Vicious

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Susan was so relieved to see people and traffic and all the bustle—or, at least, what passed for bustle in downtown Cullen. It was a refreshing change from the quiet seclusion of the rental house, which was starting to feel like a prison. Sure, the house was lovely and in a beautiful spot, surrounded by trees and water. But for the last twenty-four hours—especially the last four—she’d felt so damn isolated.

Driving toward the town’s harbor, Susan kept a lookout for Allen’s black BMW. So far, she’d had two false alarms, but had yet to spot the real thing. She routinely glanced in the rearview mirror at Mattie, who seemed mesmerized by all the scenery. “Look it, look it, look it!” he said, pointing out the window at a twenty-foot weathered-bronze sea lion statue in a park, which also had benches, a garden, and a little playground. The town center was full of quaint shops and restaurants. At one intersection, Susan looked longingly at a rambling, white-trimmed, grey cedar-shake building with a turret and a front porch. It was surrounded by a small garden of pansies, and the sign in front, an old-fashioned shingle type, which read:

THE SMUGGLERS’ COVE INN

The Captain’s Table Restaurant

Pool – In-Room Movies – Jacuzzi Suites Available

Susan decided that if Allen didn’t reappear by 4:30, she’d pack their things, leave another note for him, then come back and check into a room here at The Smugglers’ Cove Inn. She and Mattie could eat at The Captain’s Table and watch the in-room movies. She’d wait for Allen there and do all her communicating with Sheriff Fischer by phone.

Why couldn’t Allen have booked them a suite at The Smugglers’ Cove? He’d never asked her where she’d like to stay or given her any choice about this weekend getaway. Ordinarily, they didn’t even pick a restaurant without discussing it first. She wondered why he’d selected that particular house—in the middle of nowhere.

Susan was questioning a lot of his decisions about this trip. That was why she’d driven into town. She had the Pier 12 address of Bayside Rentals on the printout from Allen’s folder. Maybe Chris was still on duty, and he could give her some idea why that particular boat was so important to Allen—that boat they were supposed to sail at noon for at least four hours.

She found parking by the waterfront and kept a tight hold of Mattie’s hand as they headed toward the pier. It felt good to be walking amid other people, to see some of them smiling and waving at Mattie and making a fuss over him. She also spotted a few passersby talking on their cell phones.

Susan realized they didn’t have any cell reception problems in this part of town. She stopped, dug her cell out of her purse, and checked for messages: one from her sister, Judy, and that was it. She had to remind herself that Allen wouldn’t have bothered calling and leaving a message if he thought she was still in the no-call zone.

She dialed his number. Jordan Prewitt had said Allen had headed for town after leaving Rosie’s. If he was anywhere in the vicinity—anywhere outside those damn woods—she’d be able to get through to him. Susan anxiously counted the ringtones. A recording clicked on—and not Allen’s voice. It was the automated response she always got when his phone was turned off or he was out of range. Even though he probably wouldn’t get the voice mail any time soon, Susan left a message anyway. She turned her head away from Mattie and whispered into the cell after the beep: “Hi, it’s me at four o’clock, going out of my mind worrying and wondering where in holy hell you are. Mattie and I are in beautiful downtown Cullen, by the waterfront. If you get this, call my cell. Bye.”

Clicking off, she shoved the cell phone back into her purse and then pulled Mattie along. “C’mon, sweetie.”

He was fascinated by all the boats and the screaming, swooping seagulls. He kept stopping to peek between the planks of the pier’s wooden walkway at the water below them. The spicy aromas from Col. Mustard’s Hot Dog Hut competed with the smell of fish and salt water. Just beyond the hot dog stand was a little brown shack with a blue and white metal sign above the door:

BAYSIDE RENTALS

CHARTER BOATS – TOURS – MOORAGES

The door was open, and Susan peeked inside. It was a dusty little room with a computer monitor and a keyboard on an old metal desk. In front of it was an empty chair on wheels with silver tape over part of the seat pad. Framed faded pictures of sailboats on the wall surrounded a large stuffed blue marlin that had seen better days. There was one window, and outside of it, Susan could see a tall, slim Asian man smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone. He was good looking with short, spiky black hair.

He glanced her way and then came around from the other side of the shack. Susan guessed he was in his mid twenties. He wore shorts, boat-sneakers, and an aqua blue sweatshirt that had Bayside Rentals over the left breast. By the shack’s door, he tossed his cigarette in a coffee can full of sand and butts. He still had his cell phone in his other hand. “Hiya,” he said. “Can I help you folks?”

“I’m looking for Chris,” Susan said.

The man smiled. “Look no more. I’m Chris. How can I help you?”

“Well, you already have. I’m Susan Blanchette. You know, the woman with the emergency at Twenty-two Birch? Thanks so much for phoning the police for me earlier today.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you’re okay. You gave me a little scare there for a while. How’s The Seaworthy working out for you folks?”

“We haven’t had a chance to take it out yet,” Susan said, pulling Mattie a little closer to her. “We were planning to go sailing at noon today. But my fiancé, Allen Meeker, who rented the boat from you, he went out on an errand and still hasn’t come back yet.”

Nodding, Chris glanced at something on his cell phone.

“Anyway,” Susan continued. “I’m getting pretty worried about him.”

“Well, he hasn’t been by here,” Chris said with a shrug, his eyes still on his phone.

Susan suddenly felt a little stupid for thinking this total stranger could tell her something about her fiancé’s decision-making processes. Meanwhile Mattie tugged at her arm and rocked from side to side out of boredom.

Susan cleared her throat, hoping to tear Chris’s attention away from his cell phone for a minute. “Ah, Chris, this is probably a silly question. But is there any reason someone would want to go sailing at a particular time today, specifically from noon until four? Is there anything going on this afternoon I might not be aware of—like a solar eclipse or something?”

He shoved his phone into his pocket. “Not that I know of.”

She worked up a smile. “I read that e-mail you sent to Allen. It sounded like there was a mix-up with another boat. Apparently he was very much set on leasing The Seaworthy. I’m curious. Did he indicate why he had to have that particular boat?”

Chris ran a hand through his spiky black hair and frowned at her. “Our best vessel, The Orcas Pearl, a Catalina 309 cruiser, suddenly became available, and I thought Mr. Meeker would like that. It’s usually more expensive, but I was going to charge him the same price we charge for The Seaworthy. I thought I was doing him a big favor securing him the better boat. But—um, well, he wasn’t happy. In fact, he got really pissed off….”

Wide-eyed, Susan stared at him. “I—I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Did he say why it was so important that he have The Seaworthy?”

Chris shook his head. “No, but he sure got all over my case for making the switch. I tried to explain he was getting a better deal. But he didn’t want to hear about it. He kept calling me a ‘fuck-up’ and threatening to get me fired.”

Susan automatically pulled Mattie closer—until his head was against her leg. Then she covered his other ear.

“Sorry,” Chris muttered. He pulled his cell phone out again, glanced at it, then wandered back into the small office.

With Mattie at her side, Susan stepped up to the doorway. “I apologize for my fiancé,” she said. “Considering how Allen treated you, I’m extra grateful you helped me earlier today.” Susan glanced around at the old, faded photos of sailboats on the wall, and she thought she recognized The Seaworthy among them. The name, written in the corner of the picture frame, confirmed it. “Is there any feature that’s unique to The Seaworthy?” she asked him. “Maybe something this other boat doesn’t have?”

Chris leaned back against the metal desk. “They both handle pretty much the same. The cabin space is bigger on The Orcas Pearl, and it’s a newer boat. The only thing The Seaworthy has that the Pearl doesn’t have is an old computer with Internet access. It was a novel feature when the boat was built twelve years ago. But with iPhones and notebooks, it’s not really such a hot thing anymore.” He shrugged. “Though I guess some people must still use it. We just had somebody call the day before yesterday to make sure the Internet connection still worked on The Seaworthy.”

“Was it Allen—Mr. Meeker—calling?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know who it was,” Chris replied, shaking his head. “I didn’t recognize his voice. He hung up as soon as I told him it was working fine.”

“But if it wasn’t Allen, who…” Susan didn’t finish. He’d already said he didn’t know who had called with that inquiry. Susan numbly stared at him as he started fiddling with his cell phone again. Then she glanced over his shoulder at the old, faded photo of The Seaworthy on the wall.

“Well, thank you,” she murmured—though he clearly wasn’t listening. She took Mattie by the hand and started back toward her car.

Moira woke up shivering from the cold.

Panic-stricken, she rubbed her bare arms and shoulders and realized someone had stripped her down to the waist. She still had her jeans on, but no shoes or socks.

Moira didn’t have any idea where she was or how she’d gotten there. The room was so dark she could barely see her hand in front of her face. It smelled damp and moldy. She was curled up on a bare mattress or a futon—she wasn’t sure which, but it felt low to the ground. She blindly patted around for her missing bra, T-shirt, and sweater.

When she finally sat up, it felt like something hit her between the eyes. Her head throbbed so badly she was nauseous. She would have thrown up if she’d had something in her stomach. Moira kept feeling around for her clothes until—at last—she found her sweater and T-shirt. But she still couldn’t locate her brassiere.

Then she remembered the man who had helped her out of the pit. “It feels like you’re wearing a bra,” he’d said. “Are you wearing a bra?”

Shuddering, Moira clutched the sweater in front of her breasts and kept searching in the dark for her bra—though she knew it was useless. Her handsome rescuer, the man calling himself Jake, had taken it. And he’d brought her to this black, cold place.

Moira heard a whistling noise and something flapping—like a boat’s sail in the wind. She wondered if she was anywhere near a harbor.

Feeling around for the edge of the bed, she realized that she was right about the mattress. It was on an icy-cold cement floor. Something crawled over her hand. She recoiled and let out an abbreviated shriek. Moira wasn’t sure if it was an incredibly large bug or a small rodent, but she scrambled to the opposite side of the mattress. She tried to get to her feet, but a bone-grinding pain shot up from her left ankle, and she fell back on the mattress again.

Catching her breath, she heard another sound: footsteps. Then there was a clank. The sound was in the room with her. When she turned in that direction, she saw a door opening—and a dim light pouring through it. For a fleeting moment, she could see the small, grimy, windowless room that was her prison. Beside the doorway was an empty metal bookcase—the only other piece of furniture besides the mattress.

The door opened wider. A shadowy figure appeared at the threshold.

Recoiling on the mattress, Moira clutched the sweater in front of her breasts. “Where am I? What—”

She didn’t finish. A bright flash blinded her.

By the time Moira realized someone had taken her picture, she heard the door clank shut and then footsteps retreating. She quickly put on her T-shirt and sweater, but they weren’t much protection against the unrelenting cold. She was still shivering.

She almost called out for the man to come back, but thought better of it. Moira started to cry. She tried to figure out where the door was. Even though she’d heard the lock clank, she still needed to know. It was the only possible way out. But all Moira could see now were ghost spots from the flash—and darkness.

And all she could feel was dread for the next time that door opened.

“I spy with my little eye something that begins with a D,” Susan said.

“Dog!” Mattie exclaimed, wiggling in his child seat in the back.

“No, there aren’t any dogs around here,” Susan said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. “It’s the same first letter as dog, the same, deh…deh…” She nodded toward a deer-crossing sign at the side of the road ahead. They were headed down Carroll Creek Road toward the house.

“It’s a deer, sweetie,” she finally said. “See the picture of the deer on that sign?”

“Mommy, are we gonna go home soon?” Mattie whined.

“Soon,” Susan said. And she refused to get her hopes up that Allen was there, waiting for them.

She’d called the police while still in downtown Cullen and left a message with the woman who had answered the phone at the police station. She must have been Cullen’s version of the 911 operator.

Fischer had said he’d check in with her in two hours. “My fiancé is still missing,” Susan had explained to the woman on the line. “And it’s been more than two hours, so I’m just following up with the sheriff. My little boy and I may relocate to one of the inns in town and wait it out there. I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll make sure to pass along your message, Ms. Blanchette.”

Susan figured it would take about twenty minutes to pack up everything and load it in the car. She also wanted to check the Internet connection on The Seaworthy.

She passed Rosie’s Roadside Sundries and then continued along Carroll Creek Road. Just beyond the spot where she’d had the flat yesterday, Susan noticed a paved one-lane artery, Trotter Woods Trail. Susan quickly stepped on the brake. Through the trees, she’d glimpsed a black car parked down that road.

She backed up and then turned onto Trotter Woods Trail, which was so overshadowed by trees it was like driving at night. Susan switched on her headlights. The black car came into view. It was a Volvo, damn it. The car rocked slightly, and Susan noticed the startled shirtless young woman and man in the backseat. Mattie waved at them.

Susan sped up a bit and kept driving up the snakelike, narrow trail, figuring there was another way out—or maybe, just maybe, another black car along the roadside, a BMW next time. She slowed down as the paved road eventually became gravel—and a bit bumpy. Susan glanced in the rearview mirror. Smiling, Mattie seemed to enjoy the rough, jostling ride. Susan knew they were getting closer to the bay because she could smell salt water through her half-open window. She came to a turnaround area. Before the gravel road continued, there was a small, weathered wooden sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Through a break in the trees, Susan spotted the top of a frame-style house. It sat on a hill, and the second floor had large picture windows and a deck encircling it. She realized this was their neighboring residence on the bay. She’d noticed the house from their dock—about a quarter of a mile down the shoreline.

It was a long shot anyone was home or had run into Allen earlier this afternoon. But Susan figured she was practically on their doorstep, so why not give it a try?

She continued along the bumpy, gravel drive. The forest thinned out, and she could see the bay—and the rest of the house. The gravel road merged with a paved driveway that looped around toward the back of the place. She followed it as far as the front door.

“I’ll be right back, sweetie,” she told Mattie, grabbing her purse. “Be a good boy and make sure Woody behaves himself. We’ll go back to the house after this, I promise. You can watch a little more of Shrek.”

“’Kay,” he murmured.

Susan left the car windows open a crack and locked the doors. She walked up to the front door and knocked. There was no answer. Susan rapped on the door again, but to no avail. She glanced back at Mattie and then followed a walkway toward the other side of the house. There was a carport—and a red MINI Cooper parked in it.

“My God, it’s him….” she murmured.

She took another look at her car in the driveway to make sure Mattie was okay. She could just barely see his silhouette in the backseat.

Unless the guy was out for a sail or a hike in the woods, he had to be around. His car was there. She could hear a flapping noise coming from the backyard. It sounded like a boat sail.

She waved at Mattie and then stepped toward the back of the house. She didn’t like leaving him alone in the car—even for a minute or two. But Mattie was better off sitting out this expedition. Without him tagging along, she stood a better chance of getting the hell out of there if she needed to leave in a hurry.

Susan remembered the flare gun in her purse.

The place was surrounded by trees and bushes. Staying close to the side of the house, she crept past a gas meter and some plastic trash cans behind the carport. As she approached the backyard, she saw the dock and a canoe tied to it. There was also a wooden picnic table in the backyard, and beside that a tall flagpole with a large American flag loudly flapping in the breeze.

She crept around the edge of the house. A sudden hissing noise made her turn her head, and she saw him. Susan froze. It was the man she’d met in Arby’s yesterday, only his black hair looked wet and messy, his five o’clock shadow was even scruffier, and he didn’t have a shirt on. She noticed his lean physique and hairy chest as he moved away from a stack of lumber piled against the house. The hissing noise came from the nozzle of a hose he carried. He twisted it to cut off the water flow, dropped the hose, and then reached for the front of his jeans. At that moment, he glanced up and saw her. “Whoa!” he said, quickly buttoning his jeans back up.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

He scowled at her. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it’s you. What do you want?”

“Nothing!” she replied, taken aback by his blatant hostility. He’d been so friendly yesterday—overly friendly. In fact, that had been the problem. “Are you staying here?” she asked.

He looked at her as if she were crazy. “Um, yeah, I’m staying here. This is my place.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t know you lived around here. When I saw you at the grocery store yesterday, I thought you might have followed me from Mount Vernon.”

“I wasn’t following you at all.” He grabbed a dirty grey sweatshirt from the stack of lumber and put it on. “In fact, after the Arby’s incident, when I saw you again in the parking lot at Rosie’s, I stayed in my car just to avoid you. What are you doing here?”

“Nothing, my mistake,” she said. “God….” She shookher head at him, then turned and started back toward the car.

He started after her. “Hey, excuse me if I seem rude, but y’know, I was just trying to be nice to you and your little boy at the restaurant yesterday, and you treated me like Jack the Ripper.”

She passed the carport and glanced over her shoulder at him. “There’s being nice, and there’s being overly familiar. You have some major boundary issues, pal.”

“I’m getting a lecture on boundary issues from a woman who just trespassed onto private property and snuck into my backyard? Listen—listen to me for just a second….”

Susan stopped a few feet in front of her car. She could see Mattie in the backseat. She managed a reassuring smile for him and waved. He returned the wave. She didn’t turn to look at the man.

“If I came across as overly friendly and pushy yesterday, I’m sorry,” he said. His apologetic tone seemed genuine. “There was table full of guys in that Arby’s, young, obnoxious, good old boys. I don’t know if you noticed them, but they sure noticed you….”

Susan remembered them staring at her. They hadn’t seemed overtly obnoxious to her.

“I heard those guys talking,” the man went on. “They were making bets on who could nail you in the parking lot at the back of the restaurant. I don’t know how serious they were, but two of them started egging one guy on. It was pretty revolting. So I figured maybe they’d leave you alone if I joined you and it looked like we knew each other. If I came across as overly familiar, that’s why….”

Susan remembered how those three twenty-something guys had lumbered out of the restaurant shortly after he’d sat down with her and Mattie.

“So the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right?” he said. “Anyway, you’re here now, and I’m sorry I was rude. What can I do for you?”

Standing in his driveway in front of his house, dwarfed by all the tall trees, Susan felt so stupid and lost. She turned to face him. She let out a little laugh, but tears came to her eyes. “I’m staying here with my fiancé,” she explained, a tremor in her voice. “We were supposed to go sailing at noon, and he went to pick up something at Rosie’s. And he never came back. This is totally unlike him. I’ve talked to Rosie, the police, and some neighbors….”

She held back her tears, took a few deep breaths, and dug out a Kleenex from her purse.

“Would you like some lemonade or something?” he asked.

Nodding, Susan wiped her nose and eyes. “That would be nice.”

“Good,” he said. He tapped on Mattie’s window. “Hello, Matthew Blanchette from Seattle. Do you like lemonade?”

“Yeah!” Mattie replied, nodding enthusiastically.

Susan opened the back door and took him out of his car seat.

“My name is Tom Collins, like the drink,” the man said.

“Susan Blanchette,” she said, “like your crazy neighbor down the bay for the weekend.” She set Mattie on his feet and then closed the car door after him.

His smile vanished. “Are you staying in the house on Birch?”

She nodded. “Yes, why?”

He quickly shook his head. “Nothing. Listen, I hope you don’t mind having your lemonade in the backyard. I’m remodeling, and the place is a construction zone in there—lots of exposed nails and stuff. It’s not safe. C’mon, follow me to the back.”

Taking Mattie by the hand, Susan trailed after Tom Collins. They moved along the side of the house, past the carport. He glanced over his shoulder. “So—you’re engaged, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Just my luck,” he mumbled, with a crooked smile. “C’mon…”

Susan paused for a moment. Yes, you’re engaged, she reminded herself. And her fiancé was missing right now. What the hell was she doing, stopping to sip lemonade in this man’s backyard? Susan told herself that she should turn back, go to the house, and wait for Allen.

Then again, one glass of lemonade wouldn’t hurt.

With Mattie at her side, she followed the man toward his backyard.

“Why that house on Birch? There are at least twenty other rental cabins around here, not to mention one of the inns or several B and B’s in town.” Standing in front of the worktable, Jordan folded his arms. “Why did you pick my mother’s house this weekend? Why did you take that woman and her son there?”

Allen closed his eyes. “I already told you,” he groaned impatiently. “I went shopping online for a rental, and it looked like the nicest place available. I didn’t know anything about a murder there.” He curled his lip at Jordan. “It wasn’t one of the selling points they mentioned in the rental ad.”

Leo sat on the cellar steps and watched them. But he was thinking about Moira. He hadn’t finished packing her bag yet. They’d locked the front and back doors upstairs to make sure she couldn’t let herself in. Once she knocked, he’d throw the rest of her stuff in the bag and meet her outside. He still hadn’t thought of a good excuse to get rid of her. Maybe he’d just act like he was still mad at her, and he and Jordan wanted her to go. “We’ve voted you off the island,” he imagined telling her.

At the moment, Leo wondered if she’d ever return. It was after four and would be getting dark soon. She’d been alone in those woods for three hours now.

Something had happened to her. Leo felt it in his gut.

They really needed to go back into those woods and search for her. But Jordan couldn’t leave his prisoner. And Leo didn’t trust his friend alone with that man.

Jordan and Meeker were glaring at each other right now. “Listen, kid,” Meeker said. “If I murdered your mother in that house, I’d hardly go back there. It’s not like some cheap detective novel. I wouldn’t be returning to the scene of the crime—and I’d hardly bring my fiancée and her son along for the ride. It doesn’t make sense.”

“But you’ve already returned to the scene of the crime at least once before,” Jordan maintained. Bending at the waist, he leaned forward so his face was close to Meeker’s. “You came back to dump my mother’s body in the woods right next to her house. And by the way, don’t pretend to be ignorant of the facts with allusions to murdering my mother ‘in that house.’ You abducted her while she was standing on the dock off the backyard. You didn’t strip, beat, and strangle her ‘in that house.’ You took her somewhere else and killed her there.”

“I’m sorry for not getting all my facts straight,” Allen shot back. “Since I wasn’t even there, it’s kind of difficult to keep track of what happened.”

“Where did you take her, Allen?” Jordan pressed. “I’d really like to know where you killed my mother. Did you have a special place you took all your victims?”

“I haven’t killed anyone,” Meeker groaned. “I’ll say it again, I’m really sorry your mother was murdered. You have my deepest sympathies. But c’mon, how can you be so sure it was me? I heard you telling your buddy about it. When was she killed? I mean, shit, how long has it been—seven or eight years?”

“You know how long it’s been,” Jordan growled. “Ten years last August.”

“And you recognize me after all that time? Didn’t you say you were in a kayak in the middle of the bay? You had to be pretty damn far away if you couldn’t paddle to her in time to help her. You would have had to see the guy at a distance. How can you be so sure it was me?”

Jordan silently stared at him for a moment. “I never said I was in a kayak in the middle of the bay,” he whispered. “I said I was in a boat. But let me tell you something. It was a kayak. And you knew—without me telling you. You knew, because you were there.”

“Okay, so you said boat!” Allen yelled. He tugged at the rope around his wrists, and the worktable shook. “I figured it was a kayak or a canoe. Goddamn it, I was just guessing!”

“You’re pretending not to know, but you keep tripping yourself up,” Jordan said.

“Oh, Jesus, please!” Allen cried. “I’m aching all over! I can’t even feel my hands. I got to take a piss. I didn’t kill anybody! I came here for a quiet weekend with my fiancée. I wanted to treat her to a break from the city. She’s had a rough go of it. Her husband and her other kid died last year. I’m worried about her. God, please…” He glanced over at Leo. “I told you about this guy stalking her. She’s all alone right now….”

“If you’re so worried about her, why didn’t you just pack up your stuff and go back to Seattle?” Jordan asked.

“I wanted to take her sailing,” Allen whispered. He started sobbing again. “I just wanted to do that for her….”

Leo grabbed hold of the banister and stood up. “Jordan?” he said quietly.

His friend let out a long sigh. Scowling at his captive, Jordan walked around the worktable and approached Leo. “You can see I’m making headway here,” he whispered edgily. “Still think he’s innocent?”

Leo wasn’t sure, so he didn’t answer the question. “I’m worried about Moira,” he said under his breath. “She should have been back here at least two hours ago. She could be lost or hurt or God knows what. We should be out there looking for her, Jordan.” He glanced over at Meeker slouched across the worktable, weeping. “We can’t keep doing this. It’s not right. We need to call the state police and tell them we’ve captured a murder suspect. Then we can let them handle it. And maybe they’ll assign some cops to help us find Moira.” Leo put his hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “It’s the smart thing—the right thing to do.”

“Just give me another twenty minutes,” Jordan whispered. He clutched Leo’s hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “Please, I need to hear him confess. Give me that much. I’ve waited ten years for this. Please, Leo.”

He stared at his friend for a moment and then sank down on the step again. “Okay,” he murmured. “Twenty minutes…”

From Tom Collins’s dock, Susan gazed down the shoreline at the rental house on Birch. But it was too far away to discern if there was any activity in or around the house. The place looked very pretty from where she stood right now, but Susan wasn’t eager to go back there—even just to pack up their things and leave.

Before stepping inside his house to make the lemonade, Tom had dug a twelve-inch plastic, multicolored beach ball and a plastic baseball bat out of a toolshed in the backyard. Mattie kept busy kicking and hitting the ball on the lawn.

Susan had offered to help make the lemonade, but Tom had insisted she and Mattie stay outside to avoid the construction mess in his kitchen and living room.

From the dock, she wandered over to the picnic table by the flagpole and sat down. The sun was just starting to set over the bay, and Susan felt a chill in the air. Above her, the Stars and Stripes flapped in the breeze. It was that magic time late in an autumn afternoon when the light made everything look beautiful and saturated with color.

Susan suddenly felt so lonely—and it didn’t really have anything to do with Allen’s unexplained absence. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Maybe she was just feeling vulnerable.

Tom brought out a tray with a pitcher of lemonade, a bag of Chips Ahoy! and three tall, ice-filled glasses that had Cheers! Tom & Viv Collins written on them in gold script. He sat down with her at the picnic table. He’d combed his hair and changed into a sexy black V-neck sweater while he’d been inside.

“Mattie, come get some lemonade,” Susan called to him. But he ignored her. He was having too much fun with the ball and bat. “Sweetie, did you hear me?”

Tom poured the lemonade. “Oh, let him play,” he said. “Looks like he’s having a blast.”

“I suppose you’re right. He’ll sleep better tonight.” She studied the inscription on her glass. “Did you get these in a divorce settlement or something?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ve never been married—engaged once, but never married. Tom and Vivian are my parents. They had a whole set of these cheesy glasses. I think the other ones said Skoal and Salute. My mom died in 2002. Dad moved to a retirement village in Arizona three years ago. He left me in charge of this place.” He glanced toward the house. “It’s been the family weekend and summer home ever since I was a kid. I used to hate coming here because all I ever did here was work on the yard and on the boat. Anyway, I teach high school in Everett. It gets a little crazy at times. I come here for a break—and once I set foot in the door, all I do is work. You go figure.”

Susan smiled at him and raised her glass. “Well, cheers. This is very good lemonade.”

“It’s a mix, Country Time,” he admitted, running the cool glass over his forehead. “So—be honest. Was I really that creepy at the restaurant yesterday? I mean, I was trying my best to be suave. On a scale from one to ten—with ten being I made your skin crawl—just how creepy was I?”

“You were about a twelve,” Susan replied, cracking a smile.

He laughed. “I may go back to hating you.”

Sipping her lemonade, she glanced over at Mattie while he chased the ball. “Can I ask you something?”

“Fire away,” he said.

“Earlier, when I mentioned that I was staying at the house on Birch Way, you got this funny look on your face. Why is that?”

He frowned slightly and then let out a sigh.

“Is it haunted or something?” she pressed. “I ran into this nice young man at Rosie’s yesterday, maybe you know him, Jordan Prewitt. His family has a cabin near here. When I asked him for directions to Birch Way, he got this strange, somber look in his eyes—sort of like you had when I mentioned I was staying there.”

“You asked Jordan Prewitt for directions to the house on Birch Way?” Tom asked, as if she’d committed a major faux pas. He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Oh, God…”

“What? What is it?”

“So Jordan’s staying at the family cabin this weekend? Is he here with his folks?”

“No, he’s with some friends, another boy and a girl.” Susan leaned forward, her eyes searching his. “And you’re changing the subject. What’s wrong with asking Jordan Prewitt for directions to the house on Birch Way?”

Tom sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, since you’re staying there. I don’t want to give you nightmares, but—well, ten years ago, Jordan’s mother was abducted from the dock behind that house. Jordan was out on a boat in the bay when it happened. He saw the whole thing, the poor kid.” Frowning, Tom glanced down at the picnic table top. “Anyway, they found his mother’s body in the woods nearby. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Mama’s Boy murders from about ten years ago, but Jordan’s mother was one of the victims. Her name was Stella Syms. She dropped the Prewitt when Jordan’s dad dropped her.”

“My God,” Susan murmured, shaking her head. “I knew one of the women was killed up here in Cullen, but I had no idea it happened at that house….”

“The place belonged to Stella’s family,” Tom explained. “They wanted to unload it after that. But they had a hard time selling it, because of the murder. This local couple ended up buying it and turning it into a rental.”

“Lord, no wonder Jordan reacted the way he did when I asked for directions. I feel like such an idiot….”

Tom shrugged. “You couldn’t know.” He nodded toward his own house. “We used to have a landline phone here, but my dad had the service stopped a few years ago. When Mama’s Boy came to the house on Birch, he cut their phone lines. Poor Jordan ran all the way here—through the woods. My folks weren’t here that weekend. He broke that second window from the door there, climbed in, and called the police.”

Susan just kept shaking her head. She felt so horrible for that sweet, handsome young man.

“He had a real rough go of it for a while after that,” Tom said soberly. “I got a lot of this secondhand through my mom. But Stella—Jordan’s mom—she had some psychological problems. I think she might have been bipolar. Apparently, that’s one reason Jordan’s parents split up. After she was killed, Jordan went a little crazy himself. Not that anyone could blame him, considering what he went through….”

Susan felt a chill and rubbed her arms. “What do you mean when you say he went a little crazy?”

“Well, he tried to commit suicide. Eight years old, and he swallowed a bunch of pills. Can you believe it? His mother had some medications for her various conditions, and I guess he’d gotten ahold of them before they’d collected all her things. They put Jordan in the hospital for a while, but it really didn’t take. After they let him out, on two different occasions, he attacked two different men on the street, both total strangers. He kind of hurt one of them, too. In both cases, Jordan was utterly certain the guy had killed his mother. I think he was about ten at the time. They put him in some private care facility after that, and I think he came out okay. But I hear his dad was really beside himself for a while. It wasn’t just Jordan’s breakdown after losing his mom that way. They were worried Jordan might have inherited some of Stella’s disorders. Anyway, he got better, and the Prewitts moved from Bellingham to Seattle, where not so many people knew about them.”

Tom sipped his lemonade. “Of course, my source for all this inside information was my mom and the local ladies she spoke with. But I think it’s pretty reliable.”

“Do you know Jordan at all?” Susan asked.

“Just enough to say hi,” Tom replied. “He’s a good guy. But I’m around teenagers all the time for my job, so I don’t exactly seek them out when I come up here. All of us are kind of isolated in this section of Cullen.”

“Tell me about it,” Susan sighed. “I’ve been going stir-crazy from the isolation today—ever since my fiancé disappeared. I’m glad I didn’t know earlier about the Mama’s Boy connection to that house. My day there has been bizarre enough. Shortly after Allen—that’s my fiancé—shortly after he left for Rosie’s, I spotted this strange character in army fatigues lurking around the place. It scared the hell out of me….”

“Well, not to downplay it, but that house is kind of a local landmark for the morbidly curious. When I see boats sailing around this section of the bay, about eight times out of ten, it’s someone wanting a peek at the old dock—y’know, the scene of the crime and all that. They’ll hover near the shore with their binoculars or their cameras for a good look or a good picture. I’m not surprised they’re getting some foot traffic over there, too.”

“Sheriff Fischer seemed to think it was a hunter,” Susan said.

Tom ate a Chips Ahoy! and nodded. “Maybe. So—you had the police over there?”

“Yes, and the good sheriff decided to take a souvenir of his visit.” Susan leaned across the table. “Do you know anything about him? Have you heard anything?”

“About the sheriff?” Tom shrugged. “Well, he’s kind of a good-old-boy chauvinist. He’s been the sheriff here forever. What do you mean he took a ‘souvenir’?”

“He stole a pair of panties from my laundry basket,” she whispered.

“He did? Are you sure?” Tom began to laugh.

She slapped his arm. “It’s not funny. I was really upset! It was incredibly creepy.”

“I’m sorry. But on a scale of one to ten, with ten being it made your skin crawl—”

“It was a seventeen, okay?” Susan said, cutting him off. Then she found she was laughing, too—for the first time today. She slapped him on the arm again. “It’s not funny!” she insisted, still grinning.

“I know it isn’t,” he said, a bit more serious now. “I’ve never heard anything like that about Sheriff Fischer. He’s been married to the same woman for twenty-some odd years, and they have two children in college. But you never know about some people. One of the guys in my dorm quad at Western Washington University was this ladies’ man jock named Ron, and he now lives in Portland and goes by the name Vanessa. You just never know.” He shrugged. “Anyway, considering what you’ve been going through, it must have been the last straw to discover the person representing the law around here had stolen your underwear.”

Susan nodded. “Yes, it was pretty disturbing.” She rubbed her arms from the chill again and then glanced over at Mattie. He was still batting and kicking around the multicolored ball, but just starting to slow down. She could tell, soon he would be very sleepy or very cranky.

She thought about the house again, about waking up last night and going downstairs to find Allen on some kind of guard duty with a gun. Did he know the history of that house? In Seattle, Realtors were required to divulge if there had been a murder or suicide in a dwelling for sale or lease. Did that same rule apply to rental houses in Cullen? Maybe that explained why he’d seemed so on edge last night. But it didn’t make sense that he’d stay someplace where he wasn’t comfortable, where he felt on his guard all the time.

She wondered once again: Why that particular house? Why that particular boat with the Internet connection?

Mattie tossed aside the bat and wandered over to them. Susan was surprised that he sat down next to Tom and started talking to him as if they were old friends. Tom poured him some lemonade, and Susan said he could have only one cookie. She smiled across the picnic table at the two of them. It felt very comfortable here. Suddenly, she remembered Allen and felt very guilty.

So she announced they had to get going.

As Tom walked them to her car, he pointed out the main road to his house—by a blue mailbox at the end of his driveway. The paved road would take her all the way to Rosie’s, but even with her having to backtrack a little, it was still quicker and less chancy than the winding gravel trail she’d taken earlier. He offered to follow her back to the house and keep her company until Allen returned.

“Can’t he come?” Mattie asked, while she strapped him into the car seat. “Can Tom sleep over? There’ll be lots of room in your bed if Allen doesn’t come back.”

Susan glanced over her shoulder at Tom, who was shaking his head. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he murmured. “I swear to God, I didn’t tell him to say that.”

She cracked a smile, then turned to Mattie and wiped some chocolate from the corner of his mouth. “No, sweetie, Tom can’t spend the night. Now, watch your fingers and toes.” She shut his door.

“My offer still stands,” Tom said. “Sure you don’t want me to follow you back—just to make certain you’re all right?”

“Thanks,” Susan said. “But if Allen isn’t at the house, I’m packing up our stuff and relocating to one of the inns in town. And if Allen’s there, I don’t want to show up with this—this good-looking guy, and have to explain how I just had a lovely time sipping lemonade with him in his backyard.”

“Well, thank you,” Tom said. “You know, I just might go into town tonight, and if you’re staying at one of the inns—well, they have better cell phone reception there in town. Would it be okay if I called you—just to check in?”

Susan shrugged uneasily. “I’m afraid not. I don’t think Allen would like it. But thanks.”

“I understand,” he said, opening the car door for her. “So long.”

Susan got behind the wheel and started up the car. He shut the door for her, and she smiled at him through the window. Shifting to drive, she headed toward the blue mailbox at the end of his driveway. But when she glanced at him in her rearview mirror, she moved her foot to the brake. She rolled down her window and then ducked her head outside. “Tom?”

He hurried toward the car.

“My cell phone number is 206-555-1954,” she said. “Can you remember it?”

Stopping just shy of the car window, Tom nodded. “Yes, I’ll remember that.”

“Good,” she said.

Then Susan rolled up the window and headed out of the driveway.

Sitting on the basement stairs, Leo rubbed his forehead and watched his friend question Allen Meeker. He still couldn’t get over Jordan’s expertise on the Mama’s Boy murders and the way facts and dates just tripped off his tongue. It was a whole side of his friend he’d never known about—and he was learning a lot more about those serial killings, too.

After the murder in Chicago in 1995, Mama’s Boy took his trade to the Seattle area in 1997, and that was where he did the most damage, strangling eleven women in three years. He killed two young mothers in Oakland in 2000. Then there were the two possible “copycat” murders in Virginia in 2003 and 2004 that Jordan attributed to him. The most recent case in 2007 had occurred south of Portland. No one had called it a Mama’s Boy murder, not yet, but Jordan felt it had all the signs of one.

“I want to ask you about the scuff marks on the inside of your trunk lid,” he said, pacing in front of the worktable—like a TV lawyer in front of the witness box.

But this witness was stretched across the table, bound, shirtless, and shivering. His torn trousers only partially covered one leg. Leo winced as he studied him. Considering how long Meeker had been tied to that table in that same torture-rack position, his back, shoulders, and arms must have ached horribly. The guy had to be in agony.

But Jordan was relentless. “I think those marks were made by Rebecca Lyden after you locked her in the trunk of your car,” he said. “You remember her, don’t you, Allen? She was the young single mother from Eugene. Rebecca disappeared in 2007. I looked at the dealer’s slips in the glove compartment of your car. You bought that BMW in Seattle in 2006. Unless there’s another victim I don’t know about, Rebecca made those marks.”

“If you say so, yeah, sure,” Meeker grunted sarcastically. He didn’t even raise his head from the table when he replied. “You’re the expert; you know everything….”

“Rebecca vanished from a rest stop along Interstate 5 near Wilsonville, Oregon,” Jordan continued. “Her two-year-old son was found wandering around and crying outside the women’s lavatory with a clown doll in his hand. Was that your gift to him?”

Meeker didn’t reply. He just shook his head over and over.

“They never did find Rebecca’s body,” Jordan went on. “Maybe that’s why the newspapers didn’t call it a Mama’s Boy murder. You never bothered to hide the others too well. Why were you so careful with Rebecca’s corpse? Didn’t you want anyone to know Mama’s Boy was back?”

“Y’know, it’s bad enough you’re trying to pin the Mama’s Boy murders on me, and now you’re blaming me for all these other crimes. Jesus, pretty soon you’ll have me in Dallas, assassinating JFK in 1963.” Meeker let out a tired, labored sigh. “About the car, I load a lot of crap in that trunk. If there are scuff marks inside my trunk, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. But it doesn’t make me a murder suspect.” He glared at Jordan. “Let me tell you something. I don’t know nearly as much about the Mama’s Boy killings as you do. But I remember they were already going on when I moved from Chicago to Seattle in August 2000. I wasn’t even living in Seattle when the first several murders occurred. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my fiancée, Susan, or call up any one of my Chicago friends.”

“August 2000?” Jordan repeated. “Six months later, you must have been kind of sorry you’d made the move to Seattle.”

“Why? Was there another Mama’s Boy murder?”

“No, something else happened. Do you remember what happened in Seattle on Ash Wednesday, February twenty-eighth, 2001?”

Allen just shook his head.

“Around eleven in the morning?” Jordan pressed.

“I give up,” Meeker grumbled.

Leo took hold of the banister and slowly got to his feet. He knew exactly what Jordan was getting at. Next to September 11, it was the other where-were-you-when event for Seattleites that year.

“February twenty-eighth, 2001, is when Seattle had the second worst earthquake in its history—a magnitude six point eight. Everybody in the area felt it. But you don’t remember it, because you weren’t there.”

“Shit, that doesn’t mean anything—”

“The last known Mama’s Boy victim in the Seattle area was Candice Schulman,” Jordan spoke over him. “She was abducted in front of her four-year-old twin sons in their home on October sixteenth, 2000. You left the boys a couple of moldy hand puppets on the living room sofa. Some kids found Candice’s body two days later in the woods by Shilshole Bay. By February 2001, you’d already left Washington state. The day before the Seattle earthquake, you were in Oakland, killing Leslie Anne Fuller. You tore her away from her toddler son in the parking lot of the Emeryville Food Court. You left a stuffed animal on the hood of her car….”

“Not me,” he shook his head. “I’ve never even been to Oakland, damn it! I didn’t remember the exact date of the earthquake because I was out of town that week—in Spokane. I travel for my job—I already told you that! I heard about the quake, yes, of course. When I came back home that Friday, I was relieved because there wasn’t any real damage to my place.” His voice started to crack. “How do you expect me to know the exact date, for God’s sakes?”

“I knew it,” Leo piped up. “I remember it.”

“Well, good for you,” Meeker grumbled, tears brimming in his eyes. “Go to the head of the class, chum. You guys have already made up your minds I’m this—this heinous serial killer, and there isn’t anything I can say to convince you otherwise, is there? What do you want me to say? What? Want me to confess?” Wincing, he looked at Jordan and then at Leo. “All right, okay, I did it! I killed them all! I murdered your mother in cold blood—and the rest of them, too! Is that what you want to hear? So are you going to get the police now?”

Jordan slowly shook his head. “It’s not that easy.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Meeker cried. He glanced at Leo, his eyes pleading. “He’ll never let me go. There’s nothing I can say or do to change his mind. I’m going to die down here….”

Leo swallowed hard. He stared back at Meeker and knew the man was right.

Moira’s eyes finally adjusted to the murky darkness inside the small, cold room, and dim images began to take shape. She was locked in some sort of storage room, probably a janitor’s closet. From the icy cement floor, she figured it was in a basement or on a ground level. The empty metal bookcase was pushed against the wall—close to the door. The thin strip of light under the door was barely discernible. Up in the corner of the opposite wall was a fan box. Tiny slivers of daylight peeked through the built-in slats. There were some capped-off pipe ends along that wall, too. It looked like there might have been a sink in the room at one time.

She kept hearing that flapping noise. Sometimes it grew very loud as the breeze kicked up. She’d listen to the wind howling—and feel a slight draft through the fan slats.

Moira took the tortoiseshell barrette out of the pocket of her jeans, crawled across the mattress, and hobbled the rest of her way to the door. She still couldn’t put much weight on her left foot without it hurting like a son of a bitch.

Catching her breath, she leaned against the door and slid the metal clip in the chink by the door handle until she felt the lock. She applied some pressure to it with the metal clip and rattled the knob, but it wasn’t giving at all. “C’mon, c’mon,” she muttered to herself, jiggling and jabbing the clip against the door lock.

She kept wondering about the woman who had owned this barrette. She must have been a hiker or big nature buff to be in those woods alone. Had the barrette fallen out of her hair when she’d plunged into that pit? Maybe he’d rescued her, too—if she hadn’t already broken her neck from the fall. Had he locked her in this same janitor’s closet and taken her photograph? Moira wondered if he’d stolen that other girl’s bra, too.

Running her fingertips along the door frame by the knob, she could feel the wood was frayed there—as if someone had scratched and chipped away at it for a long time. Or maybe several people had, several women.

Moira imagined her photo and her brassiere as part of some maniacal murderer’s private collection. As terrified as she was of dying, she also dreaded what he might do to her beforehand. She was still a virgin, and even the idea of normal sex was a bit scary to her. She shuddered to think what this man might want from her—before finishing her off.

Her hands shook horribly as she continued to wiggle the clip against the door catch. “C’mon, please,” she whispered. She missed Leo and wished she’d never argued with him. She was thinking of her mom and dad, too, and how much she just wanted to be home right now. The barrette clip bent, and she shifted positions, forgetting for a moment about her sore ankle. As soon as she put weight on it, sharp pain shot through her leg.

Moira let out an anguished cry and slid down to the cold cement floor. She banged against the bottom of the door. “Let me out of here!” she cried. Her voice was still hoarse from all of her screaming earlier, and her throat felt raw. “Please! My parents, they’ll pay you! If—if you just get me to a phone …”

But she knew, in all likelihood, this guy wasn’t after money.

There was something else he wanted—something unthinkable.