Just Evil (30 page)

Jake agreed. “How long’s she been gone?”

“Five minutes, tops. I thought...maybe...you’d want to know.
But frankly, if you don’t go after her, I’ll have to.”

“I’m glad you called, Baylee. I need an address.”

Kit gunned her Jeep through the yellow caution light and
made a fast right onto Shannon Way, leaving behind the traffic on the busier
Stone Canyon for the more peaceful, less-traveled streets of exclusive Bel-Air.
Going much faster than the posted speed limit, she reminded herself what an
idiot she was for coming over here by herself.

Hadn’t Baylee offered to come with her? Why had she thought
she could face her past now, alone? She might not even be able to unlock the
front door, and if she did manage that much, could she take that step inside,
step back into the house that held not just bad memories, but so much pain, so
many nightmares?

As she pulled her car into the familiar circular driveway on
Bel Green Drive and came to a stop, her hands began to shake in spite of the
fact that Alana Stevens wasn’t waiting on the other side of the front door. Even
knowing Alana couldn’t hurt her anymore, she still broke out in a cold sweat.
Her hands even turned clammy.

She knew Alana was dead. She’d gone to the funeral, seen the
casket. Alana Stevens could no longer hurt her. Remembering that didn’t seem to
help. The shaking didn’t stop. And she could feel the sweat pool on her face.

Why wasn’t the car’s air conditioner working? She absently
adjusted the vents and stared at the house. She shuddered at the memory of
living here, shutting her eyes against the images of things that went on
inside.

She sat in the security of the car, afraid to open the door.
As if Pepper understood, instead of chomping at the bit to get out, he remained
at her side.

Today she came here trying to overcome—what? Her fear of
this house? Why should she fear a house? The house hadn’t been cruel, but
rather a blonde bombshell of a woman who could change in and out of moods on a
dime, sweet one moment, offering her little girl refuge on her lap, cruel the
next, knocking her to the floor and laughing about it. All at once, Kit heard
Alana’s laughter as if it was coming from inside the car. Alana’s laugh
bellowed at her and only grew louder...

Kit’s change of heart happened in an instant. She grabbed at
the gear shift to put the car into Drive and jumped when Jake tapped on the
driver’s side window.

All the fight went out of Kit as she slumped her head on the
steering wheel and without looking, she felt for the button that lowered the
glass. Her hands were shaking so much it took several tries before she found
the right button to work the driver’s side window.

When it finally rolled down, she heard Jake say, “Sorry.
Didn’t mean to scare you.”

In a voice so soft Jake barely heard, she said, “You
followed me.”

“You’re upset.”

Her body started shaking. “You followed me,” she said again.
A wave of relief washed over her as she realized she was no longer alone.

“You’re angry I came.”

“No. Not that. I’ve never been so glad to see anyone.” She
laughed, but it was a strained high-pitched sound that didn’t sound quite
genuine. “You knew I couldn’t go in alone.”

“Not at all. I wanted to be with you when you did.”

Oh, what a sweet man.

Jake had never seen Kit so white. The woman had beautiful,
flawless skin with a gold quality to it. But not now. Her skin had turned the
color of paste. And her whole body was shaking, just as she’d been after waking
from the dream last night.

He wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew he needed to do or
say something. Before he could speak, she asked, “What are you doing here?
How’d you find...find me?”

He smiled at her and realized she wasn’t thinking straight.
“I followed you, remember?”

“I’m...I’m glad...glad...you did.”

“What do you want to do, Kit?”

“I want to leave...this place.”

“Okay, we will. But how about this, you stay here in the
car, sit here with Pepper, give me the key to the house. I’ll go in and check
everything out? How about that?”

Shaking her head, in a low voice she warned, “You don’t want
to go in there, Jake. Bad things happen in there.”

“It’ll be okay, Kit. There isn’t anything in there that can
hurt me. I won’t let it.”

That sound came through her lips that was supposed to be a
laugh, but wasn’t. When she saw Jake reach into the driver’s side window and
take the key ring Connor had sent her, she heard him, as if from a distance
ask, “Which is the key to the front door, Kit?”

She felt it her duty to try to reason with him. “I don’t
think you should go in there.”

“You stay in the car, honey. It won’t take long to look
around. I’ll be right back.”

As she grudgingly watched him walk up to the front door, she
put a shaky hand on top of Pepper’s head. Feeling seven years old again, she
told the dog, “He’ll be sorry he went in there, won’t he boy?”

The minute Jake stepped inside the marble entryway, a creepy
feeling he couldn’t explain hit him in the gut. Closed up now for almost two
weeks, the house smelled musty. As he looked around at the furnishings, the
whole place seemed as if it lacked any kind of warmth.

But right away he saw evidence that someone had definitely
tossed the place. He examined the front door, found no sign that it had been
tampered with, nothing to indicate anyone had gained entry by any other means
than using a key. He made a mental note to check the other doors before he
left.

Every stick of heavy furniture in the living room and dining
area had been set off to the side of the rugs, as though the intruders had been
looking for something in the floor—like a floor safe maybe.

The condition of the house told him they hadn’t found what
they’d been looking for either. After stepping around overturned furniture, he
headed in the direction of the kitchen. Here every drawer, every cabinet, even
the pantry had been ransacked. They’d opened cereal boxes and strewn food all
over the kitchen floor.

After checking the back door and the doors leading to the
terrace and finding no broken locks, no forced entry, he went back to his
original assertion.

Whoever had done this must have had a key.

From the kitchen he used the back staircase leading to the
second floor. Once he got to the landing, he began mechanically checking out
each bedroom one room at a time. He found each one in as bad a shape as the
rest of the house. They’d left no stone unturned when it came to their search.

Inside the master bedroom he noted the cleanup crew had done
a half-assed job after the murder. Here, the pale Berber carpet still held that
unmistakable brownish stain where blood had congealed.

Staring at the crime scene now took him back to another time,
another place, when he’d walked into another bedroom, the one that had belonged
to Claire when he’d found her bloodied body. And it suddenly hit him that there
was no way Kit could have walked into this house and dealt with this particular
scene.

Under his breath, he cursed Connor Boyd for sending Kit back
here. What would have happened if she’d come upon this room by herself?

Ten minutes later, he again stood in the center of Alana’s
overly-decorated French living room, surrounded by what he was pretty sure used
to be ugly Louis XIV antiques. It looked as if someone had taken an instant
dislike to her taste in furniture and hacked each piece apart before scattering
the contents throughout the room.

Back in the car Kit fidgeted, checked her watch every few
minutes, and decided Jake had been in there a really long time. When Pepper
started to whine, she realized the dog needed a potty break. As she cut the
Jeep’s engine and opened the door, she watched as Pepper sprinted off and
immediately hunkered down on the lawn to take care of business. Kit shook her
head and muttered, “Alana sure wouldn’t have liked that.” 

After locking the front door, for all the good it did, Jake
found Kit and Pepper standing on the front lawn about forty feet from the car.
The first thing he thought was that she’d overcome her panic attack and left
the car. That was a good thing. But the minute he approached her, the minute
she heard his footsteps and turned to look at him, he knew something was wrong.
She had that distant look in her eyes that he’d seen so many times in the last
couple of weeks, but this time it was as if she really were physically faraway
from him.

And it scared the shit out of him.

“Kit, are you okay?” He felt stupid asking. He knew she
wasn’t. He could see it for himself.  “I don’t think Alana would be too happy
if she could see the house now. They trashed the place pretty good.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I don’t care what
they did to it as long as I don’t ever have to see it again or go inside again.
It’s a shame they didn’t burn it to the ground, don’t you think? It would have
looked so much better in ashes or rubble. They could start over then. The new
owners could build something new from the ground up, something suited to a
family, a real one.”

“Well, it’s your house now, Kit. You can...”

But she didn’t let him finish. She whirled to face him. “You
just don’t get it, do you? It’s not my house. It was never my house. Growing up
here…” She caught herself. “Yes, it appears I’m going to end up with it after
probate. They’ll force me to take it. But it’s not my house. It was never my
house. Living here was never a home, more like prison.”

Jake reached for her, and placed his hands on the small of
her back, gently nudging her toward the car. “We need to get out of here.” He
directed her in the general direction of the car. “Coming here wasn’t a good
idea.”

But walking toward the car also meant walking toward the
house and all at once Kit stopped and turned to face him. This time with more
control, in a level voice, without emotion, she said, “You want to know what
happened here, Jake. Where should I begin? How about when I was very small and
Alana bought me a playhouse. It had wonderful toys inside: a tea set, cute
little furniture. It’s my first memory.

“Any little girl would have loved a playhouse like mine. And
I did until she locked me up, locked me inside and wouldn’t let me out,
wouldn’t let me out to eat or go to the bathroom. That playhouse became a
prison, my personal little-girl prison when I was no more than three. And it
was just the beginning of things to come. Any time Alana wanted me out of the
way or wanted to punish me for some reason, she’d lock me inside my playhouse.
Sometimes I was there for a really long time. It happened over and over and
over again. So many times, I can’t count. Do you know what it’s like to be
locked inside a small space, unable to get out to use the bathroom, or to get
something to eat when you’re hungry? I’m convinced there were times when she
forgot I was there. It might be a paradise of a playhouse on the outside, but
inside, it was a cell for a little girl.”

Her voice caught before she continued. “But it didn’t take
long for me to outgrow my playhouse, and when that happened, I was locked in an
upstairs closet, Alana nicknamed Kit’s Closet; I was in the dark for hours;
sometimes, depending on her mood, it was for more than a day without food or
water, unless, of course, the housekeeper or the cook would hear my kicking and
screaming, take pity on me, and sneak me something to eat.

“Come on Jake, this is what you want to know, isn’t it? You
want to hear all of it, don’t you? Would you like to see the closet just off
the alcove upstairs where Alana locked up her willful daughter to keep her in
line more times than I care to count?” She moved past him toward the house,
“Let’s go take a look at the upstairs closet for old time’s sake. How about it?
Let’s go back inside.”

Before she took another step, Jake grabbed her arm. “Honey,
look at me. Look at me, honey. It’s okay to get angry. You can be goddamned
angry at Alana for what she did to you.”

As if not hearing him, she went on, unemotionally. “Then
there were all the beatings, the broken bones, the bruises; let’s skip all that
boring stuff and just fast forward to when I was twelve. One night she and my
father were arguing. My father had told me he was finally taking me away from
here, finally getting me out of the house. So I went upstairs to pack. But I
heard them arguing, and I knew I needed to intervene because he’d promised me
many times that he would take me away from here but for some reason he always
ended up backing down, giving in, always, always leaving me here. I remember thinking,
please don’t change your mind this time don’t leave me with her again. So, I
came into the room, and I saw that Alana had a gun. I heard her tell my father
that she’d see me dead before she’d let him have me. When Alana saw me in the
doorway, she turned around with the gun, faced me, aimed it directly at me, and
then deliberately pulled the trigger. But as I watched her aim, I turned at the
last minute and the bullet went into my shoulder, my upper arm.” Absently, her
right hand moved up to her left shoulder and she rubbed the spot as if it still
hurt.

“A twelve-year-old girl sees her mother intentionally point
a gun and fire at her because she’d rather see her dead; I can still hear the
gun go off, remember the sound it made, the searing pain, all the blood. I woke
up in my own bed. She’d paid a doctor to come to the house.

“Of course, my father was nowhere in sight. That was the
worst part, you see, about that night, my father leaving me here with
Alana…again. That hurt far more than the bullet ever could.” A sob broke out of
her throat. “I left this house at sixteen and I want no part of it now.”

Jake brought her into him. He stood there with his arms
wrapped tightly around her. She was trembling again so hard her teeth
chattered. The realization hit him that it was better she got all of that out
of her now with him rather than with St. John. They stood there like that until
Jake said, “Kit, I’m sorry you had to go through all that. Do you feel better
talking about it?”