Boldt said, “He’s going to throw her off Deception Pass bridge. His angel is going to fly this time. He’s screwed this up twice. If it is the pipe fitter, he’s not a give-up guy.”
“You’re not the psychologist, she is,” LaMoia said, his arms crossed, his voice hoarse.
“Father or son? Pipe fitter, or who knows what? You’re all over the map, Sarge.”
“I’ll disregard that,” Boldt said.
“LaMoia,” Daniels said in a cautionary tone.
“You think she was wrong, John?” Boldt asked. “Then what if she was wrong about his doing this at sunrise. What if sunset works just as well for him?” He eyed LaMoia up and down. “You want to sit here, or you want to take a ride in the chopper?”
Daniels squirmed, caught in the crosshairs. “Sarge?” he said.
“Call a prosecuting attorney named Rickert up there. Mount Vernon. Tell him to rally the best guys his sheriff’s office can muster and to have them put eyes on the residence. We want an open channel with our dispatch. Real time updates. You getting all this?”
“I got it.”
“I can be up there in twenty, twenty-five minutes.” Boldt looked over at LaMoia. All the bravado was gone, the luster, the very sense of who John LaMoia was. Someone, something, now inhabited his body.
“You coming?”
LaMoia looked up through fixed eyes. “I hate helicopters,” he said.
“That’s been…the mistake,” Daphne told him. It took all of her courage, and more than a little part of what energy she could summon. He had her tied to a narrow wooden-slat table, a scratchy rope across her bare chest, her hands connected by a rope beneath the table, another rope at her knees and yet another holding her ankles apart, also connecting under the table. She was naked, her legs spread, at once both horribly embarrassing and making her feel incredibly vulnerable. He could do whatever he wanted to her; there would be no stopping him.
She was in a dreary, dimly lit room. The windows were small and high on the wall and covered in soiled, decaying curtains. The pungent oily, stale-salt smell told her water was close.
She was not blindfolded; he had no fear of her seeing his face, her being able to identify him. This increased her panic.
He hovered over her, paying her nakedness no mind, preparing to administer a pill and what smelled like cough syrup. He was intending to drug her. He would then either leave her here to sleep it off, or walk her to his car while she was numb and transport her.
He was a soft-looking man, with piggish, squinting eyes smudged with a horrid blue eye shadow, and a pallor to his facial skin.
Her comment stopped him. She seized upon his hesitation.
“You broke her back. She…was too relaxed. The drugs…whatever it is you’re about to give me…it’s what killed her…what will kill me. If you…take away my strength to resist the force of the fall…you’ll break my back.”
He stared at her expressionless. He seemed to be thinking: How could she read my mind like this? How could she possibly know…?
“You want them to fly…want me to fly, don’t you?” she said, gaining some strength to her voice, though not much. The lingering effect of the stun stick was a massive migraine, a dry throat and pain radiating throughout her body. On top of that she was absurdly cold, chilled to the bone, a kind of chill that might be chemical, or a response to shock, but was unlike anything she knew.
“I can’t fly if you drug me. The harness…must dis-tri-bute the force of the fall better. Shoulders to hips. Bigger harness…maybe.”
He held up a series of nylon straps and buckles. It look liked he’d made it himself-there were nuts and bolts where a harness might have had stitching or grommets.
“You don’t need…to drug me…to put that on,” she said. “I won’t fight. I want…to help you…be the first to fly.”
She watched his eyes mist. She’d triggered something painful in him. She clawed through the purple and black orbs that threatened on the sides of her vision, that warmth flowing down from her skull, trying to overtake her.
He looked her over, head to toe, his eyes lingering where a woman always felt men looking. She thought perhaps she didn’t fit the look-the look that he sought. The victim they’d seen had been slightly heavier, wider in the hips. Maybe he was considering rejecting her. Maybe she’d spoken too much. But speaking was her living. Her life…depended on it.
“To make this work,” she said, “we must be a team. The two of us.” She thought that more than anything he missed whatever angel he was trying to recreate, that to include him, to embrace him, to let him in was the secret to unlocking him.
“What do you know about the two of us?” He appeared bewildered and confused.
She understood she had caused this. Had her mind been clearer, she could have had more tools at her disposal, but her education took a backseat to instinct-it came down to getting him to loosen the ropes; everything depended on his loosening the ropes.
“We should…try on the harness. You think?”
“You didn’t know her.”
“I’d like to have.”
“Shut up.”
“She meant a great deal to you.”
“I said shut up!”
He lashed out with the harness, whipping her bare skin across her middle and raising welts.
She shut up. She looked away, her arms beginning to shake from the fear. She hated herself for giving this away, for feeding him this. She must not, at all costs, give him a connection between him beating her and her fear. She fought herself, her desire to hide, to retreat. To stay silent was to ask him to strike her again; to speak was most likely the same invitation; but she could control her speech whereas he controlled her silence and this was a very big difference to her.
“You didn’t mean to do that,” she said. “I forgive you.”
His gaze locked onto her.
“I forgive you for all of this. I can see it stems from your pain. I will fly for you. I will help you. But if you drug me, you’ll break my back. You’ll kill me. Now…what about the harness? Shouldn’t we get the harness on?”
She had him. She fought through the goo, the descending veil of approaching unconsciousness long enough to understand she’d gotten through to him. As a psychologist, she’d learned to spot these moments. To seize upon them.
His arm moved toward the knot that tied one ankle to the other, but it was a motion filled with suspicion and distrust.
Come on! she silently pleaded.
The man untied the first knot.
Five khaki-clad sheriff deputies stormed the Malster residence with a precision Boldt had not expected. He and LaMoia, wearing flak jackets, followed closely behind.
“Dead body,” Boldt said, knowing that smell.
The deputies quickly swarmed through the rooms, shouting, “Clear!” within seconds of one another.
“Got something!” a voice called out.
LaMoia and Boldt slipped down a narrow hallway to one of the home’s two bedrooms. It was a small room, crowded with a double bed and a low dresser. Atop the dresser were several photographs of a younger woman wearing clothes and a haircut from a decade earlier.
“Burrito,” LaMoia said.
A human burrito. A wrap of thick plastic tarp secured with a half roll or more of duct tape. Whoever had done the job had tried to seal the body inside, but the putrid smell overcame the room.
“Weeks,” Boldt said, his gloved hand pressing the plastic closer to where the face should have been. The corpse was in a high degree of decay, squirming larvae smeared the plastic from inside.
“Oh…crap,” LaMoia said. “This guy is sick.”
“This guy is trying to hold on to the one parent he had left,” Boldt said. “Daphne said the doer would be living with a single parent.”
“So where is she?”
“He’s not living here,” Boldt said, back in the hall now, looking around. The place had been cleaned up. The kitchen was immaculate but a wire strainer had left a rust ring in the sink, suggesting the passage of a good deal of time. “This is his mausoleum.” He indicated the small living room where two of the deputies stood awaiting instruction. There were no fewer than twenty framed photographs of the same woman spread around the room.