Mary made a little choking sound deep in her throat, a sob that she tried to stop but couldn't. She knows, Anthony thought. She knows Gillian is dead.
"Where's Gillian?" she suddenly shouted, extending her gun with both hands and taking a step toward the bed. "Where's my sister?" She was half-sobbing now, the gun trembling.
Anthony put a hand out to stop her and comfort her. "Careful," he warned.
"Everything sucks," Mason said.
Anthony could kinda see where he was coming from. Sometimes he thought it was just him and the business he was in. When you deal with evil every day, you tended to think life sucked.
"I understand," Anthony said.
"You?" Mason asked sarcastically. "You understand? Are you saying you understand what it's like to be me? Nobody knows what it's like to be me. Can I put my arms down? They're getting tired."
"Go ahead, but keep them above the sheets."
Mason lowered his arms.
"I don't know what it's like to be you," Anthony said. "But I know what it's like to be human. I know what it's like to wonder where this is all heading, and why. The world is a hard place to live in. That's all I'm saying. It's a hard place to deal with."
"I can't relate to you in any way."
"I don't expect you to."
"With your suit and tie and city haircut. You don't have any right to tell me the world is hard. You're the kind of person that makes it hard. Good-looking, efficient bastards like you make the rest of us look bad, make th6 rest of us look like shit."
"I'm sorry."
"It's too late."
"What do you mean, too late?" Anthony asked. Too late for Gillian? Or too late for Von Bryant?
Up until that point, Mason's movements had been slow and slothlike. Suddenly he acted with agile speed, pulling a handgun from under the sheets. But instead of turning it on Anthony or Mary, he turned it in his direction.
"He's going to kill himself!" Mary screamed.
She lunged. Before she made contact, his weapon discharged. The sound was deafening in the cramped room. The pressure of the expanding gases from the single bullet caused the bones of Von Bryant's skull to separate along the suture lines. Like a deflated balloon, his face caved in on itself.
"No!" She grabbed fistfuls of his pajama top. "No! You son of a bitch! NO!"
"Mary, he's dead!" Anthony tried to pull her back, but nothing registered. "He's dead! Let him go!"
His words finally sank in. She released him. With her sleeve, she wiped away the blood that flecked her face. "We need to search this place." She ran to the closet and jerked open the door. "We have to find Gillian!"
Anthony radioed Elliot. "Von Bryant's dead."
"What about Gillian?"
"We're still looking. Check the garage and outbuildings, plus the area surrounding the house."
"We're on our way."
Chapter 34
She was suffocating.
Had Mason known the holes he'd drilled in the refrigerator wouldn't be enough to keep her supplied with air? That would be something he would do, something gutless. Why not just kill her outright? Shoot her, or give her an overdose of his nasty drugs? Instead, he put her away. He shut the door and didn't plan to open it again. Forget about her. Pretend she didn't exist.
It was possible her body would never be found. Her poor mother would keep looking, year after year, waiting for news. And all the while Gillian would be here, stuffed in a fucking refrigerator.
She'd tried to be good. She'd even talked to his dead sister. But it hadn't been enough. No woman would have been enough for him, because no woman could live up to the woman who-was already dead.
She'd been naive enough to think she could get through to him. How idiotic. How childish of her. She wasn't a negotiator. She hadn't been trained to talk someone into giving up. And now, in this eleventh hour, she could admit that after all these years, she was still trying to prove herself to Mary.
The basement was cold and damp, the floor was dirt, the walls wound around like catacombs.
"Gillian!" Mary shouted. "Gillian!"
She and Anthony hurried through the cramped space, ducking under wooden beams, their shoulders rubbing against stone and cement. One pass, and they found Mason's darkroom. No sign of Gillian.
Mary quickly looked around, her gaze moving over the photos plastered to the walls. There was Holly. Charlotte Henning. April Ellison. Underneath some of April's photos was a neatly printed word: bitch.
"Anthony-look." Mary stood in front of an en-larger. Visible in the compartment below the lens were the notched edges of a negative strip. "He must have been developing these."
Anthony immediately fell into action. "Shut off the overhead." He flicked on a red light screwed into a nearby socket.
Mary looked frantically around the room, running her hands across stone and cement block walls. "I can't find a switch!" She grabbed a broom and swung at the dangling bulb, breaking it like a pinata, glass shattering to the floor.
"See if you can locate developing solution," he said urgently. "It should be there somewhere near those trays." He turned on the enlarger light and bent close. "These could be Gillian, but I can't say for sure."
Mary found a jug labeled developing solution and poured it into a plastic tray.
Anthony flicked off the light, then slipped a contact sheet under the metal frame, quickly setting it up for an eight-by-ten. "Here we go." He pushed the timer button. The light clicked on for eight seconds, then off. He pulled out the contact sheet, hurried to the table, and dropped it in the solution.
"Stop bath," he said, looking around.
"Here." Mary handed him a brown bottle.
He poured a small amount into another tray and then added water. "We don't need anything else," he said. "We're not going for quality here. Watch the paper. When the photo is clear, pull it out and put it in the stop bath." He hurried back to the enlarger to make another print from a different negative.
As Mary watched, an image slowly appeared.
A woman.
Dressed in an off-the-shoulder evening gown.
Lying inside something.
A box?
Coffin?
Mary pressed a hand to her mouth.
It was a woman stuffed inside a refrigerator. Both doors were open. A notch had been cut in the freezer compartment, just large enough for a neck; her head filled the freezer, her body the lower section.
"It's Gillian," Mary said, unable to take her eyes from the photo.
Anthony returned to slide in another contact sheet. Using his bare hands, he pulled out the developed print and dropped it in the stop bath.
"Is she alive in the photo?" he asked.
"Yes." Her answer came on one tight, exhaled breath.
Standing opposite each other, they stared at the developing tray, waiting for the second image to appear.
It was a close-up of Gillian's face framed by the freezer. "She's alive in this one too," Anthony said.
Mary spun around, pulling a flashlight from her pocket as she went. Hurrying back through the stone maze, she trained the light on the dirt floor, then the steps that led to the kitchen.
Upstairs, she dived for the refrigerator, jerking it open.
Packed with food.
She slammed the door and ran back to the basement, where Anthony stood bathed in red light, three eight-by-tens spread out in front of him. "There has to be another refrigerator somewhere," she said breathlessly.
He pulled out his flashlight and trained the beam on the developed photos. "We need a clue to the location."
How long could a person remain alive in a refrigerator? Minutes? An hour?
Mary grabbed the photos, one after the other. "This one." She pointed. "Right here," she said, her voice rising. "Isn't that a stone wall?"
Anthony looked closer. "You're right." He was already moving. "Let's check the barn and outbuildings," he shouted over his shoulder. "They probably have stone foundations."
Halfway up the stairs, Mary stopped. Could they have missed something in their initial perusal of the basement? "Go on," she said, hurrying back downstairs. "I'm looking here once more."