Disembodied Bones, page 31
“So I jumped the gun,” Leonie said. “What, you had some more stuff in mind for me?”
“I was planning on using Olga again. Her mother is amazingly stupid in her care giving, even after the child had been kidnapped once. You seem to be remarkably fond of her. This child-” Leonie swung her head around to look at Keefe’s still body as the nameless persecutor continued-“doesn’t mean anything to you.”
Leonie wasn’t about to deny his statement. If she could save the child, then save him she would, at the cost of her own life. Clearly, it was she who he was angered with. For the moment, he felt like bragging to her and she wasn’t about to stop him. However, she suspected that he already knew that she would protect the child, no matter whom or what he was, simply because he was a child.
“It’s amazing what money will provide,” the voice went on. “A duplicate of a dead man’s house, replete with the things that he should have had but didn’t. Once upon a time, Monroe Whitechapel was afraid of people coming into his house, of seeing what they shouldn’t. I hire contractors from Dallas and Houston. I pay them small fortunes. They don’t ask questions and they don’t talk to the locals. Of course, I also have to do some of the work myself. Even distant contractors would ask uncomfortable questions about some of that.”
Struggling to comprehend the situation, Leonie’s mind swirled. The pain was thankfully beginning to recede again, leaving her thoughts coherent once more, but it felt as though a great blinding spot was fluttering in between in her eyes and her ears. For all she knew Whitechapel’s bullet had come loose of its tissue enwrapped prison and was rattling around in her brain. She wiped away another drop of blood from her nose.
It was time to think of the owner of the anonymous voice instead. This person had had a house built to replicate Whitechapel’s house. All for the express purpose of torturing Leonie Simoneaud and the people who had the mistake of being too close to her. Revenge motivated this man and Gideon’s previous conversation came to her.
The horror of what had been done was as painful as the knee-buckling headaches.
The mental conversation replayed like a cd on the radio. She remembered each word as if it were thought only the minute before. Leonie had asked the question, If Whitechapel had a place to hide you, why weren’t you there? Why were you in the house instead?
Gideon had responded with, I’d forgotten until now. I wish I hadn’t remembered. When I saw my parents running across his yard all I could think of was that I was glad to be free, I was glad to be alive. I was so happy that I could see my parents. I pushed everything away. Even what he’d said. Even you.
Leonie’s answer had been appalled. Forgotten. The riddle on Olga. The last lines. Even if you perceive me, you know me not. Before you can tell me…
What I’ve forgotten.
He didn’t put you in his hidden place because he had something else there. He had another child there. Leonie hadn’t wanted to believe it. It was simply too terrible to grasp. It was a fate that no one should ever face. Alone in the darkness without knowledge, without understanding of what was happening to him, what would happen to him. She wanted to dismiss it as improbable; the police, who had dug up every inch of Whitechapel’s grounds, would have surely found such a prison.
And Gideon had been equally horrified. He said he had something to do first. Something to take care of. Something to get rid of. Oh, my God. I hope he was dead already. They never found anything like that. Roosevelt would have told me. So perhaps he was dead already so he didn’t…suffer.
But he had suffered. The proof was the place that Leonie now sat within.
When she looked up again, the electronic speakers were silent. She hadn’t realized it but when she had been mentally replaying the revealing conversation, she had muttered some of the words aloud. “Forgotten?”
“Clever girl. How did you come to that conclusion?”
“It was something Gideon…said,” Leonie replied slowly. “Something he remembered about Whitechapel. And your riddles.”
“What did he say?”
“That on that day, Whitechapel had something to do, something to get rid of.” Leonie’s gold eyes sparkled with unshed tears, for the boy who had been left behind. “If he had put Douglas Trent there, then the other boy would have known he was about to be killed, and might have resisted.”
“I suspected regardless.”
Leonie’s mouth opened in silent incredulity. How could that child have survived? And in a place so well hidden that the police couldn’t find it? How is it possible? And how long had he held his silent grudge against me? Against Gideon? How many years did it take to plan this Machiavellian deed and how much money would that mean?
Blocking the door to the room that she awoken in so that it couldn’t be locked again, Leonie decided that it was time to find a weapon. It was time to see how much this house resembled the first. She had been in it a long time ago and the memory still haunted her nightmares. She hadn’t forgotten and she would use it to her advantage.
“Leonie?” came the voice again. She slipped down the hallway, looking around her for more cameras. There were several and if he weren’t watching her, then it was only a matter of time before he relocated her position.
“Ah, there you are.” The camera directly in front of her, in the middle of the hall, panned back with a little electronic whir and squared itself on her figure. A tiny red light appeared on one side, indicated that it was in use. Another speaker was well hidden somewhere above her. The words sounded as if they were coming directly out of the ceiling. “You’ll find that it’s not exactly like Whitechapel’s house.”
Opening the first door, she found an empty room. She went to the window and discovered that it was painted over with black paint. Shutters were locked into place on the outside. There was nothing inside the room that she could use to batter out the glass. She removed her black T-shirt and wrapped it around her hand and arm and punched through the glass. Knocking the sharp edges out with her cloth-covered fingers, she quickly realized that the shutters weren’t locked into place. They were nailed down. If she pressed her face up to the remnants of glass in their wood frames she could see a bit of the revealing steel shapes in between the shutter and exterior wall. And no matter how hard she pushed at the shutter, it was firmly attached. She was left only with the knowledge that it was dark outside, very very dark outside. There was no telling how long she’d been unconscious in this place or even how long it had taken to get her to this replica house.
Leonie peered over her shoulder at the camera that had become active in the little room. Another speaker gurgled with noise. “Explore all you want, Leonie. Don’t, however, pick up any of the glass there.” The last part was quickly added when she went to bend down to reach for a jagged piece that would serve as an adequate knife. “And as lovely as you are in your bra, I wouldn’t recommend staying half-naked.”
Sliding the T-shirt back on, Leonie disregarded the glass at her feet. There were a dozen other rooms on this floor and the anonymous man was playing with her. She checked the room with Keefe inside of it, and found that the child was still unconscious. It dawned on her what had happened. This man had found a drug that would limit her abilities, and furthermore it would limit the brain waves of anyone else it was used on. There was a clear reason that she couldn’t “sense” where Keefe Grant was located. He was drugged with something that made him unconscious and something that messed with the very mental facilities that Leonie’s abilities seemed to use. This unknown man had taken time and money and effort to find such a drug and attempt a test upon her to see if it was working properly.
How this anonymous person must hate me. A festering wound was created as he waited for a rescue that would never come.
“Why not let Keefe go?” she asked of the hallway, when she came back out. “You have me now. You can punish me. I didn’t do what you think I should have done. I’m at fault.”
“But that would be what you want,” replied the tinny voice from a nearby speaker, conveniently imperceptible in the ceiling. “What you want is not something I will give you. You’ll earn it, or you’ll die trying.”
He wants to punish me, she thought. And he’ll punish me by whatever means he can.
The remaining rooms on the hallway revealed much the same as the first one she’d entered. They were devoid of furniture. The windows were locked. The shutters were nailed shut. There were no other exits. No convenient attic doors waited for her to pull down and escape as she had done was a child.
“You’re right,” she said finally. “It’s not exactly like Whitechapel’s house.”
“You didn’t try the stairs,” replied the voice.
“I didn’t think you’d be that obvious.” Leonie had cast a longing glance at the open stairwell on the one side, a duplicate of the one that she’d tackled Whitechapel on. It was open and unsecured; it was as if he wanted her to try to dash downstairs to the front door and then out that to freedom. In the other direction, there were the two end doors that looked so similar to the originals. The larger one should be the staircase down. The smaller one should be the little staircase that led to the attic.
It had been the nailed shutters that had given him away as well as the detail of the house she was now in. Once Leonie saw the lengths that he was prepared to go, she knew there wouldn’t be an easy exit. There wouldn’t be an open waiting door for her. He wanted to play with her. She was merely a tiny mouse and he the great hulking cat looming over her.
Leonie checked on Keefe again. Then as she went down the hall to the main staircase, the voice remained silent, anticipatory in its absence. She hesitated at the top of the marble steps and peered downward. The carved banisters made out of some solid, dark wood appeared to be exact replicas. The marble contained a delicate pattern of pinks and grays that flowed effortlessly from one stone to the next. The first landing sat ten feet below her as normal and unassuming as anything she’d ever seen. But a gaming man, who wanted active entertainment, didn’t like to be without amusement for long, did he? A man who took the time to glue razor blades to a laptop to teach her a lesson wouldn’t be solitary for any length of time, would he?
Her shin touched something as she shifted slightly. Leonie’s eyes dipped downward. There was nothing there. Her eyes narrowed and she stepped back. Slowly she knelt and reached her hand out, slowly bringing it down horizontally. About six inches off the floor was an extraordinarily thin wire strung vertically across the top of the staircase. She glanced to the left and saw where it was connected to the wall. To the right it was attached to an ornamental wooden rail.
Another little trap. Leonie twanged the wire with her index finger, absently reopening the cut there. Nasty. Could have broken my neck.
“What would you have done if I had broken my neck?” she asked aloud. “That might have ended your game very quick. Too quick, perhaps.”
Quietly amused, he replied wryly, “You wouldn’t have broken your neck. Perhaps a wrist. Maybe an arm. Falling forward, it’s instinctual to put your hands out in front of you. At worst you might have broken both your wrists. It would have made an interesting twist.”
“Do I get to ask questions in this game?” Leonie mused, almost to herself.
“You can ask anything you want,” said the voice. “Rest assured that won’t necessarily get you an answer, nor will it make things easier for you.”
Leonie turned around and went back toward the attic stairs. The door to the downward stairs was locked. However, the smaller door was open. It was a tiny staircase, the walls unfinished sheetrock, a single unlit light bulb hanging from the sloped ceiling. Near the top was another security camera, trained on her figure, the little red light on to show he was watching her.
She checked to see if there were any other little disturbing revelations, but nothing jumped out. She even reached up to the pull chain of the light and gingerly touched it as if it would give her an electrical shock. Almost surprised, it was only a cold, beaded chain connected to the string of the light and nothing more. She yanked once on the chain and the light came on, showing the stairwell clearly. The narrow stairs went up a dozen steps and did a switchback into darkness. The camera was put in such a position that it could look up or down the stairs and she was wondering why he wasn’t speaking to her.
He’s waiting. Waiting for something to happen to me? Leonie took her time, picking her way up the staircase. None of the stairs collapsed. There wasn’t a giant Indiana Jones-type stone ball rolling down at her to crush her. There wasn’t even a colossally wicked blade that would decapitate her a la Edgar Allen Poe.
It was almost disappointing. She made it to the top and opened the door into the attic. Her heart thundered in her chest, threatening to burst in a fury of red viscous fluid as she waited for something to happen. What? For Monroe Whitechapel to burst out of the attic door with his gun in his hand, with his other hand reached for her throat. It was as if she had been helplessly transported into the past and the low electronic chuckle in the background wasn’t doing anything to prevent that undeniable journey.
But the door didn’t move. She reached for the door knob and twisted it quickly. The narrow door opened slowly with a nudge of her fingers. It swung back on its hinges, sounding as if it had been freshly oiled the day before.
Darkness greeted her.
There was no distant attic door opening that allowed meager light to filter upward, and there wasn’t the silhouetted figure of a threatening man stumbling toward them, calling out alternating threats and promises. The terror she held at bay began to weigh heavily at her, spreading like the lapping edge of rising floodwaters.
Nonetheless she stepped into the darkness, her heart continuing to pound at breakneck speed as quickly as a race horse’s hooves out of the starting gates. When something touched her face she withheld a gasp of apprehension. Her hands shot up to protect her face and something fluttered there, touching bare flesh, tickling across her hair, already in a disarray from being in a fight and carried off to who knew where. The unknown something slithered across her face and Leonie finally grasped it securely with her hand. It was another pull cord for another light.
Still she took several steps backward before she jerked the overlong cord. The yellow light pooled in the immediate area in front of her and showed the shape of a half-finished attic. Tall enough for her to not duck her head, she doubted that Gideon would pass without bumping his head on the beams overhead. The floor was unfinished plywood, nailed into the studs below, to provide an adequate storage area. But there wasn’t much here.
Leonie took a step forward, inside the attic. There was something here. She could see a faint shape in the dimness in front of her. This was something the nameless man on the speakers wanted her to see. And he remained silent while she went about discovering what it was. As she moved forward, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The low wattage bulb in the light fixture behind her exposed the bareness of the attic room. The sharply pitched roof closed in above her, the beams were thick slabs of wood that showed plywood above them, and hundreds of roofing nails had been thrust through holding shingles in place that she couldn’t see.
Another step and she found herself in the shadows, cautiously waiting for her eyes to further adjust. Her foot gingerly went forward, testing the waters before she dove in. She didn’t want to find a shark waiting for her or anything else with sharp jagged teeth and an avaricious appetite. But there was nothing and Leonie’s suspicions were aroused.
The shape became clearer. Someone was sitting in the middle of the attic in a simple rocking chair. Leonie froze in place, as still as the darkened figure in front of her. Slowly she looked over her shoulder at the place where she had entered. It seemed a hundred miles away, and long before she reached it, this person could easily gain on her, should he simply leap up and reach for her. She forced a lump of anxiety down her throat with a feeling akin to horrified dread and wished for a discarded unicorn’s horn, or anything that might protect her.
However, there was something else that spoke to her, although it didn’t use words.
It was only a faint whiff of smell. It tormented her nostrils as she strove to grasp what it meant. The air was circulating more now that the attic door was wide open. Dry, musty air was being pulled from within the attic through the door and down the stairwell. The faded smell floated on air currents past her and inundated her nose.
Wandering the piney woods around Twilight Lake as a child, she had come across dead animals. The smell of the dead was distinctive and unforgettable.
The shape sitting in the chair was dead and hardly a threat to Leonie. The realization of the other person’s condition was hardly reassuring to her. She took another step forward and stared at the figure. It was a desiccated corpse of a woman who had been there a long time. Her hair was tangled wisps of gray tainted brown and tattered flesh flaked from her bare arms onto the plywood floor. One arm crossed over her lap and another hung helplessly at her side. A simple white shirt had turned yellow with age and was stained with dark matter and remnants of other things she could identify. Plain khaki slacks covered her hips and legs.
Through the whirling dust motes, she saw that the woman’s throat had been cut. The dried flesh had curled back on itself like an obscene mouth opening below her sagging jaw line.
I don’t know this woman, Leonie thought. Then she saw one broken strap made to look like alligator lying in a single stream of light from the distant light bulb. She bent down and pulled it cautiously with one hand. It came without reservation and pulled behind it a woman’s purse. Compact and simple, it was imitation alligator, a yellowy green array of simulated scales.
