She sensed the right time had come. "Jamie, please, untie me. I won't try to get away, I promise. It just hurts so much."
He hesitated for only a moment. "You couldn't get away even if you tried."
"That's right. But I don't want to get away. We're old friends."
"Yeah, that's right. You told me you loved me, remember?"
"And I did," she admitted.
"Okay, Annie. I'm going to trust you." He walked around her chair and began to undo the rope.
She'd won a second round. Still, the battle wasn't over; she hadn't won the war. Her hands dropped when the rope was removed. As she brought her arms around to the front, pain shot through them. She rubbed her wrists, gently lowering her hands to her lap.
He came back to stand in front of her, his legs touching her knees. "You don't know what I've been through." Tears threatened to spill down his cheeks.
"Tell me, Jamie," she urged. "Tell me all about it."
He moved away from her, picked up the fallen chair, and sat down, the back no longer a barrier between them. "It's been lousy, Annie. Since they died, Mommy and Daddy."
"It must have been terrible for you." The longer he talked, the longer she stayed alive. She had to pick her moment carefully. There would only be one.
He gave her a frosty look. "You wouldn't know."
"Tell me," she urged again.
From his jacket pocket he took a crumpled pack of Camels, shook one up, grabbed it with his lips, and returned the package to his pocket. Eyes still on her, he lit up, blew out the match, then dropped it on the floor. "You really want to know?"
"Yes. Very much." And she did.
"Okay, then I'll tell you," he replied, as if she'd offered a reward for information. "After it happened, after they were burned to crisps," he pointed out acidly, "my Grandma and Grandpa Perkins took me in for awhile. But that didn't work out."
"Why not?" She would ask him lots of questions, get him to expand on whatever he told her.
"They were old. My daddy was what they call a change-of-life baby. She was forty-five when she had him. Anyway, they were old-crotchety. Mean, you could say. They didn't want me to move, it seemed. Every time I tried to play in the house they told me I was making too much noise, stuff like that. So I left there."
"What do you mean, 'left'?"
"They put me out," he amplified. "Sent me to a home. With nuns. My daddy was a Catholic." He sucked on his cigarette, blew long streams of smoke in the air. "They beat me up, the nuns."
"How?"
"With rulers. Metal ones. Then I went to live with some people, the Rogers. That was in New Jersey. She was real fat. He was tall and skinny. I called them Jack Sprat and wife. Remember that rhyme? Jack Sprat would eat no fat, his wife would eat no lean?"
"I remember," she said.
"They heard me one day. He beat the shit out of me."
"I'm sorry," she said, meaning it. For a moment she forgot that sitting before her was a man who'd killed at least four adults and a child. She mustn't let his story seduce her. What she had to do was look for an opening, a vulnerable moment. "Go on, Jamie."
His eyes searched hers as if within them he might find the answer to all his pain. "I like the way you say my name. Nobody's called me Jamie for a very long time."
"Because you called yourself Jim," she explained.
"I had to. You can understand that, can't you?"
"No. Tell me."
"Later." He dropped his cigarette on the floor, squashed it out with his foot. "I got sent away from Jack Sprat and wife and went to some people called Schroeder. It was the same. Every place I went, they were all the same."
"How many homes were you in?"
"Ten, twelve, I don't know. But I got out of it when I was eighteen. I enlisted," he said proudly. "I was a Marine."
"Did you go to Vietnam?"
"No. I just said that." He looked away from her, shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "They didn't like me in the Marines either, but I'm not talking about it so don't try to make me." His eyes were flat now, like slate. "I bummed around, picking up jobs here and there, and what kept me going was the same thing got me through all those places I'd lived as a kid. If I hadn't had my plan I don't think I would've made it."
'What plan?"
"My Razzamatazz plan," he grinned.
"Tell me," she said softly.
"I always knew I'd come back here. I knew I was going to make them suffer."
"Who?"
"The people who lived."
"You mean the people who survived the fire?" She remembered how shaken her father had been, how he'd talked about the panic, people being trampled.
"There were eighty-two of them."
"And you were going to kill all eighty-two?'
"You don't get it," he said angrily.
"I'm trying."
"I wanted them to suffer like I did. I wanted them to know what it was like to have people you love die. Like Mary Beth Higbee's grandparents. They were in the fire, but they got out. Knocking other people out of the way so they could save their own skins. Anyway, if I killed them they wouldn't suffer, they'd just be dead. But if I killed their grandchild, they'd suffer plenty."
She swallowed hard, feeling the full weight of this man's sickness. Suddenly she believed she would never get away. He was going to kill her no matter what she said or did. Kill her because her father had survived the fire. The will to fight leaked from her body like air from a punctured tire.
"I like things neat. Tied up, if you know what I mean. So I thought the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fire, of my parents' dying, would be the best way to mark it. But I couldn't come back here as Jamie Perkins. Somebody might put two and two together," explained Drew. "And then there was the most important part." His eyes fired up again. "The smartest part."
"What was that?" she forced herself to ask.
"See, if I just came here as Jim Drew, the antique and junk man, and a whole series of murders started three years after I arrived, well, I'd be one of the first suspects. People here don't like outsiders, in case you've forgotten. They're suspicious of them in the best of times. But some ex-Marine, looking sort of beat-up, living in a barn off the highway, selling mostly junk? I'd be a sitting duck. But if I made them think I was a guilt-ridden nut right from the beginning, by the time the murders began I'd be the last person they'd suspect."
"So you started confessing to everything that happened."
"You got it. Well, hell, I even confessed to the murders. Nobody can say I didn't try to get arrested!" He started to laugh, rocked backwards in his chair, its front two feet raised off the ground.
Without thinking, Annie seized the moment. Arms outstretched, she jumped, flung herself forward, and pushed Drew backwards. The chair toppled over as he tumbled back, crashing to the floor.
Annie was through the doorway before Drew landed. Her ankle tortured her, she ran to the huge sliding doors and pushed. Nothing moved. Glancing back at Drew, she saw him slowly rising. There wasn't going to be time to get out of the barn. Frantically she looked around. There were boxes, furniture, curios piled everywhere. And then she saw the ladder leaning against the second story. A large iron unicorn on wheels blocked the ladder. She pushed it to the side and hobbled up the rickety steps. At the top she started to pull the ladder up after her, but Drew reached it and caught the bottom rung. She let go suddenly and the ladder fell, knocking him to the floor.
"You fucking bitch!" he screamed over the music.
A waist-high railing ran three-quarters of the way around the second story. Annie was on the long side opposite the barn doors. She could see that there were alcoves and nooks in which to hide, but there was only one way down-the way she'd come up. It was essential not to get too far from the ladder. She could hear Jim Drew scrambling around and knew she had to act quickly. He would be putting up the ladder again and she would have to knock it down. Or better still, knock him off it.
Behind her, to the right, was a rusted gasoline can. She picked it up, relieved to find it empty. The ladder thudded against the wood as Drew propped it in place. Annie moved to the right side of the opening and dropped to her knees. She heard him grunt as his boot hit the first rung. It would be stupid to throw the can before he was halfway up, but if she missed then she would have much less time to run. Still, it was a chance she must take.