The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [166]
The door splintered inward. Bledsoe charged in, followed by Robby. They crouched low and moved quickly through the family room, their roving LED flashlights throwing an eerie flicker through the darkened house. Bledsoe tried the light switch. Nothing. He motioned to Robby to move on, toward the back of the house where the bedrooms were located.
Robby started down the hallway—and saw something on the kitchen floor. Vail’s Glock. He knelt beside it, reached into his pocket and pulled out a latex glove, and snapped it on. He lifted the weapon, held it up to his nose. It had not been fired. He removed the magazine. Empty. “What?”
Bledsoe came up behind him.
Robby motioned to the gun. “Magazine’s empty. No shells. Hasn’t been fired.”
Bledsoe squinted confusion. He turned and continued on through the house, his flashlight’s narrow beam bouncing around the walls. Robby remained where he was, trying to piece together what had happened. Why would she empty her weapon? That doesn’t make sense. Unless someone emptied it for her. Concern welled up inside his chest; his blood was pounding in his neck, in his head, in his ears.
He moved toward the garage, using his small but powerful flashlight to peer under boxes and around corners. Vail’s car was still there; the hood was cool to the touch. Come on, Karen, where are you?
He moved back into the house and met Bledsoe. “Anything?”
“House is clear.”
“Car’s in the garage,” Robby said. He rested his hands on his hips. “So where is she?”
Bledsoe held up Vail’s BlackBerry. “Turned off. That’s why you didn’t get through.” He scrolled through the numbers stored in memory. “Three missed calls. All yours.”
“I think we can assume she didn’t leave of her own choosing.”
As they stood there, the looming silence between them was deafening.
Finally, Bledsoe turned and headed toward the garage. “Let’s get these lights back on and take a good look around.”
To Robby, that course of action seemed severely inadequate. But at the moment, he had nothing better to offer.
eighty-two
Vail’s head was bowed. Her shoulders ached and her neck was on fire. As consciousness returned, second by passing second, she realized why she was in pain. Her wrists were encircled by handcuffs secured to a beam, her body suspended above the floor, a few inches off the ground. Her ankles were shackled together, the loose chain dragging impotently beneath her.
And she was naked.
A single bare bulb stared her in the face, a few feet from her head. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from it. The remainder of her body was cold, the air chilled and drafty. A strong mildew scent tickled her nose.
She blinked, trying to clear her blurry vision. She did not know what had happened to her after she fought for her last breaths. She remembered an intense electrical shock ripping through her chest. The only likely scenario was a stun gun.
But there was so much that remained unexplained . . . chief of which was how Dead Eyes could have been resurrected. She had seen Patrick Farwell’s body on the ground. And the most telling evidence of all, the left hands.
But what if the man lying there had not been Farwell? Their only photos of him were mug shots from twenty years ago. What if Farwell had found someone who resembled himself, took him back to his house, and executed him, disguising it as a suicide and expecting the police to draw the obvious conclusions, that the body was that of the Dead Eyes killer?
If it was not, in fact, Farwell’s body, then the crime scene had been staged: making it look like something it was not. Staging was a telltale sign of an organized offender. That Vail did not see this sooner bothered her. Another missed sign. She had never wanted to accept that she was fallible. Yet as the pain in her shoulders and wrists increased, it served as a constant reminder of just how flawed she was. Kidnapped by the Dead Eyes killer, however, her fate was far worse than imperfection.
Such a fate was not