Where Are You Now?

76

H e came down to the basement three times during that long night. As I lay next to Leesey on that clammy dirt floor, pain vibrating from my leg, my face crusted with dried blood, my fingers entwined in Leesey’s, he alternately cried and laughed and moaned and giggled. I dreaded the sound of steps on the stairs, not knowing if this would be the time he would decide to kill us.

“Remember the Zodiac Killer?” he sobbed the first time he came down. “He didn’t want to keep going. Neither do I. He wrote a letter to a newspaper that he knew could be traced to him. I wrote one, too, but I tore it up. I am tortured, but I don’t want to go to prison. The first girl was when I was sixteen. I had put that behind me. Then it happened again. I was the caretaker on an estate, and the housekeeper’s daughter was so pretty. When they found her body, they suspected me. My mother sent me to New York to be with her dear older brother, my uncle, Elliott Wallace…”

Elliott Wallace! Uncle Elliott! But that’s impossible, I thought, that can’t be.

I felt his breath on my cheek. “You don’t believe me, do you? You should. My mother told him he had to help me or she’d expose him for the fraud that he was. But even before I met him, it happened again, right after I got to New York, the first girl in the nightclub. I weighed her body down and threw it in the river. Then I met Uncle Elliott, and I told him about it and said I was sorry, and he had to get me a job or I’d go to the police and turn myself in and tell the newspapers he was a phony.”

Altman’s voice became sarcastic. “Of course, he said he’d find me a job.” His lips touched my forehead. “You believe me now, don’t you, Carolyn?”

Leesey’s breath had become a soft, terrified whimper. I squeezed her hand. “I believe you,” I said. “I know you’re telling the truth.”

“Do you know that I’m sorry?”

“Yes. Yes. I know that.”

“That’s good.”

It was so dark I couldn’t see him but sensed that he had moved away from us. Then I heard him going up the stairs again. How long would it be before he came back? I asked myself frantically. I had been so foolish. No one knew where I had gone. It might be hours before someone looked for me. Nick, I thought, Nick, be worried. Know that something’s wrong. Look for me. Look for us.

I think a couple of hours passed, and then I screamed. He had been so quiet that I had not heard him come back. His hand covered my mouth.

“It doesn’t do any good to scream, Carolyn,” he said. “Leesey screamed in the begi

He was gone again. My head was pounding. The pain in my leg was unbearable. Would Lucas Reeves or Detective Barrott try to reach me? Would they and Nick realize that something was wrong?

The last time he returned, I had the sense that it was morning. I could see his shadow on the stairs. “I was never going to commit another crime, Carolyn,” he said. “I really did like managing those buildings, and I loved the friends I made on the Internet. I still thought I could stop. I really tried. Then Uncle Elliott said that now I owed him a favor. He needed me to get rid of your brother. Mack went to Elliott. He wanted to tap into his trust fund. His girlfriend was pregnant, and Mack wanted to get married and pay for his own education and hers, too. But Uncle Elliott had cleaned out most of the income from both of your trust funds. He’d invested tons of money in something that fell apart. He tried to put Mack off, but he knew that Mack was suspicious. I had to kill him.”

I had to kill him. I had to kill him. Mack is dead, I thought bitterly. They murdered him.

“Elliott had to keep everyone thinking Mack was alive so that the trust funds wouldn’t be examined. I made Mack say the words that you heard on the first Mother’s Day phone call before I shot him. Then a year later Elliott made me kill the teacher and steal the tapes she had of Mack so he could make new Mother’s Day calls. Elliott is a technical genius. For years he mixed what Mack had said on those tapes for the calls. Your brother’s buried right here with the other girls. Look, Carolyn.”

He directed the thin beam of a flashlight across the basement floor. I raised my head.

“See where the crosses are? Your brother and the other girls are buried there next to each other.”

Mack had been dead all these years that we had been hoping and praying for him to come back to us. The reality that Mack was buried here in this miserable, filthy basement filled me with an overwhelming grief. Somehow I had always believed I would find him. Mack. Mack. Mack.

Altman was laughing, a high-pitched giggly sound. “Sure, Elliott was born in England. His mother is from Kansas. She was a maid with an American family that was transferred to England. She got pregnant in London and was sent home after the baby was born. She helped him make up all those stories about being a relative of President Roosevelt. They made them up together. She helped him get that swanky English accent. He’s good with voices. The last three years he’s even been doing Mack’s voice himself. He knows you already had compared Mack’s real voice with home movies. Had you fooled, didn’t he?”

Altman’s voice was becoming more and more shrill. “We only have fifteen minutes before it’s all over. They’re going to demolish this building. But I want to tell you. I dropped that note in the collection basket. Uncle Elliott was worried that you were going to start looking for Mack. Elliott had me leave it there. Lil Kramer saw me in church. I saw her look at me a couple of times. But then she thought I was Mack because you told her he’d been at that Mass. Good-bye, Carolyn. Good-bye, Leesey.”

For the last time, I heard his steps retreating. Fifteen minutes. This building was going to be demolished in fifteen minutes. I am going to die, I thought, and Mom is going to marry Elliott…

Leesey was trembling. I was sure she understood what he had said. I kept holding her hand and moistening her lips, talking to her, begging her to hang on, that everyone was looking for us. But now I did not believe what I was saying. I believed that Leesey and I would be the final victims of this madman and Elliott Wallace. In that moment I thought that at least I would soon be with Mack and Daddy.

77

W e’ve got him. He’s on 104th and Riverside Drive,” Larry Ahearn yelled.

An alarm went out to all the squad cars in the vicinity. Sirens wailing, they rushed to the scene.

The wrecking ball was in place. A delighted Derek Olsen saw that his business rival Doug Twining was inside the cockpit of the crane.

“One.” Derek jumped up and began to count.

“Two.” Then his triumphant cheer died on his lips. Someone was pushing open the boarded window on the second floor of the old town house. Someone was swinging his legs over the sill and waving. Altman. It was Howie Altman.

The wrecking ball was swinging toward the house. At the last instant, Twining spotted Altman and swung the controls so that the ball missed the house by inches.

Squad cars, tires screeching, were rounding the corner.

“Come back! Come back!” A screaming Howie Altman was ru

Police poured out of the squad cars. “The basement,” one of them yelled, “the basement. If they’re there, it’s their only chance.”