Disturbed

by Kevin O'Brien

  Molly shuddered. “God, don’t remind me.” She’d read all about the Renton killings online and in the Seattle Times.

  “Jesus, the whole family.” He sighed. “It’s enough to make you sick. The twin girls were Erin’s age.” He gave Molly’s shoulder a squeeze. “I don’t feel good leaving you and the kids alone for two nights — not while this maniac is on the loose.”

  Molly shrugged. “You can’t go changing your work schedule because of some nutcase. It could be a while before the police catch him.” She tried to smile. “Besides, we’ll be okay, because I’m going to that Neighborhood Watch potluck today. I’ll know just what to do in case a serial killer comes knocking on our front door. . ”

  The lunch would be across the street at the Hahns’ house. A police detective had been invited to speak to the residents of the cul-de-sac. That included Jeff’s ex-wife’s two best friends, Lynette Hahn and Kay Garvey.

  Angela would be attending, too. She was still chummy-chummy with her Willow Tree Court pals, even though she lived on another cul-de-sac — in Bellevue with her new boyfriend and his thirteen-year-old daughter. The new relationship didn’t keep Angela from meddling in Jeff’s life. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that she talked to her kids every day and asked them to convey messages to their dad. At least once a week, she was back in her old stomping grounds to visit Lynette or Kay. She even tried to make friends with Molly early on. But Molly quickly figured out this was just another way for Angela to have some kind of control over Jeff — albeit indirectly. It seemed pretty damn manipulative. So Molly did her best to avoid Jeff’s ex — and stayed distantly polite to her.

  She wasn’t looking forward to this Neighborhood Watch potluck with Angela and her cronies. She’d almost just as soon take her chances with a serial killer.

  “I thought that lunch wasn’t until tomorrow,” Jeff said, opening the car door. “And aren’t those neighborhood watch things held on weekends and evenings so it doesn’t interfere with people’s work schedules?”

  “Not this one. Lynette pulled some strings. It’s in four hours, and I still have to make chocolate chip cookies for it. Do you want me to pass along any messages to the former Mrs. Dennehy?”

  “Just that I’m blissfully happy,” he said, kissing her. Then he climbed into the car and buckled his seat belt. “Good luck with that crowd.”

  Molly gave him a wry smile. “We who are about to die salute you.”

  Shutting his door, he blew her a kiss, and then started up the car. He backed out of the garage. Molly waved at her husband.

  The garage door started to descend. As the Lexus drove off, Molly caught a glimpse of a strange car parked in front of Dr. and Mrs. Nguyen’s house. She hadn’t noticed the metallic blue minivan earlier when she’d walked back from Erin’s bus stop. Then again, she hadn’t really been paying attention.

  She ducked inside — through the garage entrance, then past the closed door to the basement, through the kitchen area, the dining room, and finally the living room in the front of the house. At the big picture window, she pushed aside the sheer curtain and glanced out at that minivan again. It was too far away for her to tell if someone was in the front seat.

  This would probably be one of the first items the cop would address at the Neighborhood Watch potluck in a few hours: Look out for unfamiliar cars parked on your cul-de-sac. The Nguyens lived in Denver eight months out of the year, and sometimes, they had friends using the place. Molly had to remind herself that it wasn’t so unusual to see a strange car parked in front of their house.

  Stepping away from the window, she wondered if — before last week — the mother of those twin girls had been on the lookout for strange cars in their cul-de-sac in Renton.

  She remembered the front-page headlines in the Seattle Times last Tuesday. She remembered, because she’d looked up the article again online just last night. She’d become a bit fixated on the murders.

  RENTON FAMILY SLAIN4 dead in Another Cul-de-Sac Killing PARENTS AND TWIN DAUGHTERS STABBING VICTIMS

  A photo of the murdered family ran under the headline. It showed the dark-haired, husky father and his pretty, somewhat mousy, blond wife. Grinning proudly, they posed behind their blond daughters in one of those family portraits from Sears or JCPenney. The twins looked darling. They were laughing in the picture. One of them was missing a front tooth.

  SENSELESS MURDER, read the caption. Renton residents, Lyle Winters, 33, and wife, Terri Anne, 31, in a photo taken last October with their 6-year-old twin daughters, Claudia and Colette. The family was brutally slain in their Loretta Court home late Sunday night. This is the fourth in a series of bizarre cul-de-sac killings in the Seattle area since February.

  The news article had been broken up with different subheadlines in boldface print: Neighbors Heard Nothing, No Screams — Every Light Was On and Bodies in Closets, A Killer’s Calling Card.

  Each time this Cul-de-sac Killer struck, he left nearly all of the lights on inside the house — and his victims shut inside closets.

  Lyle Winters, his throat slashed, was found in the closet off their guest room. His wife, strangled and stabbed repeatedly, was discovered in the master bedroom closet, curled up amid some shoes and a pile of blouses that had fallen off their hangers. Both children were stabbed and left — one on top of the other — in their bedroom closet.

  Like nearly everyone who lived on a cul-de-sac in the Seattle area, Molly was constantly on her guard now. That was why she walked Erin to the bus stop every morning and waited there with her. It was why she kept a lookout for strange cars on the block. They never used to turn on their house alarm at night, but they did now.

  The newspapers didn’t mention if any of the Cul-de-sac Killer’s victims had home security systems.

  Molly had read so much about the murders that she’d almost become an expert. She didn’t know why she’d become so preoccupied with the cul-de-sac killings — except perhaps to make sure it didn’t happen to her new family.

  The first to die had been an elderly woman, Irene Haskel, who lived alone in a split-level house on a dead-end street in Ballard. A neighbor had noticed nearly all of Irene’s lights were on for three nights in a row. She stopped by to discover Irene’s front door ajar — and a foul odor permeating the seemingly empty house. Irene’s neighbor followed the pungent smell to a bedroom closet in the upper level. The Seattle Times reported that Irene had thirty-eight stab wounds.

  The killer struck again a week later, stabbing three coeds who lived in a townhouse on a dead end near Seattle Pacific University. A fourth roommate, who had spent that night at a friend’s apartment, returned the following afternoon to find all the lights on inside the townhouse. She also found all her roommates’ bodies, stashed in closets on the second floor.

  A month passed, and it happened again — this time, a married couple in their fifties, who lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Coming home from college for a weekend visit, their son discovered the blood — and then their bodies, stuffed in two upstairs closets.

  And now this family of four was slaughtered just last week.

  Nervously rubbing her arms, Molly returned to the kitchen. Going through the cabinets and the refrigerator, she started to pull out all the ingredients for Toll House cookies. She didn’t want to think about the cul-de-sac murders now, not while she was the only one home. She felt uncomfortable enough in Angela’s house.

  The place still seemed to belong to Jeff’s ex-wife. Hell, half the spices in the kitchen cupboard had been bought by Angela. The glasses she drank from, the plates the family used — they were all Angela’s.

  Molly started mixing up the white and brown sugar, eggs, and butter in a bowl. She kept glancing over at the sliding glass doors in the big family room off the kitchen area. The backyard was rather small — with just enough room for a gas grill, a patio, and a small strip of grass. The forest started only fifteen or twenty feet behind the house. Some evenings, raccoons came right up
to the other side of the sliding glass door. When Molly was alone in the house at night, she occasionally got scared and imagined something else emerging from that dark forest to watch her through the glass, something on two legs instead of four.

  She thought about closing the drapes, but they were so damn ugly — maroon with gold fleur-de-lis on a heavy, velvetlike material. Hello, Angela, what were you thinking?

  Given her druthers, Molly would have redecorated the entire first floor. She didn’t share Angela’s fondness for hunter green, maroon, and gold — and the charmless, dark, Mediterranean furniture that made the big family room look like the lobby of a small, cheesy Best Western. She also thought the tall grandfather clock that didn’t work was kind of ugly. But Molly told herself that Jeff’s kids were going through enough changes in their lives. They probably didn’t want to see their mother’s house transformed into something else entirely. Nevertheless, every other week, Molly would make a subtle alteration to Angela’s drab, almost impersonal design scheme. One week, she added jazzy throw pillows to the hunter-green sofa. Another week — and about time — she got rid of a tall, ugly standing vase with a dried flower arrangement in it.

  Molly figured three dozen cookies were enough for Angela and her pals. They’d probably turn up their noses at dessert anyway. It was a competitively thin crowd.

  She left the cookies out to cool and started washing the dishes. The phone rang. She grabbed the kitchen cordless on the third ring. “Yes, hello?”

  “It’s above the heart now,” whispered the woman on the other end. At least that was what it sounded like she said.

  “Pardon me?” Molly said. She pulled the phone away from her ear for a moment so she could glance at the caller ID screen on the receiver. CALLER UNKNOWN, it said.

  “Pardon me?” Molly repeated into the phone. “Hello?”

  There was a click on the other end of the line.

  Frowning, Molly hung up. She moved over to the glass doors and peered out at the backyard once more. The sky had grown dark, and the woods looked gray and a bit sinister. Trees and shrubs swayed in the wind. She wondered if the cul-de-sacs where the killer had struck were in wooded areas.

  “Would you cut it out already, Molly?” she muttered to herself. She checked the lock on the sliding door.

  She really wished Jeff hadn’t mentioned the cul-de-sac murders earlier. Of course, before Jeff brought up the serial killings, she’d been unnerved by the news of Ray Corson’s death — another senseless murder.

  Molly heard the washing-machine buzzer go off downstairs in the basement. She’d put her coffee-spattered sweatpants and some other clothes in the quick cycle a half hour ago. With a sigh, she plodded to the basement door. Opening it, she switched on the stairwell light. It sputtered and went out.

  “Oh, terrific,” she muttered. “I really need this now.”

  She could see the overhead in the rec room still worked. The staircase was a bit dark, but Molly held on to the banister and quickly made her way down there. The rec room was the kids’ domain. In one corner sat a rowing machine belonging to Jeff, but in the ten months they’d been married, Molly had yet to see him use it. She guessed Jeff and Angela bought the maroon sectional sofa and black end tables at Ikea. The fat, clunky big-screen TV was from before the day of HD and plasma. Chris must have been in charge of the art on the walls — which included a Mariners poster, a lighted Hamm’s Beer clock, movie posters of Zoolander and Avatar, and four pictures of dogs playing poker. The Ping-Pong table had become a catchall for everything from Erin’s Barbie Dream House to a science-project volcano Chris had built with papier-mâché, paint, and some chemicals.

  There was also a small walk-in closet — with shelves full of board games, sports equipment, and toys. The door was open a crack. Molly paused in front of it. She imagined Jeff lying dead on the floor in there, his throat slit — just like Lyle Winters. The thought made her skin crawl. She tried to push it out of her mind.

  Nervously rubbing her gooseflesh-covered arms, Molly retreated to the laundry and utility room. With its bare floor, exposed pipes overhead, and shadowy nooks around the furnace and water heater, the big room was kind of creepy. It had become cluttered with unwanted furniture and knickknacks from Jeff’s years with Angela. There were also some collapsed folding chairs leaning against a square support beam, and boxes of Christmas decorations.

  Molly emptied out the washer and tossed the damp clothes in the dryer. While she threw in a strip of Bounce, her mind started to wander toward that morbid direction again.

  Why does he put the bodies in closets? Why does he leave practically all the lights on inside the houses of his victims? The police must have come up with some theories. Maybe she’d ask the cop at the potluck.

  While setting the timer for the dryer, Molly thought she heard a creaking sound above her. Quit it, she told herself. It’s the house settling, stupid — or maybe something outside. You’re all alone here. From everything she’d read, the Cul-de-sac Killer usually struck at night. And right now, it was ten o’clock in the morning. Quit it, she told herself again.

  Molly closed the dryer door and pushed the start button. The dryer drum began rolling and roaring. But the sound she heard past the racket was unmistakable.

  Upstairs someplace, a door slammed shut.

  “Shit,” Molly whispered, a hand over her heart. She quickly reached over and switched off the dryer. The rumbling noise stopped, and the hot air gave out one last wheeze. Molly stood perfectly still, and listened. She didn’t hear anything upstairs.

  Glancing over at Jeff’s worktable, she made a beeline for it and snatched the crowbar from a hook on the wall. She took a deep breath and crept back into the rec room. Then she made her way up the darkened stairs to the first floor. She cautiously looked around. Everything seemed just the way she’d left it five minutes ago.

  “Hello? Is anyone home?” Molly called, a nervous tremor in her voice. She wondered if maybe Chris had decided not to go to school today after all — and he’d come back. “Chris? Is that you?”

  No one answered.

  Molly checked the locks on the front door, the garage door entrance, and even the sliding glass doors — which she’d just checked minutes before. All of them were locked. But that didn’t make her feel any better.

  Tightening her grip on the crowbar, she headed up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, she saw Erin’s bedroom door was closed. Erin never shut her door — not even while she was sleeping in there.

  Molly tiptoed down the hallway and slowly opened Erin’s door. She felt a cool breeze against her hands and face. The window was open. The lacy white curtain billowed. The wind slammed the door shut, it’s that simple, she told herself. Still, she checked Erin’s closet before she went to the window and shut it with one hand. She wasn’t ready to let go of the crowbar, not just yet.

  Molly looked in the guest room and Chris’s bedroom — the closets, too. She poked her head in the kids’ bathroom, and then scurried down the hallway to the master bedroom. It was empty — as was the big walk-in closet and master bath. Molly even peeked behind the closed shower curtain. Nothing.

  Jeff had let her redecorate their quarters. But even with the bedroom’s new Mission-style furniture, a recent paint job (sea-foam green), new carpeting, and photos of her and Jeff prominently displayed — it still seemed like Angela’s domain. Angela had been with Jeff in that bedroom first.

  Molly still held on to the crowbar, but it was down at her side. She paused at the doorway to the third floor. Maybe she was being silly, but it was worth checking up there — just to put her mind at rest. She climbed up the stairs.

  The third floor was the only place in the house Molly felt was totally hers. With her own savings, she took Angela’s unfinished attic and transformed it into an art studio. She’d even had a bathroom installed up there. There was also a very comfortable chaise longue on which life-study models could pose — and Molly could nap.

  She glanc
ed inside the bathroom: nothing. Her one closet was so narrow and crammed with easel frames, canvas, and paint supplies, if someone could hide in there, he’d need to be half her size and a contortionist. She was alone up here.

  With a sigh, she looked at the painting-in-progress on her easel in front of the dormer window. It showed a shapely, gorgeous, tawny-haired woman in a torn bodice — which still needed some detail painted in. Standing proudly, she looked skyward as a shirtless hunk knelt behind her with his brawny arms wrapped around her trim waist. In the background, a full moon illuminated a castle by the sea. This would be the cover to Desiree’s Destiny, the latest in a series of romance novels. Molly had already gotten the advance money for it: $1,750, minus her agent’s commission. She would get the same amount once she delivered the finished painting. She’d created all seven of the Desiree covers, so far. Both Desiree’s resemblance to Angelina Jolie and the always-shirtless Lord Somerton’s similarity to Jude Law were no mistake.

  It wasn’t exactly what Molly had intended to do after six years in art school, but book covers, magazine illustrations, and ads had become her bread and butter. Occasionally, she sold one of her more serious works. She was proud of those paintings, mostly still-life studies or moody portraits that seemed to tell a story. Her Woman Playing Solitaire (at a dinette table with a melancholy look on her face and a cigarette in one hand), went for $2,600 at the Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown. But sales like that were few and far between.

  Before marrying Jeff, she’d barely eked out a living as an artist, so Molly had taken on an assortment of parttime and temp jobs: everything from office worker to waitress to hotel desk clerk. She’d figured she was paying her dues. Molly felt a bit guilty for not needing to work those kinds of jobs anymore. She had quite a nice setup here. She wondered if Angela and her friends said as much behind her back.