Vicious

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Through the dirty corner of the windshield, where the wipers couldn’t reach, Susan gazed over at the break in the trees along Carroll Creek Road. It was the turnoff for Cedar Crest Way, which eventually led to the Prewitts’ cabin. Susan eased her foot off the accelerator. She was thinking about Jordan Prewitt and everything Tom had told her about him.

She couldn’t help wondering if Jordan had anything to do with Allen’s sudden disappearance. After all, as far as she knew, Jordan was the last person to see Allen before he went missing today.

The speedometer hovered around ten miles per hour as she approached the turnoff to the Prewitt cabin.

She’d left that place earlier feeling somewhat dissatisfied. Now that she knew Jordan was connected to the rental house, she wanted to go back and talk to him again. But talk about what—his murdered mother?

Shaking her head, Susan sped up and passed Cedar Crest Way.

In just a few minutes, she would be at the house on Birch—“the scene of the crime,” as Tom had referred to it. She told herself that she shouldn’t expect to see Allen’s BMW parked in the driveway or find him waiting for her.

Then she’d feel even worse for her dalliance with Tom Collins. For all she knew, Allen could have been in a car wreck. Right now, he could be dead—or in a hospital somewhere, hooked up to a respirator. And here she was giving her cell phone number to this charming, handsome man she barely knew. What was she thinking?

She glanced in the rearview mirror at Mattie. He was asleep in the child seat with that limp, absolutely-dead-but-still-breathing posture.

As she turned down Birch and approached the house, Susan didn’t see Allen’s car in the driveway. No surprise. She didn’t see anyone lurking around the house either, thank God. Mattie barely stirred as she took him out of his car seat. She carried him into the house, up the stairs, and put him on the bed in his room. She covered him with a throw. She planned to start packing their things in just a few minutes.

Back downstairs, she checked her note to Allen, and it looked untouched, unread. She glanced out the sunroom’s glass door at The Seaworthy—tied to that dock that had become a local landmark for the morbidly curious. The beautiful, orange-azure-streaked sunset reflected on the bay’s rippling surface.

Susan unlocked the door and slid it open. She didn’t want to leave Mattie alone in the house too long, even though he was sleeping. She trotted down to the dock and hurried across the same wooden planks where Jordan Prewitt’s mother had been abducted ten years ago.

Susan was just about to climb aboard The Seaworthy when she saw something that made her balk. There on the cockpit seat, someone had laid out Mattie’s and her life vests, which she’d discarded on the dock earlier. She remembered stepping around those vests the last time she was on the dock. Now they were neatly folded up on the boat.

A chill raced through her. Who would do something like that? Susan convinced herself that the sheriff or deputy must have folded the vests and put them there when they’d checked around for that hunter character.

She boarded the boat, then took out the keys, unlocked the cabin door, and pulled it open. All the while, the boat gently teetered from side to side. Stepping down into the darkened cabin, Susan turned on the power switch, and the interior lights went on. The computer started, but it took a while to warm up.

If someone had phoned Bayside Rentals asking if the Internet was working on The Seaworthy, perhaps that was how they’d planned to get a message to Allen. Had Allen seen something online when he’d been getting the boat ready? Maybe there was an e-mail or an instant message that might explain his sudden disappearance.

The Windows menu finally came up on the screen. Sitting on the edge of the captain’s swivel chair, Susan pulled out the drawer with the keyboard and mouse and clicked on the Internet Explorer icon. It was an old computer and took a few more moments to make the connection.

Waiting impatiently, Susan stood and gazed out the thin, long horizontal window at the house. No one was prowling around the woods; at least, she didn’t see anybody. Then she glanced around the interior cabin. She spotted something pink on the couch cushion. At first, she thought she’d left behind a toy from Mattie’s bin. But then she stepped toward the settee and saw it was a brassiere.

Susan picked it up. One of the straps was torn. She automatically moved toward the V-berth—to make sure no one was in there. The place was empty.

“You’ve got mail!” the computer announced.

Susan set the brassiere on the table, moved over to the navigating station, and sat down again. Biting her lip, she clicked on the MAIL icon. There were three unread e-mails within the last two hours, all of them from secretadmirer@mbfan.com. The e-mail subjects were blank.

Susan clicked on the earliest e-mail, sent at 1:55 PM. The screen came up:

Where R U?

It didn’t say anything else. Susan clicked on the next message at 2:40:

R U there yet? U can’t avoid me.

If these messages were for Allen, obviously, the sender didn’t know where he was either. The last e-mail was at 3:50:

U need 2 respond 2 me or I come 4 S & M in 1 hr.

“Oh, my God,” Susan murmured. She glanced at her wristwatch. The hour was almost up. She peered out the long window at the house again. She didn’t see anyone.

Turning toward the monitor again, she clicked on the REPLY icon and typed furiously. She tried to adapt Secret Admirer’s amateur shorthand:

Sorry 2 B late. Unavoidably detained. R U close by? I’m here & awaiting instructions.

She clicked the SEND icon, and—true to her word—waited. She glanced over at the brassiere on the table. Someone had left that bra there for her or Allen to find—no doubt the same person who had moved and folded up the life vests. The police hadn’t moved those vests, she knew that now. The vests had still been out on the dock after the sheriff and deputy had left.

Susan peered out the window again. She couldn’t linger, not if this person intended to come for Mattie and her within the next few minutes. She had to grab Mattie and get the hell out of there—no stopping to pack or update the note to Allen. She’d drive to Rosie’s and call the police from there.

She heard a click from the computer—and saw the MAIL icon blinking. It was another message from secretadmirer@mbfan.com. This one had a subject—Pink Souvenir—and it had some kind of image attachment.

Susan clicked on READ MAIL, and an automatic warning came up advising that she shouldn’t open e-mails with download files unless she knew the sender. Susan bypassed it. The text popped up on the screen:

She’s waiting 4 U. I’ll send U another message soon. U know better than 2 involve police. Yes, I M very close….

Below the text, a photo began to emerge—one section at a time from the top of the picture to the bottom. It was a blurry shot of a pale young woman with short-cropped dark hair. Susan recognized her. She’d been at the store yesterday with Jordan and his friend. They’d said her name was Moira. Naked from the waist up, she was sitting on a stained mattress in the dark. She had a dirt smudge on her forehead and looked startled and scared. She was covering her breasts with a bunched-up towel or sweater. Someone had obviously taken her top and her bra.

Susan turned and glanced at the brassiere on the galley table, the pink souvenir.

She heard a scream in the distance.

“Mattie!” she whispered. “My God…”

Rushing up the ladder to the deck, she leapt off the boat and stumbled onto the dock. She heard him scream again. “Go away!” he yelled. “Mommy…Mommy!”

Susan raced up the hill toward the house and the sound of his voice. The sunroom door was open, just as she’d left it. Inside the house, she stopped suddenly. She couldn’t hear him anymore. The place was deathly quiet.

She rushed toward the front of the house, where the door was closed and locked. “Mattie?” she called, running up the stairs two steps at a time. “Mattie? Sweetie?”

Stopping in his doorway, she froze. His bed was empty.

“Mattie?” she screamed again, panic-stricken. She swiveled around and checked the bathroom—empty. Then she hurried down the hall to the master bedroom. He wasn’t in there either. But she noticed the closet door was ajar. She heard a quiet whimpering.

“Mattie, honey?” she asked, trying to catch her breath. She moved toward the closet. “Sweetie, are you in there?”

“Mommy?”

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. She opened the door and found him sitting curled up amid Allen’s and her shoes. Knees to his chest, he clutched Woody against the side of his face. She crouched down and reached out for him. “Sweetie, what happened?”

He threw his arms around her neck. “I woke up and you were gone!” he cried. “There’s a monster in my room. I’m hiding from him. He—he—he’s under the bed….”

“It’s okay, Mattie,” she said, hugging him and patting his back. Finally, she lifted him up and carried him out of the bedroom. She headed for the stairs. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she cooed reassuringly. “We’re leaving here now. Okay, sweetie? I’ll make sure this monster doesn’t get anywhere near you….”

Susan meant every word she said.

It didn’t work worth a damn.

Moira gave up trying to manipulate the lock with the flimsy, bent barrette clip. She moved away from the door and blindly felt around the shelves of the metal bookcase for something else she might use to trip the lock. The tall shelving unit had been put together with thin perforated metal pieces and screws. She found a discarded bracket lying in the back corner of the second-to-top shelf. The perforated piece was a bit longer than a nail file and only slightly thicker.

She slipped it in the door hinge by the lock, wiggling and maneuvering it while she twisted the knob. “C’mon, please, God,” she whispered.

Suddenly she heard a click, and the knob turned.

With a grateful little cry, she pushed at the door with her shoulder. But it didn’t budge. She couldn’t understand it. She’d tripped the stupid lock. She kept twisting and turning the knob. What was going on?

Then Moira realized what was going on was the door must have another lock, probably a dead bolt.

“Goddamn it!” Moira cried, her voice raspy. Frustrated, she almost threw the metal piece across the tiny room. But she thought better of it. She might need the metal bracket as a weapon against that man when he came back for her, and he almost certainly would. Of course, she might as well defend herself with a butter knife. But it beat nothing.

Moira told herself that she wouldn’t become one of his victims. That photo of her and her pink bra—they would be the last in his collection. She would survive this. She’d have to crawl or hobble, but she would get out of this cold, stinking little dungeon.

And stink it did. She was probably contributing to the foul smell herself after all her time in that dirty pit and then here in this little closet. Not much fresh air passed through the fan box near the ceiling.

Moira squinted up at it. She saw by the slivers of daylight seeping through those slats. There was no other light source. She wondered if she could fit through that opening. Maybe, she thought if she could pry or unscrew the slat covering.

A while ago, she hadn’t been able to see her hand in front of her face. But Moira’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, because she could now see the thin metal bracket in her grasp. She probably had a snowball’s chance in hell of clearing that opening and making it through to the outside. But she had to try.

And she had to work fast. Any time now, her abductor could come for a second visit. Another concern was that the light through those slats was starting to dim. It was getting dark out.

Pretty soon, she wouldn’t be able to see anything—except blackness.

And then she might as well be dead.

Strapped in his car seat, Mattie kicked and wiggled in protest. His pinched-up face got red as he cried—a cranky, staccato whine that was, erratically, loud and then quieter.

Susan handed him Woody, and he immediately threw the doll on the car floor. The aborted nap definitely hadn’t agreed with him. If Susan only could have put him back to bed, he might have calmed down and slept for another half hour and then been fine. Instead, she’d swept him up in her arms and carried him downstairs, where she grabbed her purse and his jacket. He’d started crying just as she’d headed out the door.

“That’s no way to treat your pal, Woody,” Susan said, having to talk loudly over his wailing. She picked up the doll and set it on the car seat—out of his reach. “I need you to be a good boy, Mattie. Okay?”

But he was cranky, scared, and disoriented. Susan knew exactly how he felt. Obviously, Allen was in some sort of secret communication with the person who had sent that e-mail. The photo of that teenage girl and the pink souvenir were meant for him. Susan wondered if Allen knew the girl. Whatever the case, the e-mails confirmed it: Allen definitely had an ulterior motive for this weekend getaway—but what exactly? And why did he have to drag her and Mattie up here for this trip?

She wondered about that poor girl. Jordan and his friend had said she’d gone for a walk in the woods. Were they lying? Were they the ones who sent that e-mail to Allen?

Susan hurried around the car to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel. She was about to shut the door when she heard the sound of gravel under tires. She hesitated, unsure who it could be—maybe Allen, finally pulling into the driveway, or maybe the man who had sent him that horrible e-mail.

Susan shut her door and locked it. She started up the engine, but waited. That other car, when it arrived, would block the driveway. Susan reached into her purse for the flare gun and set it beside her. One hand, white-knuckled, on the steering wheel, she warily gazed in the rearview mirror, waiting for the other car to come into view. Please be Tom, she thought. It was crazy, but the most comforting sight right now for her would be that red MINI Cooper coming up the driveway.

Mattie’s irritable cries competed with the sound of the approaching vehicle, but Susan could still hear it, coming up the driveway. “Mattie, sweetie, enough is enough,” she growled. She nervously twisted the loose indicator handle. She kept fiddling with it until she’d completely unscrewed it from the steering column. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, screwing it back into place. Mattie didn’t hear her swear. He was still crying.

In her rearview mirror, Susan watched a police car come around the tree-lined curve in the driveway. “Oh, great,” she grumbled, switching off the ignition. It was the sheriff, that panty-bandit. But maybe he’d come with some news; maybe they’d located Allen.

Biting her lip, she glanced over her shoulder as the patrol car parked behind her Toyota.

“I don’t wanna ride in the car!” Mattie was complaining.

“Sweetie, please,” she said, shushing him. She watched and waited while the cop remained in the front seat of his prowler for a few moments. When he finally stepped out of the patrol car, Susan saw it was the deputy. A notebook in his hand, he started toward the house.

Susan opened her door. “Deputy?” she called.

The solidly built blond cop turned. “Oh, Ms. Blanchette, there you are….”

“Did you find Allen?” she asked apprehensively.

“I’m afraid not,” he said—talking a bit loudly to be heard over Mattie’s cries. He waved at him, but it didn’t do any good. Mattie kept screaming. “Somebody’s not too happy….”

“He got shortchanged in the nap department this afternoon,” Susan explained, rubbing her forehead. From this part of the driveway, she had a view of the backyard—and the boat by their dock. U know better than 2 involve police, the e-mail had said. Then again, maybe the police were already involved. Maybe they were looking for that poor girl.

“Ah, if you didn’t come about Allen, what—what can I do for you, deputy?” she asked.

“Oh, please, call me Corey,” he replied with a cordial smile. “Nancy gave me your message….”

“Nancy?”

“Yeah, Nancy Abbe, our operator at the police station,” he explained. “She said you’d called and left a message for the sheriff. He’s off duty now. So—I’m just following it up. If you’d like, I can put out a statewide APB to be on the lookout for your fiancé’s vehicle.” He glanced at his notepad. “Black 2005 BMW with Washington plates, KKC405. Is that correct?”

Susan nodded eagerly.

“While I’m at it, I’ll notify my buddies in blue at Mount Vernon, Anacortes, Bellingham, and Everett. I’ll get word to the ferry terminals, too.”

“That would be terrific,” Susan said with a dazed, grateful smile.

“Okay then,” the deputy said. “I’m on it.” He headed back to his patrol car.

Susan opened the back door of her Toyota, then unfastened Mattie from his car seat. He was still crying—but more softly now, as if he might fall asleep soon. Susan grabbed his Woody doll, then shut the car door with her hip. She carried Mattie to the police car, where Deputy Corey—she’d forgotten his last name—was sitting in the front, talking on the police radio to the woman she’d spoken with earlier. Susan recognized her voice—even through all the radio static and Mattie’s whining. The deputy was instructing Nancy to phone and fax all the surrounding police stations and the ferry terminals to keep a lookout for Allen’s car. In the middle of it, he stopped and looked up at Susan. “Hold on a sec, Nancy,” he said into the radio mike. Then he nodded at Mattie. “Ms. Blanchette, if you’d like to take our buddy there inside the house, that’s cool. Maybe you can give that nap a second try. I’ll check in with you once I’m finished up here.”

“Of course, I’m sorry,” she said. Then she headed toward the house’s front door. She could hear the deputy talking into his police radio.

“We’re looking for Meeker, Allen, male, thirty-nine, black-grey hair….”

She began to feel a little bit better, enough so she could talk calmly to Mattie once she’d laid him down on the sunroom sofa. She put his Woody doll in his hand, then took off her windbreaker and covered him with it. “You know, we’re going back home tomorrow,” she said. “Won’t that be nice, sweetie? Just you and me, and we’ll take it easy. Maybe we’ll order a pizza and watch TV. What do you think? Just a boring night at home, doesn’t that sound pretty wonderful right about now?”

“’Kay,” he murmured, nodding tiredly. “Can we watch Shrek when we go home?”

“Of course,” she said, smoothing back his light brown hair. “Anything you want, sweetie.” She watched his long-lashed eyelids flutter and then close.

While he dozed off, Susan glanced over toward the sliding glass door—at The Seaworthy moored to the old dock outside. She thought about the e-mail warning her—or more specifically, warning Allen—not to involve the police. The person who had sent that e-mail had said he wasn’t far away. Well, if he was watching the house, he knew the police were here now. He probably figured she was telling the police everything anyway. She wasn’t putting that girl in any more danger by letting this deputy know what was going on.

Just then, the deputy lumbered up the steps to the back porch. As Susan tiptoed over to the glass door, slid it open, and stepped outside, he took off his police cap.

“Well, we’re getting the word out there,” he said. “Someone’s bound to spot his car soon.”

“Thank you very much,” Susan whispered. “Listen—ah, Corey, have you had any other missing persons cases today?”

Frowning, he shook his head.

“There’s this teenager named Moira, and I think she’s in trouble….” Susan glanced back at Mattie on the sofa. Shedidn’t want to be gone too long—and have him wake up to find himself alone again. “Could I—very quickly show you something on the boat?”

At a brisk clip, they started down the back lawn together. Susan told the deputy about the pink brassiere she’d found and the cryptic e-mails. Listening intently, he kept scratching his blond head. He stepped aboard the boat first and then reached out his hand to help her onto the deck. Susan had been in such a rush earlier she’d left the cabin open and the power on. She took one last look back at the house before she went below.

In the boat’s cabin, she pointed out the bra with the torn strap on the galley table. The deputy advised her not to touch it again. “This is way out of my league, and Stuart’s, too,” he murmured, bent over the table with his hands behind him as he closely studied the bra. “We’ll have to get the state police on this pronto. Let’s leave this right where it is….”

Susan sat down at the navigation station. The computer screen had turned black except for the floating Windows logo. She clicked the mouse, and a porn site came up on the screen: BOOBS BONANZA—XXX-RATED! flashed across sexually explicit photos of nude, large-busted women in various provocative positions.

“Now, that’s some evidence I don’t mind reviewing,” the deputy remarked.

Susan tried to clear it, but the pornographic images remained on the screen. She couldn’t even go back to the menu screen. “What is this?” she muttered, frustrated. “This wasn’t here before….”

Corey was looking over her shoulder. “You said you downloaded a picture of the girl? I bet you anything the guy sent you a virus. Mind if I get in there?”

Susan surrendered the chair, then anxiously glanced out the window at the house again. The deputy managed to clear the screen, but he was having difficulty bringing up anything else. “If you can bear with me for just a few minutes,” he murmured, “let me try a few things, here. There’s still a chance we can get something off the hard drive….”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to leave my son alone in the house,” Susan said. “I need to be close by in case he wakes up.”

Eyes on the screen, the deputy nodded. “Go, go,” he urged her. “I’ll meet you on the back porch. I won’t be more than two minutes here. If this is a dead end, I don’t want to waste any more time on it—especially if this girl’s in any kind of real danger.”

Susan nodded and then headed up on deck. She jumped back onto the dock and scurried up the lawn toward the house. At the porch steps, she slowed down and crept up to the sliding glass door. Mattie was on the sofa, fast asleep. She caught her breath, then turned and glanced back at The Seaworthy. The boat’s outside and interior lights glowed against the darkening sky.

After a few minutes, the boat’s lights went out, and the deputy climbed up from the cabin. Susan watched his silhouette as he stepped onto the dock and hurried up the sloped lawn toward her. As his face emerged from the shadows, she could see he was frowning. “No luck,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “But maybe if we got some computer geek to tinker with it, we’d recover those e-mails.” He gave her the keys to the boat and then glanced toward the glass door. “Is he still sleeping?”

Susan nodded. “Thank God.”

“Any clue at all who might have sent those e-mails?” he asked. “Anything more you could tell me about the girl would be a helluva lot of help.”

“Her name’s Moira, and she’s here for the weekend with Jordan Prewitt and another friend. They’re staying at this house on—ah—”

“Cedar Crest Way?” the deputy finished for her.

Susan nodded again. “I stopped by there about two hours ago, hoping they might know where Allen was. Jordan was the last one to see him.” She sighed. “Anyway, Moira wasn’t there when I dropped by. They didn’t invite me in or anything. They were acting sort of peculiar. I can’t put my finger on it exactly. They were just acting kind of funny….”

“Well, Jordan Prewitt’s a pretty strange kid,” the deputy said. “Then again, I can’t blame him. He’s been through a lot.”

“I know,” Susan murmured. “I talked at length about him with our neighbor, Tom Collins, this afternoon. He told me about Jordan’s mother—and what happened at this house with Mama’s Boy ten years ago.”

The deputy nodded glumly. “Huh, that Collins guy is a pretty weird character himself.”

Susan didn’t like hearing that. “What do you mean?” she asked warily.

He shrugged. “The guy’s a real hermit, all holed up in that house every other weekend. No friends or visitors. I don’t think anyone besides him has ever been inside that house since his father moved away. God knows what he’s up to.”

Susan stared at him and shook her head. She hated to consider it, but indeed there was something odd about Tom not even letting them inside the house for a moment.

“Anyway, you were telling me about your visit with Jordan Prewitt,” the deputy said.

“Yes, well…” she shrugged. “I asked Jordan and his friend if I could talk with Moira in case she’d run into Allen or seen his car. They said she’d gone for a walk in the woods. They said they’d get back in touch with me once Moira returned from this nature hike. But that was over two hours ago. Anyway, I have a feeling something’s going on over at that cabin.”

The deputy nodded. “I’ll go check it out.” He glanced toward Mattie in the sunroom. “I think you and your son will be okay here for the next half hour. But you better double-lock your doors just to be safe. When I radio in about the girl, I’ll have Nancy pull some strings and get you a room at one of the inns in town. They’re usually booked solid on weekends. But we’ve got some clout. I don’t like you two staying out here alone any longer than you have to. Do you have anything for self-defense besides that flare gun?”

Susan shook her head. “Allen had a revolver, but it was in the car with him.”

The deputy’s eyes narrowed at her for a moment, but then he just nodded. “Well, you could start a fire with that flare gun. Listen, there’s a whole arsenal in the trunk of my prowler. I’ll loan you something. Be right back….”

Susan followed him as far as some bushes near the side of the house. She watched the deputy duck into the driver’s seat of his patrol car. He left the door open, so she could just make out what he was saying on the radio: “We have a possible kidnapping or hostage situation involving a teenage girl, too soon to tell for sure right now. But put Stuart on alert. I’m headed to the Prewitt cabin on Cedar Crest Way for a follow-up. Stay tuned, over and out.”

He popped the trunk, then climbed out of the car and lifted the hood. Susan watched him hover over the trunk for a minute. Finally, he shut the hood, turned, and then swaggered toward her with a pistol in his hand.

From the corner of the house, Susan glanced toward the open sunroom door. Not a peep out of Mattie so far. The deputy came through a pathway in the bushes and plopped the pistol in her hand. “This is a semiautomatic pellet gun,” he said. “It won’t do as much damage as a regular handgun or your flare, but it’s still very effective. It’s used for riot control, and we don’t get too many violent demonstrations here in Cullen. That’s on loan for the next half hour. Don’t tell Stuart I let you borrow it, or he’ll have my ass in a sling. It’s all loaded and ready. FYI—you can do a lot of damage if you aim for the head or groin. But you’re probably not going to need it….”

Susan looked at the gun in her hand and nodded nervously.

“Give me forty-five minutes,” the deputy continued. “And if I’m not back by then, you and your boy hightail it to Rosie’s, and then call Nancy at the police station. Until then, stay inside and keep the doors locked, okay?”

She nodded again. “Thank you.”

“Be back soon,” he said. Then he turned and hurried toward his patrol car.

The pistol felt awkward and heavy in her hand. A cool wind came off the bay, and Susan shuddered. She watched the police car back into the turnaround and then head out the driveway. It took a curve in the drive and disappeared behind some trees.

Susan retreated back inside the house and quietly slid shut the sunroom’s glass door behind her. She locked it. Then she checked the front door to make sure it was locked and bolted. Returning to the sunroom, she checked on Mattie. He hadn’t stirred.

She tucked her windbreaker around his neck. Then she sank down in the nearby easy chair. She glanced at her wristwatch: 5:20.

Susan held on to the gun. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feel of it. All she could do for the next forty-five minutes was wait.