Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

She padded along the driveway, slippers scuffing the macadam, and peered down the street in the direction of the noise.

Nothing. And the footsteps were no longer audible.

Must have just missed him. Too bad. Encounters with desert animals were among her prime reasons for living on the outskirts of town.

Oh, well. Next time.

She returned to the house. As she was about to shut the door, another sound reached her. The rumble of an engine.

At first she thought it belonged to some passing vehicle on Pontatoc Road. But no, the source was closer than that. Within the townhouse complex.

She listened as the noise diminished, the vehicle-a truck or a van, it sounded like-speeding off into the night.

Maybe what she’d heard hadn’t been a coyote, after all. Maybe it had been the vehicle’s driver, taking a brisk predawn walk before heading to work. Nothing unusual about that.

So why was she afraid?

She couldn’t say. She knew only that the muscles of her shoulders and back were flinching under the caress of a sudden chill.

Erin, she thought abruptly. Please be all right. I’m scared for you… for both of us… and I don’t know why.

Erin delayed looking at the contents of the manila folder as long as possible. She was quite sure she wouldn’t like what she found.

Finally curiosity won out over apprehension. She picked up the folder, seated herself, and opened it.

The first clipping had been ripped from an inside page of the Milwaukee Sentinel, dated February 16, 1980. An article headlined Stevens Pt. Woman Reported Missing disclosed the disappearance of Marilyn Vaccaro, twenty-four, last seen leaving a midnight church service. A photo showed a smiling dark-haired woman with large, alert eyes.

Erin stared at that photo for a long time. What did he do to you, Marilyn?

Slowly she turned to the next article in the file.

Hikers Find Skeletal Remains. Subhead: Victim May Be Missing Stevens Pt. Woman.

The date was June 3, 1980. Marilyn had disappeared in February. Erin thought of the hard winter her relatives and friends must have endured, awaiting this grim news.

She hoped the woman’s death had been quick, at least.

The article, bare of details, didn’t say. Yet odd hints suggested the worst: “apparently ritualistic murder… evidence of sadism… even veteran investigators are shaken.”

A rustle of paper, and she froze, staring at the third clipping.

Stevens Pt. Woman May Have Been Burned to Death, Authorities Say.

Burned to death.

“No,” Erin whispered. “No, not that.”

Fire was her greatest fear-hers and Annie’s. Had been ever since that August night in 1973.

She could face any danger, any threat, any form of torture, but not fire. God, not fire. Please, dear God.

Panic welled in her, the same blind, screaming panic she had known when she’d awoken in the dark, bound and helpless.

He killed with flame. Killed women. She would be next. And the local papers would report it in their cold, factual accounts. Tucson Woman Found Burned Alive. People would read the story as they sipped their morning coffee. How terrible, they would mutter before turning to the sports pages and the movie reviews.

No, that couldn’t happen. She couldn’t die like that, for Christ’s sake. Could not, could not, could not!

Stop.

Teeth gritted, she refused to lose control. Refused to let terror break her.

She would deal with this. She would be strong. She had faced other crises. Even as a small child, she had confronted death and survived.

She hugged that thought, drawing comfort from it. If she had kept her composure when she was only seven years old, she could do no less now.

With the back of her hand she wiped her eyes dry, then returned her attention to the article.

Through dental records the remains had been identified as those of Marilyn Vaccaro. Charred bones, disarticulated and slightly scattered by scavengers and blowing snow, were all that was left of her. The clearing in which they had been found was still fire-scarred; according to arson experts, gasoline had been liberally poured. Above and below the blackened skeleton were two metal stakes, hammered into the frozen winter ground.

She had been tied hand and foot to the stakes, soaked in gas, and burned.

That’s how he’ll kill me, too, Erin thought. Stake me to the ground and pour gasoline.

A wave of nausea shuddered through her. She clutched her stomach and fought back the impulse to retch.

The next two articles filled in additional details. Although Marilyn Vaccaro had been kidnapped in Stevens Point, she had died more than a hundred miles northwest of town, in the Chequamegon National Forest near Lake Superior.

Erin remembered her own ride earlier tonight, her utter helplessness and pounding terror. Marilyn’s ride had lasted longer-two hours or more.

Perhaps she had been unconscious most of the time. Or perhaps not.

The next article, culled from the Grand Rapids Press, was dated July 27, 1986. Six years had passed since Marilyn’s death.

This time the victim was Sharon Lane, thirty-one, of Holland, Michigan, abducted the previous night and discovered only a few hours later, dead in a wooded area near Rose City in the eastern part of the state.

She, too, had burned. In the dry, hot summer night the fire had spread, consuming acres of forest before firefighters controlled the blaze. Damping down the hot spot, they had stumbled on Sharon’s body.

Again there was a picture of the victim as she had looked in life. The article said Sharon was a young mother; she had been taken from the parking lot of a shopping mall after dark.

Another gap of years, and then, on October 4, 1991, a minor article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported the disappearance of Deborah Collins. The nineteen-year-old had vanished after finishing her night shift at a downtown donut shop.

The following September, her body was found in the woods near Thief River Falls. Like the first victim, she had spent months in snow and rain, her bones worried by scavengers and carpeted in moss. But the telltale metal stakes remained in place, warped by heat and oxidized by flame.

Nothing else in the folder. Deborah Collins had been the last. The killer had been quiet since.

Until now.

She wondered where he would do it when her time came. There were no woods in the immediate vicinity. Would he drive her into the forested mountains, or simply burn her in the desert under the open sky?

Shut up, she told herself angrily, though she hadn’t spoken aloud.

She flung the folder to the floor. Stood and paced the room.

Now she understood why her abductor had been intrigued by her journal articles. All of them had focused on the pathology of fire-starting. It was a subject that had haunted her since childhood.

Even so, she wasn’t certain her specialized expertise actually did apply to this man. He was by no means a typical pyromaniac.

No doubt some of the same compulsions motivated him, however. Nearly all violently antisocial behavior had roots in unresolved conflicts and unconscious hostilities. At least initially, she would have to concentrate on those aspects of the case, the ones she could treat.

Slowly she shook her head. The case. Already she was thinking of him as a patient.

Well, she had better think of him that way-if she wanted to live.

And if she failed to connect with him, failed to help him in time

…

Scorching heat. Bitter smoke.

She would die hearing the crackle of her own skin as it peeled away from her bones. Die writhing like a snake with a broken back.

With a shudder she forced these thoughts away. Couldn’t contemplate her own future tonight. It was too much to absorb, and her mind was sore with use, and she was tired, suddenly more tired than she had ever been.