A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(100)

Boiardo produced a toothbrush handle with three blades from a safety razor embedded in the shaft like a long scalpel.

He swiftly tugged the wool blanket up over Slawicky’s head with his left hand, slipped his right under the blanket, and brought it across the throat by feel. He released the toothbrush handle and held the blanket in place for a few seconds while Slawicky’s heart’s last beats pumped the blood in spurts from the artery and it soaked into the wool.

In three more seconds he was out again. He moved down the cellblock like a shadow to his own cellblock. A friend had kept the automatic gate from locking by placing a book between the two sides. The gate bumped the book and retracted, bumped and retracted. As soon as Boiardo passed, the man removed the book and the bars clanged shut. The two men were in their cells long before the guards came to find out why the gate had been registering an unlocked signal.

The tracing of the short circuit that had opened the locks on one circuit for a few minutes began a few hours later, but it had to be interrupted because that morning there was a general alarm and lockdown, so the electrician couldn’t work. A prisoner had been found dead in his cell.





25



As Sally Schnell sat on the couch in the living room of her niece Amy’s house in Aurora, Colorado, she felt unsettled and worried. She was holding little Madison, rocking the pudgy newborn and humming to soothe her, but her mind was on her own child. Maybe she had made a terrible mistake that would make Chelsea furious at her. Maybe she had done exactly the right thing, and saved Chelsea from danger. The uncertainty was terrible.

The two federal agents had come to her here in Aurora. They had arrived with no warning at all. When they rang the bell at the front door, Amy’s husband, Sam, had been the one to go to the door. He had looked through the peephole first and seen two men in suits. They were both athletic looking, one of them blond and the other darker. As soon as Sam opened the door, the two held up little black wallets with their pictures on cards like licenses on one side, and gold badges on the other. When she had looked at the wallets closely a minute later, she had seen a big spread eagle on the top and DEA in the middle.

Sally had been across the room from the door and seen them and heard the blond one say, “Sir, I’m Special Agent McNally, and this is Special Agent Herrera, Drug Enforcement Administration. We’re here to speak with Chelsea Schnell. Can you get her for us, please?”

Sam was so shocked that at first he was speechless. Then he had said, “What? Chelsea?”

“Yes, sir. We need to speak with her.”

Sam was stunned. He had turned to look at Sally on the couch, opening the door wider so the two men were able to see into the living room. “Chelsea’s mother is here, but Chelsea isn’t.”

Special Agent McNally said, “May we come in, please?”

There was that oh-so-careful politeness that police officers had, no matter what they were called, but this one spoke in an especially cold, no-nonsense way. The fact that they were federal instead of local seemed to make them even more cold and steely. Of course Sam let them in. Who knew what would happen if he didn’t?

The two men stepped into the living room and held up their identification wallets so Sally could see them and repeated their names. Sally had been trembling so hard by then that she was afraid she’d drop the baby. She realized after a few seconds that she had been breathing through her mouth. She held little Madison up so Sam would take her.

Special Agent McNally said, “Your name, please?”

“Me?” she said. “Sally Schnell.”

“And you’re Chelsea Schnell’s mother?”

“Yes. What’s happening?”

“We’re looking for Miss Schnell in connection with an investigation,” said Special Agent Herrera. “Is she here?”

“No,” she said. “She’s not. She had planned to come, and we’d even bought tickets for both of us, but she decided she just couldn’t come right now.”

“So you can assure us that she’s not in the house right now.”

“Yes,” said Sally. “She didn’t come to Colorado with me. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but only a few weeks ago her boyfriend was shot to death in front of her eyes.”

“We were made aware of that, Mrs. Schnell,” Special Agent McNally said. “We’re very sorry for your daughter’s loss.”

“Yes,” Special Agent Herrera said. “What we’ve come to talk with her about was her most recent misfortune. As I’m sure you understand, one aspect of the case falls within our area of responsibility.”

“What most recent misfortune?”

Herrera looked at her, incredulous. “She hasn’t told you?”

“No. What misfortune? What’s happened to her?” Sally was terribly agitated now, and her hands were trembling so much that they felt useless, limp and fluttering. “Is she hurt?”

Herrera looked solemnly at McNally, who took a breath and said, “She was allegedly given a drug known for short as GHB. It’s a common date-rape drug. While she was unconscious, she was allegedly sexually assaulted.”

“Oh, no!” She put her hand over her mouth and a second later the two agents blurred and she knew she was crying. “Oh no no no no. Not Chelsea.”