The Dollmaker. Amanda Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the screen.

      An Amber alert was in effect for a seven-year-old Alabama girl who’d been missing for nearly a week. The FBI and local authorities were still combing a wooded area near her home, but so far no trace of the child or her abductor had turned up. No eyewitnesses had come forward; no one had seen anything. It was as if the little girl had gotten off the school bus one afternoon and disappeared into thin air.

      Claire watched the scroll until the broadcast finally switched to a video feed from Linden, Alabama. They ran footage of the search, an interview with the local sheriff and a tearful plea from the mother for her daughter’s safe return.

      “That poor woman.”

      Claire hadn’t realized that her mother was awake, but when she turned her head, she saw the sheen of her eyes in the light from the television screen. Some of Lucille’s hair had come loose from the bun, and the strands coiled around her face like tiny gold wires.

      “I hope they catch that son of a bitch,” she said in a fierce whisper. “I’d like to get ahold of him myself.”

      “I know, Mama.”

      “It’s an abomination, men preying on little girls like that. They ought to fry every last one of them.”

      Claire switched off the TV. She couldn’t watch anymore, and she didn’t feel like talking. The room fell silent, but her mind raced with images that had plagued her for years. Ruby was dead. In her heart, Claire knew that to be true. But what torment had the child suffered before she drew her last breath?

      Claire squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut off those terrible questions, but it was no use. Another mother’s agony, coming on the heels of seeing that doll, had reawakened her worst fears.

      When Ruby first went missing, Claire had made the same plea to her daughter’s abductor. Before the camera started rolling, she’d agonized over what to say, worried herself sick that she might not be able to make it through the broadcast without breaking down. Dave had wanted to go on camera in her place, but the reporter who conducted the interview encouraged Claire to make the appeal because it would have a more visceral impact coming from the mother. So she’d gone on air and begged for her daughter’s safe return, pleaded with the kidnapper to spare Ruby’s life. And it hadn’t made any difference.

      For weeks afterward, Claire worried that she’d come across badly or unsympathetic, and that’s why whoever had Ruby didn’t respond. Both Dave and the FBI agent assigned to the case told her that such an appeal was a long shot, anyway. It wasn’t her fault. But Claire had wondered for ages if she should have said or done something differently. Sometimes she still wondered.

      After the interview, she’d been so emotionally drained, she’d walked away from the reporter and collapsed in Dave’s arms. He’d held her for a long time, as if he’d never let her go. He was so strong back then, a rock in times of crisis, but that was before the guilt had eaten him alive. That was before the alcohol had destroyed the man Claire had fallen in love with.

      In the weeks and months following Ruby’s disappearance, he’d become someone Claire barely recognized. A drunken stranger who’d shoved his gun in her face one night and demanded to know what she’d done with their daughter.

      Claire could picture him the way he was at that moment, with hate and despair twisting his once familiar features. She would never get that image out of her head. That he’d suspected her even for a moment, even under the influence of alcohol, was something she hadn’t been able to live with. She’d packed her bags and walked out the next day.

      Drawing the covers over her shoulders, Claire slid down in bed and closed her eyes. The room was quiet, the air was cool and the pain medication she’d finally had to succumb to had started to numb the ache in her joints.

      She’d always told herself it was the not knowing that still tore her up all these years later. If Ruby had died of a terrible disease or in some tragic accident, Claire would have been racked with grief. Her life would never have been the same, but eventually she might have been able to move on. If she could have buried Ruby…if she could have known in her heart that her child was at peace, maybe she could have drawn some comfort from her faith.

      The not knowing was the worst.

      Or so she’d always thought.

      But on this dark, drenched night, as Claire huddled under the covers, dread settled like a shroud over her hospital bed. She’d never considered herself clairvoyant or even particularly intuitive, but she could feel the tug of something that might have been a premonition. A presage that warned of an evil she could hardly imagine.

      And suddenly she realized how wrong she’d been. The not knowing wasn’t the worst. Her ignorance had kept her sane all these years.

      She dreamed about Ruby that night, the same nightmare that always came back in times of stress.

      In her dream she was standing at her grandmother’s kitchen sink shelling crawfish. She and Dave and Ruby lived in the tiny apartment over the garage, but Claire had come over that day to use her grandmother’s stove because the one in the apartment was too unreliable and she wanted to make Dave’s favorite meal for dinner.

      The vision was so real that Claire could feel the crusty shells of the crawfish beneath her fingers as she watched out the window for Ruby. She’d gotten a new bicycle for her seventh birthday and was riding up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. Claire called through the open window for her to come inside, but Ruby ignored her. Each time she rode up the street, she took longer and longer to get back.

      Putting away the crawfish, Claire washed her hands at the sink and then went outside to call her in. The late afternoon shadows from the oak and pecan trees slowly crept toward the street.

      She could see the gleam of Ruby’s red helmet off in the distance and she started running after her. Somehow she knew that she had to reach her daughter before Ruby got to the end of the street. Something terrible waited for her there. If Claire didn’t get to her first, she would be lost forever.

      Claire screamed her daughter’s name, but Ruby just kept on pedaling. Claire could barely see her now. She was only a dot in the distance. But she was still on her bike. Claire could reach her in time. She tried to run faster, but her legs were suddenly so heavy she could barely lift them.

      And then the dream shifted. She saw herself at the end of a narrow alley, the kind in the Quarter that led back to sun-dappled courtyards. She smelled roses and damp moss, and somewhere nearby water splashed against stone. Someone brushed up against her back, but when she glanced over her shoulder, no one was there.

      A door appeared in front of her and she heard Ruby sobbing inside the room. Slowly, Claire reached for the knob. When she drew back the door, a shaft of sunlight spilled into the darkened space. A little girl sat at a small table, her head buried in her arms. Claire called out her daughter’s name and the child lifted her head. But it wasn’t Ruby. It was the little girl from the news.

      Claire started toward her, but Alex’s voice said from behind her, “She’s dead, Claire. Leave her be.”

      She turned to search for him in the narrow alley, but he was hidden in the shadows. And when he stepped into the light, she saw that it was Dave. His lips moved, but he made no sound at all. When he realized that she didn’t understand him, he lifted a hand and pointed behind her. Claire turned slowly back to the door. The little girl was gone, and in her place was the golden-haired doll from the shop window.

      Clare СКАЧАТЬ