But her delaying tactics were working. She told herself to focus on that. They were working. Take it one second at a time, because every second that passed brought her one second closer to rescue. She took a deep, shaky breath and walked through the door and into the madman’s house.
The kitchen was even worse than she remembered. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. A layer of grime covered the kitchen floor, which looked like it hadn’t seen the business end of a mop since before Carli was born. Dozens of empty, frozen dinner boxes littered the kitchen, some resting inside a grimy trash barrel but most scattered around the floor in the vicinity of the trash container, as if Martin couldn’t be bothered to take the time to aim properly. It looked as though a bomb had gone off at the box factory and their stock had come floating down in a random pattern, like snowflakes during a blizzard, into the kitchen.
This guy was a pig. Carli didn’t know why that should surprise her. She already knew he was a kidnapper, a rapist, and a murderer, so why would she expect him to be some sort of Martha Stewart where housework was concerned? Martin led her across the room toward a dimly lit hallway, which terminated at the front door. To the left was a staircase, and to the right, Carli couldn’t tell. Maybe the bathroom. It would make sense, since that was where she had requested he take her.
She didn’t know what she expected would happen when she reached the bathroom. She would pee, then wash up, taking as much time as possible. But then she would be right back at square one, trapped in a decrepit house with a love-struck psycho waiting to rape her.
She tried to think. What could her next move be? “Gee, honey, I want to wash up before we make beautiful music together,” was a start, but then what? Come on, Carli, think! But it’s so hard to think straight when you’re scared to death.
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t get past the horrifying visualizations of what might be in store for her. It was kind of funny, in a sickly, ironic way. Carli Ferguson was a virgin. She’d had a couple of opportunities to go all the way, but neither of the two guys had been special enough. She wanted her first time to be something more than nervous fumbling in the back seat of some minivan.
And now, the thought that not only would her first time not be special, but it would be a rape committed by a thirty-something murdering pervert was causing Carli’s brain to seize up. Then she passed the crazy psycho’s kitchen table and everything crystallized in an instant. She almost couldn’t believe her eyes. Nestled among three, dirty plates caked with some sort of hard-packed glop that looked like it might have once been spaghetti sauce, a couple of dirty glasses, some silverware and, ew, a Penthouse magazine—what was a Penthouse magazine doing on the kitchen table?—was a single, unwashed steak knife.
This was her chance. Never mind cleaning up in preparation for her impending rape, suddenly here was the break she had been praying for. It might be the only one she was going to get. The knife had a serrated blade, maybe six inches long, with a square-looking pearl-white handle. Carli had about a half-second to decide what to do and then she would be past the table and her chance would be gone.
The I-90 Killer was paying no attention to his kitchen table. He was paying no attention to anything; he was probably anxious to get her into the bathroom and back out again so the fun could begin. Carli made her choice. It was no choice at all, really. She yanked her arm hard, pulling the open end of the handcuffs out of the man’s grasp and ignoring the pain radiating outward from her already injured wrist. She leapt for the table and grabbed the knife.
Then she spun on her heels and faced her attacker, lunging with everything she had, aiming at his midsection. She was going to gut him like a fish.
CHAPTER 39
BILL CONCENTRATED ON SECURING the contents of the dream in his head, memorizing the important parts like he was studying for a test back in high school. In the dream, he was standing in the parking lot of the rest stop, searching for the man who had tried to kidnap the young girl, Allie Serrano. He scanned the mammoth lot, but it was choked with cars, not full by any means but still clogged with vehicles practically as far as the eye could see. Then the man passed Bill almost close enough for him to touch. He was escaping, driving a beat-up old box truck toward the interstate on-ramp and the freedom beyond.
As the truck chugged by, blue plumes of exhaust pouring from the tailpipe and hanging in the fetid air, Bill squinted and stared, trying desperately to make out the numbers and letters on the license plate. But no matter how hard he tried, the thick pollution coming from the vehicle’s tailpipe stymied him.
Out of the corner of his eye, though, and somehow retained in a remote corner of his brain, he finally saw what he had been looking for, the key to finding his missing child. His subconscious mind must have been trying to show it to him all along with these crazy dreams. The truck drove by, and Bill concentrated on the license plate, but as he did, he took note of the obviously amateur paint job. The side of the truck was a riot of fading, off-white vehicle paint, sprayed in overlapping strokes still covering some areas completely. But in other areas, the paint had begun fading badly, to the point where a series of blocky, green letters from the truck’s previous incarnation were beginning to show through.
The kidnapper had no doubt painted over the green letters on the cargo box, since kidnapping girls in a truck with a name on the side wasn’t the best avenue to achieving a long and successful criminal career.
The I-90 Killer had been in business for three-and-a-half years, and over that time period, the harsh, northeastern winters and hot summers had done a job on the paint, so now, Bill could recall seeing faint letters on the side of the crappy truck, beneath the remains of the crappy paint job. The letters, in three rows, were:
SPE
FAR
ET