“I don’t know, except that occasionally he would talk to himself, saying that everything had to be perfect. There were times when he seemed very frustrated, not so much with me, but with himself.” She hesitated, then added, “I think he was trying to work up the courage to kill me.”
“Did he try to conceal his identity, wear a mask?” Derby asked.
“No.”
“And he wasn’t someone you knew or recognized?”
“No.”
Carla barked an angry sound. “Don’t you think I would have told you if I’d known who he was?”
John broke in. “I seriously doubt you would have, Carla. While officers, including Mitch Haskell and me, were still out beating the bushes for Crissy, you didn’t tell us she was alive. Now I understand your reason, but your self-serving silence had a far-reaching and detrimental effect on a lot people.”
She folded her arms over her middle and turned her head away from him.
A taut silence followed. Eventually Derby cleared his throat. “Crissy, while you were captive, did he molest you?”
“No. I was afraid he would, but he didn’t. If anything, he treated me like… like something he cherished.”
Derby asked her a series of other pertinent questions, then asked how she’d managed to escape. She told them that her captor arrived one night carrying two duffel bags, one in each hand.
“He’d never brought them before, so I knew then that that was the night he would kill me. Because his hands were full, he pushed the door closed with his heel. Then he came over to me, set the bags down, and untied my feet so I could go to the bathroom.”
“Bathroom?” Derby asked.
“A bucket in the corner,” she said. “It was humiliating. Anyway, I went over to it. He’d set the duffel bags down and had gone back to relock the door. I knew my life depended on seizing that moment when his back was turned. I grabbed the bucket, rushed over, and swung it as hard as I could at his head. I felt the jolt all the way up my arm. He lost his balance and fell, banging his head on the floor. I didn’t wait to see if I’d knocked him out, or even killed him. I just pulled open the door and ran like hell.
“It was dark as pitch, no lights anywhere, raining lightly. I was running blind and probably went in circles, but I didn’t allow myself to stop. I didn’t even see a road for the longest time, and then I kept it in sight but stayed off it. I was afraid he would come up behind me in his car.
“At dawn, I was able to orient myself and started making my way in the general direction of home. But during the day, I was afraid he’d be searching for me, so I hid behind a dumpster at the back of an office building and waited until it got dark again. It took me four days to walk the rest of the way home, but I stayed out of sight as much as I could.”
John thought of a question he hadn’t yet asked her. “Could you have found your way back to that building? It’s immaterial now, but I just wonder.”
“No, Mr. Bowie. I swear. That was another reason we didn’t tell. I’d gotten so turned around, and it was far. I never could have shown you where he’d kept me.”
“In the meantime, she’d have been an open target,” Carla contributed.
When no one spoke, Crissy continued. “It was the middle of the night when I got to the trailer park. Our front door was locked. I knocked. When Mom opened the door and saw me, I looked such a fright, she screamed. I was still in the clothes I’d had on when I went to the convenience store, and I hadn’t eaten. Whenever I spotted an outdoor faucet, and no one was around, I drank from it.”
Looking straight at John, she said, “I know I should have let you know. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused. But I’ve lived in constant fear of him coming after me, right up till I heard you and Ms. Collins tell my mom that you’d caught him.”
Nobody said anything or moved until Derby stirred himself. “Do you think you can identify him, Miss Mellin?”
“Definitely. No question. He’s as real to me tonight as he was when I hit him with that bucket.”
Beth said softly, “Show him, Crissy.”
The young woman extended her arm toward the detective and pushed up her sleeve to her elbow, revealing a red crescent moon tattoo on the inside of her forearm. She said, “He didn’t leave me with just this memento. He tattooed memories of him on my brain that will be with me forever.”
The five of them left the borrowed office and trooped down the hallway toward the interrogation room. Barker was pacing, and when he saw them, he said, “It’s about damn time.” Then he recognized Crissy and Carla Mellin. He gaped like a fish on dry land. “What… what the hell…?”
“It’s rather obvious, isn’t it, Tom?” John said. “I don’t think you’re going to enjoy your TV debut tonight.”
“He’s not,” Beth said, beaming. She held up her phone so John could see the text. “Richard skipped over Brady and went straight to the top. Two minutes from now, TV audiences will be seeing a rerun of a Crisis Point episode, not the one on Crissy.”
He would have liked to celebrate her victory with a hug, but their attention was drawn to the window, where Crissy was talking quietly with Derby. “That’s him,” they heard her say.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. Can we listen in?”
Derby signaled another deputy to open up a microphone inside the room.
“—really is a phenomenon that shouldn’t be missed. It begins here at ten-fifty-seven P.M. Totality will be at one-fifty-eight A.M. Surely Derby wouldn’t deny me seeing that. You could escort me up to the roof.”
One of the deputies shifted in his chair. “How’d you lure Molly Bowie into your car, Victor?”
“It’s Professor Wallace,” he said loftily. “I’m going to file a formal complaint against this department over your maltreatment of me.”
Crissy said, “His voice is exactly as I remember. Can I go in?”
“Honey,” Carla said, “I don’t think—”
“I want to confront him, Mom. He had all the power before. Not anymore.”
Without further discussion, Derby reached around her and opened the door. “Victor, there’s someone here to see you.”