“Shut up!” Tess yelled, surprising herself. She didn’t recognize her own voice, frightened by the shrillness of it. “Please just shut up!”

Immediately there was silence. No moans. No sobs. Tess listened over the pounding of her heart. Her body shook beyond her control. A liquid cold invaded her veins. Air continued to leak out, replaced by more of the rancid smell of death.

Thunder grew closer, vibrating the earth against her back. The flashes of lightning lit up the world above, but didn’t make it down into the black pit. Tess leaned her head against the dirt wall and stared up at the branches, eerie skeletal arms waving down at her in the flickering light. Her entire body hurt from trying to control the convulsions threatening to take over.

She wrapped her arms around herself, determined to ward off those childhood memories, those childhood fears she had worked so hard to destroy. She could feel them crashing through her carefully constructed barriers. She could feel them seeping into her veins, a poison infecting her entire body. She couldn’t…she wouldn’t allow them to return and render her helpless. Oh dear God! It had taken years to lock them away. And several more years to erase them. No, she couldn’t let them back in. Please, dear Lord, not now. Not when she was already feeling so vulnerable, so completely helpless.

The rain began, and Tess let her body slide down against the wall until she felt the mud sucking at her again. Her body began rocking back and forth. She hugged herself tight against the cold and against the memories, but both broke through anyway. As though it had been only yesterday, she remembered what it felt like. She remembered being six years old and being buried alive.

CHAPTER 45

“I think Stucky may have taken my neighbor, too.”

“Come on, Maggie. Now you’re just sounding paranoid.” Gwen sat in Maggie’s recliner, sipping wine and petting Harvey’s huge head, which filled her lap. The two had become instant pals. “By the way, this wine is very nice. You’re getting good at this. See, there are things other than Scotch.”

However, Maggie’s glass of wine remained full to the rim. She rummaged through the files Tully had given her on Jessica’s and Rita’s murders. Besides, she hadn’t waited for Gwen to arrive before she drank just enough Scotch to settle the restlessness that seemed to have taken up permanent residence inside her. She had hoped target practice would have helped dislodge it. But even the Scotch had not done its usual job of anesthetizing it. Still she was having trouble reading her own handwriting through the blur. She was pleased, though, that she had finally been able to choose a wine that Gwen liked.

A gourmet cook, Gwen enjoyed fine food and wine. When she had called earlier, offering to bring over dinner, Maggie had rushed out to Shep’s Liquor Mart to search the aisles. The clerk, an attractive but overly enthusiastic brunette named Hannah, had told Maggie that the Bolla Sauve was “a delicious semi-dry white wine with touches of floral spiciness and apricot.” Hannah assured her that it would complement the chicken and asparagus en papillote that Gwen had promised.

Wine was much too complex. With Scotch she didn’t need to choose from merlot, chardonnay, chablis, blush, red or white. All she needed to remember was Scotch, neat. Simple. And it certainly did the job. Though not this evening. The tension strangled her muscles and tightened her rib cage, squeezing and causing her chest to ache.

“What do the police say about Rachel’s disappearance?”

“I’m not sure.” Maggie flipped through a file folder with newspaper clippings, but still couldn’t find what she was looking for. “The lead detective called Cunningham and complained about me barging in on his territory, so it’s not like I can just call him up and say, ‘Hey, I think I know what happened with that case you want me to keep my nose out of.’ But my other neighbor gave me the impression everyone, including the husband, is treating it as though Rachel just decided to leave.”

“That seems odd. Has she done this sort of thing before?”

“I have no clue. But doesn’t it seem odder that the husband wouldn’t want the dog?”

“Not if he thinks she ran off with someone. It’s one of the few ways he has left to punish her.”

“It doesn’t explain why we found the dog in the condition we did. There was a lot of blood, and I’m still not convinced it was all Harvey’s.” Maggie noticed Gwen stroking Harvey’s head as though administering therapy. “Who names a dog Harvey?”

He looked up at Maggie’s mention of his name, but didn’t budge.

“It’s a perfectly good name,” Gwen declared as she continued her generous strokes.

“It was the name of the black Lab that David Berkowitz believed was possessed.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Now, why is it that you think of that immediately? Maybe Rachel is a Jimmy Stewart fan or a classic-movie buff, and named him after Harvey the six-foot invisible rabbit.”

“Oh, right. Why didn’t I think of that?” It was Maggie’s turn for sarcasm. The truth was, she didn’t want to think of Harvey’s owner and what she believed may have happened to her, or was still happening to her. She returned her attention to the folders. She wished she could remember exactly what it was that Agent Tully had said. There was something nagging at her. Something that connected Rachel’s disappearance to Jessica’s murder. Not just the mud. Yet she couldn’t remember what it was that made her think that. She was hoping one of the police reports would trigger her memory.

“Why the hell isn’t the husband the prime suspect?” Gwen suddenly sounded irritated. “That would be a logical explanation to me.”

“You’d need to meet Detective Manx to understand. He doesn’t seem to be approaching any of this logically.”

“I’m not so sure he’s the only one. The husband does seem to be the logical suspect, and yet here you are jumping to the conclusion that Stucky kidnapped her because…let me get this straight. You think Stucky kidnapped Rachel Endicott because you’re sure he killed this pizza delivery girl and you found candy bar wrappers at both scenes.”

“And mud. Don’t forget the mud.” Maggie checked the lab’s report on Jessica’s car. The mud recovered from the accelerator contained some sort of metallic residue that Keith was now going to break down. Again she remembered the mud with sparkling flecks on Rachel Endicott’s stairs. But what if Manx hadn’t bothered to collect it? And even if he had, how would she be able to compare the two? It wasn’t like Manx would easily hand over a sample.

“Okay,” Gwen said. “The mud I can understand, if you can make a match. But finding candy bar wrappers at both houses? I’m sorry, Maggie, that’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Stucky leaves body parts in take-out containers just for fun, to toy with people. Why wouldn’t he leave candy bar wrappers, sort of his way of thumbing his nose at us? Like he was able to commit this inconceivably horrible murder and then have a snack afterward.”

“So the wrappers are part of the game?”

“Yes.” She glanced up. Gwen didn’t buy it. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Did you ever consider they could be a necessity? Maybe the killer or even the victims have an insulin deficiency. Sometimes people with diabetes keep candy bars to prevent fluctuations in their insulin intake. Fluctuations possibly caused by stress or an injection of too much insulin.”

“Stucky’s not diabetic.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Yes,” Maggie said, quite certain, then realized their lab analysis of Stucky’s blood and DNA had never been tested for the disease.

“How can you be so certain?” Gwen persisted. “About a third of people with Type 2 diabetes don’t even know they have it. It’s not something that’s routinely checked unless there are symptoms or some family history. And I have to tell you, the symptoms, especially the early ones, are very subtle.”