Also up near the ceiling in the shed were a microphone and a speaker. He’d tested the mic, and even standing on the chair, he couldn’t reach any of the equipment bracketed up there. The walls were soundproof. At least, he hoped so. It had taken the better part of a weekend to install all the damn panels.
On the desk in front of him, he pressed the sound button to the receiver box. With the volume turned up only to three, the restless mutt made a hell of a racket as it barked, paced around, and intermittently jumped up against the bolted door.
Switching off the receiver, all he heard was a faint echo of the barking. No one else would hear. The closest neighbor was nearly a mile away.
This test with the dog was a success. Now he knew. No one would hear any screaming.
Naked, he got to his feet and walked over to the window. He looked down at the shed at the edge of the patchy, neglected backyard. It stood near a tall, old maple tree with a tire swing hanging from one of the branches. The tire swayed in the wind.
No one would be looking for a missing girl in there.
In the morning, after he buried Riley, he would come back here and feed the dog. Then he would let it go.
But the girl taking its place wouldn’t be as lucky.
Once Sonny Boy murdered all the other holy sluts on his list, he would kill her, too.
CHAPTER NINE
Wednesday, September 9, 2:47 P.M.
The sun streamed through the big windows of the old classroom. It shone directly on the thirty-something man sitting at one end of the long table in the back row.
From her desk in front of the class, Ellie could now see that his chiseled, handsome face wasn’t quite as flawless as she’d first thought. A scar covered the left side of his forehead. It looked as if he might have been burned at one time.
All she could think about were the arsonists she’d helped put in prison. A couple of them—along with another suspect who had gotten off—had been burned in the fires they’d set. No surprise there, as those morons weren’t exactly adept. Ellie wondered if he’d been one of them.
It had been almost a week since she’d looked at the class list and noticed that Jensen, Nicholas was the only adult continuing education student taking her Introduction to Journalism course. Ellie had done a search for his name in the computer files of her arson series, and hadn’t come up with a match amid the couple of hundred names in her notes. A Google search hadn’t led to anything substantial either.
She’d told herself it would be easier to determine just who Nicholas Jensen was once he showed up in her class and she saw his face.
All week long, she’d been distracted by the hate-emails she’d managed to avoid during the summer. Some were pretty scary—enough so that she took the steak knife out of the kitchen drawer and hid it between her mattress and box spring again. She made hard copies of the most overtly threatening emails and filed them—in case she needed them as evidence for the police. Then she blocked the addresses of the senders and deleted the emails. Still, she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable.
A few of the haters had managed to track her down through LinkedIn, which made her extra wary of a stranger who had contacted her through the website on Monday. He’d claimed to be Alistair Thorne of Chicago Huff Post. He’d wanted to meet with her regarding writing a series of follow-up articles on the convicted arsonists and their connections to American Family Preservationists, which still had several active chapters throughout the country. After making a few inquiries, Ellie had discovered there was no one named Alistair Thorne working for Chicago Huff Post—not even as a freelancer.
Now that she’d seen Nicholas Jensen sitting in the back corner of the hot, stuffy classroom, she couldn’t help wondering if perhaps one of the haters had indeed found her. Still, except for the scar, he looked innocuous enough. His dark blond hair was cut short—with enough product in it that the sexy bed-head look must have been intentional. None of the American Family Preservationist creeps she’d encountered in the past seemed like the type to use hair products. They were more the type that beat up guys who used hair products. But perhaps this guy was going out of his way to look collegiate. He wore a white polo shirt, and she noticed another scar—a long, pinkish patch on his muscular arm. There was no wedding ring on his finger.
Nicholas Jensen didn’t look at her much. Instead, he seemed fixated on Hannah O’Rourke, sitting one table up and a row across from him. Of course, she was arguably the prettiest girl in the class. So there was really nothing too suspicious about him staring at her.
For this first class session, Ellie had been going around the room, picking students at random and asking them to explain why they’d decided to take a journalism course. Did they want to become reporters?
For the last few minutes, Robert Danagold, one of five men in the class (including Nicholas Jensen), had had the floor. At first, Ellie had been impressed with his answer to her question. He said he’d read about Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief who had been beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan. He’d pointed out that there weren’t many other professions “worth dying for.” He went on about the importance of the pursuit of truth, and he made some good points. But after a while, he started to sound like an op-ed piece he must have written for his college application. Ellie’s mind—and her eyes—had started to wander.
She was still sizing up Nicholas Jensen when she realized Robert Danagold had finally stopped talking. Everyone was staring at her now, waiting—including her mystery man in the back row.
“Thank you, Robert,” she said, recovering quickly. Then she nodded at Jensen. “Nicholas Jensen, how about you?”
With a slightly apprehensive look on his face, he straightened up in the chair.
“I’ll ask you the same question.” Ellie gave him a cool smile. “In this age, when newspapers are downsizing and journalists are being maligned and threatened, why are you interested in a journalism class?”
“I hope to sharpen my writing skills. I figured taking a journalism class might help.”
“Do you want to become a reporter?”
“Not particularly. I just hope to become a better writer.”
She nodded but couldn’t help probing a little deeper. “I noticed on the class chart, you’re a continuing education student. Do you want to improve your writing skills for your job? What kind of work do you do?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m self-employed. My interest in journalism doesn’t really have much to do with my job. As I said, I just want to become a better writer.”
Eden O’Rourke’s hand went up briefly. She didn’t wait for Ellie to acknowledge her before she spoke. “On the subject of jobs,” she said, lowering her hand and flicking back her platinum-colored hair. “You used to be a newspaper reporter, and now you’re a teacher. Why did you stop being a reporter?”
Ellie managed to smile at her. “My newspaper, the Tribune, had to do some downsizing. They offered me a severance package, and I snatched it up.” She took a deep breath. “So how about you, Eden? Why are you interested in—”
“Do you miss being a reporter?” Eden interrupted, staring intently at her.
Nodding, Ellie kept the smile plastered on her face. “Sometimes. But teaching is also very fulfilling. So I started to ask, what made you—”
“As a reporter, when you get ready to interview somebody for a story, you go in with an agenda, don’t you? I mean, you’ve already made up your mind about the person you’re interviewing and how you’re going to write your story. Isn’t that true?”
“Not necessarily,” Ellie answered. “Still, I’m glad you brought that up—”
“But you do research on your interview subjects ahead of time. You can’t help forming an opinion before you meet them. So that makes you prejudiced, doesn’t it? It means the story is slanted to your bias from the start. So you aren’t really going after the truth, but more like your version of the truth.”
Ellie finally let her cordial sm
ile vanish. “Good journalists will research interview subjects, yes. But good journalists will also allow their interview subjects to answer the questions, and that’s how they get to the truth. They listen, Ms. O’Rourke. They don’t constantly interrupt.”
Eden O’Rourke shifted in her chair and then opened her mouth to talk again.
“But a good journalist is also curious and relentless,” Ellie added—loudly, to cut her off. “And you seem to have those qualities—in spades.” She glanced at the clock. “The class assignment for Friday is to bring in a newspaper or online article you think is exceptionally well written and be prepared to discuss it. Extra points if you pick an article on a subject that ordinarily wouldn’t interest you. So if you don’t like sports, bring in something noteworthy from the sports page; or if you’re not into politics, bring in a political story. You get the drift. All right? See you on Friday . . .”
People started to get out of their seats. Ellie thanked God Eden O’Rourke didn’t blurt out another irritating question. Eden grabbed her backpack and got to her feet. She didn’t look at all annoyed or peeved. It was as if she’d said what she’d wanted and now was moving on.
But her half-sister, Hannah, looked exasperated. Rolling her eyes at Eden, she stood up and picked up her tote bag.
Ellie caught a glimpse of Nicholas Jensen as he headed toward the classroom door. He carried a small backpack by the strap. He took one look back over his shoulder—not at her, but at Hannah O’Rourke.
* * *
That was Ellie’s last class of the day. As she cleared her desk and loaded up her big purse, she still wasn’t sure what to think about Nicholas Jensen. The college offered English composition and creative writing classes. If he really wanted to improve his writing skills, he could have signed up for one of those courses. She also wondered what field he was “self-employed” in. At the same time, if he was here on a mission for the American Family Preservationists, he’d clearly let himself get distracted today by Hannah O’Rourke and her youthful beauty.
Or had he come here for Hannah?
Stepping out of Lombard Hall into the hot afternoon sun, Ellie spotted Hannah sitting on a stone bench by the dahlia garden near the entrance. Hannah quickly got to her feet and approached her. “Ms. Goodwin?”
Ellie stopped and smiled at her. “You may call me Ellie. After the first class session, I usually drop the formalities.”
“I’m Hannah O’Rourke.”
Ellie nodded. “I know. I recognized your name—and your sister’s—in the class list.”
“Half-sister,” Hannah said. “And I want to apologize for her. She can be awfully obnoxious sometimes.”
“That’s okay. I know what your family went through. I’m sure Eden must have encountered some bad reporters back then.”
Hannah sighed. “Still, that’s no reason to go after you. Eden has this irritating habit of questioning authority wherever she goes. She drove all of our high school teachers crazy.”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” Ellie said. “No offense taken. I’m just sorry I didn’t get a chance to ask her why she was taking the course. I didn’t ask you either. I’d have thought you’d be pretty fed up with reporters, too.”
“Most of them were nicer to me than they were to Eden.” Hannah nervously fidgeted with her hair. “The whole experience made me realize that reporters still have a lot of power and influence. Anyway, it got me thinking. What I’d really like to do is interview celebrities and write about them, cover film premieres, award shows, rock concerts.”
“Oh, so that’s why you’re interested in journalism.” Ellie had been hoping Hannah’s ambitions would be a bit loftier. But she nodded and kept smiling. “Well, that—that’s valid. Plus as an entertainment reporter, you’d know from your own experiences what it’s like to always have a microphone shoved in your face wherever you go—having everything you say get written down. You’ll have a lot of empathy for your celebrity subjects.”
“Exactly,” Hannah said. She leaned in close and spoke in a whisper. “So—do you mind me asking? What’s Jennifer Lawrence like?”
Ellie gave her a puzzled smile. “Jennifer Lawrence, the actress?”
Hannah nodded. “Isn’t she playing you in the film version of your story?”
Ellie laughed. “Oh that! Someone posted about it on Instagram, didn’t they?”
Hannah nodded again—eagerly.
“That was over a year ago. It’s true, Jennifer Lawrence’s people were interested in the film project for a while. But after about two weeks, the whole thing went kaput.”
“So—you don’t know Jennifer Lawrence?”
Ellie shook her head. “Sorry. I never got to meet her or talk to her or anything like that.”
Hannah looked crestfallen. She said nothing.
Ellie couldn’t help wondering if her flimsy connection to Jennifer Lawrence was the driving force behind Hannah enrolling in her journalism course. Maybe Hannah had imagined her teacher and the film star as best friends—with Jennifer popping in on her class from time to time just to study her in action.
“The film deal kind of stalled out on me last year,” Ellie admitted. “So—it’s doubtful that any movie stars will be portraying me any time soon. I hope that didn’t have too much to do with your decision to take my journalism class.”
“Oh, not really,” Hannah replied. She was a terrible liar. She still looked disappointed.
“I have to admit,” Ellie said, “when I saw Eden’s and your names on the class list, I wondered what brought the two of you all the way out from the West Coast to this little school.”
“The two of us got full scholarships. The deal was too good to pass up. A corporation out of Chicago paid for everything, the Slate-Gannon Group.”
“You mean, Rachel Bonner got you and Eden scholarships?” Ellie asked.
Hannah squinted at her. “Why would Rachel have anything to do with Eden’s or my scholarship? It’s this company...”
Ellie nodded emphatically. “Yes, the Slate-Gannon Group. It’s owned by Rachel’s father, Richard Bonner. They’re big contributors to the school. Rachel helped arrange for a couple of the scholarships last year. If I remember correctly, one of the recipients ended up becoming her roommate, and the other was a friend Rachel grew up with.”
“Eden and I are rooming with Rachel now,” Hannah murmured, looking completely baffled. “I don’t understand. Rachel’s the one who set all this up? Why?”
Ellie shrugged. “I—I have no idea. You and Eden were pretty famous a couple of years ago. Maybe she followed you on the news or social media and figured...” Ellie trailed off and shrugged once again. “I honestly don’t know. I’m just guessing.”
“Well, this is weird,” Hannah said. “Rachel’s practically like my new best friend. And she hasn’t told me a thing about this. Are you sure she’s the one behind the scholarships? Are you sure this Slate-Gannon place is connected to her?”
Wincing, Ellie nodded. “Yes, it’s one of Richard Bonner’s many businesses. It’s not common knowledge, but I know from working at the Tribune. Still, it’s quite possible Rachel had nothing to do with the scholarship. She might not know about it. I really think I spoke out of turn. I’m sorry, Hannah. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Hannah shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I’m glad you said something. Still, this is so screwed up. I better talk to Rachel. Would you excuse me?”
“Sure,” Ellie said, feeling strange about the whole thing. “See you in class on Friday.”
“Bye,” Hannah said. She brushed past Ellie and headed toward the quad.
As Ellie watched her walk away, she spotted Nicholas Jensen, standing across the small courtyard—in front of another building. He had his phone in his hand.
But his eyes seemed to be on Hannah.
* * *
“Was that the famous Hannah O’Rourke I just saw you talking to?”
Ellie swiveled around to see Diana Mackie, a student s
he’d befriended last year when the girl was a wretchedly unhappy freshman. Ellie had been new to the college and pretty miserable as well. She hadn’t fully recovered from losing her newspaper job, her film deal, and her husband. Suddenly, there had been this scared, homesick, friendless freshman even worse off than her. Diana had been like a needy kid sister she could look after, and soon Ellie had stopped feeling sorry for herself. After a couple of months, Diana had started doing a lot better, but they continued to get together for dinner every couple of weeks or so.
Diana was pretty and slightly plump with freckles and short, wavy red hair. Hugging her books to her chest, she smiled at Ellie from behind a pair of sunglasses.
Ellie was surprised to run into her. “Well, hi, Di. Yes, that—that was Hannah, in the flesh.” Ellie had had coffee with Diana on Monday, and had mentioned that the O’Rourke sisters were in her journalism class.
She looked over toward where Nicholas Jensen had been standing a moment ago. But he was gone now.
“Is everything okay?” Diana asked.
Ellie glanced around the courtyard. She didn’t see Jensen anywhere. It was as if he’d vanished. “Um, everything’s fine,” she said, still distracted. Then she focused on Diana and worked up a smile. “How are you? How’s your new guy-friend?”
“We talked last night, and we have a date on Saturday—after he finishes up at the rec center.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” Ellie said.
“I’m taking your advice and not overanalyzing it.” Diana gave her a curious, sidelong look. “What were you and Hannah O’Rourke talking about? From where I stood, things looked pretty intense.”
“We were just talking about her sister—and her roommate.”
“Who’s her roommate?”
“Rachel Bonner.”
“Hannah’s roommate is Rachel Bonner?” Diana uttered an ironic laugh. “Well, that’s a position I wouldn’t want to fill.”
“Why would you say that?”
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