Disturbed

by Kevin O'Brien

  While stashed in the darkened bedroom closet, she’d managed to find the knife she’d hidden and cut herself free. She’d heard him in the guest room, talking with Jenna Corson. She’d been unable to make out the words, but from their tone, it had sounded like they were having a normal conversation.

  Once Molly had crept out of the master bedroom, the murmurings in the guest room next door had become clearer. Jenna Corson had been talking: “. . so actually, see, you’re doing me a favor. Just let me take the little girl, and I’ll go quietly. I won’t do a thing to stop you. In fact, you can take as long as you want with the other two. I’m in no position to contact the police — ever. Don’t you see what a wonderful opportunity this is for you to demonstrate your power? By letting me live, you show that you’re not a monster. You’re in total control. You’re calling the shots. We’re a lot alike, you and me. . ”

  Molly had checked both Chris and Erin’s rooms and found the closets empty. She’d felt such relief, she’d almost cried. While in Erin’s room, she’d heard the man muttering something in response to Jenna’s proposition. For a few moments, she’d wondered what he’d said.

  But now as she stood outside the guest room, Molly knew his answer.

  She heard Jenna Corson screaming: “God, please, no! Wait. .”

  Molly saw her chance to escape. But she couldn’t. Despite everything Jenna had done, Molly couldn’t just leave her there with that killer. In the next room, Jenna was shrieking. And in all probability, the soft, punching noise was the sound of his knife penetrating her skin.

  Molly opened the door, and for a few seconds, she was so horror-struck she couldn’t move. Only the closet light was on, but it was enough for her discern the grisly scene in front of her. Jenna was squirming on the floor as he stabbed her. Her hands still tied in back of her, she writhed and screamed. Her poncho was covered with blood. Bent over her, the Cul-de-sac Killer was so enrapt in his work he didn’t seem to notice the hallway light. He didn’t seem to notice someone else had come into the room.

  Molly suddenly snapped to. Rushing toward him with the knife, she thrust it in his back — just below his left shoulder blade. He let out a howl and twisted around so quickly the knife handle snapped off. The blade was only halfway inside him.

  Wide-eyed, he glared at her. Dropping his bloodstained hunting knife, he turned on Molly. All at once, his hands were around her throat. She fought him off as best she could. She couldn’t breathe or scream out. He almost lifted her off her feet as he pushed against the wall. Molly struggled, clawing at his hands and face. But he was relentless. His stranglehold only became tighter until he was crushing her windpipe. She started to black out.

  Suddenly Chris burst into the room with a baseball bat. The man let go of Molly and reached for his gun.

  She fell down on the floor and gasped for air.

  Chris swung the bat at him, slamming it against his arm. Molly heard something crack. The killer let out another howl. He swiveled around, and she glimpsed the blood on his pale blue shirt — trailing down from the blade sticking out of his back. His hand fumbled for the gun in his holster, but the way his arm dangled at his side, it looked broken. He backed toward the wall.

  “Son of a bitch,” Chris cried, swinging the bat at him again.

  The killer dodged it, and fell back against the wall. All at once, he froze. His eyes locked on Chris. A gasp came from his open mouth — along with a little stream of blood. He coughed, and more blood spilled over his lips.

  In the distance, Molly heard a police siren. She was still too weak to stand and trying to get a breath. She rubbed her sore neck.

  Her attacker listed forward. She could see the blood dripping on the wall behind him. As he turned his back to her, she noticed the blade was completely buried beneath his shoulder blade now. It must have been pushed in all the way when he’d fallen against the wall.

  The baseball bat still in his grasp, Chris moved away from him.

  The man braced himself against the wall as he slowly, painfully made his way toward the door. “You’re both dead anyway,” he wheezed, his back to them. He started to laugh, but he choked and coughed up blood again. It spattered on the wall. He turned slightly. With a smile on his crimsonsmeared mouth, he reached for the switch by the door and flicked on the light.

  Then his legs seemed to give out beneath him, and he fell over dead.

  With the room lit, Molly realized what he’d meant when he’d said, “You’re both dead anyway.” She realized Jenna Corson wasn’t there anymore.

  Jenna had managed to slip away unnoticed. She’d left the torn linen restraints in a tangled heap on the bloodstained carpet. But the hunting knife the killer had dropped was gone.

  Chris shuddered as he stared down at the corpse. “Erin’s safe,” he murmured. “Those — those sirens, I think that’s the police on their way. I called them. Are you okay?”

  “Chris, she’s out there,” Molly whispered with a nod toward the door. “She has his knife.”

  He glanced over at the door, then down at the carpet. He seemed to notice the drops of blood that marked a trail from Jenna’s shredded restraints to the guest room doorway.

  The light had been on in the hallway earlier, but now it was off.

  Molly crawled over to the dead man and pried the gun out of his holster. As she started to get to her feet, Chris came over and helped her up. He still held the bat in his other hand. Outside, the sirens were getting louder, and in the window, Molly could see the shadows of headlights and swirling red strobes. She patted Chris on the shoulder and then started toward the doorway.

  “Jenna?” she called out, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “The police are outside, and you’re badly hurt. You’ll bleed to death if you don’t get some help. You can’t possibly get away. . ”

  Before Molly realized what was happening, Chris brushed past her and stepped out to the darkened hall. She reached out to stop him, but it was too late. With the bat poised on his shoulder, he moved down the hallway and then hesitated. Molly hovered behind him.

  Even with the blaring sirens, she could hear Jenna’s labored gasps, like a death rattle. Down the shadowy hallway, Jenna sat on the floor near the top of the stairs with her back against the railing. She appeared half dead.

  “Mrs. Corson?” Chris said with uncertainty. “I’ve — I’ve wanted to tell you ever since Mr. Corson died that I’m sorry. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and regret — what — what happened. I miss him, Mrs. Corson. I’m sorry I ever doubted him.”

  Jenna gazed at him. Her head was tipped to one side as she struggled for a breath. Bloodstains covered the front of her poncho, but she still clutched the killer’s hunting knife in her hand.

  “But you doubted him, too, Mrs. Corson,” Chris continued in a shaky voice. “You left him when things got bad. You were separated from him at the time he was killed. I think you feel as guilty as I do — maybe even worse. I think that’s why you killed so many people you felt had wronged him. You needed to prove something — that you weren’t like the rest of us. But you gave up on him, Mrs. Corson. And even with all the people you killed or hurt — including my parents — it doesn’t change that. You still doubted him, too.”

  She raised her head slightly. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Ray — he liked you so much,” she murmured. “He — he used to say you were a very smart young man. And he was right.”

  Then Jenna Corson started to cry.

  Molly could hear the police at the front door. She moved to the top of the stairs. “We’re up here,” she called down to them. “We’re out of danger, but there’s a woman stabbed up here. She — she’s pregnant. She needs a doctor right away. . ”

  She saw three policemen in the foyer, all with their guns ready. From the sound of it, there were more outside, too. She noticed one of them mumbling into a little microphone device on his shoulder.

  She glanced over at Chris, standing over Jenna. His head down, he leaned the bas
eball bat against the wall. Molly couldn’t hear Jenna sobbing anymore. She wasn’t moving.

  Molly set the gun on the post at the top of the stairs. “Is my little girl out there?” she called down to them. “Is she all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” one of the cops said as he started up the stairs.

  “Erin?” she called loudly.

  Past all the noise outside — the engines purring, policemen muttering to each other, someone issuing instructions through a haze of static on a police radio — she heard Erin calling out. “Molly, are you okay? Is Chris okay?”

  Chris glanced over his shoulder and gave her a sad, weary smile.

  Molly sank down to the floor, and sat on the top step. “We’re all right, honey!” she called back. She felt her eyes tearing up as she smiled at Chris. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We’re going to be all right. . ”

  EPILOGUE

  Chris tried not to stare, but Courtney’s face was still a mess. Nearly a month had gone by since Mrs. Corson’s attempt at murder had left Courtney maimed and disfigured. Her blond hair — coming in brown now — was growing back, but it still didn’t cover the hole and red scars where her right ear had been. She hadn’t gotten her prosthetic ear yet. The patch was off her eye, but she had a painful-looking scar that ran from the outside corner of her eyelid down to the side of her cheek. She wore a bandage over her nose — to cover some recent work on the scar tissue there.

  Chris strolled down the hospital corridor with her. Cheesy-looking Christmas decorations festooned the hallways. In some of the rooms, Chris noticed pint-sized trees with lights and ornaments. For this visit, he’d dressed up in khakis and a blue argyle sweater his mom had bought him last year.

  With her mangled hand, Courtney pushed along the wheeled contraption that held her IV bag. She wore a beautiful pale pink silk robe over silvery-looking pajamas. It was odd to see her so elegantly dressed in nightclothes while her face was ravaged.

  She’d transferred to a different hospital two weeks before. It was closer to the city — and a bit grimier. “My mother tells people we switched because they have the best plastic surgeons here,” Courtney said — over the squeaking wheels of her IV holder. “But the truth is, this hospital’s cheaper than the other place. Since my dad got the ax, his insurance won’t cover any of this. We’re majorly screwed. My mother’s putting the house on the market after the first of the year.”

  They passed an old woman in a hospital gown, slumped over to one side in a wheelchair. “God, this place is so gross.” Courtney sighed. “Anyway, I don’t think my mother’s going to have many bidders on the house. I mean, after everything that’s happened on the block, who in their right mind would want to live there? God, talk about creepy. I can’t believe they found that crystal meth jogger woman all chopped up in the basement shower stall next door to you.”

  “Actually, Mrs. Corson didn’t cut her up,” Chris said. “But I guess she thought about it. That’s what you probably read. It was part of her confession.”

  “That’s so bizarre about her drug-addict daughter following you around.”

  Chris just nodded.

  “And then those dollhouses they found in her secret room down there,” Courtney went on. “I hear she had dolls of you and your stepmother — and of your mom and dad. Did you see any of them? Did the police show you?”

  Frowning, Chris shook his head. “No, I really didn’t want to see them.”

  She sighed. “I guess if I were you, I wouldn’t have wanted to see them, either.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments. Chris thought of all the other discoveries the police were making. They’d arrested a twenty-seven-year-old hood named Mark “Wolf” Blanco, who had sold Mrs. Corson the drugs that had killed his dad. The cops said the same guy had wired Courtney’s cell phone to explode.

  Mrs. Corson had given the police a full confession and named names of all her accomplices — from Wolf Blanco to some forgery expert, and from a computer hacker to a dead hit man named Aldo Mooney, who had killed Mr. Corson, Mrs. Garvey, Chris’s mom, Larry and Taylor, and apparently several others.

  Of course, the most notorious discovery the police had made was the identity of the Cul-de-sac Killer, a thirty-two-year-old drifter, sometime seaman named Earl Richard Schreiber. In a special room he’d built in the garage of his Crown Hill rental home, the police found an assortment of knives, guns, and ropes; several costumes — from cop to courier; diagrams of the houses he’d struck; and DEAD END and NO OUTLET signs from the cul-de-sacs he’d visited. According to one article Chris read online, the police also uncovered in his secret room scores of S&M magazines, most of them dealing with bondage. Police in Portland, Sacramento, and St. Louis were now linking Schreiber to several unsolved murders in those cities.

  He’d stabbed Mrs. Corson four times before Molly had stopped him.

  Now, three weeks later, she was still in critical condition. They had her under police guard in a private room — in the same hospital where Courtney was staying. In fact, Mrs. Corson had been at this facility when Courtney transferred here.

  “Couldn’t your mother have put you in another hospital?” Chris asked her, wincing a bit. He knew it was a tactless question, but he had to ask it. “I mean, I know Mrs. Corson is in a different wing — and she’s under armed guard and too weak to do anything. But I’d feel weird here under the same roof as her. I’d want to stay somewhere else—anywhere else.”

  “Like I said, this is the cheapest place where my mother could still tell people that we moved here for the specialists.” Courtney gently touched the scar tissue where her ear used to be. “Mom has to keep up appearances. That’s why she still pretends to stand right alongside my stupid father and support him. It doesn’t make sense sometimes why my mother thinks she has to lie. She even lies to herself. She’s an expert at it.”

  Up ahead, Chris noticed a handsome, blond-haired college guy strutting down the corridor, wearing a sports jacket, denim shirt, and an expensive-looking scarf. A gawky version of him, probably a kid brother going through puberty, tagged alongside him. Mr. Handsome College Guy was carrying a small poinsettia plant. His eyes seemed to lock on Courtney for a moment, and he grimaced a little before averting his gaze.

  After they passed by, Chris could hear the kid brother whisper: “God, did you see her face?”

  Courtney kept walking a few more paces. In the silence, Chris listened once more to the squeaking wheels of her IV holder. Then Courtney stopped. “I think that’s enough exercise for one day,” she murmured. “I’d like to go back to my room.”

  “Sure,” Chris said, putting his hand on her back.

  “What were we talking about anyway?”

  “Mrs. Corson,” he muttered.

  She nodded. “You were asking if it upset me to have Mrs. Corson so close — after everything she did to me.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “I don’t mind.” Courtney gave a blasé shrug. “It won’t be for much longer. I hear they’re transferring her to a prison hospital by the end of the week. And besides, I really don’t think about her all that much.”

  Chris could tell she was lying. He wasn’t sure why.

  Maybe it was just something she’d picked up from her mother.

  There was a Picasso print in her ob-gyn’s ultrasound examining room — right above a magazine bin that hung on the wall. An issue of Vanity Fair was face out at the front of the stack. Lying on the table, Molly stared at the cover photo of Cate Blanchett while Dr. Lantz applied the cold gel to her lower abdomen. The magazine reminded her that in three months, the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue would be released — featuring a two-page cola ad with her party illustration. She’d been able to fix the painting. She’d seen the ad mock-up, too, and been impressed: Quenching Thirsts for 90 Years! Molly was already fielding a slew of other job offers.

  By the time that issue of Vanity Fair hit the stands, she’d be five months along — if all went well.
Right now, she really didn’t look pregnant — just a bit overweight in the midriff. Molly hated this dumpy stage. She couldn’t wait to be really showing, without-a-doubt-pregnant. Then maybe she’d stop worrying and feel more confident about the baby’s health.

  “I’ve got news for you,” Dr. Lantz had told her. “From now on, even after the baby’s born, you’ll never stop worrying.”

  She’d just had an ultrasound three weeks before, immediately following Jenna Corson’s capture. Molly had wanted to make sure the awful pills and peppermints Jenna had given her hadn’t hurt the baby. Lantz had said from the sonogram and his examination, everything looked fine.

  But Molly needed to be reassured again. She’d asked for another ultrasound. Lantz had agreed to squeeze her in for an appointment. She’d also asked about Jenna’s baby, if there was any chance it had survived. There had been no mention of Jenna’s pregnancy in any of the articles Molly had read. None of the cops or reporters she’d spoken with knew about it. That was Jeff’s child Jenna had been carrying. Molly needed to know what had happened to it. So she’d asked Dr. Lantz if he could find out for her.

  Molly liked Dr. Lantz. In fact, with his light brown hair, brown eyes, and boy-next-door looks, he reminded her of Chris O’Donnell, whom she’d been crazy about in high school. Dr. Lantz was happily married with three daughters, so Molly figured it was safe to have a harmless little crush on him. They couldn’t possibly get involved.

  She wasn’t ready to get involved with anyone. Chet Blazevich had paid her another unofficial visit at home last week. “Just checking in,” he’d said. Molly had appreciated knowing he was looking out for her. And she liked him a hell of a lot.

  But when he’d asked to take her out for dinner sometime, Molly had told the handsome cop it was just too soon.

  “I can wait,” he’d told her.

  “Well, that’s the true test,” she’d replied. “Will you still like me when I’m not fat and hormonal and pregnant with someone else’s baby?”