by Jan Burke
They drove toward the beach and delivered the car to its parking place. These were some of the riskiest moments, because if Marilyn had been reported missing, there was always the chance an ambitious cop might run a plate check and see that these were not originally on a Chevy Malibu. Or even though he wore a hoodie, a wig, and dark sunglasses, he might be seen parking the car by someone who somehow managed to recognize him. Or a cruising patrol car might go down the street while he was changing the plates back. Any of those possibilities could lead to complications.
These dangers had only made it all the more thrilling.
When Kai took Quinn to pick up his van, Quinn mastered a strong temptation to choose a route that went past Marilyn Foster’s home.
Kai helped him load the freezer into the van and take it to the cannery, thinking Quinn was going to abandon it there. After Kai left, Quinn hooked up a generator and placed Cade’s body within the freezer. He admitted to himself now that there had been tenderness in the way he had done it.
People were easier to love when they were dead.
He set the generator running and went back over to the warehouse. Kai had already moved Marilyn Foster’s body to the metal table. Quinn prepared his canvas by removing all her bindings, then thoroughly washing her, including all her orifices and wounds, and cleaning her fingernails and toenails. He dried her, then sealed the buckets of wash water and carried them down to the van.
By the time he came back to the room, she was ready. He used an airbrush and stencils and metal-based paints, permanent markers and calligraphy brushes to cover the bare skin of Marilyn Foster even as her body continued to go through the changes of rigor mortis. When he was inspired, he could work for hours. He stopped only to refuel the generator at the cannery next door.
He wasn’t able to spend as much time on her as he would have liked, but she would serve her purpose.
He cleaned up, removing the plastic tarps, and took her to another section of the warehouse, setting her out in a manner that would cause the light from the multitude of high, filthy windows along one wall to bathe her skin and bring out the brilliance of her new colors.
He drove off and called Donovan, who called the police from a stolen cell phone to report the body’s location. Donovan destroyed the phone; Quinn destroyed all the other evidence. Quinn was thoroughly exhausted by the time he reached his own bed.
He awoke ten hours later and groggily watched the television news while checking the Internet compulsively. He watched Irene Kelly’s press conference with interest—he enjoyed seeing that she was so frightened, even before she knew that Marilyn Foster was dead.
Two moth-covered bodies had certainly set things in a whirl! He could not help but feel pleased. He looked carefully through the online news reports for any reference to the discovery of a third body, but there was none. He had thought the noise of the generator might attract some attention, but apparently either other industrial sounds in the area or all the racket made by the police in the warehouse kept that from happening. He wanted the generator back if he could retrieve it, but not at the price of his freedom.
He went back to bed and thought of Cade before falling asleep.
Quinn kept the generator running for a week, then decided it was foolish to risk being seen going in and out of the building. The police had traced ownership of both buildings to his company, but there was nothing unusual in Moore Properties owning real estate. He was credited with helping to revitalize the area. He had employees who worked on that sort of thing, exactly so that the company’s image remained positive.
“He’s starting to come around,” Kai announced happily from his seat near the gurney.
Quinn smiled, nodded, stretched, and sighed.
Other than the moment when he had noticed the blood on Kai, nothing in today’s activities had been arousing. Exciting, yes, but not the sort of thing he ultimately found satisfying. That was all right, though. His involvement in the abduction and killing first of Cade and then of Marilyn, so close to each other in time, had left him sated. Experience said he wouldn’t remain so, but the restless edge was off for a while.
Quinn supposed that, as a matter of self-preservation, at some point he would have to kill Kai and Donovan and—saving the best for last—his father. But that could wait. Besides, his father had plans, and like his brothers, Quinn was curious about them. That curiosity would keep them all doing just as Nick Parrish bid them to do.
For now.
The plane landed smoothly and taxied toward a hangar. The flight had been short, as intended. It was a flight that Donovan had completed many times between these two destinations in recent weeks, in part to rehearse, in part to allay the suspicions of anyone who might have noticed the flight today. It was a remote area but not utterly uninhabited.
The plane came to a halt, and they disembarked, but Donovan did little more than help them unload before taking off again. He would eventually meet them in Las Piernas.
The drugs that had been given to Parrish at the prison were finally wearing off. With Kai’s help, Parrish came woozily to a sitting position.
“Thank you, Son,” he said, and Kai beamed. Parrish looked over at Quinn and gave him a charming smile. “You’ve both been of great help to me.” He stretched. “How good to be free! But we haven’t any time to waste. Quinn, you have what we need?”
“Yes, sir.” Quinn opened a locker at the back of the building and brought out the wig and clothing stored there.
They changed quickly and packed up all signs of their presence. The gurney was moved to a locked storeroom behind a workbench, covered with a drop cloth, and then loaded up with boxes and other items. Donovan would dispose of it later.
They climbed into the Ford Escape (Quinn wondered even now if irony had determined Donovan’s choice of vehicle) parked just outside the hangar. Quinn drove, Kai sitting next to him. Their father sat in the back, looking calm and pleased with himself, and not at all like someone who might at any moment be apprehended as a prison escapee.
When I grow up, Quinn thought with a smile, I want to be like you, Dad.
NINETEEN
Before his recovery, every time news about Nicholas Parrish reached me, friends would see its effect and say, “Don’t worry. Nick Parrish is paralyzed.” Hearing that set off an internal conflict. My rational self said, “Yes, of course, I’m safe from him.” Emotionally—that was another matter.
Fear, which knows better than to use mere words, barely loosened its grip. My heart would race, my hands would feel clammy. A brief horror film, rough cut, memories patched together with adrenaline, would play in my mind, take my attention from whatever I was doing.
Therapy had helped me to deal with a lot of that, but try as I might to embrace a calmer view of matters, on some level, I remained entrenched in the belief that he could beat the odds.
He did.
Then I was comforted by well-wishers with “Nicholas Parrish is in prison.”
Now it appeared he had beaten those odds, too.
When I heard about Parrish’s escape, I called Frank, who had also just heard of it. “I’m on my way over there,” he said.
“Where?”
“To the radio station. Don’t drive home without me, okay?”
I opened my mouth to say it wasn’t necessary, I would be fine, and then decided that I wasn’t going to kid myself. “Thanks,” I said. “See you soon.”
I called Ben. He hadn’t heard the news yet, and I didn’t take joy in breaking it to him. He swore enough for both of us, then grew quiet. “Funny thing,” he said.
“What?”
“I think I’ve always believed he would do something like this.”
“Me, too. I tell myself he’s human, not invulnerable, but—”
“He is human. He can be captured.” After a long silence, he added, “We’ll just have to keep telling ourselves that.”
“Is that working for you?”
He laughed nervously. “Not really.�
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There was a beep on the line, and a moment later he said, “Las Piernas PD is calling. I’d better take it.”
We ended the call. Ethan asked for more security for the building, which the station management was reluctant to provide until a couple of detectives from the police department arrived at about the same time my husband did. The detectives were sent to talk about precautions for the staff, especially one of their new hires, who might be a target. The police department was already making plans, assuming that Parrish was going to come after Ben and me.
I’m sure Ben felt about as shitty as I did over all of this, which was no comfort to me.
In the first few hours, most news reports were full of conjecture. We knew that two guards had been killed when the car they were in was destroyed by some sort of mine. The ambulance carrying Parrish had also been attacked, one guard killed, one in serious condition with a severe head injury, and the driver and attendant missing, as was Parrish.
Everyone at the prison, from the doctor to the guard who loaded him in, swore up and down that Parrish was sedated and could not have managed the escape on his own. The other facts supported that view, but it was difficult to see how he had communicated with his accomplices.
The details beyond that information were unclear, owing largely to the remote location where the empty ambulance had been found. Whether the other two men were hostages or participants in the escape was not known. Where they had gone and how they had traveled was a mystery as well.
There was an airstrip, which had caused some excitement at first, given Parrish’s abilities as a pilot and aviation mechanic, but it was locked and the FAA said their records showed no unusual activity there. The pilot associated with the only plane using it was in the air at the time the fire was reported and was on a routine run. He had been questioned, but he had not seen anyone lying in wait when he began his flight. The investigators used the time of his flight to help estimate the time of the escape.
When security video taken at the prison was shown, the owner of the ambulance company said that the driver and attendant were not the men sent out on the assignment. Those who examined the recordings were unable to get a clear look at the faces of the men who did show up—and obviously knew where the cameras were—but the owner said with certainty that they didn’t match the physical builds of his two employees.
One set of investigators began looking at the GPS tracking records for the ambulance before it reached the prison. At one point, it had veered from its planned route, down a small side road. There had been no radio call from the driver and attendant, both of whom at that point would have been riding in the cab.
Everything about that stop suggested some level of complicity by at least one of the ambulance company employees. The outrage expressed over this was somewhat muted after the bodies of both men were discovered not far away.
There was a lot of chest thumping in some segments of the California political jungle, as those who most enjoy spectacle took the stage and did their usual posturing—just for show, not to do any of the heavy lifting that might have been of real help. The public outcry, rooted in understandable fear, was fierce—but all the same, an outcry from a burdened public that didn’t want its taxes increased to improve prison conditions. As usual, most of the drama had little to do with sincerely addressing problems.
In the meantime, Ben and I found ourselves surrounded. The police were not the only ones to figure out that we were Parrish’s most likely targets, and the ensuing attention made it hard for either of us to get anything done.
Frank did all he could to reduce the pressure and stress, and we took turns reciting to each other the reasons why we shouldn’t let Nick Parrish and his friends dominate our lives, the reasons why Ben and I might be the last people he came after, and how unhealthy speculation could be. I could talk a lot of talk about not letting Parrish ruin my life. And every day, it took every ounce of will I had in me just to walk out the front door.
I knew about Nick Parrish, and not from Sacramento or the Internet or television or any other glass-walled, safe observation point. Nick Parrish had slammed my face into the mud—I had felt his grip on my neck, been utterly in his power. I could have told anyone who cared to listen that Nick Parrish was not going to fit into any ready-made, predictable slot. He was not going to do the expected thing. He had studied other serial killers, seen them as object lessons in failure.
So while the local citizenry worried that he would attack in Las Piernas at any moment, I knew he would make us wait. I remembered other hunts for Nick Parrish that had failed, remembered how capable he was of going to ground.
I knew he blamed me for his previous capture and years of physical suffering.
He would wait.
The public would become distracted, the police would receive other demands on their attention.
Nick Parrish would strike then.
And damn it all to hell, now he had friends to help him do it.
TWENTY
Nicholas Parrish stood at a window and watched leaves drift from the branches of an oak tree to a walkway that led from the lodge to a storage shed. Only a few, at this time of year. Soon the days would grow cooler, the leaves would turn, and color the ground as they died. Death was a gift to the ground, something it needed to bring forth new life. Why did so few people understand the necessity of it?
He decided to go for a walk. He could hardly get enough of being outside, breathing in scents that were not those of a hospital or a prison.
As he moved into the open air, he wanted to shout, to laugh, to scream to the world that he had won again—he had!
He had planned so carefully. Even in the days when he had allowed his first capture, he knew that he would escape—the Moth had helped him. Irene Kelly, as expected, let all the earth know that Nicholas Parrish was unlike any who had gone before. He knew even then there was a possibility that he would be recaptured, but he had already made arrangements for this, his second escape. And while his injuries had been unexpected, and delayed his freedom, he had not let them defeat them, had he?
All the pieces had been in place, and they had waited for him, just as he knew they would.
He had counted on two special devotees, who remained hidden among those who now called themselves the Moths.
Most of the Moths were thrill seekers, rebellious youngsters, and loners who took pride in identifying themselves as outre, unaware of the ways in which they could be easily manipulated.
These two were different. They had been his to control from the time of his adolescence. None of his sons knew who they really were, and he would keep it that way. The two were not gifted in the ways Kai, Quinn, and Donovan were. They were not nearly as bright, and they lacked imagination. But they were utterly loyal and subservient. He wrote to them from prison, seemingly harmless letters. They knew how to decode his letters, and they passed along instructions in a second code to Quinn.
He felt pride in Quinn’s abilities. He had kept track of all his children, watching to see which of them would prove most promising. At first he was disappointed to see how few of them exhibited the characteristics he was looking for, but as he considered his own genius, he accepted that they would be rare.
Quinn was not yet out of his teens when he first approached Parrish. Parrish was already aware of him, of course, and when they met, he startled Quinn by telling him that he had found Harold Moore’s body. He added that he had made sure it was not going to be found again. He pointed out all the ways in which it was a bad idea to not completely destroy a body if one was about to benefit financially from the victim’s death. He had shown Quinn how to do things properly when, together, they had ensured that a certain gossip at the airport restaurant would never again mention a connection between Parrish and Quinn’s mother.
It was easy work from there to both charm and dominate Quinn, to be the father he imagined he was looking for and yet to keep their lives separate and their relationship a secret.
And so, when the time came, Parrish’s plans had, of course, worked perfectly.
This property belonged to Quinn. He had purchased it to have a remote location when needed. At one time it had been a religious organization’s retreat, an irony that amused Nick Parrish no end. The grounds were extensive and included a lodge and twenty small cabins. Yes, Quinn’s financial success had proved useful.
Despite a few nagging concerns, he did not underestimate any of his children. He could now admit to himself that he had been anxious when he decided to fake trouble with his spine, knew that the drugs he would most likely be given at the prison would make him unable to fend off any attack his sons might make. He had not expected to be so completely sedated, and waking up—at all—had been a relief. Kai’s devotion had reassured him that he had not lost his touch when it came to control of others.
For a time, they would all need to lie low. It would not take long for some new demand to be made on the police, for some new crisis to distract them from their search for him. All the resources law enforcement could bring to bear were being used in the hunt just now, but his sons had followed instructions, and changed vehicles more than once. The trail was already growing cold.
He had found a great deal of amusement in watching television footage of the police swarming over the site where the explosion had gone off. And listening to the commentators (he could not think of them as reporters) had been even more amusing. There was a stiff-haired blonde who could hardly shut up about him. She liked to show photos of some of his earlier victims. That excited him so much he could ignore the idiot psychobabblers she brought on the show. He muted the television when they were on.