“You’re his type.” Her voice hikes with a righteous indignation. “He damn well better get that through his thick pretty little head.”
A burp of laughter rattles around my chest and I clap my hand over my mouth at the grievous sin I’ve just committed.
“It’s okay, A. You go on and laugh. You’re allowed.” Heather grabs ahold of me and rocks me like an infant, and as much as I’m repulsed by her touch, by the sweaty scent of her skin, I begin to weep like a baby. I had laughed. I wasn’t allowed to feel one ounce of joy. Reagan is somewhere out there with the freaks who lured her to the side of the road like an animal. Then, in a moment of clarity, I realize I’m on the side of the house, out in the open where anyone can see. Heather Evans has crawled back into my life from the grave, an impossibility, something I had sworn would never happen. There are some people you will go to lengths to avoid, and for me Heather was one of them.
“Look”—I wipe down my face with my sleeve and extract myself from her strangulating embrace, but her hot hand remains flat and clammy over my back—“you are a very good friend.” The thick knot in the pit of my stomach gets a little tighter. “And you have proven yourself an excellent detective.” Oddly true. “I need you to do something very important for me.”
“Anything.” Her hands flail as if she might rocket right off the planet with excitement. “Anything for you, Alley Cat. You just name it. I’d give you the moon if I could.”
I try not to cringe at the performance she’s putting on, genuine as it might be.
“I need you to find my baby.” My voice breaks. “I need you to find the bastards that did this to her and bring them to me so I can kill them with my bare hands.” She swallows hard, her eyes shutter like an old-fashioned doll with a haunting expression to match. “I’m going to dig my fingers into their eye sockets and take extreme pleasure in plucking them out. I’m going to stomp on them with my heel, and then I’m going to make them eat it.”
“You’re going to kill them.” Her expression grows somber, and her cheeks fill with crimson. “And then we’re going to stomp their eyes out!” Her voice ratchets up to a curdling roar. Heather jumps in place over and over. “Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!”
I pull Heather over and turn her body toward her minivan parked in front of the house.
“Now go find my baby.” I give her a firm shove toward the van and head back into the house. That ought to keep her out of my hair for a while.
Wouldn’t it be something if it were Heather Crazy Train Evans who brought my baby home?
Now that would be something.
* * *
They say suspicion grows like a fungus, and if James and I were anything, we were suspicious. The white-hot spotlight had landed on us, and no sooner did the early days of November blow in than a trickling of hatred dressed in human skin arrived down the street. First, there was the egg splattered window. Charles said it was because we didn’t open up our home to trick-or-treaters. But then a bucket of paint was hurled at the driveway, spattering the back of the car. The walkway to our home is now temporarily dipped in red.
“Where is she?” they chant as James and I hole up in our bedroom.
I pull the curtains shut at the seam. “What the hell do they think we’ve done with her?”
“I’ve read it all. That we’ve sold her into some perverted underground network. We sold her for cash. We offered her as a sacrifice in some satanic sick ritual, and now we’re covering and profiting from it.” He slumps over himself at the foot of the bed, looking every bit as tired and dejected as I do.
“I read where someone has a theory she was abducted by aliens. That Concordia is full of them.”
His chest thumps with a dull laugh. “I’ve heard that one, too. That Ota was an alien.”
“A demon.”
“A disgruntled little girl who wanted a sister.”
“A ghost.”
“A liar,” he counters. “Only that is the truth.”
“I don’t like liars.” I take a seat next to him and take up his hand.
James pulls me in and I look up at him, the closest I’ve been to my husband in weeks. We sleep on opposite sides of the bed with an ocean of blankets between us. I can’t remember the last time his lips touched mine.
I bump my finger over his nose, his mouth, and chin. “Why were you at your dad’s house with that woman?”
His head ticks back as if I slapped him. His eyes remain wide a moment too long. He’s been caught, and he knows it.
James frowns in that seductive way only he knows how to do and makes me feel as if this is all somehow my fault.
“My dad asked me to pick up a few things.” He winces just the way he always does when he lies. “I was looking for my mother.” His voice drops to a hoarse whisper, and his gaze falls to the floor. And there it is. The truth. “About halfway through my treasure hunt, Monica showed up.” His face contorts in a grimace. It looks natural. I can tell he’s as repulsed by her as I am with Heather. “My father—he stripped that place clean of all our shit. Not one trace of my mother, my siblings—just me.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “It’s as if they never existed. As if with them gone he could finally breathe. All of the photo albums my mother spent decades painfully assembling, the storage boxes of memories—all of it up and disappeared.”
“It’s because he needed to heal,” I offer, unsure if it were true at all. “Charles is stoic, stubborn, locked in his ways. I could see him loading up the trunk of the car and transporting it somewhere off the grounds. Maybe he put it all in a storage unit. Didn’t your parents keep one?”
“That’s right.” A swell of relief fills his features. “My mother had one filled with the things she used for the holiday fundraisers. A fifty foot Christmas tree, boxes and boxes filled with party supplies for every single occasion.” He tips his head back as if offering a silent thank you to the sky. “I bet that’s where it is.”
“So nothing happened between you and this Monica woman?” A part of me doesn’t want to quantify her as human.
“No.” He winces. “She was just there doing who knows what. She tried, but I’m not going there. I said goodnight and took off.”
“She tried. Was that the hug? It must have been.” She was pawing all over him.
“How did you know?” He cocks his head, those serious blue eyes filled with curiosity.
“Charles.” I swallow down the lie before I can finish the sentence.
He grunts. “Figures. He probably saw a hair out of place. Better yet, Monica filled him in. She’s been a longtime member of the Charles Price Fan Club.”
My hand glides over his, soft and reassuring. “I would have gone with you. I know that must have been hard.”
He stares at the curtains as if looking right through them and back into that night. “It was harder than you know.” He shakes his head a moment. “The memories in that house. They were brutal—painful.”
“I can imagine.” The parade of death never seemed to end.
His phone buzzes in his pocket and he fishes it out, flashing the screen my way. It’s a text from McCafferty.
Can I come over?
James texts right back.
Please.
He gives my thigh a light tap along with a reassuring idea of a smile. “Nothing happened with that woman.”
James didn’t cheat on me with that woman.
Not that one at least.
* * *
McCafferty looks older, thinner, frailer than she did when we started out this journey. Her hair sits on top of her head in the requisite bun, and it makes me wonder if she were a ballerina somewhere along the line before she picked up a magnifying glass. That’s the visual I get when someone says the word detective. And I wish she were scrutinizing every detail of my missing daughter’s existence—putting the whole world under a microscope.
An image of Reagan’s lifeless body floating in a stream bounces through my mind. Her shirt caught in a branch, the only thi
ng keeping her from being swept away. As soon as I gouge the eyes out of whoever did this, I’m going to track down Dolla Chetney and do the very same thing to her. I bet her psychic ass will never see it coming.
“Shall we sit?” McCafferty nods toward the dining room table, a room once filled with laughter and joy—albeit short and sweet—now sits collecting dust and mail. A partially used stem candle is knocked over in the center of the melee.
James pulls out a seat at the head of the table for the guest of honor and we sit on either side like somber bookends, our expressions pulled down like melted wax.
She plunks down a thick manila envelope I hadn’t even noticed she had with her and this startles me. How many obvious things do I let go unnoticed? How many times have I passed by my daughter, not knowing it was her? Passed by her captors, missing the opportunity to sink my fingernails into their flesh, disfigure them for disfiguring my family.
“I thought we should touch base. Discuss my recent findings regarding the case—the two of you.” She cuts a quick glance to James and he flinches.
My heart lurches at the sight. James and I don’t have a single thing to fear.
“Don’t worry.” She sheds the hint of a viper-like grin. “I will leave no stone unturned.” She pulls a file from the envelope with Price scrawled across the front. “I’ve taken the liberty to dig as deep and wide into your past as I felt needed.” Her eyes hook to mine, dark citrine, with a rim of crimson. Blood and urine that’s all I see.
My body takes on a heartbeat of its own. My hands start to shake so I slip them underneath my thighs. This can’t be Len. Nobody knows about him but Heather and me. Heather is practically my disciple. There is no way in hell she would rat me out.
A brief vision of me wrapping my fingers around Heather’s neck, the skin pressing white around them in a pasty looking halo as I squeeze the living life out of her brings me a rise of satisfaction.
McCafferty frowns as if she had the ability to see my thoughts displayed in a cartoon bubble over my head. Now her I would believe. McCafferty is far more credible on her worst day than Dolla is on her best.
“Let’s talk about the accident.” She folds her arms, and for the life of me I can’t register what this might be about. “You were sixteen. It was January.”
“Oh, that.” I close my eyes as a deep swell of regret washes over me. “Yes.” I roll my eyes toward James as if it didn’t matter. I know we glossed over this once when we were dating. I painted it as insignificant. “I went to a party with two of my girlfriends.” It was right after Heather gave birth. I knew that I needed to seize the opportunity to reintegrate myself into society. Heather had been a toxin injected straight into my bloodstream, and with her off the grid for a short time I needed to seize the day. “Karen Parker and Briana Humera.” I shudder as their names stumble from my lips. As far back as I can remember, I hadn’t uttered their names since before the accident. “They were seniors. I was a junior. But I grew up with them. I knew their families.”
McCafferty narrows her gaze my way as if disbelieving on some level. “What happened next?”
“I had cramps.” I shake my head remembering how pissed I was at the time. “We were supposed to party hop that night. I had a big social debacle I was recovering from, and that was supposed to be the night I shed my coat as the social pariah.”
James offers a quick tap to the table as his dimples depress, no smile. It’s his way of saying I’m sorry, I pity you, wish I could fix this all rolled into one.
“When we got in the car, I asked Karen to take me home. I didn’t think I could do another round of beers and boys. The only thing I wanted was my robe, thick socks, and a hot water bottle slung over my stomach.” I take a ragged breath as the argument that ensued comes back to me.
“I’m not taking you home.” Karen scoffed while slicking on another coat of lip gloss. “That’s clear across town, and Jonny Guzman said he has a surprise for me once we get to Vinny’s house.” She and Briana cackle at the idea of hickeys and herpes being doled out freely for the rest of the night. But I was sick. A nine at least on the pain scale.
“I started to vomit.” I give the slight tick of the head toward McCafferty. “Karen rolled down the windows and proceeded to get me home as quick as she could.”
“You stupid, stupid, bitch! Don’t you fucking yak in the back of my brand-new car!” A new Honda Civic gifted to her on her sixteenth birthday.
Briana glanced back, daggers in her eyes for ruining their night. “She’s probably knocked up like that freak she hangs out with.”
I wasn’t about to correct them, let them in on the fact that Heather had the baby and named her after me.
“And then they dropped me off at home.” I try to shrug it off as if it were no big deal, but my entire body ricochets with the terror of their shared fate that night.
McCafferty leans in, her entire demeanor reminds me of an angry old spinster school teacher who openly hates children. “What did you do after you went home?”
My faces pinches with heat. My eyes settle over her a moment too long until it becomes unbearable.
Karen stopped in front of my driveway with a jolt so hard I almost snapped my neck. I wasn’t fully convinced she was going to wait for me to take the time to get out, so I quickly took off my seat belt and swung open the door. A hand reached back. Karen dug her nails into my forearm, her entire face locked with a silent rage. “Rumor has it, you have a crush on David McMillan. Is that right, Pig Face?”
I hated that nickname. Nobody had called me that since junior high, but ever since Heather glommed onto me like a fifth appendage it had resurfaced. Heather hated it as much as I did.
“She does.” Briana snorted into the mirror on the sun visor where she watched the show unfold. “She’s blushing. She probably fucks him in her sleep. That’s the only way she’d ever get a piece of him.”
“Good.” Karen winked—something so seemingly innocent, but I saw the devil in her eye right then and there. “I’m going to take a giant shit in front of his locker early Monday morning and let him know it was from you.”
I ran straight into my bedroom, tears streaming down my face. Karen was mean enough to do it. Her father was the football coach, and she had already bragged about breaking into the school on several occasions to steal things from the biology lab, fetuses, an entire crate of dead frogs, the carcass of a cat. Rumor had it, she was a witch on the side and needed these things for her rituals. Not that I believed them. But what I did believe was that she was about to make my life all around shitty.
But that wasn’t the only unnerving event of that night. I ran straight into my room and found more trouble waiting for me. Sitting high up on my bed, with a ruddy looking newborn on her lap was Heather Holy Shit Evans.
She saw how upset I was so I told her what had happened. Then the baby started to cry unstoppably and they left. It was the first time I felt a smidge grateful to have her there to vent to. Heather was just as hurt as I was, her face doused in tears as she ran into the night.
“And then the misfortune.” McCafferty turns over the first picture, a glossy eight by ten of the Honda Civic charred, the windows blown out, the front end pushed in like an accordion and I swiftly turn my head away.
“What the hell?” James takes the picture and pulls it toward him.
“They died.” McCafferty fills him in. Okay, so maybe I didn’t gloss over this with him. “The girls left. They took off for a party in the next town over. It was dark, a fog bank came in quick, and they flew off the side of an embankment—rolling all the way down. The car spontaneously combusted, blew out the windows. Both girls were found burned to a crisp still buckled in their seat belts.”
They always did follow the rules—right up until they broke them.
I pull the picture over and force myself to look at it. “That could have been me,” I whisper.
“It couldn’t have been you.” McCafferty’s eyebrow hooks its way into her forehead.
“Not according to Katrina Parker.”
“Karen’s older sister.” Older, certainly not wiser. Certainly not above paying off a group of seniors to threaten to kick my ass for the rest of the school year. I’ve never been so happy to see so many people graduate. Good riddance.
“She seems to think you caused the accident.”
“I heard the theory.” I shake my head at James as if to dismiss it before it ever comes from my mouth. “If they never brought me home, they wouldn’t have ever gone that route. They would never have crashed, never had rolled to the bottom of the cliff.”
“You don’t think it’s true?” McCafferty seems amused by my delivery.
“I learned at a young age not to entertain what-ifs.” What if I had another mother? What if my mother had died in that horrific crash that night instead? It was useless. I was her charge, and until the government issued me a reprieve after eighteen long years, I was hers to use and abuse as she wished and she did.
“Katrina Parker doesn’t buy that theory either.” McCafferty mimics my casual shrug and I blink to attention.
“You spoke with her?”
“I didn’t have to.” She bleeds that wicked smile my way. “She has a website dedicated to her sister.”
“What does it say?” James has that intent look on his face as if he might give weight to whatever it is she’s spouted off. Katrina Parker was an angry bitch. Just as mean and heartless as her sister.
McCafferty takes the picture back and turns it upside down. I can feel all of the negative energy in the room start to evaporate.
“Katrina believes someone bumped them off the side of the road.”
I shake my head as if it were lunacy. “She’s a finger pointer. She doesn’t want to believe it was an accident.”
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 44