Undying

by V. K. Forrest

  “I’m going to the lumber store. I might be back today. Might not.”

  Eva followed him to the foyer, nonplussed. “You think she might be bi?”

  “Stay away from her, Eva.” He yanked the front door open. “I’m warning you. And I don’t want her invited to any of your damned feasta oiche parties at your mom’s place.”

  Eva was well-known for her bloodfest parties where all her friends dressed up in costumes to look like what humans thought vampires looked like. They invited human freaks who thought they were vampires. Everyone ended up in orgies or blood feasts or both. The feasta oiche had been banned from Clare Point years ago, but Eva had never been one to follow rules.

  “Come on. I’ve seen you at my parties,” she teased.

  He walked out the door, pointing at her with his carpenter’s pencil. “I’m not kidding, Eva. Not this time. I’m serious. I don’t want Macy caught up in your nonsense.”

  She followed him onto the porch and leaned on the railing, calling down to him as he climbed into his pickup. “Arlan’s got a human girlfriend,” she teased. “Arlan’s in love.”

  As he slipped on his sunglasses, he caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Was that what was going on here? Was he falling in love with Macy?

  The idea scared him to the very core of his black soul. If he was in love with Macy, could he still love Fia?

  Chapter 14

  Fia cradled her cell phone between her shoulder and her chin as she searched for quarters in the bottom of her handbag. So far she’d only come up with pens, a roll of mints, and unidentifiable lint. Frustrated, she dug deeper, feeling along the seams.

  She was beginning to think that this had been a bad idea.

  She had chosen the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk to meet Macy, primarily because it wasn’t Clare Point. In just a few days’ time, the young woman had apparently made quite an impression on the town. Arlan was sleeping with her. Eva wished she was sleeping with her, and Mrs. Cahall wanted to adopt her. Everyone was talking about Macy, about her success as a freelance writer, about how beautiful she was, how mysterious. Fia didn’t have time for that kind of crap. She cared for her family. She felt a deep responsibility for them, but they were definitely full of crap sometimes and they could never keep it to themselves. They were always in each other’s business. Always in her business.

  Here in Rehoboth Beach, Fia could get away from all her nosy relatives and conduct her interview out of earshot of telepathic eavesdroppers. A public place, it was a good location to meet an informant who was skittish. There were plenty of humans around, lots of activity, commotion. Fia was hoping Macy would feel safe here.

  What she hadn’t counted on was just how busy the boardwalk was on a Friday night in June. She’d had to park blocks from Rehoboth Avenue, the main street in town. She’d have to hustle if she was going to meet Macy on time at the Dolly’s Popcorn stand.

  “Fia, are you still there?” came the voice on the other end of her cell.

  Damn. She’d almost forgotten Glen. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” Her fingers finally grasped several coins in the bottom of her bag and she pulled them out. “Sorry. Trying to do ten things at once. It’s been crazy…today.”

  “I just wanted to let you know that I can’t make dinner tonight.” He sounded uncomfortable. Not like himself. “I…there’s probably no sense in you stopping by later, either. I’ll probably be late.”

  “Oh, okay.” She tried to sound disappointed. She had completely forgotten that it was Friday. Well, she knew it was Friday, but she’d been so caught up with trying to make some headway in the Buried Alive Killings that she had forgotten about her and Glen’s standing Friday night date for dinner and sex. They usually met at some restaurant and then went back to his place.

  “I really am sorry,” he said.

  What she was, was relieved. When she got around to remembering, she would have called and canceled; something she was doing often lately. And she would have remembered. Eventually.

  Fia fed the parking meter three quarters and a peppermint. It didn’t take the peppermint.

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’m out, anyway. Not sure when I’ll be done here.” She didn’t know why she hadn’t told Glen she was back in Delaware working on the case. No reason not to tell him. Except that he got funny about her going to Clare Point too often. He didn’t like Arlan. He didn’t like the relationship she had with him. He didn’t understand. Sometimes she liked the idea that he might be jealous. This week, she just didn’t have the time.

  She strolled away from the parking meter, headed toward the boardwalk and the sound of the waves washing up on the beach. She smelled popcorn, cotton candy, and fried clams, with just the faintest hint of human blood in the air.

  “So…” Glen said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

  Their conversation sounded so stiff. When had things gotten awkward? “Sure.” She tried to sound cheerful. “Tomorrow. Maybe we can do something. A movie, maybe?”

  “Maybe a movie.”

  At the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel, Fia turned right and headed south. As she hurried, she scanned the crowd of families with strollers, couples holding hands, and singles cruising. She kept her eye out for Macy. Or at least for the woman Arlan had described to her in detail. The girl was illusive. Fia didn’t want her getting away, not at this point. She was tired of playing phone tag. Tired of playing games. She wanted to know what Macy knew.

  It wasn’t until after Fia hung up that she realized Glen hadn’t said what he was doing tonight that prevented him from meeting her. If she’d had the time, she might have been annoyed.

  Fia ended up arriving five minutes late, but she beat Macy by ten. They met in the center of the boardwalk, between the avenue and the Atlantic Ocean. Fia held two small boxes of Dolly’s famous caramel corn in her hands, one for each of them. A peace offering.

  “Macy Smith.” The strikingly beautiful woman offered her hand.

  “Nice to meet you at last. This is for you.” Fia handed her the box, taking her in through the dark lenses of her sunglasses.

  “Thanks.”

  They juggled the boxes and shook hands. Macy’s grip was firm.

  “I was afraid you weren’t going to show.” Fia nodded in the direction of an empty bench facing the wide expanse of the ocean. “You want to sit down?”

  “Sure.”

  The young woman, late twenties, Fia guessed, was dressed for an evening at the beach in a graphic T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Fia felt painfully conspicuous in her dress pants and sleeveless silk blouse. Even without the jacket, her ensemble screamed cop.

  The two women sat down on the wooden bench close enough to each other to keep their conversation private from the people on the benches that flanked theirs, but not so close as to be in each other’s personal space. “Heard you’ve had a busy week in Clare Point.”

  “Did you?” Macy spoke quietly, making eye contact with her intense green eyes. She held the box of caramel corn in both hands. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Fia smiled, looking away as she untwisted the tie on the bag that held her box of caramel popcorn. Macy’s voice was soft, shy, but she sensed a spine of steel beneath the timidity, the model good looks, and golden locks. “The whole town is full of gossips. And Arlan is probably one of the biggest.”

  Macy turned her head and gazed straight ahead. She set her box down beside her. “He doesn’t strike me as the gossipy kind. He’s a good man.”

  Fia popped a piece of caramel popcorn into her mouth to cover her moment of discomfort. Where had that bitchy comment of hers come from? “Arlan is that. So, uh…what’s your relationship with him?”

  “Why do you ask?” Macy continued to look out beyond the sand dunes at the panoramic view of the incoming tide.

  “Okay, I’m sorry.” Fia crunched her popcorn. “Don’t be offended.”

  Of course Macy was offended; Fia had just maligned the man Macy was sleeping with. But Fia needed to est
ablish their relationship here. She needed Macy to know she was in charge and she wasn’t above bullying a little to do so.

  Macy opened her box of popcorn and sampled a piece. “I don’t like personal questions.”

  “You don’t want personal questions, but you want me to believe you when you tell me you know something about this case? You want me to trust you merely on your word?”

  Macy delicately popped another piece of popcorn into her mouth. “I talked to him the other night.”

  Fia knew, without explanation, who he was. “He calls you?”

  She shook her head, taking her time as she chewed. “That’s why I always use the rechargeable phones—you know, they’re disposable. Not registered. No, he IM’s me.”

  “And he IM’d you the other night?”

  “Monday night around midnight.”

  “You were up at midnight at your computer?”

  “I suffer from insomnia.” She turned to Fia, thoughtfully. “You do, too, don’t you? I bet you get restless just like I do. When I get restless, I have sex with men I don’t know. Or…I work.” She put another kernel of popcorn in her mouth. “What do you do?”

  Fia did suffer from insomnia. Had for lifetimes. But how did Macy know that? Fia had to fight the urge to bring her fingertips beneath her eye. Bags? As for what she did to ease her restlessness…She thought about her embarrassing call to Arlan in the middle of the night. The man she had picked up and handcuffed to a drainpipe. Not a pretty picture. Not something she was proud of. Certainly not anything she wanted to share.

  “I’m asking the questions here.” What she really wanted to ask was about Macy’s men. She wondered if they were like hers—easily forgettable and practically disposable. But that would be totally unprofessional. “I’m the FBI agent trying to gather information on this case,” she pointed out.

  “Okay, Special Agent Kahill.” Macy gestured with a piece of popcorn. “But tell me something first. Is everyone in your town related to each other? There’s an awful lot of Kahills,” she said thoughtfully. “And come to think of it, all the surnames I’ve encountered sound similar. Kahill with a K. Cahill with a C, Cahall, Hill…”

  “I thought we agreed that I was the one asking the questions.” Fia dug into her box of popcorn. She normally prided herself on how well she controlled interviews. Something told her she was not in control of this one right now. “Back to this man who contacts you. You think he’s the killer?”

  “I know he is.” She rubbed her hands together, brushing the sticky crumbs from them.

  “How do you know?”

  “He tells me he is, but even if he hadn’t told me, I would know.”

  Her words seemed mysterious but they came from her mouth sounding very matter-of-fact. Deep down, Fia knew Macy was telling the truth. She knew this was her connection to the killer.

  “And you’re sure he’s a he?”

  “He’s able to physically control entire families. He digs holes deep enough to bury people up to their chins.” She eyed Fia. “There aren’t too many women who could do that, except maybe a woman built like you. Besides, most serial killers aren’t women.”

  Fia ignored the personal comment. At nearly six feet tall, she probably did seem big to petite, slender Macy. “How do you know most serial killers are male?”

  “Male, white, middle class. Thirty to fifty years old. I watch TLC and the Discovery Channel. Someone’s always got a show on about serial killers. They’re very in, apparently. Ever since the BTK Killer.”

  Fia smiled to herself. She didn’t know that she liked this young woman; it wasn’t her job to like her. In fact, liking her could get in the way of her job. But she could see why Arlan would like Macy. Besides the obvious reason—the fact that she carried the X chromosome.

  “So you’re sure it’s him. How does he know you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s your connection to him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He just randomly picked you and started e-mailing you? A year ago when you called me? Two?”

  “Something like that.”

  Fia looked directly at her. Fia was wearing sunglasses; Macy was not. Fia could see the dark specks of brown in her green eyes. She could also see the slight dilation of her pupils. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “I’m not sure I care.”

  Fia exhaled and gazed over the sand dune that had been constructed after a nor’easter a few years ago. It had been built to hold back Mother Nature, to retain expensive beachfront property and protect landmarks such as the popcorn stand. Nonetheless, the strip of sand between the boardwalk and the ocean narrowed each year. A century ago, it had extended more than a hundred yards from this spot. Sadly, she knew that it was only a matter of time until the boardwalk, the bench she was sitting on, and Dolly’s would disappear under the relentless, crashing waves.

  “Macy, you’ve been calling me for a year. You obviously want to help me catch this monster. So, let’s stop dancing around each other. Just tell me what you know.”

  Macy clasped her hands in her lap. “I don’t want to talk about myself.” She spoke so quietly that Fia had to move closer. A child in a stroller at the next bench over was screaming for another bite of corn dog.

  “He’s been stalking me for years,” Macy continued. “It used to be that he only told me after he killed people. He would tell me to pick up a newspaper, check the evening news, something like that. About a year ago, though, he started hinting at when he would kill. This…this last time…in Virginia. He basically came right out and he told me he was going to do it before he acted.”

  “But he didn’t tell you where or when, or who?”

  She shook her head. “Teddy’s too smart for that.”

  “Teddy.” Fia looked directly at her. “How long has he really been contacting you?”

  “Since the Downings in Chattanooga in 97.”

  “Since the very first case? Mary, Mother of God.” Fia shifted on the bench. “How old were you?”

  “Eighteen. He sent me their obituaries from the newspaper. I moved. He found me again about a year and a half later.”

  “The Shorans in Pennsylvania.”

  “So I moved again,” Macy said. “After that, I just kept moving. When he found me on the Internet, I decided that that was relatively safe. He seemed satisfied to be able to talk to me that way.”

  “Does he ask you to participate?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you think he tells you about the killings? Do you think he wants to impress you?”

  “No.”

  “You have a name other than Teddy?”

  “No. And he’s smart enough to know that.”

  Macy stared at the sand on the far side of the dune. From up above, on the boardwalk, she had an excellent view. A family walked toward the water, mother, father, and three children, all in a row like ducks. This was harder than she had thought it would be…talking to Fia. She thought she could remain detached. She thought she could keep herself from thinking about her own family. She never recalled walking on the beach with her mother and father and little sisters, but they had lived in Missouri. Not a lot of oceanfront in the Midwest.

  “Macy?”

  Macy looked at Fia, realizing she’d missed a question.

  “Why do you think he contacts you?”

  Macy slipped out of her flip-flops and drew her knees up to her chest, resting her bare feet on the bench. “He wants to terrorize me, I suppose.”

  “Why you?” Fia pressed again.

  Macy stared straight ahead, hugging her knees. “He said something the other night. I don’t know what it means, but I think it’s important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The moon.” Macy looked at Fia. “Check your records. The murders have always taken place on a full moon, only he was a day late this time.”

  “A full moon?”

  Fia sounded intrigued. So it was a clue.


  Macy nodded. “I asked him if someone told him to do it. You know, I was thinking crazy voices in his head or something. He sort of went off on me when I asked. He said no one is the boss of me. Those exact words.”

  “No one is the boss of me?” Fia repeated. “Sounds like something a kid throwing a fit would say.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “So let’s see. Usually a full moon or close to it, I guess. But no one tells him to do it. No one is in charge of him. No one controls him,” Fia said, thinking out loud. “Interesting.”

  “You think so?” She almost felt a twinge of hope. “It doesn’t sound like much to me, but I think this was the most revealing conversation I’ve ever had with him. Usually he just…taunts me.”

  “This could definitely mean something.” Fia held the plastic bag at the top and spun the box of popcorn to seal it. She looked back at Macy. “He taunts you?”

  “He calls me names,” she whispered. “Mostly in reference to my promiscuity. I think he must follow me. Somehow he always ends up knowing where I am. Who I’m with. But only in generalities. It’s very odd.”

  “Does he contact the men you’ve been with?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Bizarre,” Fia remarked, looking away.

  She didn’t seem to care that Macy had practically admitted to being a whore. Well, not a whore because there was never any financial transaction, she thought wryly. Tramp was probably a more suitable word.

  “And you don’t know what he looks like?”

  Macy could see that the wheels of Fia’s FBI agent mind were still turning.

  “You’ve never seen him?” Fia asked.

  “I try to always keep my eye out for familiar faces, you know, at the grocery store, in a crowd. If I’ve seen him, I don’t know it. He’s made no attempt to contact me in person. Not ever.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  Macy breathed deeply. Her pulse had slowed to a normal rate again. It had been scary actually speaking aloud about him, but it had been emotionally freeing, as well. She could almost feel some of the ties that had bound her to Teddy for all these years breaking away.