Chill Factor (31 page)

"That's why we welcome this opportunity to talk to you, Mrs.
Gunn."

Begley's tone of voice was that of a kindly father figure, and
Dutch
resented the way the Gunns responded to it. Give Begley a few days on
the case, and they'd be questioning his methods and effectiveness just
like they had his.

"You reckon Ben Tierney is the B.T. mentioned in her diary?"
Mr.
Gunn asked.

"We're not sure of that yet," Begley replied. "Agent Wise is
looking
into several possibilities. Mr. Tierney is only one of them. We must be
very thorough before we draw any conclusions."

"But old Gus Elmer said that you'd sealed off this Tierney's
rooms
at the lodge. Did you find something in them? Something belonging to
Millicent?"

Dutch saw the agents exchange a look of consternation. Wise
was the
one to address Mr. Gunn's question. "We sealed off his rooms to protect
potential evidence in the event that Mr. Tierney has a connection to
her disappearance. That's not to say we believe he does."

"But you haven't sealed off anybody else's rooms," Gunn
argued. "How
many other men around here have the initials B.T?"

Begley dodged that by asking, "Did Millicent ever talk about
him?"

"She'd mentioned him."

"In what context?"

"Down at my brother's store, where she works, they have this
bulletin board. Somebody catches a big fish with a rod they bought
there, or bags a deer with a rifle my brother sold, they bring him a
picture of it, and he puts it on his bulletin board. Sorta like free
advertising.

"So, naturally, Tierney's articles are tacked up there, too.
He's by
far their most famous customer. I think Millicent looks on him as a
celebrity, him being in the magazines and all. She got excited every
time he came into the store. Maybe she has a teenage crush on him."

"Did she ever see him outside the store?" Wise asked.

"Not that we know of. But now we're beginning to wonder.
Pretty
young girl like Millicent, with stars in her eyes over some older
fellow…" Gunn cut a worried glance toward his wife, who was
sniffing
into a handkerchief. "You get my drift." He coughed behind his hand.
"Have y'all connected him to any of the other women who're missing?"

"A colleague in the Charlotte office is working on that," Wise
said.

"I apologize in advance for the bluntness of the questions I'm
about
to put to you," Begley said to the girl's parents. "Diplomacy takes
time, and none of us wants to waste it, do we?"

"No, sir. Ask away. Enough time's been wasted already."

Dutch ignored the critical glance Ernie Gunn shot him.

"What caused Millicent's eating disorder?" Begley asked. "Was
that
ever determined?"

"Peer pressure, we think," Mr. Gunn said, speaking for both of
them.
"You know how girls are about their weight."

Begley smiled. "I've got a teenage daughter, a bit younger
than
Millicent, worries that she's too fat, and she weighs maybe one ten."

"Millicent got down to eighty-seven pounds," Mrs. Gunn said
feebly.
"That was her lowest. That's when we intervened."

At Begley's request, they gave him an account of her illness
and
alleged recovery.

"She's doing good," Mr. Gunn concluded. "Oh, sure, she
might've
dropped another couple pounds, but that's due to her cheerleading
workouts. We're almost positive she isn't forcing herself to vomit.
She's over that."

Dutch wasn't so sure, and he could tell that Wise and Begley
weren't
either.

"What about boyfriends?" Begley asked.

"She has them. Off and on. You know. Typical kids. She falls
in and
out of love as regular as she changes her hairdo," Mr. Gunn said.

"No steady boyfriend?"

"Not since Scott."

Dutch reacted with a start, which the agents noticed. They
looked at
him curiously, then turned back to the Gunns.

"Scott who?" Wise asked.

"Hamer," Mr. Gunn supplied. "Wes's boy. He and Millicent went
steady
all last year, although that's not what they call it these days. They
were 'together,' " he said with a snort of disdain for the term.

"
Were
?" Wise said.

"They broke up right before school was out last spring."

"Do you know why?"

Mr. Gunn shrugged. "Got tired of each other, I reckon."

"No, honey," Mrs. Gunn chimed in. "Something happened that
caused
them to break up. I always thought so."

Begley leaned forward. "Like what, Mrs. Gunn?"

"I don't know. Millicent never told me. Hard as I tried to get
her
to talk about it, she wouldn't and still won't. Eventually I stopped
asking because it made her upset, and she'd stop eating. I was more
worried about her starving herself than I was about her boyfriend
trouble."

If she had shouted that the two problems were related, it
couldn't
have been any more obvious to either Dutch or the FBI agents.

Wise was the first to break the ensuing silence. "I found
nothing in
her diary about Scott Hamer or their breakup."

"She only started keeping her diary since she left the
hospital.
It's part of her ongoing therapy," Mr. Gunn explained. "The
psychologist said she should start writing stuff down. Positive
things." His mouth became a hard, rigid line. "Guess she thinks Ben
Tierney is a good thing."

"At this point we have no reason to think otherwise, Mr.
Gunn,"
Begley cautioned, his tone more stern now than before.

"You think what you want, Mr. Begley." Gunn stood up and
extended
his hand to his wife to help her from her chair. "I'm putting my money
on him. I've known everybody in Cleary and the three neighboring
counties all my life. I can't think of anybody who could do such a
thing as to cause five women to disappear. It's gotta be an outsider,
but somebody who knows his way around these parts, and has the initials
B.T. Mr. Ben Tierney fits the bill on all counts."

CHAPTER  21

There's a knack to it," William said. "Not everyone can do it."

"I think I can handle it. I mean, how hard can it be?"

William resented Wes Hamer's condescending tone. Just because
he was
the superstud football coach didn't mean he had a talent for giving
injections. "I'll stop by your house on my way home and—"

"I can do it, Ritt."

William also hated to be called Ritt. Wes had been calling him
Ritt
ever since they were in grade school. He'd been a bully then, and he
was still a bully. They were the same age, yet he addressed William
with no more respect than he would talk to one of his students, and
that rankled.

William had a good mind to take back the package of syringes
and the
small sack containing several days' supply of vials. But he didn't.
Being Wes's supplier gave him definite leverage, which he enjoyed
immensely.

"What's that?"

Marilee's sudden appearance in the stockroom startled them
both. Wes
was the first to recover. He pocketed the goods in his overcoat pocket
and gave her one of his killer smiles. "Ready for me?"

William's sister responded to Wes's suggestive question with a
simper. Just like every other woman who was exposed to his insinuating
smile, she was instantly transformed into a twit.

"I came to remind you that I can't toast the bread because the
power
is out," she said to Wes. "Linda always makes pimiento cheese
sandwiches on toasted bread."

"Everyone will understand."

"Sweet pickles or dill?"

"Half and half."

"Fritos or potato chips?"

"Half and half."

"Give me five more minutes."

She left them. Wes turned back to William and patted his coat
pocket. "How much do I owe you for this?"

"I'll put it on your bill."

"Don't itemize it."

"As if I'd be that careless. Now, you said Dutch needs
something for
his face?"

Wes explained the cuts, and William gave him a tube of
antiseptic
salve, a free sample from the drug company. "This should keep them from
becoming infected. If it doesn't work, I've got something stronger."

Wes read the label. "One of these days, you're gonna get
busted for
handing out prescription drugs without a doctor's authorization. "

"Oh, I doubt that. Who's going to tell?" William asked
guilelessly.

Wes laughed. "I guess you're right."

William motioned him out of the stockroom. As they walked
through
the shadowed store, Wes gave him an update on the morning's events.
"It's a wonder both of them weren't squashed to death. We had to send a
stretcher down by rope. Dutch strapped Hawkins to it. Never heard such
screaming from a grown man as when we pulled him up. Poor bastard's not
doing very well.

"Physically, Dutch is okay but fit to be tied because Lilly's
still
up there with Tierney. Then there are the FBI guys. Buttinskis in
topcoats. In addition to his personal problems, Dutch is having to cope
with them as well as Millicent's parents."

"What's the latest on the investigation?"

"I can tell you that." Marilee turned as they approached the
counter
of the soda fountain, where she was wrapping sandwiches. She nodded
toward the battery-operated radio that was tuned to the local station.
"It was just reported that the FBI has identified Blue to be Ben
Tierney."

Tierney was weaker than he ever remembered being.

He was light-headed, partially from hunger, partially from the
concussion. His injuries continued a relentless assault of sharp,
stabbing pains or dull, throbbing aches. He clenched his jaws so
tightly against the cold that he felt the pressure in the roots of his
teeth.

There was no help for any of these adversities. In order to
survive,
he would be relying on sheer determination.

Unfortunately, self-will had no effect on the snowfall. It
obscured
the demarcation between earth and sky. It absorbed landmarks. He was
trapped in a sphere of infinite white. Without a horizon for reference,
he could easily become disoriented and hopelessly lost.

Nevertheless, he plowed on, wading through snow that, in
places,
came past his knees. Before leaving the vicinity of the cabin, he had
made a brief stop at the toolshed to get a snow shovel he'd seen there.
It helped somewhat to clear a path, but mostly he used his body to
bulldoze through the drifts. The shovel became a walking stick to help
support him when vertigo threatened to hurl him to the ground.

Even in the most extreme circumstances, habits die hard.
Stubbornly,
perhaps foolishly, he took a shortcut to avoid a switchback, knowing
that eventually he would reach the road and would have saved himself
several hundred yards. But in the forest were potential hazards he
couldn't see. He was bushwhacked by boulders, fallen trees, and stumps,
buried under two feet of snow. Roots became snares that caused him to
stumble and fall.

Breaking an ankle or leg, falling into a crevasse he couldn't
climb
out of, or getting lost in this snow globe environment would mean
death. If he paused to consider the life-threatening risks, he would
stop, turn around, go back, so he willed himself to concentrate only on
taking one step at a time, on pulling his foot from the well in the
snow it had just created and planting it ahead of him to form another.

He didn't allow himself to dwell on the cold, either, although
it
was impossible to ignore. His clothing was a joke for its inadequacy.
When he left the lodge yesterday morning, he'd been dressed for a cold
day spent outdoors—coat, scarf, cap. But today the concept of
cold had
been taken to another dimension. The temperature, he guessed, was in
the single digits. Factoring in the windchill, it was fifteen to twenty
degrees below zero. He'd never been exposed to anything like it. Never.
Not in all his travels.

His respiration and pulse rate soon reached dangerous levels.
His
heart felt like a balloon on the verge of bursting. Common sense
dictated that he stop and rest. He didn't dare. If he stopped, even for
a moment, he knew he would probably never move again.

Eventually his frozen body would be found. And along with it
,
his backpack. They would find the ribbon. The handcuffs.

Lilly would be discovered dead in the cabin.

A search of the entire area would ensue. One shocking
discovery
would lead to another. His abandoned car would yield the incriminating
shovel in the trunk. Ultimately they would find the graves.

Tierney pushed on.

His eyelashes became encrusted by snowflakes that froze in
place,
causing temporary blindness that was annoying as well as dangerous. The
condensation of his breath froze on the woolen scarf, making it stiff
with ice crystals.

Beneath his clothing, he was sweating from the exertion. He
could
feel trickles of perspiration rolling down his torso where the injured
ribs on his left side ached from Lilly's well-placed elbow jab.

Ordinarily his innate sense of direction was as reliable as a
compass. But when he paused only long enough to check his wristwatch,
he began to fear that his sixth sense had failed him. Even considering
the terrain he'd had to walk over, surely he should have bypassed the
first switchback and reached the road by now.

He looked around in the vain hope of getting his bearings, but
in
the maelstrom of snow, one tree looked exactly like another. Natural
signposts like rock formations and rotten stumps were blanketed by the
accumulation. The only thing marring the otherwise pristine snowscape
was the track he'd made in it.

His conscious mind was telling him that his sense of direction
was
fallible, that he could have become confused and was moving in circles.
But his gut instinct overrode it, insisting that he was still on
course, that his only miscalculation was in how far he needed to go to
bypass the switchback and reach the road.