Vicious

CHAPTER TWENTY

Susan never packed so quickly in all her life.

With Mattie at her side and the pellet gun in the pocket of her russet cardigan sweater, she quickly gathered up all her clothes and toiletries, then shoved them in her overnight bag. At this point, she didn’t give a damn about wrinkles. She just wanted to get the hell out of this house.

Deputy Shaffer had told her to stay inside and keep the doors locked. He’d also said he would be back in forty-five minutes.

That had been nearly an hour and a half ago.

Susan glanced at her wristwatch: 6:45.

She’d waited all this time downstairs in the sunroom, sitting in the same chair where Allen had pulled guard duty with his revolver last night. She’d done the same thing, only with a different kind of gun. While Mattie had slept, she’d sat there, afraid she’d suddenly see that man in the army fatigues on the other side of the sliding door—his face against the glass.

Ten years ago, she and Walt had been so concerned because one of the Mama’s Boy victims had been abducted in a park five blocks away from their home.

And here she was now, in a house occupied by another Mama’s Boy victim.

As Susan zipped up her suitcase on the bed, she thought about Jordan Prewitt’s mother, spending the last night of her life in this very room.

“Okay, sweetie, we’re out of here,” she said, grabbing the overnight bag. She’d already packed Mattie’s suitcase—in less than three minutes. It was now by the front door, along with the bin full of his toys. She hadn’t packed Allen’s things. When he came back, he could do his own packing.

As she started down the stairs after Mattie, Susan half expected to hear a sudden pounding on the door—or perhaps a window shattering. She couldn’t get past the weird notion that Mattie and she were reliving Jordan Prewitt and his mother’s last night in this house—and they might not make it out alive.

Her purse was hanging on the newel post at the bottom of the banister. Susan realized she still had the flare gun in there. She took out the gun and the extra flares and set them on the half table in the front hallway. She thought about stashing the pellet gun in her bag, but decided to keep it in the deep pocket of her cardigan. That way, it was easier to reach—in case of an emergency.

“You don’t have to go potty, do you?” she asked Mattie, pausing by the door.

“Nope,” he said, tapping Woody’s head against the doorway frame.

“I want you to stay right here like a good boy while I load up the car.” She mussed his hair, then opened the door and took her suitcase outside.

The car was parked just a few feet from the burnt rain barrel—by the trees where that hunter had been lurking. Susan made three trips back and forth, loading up the car, and for each brief trek she glanced at those woods with trepidation. She kept waiting for someone to leap out of those bushes.

Finally, she strapped Mattie into his child’s seat, then hurried around and ducked behind the wheel. She quickly locked her door and then started up the car.

As she pulled out of the driveway, Susan glanced in the rearview mirror. She took one last look at the house—and hoped to never see it again.

“You only have a few more sips left,” Leo said, nodding at the near-empty bottle of citrus-flavored Vitaminwater. “Why don’t you polish it off?”

They sat at the kitchen table. Leo had half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a paper plate in front of him. He felt horrible as he watched his trusting best friend swill down the rest of the Vitaminwater he’d laced with sleeping pills.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a few minutes earlier when Jordan had mentioned he wanted to go back down to the basement again, Leo had lied, saying he felt another diabetic episode coming on. So Jordan had gotten all concerned and made him the PB and J.

“This isn’t exactly the birthday dinner I’d planned for you,” he’d said, setting the sandwich in front of him.

Leo had noticed Jordan slurring his words a bit. And the way he’d moved around, he’d seemed slightly drunk. That had been about ten minutes ago.

“We gotta go back down there, Leo,” he announced with a sigh. He rubbed his mouth as if it weren’t working right. “I know you hate it, and I hate it, too. But we’re so close to making this son of a bitch crack. We’re so close….”

Jordan got up from the kitchen table, but started to lose his balance. “Whoa, head rush,” he muttered. He went to grab his chair and tipped it over. It clattered against the tiled floor.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked, springing to his feet. He grabbed Jordan’s arm. He felt like such a weasel, pretending he didn’t know what the problem was. He wondered if he’d put too many pills in that drink.

Weaving slightly, Jordan numbly gazed down at the fallen dinette chair.

“Y’know, maybe you ought to lie down for a few minutes,” Leo suggested. He picked up the chair and set it by the breakfast table. “You’re tired. You’ve been through a hell of a lot today. It’s catching up with you….”

But Jordan was shaking his head. “No, no, we gotta go down there and get a confession out of him. We—we can’t give up now.”

Leo tried to take hold of his arm again, but Jordan pulled away and staggered toward the basement door. “That deputy is coming back in less than an hour,” he said sluggishly. “We don’t have much time. As soon as we get a real confession from this son of a bitch, we can—we can go look for Moira. Poor Moira, lost all alone in those woods…”

Leo hovered behind his friend as he teetered down the basement stairway. Halfway down, Jordan stumbled, but he grabbed for the banister and landed on his butt. He sat in a stupor on one of the lower steps. “Geez, what’s going on?” he murmured.

“Like I said, you’re tired,” Leo whispered. “Really, you ought to go upstairs and lie down—for just a few minutes. This can wait.”

As he helped Jordan get to his feet, Leo glanced down at Meeker, sprawled across the worktable. With a cold look in his eyes, he seemed to study their every move.

Leo ignored him. “C’mon, Jordan, let’s get you upstairs. You can catch a few Z’s. A fifteen-minute break, and you’ll be good as new.” He led Jordan up the cellar steps. All the while, he felt Meeker’s eyes on him.

He almost had to hold Jordan up as they staggered through the kitchen to the next set of stairs. They made their way up to the second floor, but at the landing, Jordan stumbled once again—almost falling down the staircase. Leo caught him and steered him toward Moira’s room.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with me?” Jordan mumbled. “All of the sudden…did you…” he shook his head. “No, no, you wouldn’t have…. You wouldn’t have done anything like that to me….”

Leo knew what he was talking about. But he pretended not to hear. He pulled back the quilt and sat Jordan down on the bed. Reaching back under his friend’s shirttail, he took away the gun and set it on the nightstand.

Jordan flopped to one side, then rolled over and laid his head on the pillow. “We got him, Leo,” he murmured sleepily. “We got Mama’s Boy.”

“Yeah, we got him,” Leo said. “Justice will be served, I promise.” His heart ached as he pulled off his friend’s shoes. He kept telling himself this was for the best—even if it meant betraying his best friend. Eventually, Jordan would forgive him.

He reached into the pocket of Jordan’s jeans and took out his car keys.

His friend squirmed. “I’m going to let all the others know,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m going to look them up, all the Mama’s Boy orphans like me. Maybe they—maybe they’ll finally be able to live with themselves and move on, y’know?”

Leo covered him with a blanket.

“Wake me in fifteen, okay?” Jordan asked.

Leo patted his shoulder. “I’ll make it twenty,” he said.

He figured that was how long it would take to drive to the store and back. Just one phone call and the state police would be on their way to resolve this whole mess—and no one had to die. He watched Jordan start to doze off. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hand lingering on his friend’s shoulder for a moment.

Then he took the revolver from the nightstand and headed downstairs. He hid the gun in the kitchen cabinet—behind the Cap’n Crunch. At the top of the basement stairs, he hesitated. He hadn’t been down there alone with that man—not without Jordan alert and close by.

Leo started down the creaky cellar steps.

Meeker was watching him. “You drugged him, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice raspy. “What, did you slip something in a drink of his?”

Leo said nothing. He wondered how the man could have figured it out. Perhaps he’d had several opportunities to observe someone who had been drugged. Maybe Mama’s Boy hadn’t always taken his victims by gunpoint. Maybe he’d drugged a few of them.

Leo warily moved toward the worktable.

Meeker laughed and shook his head. “I don’t care what you did,” he sighed, “as long as that crazy-shit friend of yours is out of commission. Thank you. Thank you, Leo.”

Biting his lip, Leo avoided Meeker’s eyes. He tugged at the rope around his wrists.

“That sucker’s so tight, you’ll need a knife to cut it loose,” the man said.

But Leo made certain the rope was secure. He bent down and checked the tape around Meeker’s ankles.

“What the hell are you doing?” Meeker asked. “What’s going on? Aren’t you going to untie me?”

“I’m driving to the general store, so I can call the state police,” Leo said, backing away from him. He thought of Jordan upstairs, asleep and vulnerable. “I’m taking Jordan with me,” he lied. In truth, it would slow him down terribly if he attempted to move his unconscious friend into the car. But Meeker didn’t need to know that. “When we come back—”

“NO!” Meeker shouted. “You gotta untie me! At least, loosen the rope, for Christ’s sake. I’m dying! You can’t do this to me….”

“We’ll come back here and wait for the police together,” Leo said, edging toward the stairs. “All of this will be over in about a half hour.”

“Goddamn it, don’t leave me here like this!” Meeker bellowed. He squirmed on the table and tugged at the rope around his bound wrists. “Don’t leave me alone! You gotta untie me!”

Leo headed up the stairs.

“You son of a bitch!” he heard Meeker scream. “Get back here!”

Leo shut the basement door, but it didn’t block out Meeker’s tirade. The man downstairs kept screaming and cursing at him. Leo locked the basement door. Then he dragged one of the dinette chairs across the kitchen floor and wedged it under the doorknob.

Fishing the car keys from his pocket, he hurried out the front door and climbed into Jordan’s Honda Civic. It smelled like a bakery cake inside the car. Leo turned the key in the ignition. But then he hesitated, turned, and pulled at the string around the bakery box. He opened the top flap.

Inside was the cake with Speed Racer’s likeness in the frosting and a tiny green plastic race car by the words Happy Birthday, Leo!

He let out a little laugh, but then tears stung his eyes and he began to cry.

Leo closed the top flap of the cake box. He wiped his eyes, took a deep breath, and started out of the driveway.

“Hi, um, Nancy, this is Susan Blanchette calling again,” she said into the telephone. Rosie had let her use the corded slim-line phone by the register. Susan leaned over the counter to glance past the lottery machine at the play area, where Rosie was keeping Mattie entertained. He was in Fisher-Price heaven.

“Yes, Ms. Blanchette,” the police operator said on the other end of the line. “Can I help you?”

“I’m wondering if you’ve heard from Deputy Shaffer. He stopped by where I’m staying this weekend—at Twenty-two Birch. He said he’d be back in forty-five minutes. And that was nearly two hours ago. Do you know where he is? Has he radioed you?”

“No, Ms. Blanchette,” the operator said. “I haven’t heard from him since we put out that APB on Mr. Meeker’s car. And that was just about two hours ago—like you say.”

Susan anxiously tugged on the phone cord. “Have you had any response to that bulletin yet? Any leads as to Mr. Meeker’s whereabouts?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m awfully sorry.”

“What about the girl? Do they have any updates on the girl?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What girl?”

“The teenager, Moira,” Susan explained. “The deputy radioed you about her just a few minutes after he spoke to you about Allen—Mr. Meeker.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Blanchette. Corey didn’t report anything to me about a teenage girl—at least, not today.”

Susan didn’t understand. “But I heard him on the radio with you. He said it was a possible kidnapping and that you ought to notify the sheriff.”

“Well, Sheriff Fischer has the night off. Corey knows that. Stuart and his wife left for Whidbey Island late this afternoon. He’s had it on the schedule for weeks now.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Susan murmured.

“Well, maybe you heard him talking to the state police,” the operator said. “Or maybe you misunderstood. I’ll try to get ahold of him and straighten this out. His radio was off when I tried him about twenty minutes ago. The caller ID shows you’re phoning from Rosie’s store. Is that a good number to call you back?”

“Yes, thank you,” Susan said numbly.

“Okay, stay put, and I’ll give you a call there,” the operator said. Then Susan heard a click and the line went dead.

Susan hung up the phone. Leaning over the counter, she glanced toward the play area. Rosie caught her eye and shuffled toward her. “Any luck?” she asked.

Susan sighed and shook her head. “They’re supposed to call me back here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, please,” Rosie said, with a wave of her hand. “Are you kidding me? I could use the company. It’s deader than Hector here. Mi casa, su casa!” Donning her glasses from the chain around her neck, Rosie got busy at the cash register. She pressed a button on her credit card machine, and it began to spit out a long roll of paper with tabulations on it.

Susan wandered over to the play area and watched Mattie crawling in and around the mini jungle gym.

She kept thinking that it didn’t make sense, what the police operator had told her. Susan had heard the deputy on his car radio earlier. She remembered him describing a “possible kidnapping or hostage situation,” and he’d said, “put Stuart on alert.” Then he mentioned that he was headed to “the Prewitt cabin on Cedar Crest Way.” He wouldn’t have talked like that to the state police. He had to have been talking to someone local.

On the way here to Rosie’s, she’d slowed down near the turnoff to Cedar Crest Way. But she hadn’t been able to see if a patrol car was in the driveway to the Prewitts’ cabin. She wondered if the deputy was still there—or if he’d gotten a hot lead from Jordan Prewitt and was now following it up someplace else.

The Prewitts’ place was only five or ten minutes away.

She watched Mattie, entertaining himself in the play area. He was looking the happiest she’d seen him all day—except for when he’d been frolicking in Tom Collins’s backyard.

“Rosie?” she said, starting back to the register. “Could I ask you for a big favor? I need to check on something down the road. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Would you mind—”

“Looking after the little one?” Rosie finished for her. She put down her credit card printout and took off her cat’s-eye glasses. “Honey, I’d be delighted. Mattie and I are like old friends already. He’s a peach.”

“Well, the police operator is supposed to call back here.”

“No sweat, I’ll take a message for you,” Rosie said.

“Rosie, thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” Susan moved back toward the play area and crouched down on the recreation mat. Mattie was playing with a big plastic dump truck. “Sweetie, I’m going out for a few minutes. I want you to be a good boy for Rosie while I’m gone. Okay?”

Nodding, he barely looked up from the toy truck. “’Kay.”

“Kiss me good-bye?” she asked. She needed to make sure he understood she was leaving. Often when she left him with a babysitter, he didn’t comprehend what was happening until she stepped out the door—and then he’d scream bloody murder.

But not now. Mattie looked up from his truck, put an arm around her neck, and kissed her on the cheek. “Bye, Mommy.”

She kissed him and hugged him back. On her way down the aisle toward the front of the store, she thanked Rosie again. Heading toward her car, Susan listened for the sound of Mattie’s cries. But it was quiet in the store. Susan told herself that he would be all right without her—for a while.

She remembered in the heyday of the Mama’s Boy murders, she used to wonder if Michael would be all right without her.

Susan wondered why she’d thought of that now.

She jumped in her car and headed toward Cedar Crest Way.

A loud banging echoed from the basement of the Prewitt cabin.

Allen Meeker kept pushing out with his foot, trying to break the leg off the worktable—or at the very least, tear the duct tape securing his ankle to that table leg. Like a crazy man, he repeatedly threw his weight to slam the table against the cellar wall.

With every crashing blow, saws, wrenches, and other work tools that had been hanging from hooks on the wall dropped to the floor—some two or three at a time. The pile of fallen tools lay on the cement floor, just out of his reach. Allen had thought he’d lost all feeling in his hands, arms, and shoulders, but now, every time he banged the worktable against the wall, he felt a painful reverberation in his limbs.

But Allen was relentless. He figured if he could break the table, he’d be as good as free. He wasn’t sure which one of them would give out first—him or the table.

After every violent blow, Allen caught his breath. Then he’d push and pull at the table leg until the joints in his own leg ached.

He was doing that now—putting as much pressure as he could against the wooden strut. His face turned crimson, and the veins protruded in his neck and forehead. “C’mon, you son of a bitch,” he growled.

Then he heard the crack.

It was a lovely sound.

Leo wondered what that noise was. It sounded like he’d hit a tin can along the snaky road to Rosie’s Roadside Sundries. He’d been driving for nearly five minutes and hadn’t seen another car yet. He hadn’t seen any lights either. If there were any other homes or cabins along this route, they were tucked away behind the trees—like Jordan’s place.

The car didn’t seem to be handling right. He’d only gotten behind the wheel of the Honda Civic on the rare occasions when Jordan needed a designated driver. But he could tell something was wrong. He felt as if he were driving over a path of potholes, and yet the road ahead looked smooth. The steering wheel resisted as he tried to maneuver the many curves. “This isn’t good,” he said to himself. “Please, God, don’t let it be a flat….”

Hunched close to the wheel, he eased off the accelerator and felt the car tilt and buckle. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered—with a pang of dread in his stomach.

Leo switched on the emergency flashers and veered toward the shoulder of the road. The car limped to a stop on the gravel. He left the motor running, climbed out of the Civic, and checked the back tire. It was flat.

He took a few deep breaths. “Okay, okay, don’t panic,” he whispered to himself. “Don’t wuss out….” He’d changed only one flat tire in his day—and even then, Jordan had done most of the work. It had taken them about ten minutes.

Leo figured he was about halfway between the cabin and the store—about three miles in either direction. On foot, it would take him at least twenty minutes. He’d need the car to drive back to the cabin after calling the state police. He couldn’t leave Jordan alone—fast asleep and defenseless—with that guy in the house.

Ducking back inside the car, he switched off the ignition and took out the keys. With the key ring, Leo tried to pop the hood, but nothing happened. Frowning, he tried to unlock it manually. That was when he found a metal piece—it looked like part of another key—jammed in the trunk lock.

“What the hell?” he murmured.

The lock had worked fine yesterday when he’d unloaded their suitcases.

Frustrated, Leo tried to wiggle the piece of metal out of there, but the damn thing was stuck. It looked like someone had jammed the lock on purpose.

Then he realized the flat tire might be on purpose, too.

Leo anxiously looked around and felt swallowed up by the darkness. Jordan’s crippled car—with its emergency blinkers going—seemed to provide the only pool of light for miles.

He couldn’t just stand here. He’d have to run to Rosie’s and call the police.

Leo shut the car door, but left the flashers on. He was just about to start running. But then, in the distance, he saw something on the dark, winding road.

Through the trees, the light seemed to wink at him.

It was coming his way.

Susan couldn’t see anything beyond the twin beams of her car’s headlights—just a small patch of road; the rest of the landscape was black. She’d left Rosie’s just a few minutes ago, and yet she felt as if she were the only person around for miles, the only person in all this darkness. She couldn’t believe it was only 7:20. It seemed more like three in the morning.

She was still trying to make some sense out of Deputy Shaffer’s reporting procedure. Why would he radio the police operator to set up the APB for Allen, but then radio someone else about the girl, Moira? If anything, that helpless teenager’s situation was far more urgent and life-threatening than Allen’s disappearance. Why didn’t the police operator know about it?

Susan took another curve along the dark highway when suddenly a figure darted out from the roadside. The thin man looked ghostly in the harsh glare of her headlights. He ran right in front of her car, waving his arms.

Panic-stricken, Susan slammed on her brakes and jerked the wheel to one side to avoid hitting him. Tires screeched as the car swerved off the road and careened toward a tree.

All the while, Susan had this powerless, doomed sensation. She pumped the brake, but the car kept moving. Automatically, she reached for the backseat with one hand. Her fingers grazed Mattie’s empty child seat, and she realized he wasn’t there. He was all right.

But she wasn’t—and neither was the car.

It slammed into the tree. Susan reeled forward, but the seat belt kept her from hurtling through the windshield.

She hadn’t even had a moment to recover from the shock when the man rushed up to her car window. For a second, Susan thought he was going to attack her. But then she recognized Jordan Prewitt’s friend—and he looked utterly terrified.

“Are you okay?” he called through the closed window.

Rattled, Susan caught her breath. She gazed at him and nodded.

He ran around to the front of the car. “Can you back it up?”

The motor was still running, and it looked as if both headlights were still on. Susan felt her heart racing. Her hands shook as she shifted to reverse and backed up the car a few feet.

“The bumper’s a little dented, but it doesn’t look too bad,” he announced. “I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to make you drive off the road….”

Susan’s first instinct was to step on the gas and get the hell out of there. But something made her hesitate. As he approached her window, she checked to make sure her door was locked. She rolled down her window an inch.

“Listen, I—I know where your fiancé is,” he admitted, hovering by her window. “I need to call the state police. If you’ll give me a ride to the store, I’ll explain everything to you on the way.”

“Where is he?” Susan asked. “Is he all right?”

“He’s okay,” the teenager told her. “I’ll tell you all about it—if you’ll just give me a lift.”

Susan didn’t trust him. She shook her head. “Tell me now. Where’s Allen?”

Jordan’s friend winced and then gave the ground a kick. “Please! My car got a flat, and I’m stuck out here. I really need to call the police—”

“Why?” Susan asked, shouting at him. “Tell me what the hell is going on!”

The young man let out an exasperated sigh. “My friend, Jordan, he’s pretty sure your fiancé is the guy who killed his mother.”

Susan stared at him. She wondered if she’d heard him right. Hadn’t Jordan’s mother been one of Mama’s Boy’s victims?

“I know it sounds crazy, but I think Jordan might be right. Jordan has him tied up in the basement at the cabin. We’ve been talking to him, asking him questions, trying to get a confession out of him….”

Stunned, Susan kept shaking her head.

“Jordan has a gun, and I was worried he’d—he’d do something. He’s been acting kind of crazy. I put some sleeping pills in a drink and gave it to him. He’s sleeping right now—and—well, your fiancé is all right. I promise. But I need to call the state police and let them handle this before somebody gets killed.”

“Your friend believes Allen murdered his mother?” Susan asked, incredulous.

He nodded glumly. “I’m sorry, but I think he might be right.”

“Do you know that, when he was younger, your friend attacked two total strangers on the street because he thought they murdered his mother?”

The teenager frowned. “Where—where did you hear that?”

“One of his neighbors here in Cullen told me today,” she said. “Allen’s been in your basement all this time?”

He nodded. “Since early this afternoon. I wanted to tell you when you stopped by, but I couldn’t. Please, I can explain everything in the car if you just—”

“Have you two been communicating with Allen before this?” she interrupted. “Did you coerce him into taking this trip?”

“No, Jordan didn’t even know who he was until today. He spotted him at the store this afternoon, and suddenly recognized him….”

“What happened to that girl you came here with?” Susan pressed. “Do you have her tied up in the basement, too?”

“God, no—”

“Then you didn’t e-mail that picture of her to Allen?”

“What picture? What are you talking about?” His hand came up to the glass.

“Did a police deputy come by your cabin earlier tonight?” Susan asked.

“Yes,” he nodded quickly. “But you started to say—did something happen to Moira?”

He seemed genuinely concerned—panicked even. But Susan still wasn’t sure she trusted him. Maybe this was a case of three bored teenagers preying on a tourist couple as part of some twisted, deadly game. She’d seen plotlines like that in the movies. They picked some couple and terrorized them.

“Please, tell me,” he pressed. “Did something happen to Moira?”

“The deputy didn’t say anything to you?” Susan asked.

“Not much,” he answered. “He seemed a lot more concerned about finding your fiancé. He asked if we knew where Moira was, but that’s about it.”

“Well, do you? Do you know where she is?”

He shook his head. “She and I went for a walk in the woods earlier. We had a fight, and she told me to get lost. So I left her there.” He heaved a sigh. “That was five hours ago, and I haven’t seen her since. I told all this to the deputy, and he said Jordan and I should get some flashlights and go look for her in the woods.”

Susan stared at him and blinked. It didn’t make any sense. Earlier, she’d made it clear to the deputy that the poor girl was being held prisoner someplace. Why would Shaffer tell the two boys to go look for her in the woods?

Nothing this young man was telling her made any sense—especially the part about Allen being a murderer.

“Listen, please,” he said. “We’re wasting time here. If you could just drive me to the store…” He hurried around the front of her car and then reached for the passenger door.

Susan swallowed hard and then stepped on the gas.

He pounded on the car window. “No, please, wait!” he screamed.

But Susan pulled onto the pavement.

“God, please, no, don’t leave me here!” he cried, chasing after her.

Susan pressed harder on the accelerator. She just couldn’t believe anything he was saying—except maybe the part about them holding Allen prisoner in the basement of that cabin.

She was headed there now.

Picking up speed, she watched Jordan’s friend in the rearview mirror as he ran after the car. For just a few seconds, she thought about turning back. What if he was telling the truth?

But Susan pressed on. She looked at him in the mirror again. He’d stopped running. And he became smaller in the distance until darkness swallowed him up.