantly to the worst conceivable explanation for her disappearance.
He had told her that Erin had just run off, he reflected grimly, draining his glass. Had she remembered Oliver when he’d said that? Oliver, who ran away on impulse-and never returned?
Sure, Annie was being paranoid. But it looked as if she had every right to be.
“Thanks, Gary,” he said finally. “This is… helpful.”
Gary shrugged. “As you can see, it was a big local story at the time. I was too young to know about it, but if you’d been living here, you would have heard.”
“That’s why she thought the name Connor would mean something to me,” Walker mused. “Probably took me for a native. Everybody else does.”
“Just like everybody takes me for an Angeleno. And I’m a Tucsonan born and bred. Go figure.” Gary’s smile faded. “There’s one loose end I didn’t mention.”
“In the Connor case? What?”
“Well, the police tracked down those hippies and asked them when was the last time they’d seen Oliver. They said he went for a walk in the woods one evening with a friend from the camp, and neither of them ever came back.”
“The friend vanished?”
“That’s right. Never turned up. The other kids couldn’t help much. Gave a pretty vague description-you know how it was, they were stoned most of the time. They didn’t even know his full name. First name only.”
“Which was?”
“Harold.”
“You think Oliver and Harold were together when Lincoln showed up?”
“Could have been,” Gary said. “Maybe Harold got away and was so scared he just kept running.”
“Or maybe he was shot, too, and for some reason his body wasn’t found.” Walker shrugged, dismissing the issue. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”
“I suppose not.”
Walker noticed the other slip of paper still folded in Gary’s hands. “Got something else?”
“One last item. Not directly relevant. Doesn’t involve Lincoln Connor or Oliver, just Lydia.”
“What about her?”
“In 1973 she took in two young nieces, named, let’s see… Erin and Anne Reilly. Her sister’s kids, seven-year-old twins, originally from Sierra Springs, California.”
Walker nodded. He tipped the glass and let a piece of ice slide into his mouth, then pushed it around his cheek with his tongue.
“I knew that part,” he said. “They’d been orphaned in a fire.”
Gary frowned. “A fire, yeah. But not just a fire.”
Walker chewed the ice and swallowed it. “What does that mean?”
“You don’t know the story.”
“I guess not. Can’t be as bad as the first one, though.”
Gary shook his head slowly. “You’re right. It’s not as bad. It’s worse.”
Walker set down the glass with a soft clunk.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
Gary told him.
Even after Gary was done speaking, Walker remained silent. The waitress stopped to ask if he wanted a refill of his scotch, and Gary had to answer for him, because he didn’t hear.
29
Erin surfaced from unconsciousness to the sound of hammering.
Blinking, she focused her vision. Above her hung a brilliant scatter of stars, bracketed by steep embankments tufted with ocotillo and mesquite.
She was stretched on her back at the bottom of an arroyo, arms over her head, wrists pinned together.
Her abductor knelt at her feet, swinging a mallet, driving a metal post into the ground. She tried to move her legs, couldn’t; rope lashed her ankles to the post.
He was staking her out like Marilyn Vaccaro, like Sharon Lane, like Deborah Collins.
Panic struck her like a fist. All breath and heat left her body in a rush, and abruptly she was winded and clammy and more afraid than she had been in her life, more afraid than she had been as a small child in a blazing house, more afraid than she had been in the rear compartment of the van last night.
In her mind she could hear it-the crackle of flame, the hiss of steam, the slow crisping and peeling of her own flesh.
No. No. No.
Had to stop him. Had to.
Her one hope was to communicate, find a way to make contact, get in touch with the nascent conscience deep within him that understood remorse.
But she couldn’t speak. Something was wedged in her mouth, a scrap of cloth, secured with another strip of fabric wound around her head.
The noise she made was a whimper, a beaten-dog sound.
“Awake, Doc?” He swung the mallet again, and the stake descended another half inch. “Good.”
She whipped her head from side to side, fighting to loosen the gag. Words, eloquent words, words that could save her life, bumped up against the wadded obstruction between her teeth and died there unexpressed.
The gag would not come free. He had knotted it tight.
Don’t let him do this, make him change his mind, I’m scared, oh, Jesus Christ, I’m so scared…
He put down the mallet, stood up slowly. The moon had set, and only strong starlight illuminated his face. She saw a smoky suggestion of a flat nose and receding chin. His big hands flexed at his sides.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Doc. I’m extremely disappointed in you.”
Her choked groan was the feeble protest of an animal in a trap.
Flashback: the bedroom of her parents’ house, Annie shrieking, smoke everywhere, red glow in the stairwell, and the pungent smell of gasoline She would smell it again when he soaked her in gas.
Not fire. Anything else, the gun, a knife, a noose-but not fire, not fire!
He crouched near her. Laced his fingers in her hair. His touch was tender, but the expression on his face was a twisted caricature of self-torture, a ham actor’s exaggerated display. Eyes narrowed in a painful squint. Lower lip thrust out like a pouting child’s. Stripes of wetness banding his cheeks.
She stared up at him, pleading with her gaze. Could he read her thoughts in her eyes, and would it matter if he did?
“God damn you.” His breath, coming fast and shallow, was hot on her face. “I came back to finish our session. Thought you’d be able to help me.”
But she could. She wanted to scream the message at him. If he would just give her another chance, she would help him, treat him, do whatever he wanted.
He stood. Oddly he seemed to have heard the words she could not speak. He answered her with a slow shake of his head.
“I’m sorry, Doc. I wish this hadn’t become necessary. But it has.”
She watched through a prism of tears as he trudged toward the embankment.
When he returned, he would have the gasoline with him, and then there would be only the final moments of helpless, racking terror as he drenched her with it and lit the match.
She hadn’t known her heart could work so hard, hadn’t known it was possible for each separate beat to shake her like an inner explosion, hadn’t known a human being could endure this extremity of fear.