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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

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She broke into a grin. “The tiles and the pencil sharpener are both still there.”
He chuckled. “That’s good to know. Well, thanks for your time . . .” He turned as if he were going to leave. He heard the chain lock rattling.
“Listen,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”
He swiveled around and smiled at her. She had the door open now. “You sure it’s not too much trouble?” he asked sheepishly.
“No trouble at all,” she replied, opening the door wider. “You’ll have to excuse the way the place looks. I wasn’t expecting company. . . .”
The newspaper said her name was Irene Haskel, and she was seventy-four, a widow with two children and five grandchildren. He’d thought she was younger than that. In fact, he’d figured her to be about sixty-five, the same as his aunt would have been—had she lived.
She let him look at the upper level, and he stood outside that closet beside the bathroom. There had been a laundry hamper in there, and shelves full of sheets and towels that kept him from standing up all the way. His aunt had had another shelf with medicines, ointments, enema bottles, and a smelly old heating pad. The whole closet had smelled like that heating pad.
He noticed the bolt lock still on the outside of that door. He hadn’t realized how flimsy it was until that moment.
Standing beside that woman who could have been his late aunt and stepping inside that house again brought back so much rage. He kept telling himself that she was a nice enough lady. He was still telling himself that as he grabbed her by the hair.
The Seattle Times
reported that Irene Haskel had received thirty-eight stab wounds. Funny, he counted a lot—usually the seconds in order to time people and determine how long they took to do things. But he hadn’t counted how many times he’d stabbed that woman with his switchblade. In fact, he barely remembered shoving her inside that tiny closet.
What he remembered most was how powerful he felt afterward. He turned on practically every light in her house, and as he drove away, he stole the
NO OUTLET
sign from the end of the block.
The sense of vindication from the experience was so intoxicating that he had to do it again and again. He’d made it into a ritual now, refining every step a little more each time. The killing had almost become secondary now. The best rush was watching his victims tying each other up while he promised no one would get hurt. It gave him all the power and control. He was in charge.
Some ignorant shrink speculated in the newspaper about how
conflicted
he was. The analyst said he wanted to be discovered, so he turned on all the lights in the house. At the same time, he was ashamed, so he hid the bodies in closets.
Stupid.
There was no conflict. He knew exactly what he was doing and how it made him feel. It made him feel exhilarated.
He slowed down as he walked past the Dennehy house again. He could see someone in one of the front windows. It was the teenage boy.
When the time came, he would save him for last.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE
Exactly one week after Chris and Erin had buried their mother they were sitting in the front pew at the funeral mass for their dad.
Molly was in the same pew, but she might as well have been alone. Chris had asked Elvis to sit with him. Erin wanted nothing to do with her and clung to her Aunt Trish. Molly was the fifth wheel, seated on the aisle with Elvis at her side.
One good thing about being on the aisle—at least it was easier for her to make a hasty exit when she felt sick, even with the walk of shame down the aisle in front of everyone. Halfway through the service, she’d had to go get some fresh air. Rachel, several pews back, walked her outside, and she gave her a peppermint from her purse. It seemed to help—for a while anyway.
Molly felt a bit light-headed again as the priest gave the final blessing. She was supposed to lead the congregation out of the church, and when she did, Molly signaled to Rachel to help her. Her neighbor quickly came to her rescue, put an arm around her, and helped her down the aisle and out the church.
Outside, a few people shook her hand and gave their condolences. Molly kept thinking she just needed to lie down. But she hung in there, nodding and thanking people while Rachel kept a hand on her back. She looked around for Chris and Erin, but didn’t see them on the sidewalk in front of the church.
Jill and Natalie approached her together, and each one shook her hand. It threw Molly for a loop. She hadn’t noticed them among the congregation and couldn’t believe Natalie, of all people, had come to Jeff’s service. The reclusive neighbor gave Molly a tiny, joyless smile. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she murmured.
“Thank you, Natalie,” she managed to say. “And thank you for coming.”
“Jenna? Jenna, is that you?”
Molly glanced over her shoulder toward the street. A thin, fortyish woman with her frizzy brown-gray hair half hidden by a bike helmet pedaled by on a bicycle. She wore a blue Windbreaker, and her bike toted a little go-cart carriage for a toddler, who was also in a bike helmet and bundled up in a jacket.
The bicyclist was looking right toward her—and her neighbors. “Jenna Corson, is that you?” she called.
Molly twisted around to look at Natalie, who suddenly glanced over her own shoulder. Molly didn’t see anyone else who seemed to notice the bicyclist—or react to the name Jenna Corson.
Why would Ray Corson’s widow want to come to Jeff’s funeral?
Molly turned toward the woman on the bike again. With a puzzled, slightly embarrassed look, the bicyclist pedaled on—the child in the attached cart trailing behind her.
“Well, that’s a little tacky,” Molly heard Rachel whisper, “yelling at someone coming out of a funeral mass. Do you know this Jenna Carlson?”
“
Corson,
” Molly murmured numbly. “Her husband was Chris’s guidance counselor at the high school.” She glanced around for Chris. If he was nearby, he might have recognized Mrs. Corson; but then Molly remembered—he’d never met her.
If anyone had a better reason not to mourn Jeff’s passing it would have been Jenna Corson.
“You have a lot of nerve showing up here,”
Ray Corson’s sister had growled at her and Chris at the Corson wake when they’d asked to talk to Jenna.
“Haven’t you done enough damage? She’s been through hell, thanks to you people.”
Why in the world would Jenna Corson attend Jeff’s funeral?
Had she come to gloat?
The woman on the bicycle seemed to have been addressing one of her neighbors. Molly turned to face Natalie, but she wasn’t there anymore. She’d disappeared among the mourners. “Natalie?” she called. “Natalie?”
No heads turned in the crowd. She wondered if Natalie looked like Jenna Corson.
Then it hit her. What if Natalie
was
Jenna Corson?
“Jenna!” she impulsively cried out. “Jenna Corson?”
“Molly, what are you doing?” she heard Rachel ask.
“She’s been through hell, thanks to you people.”
Was it Ray Corson’s widow who had asked Kay the week before her death if she thought she was a good mother?
“You’re going to pay for what you did,”
someone had told Angela.
That same someone had Angela, her boyfriend, and his daughter murdered. And that same night she’d arranged for Jeff to meet her in Vancouver. She’d known all along Jeff would have to account for his whereabouts that evening. Molly could still hear that raspy voice:
“Do you know where Jeff was that night, Mrs. Dennehy?”
She could still see Angela in that booth in the restaurant, a glass of wine in her hand. She’d wondered out loud:
“Maybe Jeff has found someone new, and she wants to sit back and watch us scratch each other’s eyes out.”
In order to sit back and watch, she’d have had to be close by all the time. She’d have to be a neighbor.
“Jenna Corson, is that you?”
the woman had called, staring directly at Molly and the women from her block. Everyone was there, except Lynette Hahn, who was at the hospital with Courtney.
Molly thought about Courtney’s “accident” and Jeremy’s arrest, their kids getting cut up in the vacant lot, Rachel’s toolshed catching fire, Chris’s locker being broken into, and the smashed pumpkins. Someone had hired a sleazy detective to look into her family history—months before Angela admitted to doing the same thing. He or she planted an anonymous note to Chris inside his locker and sent a letter to Rachel.
“. . . she wants to sit back and watch . . .”
She remembered Lynette confronting her a few nights ago:
“For two years, I lived here—and we were all very happy, and then you moved in . . . and everything changed.”
But Lynette wasn’t quite right. Molly had lived on the block for ten months, and no had been hurt or killed. But then less than two weeks after Ray Corson’s murder, Kay had had her fatal accident.
“Jenna?” Molly cried out, weaving through the crowd. “Jenna? I know you’re here!” It all started to make sense, and the horrible realization made Molly’s stomach turn. Ray Corson’s widow was there, watching.
“Molly, for God’s sake,” Rachel whispered, trailing after her.
She caught a glimpse of Chris, by the church steps with Elvis. He was scowling at her as if she was crazy. His face seemed to go out of focus. The sidewalk felt wobbly. Molly’s head was spinning. She reached toward Rachel just as her legs started to give out.
Then everything went black.
She could hear people downstairs, chatting quietly. Molly opened her eyes and saw Rachel sitting at her bedside. For a moment, she felt totally disoriented and thought it was morning. But then she saw the digital clock on her nightstand: 12:55
P.M
.
Molly realized she was still in her dress from the funeral. She vaguely remembered riding home in the limo, and Chris and Elvis helping her upstairs to the bedroom. Trish was supposed to be hosting a brunch.
Molly tried to sit up. “Who’s downstairs?” she asked groggily. “Are Jill and Natalie down there?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, the brunch was kind of a bust. People could see you weren’t exactly up for entertaining. And the few that came over got one look at the boozefree, meatless vegan spread Miss Crunchy Granola had laid out, and they headed for the hills.” She reached for the bottle of ginger capsules on Molly’s nightstand. “It didn’t even last an hour. The only ones left down there are Trish and a friend of hers, Chris and his pal, and Erin—and a ton of rabbit food no one touched.” She took out a pill and offered her a tumbler of water. “Here . . .”
Molly shook her head. “No, I think those are making me even sicker.”
With a shrug, Rachel put down the tumbler and set the pill beside it. “In case you change your mind.” She moved over and sat at the end of the bed. “So—you kind of scared me out there in front of the church. What’s the story with this Jenna person? You said she was the wife of Chris’s coach?”
“She’s the widow of Chris’s guidance counselor,” Molly said, reaching for the tumbler on her nightstand. She gulped down some water. “Her name is Jenna Corson, and I—I think she’s behind all the strange things that have been happening on this block—including Jeff’s death. . . .”
Molly somehow felt stronger as she explained to Rachel about who Jenna Corson was and why she would want to hurt the people on the cul-de-sac.
“Why would this Jenna person threaten me?” Rachel asked. “I didn’t have anything to do with her husband getting the ax at Chris’s high school. I wasn’t even living here at the time. Yet she was ready to burn my house down. I didn’t want to tell you, Molly, but I got another one of those calls yesterday, and that lady is crazy. Why would she pick on me?”
“Maybe it’s because you’re my friend,” Molly replied. She took another swig of water and sat up straighter. “I’m the one who first reported the incident with her husband and that poor student. Chris and I started it all. And look what happened. She made Chris an orphan.”
“And you think she was outside the church after the funeral?” Rachel asked.
“More than that,” Molly answered. “I think she was standing right in front of me when that woman rode by on the bicycle and called out to her.”
Rachel stared at her. “But the only people there were Jill, Natalie, and me.”
Molly nodded. She was thinking back to the day before Jeff died, when he’d come home from work, and the same group had gathered at the end of the driveway—Rachel, Jill, and Natalie. Jeff had been home so seldom that she’d had to introduce him to their neighbors. Then he’d acted so peculiar—to the point of rudeness. Was it because he already knew one of them—and he was having an affair with her?
One of the women in that group had spent the weekend with Jeff in Vancouver, British Columbia. She’d had another tryst with him in La Conner. And she’d poisoned him with drugs and alcohol in a hotel by the airport four days ago.
“So—you’re saying that Natalie or Jill—
or me
—one of us is really Jenna?” Rachel let out a stunned, little laugh. “Do you need to see my birth certificate?”
Molly quickly shook her head. “No, not you,” she said. “I think it’s Natalie. I’ve always had a weird feeling about her. And just seconds after that woman called out Jenna’s name, Natalie disappeared. I’d be surprised if Natalie shows her face again on this block. How much do we know about her anyway?”
At the same time, Molly couldn’t totally dismiss her other neighbor, Jill. There was something very sensual and earthy about her that might have appealed to Jeff. She was just about the right age to have been Ray Corson’s wife. And Molly remembered they had a young son. Was he around Darren’s age? Molly wasn’t sure.
She hated to even think it, but she couldn’t be one hundred percent sure about Rachel, either. But then that meant Rachel had set fire to her own toolshed and left herself that threatening voice mail, and sent herself the letter with the news clipping about Charlie. And even though the bicyclist had called out Jenna’s name—exposing her—there was Rachel at Molly’s bedside when she’d awoken.
“Don’t you think we should call the police?” she asked. “I mean, they should know about this Jenna person.”
Molly smiled a tiny bit and told herself that Jenna Corson would never have made such a suggestion.
“We can’t call the police, not yet.” She sighed, shaking her head. “You heard me trying to explain everything to Chet Blazevich the day before yesterday. He didn’t believe me—and hell,
he likes me
. No, before we go to the police, we need some solid proof that Jenna Corson is responsible for all these deaths and ‘accidents.’ We have to determine whether it’s Natalie or Jill behind all this.” Molly paused. “Listen to me with the ‘we this’ and ‘we that.’ I didn’t mean to be so presumptuous. You don’t have to be involved.”
Rachel reached over, took her hand. “Go ahead and presume, honey. I’m here for you. By the way, you’re finally getting some color in your cheeks. I’ll go see if I can find something edible for you down there. You stay put.”
“Thanks,” Molly said, working up a smile. She watched Rachel head for the door, and her smile waned. She had to know something. Molly waited until her new friend was in the doorway, and then she said in a quiet voice,
“Jenna?”
Rachel stepped out to the hallway, then hesitated and glanced back at her. “Did you just say something?”
Molly quickly shook her head.
Rachel frowned at her. “Yes, you did. You said, ‘Jenna.’ ”
“I’m so sorry,” Molly replied, grimacing. “I just needed to be sure. . . .”
Rachel sighed. “Listen, I’m suddenly not feeling so well myself. I think I’ll go home and lie down—”
“Please, Rachel, I’m sorry.” Molly started to climb off the bed. “That was stupid of me, I—”
“I’ll be sure to bring my driver’s license with me next time I come over, Molly,” she said. Then she turned and started down the hallway.
“Rachel, wait!” Molly heard her footsteps retreating down the stairs. She started to get up, but felt a head rush and quickly sat down on the bed again.

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