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CHAPTER 1
EVELYN JAMES PARKED THE county's battered station wagon behind a knot of cars on the side of the road. She pulled her crime scene kit from the passenger seat and stepped out into a puddle of slush, slamming a door with the words Medical Examiner's Office stenciled on the side. Flakes of snow fell at a deliberate pace, the day's mood darkening by the hour.
A maze of construction signs and sawhorses was spread over the bridge. Workers in bright orange safety jumpsuits watched the action as a jackhammer echoed from work at a new plaza on the next block --- a forlorn attempt at urban renewal barely visible through the trees. Over their branches, the downtown skyline stretched toward gray clouds. Two marked Cleveland Police Department cars and two unmarked ones --- worn Ford Crown Victorias that screamed cop --- were pulled onto the softened grass. Except for two unlucky rookies directing traffic, the uniformed guys had long since taken to the warmth of their patrol cars, leaving the detective work to the ones who got paid for it. Each person present turned a wary eye to the riverbank, where the supine form lay as white and still as marble.
The Cleveland Metropark system covered over twenty thousand lush acres, enjoyed by forty-two million visitors per year, but today the trees were stripped bare, and Evelyn was not there to have fun. She uncapped her camera and recorded the scene --- bridge, river, body, the downtown skyline looming beyond the forest --- as her socks grew icy wet. Another day in the glamorous life of a forensic scientist. Her lens caught Bruce Riley as he stood on the bank, watching four men in scuba suits pack up their equipment. She moved carefully over the sloping grass to join him. "Afternoon, Detective."
Riley grunted in greeting, still the only man in the world who could wrinkle polyester slacks. "The divers got her out --- two construction divers and two of ours, but it wasn't easy. You've got to see this. Ten years in Homicide and this is a first. It makes our nail-gun murder last year look positively normal. But hey, what's up with you? Planning a big Thanksgiving?"
She shook her head with a rueful smile. "I can't decide whether to cook dinner for Angel, or be magnanimous about it and tell her to spend the day with her father, or just screw the stupid turkey and go out --- though any restaurant that makes its employees work on Thanksgiving doesn't deserve my patronage."
"Hear, hear."
"Tell me, Riley --- you've got two ex-wives and four kids. What do you do on holidays?"
He lit a cigarette, a questionable practice in light of his pallor. "I go to Flanagan's Pub in Ohio City, buy a round for the house, and pop in a tape of the last World Series."
"Very traditional."
"Hey, they have chicken wings. They're like turkey."
Evelyn sighed, flexed her toes, and felt every minute of her thirty-eight years. "My entire family gathering will be my mom and a daughter who thinks it's entirely my fault that her father left me."
Riley frowned. "Why does she --- "
"Because I've never enlightened her. So the three of us might meet you at Flanagan's." She grinned at him, getting a half smile in return. The Homicide detectives were older guys, white and black, married and divorced, who did a sometimes hellish job for always lousy pay, because somebody had to and it happened to be them. "But no chicken. Angel's gone vegetarian, unbeknownst to her steak-loving father."
No doubt Little Miss Perfect Stepmom would be so understanding.
Riley nodded toward the body. Beside it, the river formed a small valley through the wooded area. It had been deepened by a rainy fall and melting snow. Although driving a block in either direction would reveal a tightly fit neighborhood of dilapidated wood houses and pockmarked streets, the patch of earth by the river was quiet, isolated. "I don't think they lost any parts. Maybe the cold water kept her from decomposing. I can't say I envy our divers --- they've got to be freezing even in wet suits. Ever pee in a wet suit?"
"I've heard that's how you stay warm," she said absently, moving closer. The body lay uncovered on the sparse weeds and mud. The lack of a covering sheet meant that they had not called EMS, and no wonder. The woman was very, very dead.
Though she was a Caucasian, the dark marbling of decomposition had spread through her limbs like a poison under her skin. In a short period of time she would turn completely black. Dark brown hair lay plastered against her face and neck. Everything seemed to be present --- two arms, two legs, nose, eyebrows --- and there were no signs of violence other than abrasions and skin slippage, made worse by her rescue from the depths. She wore what had been a pink long-sleeve shirt and denim shorts. Her feet were encased in a cement-filled five-gallon plastic bucket with a wire handle. Bright lettering on the side read Stay-Clear Chlorine tabs, 1 inch.
A tall man about her age stood beside the body. He had a shock of black hair and the cop look, indescribable but unmistakable. Riley waved his cigarette back and forth in a gesture of introduction. "Evelyn, our forensic scientist, is from the Medical Examiner's Trace Evidence Department. Evie, this is David Milaski. He's working with me until he gets me killed. He's known to be hard on partners."
Evelyn assumed this was a joke and smiled. Milaski didn't.
"David's new to Homicide. Real new --- as in, today's his first day."
"Hell of a way to start." She gave him a sympathetic look, but he merely shrugged.
Riley clapped his new partner on the back, pushing him slightly off balance. "It could be worse, Milaski. On Evelyn's first day, the boiler at Hanna's in Playhouse Square blew. Took out the whole restaurant."
Evelyn groaned. "Don't say it."
"Three local actresses lost their parts."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you a pun is the lowest form of humor?"
"Yeah, but I don't believe it. Anyway, the construction divers were working on the base of that middle support, or whatever it is they call it --- "
"Pylon," Milaski said.
"Whatever. One of them swam right into her. She was upright, like she was standing on the bottom. Scared the shit out of him."
Evelyn crouched next to the dead girl, nostrils pricked by the faint but persistent odor of disintegrating flesh, thinking, She must have been pretty when alive. High cheekbones set off wide-spaced eyes, now filmy and dull. Her slender frame seemed firm, almost the same height and weight as Angel, with the same delicate wrists. Thin chains bound those wrists and snaked around her waist and neck before plunging into the cement.
Uncharacteristically, Evelyn swore. Then she said, "Someone wanted to be sure this girl wasn't found."
"Yeah," Milaski breathed, stooping beside her, his coat hanging open over a stiffly new suit jacket. "But why?"
"You know what I want to know," Riley said. "Why is she wearing shorts in the middle of November, that's what I want to know."
The dead woman appeared to be about five-five and in her early twenties, but Evelyn couldn't be sure. The older she got, the younger everyone else looked --- and the more any age at all seemed too young to die.
A shout of laughter echoed from slightly down the street, where members of the media had congregated behind police barricades. Milaski glanced in their direction and asked the older detective, "Can those cameras get a shot of her from there? I'd hate to have this girl's parents ID her from the six o'clock news."
"Nah, the bank's too steep. As long as they stay behind the tape we're okay."
Evelyn pulled on gloves and picked up the right hand, restrained by the chains and rigor mortis, the last touches of which still remained thanks to the cold water slowing the decomposition process to a crawl. A veneer of ice had solidified over the prunelike skin.
Milaski interrupted her thoughts. "Aren't you going to wait for the medical examiner?"
"You've been watching TV again, haven't you?" Her joking seemed to confuse him and she relented. "The doctors --- the pathologists --- never, but almost never, come to the scene. They stay at the office and do the autopsies. Though I'm not a doctor, out here at the crime scene I am the ME's office."
He nodded and she turned her attention back to the victim.
A piece of duct tape still clung to one cheek; it had obviously been over her mouth but the water's current had worked most of it off. Evelyn noticed a slight indentation from the middle of her nose to the end of her left cheekbone. Her nails were short and three were broken. The chains had left angry purple marks on her wrists and neck, but the ones around her neck would have been deeper if she had been strangled. She gave the woman's hair a cursory examination but didn't see any gashes or other damage. A pathologist would have to determine the exact cause of death, but because the woman had no obvious signs of fatal injury, it looked to Evelyn as if she had gone into the water alive.
Who could have done this? Who could have been so unspeakably cruel as to kill someone this way, to permit her to feel the frenzied pumping of her own lungs as they filled with water, to let her flesh be tortured by the icy water? Evelyn had worked through stabbings, beatings, the ubiquitous shootings, a deliberately scalded baby, and a teenager whose boyfriend had tossed her off a fourth-floor balcony. But she wanted nothing to do with this. It was horrific, wanton.
Bet it was cold, Evelyn thought, and straightened up, her foot sliding in wet mideastern clay. Milaski caught her arm.
"You okay?"
"Yes," she snapped.
"What do you think?" He released her elbow when she found firmer ground.
Evelyn sucked in a deep breath and summoned a friendlier tone. "She could have drowned. She could have already been dead, drug overdose or whatever, and someone just wanted to get rid of the body. She may be from a warmer state and just have been dumped here. That would explain the shorts. But it must have been a quick trip or she'd be more decomposed. Her epidermis is getting ready to peel off, so she was in there a couple days but not much more than that. If the water had been warm, it would have come off in a few hours."
"So how long do you think she's been dead?"
"As a general rule, two weeks in the water equals one week in the air, but you'll have to ask the doctors. And with the cold water slowing things down, it's going to be tough even for them." She glanced at the river. It moved along with a whispering sound, taunting her with its secrets.
"What about that bucket?" Riley asked of no one in particular. "Chlorine tablets?"
"Maybe the perp has a pool," Milaski suggested. "Can we trace the chains?"
Evelyn looked at him without seeing him, wondering about the woman's family, people who would need answers. "We can hit every Home Warehouse and Lowe's in the area, sure. If we find him, we might be able to match the chain, the composition, the manufacturing toolmarks."
"What about the cement?" Milaski asked.
She grinned without mirth. "As far as I know, cement is cement. But I'm sure there's an expert somewhere in the country who charges more an hour than I make in a week, and will be happy to take a look. It tends to be manufactured in large quantities, so it still wouldn't do you any good unless you have a suspect in mind --- a suspect with a supply of cement to compare it to."
"Give me time," Milaski said. "I'll find him."
She raised her eyebrows, unsure if she found such optimism refreshing or foolish.
"I'll be honest with you, Miss James." He leaned forward. "I'm on my fifth life here, and this alley cat can't afford to screw up his first big case. So I'll get this guy."
If he thought sharing his vulnerability would warm her, he had miscalculated. "This woman isn't a big case. She was a person with a family and a job and a past, who's just been robbed of her future. And it's Mrs.," Evelyn added, unable to ignore a slight glow of satisfaction as his ears turned redder than the cold air would warrant. "Mrs. James. Now how about getting your guys off the bridge and out of camera range so I can finish photographing the scene before frostbite sets in, Detective?"
"Shit," Riley said suddenly, "what's he doing here?"
CHAPTER 2
HE ISN'T GOING TO speak to me, she thought. He hasn't spoken to me in seventeen years.
Cleveland's mayor, Darryl Pierson, crossed the grass with a skeleton entourage and the county prosecutor in tow. The African-American mayor's face radiated concern. He stopped on the other side of the sagging yellow police tape and called to Evelyn as if he had last seen her around lunchtime. "Tell me where to stand, Evie. I don't want to mess up your scene."
Evelyn had hoped this reunion, if it had to occur, would have taken place on a balmy day while she wore a low-cut cocktail dress and fire-engine-red lipstick. Instead she stood in her worn blue parka with snow-dampened dull red curls, without a single word for her chapped lips to form. Best-laid plans. I can't just ignore the man --- we loved each other once, even if we were barely out of our teens at the time. She forced her chilly feet to move.
Riley fell into step beside her, then Milaski. They met the mayor and county prosecutor Harold Rupert at the top of the bank, out of earshot of cops and reporters alike. The entourage maintained a discreet distance.
For a man of medium height, medium build, medium-dark black skin, wearing a perfectly fitting but conservative overcoat, Pierson somehow managed to tower over everyone present. He straightened his shoulders and took a moment to gaze at each of them. Only his eyes seemed tired, and in them Evelyn saw flecks of yellow like fragile spots, vulnerable areas; they were cat's eyes, cautious and a bit cold.
"How have you been?" he asked her soberly, as if a great deal rested on her answer.
"Good. Fine." Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. Her nose started to run from the cold and she fumbled in her pocket for a tissue.
"I'm sorry to hear about your divorce."
"Last year's news. Really, I'm doing great."
Riley interrupted, to rescue her from a clearly awkward situation or simply out of impatience. "Have they told you the circumstances here?"
The mayor nodded. "I hate to say it, but cement shoes go with ‘sleeping with the fishes,' don't they?"
"We'll be checking out the mob angle," Riley told him.
Evelyn applied a crumpled Wendy's napkin to her nose. "Do we even have a mob in Cleveland anymore?"
"You better believe it," Prosecutor Harold Rupert told her, supporting Pierson's theory with brownnosed enthusiasm. "They keep a low profile here, but that's why they've lasted. Remember Danny Green? Libertore? You might want to be careful whose toes you step on."
"Since when do I step on toes?" she protested. "And whose feet are we talking about?"
"Well," Rupert hedged, careful to keep his voice down and bending over the tape as if he were leaning on it, "I've had my eye on two different men, rival families. There's Armand Garcia, he works the near west side. Every time we get something on him, the witness develops amnesia or the evidence mysteriously disappears. Then, on the east side, we've got Mario Ashworth."
"Uh-huh," Riley said. The mayor nodded, still looking at Evelyn. Milaski remained silent.
She recognized the name --- anyone in Cleveland would. Ashworth Property Management. The Ashworth Fund. Ashworth Construction: Current projects included the new Brook Park High School, the aquarium remodeling, and the South Fork Mall Annex. Lots of money, high profile. No wonder the prosecutor and the mayor had abandoned their warm offices for this. "He's in the mob?"
Rupert chuckled at her naïveté. "The Big M himself. Why do you think he gets the largest contracts? He's got a piece of every pie in northern Ohio." He turned to the senior detective. "Look, Riley, this has to be wrapped up, and quickly. If organized crime thinks they're going to take the city back, they're wrong. We have to present a united front and strike back hard." He spoke with the perfect amount of righteousness, and Evelyn knew he had a mental picture of the cover of Cleveland Today bearing his image with the caption Mobbuster!
The mayor grinned at her while responding to the prosecutor. "Don't criticize too loudly. He just might build the new medical examiner's office."
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. "So we can fight crime from a building built by a criminal?"
"The idea has a certain flair, doesn't it?"
"I don't know about flair, but to get out of the declared disaster area we're in now, I'd consider an inferno built by Satan."
"The council will support Jurgens Limited." Rupert carefully maintained his political correctness. Jurgens happened to be the largest minority-owned contractor.
"Their costs are out of control," Pierson said. "Reuters Limited has the best price but the worst reputation, and North Coast can't handle a project that size. That leaves Ashworth. Mobster or no, his buildings are energy efficient and free of problems."
Riley lit another cigarette. Evelyn could see the muscles in his neck tighten to ripcords at every mention of Ashworth's name. "You can't be serious."
"I'm no more thrilled about the concept than you are, Detective," Pierson told him. "But it's not just up to me, and besides, this isn't the time to discuss it. I can see you are all busy and you're going to be even busier once the press gets hold of this story."
"They already have." Riley nodded toward the parkway intersection.
"I know." Mayor Pierson waited until Rupert had rushed to the cameras and boom mikes like an ant to sugar, then turned back to Evelyn. "How's Angel?"
"Great." She felt Milaski fidget, probably from boredom. Or else he was getting the lay of the land and sensing a minefield. Despite a touch of guilt, she continued, letting the murder investigation languish while she played catch-up with an old friend. "Destiny must be growing up."
"Seventeen going on thirty-five, yes. She lives at Tower City mall and covers me with cell phone bills. She won't even let her mother kiss her good night anymore. In fact she broke her finger yesterday playing ball with her brothers and we're relishing the opportunity to baby her again." He shook his head ruefully. "Say, are you and Riley coming to the fund-raiser tonight? I'm sorry, you're --- "
"Milaski. David Milaski. I'm in Homicide," he added, his voice respectful but not interested. He glanced at the riverbank as if he just wanted to get back to the investigation. Evelyn felt the same way, though not exactly for the same reason.
"I need the support of the law enforcement community if we're going to scare up some funding from the feds. Evelyn? Plenty of champagne and the best food in the city."
"You know I'd love to see you and Danielle." Had she really managed to keep the irony out of her tone? "But I'll be busy here for quite some time. It was nice to see you again." Over the silent snowfall, reporters' cameras clicked away as the prosecutor droned on. The jackhammer had stopped. The valley fell quiet, as if cocooned by snow. "I'm sure the ME will be in touch with you as soon as we have an ID."
"Thanks."
Pierson remained behind the tape as she fled down the slope to the body, seeking refuge in the company of a dead girl. There, that hadn't been so bad. They had only dated for two years in college, anyway. Get over it, girl.
When she looked back, he was gone.
With relief she squatted next to the body, pulled on a new pair of gloves, and touched the woman's ice-cold forearm, turning the palm upward. Her inner arms showed no signs of drug use. A peek under her outer clothing revealed a bra and panties. Tiny diamond earrings winked at them. She had a thin gold chain around her neck and a star sapphire on her right hand; no wedding band.
Milaski joined her, their knees practically touching. "Question."
She glared at him through the fading light, inwardly daring him to say one word about Darryl Pierson.
"You said she had a family and a job. How do you know that?"
She put Pierson out of her mind. "Okay, it's more of an assumption. She doesn't look homeless, undernourished, or riddled with needle tracks. Her hair has been trimmed, her unbroken nails are even, and her clothes aren't stained or full of holes. She isn't poor. She either has a decent job or a family to notice she's gone, and most young, healthy people have both. That's why it shouldn't take too long for an identification --- someone, somewhere, will wonder where she is."
"That's all it takes, to be young and healthy? What happens when you're old and you drink too much?"
She gave him a look, half mocking, half compassionate. "Then you might be unfairly unmissed."
"Story of my life," he grumbled.
Several hours later Evelyn finally felt warm. In jersey pajamas and thick socks, she watered the limp plants in her living room and thought about Darryl Pierson as the cat swatted at her ankles. Did any woman ever make peace with how she felt about an old boyfriend? A sort of apprehension permeated the memory, a sense that you either avoided a narrow escape or missed an alternate future that might perhaps have worked out better. The past didn't make her anxious, only the future she didn't choose.
They had met in her second year at Cleveland State. She had introduced herself by spilling coffee on his Honors English notebook. He said he liked her because she never pretended to understand what it was like to be black. She liked him because he could talk to her without staring at her chest. The courtship had been intense, the breakup swift and unexpected.
Darryl's background differed a hundred and eighty degrees from hers --- not your standard poor-kid-from-the-hood-makes-good kind of background, but a really hard background about which he told her only bits and pieces. In the years after the breakup, she privately celebrated his success. He had gotten what he wanted by working almost fanatically for it, and he deserved the brass ring. It had worked out for the best, right? If she hadn't married Rick, she wouldn't have that special combination of DNA and cellular organelles that had become Angel. As if in response to the thought, her daughter breezed into the house.
Evelyn often asked herself what kind of a fantasy world she had been living in when she named the girl Angel. It had never fit her. Instead of a sweet-tempered ethereal blonde, she had inherited Rick's raven hair and penchant for mischief. Now she mumbled a greeting and pushed aside the mail on the kitchen table in order to reorganize her purse, a scrap of fabric only slightly larger than an envelope.
Rick, dark and stout, walked in as if he still owned the place, with Terrie at his elbow. She took in Evelyn's pajamas with a complete lack of expression. "We were at Rio Bravo. Rick wanted to go to the Flats, but I didn't think it was a good idea. No sense showing a sixteen-year-old everyone hanging out at the bars."
"Of course," Evelyn agreed as she avoided Nefertiti, whose claws made clear her desire for Evelyn's undivided attention. "We had a victim stabbed there last week."
Terrie blinked. "How awful. It must be so hard to see things like that."
No, Evelyn thought, it isn't hard at all, because I'm a coldhearted bitch. Isn't that what Rick and Angel tell you? That I stole the house from him and how I make Angel abide by a --- gasp --- ten o'clock curfew?
Rick made leaving motions. "Okay" --- Terrie laughed --- "we're going. Take care, Angel. Don't watch too much TV."
As the door closed, Evelyn turned to her pale and sullen daughter, watching her place each makeup item in its preordained pocket. At least she's not into Goth, Evelyn thought, thanking her lucky stars. Angel dressed neatly, in collared shirts and khakis so perfectly pressed that it never failed to amaze her mother how a disaster area of a bedroom could produce such an example of precision.
"How was school today?" Evelyn tried. "Did you have your math quiz?"
"Yeah."
"And what did you get?"
"Eighty-three."
"Mmm." Evelyn wanted to say, I saw a dead girl today. Just about your age. Life is short, so very short. Maybe you should be nicer to your mother. Maybe your mother should be nicer to you. But that was the easy way out, using her job to control her daughter.
"It was hard," Angel said defensively. "Can't we turn up the heat in here? What good is saving on electricity if we freeze to death before we get to spend what we've saved?"
A spontaneous statement. Encouraged, Evelyn opened her mouth to respond, but Angel flounced up the stairs, her light frame making thuds heavier than should have been physically possible.
Evelyn stared at the bottle of nail polish in among the letters on the heavy kitchen table. Too much TV. And how many children have you had? Let's see, that would be none, wouldn't it?
How easy was it to be the perfect mother if you had to do it only every other weekend? Terrie hadn't had to give birth. She hadn't had to sit through ten years of band concerts or held a bucket next to the bed when Angel had the flu. She hadn't paced the floor when Angel was out way past curfew or had nightmares about the SATs. Just go out to dinner every other weekend, and maybe a museum now and then.
Evelyn shook her head in disgust. Why did she resent Terrie more for liking her daughter than for sleeping with her husband? She sighed, patted the cat, turned out the lights, and threw on a coat to walk to her mother's house next door and say good night. At least she'd be warm there.
Chapter Three
THE GIRL SWAM UPWARD through the currents of her subconscious without concern or haste. She didn't particularly want to wake up; comfortable where she sat, she dreamed of a boy in her English class. But her stomach ached, she felt nauseated, and the peculiar heaviness on her feet pricked her curiosity.
She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt too heavy to raise. Instead she wiggled the toes on her left foot. The wet, sticky sensation felt almost erotic, but at the same time it was just a few degrees too warm and she thought she really ought to deal with this, so she opened her eyes.
What she saw made no sense. She shut her eyes again and let the images mill about in her brain for a while. Maybe then they would form some kind of order.
She sat in a basement, or at least a neat room with gray concrete walls and floor. The view included a tool-scattered workbench and homemade wooden shelves, which held a myriad of items from cardboard boxes to a beach ball. It smelled . . . not pleasant, along the lines of a stale, animal sweat. She knew her scents. She could tell Opium from Tommy Girl from any kind of Chanel on her friends even when they'd showered after drill team practice, and she was never wrong. She was never wrong period.
Her legs, from midcalf to toes, were immersed in a five-gallon plastic bucket filled with heavy cool gray stuff. Her new Italian pumps were in the bucket with her feet and almost certainly ruined, which irritated her. Her hands were pulled way to the back of the cheap folding chair and this made her shoulders hurt. She tried to pull them forward but something wouldn't let them move. Now that was ridiculous. No one told her when she could or could not move her arms.
She opened her eyes again.
Same scene. For the first time it occurred to her to be afraid, and the sensation nauseated her further.
Shit.
She was in trouble. She was in big trouble.
Her muddled brain tried to regain some sense, some control. She had been at a party . . . Crosscut images of people and drinks and music came back to her, but she could not be sure if that had been tonight, last night, or some night forever ago.
Screw that, it didn't matter. She was here now, immobile, with one hand tied to the other by something hard and cold and rattling --- like chains.
She wasn't only tied but chained? Somebody was going to get their ass whupped big-time when she got out of there.
If she got out of there.
Worry grew to panic. She began to wriggle like a worm on a hook, searching for a weakness in the links, a gap that would allow her to slip her bonds. The chains snaked up and over her, lying on her shoulders, but only the ones around her wrists were tight and her fingers were tingly and going numb. The rest of the chains were not as tight, but still prevented her from moving in any significant way.
Her attention swung to her feet. She tried to pull them out of the cement --- for that's what it had to be, she wasn't so sheltered that she had never been exposed to wet cement --- but one chain kept her knees primly glued to the chair seat. She kept her toes active while she thought, flexing the Italian leather up and down, and moved her knees as if she were doing a sort of aerobic exercise. Hey, everybody, want to lose weight and look great? Try cementecize! Works off those extra inches in no time! A chuckle that came too close to hysteria escaped her throat and she tried to call it back.
Too late.
Above her, she heard an abrupt thunk and a series of thuds, exactly as if someone upstairs had dropped a chair onto all four feet and was now crossing the floor. Toward the basement door. Toward her.
She tried to remember exactly what position she had been in when she regained consciousness, couldn't, and decided it didn't matter because her options were few. She couldn't move anything but her head, which she now let loll forward like a forgotten rag doll. It hurt her neck, but she willed herself to be absolutely still. She really did want to throw up, but she refused to think about it. She left her eyelids slightly ajar, just enough for a hazy view of the floor.
Whoever it was came from the steps and paused right in front of her, but still she couldn't see his --- its --- feet. Then he moved two shuddering steps closer.
Blue workpants stained with traces of light gray ended above scuffed brown shoes. They weren't Timberlands or Rockports. Some loser in generic shoes --- now what?
Maybe playing dead wasn't the way to go. Maybe she should try to talk to him, ask what the hell he thought he was doing and by the way, would you let me go? I promise I won't tell anyone if you just let me go. Yeah, right.
On the other hand, maybe he was just waiting for her to wake up before he started in with the torture, standard serial killer stuff like Drano under the skin or cutting off her fingers. In which case it would behoove her to be a heavy sleeper. She tried to keep her breathing steady and found it impossible to breathe normally while her heart pounded furiously.
Maybe he wasn't a serial killer. Please, please let this whole thing be the revenge of some bimbo who didn't make Homecoming Court, just trying to scare her.
Maybe she'd just keep quiet until she knew for sure.
In the two seconds it took for these thoughts to flit in a panicked rush across her brain, he moved again, walking around behind her. The sight of his shoes frightened her enough, but not to see them felt infinitely worse. What if he didn't care if she woke up or not? What if he intended to kill her right now?
There was a clinking sound, which had to mean a chain was about to be lowered around her neck and tightened until ---
He grabbed her arm. She couldn't help an involuntary jerk at his touch, as clammy cold as the cement itself, but kept her head down. He simply wiggled her arm a bit, not to hurt her but to check the chains and fasteners, pulling on each one. Her eyelids were squeezed together like a little child's, something she would be embarrassed about later but not right now.
The steps went away.
She heard him clumping up the stairs and waited for the door to shut before she drew a normal breath, and even that she did with the utmost caution, scared that one link of her chains might bang against another and alert him again.
Him? Who was he? Where was she? And what did he intend to do with her?
Then she saw the mark. The grainy surface of the cement in the bucket had been marred. He must have stuck a finger in it to test the hardness.
Again, she willed her heart to calm. When the pressure is on, her father always said, focus on the priorities. Forget about the problems you can't solve for the moment and concentrate on those you can. What do you need to do right now?
Get the hell out of here.
She started moving her legs again, wiggling her toes, moving her knees, trying to straighten her foot to a Barbie-like point. She did this for several minutes without knowing why, and then figured out what her body had known automatically: If she created a hole in the cement larger than her legs, then her legs would slip out of it.
Except that at least two of the chains ended in the cement. He had not only encased her legs but had literally chained her to this anchor.
And then she knew.
There was only one reason to put someone's feet in cement. She had seen Billy Bathgate. She had heard the slang. They drowned people with cement shoes.
It was ridiculous, too fantastic to contemplate. If you wanted to kill someone you blew them away from the window of a moving car, you didn't mess with stupid shit like this. No, they were going to leave her naked in Public Square or handcuffed to the men's room at Jacob's Field. She wiggled for all she was worth.
While she did that, she checked out the rest of the basement. She could see two glass block windows, no door. No way out except for the stairs.
The cement thickened, getting harder and harder to stir. It was like a nightmare where she was trying to run away from something awful but couldn't make her legs move. If she got through this, no lame-ass nightmare would ever bother her again.
Why only one guy? If this was a revenge deal, there should be a couple of people. Teenagers did everything in groups. There should be two or three girls giggling upstairs about how she was going to "get hers." A boy or man alone made no sense. Boys never got mad at her --- frustrated maybe, but not mad.
The thought of her acquaintances calmed her; she felt comfortable in their world of intrigue and betrayal. This temporary composure evaporated when the upstairs door opened and the man returned.
She strained her neck again, letting her head hang until her long dark hair obscured her face. He moved past her to the workbench, where she heard a series of small movements. This is unbearable, she thought. I'd rather be jumped in an alley, beaten up, anything so long as I could see my attacker and know what he wanted. What the hell did he want?
Abruptly he grabbed the back of her hair and she struggled, twisting her head and trying to jerk away, but with his other hand he clamped something plastic over her nose and mouth and she was trapped. Still she struggled, her entire body writhing at his touch.
"I thought so," she heard him say. His voice was low, calm, utterly ordinary, and vaguely familiar.
When she finally inhaled, there was an overwhelming chemical smell that made her gag. She coughed and tried not to breathe, but her terrorized body couldn't hold out for long. She breathed in.
Then there was nothing.
Later. She was in a different place now, outside, and cold. She could hear the night birds chirping, then falling silent as they heard the sounds of metal and rubber wheels. Then a sensation of movement. Her feet were being pulled out of a car trunk and the open edge of it scraped her body. She protested at the painful burning along her hip, but the shout came out as a murmur. She had tape over her mouth.
He held her up, his body pressed against hers as he loaded the cement bucket onto a two-wheel dolly. Then he pulled on the chains down her back to keep her upright while he tilted the dolly back. Her knees could not support her. The chain around her neck bit into her larynx and her head ached as it bounced against the bar. The smell of vomit snaked through the air, and her throat burned. He wheeled her over the rough road as if she were a crate of oranges. This is starting to suck big-time.
The birds became a backdrop to the main noise, one that reached her ears just as the fishy smell reached her nose. They were near moving water. He was taking her to the water.
Shit!
Why was he doing this? Why?
They were not by the lake, but on some kind of a bridge. There were no lights, not even streetlights, and she could just barely see the surrounding trees. She could not get her bearings. Nothing about the area seemed familiar, but she had never been much for the outdoors. No walks in the park for her.
A giggle escaped. She was losing it.
Think, girl!
Her feet, however, felt loose in their cement holes. The chains hung on. Her hands hurt terribly. She tried to push the tape away with her tongue, but it extended all the way across her cheeks and wouldn't budge.
They stopped in the middle of the bridge and he pitched her body sideways onto the low, wide wall, not caring that the rough brick scraped the bare skin on her arms and face. Hell, he was throwing her away, why would he care about keeping her in good shape?
Her hands hurt, she realized, because circulation had been restored. Without the folding chair, the system of chains around her body and wrist had loosened.
With a terrific grunt he hefted the cement onto the wall, using the handle of the bucket. He straightened her legs, the bucket balancing on its side along the wall's top, the handle resting on her shins. He paused.
He was going to throw her into the water.
She was going to die.
She was going to die horribly in that frigid water.
Insane with panic, she began to scream, her voice coming out as a muffled series of pathetic grunts to which he paid no mind.
He pushed her shoulder back, turning her faceup. In the weak light of a quarter moon, a shadow formed his face, a grotesque empty hole where a face should have been.
"Please." Her words escaped the duct tape, loosened slightly by her tears. "Please don't."
Without warning, he pushed her over.
The shock of the water terrified her more than she could have imagined. It encased her in a tomb of ice, cut off all sound other than her frenzied heartbeat, and stabbed through her flesh straight to the bone. Not to inhale in response to the stunning cold took every ounce of strength she had.
She sank to the bottom as the chains over her shoulders pulled her down with the block. The pressure mounted in her ears and sinuses. Her lungs ached. She felt soft things around her --- seaweed, fish, or her own hair. She knew she would die, but also discovered that her hands were free.
Insensible with fear, she felt her body function on its own: She slipped each wrist through the links, worked her feet out of the rigid holes one at a time, and pulled the chains off her shoulders as if shedding a negligee.
The loop around her waist held fast.
She pushed off the cement block and strained against the bounds, but the chains held on to her hips.
With pained fingers she undid her belt buckle and yanked her miniskirt down to her knees, managing to hang on to her panties. Then she lost a few more precious seconds working the chain down over her hips before finally kicking free. She didn't waste time with the tape over her mouth and swam upward, giddy with success. Except that she couldn't hold her breath any longer.
She tried to let it out, just a little, just to relieve the pressure, and swam harder. How deep could she be? Which way was up? She opened her eyes and saw nothing, freezing limbo.
Her lungs had held out as long as they could. She sucked in icy water through her nose, freezing her sinuses; she tried to cough through the tape, thinking, I'm not going to make it.
One hand reached air, only a few degrees warmer, and she burst through the surface trying to gulp air through her water-filled head. One hand scraped the slimy surface of a bridge pylon and she broke two nails grabbing for it. With the other she pulled the tape off her numb skin and coughed spasmodically, spitting out the water and sucking in lungfuls of the sweet, clear air.
The river moved along, but not fast enough to rip her from the pylon. She clung to the stone, trying to comprehend what had just happened. She had done it. She had escaped an icy tomb but still had to swim to the shore, visible only as a darker black against the charcoal gray of the water, and get to some shelter or a person who could help. And she had to do all that with no pants and no shoes and without freezing first, a feat that seemed less possible with every passing moment. She could no longer feel any of her limbs, yet they were still moving at her command. Maybe she could make it. The damn polar bear club did it, didn't they?
She struck out for the bank. It occurred to her that the man might not have left, he might have heard her furious breathing and splashing, but that was a chance she'd have to take. Anything to get out of the damn water.
The downstream current carried her away from the bridge --- she had only to make her way toward the bank. But it was so cold. Her head slipped under the freezing water.
Then her foot struck bottom; the water had grown shallower. She stood. The current pushed her down and she crawled over the smooth rocks on her hands and knees. When the water faded to a foot deep she stood again and moved carefully over the stones in her bare feet.
For a moment the air felt good, warmer than the water by several degrees. But then a breeze came through and turned her flesh to ice. She couldn't survive out here for long, maybe not at all. She grabbed the branches of a bush and pulled herself up the incline, slipping a bit on the muddy bank.
She moved blindly, unable to hear anything over her own ragged breathing. She kept her head down to keep her eyes safe as she plowed through the undergrowth. Branches and thorns tore her skin but she barely felt it --- the advantage of being numb, although the movement began to thaw out her hands. A monotonous droning sound turned out to be the chattering of her teeth.
Then the ground leveled out a little, became more horizontal. With another few steps she felt gravel, then hardness under her frozen toes. She had found a road. She stopped, unable to decide which way to turn.
When she became still, she could hear them.
Footsteps.
Steps with a slight crunch, as if someone were walking along the side of the road, partly in the gravel.
No!
He moved toward her, the feeble moonlight picking up a white shirt under a long jacket. But his face was hidden beneath a hood.
She turned in the other direction and started to run, as fast as her frozen, barefoot body would allow, scarcely more than a limping trot. She had covered perhaps five feet when he grabbed her by the back of her sodden T-shirt and tripped her. She hit the ground heavily and felt the biting sting of a scraped knee.
"What?" she shrieked at him with lips only half thawed, and he hesitated just for a moment as if startled by her voice. "What do you want? Who are you?"
"How did you get out of there?" he demanded, his voice full and loud and terrible.
"Leave me alone!" She struggled to her knees, her mind beyond reason. All she wanted to do was go home and be warm and safe. All she wanted to do was live. "Go away!"
He kicked her in the stomach as she started to stand, dropping her to her knees once more. "How did you get out of there?"
"Go away," she sobbed.
He straddled her back. She heard an almost gentle clinking sound and then the chain passed around her neck. He pulled the ends taut but not yet tight.
The touch of the unyielding metal shocked her mind into a new direction. "You can't do this." She fought one last time to get to her feet, tearing at the skin of her own neck as she tried to pull the chains away with her right hand. "Do you know what will happen to you?"
He said nothing.
"Don't you know who I am, you son of a bitch? I'm Destiny Pierson. I'm the goddamn mayor's daughter!"
The chain tightened.
Excerpted from TRACE EVIDENCE © Copyright 2005 by Elizabeth Becka. Reprinted with permission by Hyperion. All rights reserved.
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