Northwest: Deep Freeze Part 42

A search party had been started for Lynnetta Swaggert. The group was largely made up of volunteers-neighbors, friends, and members of the church-who were already tired from tromping through the snow-covered woods and fields looking for Sonja Hatch.e.l.l and Roxie Olmstead. Even the Explorer Scouts, young people who aspired to be cops and were often used in searches, were weary, cranky, and cold to the bone. A usually eager group, they were dispirited with the prospect of yet another search.

Carter sat at his desk behind an ever-growing pile of paperwork, a couple of empty coffee cups, and a stack of phone messages he hadn't returned yet. Most of the paperwork would have to wait. The missing women were the highest priority, and Lynnetta's husband was making the most of the grim situation.

The Reverend Derwin Swaggert had been on the television, dry-eyed but shaken, spouting about G.o.d's will and asking for prayers for his wife. A candlelight vigil was planned for this evening, and The reverend was encouraging everyone to pray not only for Lynnetta but for the other missing women as well.

Morale was low.

Deputies and office workers alike needed a break.

Even BJ wasn't herself.

She stopped by his office and shut the door. "You know, I have a problem with Ian Swaggert, a big problem. He's still hanging around Megan, and the kid is trouble, but this..." She lifted a hand and let it fall to her side. "This is real bad."

"We could still find her."

"Alive!" BJ snapped. "We need to find her alive."

Jerri tapped on the door and dropped two sheets of paper on his desk. "Fax for you," she said. "From Jenna Hughes."

BJ said, "What kind of fax?" as Jerri left and closed the door behind her again.

"A list of makeup studios who specialize in monster-making." He quickly scanned the list. "Companies that might use alginate for molds."

"What are you talking about?" She was interested, leaning a hip against his desk, reading the list upside down as he explained what he'd found out and how he thought the alginate might be the link between Mavis Gette's murder and Jenna Hughes's stalker.

"You're serious about this?"

"Absolutely."

BJ studied the list and scratched her arm. "I don't know, it's pretty far-fetched," she said. "Did you tell the feds or OSP?"

"I called Larry Sparks. He said he'd check it out. Run it by the FBI. They've got a profiler working on the serial kidnapping case now, but they're still not convinced the cases are linked, so maybe this'll help."

"Or maybe they'll laugh you out of the office."

He snorted. "It wouldn't be the first time." Running a finger down the typed names of the companies, he said, "Now, what we need is a roster of their employees and anyone with roots up here, maybe someone who was working for them in California and moved north." His eyes narrowed and he tented his fingers under his chin as he leaned back in his chair, making the old metal groan. "And we need to find out if any of them are or have been missing alginate. Did you have any luck finding out if any suppliers shipped to anyone around here?"

"Other than the dentists?" She shook her head. "No."

"What about Portland? Or Vancouver? Even Seattle. Somewhere within driving distance."

"Still working on it."

"Good."

Another tap on the door and Jerri stuck her head in. "KBST is camping out in front," she said, "and one of the reporters, a"-she glanced at her note-"Brenda Ward, wants to interview you."

"Not now."

"She asked for a statement."

Carter leaned forward. "Tell her to call Lieutenant Sparks of the Oregon State Police."

Jerri ducked out of the office and BJ picked up the list. "Mind if I make a copy?" she asked.

"Go for it. Once you get a printout of any employees who have moved recently, or quit, or taken a leave of absence, we'll cross-reference it with our list of people who have rented or bought the movies, not just around here, but in the greater metropolitan area of Portland, maybe all of northern Oregon and southern Washington. If that doesn't work, we'll expand the search." He crushed an empty cup and tossed the crumpled remains into his trash. "But I have a feeling this guy's close." His eyes narrowed as he thought. "And efficient. Maybe knows his victims. There wasn't any sign of a struggle in the church, nor at the scene of the Olmstead accident, nor at the parking lot of Lou's Diner. Either this guy somehow disables his victim without a struggle or blood loss or he cons them into helping him out. Remember Ted Bundy? Sometimes he wore a cast, I think, or bandages to disarm his victims, make them less wary."

"Roxie Olmstead wrecked her car. No conning there."

"He could be smart enough to adjust to each situation. If one way doesn't work, he uses another."

"Let's hope he's not smart," BJ said, "but just lucky and that his luck is about to run out." She grabbed the two sheets of Jenna Hughes's fax and started to walk out of the room. "Oh, wait," she said. "I thought you might want to know that there are a couple of lines from the poems that I came across on the Internet. Today. Tomorrow. Endlessly. It's from a poem written by Leo Ruskin-have you heard of him?"

Carter shook his head.

"Similar to a New-Age Timothy Leary. Writes poetry that means nothing to me, but get this-the line was going to be used as a promo line for White Out, the Jenna Hughes movie that never was finished."

Carter's head snapped up. He drilled BJ with his eyes. "Wouldn't she remember that?" he asked. "Her husband was the producer of that movie and it lost millions."

"You'd think, but maybe she wasn't in on that end of things, and then her sister was killed and her marriage fell apart. She could've blanked the whole business out, if she ever knew it at all."

Carter felt a rush in his blood, a surge of adrenaline, the same excitement that he always felt when he was about to solve a case. This could be it. "Where is Ruskin now?"

"Still searching."

"Find him. Find out all of his previous addresses. And when you start with the makeup studios and firms in L.A., start with the one hired for White Out."

"Will do," she said as she left the office and Carter's phone rang. As he picked up the receiver, he hoped he'd just gotten lucky.

What was this?

Dear Lord in heaven, what was going on?

Lynnetta opened a bleary eye and shivered.

It was so cold...freezing...Her skin was probably turning a dozen shades of blue. Yet there was a dullness to her, as if her brain was filled with mud. Blinking, she slowly looked around the vast room...or was it a warehouse?...She couldn't tell from her position in a chair, a recliner of sorts. Somewhere music was playing, but it sounded far away and when she blinked, she saw women standing on a stage. Half of them faceless, naked, bald, but three dressed, their hair combed, their faces...Lynnetta swallowed hard. They were all Jenna Hughes! No, that couldn't be. They were likenesses of Jenna, strange mannequins.

What was this?

She rolled her eyes upward. Above her head was the long, stainless-steel arm of a dentist's drill...shining bright in the dim lights. Glinting like pure evil.

No...this couldn't be right. Something was wrong here. Very, very wrong. She had to get a grip or wake up or...She heard a sound, a soft rasp that set her teeth on edge.

She was groggy and certain that she, like Alice, had fallen down a rabbit hole. Everything was surreal. Bizarre. Topsy-turvy. She blinked again to clear her vision and her mind.

But it didn't hone the dullness.

In her peripheral vision she saw him. The man who had startled her in the theater. But now he was naked.

Oh, no.

She remembered being in the theater under the stage. She'd heard a noise as she was putting away the dress she'd hemmed. Thinking the sound was just the cat nosing around where he shouldn't, she'd called to him. As she'd rounded the corner to Rinda's office, she'd come upon a man who had been waiting for her in the darkness. She'd thought he'd held a gun and had tried to run. But he'd grabbed her, placed the cold metal against her neck, then zapped her. Electricity had shot through her body. She'd crumpled, but he hadn't been finished and slammed a needle into her arm.

Fear slithered down her spine as she tried to see him more clearly, attempted to recoil. But she couldn't escape; she was bound to this d.a.m.ned chair and realized with a sickening feeling that she, too, wore nothing. Her skin was pressed against cold leather. Oh, Lord, was he going to rape her? Why? What had she done to deserve such a wretched fate?

Tears filled her eyes, but still, through the blur, she saw him, his genitals exposed, a tattoo she couldn't make out upon his chest. He was holding something in his hand, something she couldn't quite see.

Help me, she silently pled. Please, G.o.d, help me.

Who was this man? She thought she'd known him, had seen him in town, but he'd changed. He was slimmer than she'd remembered, his hair thinner and dyed a different color. As if he was wearing a disguise...or had worn one for all the time that she'd known him.

Even his eyes were different. Cruel. Like glittering blue rocks set deep into his skull. The purest form of evil she'd ever witnessed.

She swallowed hard as she stared at the contraption in his hand. It was a dental appliance, a rubber dam with stainless-steel frame, equipment that would force a mouth open.

No! She began to panic, though her mind was mush. She had to get out of here! Now! Oh, G.o.d, there was no escape. She was bound to this chair. Over the music and the sound of her own frantic heartbeat, she heard a voice.

Stay calm, Lynnetta, I am with you.

Was it G.o.d's voice she heard...yes? Or a hallucination from some weird psychedelic drug that was being piped into her bloodstream via the IV pierced into her wrist. She glanced down at her hand and for the first time noticed the bandage...a thick strip of gauze wound tight over her fingers, binding them together. What was that all about? There was a dark red stain...no doubt blood...on the gauze, seeping through from her ring finger...Yet she felt no pain and something about her hand seemed weird. Frantically attempting to wiggle her fingers, she failed. Probably because of whatever drug was flowing through the darned IV. There had to be something in the clear liquid that was keeping her mind fuzzy, dulling the pain.

So why was her hand bandaged? Had she struggled? Fought? She couldn't remember. Didn't have time to think.

He was coming closer.

Fear screamed through her bloodstream.

Trust in me. The Father's voice again, trying to calm her, hoping that her faith would sustain her.

Please, Father, have mercy, she prayed, closing her eyes as she felt Lucifer's hot breath upon her cold face. She thought of the martyrs who had gone before her, the fearless souls who had accepted G.o.d's fate. For some reason, The Father was testing her, but she would fear not...He would deliver her. She was certain of it.

She thought of springtime and her dear, departed parents, then of Derwin, a hard-driven man, but a man who had loved her...and she thought of her son, Ian, not yet an adult, tempted by all that was available to youth these days. Be with them, dear Lord, she prayed, and despite whatever torture this evil incarnation of Satan had planned for her, she would never lose her faith. Never! Soon, she would be home. Soon, she would be with Him. She, like those before her, like Jesus who had suffered on the cross, would endure the agony on earth to accept her eternal reward.

I'll be with you soon. Sweet Jesus, I'll be with you soon.

Her eyes still shut, she complied as the monster roughly forced the rubber dam into her mouth, didn't so much as squeak as he tightened it so that her jaw was opened painfully wide, her lips pulled harshly back, her tongue and teeth at his mercy. She flinched only slightly when she heard the hum of the drill, but closed her mind to everything other than her prayer.

Our Father, who art in heaven...

The drill squealed against her teeth, shrieking wildly as the scent of burning enamel filled her nostrils, and she knew it was only a matter of seconds before the unG.o.dly drill bit hit a nerve.

CHAPTER 36.

Technically, it wasn't breaking and entering.

He had a key.

The key Wes Allen had given Carolyn years before, and it was now in the front pocket of Shane Carter's jeans.

But you don't have a search warrant. Anything you find will be thrown out of court. You'll lose your job.

Carter had wrestled with that decision for nearly four days, ever since the night Lynnetta Swaggert had been abducted. He had hoped to gather enough evidence against Wes, to get the d.a.m.ned search warrant, but then Amanda Pratt and her boss, the D.A., hadn't been impressed with the fact that Wes Allen dabbled in art, knew Jenna, had bought or rented all of her films on DVD or tape. And Wes had no link to Leo Ruskin, the Leary-esque poet from L.A. who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

Even Shane had known the evidence was thin at best, and his gut instinct didn't count for much. Besides, there was that little matter of a personal vendetta Amanda Pratt had brought up.

"Isn't this guy a friend of yours...oh!" Sitting on the edge of her desk, legs swinging, she'd snapped her fingers as if struck by a sudden bolt of insight. "Wait a minute...this was the guy that had an affair with your wife, right? The one you, in a fit of rage, swore to kill? Isn't this the reason they suggested you go to counseling, to deal with your grief and rage? I think this little incident nearly cost you your job."

"That was a long time ago," Carter had said.

"And they always say something to the effect that revenge tastes best when served up cold."

She hadn't budged, so here he was, hours later, parked on an old logging road a quarter of a mile from Wes's farmhouse, hankering for a cigarette and contemplating breaking the law and losing everything he'd worked for all his life.

Because of a gut instinct.

And because he was losing his perspective when it came to Jenna Hughes. What had Dr. Randall observed about him, that he was the kind of person who basically shot himself in the foot, who always found a way to thwart himself? Hence, Carolyn. Now...his job.

Tough, he thought, climbing out of his truck and making his way through the woods. He was wearing a pair of boots that were a size too big, a pair that had been left by Wes himself at Carter's cabin years ago. Fitting, Carter thought with a trace of irony. The boots were a common brand, the favorite of hunters and hikers in the Northwest. Hard to trace. Carefully, he walked through the woods, using a flashlight, grateful for the lull in the blizzard that had been ripping through the gorge. He knew the deer trails well, had followed them while hunting as a kid, he and Wes and David together.

It had been years ago. Carter hadn't been through this part of the forest since the day David Landis had fallen to his death while trying to climb Pious Falls. But the terrain hadn't changed much-the forest still remained, and Carter skirted the falls, now solidly frozen pillars that stretched from the ridge overhead to the pool of ice at his feet.

The night was quiet. Eerily so. Without the cascading rush of water tumbling over the cliffs or the wind howling through the canyon cut by the Columbia River, the forest held a silence all its own. A bit of moon peeked through the thick clouds, but the stars were obscured, as if they didn't want to witness his crime.

Sometimes a man had no choice but to take the law into his own hands. That's just the way it was.

Angling down the hillside, he recognized Wes's home, visible through the trees, one tall security lamp lighting the small farm with its ancient farmhouse and cavernous barn. Wes's truck was missing, which wasn't a surprise as Carter had spied it parked in front of the Lucky Seven Saloon, a favorite watering hole just outside of town. Wes usually spent a couple of hours there each night that the Trail Blazers played; Carter was gambling that his pattern wouldn't change tonight. The game had started an hour earlier, which should leave plenty of time. Unless Wes didn't stay through the fourth quarter.

Carter had considered enlisting BJ, telling her to stay at the bar and sip beer, making sure that Wes stayed firmly seated upon his bar stool. But BJ would have started asking questions, and then he would have involved her in something if not strictly illegal, then certainly borderline. No, he was better going it alone.

Pausing to double-check that no one was lingering on the farm, he leaned against the trunk of a Douglas fir that had somehow escaped the logger's axe and watched his breath fog in the still night. Headlights flashed along the highway in the distance, few and far between. Somewhere a train rumbled on distant tracks, but no dog was barking. The two-storied farmhouse with its wide porches, steep roof, and peeling paint was dark and appeared deserted.

"It's now or never," he told himself and circled through the woods to the barn, where he stopped and listened for the sound of a dog or other animal, but no noises erupted, no startled neigh, no sharp, warning bark. Through a sagging gate and up the back porch he crept, as he had often years ago.

Before Wes and Carolyn had become lovers.

Jaw set, he climbed up two steps to the porch and reached the back door. He pulled off one glove with his teeth, then using his exposed hand, extracted his wallet from his pocket and removed the key.

In a second it slipped easily into the old lock and turned. Carter winced, bracing himself for the sound of an alarm that Wes could have installed in the past few years. The lock clicked and no other noises erupted.

So far, so good.