by Lisa Unger
It amazed her that, with all the demons she had battled since the death of her mother, both internal and external, there were still so many left to fight … Jed McIntyre not least among them.
Two days before Jed McIntyre murdered Marion Strong, Lydia saw him in a supermarket parking lot. She was waiting for her mother in the car while Marion ran into the A&P to get a quart of milk. Sitting in her mother’s old Buick, the fifteen-year-old Lydia punched the hard plastic keys on the AM/FM radio, checking each preset station for acceptable listening, when she felt the hairs raise on the back of her neck. She felt heat that started at the base of her skull and moved like fire down her spine. A hollow of fear opened in her belly. She turned around and looked out the rear windshield.
The car’s front windows were open and the already cool fall air seemed to chill. The man stood with his legs a little more than shoulder length apart, one hand in the pocket of his denim jacket and one resting on the sideview mirror of his red and white car, which reminded Lydia of the car in Starsky and Hutch. His flaming red hair was curly and disheveled, blowing into his eyes. She remembered that he did not move to keep it off his face. He just stared and rocked lightly back onto his heels and then forward onto the balls of his feet. Seeing him standing beside his car, his gaze locked on her, made her senses tingle. She detected his malice in his unyielding stare, his perversion in the way he began to caress the sideview mirror when their eyes met. She had reached to lock the doors and roll up the windows without taking her eyes off of him.
When her mother returned to the car, Lydia pointed out the man to her and he just stood there smiling. Marion tried to tell her it was nothing. But Lydia could see her mother was afraid in the hurried way she threw the milk into the backseat and got into the car, the way she fumbled to put the key in the ignition. They drove off and the man pulled out after them. But when Marion made a quick turn, he did not pursue them. They laughed; the threat, real or imagined, was gone. But Lydia would look back at that moment as the point at which she could have saved her mother’s life. She had written down the license plate number with blue eyeliner on the back of a note a friend had passed to her in class. That information had led to the apprehension of Jed McIntyre, serial murderer of thirteen single mothers in the Nyack, New York, area. But only after he had killed Marion Strong, leaving her where Lydia would find her beaten and violated as she returned home from school.
She knew now, of course, that even if they had reported the parking lot incident to the police, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. But when she got that feeling, the feeling she and Jeffrey had come to know as “the buzz,” she had never been able to walk away from it again. Wondering always who else would die if she did.
She had walked away from the missing twins, from Eleanor and Julian Ross tonight, not because this curiosity, the need to hunt the demons and save their victims, had died. It was not that she didn’t care about the children, Julian’s plight, or Eleanor’s murder. She did very much; this drive was alive and well within her. It was just that the loss of her baby, the risk to her own life, and the damage done to her body had made clear things that had always been nebulous. She had realized for the first time how much her own life was worth, how much she cherished her time with Jeffrey, and how much, even though she hadn’t realized it, she had wanted to be a mother. She rested her head on her arm and let a tear fall, as a hot wave of sadness swept over her.
There was a kind of peace to her grief, though. There was an irony to the situation that was not lost on her. Only the loss of her pregnancy could have made her see what it took to be a mother. And how she never could have taken care of her child when she wasn’t even willing to take care of herself. Something in the fact that she had learned this lesson comforted her, made her believe that there would be another chance to do it right. She was reminded of the airplane safety rule stating that should the oxygen masks drop you should put on your own mask before putting it on your child. Something that seems so selfish, so backward, may be the ultimate selfless act. You can’t help anyone until you’ve helped yourself.
The kettle on the stainless steel stovetop whistled and Lydia got up to make herself a cup of raspberry tea. She took the cup and placed it on the coffee table, pulled off her boots and lay on the couch. She pulled the chenille blanket over herself and sank into the plush furniture. She thought to turn on the television and watch the news, but she decided no. She thought briefly that she should check her messages. But she didn’t do that, either. She never even had a chance to sip her tea because sleep came for her hard and fast and there was no resisting.
chapter twenty-nine
Sitting alone there, Anthony had indeed, as Ford suspected, whipped himself into a frenzy of worry, deciding confession and contrition were his only options. By the time Ford arrived, Anthony was barely holding it in. When Ford walked into the room, it reeked of fear and body odor. Ford hadn’t even taken his seat before Anthony started talking.
“She hated Julian Ross. And Eleanor, too. I mean hated their guts,” said Anthony, wiping perspiration from his brow. He looked pale in the harsh fluorescents, with black smudges of fatigue and worry under his eyes. Anthony was a reasonably big guy with broad shoulders and thick arms, but behind the long table he looked deflated.
“Who did?”
“Geneva … or whatever her name was.”
“Annabelle.”
“Yeah.”
“So you talked about Julian,” said Ford, leaning his elbows on the table and folding his hands.
“And Eleanor. Yeah, we talked sometimes.”
“So the whole dick-sucking incident wasn’t your first encounter, is what you’re telling me. Because before, you made it sound like—”
Anthony held up a hand and gave a nod. “We talked a couple of times. Nothing serious, you know. Not like we were dating or anything. I took her for coffee around the corner. But that’s it. I swear.”
“When did you talk?”
“She’d come down at night, after the kids were in bed. Sometimes she’d bring a couple of beers. She was lonely. I thought she was lonely,” he said. His mouth had turned down at the corners and he shook his head a little bit. Anthony had been used and it was just starting to dawn on him. Ford felt for the guy, he really did.
“So what did you talk about?”
“About Julian and Eleanor Ross, mostly. She did most of the talking. I listened,” he said, looking down at the table. “I guess, looking back, it always seemed like I could have been there, or not.”
“So what kind of things did she say?”
“A lot of it didn’t make sense. She would start off talking about what a bitch Ms. Ross was, how badly she treated her, Geneva—Annabelle, I mean. Then she would start on how Julian didn’t deserve the life she had, her husband, the twins, all their money. But then she’d say things like, ‘One day soon, that’s all going to change.’ When I asked her what she meant, she’d say that the past was bound to catch up with Julian and Eleanor Ross.”
“You didn’t think that was an odd thing to say?”
“I guess, to be honest, I wasn’t really thinking too much about what she was saying,” he said, looking at Ford sheepishly. “She was, you know, really hot. I was mostly just thinking about what it would be like to fuck her.”
Ford nodded, not surprised.
“Did it sound like a threat to you? Like she was planning to hurt Julian Ross?”
“No … it sounded more like a prediction.”
Ford cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “A prediction.”
“Yeah, like she knew something bad was going to happen; not like she was threatening to make her pay for something. There’s a difference, don’t you think?”
Ford shrugged. “Did she ever talk about her home, her family? Did she ever mention Haunted?”
“She said she was part Haitian. Seemed pretty proud of it. She said, and I remember thinking this was weird, that she had the blood of a voodoo pries
tess in her veins. I was, like, You’re not going to put a curse on me, are you? She didn’t seem to think that was very funny.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Not if you’re good.’ But she didn’t laugh or anything. She was a little freaky, I guess.”
“I guess.”
Back to the voodoo curses, thought Ford. Lydia Strong might not have been as far off base as he’d thought. He looked at Anthony, who instead of seeming less agitated after spilling his guts seemed to be getting more uncomfortable. He shifted up in his chair, rolled his neck and shoulders, releasing audible pops.
“What else, Anthony?”
He shrugged, looked around the room. He nodded to himself finally, as if coming to a decision after an internal conference.
“Tonight. She was there again tonight.”
Ford shook his head in disbelief. “And you’re just getting to this now?”
“I didn’t know …” he said, his voice trailing off miserably.
“What did she want?”
“She didn’t come to see me.”
“Who’d she come to see?” asked Ford, feeling like he was going to have to wrestle every last bit of information from this kid.
“Eleanor Ross.”
“And coincidentally, now Eleanor Ross is dead. And the twins missing.”
Anthony nodded.
“What time did she come?”
“Around nine-thirty. Just after I came on duty.”
“So you called up to Eleanor and told her Geneva was here.”
“She said Eleanor was expecting her. That she was holding a paycheck for Geneva, and that she still had a key.”
“So you didn’t call up?”
Anthony hesitated a moment and then shook his head.
“And what time did she leave?”
“I never saw her leave. I thought she was still up there, maybe playing with the twins.”
Ford turned it over in his mind. The basement entrance had been sealed and was no longer a way in or out. The back door, he knew, was attached to a fire alarm.
“Let me just ask you, Anthony,” said Ford, reaching. “Did the fire alarm go off tonight for any reason?”
“Yeah, that thing is always acting up,” he said with a laugh and a shake of his head like they were talking about a mischievous child. Then it dawned on him. “Oh … yeah.”
“What time was that?”
“I guess about an hour before you arrived.”
“Anything else, Anthony? And I mean anything.”
Anthony shook his head slowly, his eyes telling Ford that he was searching the limited database of his brain. “Nope,” he said finally. “Can I go now?”
“Did you tell any of this to Peter Rawls when he talked to you?”
Anthony shook his head. Ford glared at him and Anthony seemed to shrink into himself.
“With missing kids, every hour, shit, every minute counts. You may just cost those kids their lives. I hope you can live with that, Anthony.”
Anthony started to blubber again. Ford was old school. He really hated it when men cried. He turned his back on the man and walked out the door.
“But—” Anthony was protesting as Ford closed the door behind him. He turned the camera and audio recorder off from the switch that looked like a thermostat outside the door.
Returning to his office, he called Peter Rawls and told him about Annabelle Hodge. Rawls sounded excited by the news of a suspect and he hung up the phone quickly. Then Ford called Piselli and told him to make sure that Rawls got anything from their files on Annabelle that he needed. He thought about the kids for a minute, remembering how they’d clasped hands during the interview with Irma Fox. And it made him think of his Katie and Jimmy. He thought about little Nicky Warren watching his mother shoot his father. He felt a rush of anger at the way kids get crushed when adults fail to protect them.
He leaned back in his chair, absently tapping an impatient staccato on the desk, trying to strategize his next move. His fingers touched manila.
Sitting on his desk was nothing short of a miracle. DNA evidence analysis takes weeks, sometimes months, especially in New York. Now, with all the cold cases being reopened, death row appeals, you’re lucky to get your results at all. But Ford had a few friends, and the Ross case was a high priority. Still, he was surprised to see an envelope from the lab on his desk. In spite of the lecture he’d delivered to Lydia Strong, he had sent her Milky Way wrapper, with the hairs from the Tad Jenson murder scene, up to the lab.
“Well, goddamn,” he said softly, scanning the report. “It’s a match.”
He’d sat there at his desk, working out what this might mean. It didn’t mean James Ross was still alive, necessarily. They didn’t have a DNA sample on him to compare to the hair and the wrapper. Legally, it only meant that someone at the scene of the Tad Jenson murder had also been in the basement of the Ross house in Haunted. Ford picked up the phone on his desk. When he didn’t get Jeff, he left a message.
“Jeff, it’s Ford. Listen, Lydia was right. That DNA evidence from the Milky Way bar links whoever attacked her in the Ross home with someone present at the Jenson scene. I’m not sure what it means, but I’m heading up to Haunted. This can’t wait till tomorrow, especially with the twins missing. I’ll keep you posted.”
chapter thirty
The ringing of her cell phone woke her finally. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was after two. It took her a few seconds to orient herself … home alone, Jeffrey not back, phone ringing … where’s the phone? She found it in her jacket and saw on the caller ID that it was Jeffrey.
“Where are you?” she answered.
“Hello, Lydia.”
She let silence be her answer as dread swelled within her. His voice had a nasal quality, a kind of raspy edge to it that she recognized even though she’d heard him speak only a few times. The room seemed to spin around her.
“You don’t have to answer. I know you know who this is, old friend.”
She didn’t say anything because she couldn’t. Fear had lodged itself in her throat like a chicken bone.
“It’s been too long. We must get together, Lydia. It’ll be a party. Your beloved Jeffrey and your friend and guardian Dax have already joined me. It wouldn’t be the same without you. But, darling, it’s a private party. Do not contact your friend Ford or Agent Goban. Come alone, come as you are, and come quickly.”
“You don’t have them,” she managed, clinging to denial. This wasn’t happening. It was too much like a nightmare. “I don’t believe you.”
Her mind raced. Wasn’t this phone tapped? And then she remembered that no, only the land line was trapped. The cell transmissions weren’t always monitored.
“We’ve been through so much together. Do you think I’d lie to you?”
When she said nothing, his voice changed from mocking, crooning, to razor-sharp.
“Think about it. Do you really think you’d be alone right now if I didn’t? For such well-armed, well-trained men, it was really ridiculously easy.”
“Where are you?” she said, suppressing a wave of nausea.
He told her where he wanted her to meet him.
“Remember, Lydia: One phone call from you to anyone and the party is over. Do you understand me?”
“I do.”
The line went dead. Lydia waited, blood rushing in her ears, throat dry as sand, heart thumping. She waited to wake up in her bed, Jeffrey breathing beside her. When she didn’t, she ran upstairs to their bedroom. She pulled off her shirt and pulled on a black ribbed Calvin Klein sweater of Jeffrey’s. She traded the yoga pants she was wearing for comfort, since her abdomen was still swollen from surgery, for a pair of Levi’s. She unlocked the safe in the floor and removed a Smith and Wesson .38 Special and a shoulder holster.
Downstairs, she took the Glock from her bag and stuffed it in the back of her jeans, donned her leather jacket and a pair of soft black leather motorcycle boots at the door, and she
was gone. Adrenaline had taken care of her pain and fatigue, for the time being at least.
chapter thirty-one
He recognized the smell, but he just couldn’t see through the blackness that surrounded him; it was a copious dark in which not even a pinprick of light had survived. He could feel the space, cold and concrete, damp. As he fought to hold on to consciousness, his head nothing but a house of pain, he knew something was not as it should be. He just couldn’t remember what. There was an odd tightness in his limbs. He was having difficulty breathing and he felt as if the room were spinning … or maybe his head was spinning. He tried to piece together the last events of his memory, but they eluded him, like the fading images of a dream.
There was a low groan to the left of him. And in hearing it, memory came rushing back like a kick in the teeth.
He’d taken the call from Dax and rushed to meet him, uneasiness buzzing in his subconscious. Something about Dax’s voice, something about the way he’d said Jeff’s name. Normally, his accent seemed to drag the word out, imbuing it with a rising and falling of tone, like Jay-eh-f. There was usually something pleasant about his tone, even when it was gruff, something musical and comforting about that Aussie accent. But that night, he’d seemed terse, his accent strained. If it hadn’t been for the caller ID announcing his number, Jeffrey might not have recognized Dax’s voice at all. But he’d ignored the alarm bells ringing, told himself that Dax was just excited and in a rush.
There are a few significant ways in which life is not like movies. Here, bound in the darkness, scared and disoriented, Jeffrey thought of one of those ways. In the real world, sometimes people disappear and no one who loves them ever knows what happened to them. Like the West Village couple who were expecting friends for dinner one fall evening a couple of years back. When their friends arrived and rang the buzzer, no answer. After waiting around for an hour or so, they figured that there had been a misunderstanding about date and time and left. But three days later, the superintendent lets NYPD into that apartment, after numerous calls from family and friends, and the table is set for entertaining, food is on the stove and in the oven; their shoes are by the door. It was as if something had sucked them from their life still in their stocking feet.