Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “If you need us to sign a petition or whatever to get the police to reopen the Cupid Killer case, just let us know,” DeLynn said.

  The others piped in with their endorsement of DeLynn’s statement.

  Half an hour later, Rachel left Mandy’s feeling as if she had not only reconnected with old friends, but had also accomplished a great deal toward achieving her goal. She wasn’t the only person who wanted to solve the Jake Marcott murder, and in doing so, possibly save the lives of potential victims.

  In the dark, dank basement of St. Elizabeth’s, she pointed her flashlight at Mandy Kim’s locker. Mandy, with her moon-pie face and expensive salon haircut and rich husband. Mandy who was and always had been too smart, too cute, too everything. Jake used to talk about what a living doll Mandy was and how he’d love to get in her pants. She knew he’d told her that because he wanted to make her jealous, wanted to hurt her. The only time he had ever said sweet things to her was when he was softening her up for the kill. That’s how she had thought of sex with Jake. Each time he touched her, each time he buried himself inside her, she died a little. By the time she’d murdered Jake, she was totally dead inside, her uterus empty, her emotions frozen, her future destroyed. That’s why she’d been able to kill Jake so easily, without any regrets. It had been all his fault. If he hadn’t ruined her so completely, she wouldn’t have…

  Killing Mandy would take cunning. And intricate planning. She would be cautious. Waiting. Expecting. Anticipating the worst.

  That’s all right. Let her be on guard. I simply have to devise a plan that will enable me to take her by surprise, to sneak up on her blind side.

  She has a toddler whom she adores. Perhaps I can use little Emily Stulz in some way to lure Mandy into a trap.

  A deep rumble of laughter fluttered up from her diaphragm and erupted into deliriously happy giggles. She had them all running scared. Each of them would be looking over her shoulder all the time, waiting for the unknown killer to strike.

  Even wiseass policewoman Rachel Alsace had no idea who was marked for death, who the next victim would be.

  But you have to know that you’re on my list. You, Kristen, and Lindsay. The ones who loved Jake the most.

  Rachel had to admit that the following day when she arrived at 1111 SW Second Avenue and went to her desk in the corner of the squad room, she had hoped to see Dean. When she hadn’t caught even a glimpse of him by two that afternoon, she had begun to think he was avoiding her. Then when she was absorbed in looking over the photos from the Cupid Killer crime scene, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and yelped at the same time.

  “Sorry,” Dean said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Exhaling a calming, relieved breath, Rachel swivelled around to face him. “Next time, blow a whistle or something.” She laid the photos aside.

  Dean sat on the edge of her desk and glanced at the glossy prints. He fingered them, separating the top two, one a full shot of Jake from head to toe, his body pinned against the oak tree by a crossbow arrow, the other a photo of the bow, found at the scene.

  “Nasty stuff,” Dean said.

  Rachel nodded. “You know, back then all of us suspected one another. Crazy, huh? We were all a bunch of kids who knew nothing about crossbows. And it’s not as if St. Lizzy’s or Western or Washington High offered archery classes.”

  “Yeah, it never entered our minds back then that it would take an expert with a bow to hit a guy dead center in the heart and pin him to a tree.”

  “Even if the person had been fairly close, they still would have had to know what they were doing. I can’t think of anyone in our circle of friends that would qualify.” Rachel spread the photos apart, placing them side by side atop her desk. “When I first read over the file, I started wondering if a woman would be strong enough to handle the rigid tension on a crossbow, but then I read where there’s some kind of lever on a crossbow that would enable just about anybody to cock it.”

  “Yeah, but just anybody couldn’t hit the target, especially not dead center.”

  “I’ve looked at the report on the man who owned the crossbow, but apparently he was a dead end.” Rachel searched through the file folder until she found that specific report. “His name was—”

  “Patrick Dewey,” Dean said.

  Rachel stared at him. “You’ve taken a look at these files, haven’t you?”

  “Sure. More than once,” Dean told her. “There was a time when Jake and I were good friends.”

  “What actually happened between you two? When did you stop being best buddies?”

  “You want to know the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I found out that Jake had been driving the car the night Ian Powers was killed and that Jake laid all the blame on Ian because he was dead and couldn’t defend himself. Jake wasn’t about to take the rap for vehicular manslaughter.”

  A tight fist constricted around Rachel’s heart and for a brief half second, she couldn’t breathe. So, it was true. All the accusations that Haylie had made against Jake had been true!

  “How do you know that Jake was driving that night?”

  Dean grunted. “Jake told me. A few weeks after Ian’s funeral. One night when we’d both had a few too many beers.”

  “And you never told anyone?”

  Dean didn’t respond. Instinctively Rachel knew there was more. The question was, did she really want to know exactly what the “more” was?

  “Tell me the rest of it,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Jake threatened me,” Dean said.

  “What? Are you saying Jake threatened to kill you?” If Jake had threatened Dean, wouldn’t that have given Dean a motive to murder his onetime best friend?

  “He didn’t threaten to kill me,” Dean told her.

  “I don’t understand, if he didn’t—”

  “He threatened to harm someone who meant a great deal to me.”

  Puzzled, Rachel stared at Dean.

  “He told me that if I ever breathed a word about what he’d said about driving the car the night Ian died, he would seduce you and then drop you like a hot potato. I knew that if he did that, it would not only break your heart, but it would break your spirit.”

  Rachel sat there staring at Dean, absorbing what he had just told her, coming to terms with distorted memories and shattered dreams. She’d had a major crush on Jake, had thought he hung the moon, despite the fact that she knew he could be a self-centered jerk. But she had never seen his truly dark side. And Dean, who had been the bane of her existence from kindergarten through high school, had been her hero, her champion. Why had she been so blind?

  “Are you okay?” Dean reached out, clasped her hand resting on the desk, and gave it a squeeze.

  “Yes, I’m okay. Just stunned. I thought I knew Jake. I was wrong about him.” Her gaze met Dean’s. “I was wrong about you, too.”

  “Old news, honey. Jake’s history. He’s the past. He can’t hurt anybody now.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Look, I can’t officially reopen the Cupid Killer case, but in my free time, there’s no reason I can’t help you sort through the old records, snoop around, and ask some new questions.”

  “Are you saying you believe us—believe me—about the possibility that Jake’s killer murdered Haylie and Aurora and is stalking—”

  He tapped his index finger on her lips. “Nah, I’m offering to do this just to make brownie points with you.”

  It took Rachel a couple of seconds to realize Dean was joking. Or was he? He was looking at her like a hungry man staring at the last bite of food anywhere in sight.

  “I’ll take you up on your offer,” she said. “And earning brownie points with me is dependent upon just how much help you are.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Where do we start and when?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Bu
t you’re still on duty.”

  “I’m on an extended coffee break.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble,” she said. “Uncle Charlie and Aunt Laraine are having dinner out with friends tonight, so why don’t we borrow Uncle Charlie’s home office this evening, order in, and plan a strategy?”

  “What time? Six?”

  “Make it six-thirty.”

  “It’s a date.”

  She shook her head.

  He chuckled. “Think of it as a study date.”

  Every afternoon, about an hour before she started dinner, Mandy took Emily for a stroll up the street and through a nearby park. Today, she had considered not going. After all, if someone was stalking her…

  But her neighborhood was one of the safest in the Portland area. And it was broad daylight. Besides that, she had a whistle and Mace, didn’t she? And even Jeff had agreed that she couldn’t live in terror every second of every day.

  Five minutes later and only two blocks away from her house, Mandy was on the verge of a panic attack. She kept seeing shadows, kept sensing dark figures behind every tree, kept hearing odd sounds.

  Ridiculous!

  It was one of those spectacular days in Portland—bright sunshine flooded over the earth in warm, shimmering glory. The breeze was mild, birds were singing, and butterflies were fluttering all about. She should be enjoying this afternoon stroll with her daughter, not anticipating some sinister character to come out of nowhere and grab her.

  By the time she pushed Emily’s stroller into the small park a few blocks away, Mandy felt calmer and more assured that all was well. She had passed by Mr. Hensley working in his flower garden, Mrs. Kennedy walking her dog, and the Monroe twins skipping rope on the sidewalk. And in the park, she ran into another stay-at-home mom and neighbor, Erin Minor. They talked for a while, chatting about nothing of any importance and comparing notes about their toddlers.

  On her walk home, Mandy actually enjoyed herself, as she usually did, all her anxieties now under control. As she approached the back door that led into the mudroom where she kept the folding stroller stored, she noticed something stuck on the glass storm door.

  Sweet Jesus!

  Someone had taped an arrow on her door. Her pulse raced. Glancing from side to side as if she thought she might spot the culprit who had left the arrow, Mandy eased around to the front of the stroller and lifted Emily up and into her arms. Resting her daughter on her hip, she walked closer to the door and stared at the arrow. A child’s toy arrow, the kind with a rubber tip. But there was something red and wet dripping from that rubber tip. Blood? Surely not!

  Mandy clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. Taking several steps backward, behind the stroller, she reached down into the diaper bag inside the back pocket on the stroller and retrieved her cell phone. Under ordinary circumstances, the first person she’d call would be Jeff. But not this time.

  She dialed the newest number she had programmed into her phone. Rachel Alsace’s phone number.

  Chapter 27

  During the eight days Rachel had been in Portland, a wave of anxiety and fear had swept over the reunion committee, spreading from Kristen, and Mandy to the others—DeLynn, Martina, Bella, and April. And Rachel. Each one had received at least one weird phone call and a strange, threatening note. And each member of the group had come home on various days to find a child’s toy arrow taped to their back door. The rubber tip on each arrow had been dripping red paint. Not blood. Paint. But the message was clear—Remember how Jake Marcott died.

  Initially, the police handled these incidents as misdemeanors, as nothing more than silly pranks. But because of Rachel’s involvement and the fact that one of those arrows had been attached to Chief of Police Charlie Young’s back door, an investigation was under way to look into the matter more thoroughly. The arrows and paint were easily traced, both sold at a variety of stores in the Portland area, making it virtually impossible to pinpoint the buyers. The phone calls had all been placed on prepaid cellular phones purchased by Minnie Mouse. The words in each note had been cut from newspapers and magazines and taped to a sheet of plain white paper.

  At first, after Mandy had returned from a walk in the park with her child and found the first arrow on her door, Dean had tried to convince Rachel that someone was playing a sick prank. Maybe it was someone who, for his or her own perverted reasons, wanted to resurrect the past, to remind everyone about Jake’s brutal murder. But after each committee member found an identical paint-tipped arrow on her back door, Dean had come around to Rachel’s way of thinking. Someone was targeting the women who had been a part of Jake’s life back in high school. But why? And was the stalker the same person who had killed Jake?

  Day by day, Rachel sifted through the Cupid Killer files, with Dean assisting her in his free time. As she worked diligently to put together the pieces of a twenty-year-old murder, she often felt that she was betraying her father’s memory. Mac Alsace had been the best detective in the world, bar none. If he hadn’t been able to find Jake’s killer, what made Rachel think she could?

  Time and distance often had a way of clearing the gray areas, of making things more black and white. Sometimes even the best investigator could be too close to the forest to see the trees. As she had studied the photos, read the reports, gone over the facts again and again, a clear picture had emerged. Jake Marcott had not been the boy she’d thought he was, that was for sure. But more important, the likelihood that one of his teenaged peers had killed Jake was slim to none, unless one of them had been a skilled archer and had been able to keep that fact a secret.

  Back in the day, the police had released very little information about the case, hoping to keep the killer in the dark. And Rachel’s father had never discussed the particulars of the case with her, partly because he was duty-bound to keep certain things private, and partly because he had wanted to protect her from some ugly truths.

  Even after all these years, she still missed her dad. As much as she had loved her mother, she’d always been a daddy’s girl. His death at age forty-seven had come as a shock. Such a waste. A man in his prime.

  Rachel couldn’t help wondering how her life might be different now had her dad lived. One thing she knew for certain—her mother wouldn’t have moved home to Tennessee as long as Rachel remained in Portland, and Rachel would never have left Portland as long as her dad was alive. And if she had stayed here in Portland? She wouldn’t have a slight Southern accent, wouldn’t be referring to a group of people as y’all, and she would never have married Allen Turner.

  Would she be working alongside her dad now, who would probably be chief of police instead of Uncle Charlie? Would she perhaps be partnered with Dean McMichaels? Would the two of them have hooked up years ago, maybe gotten married and had a couple of kids?

  Wow! Where had that thought come from—Dean and she married? Back then, she hadn’t even liked Dean. But back then, she hadn’t really known Dean. If she had, she never would have suspected him of killing Jake—and she had! After all, it hadn’t exactly been a secret that the two guys, once best buddies, had parted ways, and no one had understood why. Now Rachel did. It had been because Dean had known one of Jake’s deep, dark secrets. Because Jake had used Dean’s feelings for Rachel to blackmail Dean to keep him quiet.

  Dean placed two brown paper bags on Rachel’s desk. “Lunchtime,” he said as he pulled up a chair and sat beside her.

  “You didn’t have to bring me lunch.” She twisted her swivel chair around so that she faced him. “But it’s a sweet gesture. Thanks.”

  “It’s no big deal. I had to eat anyway, so I just picked up something for you, too.” He eyed the brown paper bags. “Do you still like Reubens? Kosher dills? Diet Coke?”

  Her mouth opened wide in surprise. Why would Dean remember her teenage favorites? “If you’ve got a Snickers candy bar in there for dessert—”

  “If I do, what?” he teased.

  “I won’t believe it until I see it.” S
he opened one sack, removed two sandwiches, two giant dill pickles, and two single-serving bags of potato chips.

  Dean opened the second paper sack and removed a regular and a diet canned Coke and a couple of straws, then he turned the sack upside down and shook it. Out popped two Snickers bars.

  Rachel gasped, then giggled. “Dean McMichaels, you have a memory like an elephant.”

  “Only for the important stuff.” He winked at her.

  Her heart did a crazy little rat-a-tat-tat. “I imagine that kind of memory has helped you become a top-notch detective.”

  He unwrapped his roast beef sandwich. “What makes you think I’m a top-notch detective?”

  She popped the tabs on both colas, stripped the paper off the straws, and inserted them into the openings of the two cans. “Uncle Charlie told me. You’re a highly decorated officer, made lieutenant younger than anyone else on the force, and you’re in line for a big promotion.”

  “I just do my job. That’s all.”

  He seemed genuinely embarrassed by her praise. A modest man. Imagine that. So different from her ex-husband. So different from Jake.

  Rachel unwrapped her sandwich, lifted it to her mouth and took a bite, then sighed. After chewing and swallowing, she said, “Delicious.”

  Dean opened both potato chip bags. “I tracked down the man who owned the bow that was used in Jake’s murder.”

  “You did?”

  Dean nodded. “Patrick Dewey moved his family to Salem nineteen years ago. I phoned his home today, right before I went out to pick up our lunch.”

  “And?”

  “I spoke to his wife, Marilyn. She said Patrick died a couple of years ago.”

  “Hmm…too bad, but I don’t suppose he could have told us any more than he told the police twenty years ago. He reported the bow stolen a week before Jake was killed.”

  “Yeah, and the only reason we know it was Dewey’s bow is because he registered it with the manufacturer right after he bought it. They keep a record of the serial numbers for the warranty registration.”

  Rachel nibbled on her potato chips. “I saw a report where my father interviewed several bow hunters who lived in the area, but none of them, including Dewey, knew Jake or his family.”