The Lonely Mile(36)
“If you’d rather,” he said gently, “we can start with your training now and eat dinner afterward. You know, if you’re not hungry yet. I’m certainly anxious to begin your training, and once we get into it, I bet you’ll even start to like it, too. “
“Veggies,” she said quickly. “I like veggies. A couple of slices of veggie pizza sound great.” She tried to put enthusiasm in her voice, hoping it didn’t sound as false to her captor as it did to her.
He held her for a moment longer, and Carli feared the man had seen through her pitiful attempt to put off her “training.” She didn’t know specifically what that meant, but she had a pretty good idea what was going to happen. Finally, he let go of her and stood. Carli wanted to brush the lingering sensation of his touch away but somehow managed to hold her arms steady.
“Veggie pizza it is,” he said, watching her closely. “I’ll be back in a little while with our dinner. In the meantime, make yourself at home.” He turned toward the stairs. “Oh, and by the way,” he said, looking back with one foot on the bottom step. “Don’t bother screaming. My nearest neighbor lives far beyond the sound of your voice, and you really don’t want to try my patience again.”
Then he climbed the stairs quickly and was gone.
CHAPTER 32
BILL FELT DAZED, DISORIENTED, like he had gotten disgustingly drunk last night and was now suffering from a massive hangover. He almost wished that was the case; at least then he could have forgotten about his entire life crashing down around him in the last few hours. He glanced at the little clock hanging over the kitchen sink. It was 5:20 p.m.
Carli was gone, and it was his fault. Sandra had said so, attacking him in front of the police and FBI personnel, and she was right. He had brought the I-90 Killer down on them by his actions. He didn’t regret saving that girl. Would it be any better for her parents to be suffering right now as he and Sandra were? Of course not. But he still knew he was directly responsible for Carli’s abduction by that monster.
He paced back and forth in his tiny apartment, wanting to do something, needing to do something. Canfield and her team of Feebs—an apt description if ever there was one—and local law enforcement had exited Sandra’s home at the same time as Bill. The agent had spoken quietly to him for a moment in the front yard in a vain attempt to take some of the sting out of his ex-wife’s words. “She’s just upset,” Canfield said, “and is taking her fear and frustration out on you. Try not to take it to heart.”
“I don’t care about any of that. I just want my little girl back. Besides, how can I even think about arguing with her when she’s right?”
Canfield shook her head and Bill thought she was going to try to press her point when she changed the direction of the conversation entirely. “We’re splitting up the investigative teams now,” she said. “The locals have been tasked with interviewing all of Carli’s schoolmates who were on the bus this afternoon to try to get a handle on this guy. Maybe he inadvertently let slip where he was taking her or made some other mistake we can use to our advantage.”
Bill nodded, glad to hear something, even for just a moment, to take his mind off Carli and the gruesome scenarios running rampant inside his tortured head. “Makes sense. And what are you going to do?”
Agent Canfield made a face. “I’m taking my people out to comb that poor bus driver’s property for evidence.”
That was two hours ago. Bill had walked back to his van and immediately called the office of his West Stockton store, putting assistant manager George Bentley in charge indefinitely. He had filled Bentley in on the situation and advised him he would not be returning to work for the foreseeable future. Then he called his other store and repeated the exercise with Stefanie Wilson, the manager of that location.
He couldn’t think about working while Carli was missing, but, until he could settle on a course of action, he felt caged, hemmed in.
The hot, dead air circulated listlessly through the apartment, affected only slightly by the single overmatched ceiling fan mounted in the living room. For the hundredth time, Bill considered how nice it would be to bring an air conditioner home from work and stick it in his window, but he had resisted doing that for the completely irrational reason that doing so would attach a permanence to this residence that he simply did not want to acknowledge. The idea that a man now well into his forties, a successful businessman at that—if you could consider the owner of two hardware stores barely avoiding bankruptcy to be successful—could live in such a bare-bones apartment was so depressing that Bill had been determined to avoid it at all costs.
The home he and Sandra had shared with Carli prior to the divorce was nowhere near as palatial as Howard Mitchell’s, but it had been warm and cozy, and comfortable. Three bedrooms, roomy kitchen, casual dining area, comfortable living room, and two-and-a-half baths. Nice. Nothing spectacular, but nice.
After Sandra left, Bill tried staying in the house for a while, but even though he had never considered himself to be any kind of sensitive soul, he quickly discovered the memories were too close and too overwhelming to allow him to stay. They smothered him. They were everywhere. Each square inch of the place reminded him of the life he had shared with Sandra and, of course, Carli back in happier days.
The weight of all those memories, plus the severely restricted cash flow from two barely sustainable businesses, convinced Bill Ferguson in short order that a change would do him good. He put the house on the market at a reasonable price and it sold quickly. His share of the profit from the sale went in the bank, and screw the IRS. They would tax the life out of the money in two years if he didn’t roll it into another home, Bill knew that, but he wanted to put it aside as a head start on paying for Carli’s college, which was coming up faster than he could believe.