Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

Boldt studied the hairs once again, blood thumping in his ears.

Cindy Chapman and Sharon Shaffer connected? Abducted by the same man? Both runaways, one present, one past. Overlaps. Mounting coincidences he couldn't buy. He asked, "Any way to prove such a connection?" Evidence as ubiquitous as animal hairs was unlikely to hold up in court, but Boldt temporarily ignored this.

Lofgrin smiled; the Professor loved a challenge. "We'll sure as hell try." Daphne kept a close eye on Boldt as he hurried her off the telephone, took it from her, and started dialing.

She protested, "Hey, it was you who wanted me to make these calls."

"Priorities," he replied.

He avoided looking at her because she was the kind of person to sense something was wrong. He didn't know the number, so he called information. "Seattle," he said. Coincidences, he was thinking. "Bloodlines," hoping he had spoken quietly enough not to be overheard, but as he turned around, there she was, only inches from him, wearing a puzzled, frightened expression.

The woman who answered connected him to a man named Henderson, because Verna Dundee, the managing supervisor, didn't come in on Sundays. Boldt reintroduced himself and presented his case, Daphne listening in. He cupped the receiver and protested to Daphne, "Can't a guy get some privacy around here?"

"No," she replied, fear and irritation flashing from her eyes.

Boldt spelled Sharon Shaffer's name for the man. "I doubt it's a recent file. I'll wait," he said in anticipation. As he assumed, he was placed on hold. He would have to check central processing using another-line. "Lou?" Daphne asked, eyes squinting, lips pale.

Boldt felt impossibly hot. The seconds grew into minutes. He thought: I should hang up right now. I should leave this for others. I should stick to my family and my piano playing, because if it turns out … It was Henderson telling him what he didn't want to hear. He wouldn't need the results of the Professor's tests. Not now that he had this. He felt sick to his stomach.

Daphne had desperate eyes. She had already guessed. "Lou?"

How did you put something like this to Daphne? Why, as a cop, were you always the bearer of bad news? "Sharon Shaffer is in the Bloodlines database. Three years ago she was a regular donor."

Daphne gasped. "I think the harvester's struck again." He looked over at Agnes Rutherford, her blind eyes steady and untracking. "And she's our only witness."

Sharon Shaffer looked on as the black man in the kennel next to hers came awake for the first time. She remembered the terror of that moment and could do nothing to warn him of the horror he was about to experience, nothing to lessen its effect. The dogs started barking; she knew he would awaken-it had been the same for her. She couldn't remember exactly when. Had it been just yesterday? It seemed more like forever.

He looked around. Surprise. Astonishment. Terror. He clearly noticed then the chain-link cages; and a moment later, his own nakedness. She knew that his head ached miserably from the drugs just as hers had.

He spotted her then. She tried her best to communicate with her eyes, for her jaw was now held in a modified dog muzzle made of nylon webbing, one strap of which ran across her mouth, keeping a gauze rag stuffed into place to prevent her from crying out, as she had to this man. She felt responsible for his being here. She was responsible. His jaw was secured in a similar muzzle, although the gag had been omitted, probably because the doctor feared he might vomit on coming awake, which he did, repeatedly. She had to wonder: Was it the effects of the sedation or from looking at her? She could only guess at what she must look like. A bandage glowing a lurid pink at the edges. She had pale skin the color of cigarette ash. Her hair was matted flat. Or perhaps that expression of his arose from the dogs and their horrid smell. The deafening barking at the slightest instigation. It would take him a while to adjust to their situation, but she needed him to adjust-to settle down.

To help her escape. She was going to get out of here, with or without him.

She thought that if only she could stop him from what he would do next, she could spare him some pain. But the muzzle and gag prevented her from speaking; she could only grunt and gesticulate. And that, only quite weakly. She had little strength, drugged as she was by whatever was in the IN. It felt like a combination Valium-Demerol to her. She was experienced enough to know. When she thought about it, it brought on resentment and anger, rage and indignation. She had spent the last three years of her life learning to live sober. Now, forced on her, she found herself drugged up again-enjoying the feeling, wanting more. She looked up at the precious drip, drip, drip of the IN. Worst of all, she couldn't bring herself to disconnect the tube. If anything, she wished it would flow faster. She could take more.

She had always been able to take more … Despite her efforts to warn him, her neighbor reached out and touched the chain-link door of the 4, cage. He actually laced his fingers into it and shook it with his considerable strength. He must have heard the collar sound its electronic warning-the buzz-but like her on her first time, he didn't associate this sound with the pain that would follow. And like her, he would learn soon enough.

She watched as his fingers met the cage, as a blinding pulse of electricity stung his neck, and literally knocked his knees out from under him. She heard his head thump against the cement as he wilted. His bowels loosened and he fouled himself. He lay there staring up at her, flat on his back, the pain, fear and terror so great in his eyes that she felt herself break into tears. A maddening frustration stole through her, and briefly she found enough strength to sit up, to sit forward and be as close to him as possible.

As his strength returned, he reached for the shock collar, and despite her shaking her head in discouragement, he tried, in vain, to rid himself of it.

How clearly she remembered those first few minutes; they seemed so distant now. He would deny his situation at first. She knew. He would think: This can't be. This is impossible. Then, as reality sank in, as his muscle strength returned, as he began to assess, to realize the hopelessness, he would recoil. A minute later he sat in the center of the cage, wrapped in the fetal position, sobbing and mumbling incoherently. "Impossible What did I do? Can't be …" He mentioned God, he mentioned his parents. He glanced over at her several times, but seemed not to see her. He retreated.

She sat back onto the burlap and waited. In time he would come around. Given time, he would come to realize they were a team now and that their only chance of escape was to work together.

Her one single hope remained that he would come up with a plan.

After all this time here, she saw no way out. Like the IN. in her wrist, she was stuck here.

Not long after that-she could not determine the passage of time because of the drugs and the suspended states in which she found herself-the ground rumbled. A car! The dogs paced restlessly inside their cages.

She turned quickly to her neighbor, charged with adrenaline. She shouted at him through the gag, able to win his attention but unable to communicate. She resorted to an archaic pantomime, pushing her hands along the cement as if to say, "Clean up!" Demonstrating that he should scoop up the vomit and excrement and get it into the bucket left as a toilet. When he failed to respond, she twisted her face angrily and screamed, shaking her fists, and then pointed to the door. "It's him!" she mumbled. She grabbed hold of her collar and shook it. That reached him. He sat up with a jolt. Again she motioned that he must clean his cage. Her panic contagious, she drove him to it. He worked quickly, glancing over his shoulder all the while, both at her and the door he expected to see opened any second.