CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
May was being tossed around, lashed from side to side, with an engine roaring in the background.
She tried to reach out a hand to save herself but she couldn’t. She felt sick and dizzy and completely disoriented.
She opened her eyes. Her head was throbbing. Where was she? What was happening?
To her utter confusion, she found she was half-sprawled in the passenger seat of a truck. Her hands were tied behind her back with nylon rope. The truck’s seatbelt was the only thing preventing her from going through the windshield or onto the floor in this crazy, rocketing drive.
May glanced to her left and, to her horror, saw the killer gripping the wheel.
The Joker mask looked garish and cruel in the dim, evening light. The truck’s headlights cut the gathering gloom as they rushed along on a speedy, swaying ride that May feared was not going to end well.
From the back of the truck, she heard bangs and screams. Lewis was still locked inside. But the noise he was making wouldn’t help, because the truck was flying along the back roads, taking quiet routes, jolting over rutted, seldom-used tracks.
May managed to get her legs working and wedged herself into a more stable position.
What should she do?
She guessed she could find out if the killer really was Sam. She was so close to this person that if her arms hadn’t been tied, she could have reached out and touched that leering mask.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked, her voice hoarse and trembling.
The killer shot her a glance. The mask’s eyes were cold and empty looking.
“To the lake.”
The words shocked May to her core. She gasped in astonishment.
It was a woman speaking.
Her voice was strongly tinged with the flavor of Eastern Europe.
May felt utterly stunned to have learned this fact about the killer’s identity, and as her mind raced back over the information she’d gathered, she made a guess.
“Are you Zinaida?” she asked.
Perhaps the woman hadn’t died after all. Perhaps she really had disappeared and because they couldn’t find her, the guards had been told to say she’d died, to scare the other workers.
The truck swerved sharply to the right as May spoke. The woman—the killer—turned to stare at her again. May guessed she was surprised. The mask gave nothing away.
“I am,” she said.
“Zinaida, why are you going to the lake?”
“I could not drown that man in the beer vat. He got away from me and locked himself in the truck. So I am going to drive it into the lake. He will die there. We will all die. It is a fitting end.”
Her voice sounded calm and resolute, as if she’d already accepted her fate.
May’s heart accelerated.
“Wait, Zinaida! You don’t have to do that.”
“I do,” she replied. Her hands were tight on the wheel. The truck hurtled around another sharp bend, tires skidding on the dusty ground.
“No. You don’t have to do that. I’m a police officer. I’m going to arrest him. We need him. He’s got important information.”
“Being arrested is too good for that scum. He needs to die,” she insisted through gritted teeth. “As for the police, how will they help? How did they help? You cared nothing for us! We were alone!”
May was starting to fit the puzzle pieces together, even though the picture they were creating was a terrible one. There must be a reason for this woman’s intense anger, and for her to have done what she did.
“Did you know Laima? One of the other women told me she died a couple of years ago. Is this why you’re doing it? Is it something to do with her?”
Zinaida stared at her again. May couldn’t read the expression behind that grinning mask but she guessed the woman must be surprised.
But she was wrong.
When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse, tearful.
“She was my sister,” she replied. She was sobbing now. “She was my sister, and she died a prisoner, abused, killed by one of the men they forced her to sleep with.”
May felt filled with horror.
“Zinaida, I’m so sorry.”
“She was beaten up, and then the man drowned her in the bathtub. That is how she died.”
Now May understood why Zinaida was committing the murders this way. It was justice on her own terms, killing her targets the same way, beaten over the head and then drowned.
Despite her own dangerous situation, she felt tears prickling her own eyes. Losing a sister was the most shocking tragedy. She knew that only too well.
She deeply disapproved of Zinaida’s actions, but in a tiny part of her mind, May could understand why this woman, traumatized and bereaved, had felt the need to get revenge.
She must have waited, planned, hidden. She’d been surviving for years. Perhaps she had a fake identity set up by now. Who knew?
But one thing May did know was that if she couldn’t stop this woman from going ahead with her plans, they were all going to die. Horror filled her at the thought. What if she could not derail this woman from her murderous agenda?
She now recognized the road they were on, and it led down to one of the deeper parts of the lake. The road ended in a cul-de-sac just a few yards away from a steeply sloping bank and a fishing jetty. May’s stomach twisted with terror at the thought of going over that steep bank and plunging down into the dark, cold, and deep waters of the lake.