“I hope—,” he started to say, then stopped, trembling. “Just hope you never have to make a decision like I did.”
Melissa looked away. “I’m taking a shower,” she said, nearly knocking over her little sister as she bolted up the stairs.
Annie sat down in her chair and laid the rumpled Silkie beside her cereal bowl. He couldn’t remember ever craving a dose of unconditional love more than he did at that moment.
“A dinosaur, I think,” she said.
He was still shaking from Melissa’s assault, but he tried to smile as he poured her Honeycombs. Upstairs, the bathroom door slammed again.
“Not the giant?”
She shook her head decisively. “Dinosaurs have big teeth; giants just have clubs.”
“Good point. When do I get my morning hug?”
Annie stretched her arms wide. He held her until she shoved him away and demanded milk for her cereal. “And pour it on this side,” she ordered.
The pipes running behind the kitchen wall groaned as Melissa started her shower. Molly was the one who’d truly loved this old house; he’d simply learned to live with its idiosyncrasies.
“I wonder, though,” he said, “do you think fighting is the best way for the giant and the dinosaur to solve their problems?”
Annie rolled her eyes.
The bathroom door opened as violently as it had closed, and the wooden stairs creaked. Melissa appeared at the kitchen door, hair soaking wet, her blue terry-cloth bathrobe gathered loosely at her waist. She was holding her left hand palm up, and Christensen could see from across the room that something was wrong. The skin was bright red at the center, and her fingers were curled in obvious pain.
“Dad?” she said, crossing the room to him. “It burns.”
Purely by instinct, he turned the sink faucet on full cold and guided her hand beneath it. Her whole body shuddered as he held it there. The skin already was starting to blister.
“Was it the radiator in the bathroom? That thing gets hot as a griddle,” he said. “Sometimes I hate this house.”
Melissa shook her head, blinking back tears. “The shampoo,” she said. “It started as soon as I poured some into my hand.”
Christensen turned toward the kitchen table. Annie was using the tiny sample tube of toothpaste like a rocket, blasting off from the tablecloth.
“Don’t touch that!” he said.
Annie dropped the tube, startled by the volume and urgency of his voice. The toothpaste splashed down in her cereal bowl. He struggled for composure as they all stared at the sample products scattered across the tabletop.
“Get away from the table, honey,” he said. “There may be something wrong with that stuff. Keep your hand under the water, Melissa.”
She was crying now, losing control, staring at the angry skin beneath the cascading water. Jesus. He snatched the handset from the wall phone and punched in 9-1-1. Annie backed away from the table and stood against the far wall, looking lost, Silkie in hand.
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
Two rings. Three rings.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be fine.”
The operator answered. “Allegheny County Fire. Is this an emergency?”
Up and down his street, Christensen’s neighbors continued their vigil. Standing on their lawns and sitting on porch steps despite the cold, watching a scene Christensen still couldn’t comprehend.
The paramedics had come, treated Melissa’s hand, and left an hour ago. But still there was a lot to see. Two black-and-whites were parked out front. An ambulance idled in front of old Mrs. Donati’s house three doors down, the attendants having disappeared inside twenty minutes earlier. Two blocks down, a discreet coroner’s van was parked outside a house on the north side of the street. Investigators were still going door-to-door, collecting the sample bags, looking for anyone who might have seen who left them.
“Ever kill anybody?”
Annie’s voice, distinct from the low murmur of the investigating officers, diverted him from the window. She was standing beside a uniformed cop in the living room, hands in the pockets of her overalls, eyes at holster level and very, very wide. The cop seemed annoyed. He looked to Christensen for direction.
“Annie, why don’t we get you to Mrs. Taubman’s?” he said, moving her gently toward her backpack at the base of the stairs. “I’m staying home with Melissa, but there’s no reason you should. I bet Corey and the other kids are wondering where you are.”
“I’m staying,” she said. “This is so cool.”
Even the cop laughed.
“Come on, I’ll walk you over,” Christensen said. He called up the stairs. “Melissa? You need me for the next few minutes? Melissa?”
He took the steps three at a time. She was curled into her beanbag chair, headphones on, studying the white gauze on her left hand.
“Lissa?” he said.
She looked up, then away, then back at him as she peeled the headphones from her ears. She must have been reading his face.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m missing a World Cultures test today.”
He leaned against the doorjamb. “So this isn’t all bad, then?”
Ordinarily, Christensen would have interpreted her shrug as hostile indifference. But this time his attempt at humor seemed to connect. She was smiling.
“Putting it under cold water was the right thing to do. That’s what the paramedic guy said.” She stopped just short of a thank-you. Christensen knew that’s what it was, though.
“It just looked like a burn from the minute I saw it, and that’s the best thing for burns,” he said. “Okay if I walk Annie over to day care? You need anything?”
“Don’t get all spastic. I’m fine.”
The phone rang as he and Annie were halfway out the front door. He started back in to answer it, and was surprised when the plainclothes investigator answered it first.
“What have you got?” the man said. His face betrayed nothing. “That helps,” he said, hanging up.
“What helps?” Christensen asked.
The investigator wheeled and stared, seemingly annoyed at Christensen’s presence in his own home. He had a broad, open Slavic face, and when he turned Christensen saw a flash of leather and metal beneath his overcoat. The man considered him for a moment before replying.
“Things sure have changed since I was a paperboy,” he said. “Used to be you just stuffed and folded the papers and threw them on the doorstep. Now they’ve got these poor kids doing inserts and promotions and that kind of crap. Hope the pay is better than when I was a kid.”
“That was the Press?” Christensen asked. “What did they say?”
“Not the Press, exactly. I know some of the Teamsters down there on the loading docks.”
“And?” Christensen knew the cop wasn’t going to tell him anything if he didn’t keep asking.
The cop nodded toward the kitchen table, where the sample products delivered that morning were gathered neatly into a see-through evidence bag. “I called to find out how promotions like that are handled. Where this stuff comes from, who bags it, who delivers it, everybody who has any contact with it along the way.”
He seemed to weigh his next thought more carefully.
“Last time the Press did one of these was four months ago, in July.”
“I don’t get it,” Christensen said.
The man nodded again toward the evidence bag. “Somebody else delivered that.”
Nothing made sense. “To the whole city? Why?”
The man cleared his throat. “That’s the other thing,” he said. “There’s no real pattern so far. Just single streets in a few different neighborhoods, here and there. Bethel Park. Cranberry Township. Penn Hills. All over.”
Christensen excused himself and went to the front door, which was still wide open. To his left, three doors down, paramedics were wheeling Mrs. Donati down her front walk, a thick white bandage taped across her eyes. Her ancient husband trailed the gurney; he was fully dressed except he was still wearing bedroom slippers. A knot of neighbors gathered outside the house where the coroner’s van was parked.
Annie was lying flat on her back in the yard, spread-eagle, no jacket, making a snow angel. The hell with day care, he thought. No way he was letting either girl out of his sight. At least not today.
Chapter 14
The marching band below was loosely configured. A rocket maybe? A ketchup bottle? Christensen couldn’t tell, even from the top row of bleachers. He recognized the “Hakuna Matata” song from their Lion King video, but it offered no clue.
Melissa was sitting halfway down, at the fifty-yard line, a solitary form in the otherwise empty stands. In her heavy down parka, and with no hint of scale, she might just as well have been one of the ponytailed football players. But he knew it was her. He saw the white bandage on her left hand when she waved to the drum major.
She moved to her right, as if making room for him to sit. “Hi,” she said over the din. “You’re way early.” She moved again when he sat too close.
“I know,” he said. “Drum section sounds really weak without you.”
A shrill whistle brought the music to a disorderly stop. From atop an aluminum stepladder, the balding band director screeched realignment directions through his bullhorn to a gaggle of trumpet players. “First time in the W.P.I.A.L. playoffs this decade, people!” he said. “We want it right!” It still looked like a ketchup bottle, only now with a bubble on one side.
Christensen cleared his throat.
“The crime lab finally finished the tests. I just talked to Detective Downing.”
“And?”
“We’ve got a few answers, anyway.” Damned scary answers, despite Downing’s reassurances. His daughter stared straight ahead.
“It was some kind of acid, like car-battery acid,” he said. “I should have known something was wrong because it was in a glass bottle. Nobody puts shampoo in glass bottles anymore.”
Melissa pulled the bandaged hand from her parka pocket and studied it. In the week since the injury, most of the dead skin had flaked and peeled away. Her palm was still red and tender, but healing nicely. Christensen imagined again how much worse it could have been. What if she’d poured it directly onto her head like old Mrs. Donati and thirteen other people who got samples?
“The two people that died?” she asked.
He put his arm around her, surprised that she let him. “The cereal.”
“And nobody saw who delivered it?”
“The Mymans got home at midnight and didn’t see bags on any of the doors. But the bags were there at four when Mr. Capelli got up to let their dog out. So whoever left them came pretty early.”
The director excused the band. Most of the players headed for the heated gymnasium at the far end of the field, amid the bleating of stray brass notes and random paradiddles. A young man carrying a set of three tom-toms started up the stadium steps toward them, but retreated when he saw Christensen with his daughter.
“Anybody I should know?” His question was more reflex than inquiry.
Melissa just smiled. “How many bags were there?”
“A couple dozen in each neighborhood, usually every house on a single street. That’s why I didn’t think anything of it. Everybody on our street had one, so I just assumed it was some big marketing gimmick.”
Christensen cleared his throat again. “There’s something else,” he said, “but it has to stay between us, okay?”
He tried to stay calm and reassuring, but his voice sounded emotionless and flat.
“I got involved in something at work in the last few weeks that I think may have been a big mistake, and I want to tell you about it. I don’t know that it had anything to do with what happened to you. It probably didn’t, not directly anyway. But I want you to understand what’s been going on, and why I’m going to put a stop to it.”
For once he had her full attention, but there was no victory in it for him. And why was everything he said coming out like the drone of an outboard motor?
“Years ago, in 1986, there was something called the Primenyl poisoning case. Somebody killed six people by putting poison into these headache capsules and then putting them back on store shelves. Do you remember any of this?”
“Sort of.”
“Nobody was ever arrested, but the police think they know who it is. And a few weeks ago they asked me to help out in the case.”
“I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore after that guy shot at you,” she said. She was right. Did she worry about him, or did she just enjoy catching him in a contradiction?
“Let’s just say I got talked into it,” he said. “They really thought I could help, and it was hard to say no because … just because of the kind of case it was. Is. See, there was another product-tampering case about a month ago, and they think maybe it was the same guy. It’s kind of complicated, but they thought somebody with my background could help.”
Melissa reached into her backpack and pulled out a cherry Chap Stick.
“They needed a psychologist?” she said, tracing the balm over her lips.
“Someone who knows a lot about how memory works,” he said. “So I wanted to help if I could. But now, with all this, I wonder if it was a mistake, my getting involved. So, I’m sorry.”
His daughter stopped mid-pout, the Chap Stick still poised. “For what?” she said.
He could see her mind kick into instant replay, trying to make sense of his story and to figure out why he was telling it now. “Wait. You’re saying this same guy put the acid in the shampoo?”
“I don’t know. But—”
“And sent it to us?”
He shook his head. “Not specifically, no, but there weren’t really that many of those sample bags. It’s just got me spooked is all.”
She pulled her injured hand from her parka and examined it again.
“What if it’s not just a coincidence?” he said. “You know I’d never do anything to put you or your sister in any danger. I told the police that right off, and I believed them when they said we’d have no problems. But even the thought—” He hugged her tighter. “It’s just not worth it, Lissa. They can handle it without me.”
Melissa put the Chap Stick back into her pack and zipped it shut, taking care so he couldn’t see the pack’s contents.
“I don’t understand what help you could be,” she said.
He hadn’t intended to share details, but he didn’t see how he could avoid it now.
“The killer has a son, a little older than you,” he said. “Police think he may have seen something back in 1986. But they also think he may not remember seeing it. With something awful like that, sometimes those memories can get tucked so far in the back of the mind that they’re pretty much forgotten. So they wanted me to talk to him to see if I could help him remember anything.”
“That’s what you’ve been staying late for on Thursdays,” she said.
“Right.”
“And that’s what you were talking to Brenna about the other night when I came in the room and you all of a sudden told her you’d have to call her back.”
“Probably.”
“And how many people do they think this guy killed?”
“Six in 1986. One down in Greene County a few weeks ago, and maybe another one down there a few days ago that left a kid in a coma. Now these two. What’s that, nine dead so far?” He sighed. “There was a lot of Primenyl stuff in the news around the tenth anniversary of the ’86 killings. That may have set him off again.”
Melissa stood up, slung her backpack over her right shoulder, and started up the stadium steps toward the parking lot. As she walked, she pulled something from her coat pocket. He recognized it by the colored foil wrapper as the jam-filled Nutri-Grain breakfast bar he’d put in her lunch. How carefully had he checked it?
She stopped about ten feet away and turned back toward him, then held up her bandaged left hand until he looked away. She waited until he looked her in the eye. “And you’d just quit with this guy still out there?”
Chapter 15
“A gentleman named Sonny Corbett is here, Jim. He says he’s early for an appointment, but I don’t see his name in the book.”
Christensen stared at the intercom, then checked his watch. 5:20. Sonny wasn’t due for another forty minutes. He was always prompt, but never early, in the five weeks since they’d started their Thursday sessions. Christensen had kept the after-hours meetings private, so his secretary and Sonny had never before crossed paths.
Christensen shuffled the stack of pink phone messages in his hands. Downing was driving him nuts.
“I was expecting him, but not until six. It’s okay. Just tell him I’ll be a few minutes. No need for you to wait around.”
Christensen arranged the messages chronologically. Downing had called at least once a day for the past week, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. He’d called him here at his private office, at the Pitt counseling office, at home. He’d been so persistent, Christensen started having Melissa screen his calls. Not only did he have nothing to report about Sonny’s progress, but he was troubled by the escalating urgency of Downing’s messages. The most recent one, left just an hour earlier, was the most troubling of all.
Christensen read it again: “Det. Downing. Please call. Re: Sodium amobarbital.”
Where was Downing getting his information? Sodium amobarbital wasn’t much known outside a small circle of therapists and researchers who considered the drug a chemical shortcut to repressed memories. A shortcut with dangerous and incalculable side effects, as far as Christensen was concerned. That Downing would research it and mention it as a possibility for Sonny’s therapy mirrored the helpless panic Christensen sensed in nearly everyone he knew. The pattern of deaths was emerging, and like in 1986, it wasn’t a pattern at all. But to that familiar randomness had been added a chilling new dimension: the killer’s mastery of inventive, almost casual, terror. He’d tapped into the very lifeline that sustains a consumer society, and he was poisoning it at will.
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