The Lonely Mile(24)
Still, when he read the letter yet again, he saw a man consumed with exacting vengeance from the person who had disrupted his precious plan. And what better way to combine revenge with his sick, twisted little obsession than to kidnap Carli?
Canfield carefully refolded the letter on its original creases and dropped it into a clear plastic evidence bag, along with the envelope. “We will need to keep the original,” she said, “but will be happy to provide you with a copy if you wish.”
Bill shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Agent Canfield—”
“Angie.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said you can call me Angie. After all, it’s only fair if I’m allowed to call you Bill. Besides, I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other until we catch this guy, so we might as well dispense with the formalities, right?”
“Okay, Angie, then. Thank you. Anyway, it won’t be necessary to provide me with a copy of that letter. I had every word of it committed to memory before you even arrived.”
She nodded. “All right, but try not to make it into more than it is. Like I said, I think he just wanted to spook you.”
“Then, he definitely succeeded.”
CHAPTER 22
THE DREAM IS ALWAYS the same.
The man leaves your darkened bedroom after he has finished with you, and the first thing you do is swear that this time will be the last time. This time you will tell your mother. Morning will come and you will tell her what the man—who is supposed to take the place of your daddy—has been doing to you several times a week for as long as you can remember.
Then you cry.
Only then.
You swear to yourself again, in the dark, with your head burrowed into your tear-stained pillow, that tonight was the last time he will get away with it. Ever. You will tell your mother what he has been doing to you, and she will toss the bum out of the house and then call the police. The police will come to the house in their black and white cars with their sirens screaming and their blue lights flashing, and they will take the man away in handcuffs and you will never have to see him again.
It is a satisfying fantasy, and it never fails to calm your ten-year-old fears.
But the dream, the long-repressed memory, is always the same. You never do tell your mother. You never tell her because, if you’re going to be honest with yourself, you are afraid, somewhere in the back of your frightened ten-year-old mind, that she already knows, or at least suspects. She knows or suspects what he has been doing and just won’t admit to herself what she knows or suspects. She is either too afraid or too uncaring to take action. To protect her child.
The dream is always the same, and you wake up screaming. Unlike during the real-life horrors of your childhood, when you were never able to scream, when you choked down the humiliation and terror, you wake yourself up screaming. Your throat is hoarse, it hurts from all the screaming, but you don’t care. You scream.
CHAPTER 23
MARTIN WAS EXHILARATED. HE hadn’t felt this alive since his first couple of successful snatches, and those had taken place years ago. He actually was beginning to believe he owed a debt of gratitude to this Bill Ferguson character for forcing him outside his comfort zone, for making him break away from the same, tired ritual he’d been performing over and over.
It was patently obvious that finding a new companion was now not going to happen the way he had been operating. He had been successful over a dozen times using the same scenario, but after the near-miss last week, he had to acknowledge that the authorities were becoming too familiar with the rest stop gig. But now he had a fresh challenge and objective and was totally focused on it—Carli Ferguson. And the best part was that he wouldn’t have to go anywhere near a highway rest stop to get her.
No, the best part was that he could mess with the interfering busybody’s mind at the same time he was accomplishing his objective! Of course, he had known that handing the letter to his angel would make achieving his goal more difficult, but he couldn’t resist rubbing Ferguson’s nose in it. Besides, anything worth having was worth working for, as his father used to say—not that that loser had much personal experience with working.
Besides, the pleasure of a few moments’ interaction with his angel yesterday had made all the extra effort worthwhile. It was everything he had imagined it would be and more. She was smart and pretty and exuded the sort of innocent sexuality that really cranked his engine.
And, really, where was the fun in getting what you wanted if it came too easily? As a philosopher once said, “life is a journey, not a destination.” Or maybe it was a songwriter, but who cared? The point was still the same. Maybe part of the reason he had ultimately been disappointed with his previous companions despite his initial high hopes was because they had all come too easily to him. There was no real challenge in stealing young girls from under the unwitting noses of grazing sheep.
Now, though, things were different. Now, he had a challenge worthy of his skills. The authorities knew he was coming to sweep his angel off her feet, and they thought they could stop him. Martin knew exactly how they thought. They would be convinced he wasn’t actually going to grab her after passing her that note, but, hey, that was their problem, not his. This time, when he welcomed a companion into his home, it would be after outwitting the authorities and sticking it to that nosy bastard. Just planning it gave him an adrenaline rush.