by Ed Gaffney
And he certainly didn’t need to set the movie in a small town in New England, where, several years ago, a terrible murder had shocked the very same community that was dealing with this new crime.
But thankfully, there were real differences between the movie and reality. In the movie, the original crime had never been solved, and the murderer had used a rope to strangle his only victim.
No serial killers, no diaries of serial killers, no profiles of serial killers, no mention of Springfield or the Springfield Shooter.
And finally, about as far from reality as it could get, toward the end of the movie, the daughter of the suspect hid evidence that she was sure had been planted to falsely implicate her father.
Yeah, like Steph would ever do something as foolish as that. When she had heard about the gun from her father and Thomas, she was so adamant that they report the incident that she almost got in the car and drove with them to the police station that very night.
The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps caught Steph’s attention, and she turned around. About a half block away, a young, very skinny woman with fancy hair and wearing a ridiculously improbable outfit—a cocktail dress and sneakers—was running toward Steph with a microphone in her hand. A man labored behind her, carrying a camera of some kind.
The woman waved and called out, “Stephanie! Yolanda Bigelow, Maximum Entertainment Media! I was hoping to get your reaction to The Suspect’s Daughter. It will just take two seconds.”
It took exactly two seconds for Steph to process it all, and then she was turned around, and running to her car. Moments later she reached it, got in, quickly locked the doors, started it up, and pulled away, just as Yolanda Bigelow and her cameraman caught up to her.
Steph wasn’t sure, but as she looked in the rearview mirror, it seemed like the cameraman was filming her escape from the interview.
Steph wanted to be furious, but the whole thing was so stupid that she found herself laughing. Paparazzi. Who would have thought that Stephanie Hartz would ever have been chased down the street by the press for her reaction to a silly movie?
Sometimes, the world seemed absolutely stark raving mad.
What was interesting, though, was the fact that the press—at least Yolanda Bigelow—knew that Steph was seeing the movie tonight. How in the heck had that happened? The only people Steph had told about her plans for the evening were her father and Mrs. G.
And Russell Crane. Of course. He wasn’t just interested in feedback. He was interested in a little extra publicity from, oh, possibly an interview with a real suspect’s daughter. That snake. No doubt after he spoke to Stephanie, he tipped off some network honcho, and they’d sent a camera crew out to catch her as she left the theatre.
As Steph reached the parkway, she realized that her phone was still switched off. It would be interesting to find out if Russell Crane had the courtesy to call and let her know that someone was coming to interview her, or whether he just decided to let them ambush her. Steph dug her phone out of her purse, turned it on, and checked for messages.
There was only one, and, predictably, it was not from Russell Crane. According to the display, it was from Thomas. Uh oh. Why would he be calling?
She pressed the play button, and listened as her world fell apart.
Stephanie, dear? This is Thomas. Thomas Prieaux. Meet me at your father’s house as soon as you get this message. I will wait for you, but come soon. Whatever you do, don’t call the police. Your father has been arrested, and I need to speak to you before you call anyone else.
Before the message was even over, Stephanie was speeding down the parkway toward her father’s house, all thoughts of movies and paparazzi and foolish Russell Crane vanished.
Steph blew by a minivan rolling along at five miles per hour below the speed limit.
Questions were racing through her brain. Malcolm arrested? For what? Was he drinking again? Was that why Thomas was calling her about this? Why did he need to meet her at her father’s house? Why couldn’t he just leave whatever he wanted to tell her on voice mail?
She exited the parkway at Appleton, and gunned the engine as she approached Old Boston Road. Normally it should have taken her about twenty minutes to get to Indian Oaks from the theatre, but the way she was driving today, she’d be there in less than ten.
Whatever you do, don’t call the police. Whenever someone said that in the movies, two things were guaranteed. First, the person who received the message wouldn’t call the police, and second, something terrible would happen to them.
She took a sharp right onto Meadowbrook, and immediately found herself behind a school bus. A school bus? What the heck was a school bus doing out at this time of night? Could this get any worse?
Why hadn’t her father called her? Had he called Thomas with his one phone call from jail? Or was Thomas with him when he was arrested?
The bus made a right turn, and Stephanie almost sobbed with relief as she raced ahead to make the next traffic light before it turned red. He couldn’t have been arrested for anything serious, could he?
There was no question in her mind that Malcolm didn’t have anything to do with these murders. She knew him. She knew he wasn’t some psychotic who enjoyed torturing people.
It must be that he had started drinking again. That’s why he’d called his sponsor instead of her. Oh my God. What could he have done while drinking that would have gotten him arrested? Did he drive drunk and kill somebody? Or somebodies?
The possibilities were endless. And catastrophic.
It was like a nightmare. One minute, Steph was laughing about silly reporters chasing after her for an interview, and the next, she was racing to her father’s home, desperate to learn the details of his arrest.
Mug shots. Headlines. Front-page pictures. Leif Samuelson and Public Forum. Her father was going to be so humiliated.
And how was his heart going to hold up under the stress of all of this? Would he even survive?
Finally, she made the left turn onto Seminole, and pulled behind Thomas’s tiny Volkswagen in the driveway. She jumped out of her car and ran to the front door. Thomas opened it before she even reached it. He had obviously been crying, and as soon as he saw Steph, he hugged her, and sobbed out, “I’m so sorry. It’s so terrible. I don’t know what to say. It’s just too awful. First Andre, and now this…”
“Who’s Andre? What happened?” Steph pulled free of the hug. “Where did they take Malcolm? Why did they arrest him? What’s going on?”
The little man swallowed, and took a shaky breath before he answered. “Andre Englewood was our stage manager. He was the nicest person. And yesterday, he was murdered by this killer, whoever he is. Anyway, the police came here today and said that Malcolm did it. They brought him to the police station. They said they would let him make a phone call when they booked him.” He took another rasping breath. “They’re going to book him for Andre’s murder. Oh God. It’s awful.”
For a minute, the lights seemed to dim, and Steph felt a dizzying wave of nausea. The last time she felt this was in high school when she fainted on the way to the hospital when she had meningitis.
Damn it, she was too mad to faint. Malcolm was not a murderer, and he needed her to help him prove it. She shook off the feeling of lightheadedness, and then, for the first time, she noticed the house.
The living room looked like a tornado had blown through. Furniture was overturned, books and papers were scattered all over the floor. Even the oriental rug was flipped over.
“What happened in here?” she said, walking through the debris and into the small dining room, where silverware and flatware littered the floor.
The kitchen too was in chaos. The cabinets had been flung open, and cookie sheets, frying pans, sauce pots, and lids of every size were lying on the floor.
“I think they had a search warrant,” Thomas offered, tentatively.
Steph could barely make her way into the pantry. The shelves were swept almost bare, and the food
formerly kept there lay in mounds at her feet.
“What kind of people do this?” Her voice was quivering. “I can’t even…” She couldn’t finish her thought.
Thomas just shook his head. “There must have been a hundred police cars that passed me as I drove here. I was coming to pick Malcolm up to go to a meeting, and I got here just as they were bringing him out of the house in handcuffs. They almost didn’t let me talk to him.”
Tears flooded Steph’s eyes, but she fought them back. She had to stay focused. She had to take care of this. Unfortunately, she had no idea where to start. It was so overwhelming. Her father, arrested for murder. Again.
Afraid that if she didn’t start to do something, she’d just stand there, frozen to one spot, she began to pick up some of the food that had been strewn all over the floor. “Did he…Was he drunk when they came?”
“No,” Thomas replied. “He was upset, of course, but he hadn’t been drinking. Believe me, I’d know. In fact, he made sure to give me the oddest message for you. But he was definitely sober.”
Steph paused, a can of split pea soup in her left hand, a bag of onions in her right. “What did he say?”
“Well,” Thomas said, and prepared himself to deliver the line.
Steph tried to stay calm. She really didn’t need the extra drama that the strange little man seemed determined to add to the moment. “We actually passed on the driveway. I had parked on the street, because there were still a couple of police cars here. And just before they put him into the backseat of one of the cars, Malcolm said, ‘Tell Stephanie that everything is all right. I didn’t do anything wrong. And tell her not to cheat herself out of a real dinner tonight.’”
As if this day wasn’t bizarre enough. Now her father was starting to sound like a madman.
“I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here, but it seemed pretty clear to me that he was giving you some kind of message. That’s why I said you shouldn’t call the police. Do you know what he means? ‘Cheat yourself out of a real dinner tonight’?”
“No.” Steph put the onions on a shelf in the pantry, and stepped out into the kitchen again. “I have no idea why he would say that.”
And then, suddenly, she remembered. A conversation Malcolm had told her about that he had had with her mother shortly before they’d found out that her mother was sick.
And Steph realized that she was going to have to check something in the refrigerator, and she needed to do it alone.
“Thomas, I hate to ask this of you, but would it be all right if I just…Would you mind if I was alone for a little while? I’m a little overwhelmed, I guess, and I want to clean up this mess before I go to the police station and try to see him.”
“Oh my God, of course,” Thomas replied. “But are you sure you don’t want any help? I feel so awful leaving you with all of this—”
“I’m fine,” Steph interrupted. “I think I just need to be by myself right now, if that’s okay.”
“Girlfriend, I have been there myself. Many, many times.” He smiled sadly. “I’m so sorry about all of this. I know Malcolm is a good person, and that he didn’t have anything to do with anybody’s murder.” He hugged Steph again. “If you need anything, you have my number, right?”
Steph nodded. “I do. And I’ll give you a call as soon as I get in touch with Malcolm.”
“You are a dear,” he said, and let himself out.
Steph went to the front of the house and watched through a window to see the little man’s car drive off. Just before he got into his car, it looked like he was deciding whether to come back into the house. He hesitated and turned around, but when he saw Steph watching him from the window, he smiled and waved. Then he turned back, got into his car, and drove away.
Steph returned to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator.
Malcolm’s strange message had been intended to remind Steph of a funny conversation he had had with her mother after he had returned home from the grocery store one day. While emptying the bags, he proudly revealed that he had bought an already cooked rotisserie chicken. He was very excited about the fact that his clever purchase had saved his wife the time she’d normally spend actually cooking the bird.
To Malcolm’s complete surprise, Steph’s mother didn’t like the idea of rotisserie chickens. She thought that if a family was going to eat a cooked chicken at home, that they should actually cook the chicken at home. And in the ensuing, very silly exchange, Malcolm and Marilyn debated whether eating a rotisserie chicken was “cheating them all” out of a real dinner.
Malcolm had once told Steph that that conversation was the last time he could remember her mother laughing.
Now she opened the refrigerator, fully expecting to find a rotisserie chicken.
She was not disappointed.
On the second shelf, next to a few bags of precut salad, sat a Big Green Grocery lemon-pepper rotisserie chicken. It was still in its original packaging—a paper bag with a plastic window, and flaps at the end that you could refold. From the date on the bag, it looked like Malcolm had just bought it yesterday.
Steph reached into the fridge, and took the chicken out. Then she picked up a plate from the floor and brought it with the bird over to the kitchen table, which, miraculously, was relatively clear of clutter. Was it possible Malcolm had hidden something in the bag with the chicken while the police were searching the house? How could he have managed that? From the extent of the mess they made, there must have been dozens of cops swarming the place.
Steph put the plate on the table and set the bag down in its center. Then she sat down before it, and carefully, she unfolded the end of the bag, opened it up, and lowered her head slowly, to peer inside.
It was ridiculous. Her heart was thudding. She was peering into a bag containing a rotisserie chicken as if there were a chance that something inside was going to jump out at her. But her hands were actually shaking as she used them to pull back the ends of the bag—
Her phone rang, and she was so startled she almost had a heart attack. She jumped up from the chair, and hurried over to her purse, which she’d left on the counter. The caller ID showed a number she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was Malcolm, calling from the police station.
“Hello?” she said. “Daddy? Is that you?”
There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the phone, and then there was a gentle male laugh. “Not exactly,” a man said, “but I wouldn’t object if that’s what you wanted to call me. This is Russell Crane, sweetheart.”
“Oh my God, of all the times…” Her mind was racing in so many different directions, Steph could barely put two words together. “Would you please stop, you…” She couldn’t even think of what to call the man who had done so much harm to them. Instead, she clicked the phone shut, turned it off, put it back into her purse, and returned to the table. Russell Crane. If there was one person in the world she did not need to be thinking about, it was Russell Crane.
The chicken sat there in the open bag on the plate. And suddenly, this entire business seemed so incredibly silly. Her father had been arrested for murder, and here she was, expecting something useful from a rotisserie chicken bag. Maybe Malcolm really was crazy. Maybe Thomas had gotten the message wrong.
Still, she reached in and grabbed the chicken, and one of her fingers slid into the body cavity of the bird, striking something solid.
That was strange. Grocery store rotisserie chickens were not supposed to have giblets or anything else in the body cavity. Steph pulled the bird out of the bag, and placed it on the plate. Then using one hand, she pried open the rear end of the bird, and with the other, reached her thumb and index finger inside, and touched what felt like a plastic container of some kind.
It was a very small Tupperware container. A mist had formed on the inside of the transparent plastic, making it impossible to see through. So Steph pulled the top off and looked inside.
The next thing she knew, she was screaming, the Tupperware container, its to
p, and what was inside were all flying through the air.
But when the three separate items landed on the kitchen floor, Steph could only see one.
The severed human finger.
Eleven Seconds
ZACK WAS OUT OF TIME. HE HAD TO REACH the gunman now, or he was going to shoot Justin.
And Zack was still ten feet away, with a bullet in his leg.
The shooter had completed his turn toward Justin, and was bringing the gun down so that it would point directly forward before he fired.
Zack had no chair to shove at him, no gun to shoot at him, no time to run and dive on top of him.
He had to stop thinking about what he didn’t have. What did he have?
His jacket, his tie, his shirt.
The gun rose up. The shooter’s arm was almost parallel with the floor. In a moment, he would be ready to fire.
Zack’s belt. His pants. His shoes.
The shoe he was still stupidly holding in his right hand.
Jesus Christ. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
And as the gunman sighted along his arm before taking the shot that would kill Justin, Zack let his shoe fly.
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought that he saw it make contact with the side of the shooter’s head just before he heard the roar of a gunshot.
TWENTY-FOUR
September 18
Paul was surprised by how quiet it was when Mr. Heinrich died.
The old man had had a very rough night, and early on during the day of his death he wasn’t any better. He’d managed to have a little water with his morphine, but other than that, he was just lying there in bed, looking tiny, breathing pretty shallow.
So the nurses had called Neil, and he’d arrived around eleven. He took a chair beside his father’s bed, and just stayed there, mute and miserable. Paul came into the room a couple of times after lunch, once to see if Neil needed anything to eat, and once to sit by the old man while Neil went to the bathroom.
At around two, Paul went in to check on them, and he found Neil standing beside the bed, holding his father’s hand. The old man’s eyes were open, and for a minute, Paul thought he was gone. But then the glassy eyes blinked, and the cancer-riddled lungs coughed weakly.