The Girl In The Woods Part 25

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

You have to go. It has to be you.

Diana drove home, exhausted. She hadn't slept.

Her mom's words rang in her ears. The words of a sick, crazy woman, living in an inst.i.tution. Diana hadn't listened to her mother in years, hadn't given her thoughts or words credence since childhood.

So why start to listen now, as her mother slipped deeper into the darkness of Alzheimer's?

Simple. At last, Diana believed her mother's words were true.

Back in her apartment, Diana found the phone book and looked up the address of the Donahue house. She didn't expect it to be listed, and if it wasn't listed, she didn't know how she'd find it. But the number was there in the directory. A Roger Donahue in Union Towns.h.i.+p. She committed the address to memory and decided that the fates must be on her side.

Or were they working against her, pus.h.i.+ng her toward some twisted goal, one with an unpleasant end for Diana? She told herself she didn't care. Better to have an end to all of it, pleasant or not. In fact, the notion that it might be pleasant seemed laughable. How could anyone imagine anything good coming of this trip to the woods?

With that in mind, Diana went to her closet and brought down a s...o...b..x. When she left the force, she purchased her service weapon, a Glock 22. She hadn't taken it out of the box since. No time like the present, she thought, and slipped it and its holster onto her belt. She also brought out a canister of pepper spray for good measure, and even as she did, she wondered what good these weapons would be against the visions that were haunting her. If it were that simple, she would have taken the box down several months ago. But where would she have aimed it? At her own head? Into her own mind?

Diana pushed the disturbing thought out and considered the possibilities before her. She could go to the Donahue property now, in the wake of the police search, and possibly encounter the agitated and hara.s.sed landowner, someone who might be a killer, or short of that, someone who might be p.i.s.sed off enough at the invasion of their privacy to call the police on her, which would bring an end to any hope of finding anything on that land.

Or she could go later, when the sun was going down, making it easy to slip into the property undetected.

Diana s.h.i.+vered at the idea, and for a brief moment, considered letting it all go. But she couldn't. She knew she just couldn't, so she paced the floor, waiting for nightfall.

Before Diana left that evening, she called Vienna Woods and asked to speak with Deborah. She didn't think the jangling social worker would still be on duty since it was just after six o'clock, but the woman quickly came on the line, her voice full of a mixture of good cheer and healthy concern.

"Is there any way for me to speak to my mom?" Diana said.

"Oh. Well, we don't have phones in the room. And she's asleep now anyway. They give them a round of medication after dinner, and it usually knocks them out. Is there something I can help with? Would you like me to pa.s.s a message on?"

"No, it's okay." Diana thought about hanging up but stopped herself. "Just tell her I was thinking of her."

"Will do, dear. Will do. And are you sure you're okay?"

Diana didn't know how to answer that question, so she didn't.

"Have a good night, Deborah."

Diana took a last look around the apartment, then stepped out into the cool evening, heading for her car.

On the way to the Donahue address, with the night falling down around her, Diana took a slight detour. She found County Road 600, the presumed sight of Jacqueline Foley's abduction. She cruised the empty, quiet road, her headlights catching a portion of the fencing and fields that stretched out into the darkness. She went nearly half a mile before she came across the impromptu shrine that had been erected in the Foley girl's honor. Diana pulled to the side of the road, allowing her headlights to illuminate the scene. It looked just like the roadside memorials people erected in honor of those who died in car accidents. There was a crude wooden cross, a collection of notes, a votive candle long burned out, and a small teddy bear holding a silky, red heart. Diana didn't get out of the car right away but studied the shrine from inside.

Then she took a small notebook and pen from the glove compartment and wrote a short note. She pushed the driver's door open and carried the paper over to the shrine. She laid it down among all the others, leaving it face up so anyone coming by could see if they cared to. It said, Off to find the girl in the woods. DG. If I don't come back, remember us all. Rachel, Janet, Margie, Jason, Jackie.

When she returned to the car and dropped it into gear, the pain began at the base of her skull. It slowly spread up the back of her head.

"No," she said.

It's starting...

Just as quickly as it began, the pain subsided. Diana felt a momentary relief, but then she understood.

It was giving her just a taste, just a warning.

She knew she was getting closer.

She stopped her car at the end of the long driveway to the Donahue house and cut the lights. The driveway sliced through a thick stand of trees so she doubted anyone inside the house could have seen the car as she pulled up.

Did it matter anyway?

She touched the gun nestled against her hip for rea.s.surance, and for just a moment, found a small measure of it. It was possible her former colleagues were correct. They had searched the place and interviewed the owner and found nothing. Searches led to nothing all the time, and if the perpetrator of the crime lived somewhere out in the large rural area around New Cambridge, then he could be living in any one of hundreds of houses. Why did she think this was the place?

Because her head had started to hurt again, a more intense pain. It felt as though the plates of her skull were being slowly pried apart, and Diana's eyes watered from the pressure. She gritted her teeth and tried to ride it out. In a moment, a long moment of agony, the pain pa.s.sed again, leaving her taking deep breaths like a woman in the throes of labor. When her vision cleared, she placed her hand on the door handle. She needed to go before the pain started again.

She pushed the door open.

The house came in sight, a small, nondescript, two-story Cape Cod, the kind that littered the landscape of Union Towns.h.i.+p. Night birds called in the trees as Diana moved closer. No lights burned in the windows, and the house's shabby condition and slightly overgrown yard made it appear abandoned. But Diana knew it had just been searched earlier that day.

She swallowed hard and forced herself to go on.

She didn't really have a plan. She just wanted to see the place first, get a feel for it and the landscape. She believed a plan would present itself once she arrived and to prepare in advance might only provide a false sense of security.

The house sat on an average-sized plot of land that had been clear-cut out of the surrounding woods many years ago. Diana stuck close to the trees, her body in the shadows as she approached the house. She moved parallel to the long, gravel driveway, and as she came even with the side of the house, the pain returned. This time it was so intense, it buckled her knees and brought her to the ground. Blackness encroached from the edge of her vision.

"No. No."

She fell to all fours...

...she saw the Donahue house again, and then she saw behind it. A garage, a storage shed, and farther along, a stand of trees. She saw an opening there, a path...

She knew it led to the clearing...

She didn't know how long she'd been out. The sky looked darker, and the moon was peeking above the tree line, a fat rising disc accompanied by a speckling of stars. Diana lay in the gra.s.s, her joints aching. She felt cold, her body jolted by s.h.i.+vers.

She looked around. The house-the real house and not a vision-stood there, still dark. She hugged her arms around herself. She thought of the heat blasting in her car, the ticking of the radiator in her apartment. No one had seen her, no one knew where she was. She could turn and go, start the new life she needed.

Because that had worked so well before.

These things kept following her. Better to be the one in control, take the fight to it rather than being the one always pursued.

She pushed herself to her feet and kept walking.

Behind the house, she saw the garage just as it appeared in the vision. Beyond that, the trees and the entrance to the path. Her heart pounded. She looked back at the house. It remained quiet and dark. She turned to the path, took a deep breath, and entered it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

That night, Nate Ludwig didn't have to wait as long to see Captain Berding as he had the first day. He gave his name at the front desk, this time to a different officer who seemed less efficient and more world-weary than the last, and within two minutes he was being escorted back to the captain's office where Berding waited for him. Berding looked tense. His jaw was clenched, and his body appeared ready to uncoil and leap across the desk. Ludwig understood. He had spent the afternoon in a mindless faculty senate meeting and then was detained by his department chair who wanted to talk about the composition of a search committee to hire a new Shakespeare scholar. Ludwig went through the motions of his day, but inside he wanted to scream.

"Close the door," Berding said.

Ludwig did, but before he could sit down, Berding spoke.

"I know you're disappointed in the search," he said.

"I am. Surprised, too."

"I feel the same way. I was just about to call you."

"You were?"

Berding nodded. He clenched and unclenched the fist that rested on his desk.

"Are you free right now?" Berding said.

"Right now, this is all I have in my life."

Berding stood up and grabbed his hat.

"Good. I want you to take me to that grave."

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

Diana moved through the darkened woods. Her eyes slowly adjusted, but she still only saw indistinct shapes and fuzzy outlines. She kept her eyes down, watching the path, fearing that if she lost sight of it she might never find her way back out.

I should have brought a flashlight. Why did I bring everything but a flashlight?

Something told her it didn't matter. She'd find the place she was looking for whether she could see it with her eyes or not. Something would guide her there, draw her like a magnet to steel. And that's what she felt as she moved through the woods. She no longer controlled her own destiny, and she hadn't for many months, maybe even years. She looked back over a series of events and saw how they all lined up to guide her to this place, this moment. Leaving home. Inst.i.tutionalizing her mother. Coming to New Cambridge. Joining and leaving the force. Meeting Dan. And then Kay Todd.

It had to be leading her to Rachel. There could be no other answer.

The night had grown silent around her. The wind was still, the branches above and around her frozen in place. Her foot landed on a small branch, and its crack in the darkness sounded like a cannon burst. Diana's heart rate remained steady, her breathing calm. She had accepted this as her fate, as the place she needed to be, and her acceptance brought her a measure of peace. Here at last something would be decided. One way or another, she'd know something. Either these visions meant something and led to something greater, or it was a giant cosmic joke, one that she could laugh about all the way to the second floor room she'd soon be sharing with her mother.

But Diana doubted it was a joke.

Ahead, she saw a break in the trees. She hesitated.

It suddenly seemed familiar to Diana, as though she had been to this place and seen it before. The images flooded back. The clearing in the woods...the tall trees...the moonlit night...the dark, rich earth and the secrets it held... She had been here in her visions.

She rushed forward to the edge of the clearing, pausing at the trees and rocks that lined its edge, creating a natural barrier from the rest of the woods.

"This is it," she said. "This is it."

She fell to her knees, crying.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

Roger had stayed in the house since the police had left. He was tired and hungry, but he didn't eat. He didn't feel like doing anything. His body felt empty, used up and worn out.

He missed the girl. Even though he'd had to kill her, and even though he knew she really didn't like him and probably never would, he missed her. Without her there, without her presence, the house felt terribly empty and sad. It reminded him of the days after his mother died, days when he and his dad stumbled from room to room, not speaking, avoiding each other's eyes. They didn't know what to do to keep the place going. They ate soup from cans and cried in front of the television.

That's how Roger felt now, except worse.

Back then, he at least had his dad. And eventually he had a wife. Now, he had nothing to look forward to. He wouldn't be able to take another wife, and the police might very well come back. He had covered up everything for now. He had cleaned the blood and brains and bits of skull from the bedroom. He had managed to slap on two coats of paint to hide the evidence. But he didn't think it would last. They'd find the cop's truck and they'd find his prints on it and they'd come back. Most definitely, they'd come back.

He sat in the house, in the dark, like a scared little kid.

But after a while, the clearing started talking to him.