She'll Never Know

by Hunter Morgan

  * * *

  Claire, dressed in an old Delaware State Police Academy T-shirt and plain-Jane cotton panties, walked around her house in the dark, checking all the windows and doors. She glanced one last time at the security panel at the front entrance and then went back down the hall, past her daughter's closed door, the bathroom door, and the door that opened into the spare bedroom. She didn't need any lights to illuminate the way. The log cabin she shared with her teenage daughter was small, and she knew every inch of it, even in pitch blackness. Somehow that gave her a sense of security. That and the four-thousand-dollar alarm system....

  In her bedroom, she closed the door behind her and crossed the floor to flip on a bedside lamp. It was just after midnight. She knew she needed to get some sleep if she was going to be out of here by six, the same as every morning since Phoebe Matthews' body had been found in a Dumpster at a construction site.

  The worst thing was that, in her gut, Claire thought the killer had meant to get Phoebe's twin sister, Marcy Edmond. Phoebe had borrowed her sister's car. Just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. For that reason, Claire thought Marcy and her husband were smart to take their family and get out of Dodge. They had left three days ago, right after the funeral, and were now headed for the Grand Canyon in a rented RV. Claire had never wanted to see the country by motor vehicle. Long car rides made her nauseous. She was a US Airways kind of gal all the way, but tonight, the RV and hot dogs cooked on a two-burner stove in a dusty, crowded RV campground actually sounded pretty appealing.

  Claire sat on the edge of her bed and dropped her head into her hands. She was exhausted. Jumpy, as if she had drunk way too much caffeine. She had, of course; coffee was all that kept a police investigation going some days. But mostly it was just lack sleep. How could she sleep, though, when the images of the three women's bodies flashed in her mind every time she closed her eyes?

  Every time she closed her eyes, she could see them lying beside the trash can, behind the restaurant near the dumpster, at the construction site. Cold, lifeless, nearly bloodless bodies of women who had depended on her to keep them safe. Even the tourist, April Provost, whom Claire had never met before that hot night when she had studied her body sprawled on the pavement, had, in a way, trusted in the town's police chief. It was Claire's duty to protect these women. And now it was her duty to find their killer before he struck again.

  She rose and began to pace. Despite the hum of the central air unit, it seemed stuffy in the bedroom. She wouldn't open the windows, of course. A breach of security. Sometimes visitors to the house asked her if she didn't feel confined locked up in her little cabin in the woods outside of town with her high-tech alarm system and lock-down at night. She didn't usually, and even on a night like tonight when she did, she knew it was worth the sacrifice to keep her daughter safe.

  Claire halted in the middle of the bedroom floor, a rag rug her grandmother had made beneath her feet. She gazed at the Navajo patterned quilt on her bed and thought about Ashley asleep in the other room. Her fifteen-year-old daughter still slept with a Raggedy Ann doll she had received for a birthday gift when she was three. Each night, Ashley also filled a little ceramic dish she had made in art, on her nightstand, with silver rings embellished with bats and skulls.

  The same sweet Raggedy Ann girl was also dyeing her beautiful blond hair shoe-polish black and hanging out with kids who appeared to be ex-Ozzie Osbourne band members. Her new boyfriend, "Chain," was encouraging her to push the envelope of the household rules. At first he had brought her home right on time, then ten minutes late. Last week it had been a full hour, thus the restriction punishment. And now that Ashley had broken the rules of restriction today by stopping at the diner, it would be longer, torturing both her and Claire.

  Ashley's father, now remarried with two children, had suggested that Claire consider sending their daughter to live with him for a year or so in Utah. Just to get her away from the crowd she had chosen to hang with, he said. Claire had outright refused. She told Tim it was because Ashley didn't want to go, didn't want to be a part of his new family with the cheeky wife and cheeky kids. Truth was, Claire couldn't stand to see Ashley go. Even being the pain in the ass that she was being right now, Claire's entire world revolved around her daughter.

  And this crappy job that had been her dream job until a month ago, when waitress Patti Lome's body had turned up.

  Claire reached for the bottle of water she took to bed with her each night, then realized she'd forgotten it. Annoyed with herself, she opened her door and started back down the hall toward the kitchen. She passed Ashley's closed door, no light showing beneath it.

  But she could have sworn she saw light as she opened her bedroom door. Claire had almost reached the kitchen when she caught the scent of something burning.

  She cursed beneath her breath and stomped back down the hall. Without the courtesy of knocking, she grabbed the doorknob, twisted, and barged in.

  Ashley was standing at the window in boxer briefs and a baby-doll tee. The room smelled of cigarettes, though there was no smoke to be seen by the dim light of the bedside lamp.

  "You've been smoking again?"

  "Mom—"

  "Don't bother, Ashley," Claire interrupted, striding toward the window where the purple curtains were uncharacteristically drawn back. "You know I hate lying."

  "You're supposed to knock." Ashley thrust one narrow hip out, offering her best belligerent teen tone. "I thought we agreed on each other's privacy, which includes knocking on the door before entering."

  "And I thought we agreed you wouldn't smoke." Claire reached out to check the lock on the window. Sure enough, it was open. It wasn't smoky in the room because Ashley had been enjoying her fag with the window open.

  Claire twisted the lock on the window and yanked the drapes to cover the glass panes. "Were you trying to sneak out or just have a little cig break before you went to bed?"

  "Sneak out? Where would I go?" Ashley crossed her arms over her small breasts and dropped onto her bed. "It's not like I would have any friends to go to. Not after the way you embarrassed me at the diner today."

  "We lock the windows for a reason, Ashley. You know the reason."

  "So serial killers don't sneak in and carry us away," her daughter mocked. As she spoke, the straight black hair that had once been duck-down blond brushed her shoulders.

  "We lock the windows because it's what all people with a lick of sense do." Claire thrust out her hand. "Now hand them over."

  Ashley looked up at her mother, suddenly an innocent. "Hand over what?"

  "You know what." Claire kept her hand extended. "You hear Grandpop wheeze. You see his oxygen tank and nasal cannula. Is that what you want? To slowly asphyxiate someday because, once upon a time, you wanted to smoke cigarettes and look cool? Or were you hoping for cancer? Lung, breast, tongue, take your pick."

  "The nukes will probably kill me first." Ashley stared at her mother for a moment, and when she saw she wasn't going to back down, she pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from under a music magazine spread on the messy bed. "Take 'em. They make my hair stink anyway."

  Claire walked toward the door, circumnavigating a growing pile of clothes on the floor. "I thought you were going through your stuff. Bagging up clothes for the church yard sale."

  "I am, obviously." The teen gestured to the clothes.

  "I'd put you on restriction for this if you weren't already going to spend the rest of your life with no phone or Internet." Claire halted at the door and allowed herself a sigh. "Ashley, I don't understand why you have to be this way with me right now. I'm already at my wit's end with work. I could use a little support."

  "Grandpop told me he caught you smoking in the woods behind their house when you were fourteen."

  "Thanks, Dad," Claire muttered, rolling her eyes. "Yes," she admitted. "He did, after my girlfriend and I started a brush fire and the fire department had to be called. That was how I ended up with my first job." She
crumpled the offending cigarette soft pack in her hand. "Dad got me a job with the park service."

  "I know. Picking up butts." Ashley flung herself backward onto a stack of pillows on her bed.

  Claire studied her daughter for a moment, trying to ignore the black poster of a man sticking a python's head into his mouth on the wall behind the bed. "I know I've said this a million times, Ash, but we're going to get through this, you and I... I swear we will."

  "Yeah." Her daughter groaned, staring at the ceiling. "If we don't kill each other first."

  Claire stepped into the hall. "I'll be gone by the time you get up in the morning. Grandmom or Grandpop will be here to get you in time for you to get to work. How about if I pick you up at Stewart's when you get off?"

  Ashley's blue eyes cut to her mother. "The nursery closes at five. You haven't been home that early in weeks."

  "Well, I will be tomorrow. 'Night."

  Ashley made no reply as Claire closed the bedroom door, but that was all right. Claire remembered being this age. She remembered how hard it had been. What idiots, she thought at the time, her parents were. All teenagers went through this. It was just a stage. She repeated the words like a mantra as she went back down the hall toward her bedroom.

  "Just a stage. Just a stage." She shot the crumbled cigarette pack and lighter into the garbage can inside her bedroom door. "Lord, help me."

  * * *

  "May I help you?" A grandfatherly looking man in a light blue smock at the reception desk in the hospital's main lobby asked kindly.

  "Yes." Jillian leaned on the counter, pushing some paperwork across the counter. "I'm from out of town, but my doctor in Virginia wants me to have these blood tests done. He said someone could call his office if need be."

  The old man sported a name tag that said "Volunteer. Hi, I'm Randolph. May I help you?" Randolph was handwritten with a marker and there was barely room on the tag for the 'h'. "I don't think this will be a problem," he said cheerfully. "Someone in billing can straighten this out later, if necessary. Just fill this out." He slid a clipboard with a pen attached across the desk to her. "Then have a seat right here in the waiting room. Someone will call your name."

  "Thanks." Jillian filled out the form, using the cottage's address and marked "temporary" on the margin.

  She listed no phone number. For the insurance information, she fished a small card out of her wallet. The Amnesia Society offered a basic health insurance plan through the generosity of some apparently loaded benefactors.

  Jillian rechecked the information she had written down, then handed the volunteer the clipboard. "Thanks."

  "You're welcome"—he glanced down at the form—"Miss Deere. Have a seat and we'll be right with you."

  Jillian took an end chair that looked just like the chairs in the hospital waiting room in Portsmouth. She wondered if every hospital in the U.S. had the same chairs. She picked up a magazine and flipped through the pages, glancing up occasionally as people came and went.

  Two nurses dressed in white pants and bright smocks passed. A grandfatherly looking doctor on his cell. An elderly gentleman pushed a woman of the same age through the lobby in a wheelchair, talking softly to her as they went by. It was like a replay of the images she had seen in Portsmouth General. The only thing she spotted even slightly out of the ordinary was a heavy man in a Hawaiian shirt and a bad toupee who entered the automatic doors and marched up to Randolph's station.

  "Can you get me in right now for these blood tests? I haven't got time to wait this morning, Randy," he said loudly, sliding a form across the desk. "City business to attend to."

  "I'll see what I can do, Mayor," the elderly volunteer replied as he scurried through a door behind him.

  While the mayor waited, he leaned against the counter and wiped his sweaty forehead with a folded white handkerchief. He caught Jillian's eye and smiled.

  She gave a quick smile back and lowered her nose to the magazine, feeling silly for having been caught eavesdropping.

  Randolph returned a minute later and ushered the mayor down the hall toward the outpatient area. The two disappeared into the bowels of the hospital, and the volunteer soon returned, minus the mayor, looking relieved.

  Jillian hadn't waited five minutes longer when a young woman cheerfully called her name.

  "Here." Jillian dropped the magazine and grabbed her purse.

  "I'm Missy and I'll be taking care of you today," the bright-eyed, slightly plump hospital employee said from the outpatient services hallway.

  Jillian noted that she wore a blue smock with yellow Spongebob characters all over it. Again, it struck that she recognized a kid's cartoon character, but she didn't know what her own occupation was. This morning it didn't upset her, though. This morning, it just seemed funny.

  Missy led her down a wide corridor into a small lab where Jillian took a seat in a chair that resembled an old-fashioned school desk. She flipped the armrest down herself and offered her left arm.

  "Randolph says you're visiting us this week," Missy said cheerfully as she placed labels with Jillian's name and patient number on glass tubes.

  "Yes. I rented a cottage on the ocean. Off Juniper."

  "Ocean front. Great."

  There was a knock on the open door, and a nice-looking man in his early to mid-thirties poked his head through the doorway. "Sorry," he apologized to Jillian before turning his attention to his co-worker. "Missy, can I grab a couple of syringes? I don't know who is stocking these rooms, but—"

  "They ought to fire his or her butt," Missy finished for him. "Help yourself." She gestured to the counter. "This morning I didn't have a single cotton ball when I saw my first patient at six."

  The lab technician took two white boxes from a stack on the counter and disappeared down the hall.

  "Sorry about that." Missy tied Jillian's arm with a short length of rubber tubing.

  "No problem." She glanced out the door, into the open hallway. "I've only been in town since yesterday, but everyone seems so nice."

  "It's a great place to visit." The technician thumped the vein in the crook of Jillian's elbow. "A little stick, now." She eased the needle into the vein and popped a vial on the end of the syringe, removing the tourniquet. "Terrific place to raise children, too."

  Jillian watched as the vial filled with blood.

  "You have kids?" Missy asked. She removed the vial and snapped on another empty one.

  "No."Jillian offered a quick smile. "But maybe someday." She didn't know what made her say that, but she sensed it wasn't the first time the words had come from her mouth.

  "There. All done." Missy removed the needle and pressed a cotton ball to the tiny bubble of blood in the crook of Jillian's arm. "Just hold that up for a sec." She guided her arm in the air.

  Missy dropped the vials of blood into a little tray and reached into a glass jar full of Band-Aids. "Let's see, Rugrats, Tweety, my favorite Spongebob." She plucked her smock. "Or boring old plain Band-Aids."

  "Tweety," Jillian said.

  Missy put the Band-Aid on Jillian's arm. "Okay, you can go. We'll have the results faxed to your doctor, oh... probably tomorrow." She turned to her. "So have a great day on the beach."

  "Thanks. "Jillian walked out of the lab, down the hall, and through the doors of the hospital, out into the parking lot. As she climbed into her car, she realized that if she was going to be at the beach for the week, she needed a bathing suit. She glanced up at the sky and squinted. "And suntan lotion and a pair of sunglasses," she told herself aloud.

  Jillian stopped at a small shopping center she had passed on her way to the hospital this morning. She picked up the suntan lotion and a cute pair of ten-dollar sunglasses, but choosing a bathing suit took longer. As she held two suits up for inspection, she wondered what kind of woman she was. A one-piece or a two-piece? Trying them on behind a curtain in a makeshift fitting room in the back of the store, she decided she had a pretty nice body. No stretch marks. Pert breasts for a woman some
where in her mid-thirties.

  She went with the two-piece in navy. It was simple, but contemporary. She also grabbed a pair of rubber flip-flops printed in navy and white Hawaiian flowers. On her way through the checkout line, she picked up a striped white and blue beach towel, a six-pack of sodas, and two bags of pretzels. Two for the price of one. As she paid for her purchases, she thought that at the rate she was going through money, she was going to have to think about a job at some point. The question was, doing what?

  In the parking lot, Jillian tossed her bags in the trunk. As she came around the side of the car, a man she recognized from the previous day approached her.

  "So how's the old Williams' place?" Seth, the realtor, grinned.

  "Fine. Great." Feeling uncomfortable with the way he walked right up to her, getting into her personal space, she opened the car door, putting it between them. "How'd you know I was the person who took it?"

  "Small town." He grinned. "I'm Seth Watkins."

  "Yes, I know."

  "You do?"

  "Small town," she said. "And..." She pointed at his name badge.

  He looked down at the tag on his madras plaid shirt, then up at her and laughed. "Yeah, right."

  Jillian had fished her new sunglasses out of a bag before closing the trunk, and she now fiddled with the tag on the nosepiece.

  "Well, if there's anything you need. Anything I can do. It's my listing," he explained. "Just call me at Waterfront Realty." He grabbed a lime-green pen from his pocket and offered it. "Number's right there."

  "Thanks." She didn't really want the pen, but she took it and slid into the front seat. "Have a good day," she called before slamming the door.

  Seth stood there for a second, then gave a wave and walked away, seeming to at last get the hint. Jillian tossed the pen on the seat and gave the price tag on the glasses a final tug. It came free and she pushed the glasses on before starting the engine. It was stifling in the car, but she didn't want to roll down the window. That guy gave her the creeps.