25

She cradled him, sobbing.

Megan had eased Joshua LeFevre into the pale light from the outside lamp. He was even more badly injured than she’d thought at first-terribly battered-riddled with slashes and bite marks, the wounds crusted with dirt and dried blood. One eye was swollen completely closed, Most of his dreads had been torn off his scalp, which was covered with mud and scabs.

He could speak only in a ghostly, snapping wail. No, it hadn’t been Peter Matthews’s leering voice she’d heard; it was Josh’s. His throat was split open and his vocal cords had apparently been cut. When he breathed, air hissed in through both his mouth and the slash. The bleeding seemed to have stopped but she bound the denim rope around his throat anyway. She could think of nothing else to do.

“Thought it was you,” he gasped. “I couldn’t see. My eyes, my eyes. I thought it was you. But you didn’t answer.”

Megan lowered her head to his chest. “I thought you were his son. I thought you were going to kill me. Oh, Josh, what happened? Was it the dogs? Outside?” He nodded, shivered-from the pain, she guessed, as much as the cold.

“That… man?” he struggled to ask. “He kidn-”

She nodded. “Did you call the police?”

“No,” he gasped. “I didn’t know what was going on. I stopped him but he tricked me He coughed for a moment. “Thought you… thought you were going with him.”

“What happened?” she asked tearfully.

The stuttering explanation: he’d followed her and Matthews here then the doctor had attacked him and left him for the dogs. But before they could finish him off a young deer had trotted past and they left Josh to pull her down.

His beautiful voice, Megan thought, crying. It’s gone. She had to look away from his face.

He’d found a metal rod to use as a cane, he continued, and made his way into the hospital to find a phone. But there weren’t any. Then he learned that the doors didn’t open outward, that the place was a prison.

She gently touched a terrible wound on his face. Even if they managed to get him to a doctor soon would he survive? He’d lost so much blood.

“Were you… you weren’t his lover, were you?”

“What?” she blurted.

“He said you were. He said… He said you wanted to get rid of me.”

“Oh, Josh, no. It was… whatever he said, it was a lie.”

“Who is he?” LeFevre rasped.

“We don’t have time now. Can you walk?”

“No.” He breathed heavily and winced. “Can’t do anything. I’ve about had it.”

She pulled him farther into the alcove, hid him from view. “Wait here.”

“Where… you going?”

“Lie still, Josh. Be quiet. I’ll get something to use for bandages,” she said, rising.

“But he might be there.”

She showed him the glass knife. “I hope he is.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But for God’s sake send somebody after my daughter.”

“Once more from the top, please, sir.”

Tate was still stunned from the news that Amy had been found naked and stabbed to death on Tate’s farm.

“There’s a man named Aaron Matthews. He drives a gray Mercedes. He lives on Sully Field, off Route twenty-nine near Manassas. He’s been following my daughter for the past couple weeks. Or months. I don’t know. And-”

“We’ve got our own agenda here, Collier,” the young homicide detective-a dead ringer for the security guard at Megan’s high school- said gruffly, his patience gone. “You don’t mind, we got a lotta ground to cover.”

“Is Ted Beauridge around?”

“No. One more time, sir. From the top.”

He was in an interrogation cubicle and he was perched on an uncomfortable metal chair. At least the cuffs were off.

“Matthews killed Amy. Megan had told her about being followed. He thought she might have some information-maybe he just killed her to get me out of the picture.”

And I gave him her name, Tate thought. He was sure the man who called from the FBI-special agent McComb-was Aaron Matthews, probing to get information to stop their search for the girl. He forced or tricked Megan into writing those notes and when they kept looking for her anyway, he turned on them.

“How’d you find out about the body?” Tate asked. “An anonymous call, right?”

The detectives looked at each other. They were slim and in perfect shape. Shoes polished, guns tucked neatly away. Law enforcement machines.

“It was Matthews who called. Don’t you get it?”

“Her mother said you’d been stalking Amy. That Child Protective Services has been investigating you.”

“What? That’s bullshit. Call them.”

“On Saturday night, sir? We’ll call on Monday.”

“We don’t have until Monday.”

The cop continued lethargically, “Mrs. Walker also said you tried to break into her house today.”

“Amy was going to give us Megan’s book bag. I knocked on the door and tried to open it when no one answered.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There is no Child Protective Services investigation. It’s him! It’s Matthews. He’s trying to stop me from finding Megan. Can’t you see?”

“Not exactly, sir. No.”

“Okay. When did this anonymous call come in? Within the last half hour? Believe me, Matthews killed Amy and dumped the body on my land. I saw somebody watching the house this morning.”

“Did you report it?”

“Well, no, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

Tate remembered thinking, as he stood in the rain-swept field that morning, Hey, looks like the Dead Reb. But it wasn’t. It was Aaron Matthews, waiting until I left the house then tossing the dog a bone, planting Megan’s letters, leaving fast.

“I just didn’t. Look, he knows I’m after him-Konnie was running a check on the Mercedes. It turned out to be his. That’s not a coincidence.”

“How do you account for the fact that this girl was murdered with a kitchen knife that had your fingerprints on it?”

“Because it was probably from my kitchen. Talk to Konnie about this morning. He-”

“Detective Konstantinatis is in custody and he’s also in no shape to talk to anybody. As I’m sure you know.”

“Beauridge, then. They were out to my house. Matthews broke in, planted some fake letters that Megan supposedly wrote and he must’ve stolen the knife at the same time. Or stolen it tonight. It’s an easy house to break into.”

“The cause of death was shock due to blood loss after her throat was slashed and her chest and abdomen punctured thirty-two times. There was some mutilation too.”

“Fuck of a way to kill someone,” the other detective added. Tate’s face grew hot. Megan’s terrified eyes were the most prominent image in his thoughts.

“We’ve checked out your house and found you’d packed most of your girl’s stuff away. Her bedroom looked about as personal as a storeroom.”

“She lives with her mother.”

“No pictures of her, no clothes, nothing personal. The impression we got was you’d been planning to say adios to Megan for some time. That’s making us wonder about this whole kidnapping story.”

“There were some witnesses. There’s a teacher… Robert Eckhard. He saw-” But he stopped talking when he saw the expression on their faces.

‘You a friend of Eckhard?”

“I don’t know him,” Tate said cautiously. ‘I just heard that he’d seen the car that was following Megan.”

“Have you ever talked to him?”

“No. I just told you-why?”

‘Robert Eckhard was arrested today on numerous counts of child pornography and endangering the welfare of minors.”

‘What?”

‘Could you describe your relationship with him?’

“With Eekhard? There is no relationship… Jesus Christ. I don’t know him! Please! Just send somebody out to check out this Matthews!”

A rhetorician never pleads. Tate’s talents were deserting him in droves. Think smarter, he raged at himself. He could talk his way out of this. He knew he could. There must be some way. What would his grandfather, the Judge, have done?