Chosen for Death (34 page)

I'll bet even Thea doesn't notice. She sees the world through rose-colored glasses. She notices a lot of other things, though. That's why she was always running interference for me—because she could tell Mom and I couldn't get along. Yeah. Thea loves me like a sister. She's the only one of them who does. But she's one of them. Sometimes I wonder if she'd still love me if she knew what I'm really like. If she knew how bad I am. Well, I've got some really good dope Charlie gave me. A few puffs of that should mellow me out enough so nothing Mom says will bother me. Wouldn't she just die if she knew I was screwing three different guys, including Charlie?

I read on. Carrie got through her family visit, though it was painful to read about. I didn't like what she was showing me. About the family and about herself. I wanted to keep seeing through my rose-colored glasses, and Carrie, even in death a determined iconoclast, wouldn't let me. She kept seeing her mystery guy, and Charlie, and mothering Kevin, but she didn't give me clues about his identity. Mrs. Hoggins had straightened out Mr. Hoggins, so he wasn't bothering her anymore. Lorna was being difficult at work and alienating the customers. Carrie was spending her spare time searching for her birth mother, and on her next free day she was going back to Massachusetts, to Serenity House. Poor girl. I knew how that was going to go.

I sat on the floor, lost in remembrance, following Carrie through her last month. I'm not prissy, nor the prude Andre accused me of being, but I meant it when I said I was uncomfortable talking about Carrie's sex life. I was uncomfortable reading about it, too. Part of me was thrilled to have her diary, for the information she was giving me and for the closeness I felt. Another part of me was a little disturbed. The Carrie I was seeing here wasn't always a very nice person. I had an idealized picture of her, because she was my sister, because she'd been such a sweet child. As a confused young adult, she sometimes shocked me. I had to admit that the things she said about me really hurt, too. And I couldn't say, "But Carrie, I don't want to know all this," because I might need to know it. Worse yet, I was going to be giving it to the police.

Under August 29th I found the sentence that broke my heart. I'd followed in her footsteps so I knew what she was going to learn, and the diary led her to all the people I'd seen. Like me, Carrie had wanted to hurt Esther Pappas and had found food, comfort, and the vital clue at Agnes Deignan's house. As I got closer to the point when she would meet her birth mother I almost couldn't make myself read on. Even now, when it was too late, I instinctively wanted to protect her from what I knew was coming. I could see her sitting alone here, writing it, and a terrible grief seized me.

August 29. They bought me. That's what my mother said. They bought me. My mother. There's no doubt about who she is. It's like looking at myself in the mirror. Even though they warned me, back home in my search group, that you don't always like what you find, I couldn't have expected this. How much she hates me. Has always hated me. No wonder I'm no good and can't be happy. I was conceived in violence, hated, rejected, and then sold.

Carrie's handwriting trailed off into an illegible blur, and from the smudges on the page I could tell she'd been crying. I was crying, too. In shame for the phone calls I hadn't returned, in sorrow for all that she had had to face alone, impotently angry with the family for the way we'd all let her down.

The shrill of the phone jarred me back to the present. Something else I'd forgotten—to disconnect her phone. I assumed it would be Andre, but the voice on the other end was unfamiliar. A strange man who knew my name.

"Mrs. Kozak? This is Chris Davis. You borrowed some of my clothes yesterday." With difficulty, I shifted my mind back to the present. Who was Chris Davis? I vaguely remembered borrowing some clothes. Oh yes. From Betsy Davis's son. "I need to talk to you... about my mother and your sister. Please," he said. He sounded scared and determined. "We can't talk here at the house. Will you meet me somewhere?"

I was intrigued. Why the son and not his mother? She said she had kept all this a secret from her family. I looked at my watch. I'd dreamed away a lot of time, and I did have to get back tonight, but if this was important, I'd make time for it. "I could meet you in about half an hour," I said. "Where?"

"Do you know where the public boat landing is, near the Wayfarer Marine yacht storage buildings?" he asked.

I said no, and he gave me directions, which I scribbled on the back of an envelope. It took me almost the whole half hour to finish packing and get everything stowed away in my car. I was moving in an emotional fog. Reading the diary had left me feeling hollow and depressed. I called the Thomaston barracks and left a message for Andre that Carrie's brother had called and asked me to meet him at the public boat landing, and that I'd found Carrie's diary and would stop in and give it to him on my way back to Massachusetts. They promised to give him the message.

The last thing I did before I left was call the phone company and arrange to have the phone disconnected. It turned out to be harder than I'd expected. Carrie hadn't had the phone changed to her name when her roommate moved out and I didn't remember her roommate's name. Fortunately, the service rep was able to work from the phone number and we got things straightened out in the phone company's own special way. She agreed to close the account and send a final bill to me as soon as she received a letter from the former roommate. Another thing to take care of when I got back.

As I carried out my suitcase, I saw the curtain twitch one last time. I wondered if Mrs. Bolduc would rush right over and check the apartment and see that I hadn't cleaned. I pictured her chasing me down the street, yellow teeth bared, her skinny arms churning frantically in the fog.

It was foggier than before, and chillier. A bone-deep chill that made me appreciate the heated seat. Hard to believe it was only the end of September. It felt like December today. Switching on my lights, I crept down Mountain Street through the fog, trying to follow his directions to the public boat landing. He'd said it was right beside a row of new condominiums, which would normally make it not too difficult to find, but today I could see only about ten feet in front of the car.

Suddenly a vast blue building loomed up on my left. I drove past it, peering through the fog for the boat launch parking area, and almost launched my car. The tiny sign marking the spot would have been more suitable on a peanut butter jar. I had stopped at the very edge of the lot, or street, or whatever it was. Ahead a wad of lumpy tarmac, riddled with fissures and craters, sloped sharply down to the water. I backed up and moved the car farther to the right, where a ragged patch of weeds provided at least a visual barrier between my car and the beach. There were no other cars around.

Farther right, a rank of gray condos looking like highstyle beehives marched away into the fog. They looked uninhabited. No lights shone out into the gloomy afternoon. I cut the engine, stuck the keys in my pocket, and got out. The keys clinked against something metallic in my pocket. Curious, I reached in and pulled out the little can of Mace Agnes had given me. I stuck it back in my pocket and walked slowly around the car, looking for Chris Davis.

I could hear the faint scrunching of shoes on gravelly tar, and then, as I watched, he emerged from the shelter of some big dark evergreens, walking toward me with an odd smile on his face. Once again I was struck by his resemblance to his mother. The same blond curls, now wet with fog and plastered against his forehead, the same blue eyes. Carrie's eyes. His sister's eyes. The nose and mouth must have come from his father along with his height.

As I watched him approach, a remark Lorna had made flashed across my mind. A remark I'd ignored at the time. "...she was seeing two guys, this cute blond guy, I never heard his name, looked like he coulda been her brother." And something from Carrie's diary. She'd written "lying there, we looked just like twins." I'd been too stunned yesterday to notice, or I would have seen it then. But I hadn't seen it. Hadn't thought of it when I was reading her diary. Hadn't wondered how he could call me at Carrie's when she wasn't listed, unless he already knew the number. Hadn't put it all together until now, as Carrie's killer came toward me, an unpleasant smile on his face.

Chapter 27

I'd delivered myself right into his hands, even let him choose the spot. I reached into my pocket for the car keys, but it was too late. He was too close. I turned and ran down onto the beach, heading left away from the condos, stumbling down the rough, slippery ramp and onto the rocky sand. I could hear him following behind me, calling as he came, his voice distorted by the fog. "Mrs. Kozak? It's me. Chris Davis. Don't run away. I just want to talk to you."

"Yeah, right, brother," I thought as I ran, "and after that you've got a bridge to sell me." I scrambled on blindly, trying to run quietly, an impossible task on this rocky beach. My feet crunched through the sand and squelched over the rocks, scraping over barnacles and sliding over seaweed. It was like running an obstacle course—a deadly one. Magnified by the fog, my footsteps and his sounded unnaturally loud in the otherwise silent afternoon. We were sealed in a thick, gray world, isolated by the intangible blanket around us. I couldn't see more than ten or fifteen feet ahead, not far enough to plan an escape. In the distance, a foghorn called its deep-throated warning across the invisible sea.

If only I knew where the big blue building ended. It would have been easier to lose myself on land or go to a house for help, but I didn't dare head that way, fearing I'd be trapped between the beach and that unending wall of blue metal. Ahead of me a groin of boulders, meant to stop beach erosion, rose up. There were deep crevices between some of the rocks where they'd been shifted by storms. I found one big enough to hold me and crawled into it, pulling my sweater up over my face to muffle the ragged sound of my breathing. I loosened my hair and pulled it forward to cover my face, trying to make myself only a dark blur.

His fair head appeared out of the fog, swiveling left and right. He stopped about eight feet away and listened. I held my breath. He turned and began walking up the beach, peering down among the rocks. "Mrs. Kozak, what's wrong?" he called softly. "I didn't mean to scare you. Please come out. I just want to talk to you."

He sounded so kind, so friendly, so trustworthy. Lucifer, I thought. God's favorite angel. So innocent. So perfect. So profoundly evil. An innocence and perfection that had made Carrie cry and then done so much worse. I saw the pictures again. Saw again what he'd done to her. Poor Carrie, who had wondered if this was finally the guy who would turn out to be nice. He made Charlie's sadism seem benign. I was as brave as a barrelful of bears, but what I was facing now chilled me to the core. Absurd as it was, his evil seemed more extreme, more frightening, because it was so at odds with his boy-next-door appearance.

He started to walk away and I felt my panic begin to subside, thought I might begin to breathe again. Knowing I would have to stay here for a while, I shifted into a more comfortable position, accidentally knocking one rock against another with my foot. He whipped around and headed back toward me, walking along the top of the rocks, peering left and right, his sandy shoes grating loudly on the granite. I pulled myself as far back as I could, cowering in my chilly cave, clinging to the irrational hope that he might not see me. The footsteps came closer, then paused, and I knew he'd spotted me. Reluctantly I shook back my hair and raised my eyes to meet his. They glittered with triumph. "Found you," he said simply. "Come on out of there."

Reluctantly I crept out and faced him.

"Why did you run?" he said.

"I don't know," I said. "Everything suddenly seemed so strange. This place. The fog. I'd been thinking about my sister. You were a stranger. I guess I was spooked. I'm sorry. It was silly. Let's go back and talk in the car where it's warm. This place gives me the creeps." I started walking.

"No, wait, don't go," he said, his voice suddenly harsh. "We can talk here."

"I'd rather go back to the car. It's raw and damp out here, the fog is turning to drizzle, and I'm getting cold," I insisted, edging sideways onto the next rock. I didn't dare turn my back on him. Carrie had been hit from behind. He jumped past me, blocking my way. "Don't move," he ordered, sounding uncertain.

I pressed at that uncertainty. "Why?" I asked, moving sideways to go around him. "What's the matter with you? Why talk here, when we'll be more comfortable at the car? Why shouldn't we be comfortable?" I moved again, but he lunged at me and grabbed my arm.