The Hidden: A Novel of Suspense

T W E N T Y - T H R E E

IT’S TRUE,” CLAIRE LOMAX said. Her eyes were open now, rounded, the pupils dilated and the whites that sickly clabbered-milk color in the fireglow. “I don’t care who knows it now, I don’t care what the police do to me if I live through tonight. It wasn’t the Coastline Killer who shot Gene, it was Brian. And not down the coast, in our own living room. Brian, Brian, Brian!”

A sick metallic taste had formed in Macklin’s mouth. He said, “For God’s sake, why?”

“He blamed it all on me,” she said. Talking to herself now as much as to him. Her gaze had shifted away, was fixed on something only she could see. “But it’s not my fault, it’s his, his. None of it would’ve happened if he hadn’t started treating me like a … a toy he was tired of, a piece of useless baggage. I was faithful to him until then … I swear I was, I never even looked at another man. But you can only stand so much. That’s why I had the affair, to get back at him.”

“Decker? He’s the one you had the affair with?”

“I didn’t have any feelings for Gene,” she said, “I never even liked him very much. But he’d been after me for a long time and finally I just … I let it happen. Twice, that’s all. Only twice.”

“How’d your husband find out?”

“I don’t know how he found out … something Gene said, the way he kept looking at me with that smarmy smile of his … I don’t know. But Brian knew and he kept on hitting me until I admitted it. He wouldn’t listen when I told him I was sorry, just hit me some more, then sat up most of the night drinking and brooding. Paula must’ve heard us, that’s why she left. Brian accused Gene after she was gone. Gene laughed at him and Brian hates to be laughed it, he went and got that fucking gun of his, but Gene the stupid drunken fool kept right on laughing. You won’t use that, he said, quit playing Dirty Harry, he said, and Brian … Brian …”

She shuddered, hugged herself before she went on. “Afterward he put the … the body in Gene’s car and made me take it down to that rest area so it would look like the Coastline Killer did it. All that way with Gene dead beside me and Brian just ahead so I couldn’t get away, so he could bring me back here and beat on me some more.”

It had been Claire driving Decker’s Porsche Monday afternoon, grinding the gears because she was scared or unused to a stick shift. He hadn’t heard the SUV because Lomax, leading, had already passed by.

“Threatened to kill me too if I didn’t do what he told me, if I didn’t lie to the police when they came. But he’s going to do it anyway—I knew he would, I knew it. He’s crazy, he’ll kill anybody who gets in his way …”

Shelby!

What if Lomax went all the way to the highway and she’s still there and he finds her, tries to stop her from bringing help?

Another chilling thought jolted Macklin.

What if Lomax was the Coastline Killer?