Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

They’d had no children. All they’d shared was each other. Now she was gone, and as autumn yielded to winter, Harold had found that he couldn’t face another season of bleakness and cold.

He’d applied for a custodial position at the University of Arizona, then had come southwest with an assurance that the job was his. Through a bureaucratic bungle someone else had been hired before he’d arrived. Now he was stuck in an unfamiliar city with no employment.

The story was almost too affecting to be true. But she hadn’t doubted him. He seemed incapable of duplicity, with his round, smooth face, his sad blue eyes, his large belly overspilling his belt. Though he was years older than she, he conveyed a pleasantly boyish quality, and an instant sense of familiarity, as if he were an amalgam of two old-time movie actors she liked-the face of Ernest Borgnine and the voice of Aldo Ray.

His University of Wisconsin reference had checked out. And his van, although old, was serviceable; it would be useful when he made local deliveries. Annie, feeling a stab of sympathy, had taken a chance on him. After all, she’d reasoned, he couldn’t be worse than her previous assistant, a frizzy-haired nineteen-year-old named Beth whose chief talent had been devising excuses for showing up late and leaving early.

As it turned out, Harold had proved to be punctilious and diligent, the most reliable employee she could have asked for.

But although she’d worked at his side six days a week for half a year, she actually did not know him at all. He was like one of those good neighbors she occasionally read about, the person described by everyone as quiet and considerate and well mannered, until the day a cache of dismembered bodies was discovered in the crawl space under his house.

Bodies. She shivered.

Then she got hold of herself. As usual, she was becoming all emotional, letting her imagination run rampant, jumping to wild conclusions. She had nothing to go on except a turquoise bead, and such gems were commonplace in Arizona.

Besides, the whole idea was crazy. To suspect Harold-sweet Harold who made lovely bouquets of long-stem roses and worked overtime without pay and consoled her over Erin’s disappearance-to suspect him as a kidnapper, a psycho…

Then she remembered how her porch light had been activated in the early hours of the night before last. The footsteps she’d heard, the chortling rumble of an engine.

Harold’s van sounded like that.

Had he deposited the letter? Had it been his footsteps on gravel, his van pulling away?

No way. Impossible.

Still, she had to be sure.

He had seemed nervous about taking a long lunch break today. And something about that accident just didn’t add up. And when she mentioned the dirt on his pants, he’d seemed flustered, hadn’t he? Almost… guilty?

She wondered if he had really taken the van for an estimate, or if he had gone someplace else.

There ought to be a way to find out. Another minute of hectic, feverish thought guided her to a plan.

Before leaving the bathroom, she flushed the toilet and ran the faucet again, for realism.

In the front of the shop, Harold was on a stepladder, hanging a basket of green camellia on a ceiling hook to replace an identical item sold earlier today.

“Looks good,” Annie said, studying the plant from below. “Maybe spread the leaves a little more on this side.”

He did so.

“Perfect. Which auto-body shop gave you the estimate, by the way?”

“Metzger’s, at Grant and Campbell.” He glanced down at her, and she wondered if it was only her imagination that caught a glint of suspicion in his eyes. “Why?”

“Just curious. I know a good place if you need a second opinion.” A pause, then casually: “You know, I never did get lunch. Think I’ll run next door and grab a sandwich.”

Gund made some kind of acknowledgment, which she barely heard, and then she was out the door, breathing hard. The effort of maintaining a neutral facade had exhausted her.

On her way to the delicatessen, she circled around to the rear of Gund’s van and memorized the license number. The tires, she noticed, were streaked with desert dust.

At the back of the deli, there was a pay phone. A battered copy of the Yellow Pages was set on a shelf below. She looked up Metzger’s, dropped a quarter in the slot, and dialed.

As the phone rang on the other end of the line, she drew a deep, soothing breath and tried to calm her frantic heart.

“Metzger’s,” a female voice answered.

“Good afternoon.” She kept her tone cool and professional. “This is Barbara Allen, calling from Allstate Insurance. I’d like to confirm an estimate for one of our clients, Harold Gund, policy number seven-six-two-three-eight.” The five digits came out of nowhere; insurance people always gave the policy number, and she didn’t expect the receptionist to check. “The vehicle in question is a Chevrolet Astro van, license plate…” She recited the memorized number.

“Hold, please.”

Silence. Annie clutched the hard plastic shell of the handset and tasted a sour flavor at the back of her mouth.

Click, and the receptionist was back. “Sorry, but we have no record of any estimate on that vehicle.”

Her heart slammed into overdrive. “It was my understanding”-she fought to betray no reaction other than mild consternation-“that our insured party, Mr. Gund, took his van to Metzger’s for inspection earlier this afternoon. He’s informed us that Metzger’s provided an estimate of twelve hundred dollars.”

“Well, we have no record of that.”

“I see. There must be some mix-up, then. Thank you.”

Even after she had replaced the handset on the plungers, Annie kept her hand on it, as if afraid to let go.

No record.

He hadn’t gone to Metzger’s.

Hadn’t gotten an estimate.

Then what had he been doing? And where?

Briefly she considered calling Walker. No, waste of time; she had nothing, really. Nothing specific, nothing tangible.

For the time being, she was on her own.

Okay, then.

Erin had sent an SOS. A distress signal. A cry for help.

Annie would do her best to answer it.

Tonight.

Even after she awoke, Erin lay unmoving on the futon for long minutes, taking inventory of every separate pain.

The cramps in her abdomen and thighs had loosened their grip, to leave only a dull, throbbing ache. Rubbing at the rope for hours had taken its toll; her shoulders and arms were agonizingly stiff. When she turned her head, a hot needle lanced her neck.

The worst pain, however, was not internal but external-the searing sunburn on every inch of her exposed skin. Her gaze drifted to her right arm, lobster pink. It looked boiled.

The burn would torture her for days. Every scrape of her clothes against her skin would be a minor agony.

But at least, for the moment, she was alive.

Grunting, she propped herself on one elbow and threw back the cheap cotton blanket. A gleam of metal caught her eye.

For a disoriented moment she imagined she was wearing an anklet. A large, curiously bulky anklet glinting on her right leg.

Then her mind cleared, and she recognized what she was seeing. A loop of chain, wound tightly around her leg just above her boot, with a padlock’s hasp inserted through two heavy links.

The chain snaked across the concrete floor to the wall, where a second padlock secured it to the sillcock.

Slowly she bent forward, wincing at the residue of pain in her abdomen, and studied the chain. The links were rusty and soiled, as was the padlock. They had been used outdoors.

The gate. It had been chained and locked. Yes.

And the other padlock, the one fastening the chain to the spigot, most likely had come from the rear door, which she’d tried to open last night.