The Serial Killer's Wife

by Robert Swartwood

  Elizabeth said, “You need to get me in contact with Michael.”

  Something changed in Sheila’s face, her nose crinkling just slightly, and she glanced back inside, then stepped out and shut the door behind her. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m in some trouble. That’s all you need to know. And it’s very important I speak with Michael.”

  “How’s Thomas? Where have you been?”

  “Sheila, please, I need to speak with Michael. Can you tell me where he lives?”

  Sheila’s face fell, and she studied Elizabeth for a few seconds. “What kind of trouble are you in? Legal trouble?”

  “It’s best if you don’t know the details.”

  “Liz, you show up at my door after five years ...” She shook her head. “I’m trying to get my thoughts collected.”

  “When did you and Bill separate?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

  “If you’re in so much trouble,” Sheila said, crossing her arms over her chest, “why don’t you go to the police?”

  The sudden hard tone wasn’t one Elizabeth had expected, not from the woman who had once been her best friend and who had helped her escape her old life with the idea to start a new one. This hadn’t turned out anything like she had imagined, and so she crossed her own arms over her own chest and glared back at Sheila.

  “Do you or do you not know where Michael Foreman now lives?”

  Sheila glared back at her for another second or two, before nodding slowly. “I do. And when I tell you, you’re not going to believe it.”

  • • •

  IT WAS TRUE: Elizabeth didn’t believe it. None of it made sense. She felt like a storybook character, falling down a hole or walking through a wall or going through some kind of portal that brought her to a world that was similar but completely unlike the one she remembered.

  When she returned to the car, Todd said, “What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Elizabeth”—he reached over, placed a hand on her leg—“you’re trembling.”

  “Drive,” she said.

  By now Todd had learned it best not to ask questions and shoved the Prius into gear. After a couple miles he asked where they were going and she started giving him directions. It felt strange, giving him directions like this, especially to this particular address. But then minutes later they arrived, and the house looked no different than the last time she had seen it.

  “This one?” Todd asked, pulling into the driveway.

  “Yes.” Elizabeth couldn’t take her gaze off the house. “I can’t believe he’s now living here.”

  “Why? Who lived here before?”

  “I did.”

  CHAPTER 34

  THE LAST TIME she had seen Michael Foreman was in the rearview mirror of the car he had purchased for her for five hundred dollars, a rundown Dodge Neon that was hardly a promise to take her halfway across the country. He had been forty-one then, already had a gut, was already losing his hair, and wore glasses only for reading.

  The man that opened the door now looked not five years older but at least ten, his gut still there, his hair almost all gone, and the glasses perched on his nose the kind a person wears from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they lie down to sleep at night.

  He didn’t seem at all surprised to find Elizabeth standing on his doorstep. He simply glanced past her at the Prius in the driveway, tilted his gaze back at her, and said, “I can’t believe you actually showed up.”

  This wasn’t quite the greeting Elizabeth had expected. “Sheila called you?”

  “An FBI agent. He called earlier this morning. He said there was a chance I might see you.”

  “Why?”

  “He wouldn’t say. But he left his number. He said it’s important that you call him immediately.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know how to react to this news, so she didn’t react at all. She said, “I’m in a lot of trouble.”

  Foreman nodded. “I assumed as much.”

  “Can we come in?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But who’s we?”

  • • •

  IT WAS FOREMAN’S idea to switch out his car in the garage with the Prius. That way if anybody passed by on the street (such as, say, the police or FBI) all they would see was Foreman’s second-rate Mercedes in the driveway.

  Once they were inside, Elizabeth made quick introductions. Foreman nodded and smiled and shook Todd’s hand like it was just any other day. Then he turned to her, his face all at once serious.

  “Where’s Thomas?”

  She handed him the BlackBerry and gave him a condensed version of the past two days. Foreman listened carefully, his gaze focused on the BlackBerry screen, and when she was done, he said the exact thing she knew he would say.

  “You need to contact the FBI.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I do that, Cain will kill Matthew.”

  Foreman frowned. “Who?”

  “Thomas,” she said. “His name is now Matthew.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I thought that would be obvious by now.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as you need to get me in contact with Mark Webster.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You’re going to have to.”

  They were standing in the living room, which hadn’t changed at all since the day Elizabeth walked away from her old life. The carpet, the couch, the armchairs, even the coffee table—they were the exact same.

  Foreman said, “You’re wondering why I’m living in your old house, aren’t you?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “I figured as much. But it’s not as weird as you might think it is. At least not yet. Let me show you the basement.”

  • • •

  THE LAST TIME Elizabeth went down into a basement she had found a half-naked man strapped to a chair, an explosive collar around his neck. She knew she would find neither of those things here, not in this basement, but still her mind played tricks on her, telling her that while she might not find Reginald Moore tied to a chair, she might find somebody else.

  Foreman led the way. He seemed to have trouble walking down the steps and needed to grip both railings tightly. At the bottom he paused, took a breath, turned to her.

  “As you can see, I did my best to keep them as organized as possible.”

  She had about ten more steps to go, her view of the basement itself blocked by the sloping ceiling. She had no idea what he was talking about but then she reached the bottom and as she stared around the basement her heart skipped.

  Plastic storage containers, hundreds and hundreds of storage containers, stacked up and labeled by a deftly skilled hand in black Sharpie marker. One said, Books: nonfiction. Another said, E’s dress shoes. A third, Kitchen utensils.

  She took in the entire basement—all that was here were those storage containers, nothing else—and then she glanced at Todd. She could tell at once he saw the distress in her face. He gave her a questioning look, and she shook her head once and turned to Foreman. The light wasn’t bad but still he appeared to have aged an additional five years in the space it took him to walk from the first floor down here to the basement. His face was wrinkled, he had bags under his eyes, and his shoulders appeared more slouched than ever.

  “You kept everything?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t have much choice.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Until the whole thing happened with Eddie, I never knew there were so many people interested in the belongings of serial killers.”

  “Death collectors,” Elizabeth said.

  He nodded again. “Weeks after you had left, when it was clear you wouldn’t be coming back, some people started trying to break into the house. It was just some kids at first, some teenagers, but then the police caught
actual adults. One guy had driven five states away just to see the house. He said he didn’t want much, just a coffee mug would do.”

  Foreman paused, and in that pause the silence that embraced them was a scary thing. Down here in a basement she had once called her own, surrounded not just by the house she had once lived in but by everything that had once been hers and Eddie’s—even Matthew’s back when he was named Thomas—she almost preferred to be back in Reginald Moore’s basement. At least that, in the most morbid way, made some kind of sense. This here now, all these things that she had managed to forget, waiting for her like one day she would return looking for an old hair brush, unsettled her.

  “It was Eddie’s idea I buy the house. He contacted me through Mark Webster. He said he would rather have somebody he knew, a friend, buy and move into this place than a complete stranger who would do God knows what with it.”

  Elizabeth had to look away from him. She didn’t like the idea at all that Foreman was here because her husband had asked him to be. Just like in her previous life, where Eddie had manipulated her, here now Eddie had manipulated Foreman.

  Todd said, “So you agreed, just like that?”

  “Of course not. I had a place of my own, had just paid off the mortgage a few years before. I was happy. But then Sheila and I started seeing each other.”

  Elizabeth looked up sharply. “You and Sheila dated?”

  He stared back at her for a very long time before answering. “Yes, we did.”

  A thousand more questions flooded Elizabeth’s mind—Elizabeth now remembering the way the new Mrs. Rodgers had tightened her jaw at even the mention of Foreman or Sheila—but before she could ask anything else, Todd spoke.

  “So how much did Eddie sell you the house for?”

  “A dollar.”

  “A dollar,” Elizabeth repeated flatly.

  Foreman nodded. “For the house and for everything in it. He just made me promise that I wouldn’t throw any of it out in case ... well, you know, in case you ever came back.”

  Elizabeth found herself with her arms crossed again. She didn’t like it down here. She didn’t like being back in this house at all. And now, with what Foreman had just told her, which was what Eddie had told him, that he should keep everything in case she ever returned ...

  Shivering, Elizabeth said, “Let’s go back upstairs. Being down here is really starting to give me the creeps.”

  CHAPTER 35

  TODD ASKED FOREMAN if he had a computer with a working Internet connection. When Elizabeth gave him a questioning look, he said, “Isn’t it strange that the FBI is already involved? That probably means there’s news of you. I just want to see how bad it is.”

  Foreman led him to the study at the end of the hall—what had once been Eddie’s study—and then when Elizabeth said she wanted to get some fresh air, Foreman walked with her out to the back deck.

  But the moment they were outside she remembered the deck they were now standing on, how it had been one of Eddie’s few pet projects when they had first bought the house. How when it came to “man things”—hunting, sports, cars—he had very little interest, and would instead rather read a nonfiction book about one of the World Wars. But the idea of building a deck, one grand enough that it boasted a railing and even had slots where Elizabeth could put flowers, well, that was something he was determined to do. And he did do it, though it took nearly two years, and once it was done he insisted they sit out here late at night with all the lights off in the house and stare up at the sky and watch the stars, hoping to maybe spot one falling.

  Despite the surprisingly warm temperature, Elizabeth crossed her arms and hugged her elbows.

  “You need to call that FBI agent,” Foreman said.

  “I already told you that’s not an option.”

  “How do you think this is going to turn out? Honestly, when you stop and really think about it, do you see this having a happy ending?”

  “I have a plan.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Like I told you, I need to get in contact with Mark Webster.”

  “And what is he going to do?”

  “Hopefully get me in to see Eddie. When Eddie finds out what’s happened, he’ll tell me where to find his ...” But she shook her head, refusing to say the word.

  “Do you actually believe that? Do you actually believe that your serial killer husband is going to give a shit about you?”

  “Not me, no. But his son? I think so, yes.”

  Foreman shook his head. “You’re wasting your time. Mark Webster won’t help you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You were his key witness. The defense had nobody else to put up there to talk on Eddie’s behalf.”

  “Even if I had stayed, I would have refused to speak on Eddie’s behalf.”

  “Listen, the long and the short of it is Mark Webster was pretty ticked when you up and vanished. There he was, a young up and coming lawyer with a national case, and his only witness disappeared. He wasn’t happy. I very highly doubt he will help you now.”

  Elizabeth’s arms were still across her chest, and she hugged herself even more. In a soft voice she said, “Could you talk to him for me?”

  “It won’t work.”

  “Please.”

  Foreman sighed. “He’s not even in the area anymore. Last I heard, a law firm up in Manhattan hired him.”

  Elizabeth didn’t like where this conversation was headed. The entire ride here, she had had ideas, thoughts, theories on how this could all turn out. Everything that had seemed so simple just hours ago was now so very complex, and while Foreman was the one telling her the reality of the situation, she knew she had been fooling herself all along.

  Staring past Foreman at the house next door, she said, “Do the Greers still live there?”

  Foreman obviously knew what she meant, but he still turned to glance at the house anyway. “No, they moved out two years ago. A young couple lives there now, named Padron.”

  “What about the Rafalowskis?”

  “They’re still next door. In fact, they’re probably home right now. We shouldn’t be standing out here in case one of them sees you.”

  “Think they’d recognize me?”

  “I can’t imagine they wouldn’t.”

  “So I haven’t managed to change my appearance at all?”

  Foreman hesitated a beat. “You look just like the Elizabeth Piccioni I knew.”

  Elizabeth was quiet for a moment. “What happened between you and Sheila?”

  Something changed in Foreman’s face. It was an almost imperceptible change, the sides of his mouth tensing for just an instant as he clenched his teeth, and then it was gone.

  “Never mind,” Elizabeth said. “It’s none of my business.”

  Michael Foreman was a widower. His wife, Janice, had been a beautiful and petite woman who, from every picture Elizabeth had ever seen, looked like she didn’t even know what a frown was. She had died of a sudden aneurism nearly a decade ago. Foreman was devastated. From what Elizabeth had heard he had spent days in his house crying before, one day, he went into work like nothing had happened. Ever since then he had not dated or even gone on any social outing with a person of the opposite sex, as if even the idea of dating (or being with someone who might consider it a date) would be a direct slap in the face of Janice’s memory.

  But now Foreman looked nervous. No, strike that; he looked extremely nervous, like a kid on his first date walking up the porch steps, almost ready to ring the doorbell, preparing in his mind what he would say and do even though he knew that when it eventually happened none of it would go according to plan.

  He cleared his throat. “A lot changed after you left. Your disappearance, we knew it would be a big deal, but not as big as it became. The police and FBI came to me and Sheila and everyone else who was close to you, asking us if we had any idea where you had gone. They knew someone had helped you and they more or less threatened that if they found ou
t it was us we’d go to jail. And then that Applegate guy came out with his theory on how you were actually in cahoots with Eddie on the murders, and ...”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “What? No, of course not. But like I said, the whole thing was a mess. And Sheila and I, the secret we had, it was growing so big inside us, like a balloon ready to pop. We couldn’t just stop thinking about it. So we started meeting for coffee, speculating about where you had gone. Then ...”

  He was that nervous boy again, standing at the door, having just rung the doorbell, his palms sweating and his knees wobbly.

  Elizabeth said, “What happened?”

  He took a breath. “We had an affair. It was brief, lasted only a couple of weeks. Her husband found out. As you can imagine, he was furious. Even so, it looked like he was going to forgive her until he found out she was pregnant.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. Didn’t know what to say. Sheila had been her best friend and she had had no idea, no idea at all about any of this, and it now made more sense why Sheila acted the way she did with her earlier.

  “Wait,” she said. “Why would Bill not just assume it was his?”

  “Because after the twins he’d gotten a vasectomy.”

  “Oh.”

  Foreman nodded again. “From what Sheila told me, they had a big fight. Bill wanted her to get an abortion. She refused. He said he wanted a divorce. She said that was fine with her, she was in love with me anyway.”

  “She really said that?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  Elizabeth was still having a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea of Michael Foreman and Sheila Rodgers not just being a couple but being intimate. Sheila at least ten years younger than Foreman, both nice enough people but completely different personalities. Sheila more forward, more direct, and Foreman, well, he was patient, the kind of person to let the cards lay where they may, which was strange because he also happened to be a very successful lawyer.