Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

She accepted the numbness of her hands and arms as a handicap and focused on keeping her footing as she sprinted through the woods, frantic for the sight of a home or traffic on a road.

Adele was putting distance between herself and the men when she felt a sharp, glancing pain in her right shoulder.

A man called out, “Good one, Junior.”

A second voice cheered her on. “Run, Bambi. There’s a road not far. You can make it. We love you, Della.”

Something shiny sliced through the air, past her face, and struck a tree, sinking an inch into the trunk. She paused a moment to see what the object was: a pointed, star-shaped piece of metal about five inches across. One like that was in the back of her shoulder, and she couldn’t reach it with her tied-up hands.

Another of the things whizzed past her face, missing her by what seemed like only a fraction of an inch.

“Bad throw,” said a voice closer than before. “You missed again.”

“She’s fast. Faster than the other one.”

One of the men laughed. “Or maybe you just suck.”

The flashlight beams and snapping of twigs were coming too close. She told herself, Keep going, run faster, and although her muscles were killing her, Adele ran up the grade to a clearing in the trees carpeted with moss and leaves. She had to stop, put her hands on her knees, catch her breath. That’s when she saw it below the incline, downhill and only about a half mile from where she stood.

There was a road, with cars and what looked like houses close to the base of the hill.

You can make it, Del. Focus on the road.

She started down the slope, bracing against saplings when the grade was too steep. Soon she would run out in front of traffic and hold up her tied wrists, and when a car stopped, she’d tell the driver to call the police.

Adele sucked air into her burning lungs as she ran. Blood poured down her arm from the throbbing wound and the star that was still in her shoulder, but she pressed on. She was in midstride when the shock came, the blow and sharp pain between her shoulder blades that knocked her to the ground.

She thought she might have blacked out, but she was awake now, sledding on her belly over fallen leaves, toward the headlights on the road just below.

The pain was nearly unbearable, but Adele stretched her bound hands in front of her. Her descent stabilized, and as she slid slowly downhill over the dry leaves, she told herself, I’m going to make it. I’m going to take my life back and make Tony and his goons pay for what they’ve done, so help me God.

Chapter 74

At 8:00 a.m. Conklin and I were in the break room with Jacobi, who was showing us the images Clapper had just sent him.

They were hard to make out across the table, so I took Jacobi’s phone out of his hand and stared at the screen. I expanded the image.

“Oh, no. Is this Adele?”

Jacobi sighed and took back his phone. He said, “Claire’s on her way to San Jose. Here are the coordinates. Get going. I have to get to the parents before the press does it for me.”

On any other day it would have been a soul-lifting and inspirational drive alongside Crystal Springs Reservoir and the rolling hills from SF to San Jose. But this morning I felt saturated with dread.

Adele Saran had died an inconceivable death. As investigators, we would be starting over, learning what we could about the killer with the help of forensic science and our own problem-solving minds. That, combined with hope, luck, and prayer, might lead us to Susan Jones, or it might not. Based on how Adele’s body was posed, her murderer was probably the same psycho who’d killed Carly Myers.

We commandeered a squad car, and Conklin took the wheel while I manned the phone and the radio, connecting with the rest of the team over the wail of our siren. We got clear of Highway 280 and Route 17, then took Camden Avenue to Hicks, a two-lane stretch of road that cut through the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve, eighteen thousand acres of rugged wilderness.

The scenery was impressive and couldn’t have been more different from the skeezy motel in the Tenderloin. Assuming the perp had killed both women, he had range. Or maybe he just liked the legendary spookiness of Hicks Road, described as Halloween any time of year. Travelers claimed to have heard banshees and seen red-eyed ghouls on Hicks. Others spoke of the blood albinos and other fanciful ghosts.

But it was morning. No wraiths or banshees made themselves known. A turn in the road opened into a forested area just up ahead, and I picked out the crime scene.

It wasn’t hard.

Law enforcement vehicles flanked the road: CSI and coroner’s vans, local police cruisers, and a couple of ambulances. Crime scene tape cordoned off the road on both sides, enclosing the primary and secondary crime scenes, and an evidence tent had been set up just outside the perimeter.

Conklin pulled off the road a few yards from the tent.

I called dispatch, notifying them that we were on the scene. Conklin and I looked at each other across the front seat. Neither of us felt sunny-side up today. We’d failed Adele Saran and were heartsick about it.

I said, “Okay, Rich. Ready or not, time to go.”

He badged the uniform at the tape, and as soon as we had ducked under it, Clapper appeared. We shared both shock and banalities as he walked us to the big oak tree, ten yards in from the edge of the road.

Hanging from the outspread branches was the body of a young woman, pretty, dark-haired, wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt with the words Pacific View Prep . She was barefoot and had been hanged by the neck with what looked like a length of white telephone-type wire.

Clapper said, “We’ve got our pictures, and I have two teams going through the woods looking for God knows what. She’s been up there long enough. Agreed?”

I nodded okay.

Claire came up behind me and stood next to me as a van backed up to the tree. A couple of CSI techs climbed to the van’s roof and very carefully, reverently, cut the wire below the knot and brought the dead twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher down.

Chapter 75

Joe and I were watching the eleven o’clock news, lying close together on the sofa, with Martha breathing deeply on the floor beside us.

I held the remote control.

I wanted to keep talking to Joe, but first I had to see how the media was treating the death of Adele Saran.

The headline stories on all channels, mainstream and cable, focused on the tree where Adele Saran had been found hanging. There were close-ups of the knot, the tree, the coroner’s van leaving the scene, the men in white CSI coveralls bringing evidence to the tent for bagging and tagging. All of this activity was accompanied by the crackle and screech of car radios.

Press setups were dotted around the immediate area, outside the tape. Television reporters faced the camera and told their audience of the horror at the murder scene. A peppy young woman interviewed Paul Harwood, the hiker who had discovered the nightmare on Hicks Road while driving to his favorite trail early this morning and called the police.

Harwood told the reporter, “I didn’t believe what I was seeing, that I can tell you. I thought at first it was some kind of prank. A store dummy or something like that. But I had a bad feeling, so I pulled over to make sure. And there that poor girl was, strung up like that.…”

I muted the sound as the video switched back to the studio anchor.

Joe said to me, “So, go on with what you were telling me.”

“Where was I?”

“With Claire.”

“Right. Rich and I followed Clapper and Claire back from the crime scene, and we all went straight to the morgue.