Faces of Fear (16 page)

"Trust me," Conrad whispered. "She'll be just fine."

Finally content, Risa fell asleep in the warm security of her husband's arms.

* * *

ALISON WAS PROPPED in the window seat with two of the pillows from the bed, her quilt wrapped around her, Ruffles stretched out along her thigh, and her computer in her lap.

She logged on to the MySpace page she had spent the last hour reconstructing.

And Cindy Kearns still wasn't online.

She heard the tone signaling incoming e-mail and clicked on the button to open the program. There was a new e-mail titled, MYSPACE FRIEND REQUEST.

She opened it.

SETH8146 WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO YOUR MYSPACE FRIENDS LIST.

She went back to her MySpace page and clicked on his profile. He was very cute, in a blond, surfer-guy kind of way, but there wasn't much information about him.

An Instant Message box appeared from Seth28146.

HI. CUTE PIX OF U.

Alison's fingers absently stroked the dog's fur as she gazed at the blinking cursor.

What should she do? This was exactly what her dad had warned her about—chatting with strangers on her computer.

But what was the big deal? It wasn't like she would make a date with him, or tell him where she lived, or anything at all. What harm could chatting do?

She looked over at the big, uninviting bed and realized that even if she shut off the computer and got into it, she'd just fret about tomorrow. She made up her mind. HI! she typed, and then hit SEND.

* * *

TINA WONG PERCHED on the edge of the hard gray metal folding chair next to Detective Evan Sands's desk, unconsciously tapping her foot and checking her watch every few seconds.

Slowly, the squad room began to fill, but even when it seemed as if the room could hold no more people, neither Sands nor Rick McCoy had shown up. At 8:45, deciding she'd wasted enough of her time, she picked up her briefcase and rose to her feet. She had a lot more important things to do today than wait in vain for two cops who were even now probably sitting in some doughnut shop swapping lies and bad jokes.

As if on cue, Evan Sands pushed through the glass doors into the squad room and instantly spotted her. To his credit, he barely hesitated, keeping nearly all of his distaste for her out of his expression, but not enough to keep Tina from reading his animosity. Not that it mattered; as far as she was concerned, her job was to get the story and report it, and if some people—or even
all
people—found her irritating, that was just tough for them. Besides, Sands had no idea that she was bringing him a gift today, and even though the gift came with a price, she was sure that in the end he'd agree that he got the better end of the deal.

"Tina," the detective said, barely nodding to her. "I thought vampires were afraid of the daylight."

"Funny," she said without even a hint of a smile. "I want to talk with you privately." Her eyes swept the room, but only about a quarter of the detective force even pretended not to be trying to hear every word she and Sands exchanged.

"Does that include McCoy?" Sands asked.

"Not a problem," Tina said, checking her watch. "Assuming he's planning to show up at all this morning."

"He had the doughnut run this morning," Sands told her as his partner, balancing two paper cups of coffee on a big, greasy box, backed through the door and let it swing shut behind him. He shot Sands a questioning look as he recognized Tina, which Sands responded to with a helpless gesture, clearly conveying that he wasn't to be blamed for the fact that she'd trapped them both by getting into the squad room early enough to avoid being stopped.

Still, she could see that Sands seemed to understand her urgency and the importance of privacy, because he jerked his head for McCoy to follow them, then led the way through the back of the squad room into a small interrogation room, closing the door as soon as they were all inside.

"I'm not going to waste your time," Tina said without spending so much as a second on pleasantries. "I want to know one thing in particular about Kimberly Elmont's murder."

Rick McCoy scoffed as he set the box on the table. "You and about a million other reporters."

"We're not giving out any specific information to anyone," Sands said. "You know the drill. So why are you really here?"

"Because," Tina said, ignoring McCoy and looking Sands directly in the eye, "I think I know something about that murder that you don't know, and if you'll answer one question, I can help you guys get Cop of the Year or Queen for a Day or whatever award they hand out around here."

"Oooh," Sands said, "I'm so excited I think I might wet myself." Then he dropped the sarcasm. "Look, Tina—you know the rules. You give before you get. If you really know something, you have to tell us anyway, otherwise you're withholding evidence or obstructing justice or anything else the D.A. can think up. So you go first, and if we like it, we'll give you something back."

Tina hesitated. If she divulged too much without confirmation from them, she'd blow the best angle she had for her special. "I need to know you're good for this information."

"What do you want to know?" Sands asked.

"Did Kimberly Elmont lose some glands Saturday night in addition to her ears?"

The look that passed between the two detectives was almost all the confirmation Tina needed.

Almost, but not quite.

"We can neither confirm or deny—" McCoy began, but Sands interrupted him.

"We can give you the answer to that one," he said, the last trace of sarcasm vanishing from his voice. "What have you got?"

"If she was missing her thymus and adrenals, the same thing happened last year to Caroline Fisher."

She waited for a reaction from either cop but got none.

"Hello?" Tina said. "Is anybody home? Do I have to spell it out? Does the term ‘serial killer' mean anything to you two?"

"There isn't any reason—" McCoy began, but now it was Tina who cut him off.

"Come on," she snapped. "Obviously you hadn't connected Caroline Fisher and Kimberly Elmont yet, so at least let me have some credit for giving you that."

Evan Sands eyed her speculatively. "Which means you've got more?"

Tina weighed her options. "I do. But unless Fisher and Elmont are connected, the rest of what I have doesn't pertain to Elmont. So make up your minds."

Sands picked up a doughnut and bit into it. "Okay," he finally said after he'd munched through half the sticky ring of pastry. "According to the coroner, those glands were gone. So you're right—unless we have a copycat—"

"Copycats don't wait a year," Tina Wong cut in. "And there are two others, fifteen years ago." As McCoy and Sands stared at her, she snapped open the locks on her briefcase and brought out two sheets of paper, laying them on the table. "One in San Diego and one in San Jose. Girls slashed open and their adrenals and thymuses taken. Same M.O., same killer, right?"

"Holy Christ," Sands breathed, picking up the summary of the San Diego case and starting to scan it as Tina Wong kept talking.

"He's a serial killer, he's back, and he's in Los Angeles now," the newswoman said. "So how much of Elmont can I report on?"

"Similarities," Sands said slowly, passing the San Diego report to McCoy in exchange for the one from San Jose. "Don't give the details about the glands—we'd just as soon not tip too much to the wackos who are going to start 'fessing up the minute they hear it's a serial." He looked up at Tina. "And you didn't hear anything from me. Take all the credit for seeing the similarities yourself."

Tina snapped her briefcase shut and picked it up from the table. "Thank you, gentlemen—a pleasure doing business with you."

"Not so fast," McCoy said, holding up the San Diego report. "What are you planning to do with this stuff?"

Tina smiled sweetly. "The public has a right to know," she said. Then she opened the door and walked out, leaving them still reading the reports.

If she hurried, she could film her noon update and still be in San Diego before lunch.

* * *

ALISON SHAW FOUND her way back to her locker after the final hour of the day, her head still spinning from the differences between Santa Monica High and the Wilson Academy. Aside from the fact that the academy was on a small campus nestled in the hills above Westwood Village, and the buildings looked more like mansions than school buildings, the classes were far smaller than any she'd been in before, and the dining hall was more like a restaurant than a cafeteria. Even the lockers were different—built carefully into the walls, each with a mahogany door with a student's name engraved on a small brass plaque. Hers was on the first floor of the Science Building, and now, as she stood staring at all her new textbooks, she wondered if she could leave any of them in her locker overnight.

"Mrs. Morgan is always the priority," someone behind her said.

Alison turned and saw Tasha Rudd and Dawn Masin, the two girls she remembered from her mother's wedding.

"Literature," Alison groaned.

"Don't you just hate it?" Tasha asked. "You have to actually read the material, and God help you if you're late with a paper."

Dawn Masin nodded. "She's the worst."

"Okay, at least I know," Alison said, and pulled the heavy literature book off the stack.

"So you made it through your first day," Tasha said as Alison added her history book to her backpack.

"Well, I survived it, anyway," she replied. "In fact, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."

"Then you should celebrate," Dawn said. "We're all going up to Tasha's. Come with us."

Alison hesitated—neither of the girls had been this friendly at the wedding; in fact, they hadn't spent more than five minutes with her. So why were they inviting her along now?

"You need to meet some people," Tasha said, reading the uncertainty in her expression. "Come with us. It'll be fun."

"And if you don't come, my dad will think we didn't invite you, and I'll be grounded for a week," Dawn added.

Alison gaped at her. "Your father
told
you to invite me?"

Dawn nodded. "But it's no big deal—if we didn't want you to come, we would have just lied to our folks. Plus which, Trip says you're really good in trigonometry, and Tasha and I can't do it at all, so we're going to need you to help us. Okay?"

Alison found herself laughing. "Are you always this honest?"

"You'll get used to it," Tasha said as Dawn only looked vaguely puzzled by the question. "So come on, okay?

"I need to check with my mom," she said, still uncertain whether they wanted her to come with them.

"So call her," Tasha countered. "We'll wait."

Two minutes later Alison closed her phone, added her trigonometry book to the two others already in her backpack, then closed her locker. "Let's go!"

Five minutes later Tasha beeped open her silver BMW roadster, which was parked between a Mercedes coupe and a Saab convertible.

"This is
yours
?" Alison asked, her eyes taking in the row of glittering automobiles as she pulled open the passenger door of the BMW. She knew one person at Santa Monica High who had a BMW, but it was five years old, and most of the students' cars had been at least ten. Nor were most of them Mercedes and Saabs and BMWs.

"Got it for my birthday," Tasha said. She put the car in gear and led a caravan of three other cars full of kids up Roscomare Road to Mulholland Drive, where she turned right and wound her way along the crest of the hills for a mile before turning right through a pair of electric gates and down a steep driveway to a large parking area and garage in front of her family's house overlooking Stone Canyon.

Tasha parked in the garage, the other cars parked behind her, and then almost a dozen kids piled out, streaming around the house itself and down the stairs to the pool house.

"Let's go dump our stuff in my room," Tasha said, leading Alison to the front door. "Then we'll find you a suit in the cabana.

Two boys—Alison thought they were Cooper Ames and Budge Phelps—were already splashing in the pool by the time she and Tasha arrived at the huge terrace containing not only the pool and a "cabana" that was bigger than the house in Santa Monica had been, but an outdoor kitchen around a huge barbecue.

When they went into the dressing area in the cabana, half a dozen naked girls were rummaging in the drawers full of different size swimsuits. Suddenly, she felt like she was back in gym class.

"Here," Tasha said, pulling a purple striped two-piece suit out of a drawer and handing it to her. "This should fit you."

Tasha casually stripped off her clothes and got into her own pink bikini with white piping, then adjusted it in front of the mirror.

Alison, self-conscious, hesitated, but finally took off her own clothes and pulled the bathing suit on. At least it wasn't a full bikini, and the bottom sort of fit—it was a bit tighter than anything she'd ever worn before, and her thighs and waist bulged a bit over the spandex.

She told herself it wasn't too bad.

But the top was way too big—the cups bagged around her small breasts.

"The bra doesn't fit," she said, staring dolefully at her reflection in the mirrored wall. "Do you have a smaller one?"

Tasha opened another drawer, pulled out a pair of foam rubber falsies, and handed them to her. "These will fill it out."

Alison stared at them, praying Tasha was kidding, but knowing by the tone of her voice that she wasn't. "I'm not sure I—" she began.

"Go on," Tasha said, cutting her off. "They're the ones I used to wear before your stepdad gave me these." She lifted her chest with two hands, exaggerating the bulge of her breasts.

Alison reddened and tried not to stare. "You mean those are implants?
Conrad
gave you implants?"

"Well, it didn't look like I was ever going to grow them, so first I used those." She nodded toward the two foam pads that were still in Alison's hand. "They'll push you up and fill out the top. Try it."

"They fit into a pocket in the bottom of the cups," Dawn said. "Here, take it off and I'll show you."