The Last Dead Girl Read online

  Warren spotted the landline on the night table and picked up the receiver. I watched him hold it to his ear and shake his head. No dial tone.

  “It’s just us,” he said. “Where would he take her? Back to his house?”

  No, I thought. All those neighbors. Why risk it? Especially if you knew about a better place. A ready-made prison.

  “The farm,” I said.

  • • •

  Pitch-black.

  Sophie Emerson listened to the tin-roof sound of the rain, to the hiss of the tires on the wet road.

  He had taped her wrists together behind her back. Her captor. She didn’t have a name for him. He had taped her mouth too, but not her legs. He had left them free and marched her down the darkened stairwell and out of the building—in nothing but the scrubs she’d fallen asleep in, no shoes—and he had forced her into the trunk of his car.

  No one on the stairs or in the hallway or outside. No one to see.

  She lay on her side and twisted her arms against the tape. Twisted them until they hurt.

  The tape held.

  The car began to slow down. Rolling onto her back, Sophie used her bare feet to push against the lid of the trunk. It didn’t budge. The car accelerated again.

  She was breathing fast through her nose. A raspy sound. She didn’t like it. The air was stale and the trunk smelled of spare antifreeze and motor oil. She thought she might pass out. A bad thought.

  But breathing was something she could control.

  She turned onto her side again. The floor of the trunk had a wet-carpet smell. Not so bad. She focused on her breath. Felt it slow.

  When she had it under control, she went to work on the tape over her mouth. She rubbed it against the carpet. Tried to peel it off.

  • • •

  We sped west on Erie Boulevard, driving into the wind. The traffic lights were still dark; all the intersections were four-way stops. I honked the horn as we tore through them.

  We passed a minivan driving slow and left a spray of mist in our wake. Warren Finn eyed the road ahead and braced one hand against the dash. The minivan flashed its high-beams, angry.

  Half a mile on, we hit a puddle that spanned two lanes. Black water boiling in the rain. The truck hydroplaned. It spun a hundred eighty degrees, three sixty; it jumped the curb of a convenience-store parking lot. I watched us heading for a pair of glass doors. I turned the sluggish wheel, hit the brakes hard.

  The front end of the truck jerked to the left. The back end snapped around and slammed through the glass.

  The wind vanished and the rain hung motionless in the air, and there was nothing but the truck rocking gently side to side. A few long seconds passed. Warren Finn drew his hand away from the dash and twisted around in his seat to survey the damage.

  “You’re good,” he said.

  The truck still swayed. I swayed with it. Left right, left right. The minivan pulled into the lot—the one with the angry high-beams. The driver climbed out. I thought he looked worried.

  “Time to go,” Warren said.

  He sounded confident and sensible and levelheaded. I decided to take his advice.

  When I pressed the gas pedal nothing happened.

  “It stalled,” Warren said.

  I pushed the pedal some more. The minivan driver came closer.

  Warren shifted the truck into park and reached over to turn the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life. The minivan driver stopped in his tracks.

  Someone said, “Let’s go.” Warren again.

  The world came roaring back like the engine. The wind blew and the rain fell.

  I shifted us into drive and hit the gas.

  • • •

  Sophie felt every curve in the road, every crack and pothole. She knew the moment when the car drifted onto the shoulder, when it moved onto gravel. She felt it rumble to a stop.

  The motor went silent. A car door opened and shut. Footsteps. A key slid into the lock of the trunk.

  • • •

  Neil Pruett raised the lid of the trunk and was met with a burst of movement—the girl kicked out at him with both feet. One of her heels struck the burn on his right hand, his gun hand. The Makarov pistol went flying.

  He whirled around to find it in the dark, slipped on the wet gravel and fell. A flash of lightning revealed the pistol, just out of reach. He scrambled for it, snatched it up.

  Turned back to see the girl on her feet, out of the trunk. The tape gone from her mouth, but her arms still bound behind her back. She stepped toward him and launched a kick at his face.

  He twisted to catch the kick on his shoulder, crawled knees and elbows on the gravel to escape her, rolled onto his back and brought the gun up. She kicked it away again, but the kick left her off-balance. He grabbed her ankle and pulled.

  Then she was down with him, down on the ground. A bolt of lightning ripped through the western sky. Neil spotted the pistol lying on an island of wet grass amid the gravel. The girl saw it too.

  She tried to roll toward it. He got there first. She kicked at him as he lifted it from the grass, and when he stood up she was still kicking at him. He aimed the gun at her head, then shifted his aim a few inches and fired once. The shot raised a spit of mist and mud from the ground.

  The girl stopped kicking and let out a wail of pure despair.

  The wind carried it away.

  • • •

  We came around a bend on Humaston Road and the storm threw a tree branch in our path. I drove over it and it caught on something under the truck, and we dragged it all the way to Luke Daw’s trailer.

  I slid to a stop in the gravel and felt the bull’s horn along my spine again. I didn’t see Neil Pruett’s car. I thought I’d made the wrong call; he’d taken Sophie somewhere else.

  Warren Finn was out of the truck with his flashlight. I followed him. He ducked inside the trailer and came out a moment later, shaking his head. I snapped on my own flashlight and felt the weight of the Makarov in my pocket and the beat of the rain against my neck. We went around to the back of the trailer and there was Pruett’s car. A dull sedan.

  No one in the car. No way to make out footprints in the gravel. But we knew where they must have gone. There was only one place.

  We found the lane and followed it through the trees.

  • • •

  The full moon hid behind the clouds above the barn: a blurry wash of pale light.

  The light guided Neil Pruett up the slope of the hill. He pulled the girl along with him. When he came to the farmhouse and the wagon wheel, he put the gun in his pocket and took out his penlight. He used it to scan the ground until he found the iron ring.

  He pushed the girl down to her knees, then hauled up the heavy door. He let it stand open, resting against the wheel, and aimed his penlight into the void. Saw the familiar stairs leading down. And saw something wrong: mud on the steps. Shoe prints.

  Someone had been here. The wooden room was no longer a secret.

  “There’s no way I’m going down there,” the girl said.

  Neil clicked off the penlight.

  “You’ll have to shoot me,” the girl said.

  He traded the light for the pistol. Touched the muzzle to the top of her head.

  “Shhhh,” he said. “I’m thinking.”

  Change of plans. He couldn’t use the wooden room. He would go back to the car. Take the girl to Gary’s house.

  He pulled her to her feet and lightning struck. Close. Just the other side of the pond. The thunder made him flinch.

  His eyes adjusted in the wake of the strike. He looked down at the pond—a gray pool amid the darker gray of the surrounding fields. He blinked.

  There were two spots of light advancing up the slope of the hill.

  • • •

  I saw th
em first as silhouettes: two figures at the top of the slope, against a sky of night and cloud. Then the lightning turned the sky to daylight and I saw them clearly: Neil Pruett holding Sophie’s arm, with the Makarov pistol in his free hand.

  The sky turned to night again. Warren and I raced up the hill, flashlight beams jittering over the uneven ground.

  A shot rang out.

  I dropped my light and drew the gun from my pocket. The rain slanted sideways through the air. I saw it in the beam of Warren’s light.

  “Turn it off,” I told him.

  Too late.

  A second shot cut through the night, and I dove to the ground.

  Warren dove too.

  His flashlight rolled over the drenched grass. I crawled to it and worked the switch. The light went out.

  A third shot sounded from up the hill. I raised my gun and fired twice, aiming wide. I didn’t want to risk hitting Sophie. The shots rang loud. My eyes closed reflexively. When I opened them again I saw the two silhouettes running—one dragging the other—heading in the direction of the barn.

  I went to Warren. He was lying facedown. I shook his shoulder and heard him moan. I rolled him over onto his back.

  I could see the blood on his white shirt, even in the dark.

  • • •

  Neil Pruett took the girl to the far end of the barn. The broad door stood open. He pulled her inside. The rain still fell on them, pouring through the bare frame of the roof. But the walls kept out most of the wind.

  He could still get out of this.

  He only needed to reach his car. Nothing stood in his way except the two men on the slope—and he had hit one of them, he was sure.

  They weren’t cops. If the cops had discovered the wooden room, there’d be swarms of them, not just two.

  No, the cops didn’t know about the farm. But David Malone knew. Malone had been here before. So that’s who he was dealing with: Malone and a friend. And one of them was already down.

  The rain streamed from Neil’s hair into his face. He wiped it away with a damp sleeve. The girl was talking to him. She’d been droning on in a dull and patient voice, the kind you might use to talk to a foreigner. He’d been half listening. She wanted him to let her go; that was the essence of it. She had money and her parents had money, and they would pay him if only he would let her go.

  Neil brought the Makarov pistol up and aimed it at the bridge of her nose.

  “Shhhh,” he said.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement at the other end of the barn. Someone stepped into the open doorway there—a dark shape against the night-gray sky.

  • • •

  Sophie?” I called.

  She answered in a wavering voice. “Dave?”

  The rain faded back. I could still hear it falling; it tickled the mud of the barn floor. It sent ripples through a puddle midway between us. I could see the ripples in the light of the moon: concentric circles spreading out into one another.

  “Is he there?” I asked Sophie.

  “He’s here,” she said. “He’s got a gun in my face.”

  “Yes, I’m here,” said Neil Pruett.

  “I think he’s crazy,” Sophie said.

  “I know,” I told her.

  “Put your gun down,” said Pruett.

  I watched the circles in the puddle. I didn’t do what he said. I didn’t intend to do anything he said.

  “The police are on their way, Neil.”

  No reply. Not at first. I heard movement at the other end of the barn, and a gasp from Sophie. I could imagine what Pruett was doing: moving her in front of him so he could use her as a shield.

  “You’re lying,” he said.

  “You’re right. I’m lying. But Warren Finn—he’s the one you shot—he’s not dead. You winged him. I sent him to get the police. So they’re not on their way yet, but they will be.”

  “You’re lying,” Pruett said again.

  I thought I could see him, down at the other end. He was just inside the doorway. Seventy feet away from me, maybe a little more.

  I stood sideways with my head turned toward him, trying to present as small a target as possible. I had my gun arm extended in front of me.

  “Warren must’ve reached my truck by now,” I said. “He’ll go to the police and bring them back. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “They won’t get here in time to save you,” Pruett said.

  I tossed my shoulders. “It won’t matter. Not to you. He’ll tell them all about you. They’ll track you down. I’m giving you a chance to get away. A head start. Let Sophie go.”

  Quiet in the barn. Just the patter of the rain in the puddle.

  “What if I want to keep her?” Pruett said.

  “That’s not the deal I’m offering.”

  Pruett stepped into the square frame of the doorway, pulling Sophie with him. She cried out softly. I could make out the shape of them. He had his gun against her temple.

  “Here’s the deal I’m offering,” he said. “Put your gun down or I’ll kill her right now.”

  • • •

  Neil Pruett pushed the muzzle of the Makarov into the side of the girl’s head.

  “Right now,” he repeated.

  Malone didn’t move. “You’re making a mistake, Neil,” he said.

  “I’ll kill her.”

  Nothing. Then Malone lowered his arm. His gun dropped into the mud.

  “Now kick it this way.”

  Malone kicked it. It landed in the puddle.

  “Now turn around and put your hands on your head.”

  • • •

  I didn’t turn. I didn’t put my hands on my head.

  If Pruett wanted to shoot me, he could shoot me in the front, not the back.

  Seventy feet between us. He was a schoolteacher, not a soldier. Not a marksman. He’d managed to hit Warren, but that was a wild shot. Dumb luck. I didn’t think he could hit me.

  He seemed to have the same idea. He moved a few steps closer, pushing Sophie in front of him. He took the gun away from her temple and aimed it at me.

  She butted the back of her head against his chin and tore away from him.

  I reached my hand behind my back, fast, and brought it out again.

  Neil Pruett fired his Makarov at me. Four times. I felt the first one like a bee buzzing by my sleeve. The other three I felt not at all.

  I didn’t shoot him. My gun hand was empty. I didn’t even have my cell phone. I’d dropped it in the mud and kicked it into the puddle.

  Pruett lowered his spent Makarov and turned to run. Warren Finn met him in the doorway of the barn and shot him in the gut with the second Makarov.

  46

  Weeks went by before they found Neil Pruett’s body.

  The storm passed before dawn on Saturday, and by Sunday night most of the city had power again. There was still a lot of cleaning up to do. Roofs that needed repairing. I managed to keep busy.

  When Megan Pruett missed school on Monday and didn’t call in, some of her fellow teachers worried about her. Two of them drove to her house on Tuesday and found it empty. They tried to call her husband and got no answer. Finally they drove to the house on Bloomfield Street and found her car parked in front. They went onto the porch and in through the damaged door and saw the letter K on the wall. They called the police.

  The police discovered Megan’s body in the trunk of her car. Killed with a bow and arrow.

  That’s when they started looking for her husband.

  The manhunt for Neil Pruett began with a statewide bulletin and soon expanded through the northeast. There were sightings as far afield as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Bangor, Maine. One woman swore she had seen him in Niagara Falls, crossing over into Canada.

  People see what they want to see
, and there are plenty of forty-year-old men in the world with plain faces and sandy hair.

  The police caught a break in July, when a retired state trooper and his wife pulled off on the side of Humaston Road to hunt for wild blackberries. The trooper had been following the case, and he recognized Pruett’s car when he spotted it behind Luke Daw’s abandoned trailer.

  The Rome P.D. found Pruett three days later, with the help of a cadaver dog on loan from the county sheriff. They found him in Luke’s underground room. Right where I put him.

  • • •

  The night of the storm. Warren in his blood-soaked shirt, standing over Neil Pruett with the Makarov pistol. Sophie running toward me. I sloshed through the puddle and caught her up, spun her around, asked her if she was hurt, told her I was sorry.

  I used my pocketknife to cut the tape that bound her wrists.

  We turned to see Warren firing another round into Pruett’s stomach. Thunder drowned out Pruett’s scream. Warren pointed the gun at Pruett’s head and pulled the trigger again.

  Nothing happened.

  Warren didn’t let it faze him. He stepped around to Pruett’s right side and stomped his heel down hard on Pruett’s hand. He did the same on Pruett’s left side. He brought his flashlight out of his back pocket and used it to break Pruett’s nose. There was no thunder to mask the screams.

  We went to him. I took the pistol away—gently—and flicked on the safety. He kicked the side of Pruett’s neck.

  “It’s enough,” I said.

  Warren drew his foot back for another kick, but all the exertion had left him unsteady. He swayed. I caught him and helped him down to the ground.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  I opened his shirt. The bullet had struck his shoulder. We looked at the wound in the beam of his flashlight. Sophie leaned close, squinting. I remembered her glasses; Warren had them in his pocket. I gave them to her.

  “He needs to go to the hospital,” she said.

  “No hospitals,” said Warren.

  Neil Pruett tried to sit up. I pushed him back down into the mud.

  “I’m good,” Warren said.

  He looked better than he had a right to.