Killing Spree (25 page)

“Cream, please, thanks.”

“Please don’t twist this around to sound perverted,” Tim continued, heading toward the refrigerator. “But Boyd loved teaching—and he loved kids. Kindergarten through eighth grade, they adored him. He was very athletic—you can tell in the pictures. He used to play sports with the boys, and he helped coach the girls’ teams. If a student ever got sick, he’d go visit them at home—or in the hospital. God, they loved him.”

Gillian was looking at one photo after another of this handsome priest—sometimes in regular clothes, sometimes in his clerical garb, and a couple of times in his altar vestments. In so many of the snapshots, he was surrounded by smiling people, children and adults alike, and he seemed to be the shy recipient of everyone’s adoration.

Gillian looked up from the pile of photographs. “Something happened on a camping trip with a sixth-grade girl. None of the articles I read would elaborate.”

Tim set a small carton of cream in front of her, then he sat down. He took a sip from his own cup. “That camping trip,” he said, grimacing. “Some parents in the parish cooked it up for the sixth-graders. Boyd and one of the teachers, plus a couple of the mothers, ended up chaperoning. They had cabins for the boys and girls.” He let out a sigh. It clearly pained him to explain it. “Boyd had his own room in the boys’ cabin. These cabins had several kids in each room. Anyway, at lights out, Tim said good night to the boys; then he went to do the same thing in the girls’ cabin. Well, the teacher in the girls’ cabin had stuck one girl alone in a room, because she had a bad cold. There was talk about one of the parents driving her home. Anyway, Boyd had some Vick’s Vaporub in his room, which was just like him. At the seminary, he was a walking pharmacy. I mean, if you needed something to cure Himalayan goat-bite, he had it in his travel kit. Anyway, this sick little girl was in bed coughing her lungs out. So Boyd fetched his Vick’s Vaporub, he unbuttoned a couple of buttons at the very top of her nightshirt, and he rubbed Vick’s on her chest. And they talked until she fell asleep. I asked him later if he’d touched her breasts or anything. He told me no. He only rubbed the stuff on her upper chest, just below her neck, her
clavicle.
It was nothing, only—he told me—” Tim trailed off and shook his head. “It was totally innocent. The next day, the girl was actually feeling better. No one made a fuss. It wasn’t until after the trip, when the girl got home and told her mother. That’s when the shit hit the fan.”

Gillian cocked her head to one side. “A moment ago, you started to say that Boyd told you something—”

He quickly shook his head again, then sipped his coffee. “It wasn’t important. Anyway, this girl’s mother was divorced and bitter, one of those high-maintenance types with lots of issues. You have to wonder about a mother who sends her daughter on a camping trip when the kid has a horrible cold and a fever. Boyd never said anything, but I heard from someone else in the parish that this lady had made a pass at him at one time. It’s just hearsay, but you’re not taking notes, so you won’t quote me.”

Gillian shook her head. “Oh, I won’t quote you—not yet.”

“Anyway, the mother went ballistic and raised a big stink with the archdiocese. Boyd had to go before the bishop. They felt he’d shown ‘an error in judgment’ tending to the girl the way he had. They officially censured him for it. He could have stayed in the priesthood. But Boyd quit. He was so hard on himself. He felt—well, he…” Tim trailed off and shook his head.

Eyes narrowed, Gillian stared him. This was the second time he’d stopped himself from saying something. “Go ahead,” she whispered.

Tim sighed. “You know, he didn’t feel sorry for himself at all. Boyd was more concerned about the girl, and how the other kids at school probably knew who she was. He even felt sorry for her mother. He said she was just so full of anger and bitterness about her marriage and her life that she had to take it out on somebody. He never complained. He took on all the blame for his ‘error in judgment.’ Anyway, he was never the same.”

The cat, Oscar, sidled up to his leg. Tim picked him up and set him in his lap. “That was seventeen years ago,” he said, stroking the cat’s head. “Boyd started drinking, and it aged him so quickly. You can see it in the pictures. He was still a handsome guy, but he suddenly no longer had that same—beauty.” He let out a sad little laugh. “Listen to me. I’m so pathetic. You can tell I had a crush on him.”

“It sounded like everyone did,” Gillian said, “for a while there, at least.”

Tim nodded. “Anyway, Boyd worked in retail for a while. He dated. He moved to Seattle, and so I moved here, too, of course. Then he finally went back to teaching.”

“But not kids,” Gillian said. “I remember one of the newspapers hinted that he wasn’t allowed to teach children after the camping incident.”

Tim frowned. “That’s bullshit—if you’ll excuse me. It was Boyd’s decision not to teach kids after that.”

“But you told me earlier that he
loved
children. If he could have gone back to teaching kids, why didn’t he?”

The cat jumped off Tim’s lap. Standing up, Tim took his coffee cup to the sink, and turned on the water. “Boyd was very tough on himself. He felt he’d made one ‘error in judgment,’ and he didn’t want to make another.”

Gillian stared at his back as he hovered over the sink. “You make it sound like he thought he’d get into trouble again if he were around children.”

Tim didn’t respond. She noticed him lift his head a little, like he might have been staring at the crucifix over the sink.

“Tim, was he afraid of another ‘incident’ happening?”

He shut off the water, then turned around. Gillian could see tears welling in his eyes. He didn’t look at her. He gazed down at the cat, rubbing its flank against his leg.

“Was there any truth in the accusations?” she pressed.

“Boyd was worried there might be,” Tim murmured. “He confided in me that he got a feeling when he was touching the girl—”

“Oh, God, I don’t want to hear any more,” Gillian said, holding up her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing happened,” Tim said. “That girl wasn’t molested in any way….”

Gillian was staring down at photos of schoolchildren mixed in with the others of Boyd Farrow. The girls were in their school uniforms—including the saddle shoes. She felt so silly for trusting her gut instinct about Boyd Farrow’s innocence. Now, it made sense that he was the Schoolgirl Killer. Depriving himself of the company of children, he abducted grown women, dressed them like little schoolgirls, then killed them. The only reason Tim Haworth defended Farrow was because he had been in love with the guy. Maybe he still was.

“Don’t you see? He’d been celibate for so many years,” Tim was explaining. “This was human contact—with a certain amount of intimacy. And even though it was perfectly innocent, it scared him. Boyd was always so tough on himself. He was horrified at just the—the
infinitesimal possibility
that it could be true…”

Tim pointed to a class photo—with about forty small individual portraits of the students on an eleven-by-fourteen glossy sheet.
ST. LAMBERTS 6TH GRADE
—1989 was written in fancy calligraphy across the top. “That’s the class,” he said. “The girl who had the cold is there, but I’m not going to show you which one she is. There’s no point in it. She died from leukemia back in the mid-nineties. But this one…” Tim stabbed his finger on the portrait of a dark-haired girl named Cynthia Siddons. “She’s one of the liars who came forward after Boyd was arrested for the Schoolgirl Murders. There were three of them—her, another woman, and a man, both from another class. They’d claimed Boyd had molested them,
too
. As soon as the archdiocese told them they weren’t getting a dime, they dropped it. Everyone knew they were lying. If Boyd had done anything to them at all, why didn’t they speak up after the camping trip incident? All the kids knew about it—as much as their parents had tried to keep it secret.”

“I’m sorry,” Gillian said, pushing her chair away from the table. “But really, I don’t think I’ll be writing this piece after all. I’m—”

“Damn it, sit down!” he yelled.

Gazing up at him, Gillian stayed in her chair.

“Please, please, listen to me,” Tim whispered. “Boyd never molested a child, and he never killed anyone—except himself.”

“If he was innocent, why did he commit suicide?” Gillian dared to ask.

“It wasn’t because of the Schoolgirl Murders. Boyd felt they’d realize their mistake soon enough and clear him of the charges. But he couldn’t handle these former students saying he’d molested them. It hit a nerve with him—because he’d always beaten himself up for that one incident. None of their stories stood up to questioning. But by the time everyone realized that, Boyd had already slit his own throat.”

“What about the hairs they found on all the Schoolgirl victims?” Gillian argued. “Didn’t they all match with Boyd’s hair?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” Tim said, sitting down again. “But I’m almost positive Boyd was set up. About a month before the first campus murder, someone broke into his apartment. Nothing was stolen, but they’d gone through his things—including his journal. He’d written about Kelly Zinnemann in there. He told me about it at the time. It was just one date, and they didn’t click. After the break-in, Boyd had his locks changed. But he didn’t tell the police about it until his arrest. Naturally, the sons of bitches didn’t follow it up.” Tim’s eyes wrestled with hers. “I think someone set him up. They knew he’d gone out with Kelly, and they could have easily taken hair samples from Boyd’s apartment—off a comb or hairbrush, then planted them at the murder scenes.”

Gillian frowned at him. “A month before Kelly was even killed?”

“I know, I know,” Tim sighed. “Who would frame someone for a murder that far in advance?”

“He’d have had to pick Boyd as the fall guy a month before even killing anyone,” Gillian pointed out.

“So—you don’t believe it’s possible someone could have planned something so far in advance?”

Gillian was thinking of her copycat killer, the planner. “No, I believe it’s possible,” she heard herself say. “I believe it’s very, very possible.”

She gazed down at the St. Lamberts sixth-grade class photo on the table. Among the individual portraits, a boy’s name and photo caught her eye. He was a pudgy, slightly cocky-looking, brown-haired boy. The face was eerily familiar. His name was listed under his photo, his old name, before he’d changed it around:
Scott Chase.

Gillian realized that she and Boyd Farrow had something in common. They’d had the same pupil.

“C’mon, Andy, c’mon,” he grunted, lifting the half-frozen corpse from the large, horizontal deep freezer in his basement. Hoisting the dead hitchhiker out of his icy resting place was a hell of a lot more difficult than dumping him in there last night. He had to wear oven mitts to handle the body, it was so cold. Fortunately, Andy hadn’t frozen solid, so his cadaver bent a bit—with some pushing and pulling and tugging.

“Son of a bitch!” he gasped, dropping his victim. Andy hit the cellar floor with a thud—facedown.

“Oops!” He chuckled. Bending forward, hands on his knees, he caught his breath.

He’d taken Andy as far south as Tacoma. Then he’d mentioned that the car didn’t
feel right.
He’d gotten off the Interstate, and found an isolated road. “Don’t you feel it, Andy?” he’d asked. “Something seems to be dragging on one of the rear tires. I have a crowbar on the backseat. Can you hand it to me? We might need it.”

Andy had climbed out of the car with him, and bent over to check the tire. One blow to the back of his head had done it. Then he’d dumped Andy in the trunk, and headed for home.

He readjusted the oven mitts on his hands, then squatted down and rolled Andy onto his back. The corpse had been resting on top of an old bedsheet in the deep freeze. The section that had been under Andy’s head was stained with his blood. The sheet had become hard, but still pliable. As he pulled at the stiff material, little rust-colored ice crystals broke off from where the blood had soaked through. He wrapped the sheet around Andy’s head.

Closing the freezer lid, he reached for the shovel he’d brought down earlier.

“Don’t worry, Andy,” he muttered. “You won’t feel a thing.”

He raised the shovel over his head, and brought the back side of it down on Andy’s shrouded head. He heard a crack. He’d knocked out several teeth, he was certain. That was the least of the damage.

He leaned on the shovel, giving himself a minute before he took another whack at what was left of Andy’s face. It occurred to him that Gillian had never written a scene like this in any of her books. No, she hadn’t.

She just wasn’t as clever as he was.

The man was still staring at him.

He occupied a spot in the bleachers a few spaces down and one row back from where Ethan sat alone. The man was alone too. He was tall, with a solid build and black hair graying at the temples. There was nothing special about him—except his shirt. He wore it under a heavy-looking brown jacket that was unzipped and open in the front. The shirt had a gaudy, eye-catching print with gold-colored Roman gladiator helmets, swords, and tridents against a burgundy background.

Ethan had never seen a shirt like that before. He’d never seen the man before either. And the guy wouldn’t stop staring.

His mom had freaked out about him going to this stupid football game, because of some stalker who was out there. Now Ethan wondered if she’d been right to worry. Was this guy planning to kill him or abduct him or something?

Another thing his mother had said was haunting him. She’d told him not to wander off alone, not even for a trip to the bathroom. He’d thought about that on the bus, and ever since, he’d desperately needed to pee.

Otherwise, the bus ride had been painless. Richard Marshall, who had been so obnoxious yelling at him from the bus window, hadn’t bothered him during the trip. It was so cool, the way Jason had shut him up.

Ethan figured his mother must have apologized to Vicki’s friend. Or maybe Jason Hurrell was just an incredibly nice guy, despite his mom being so rude. Ethan was still a little ticked off at her this morning. He wondered if she knew he’d lied about hanging around with Jim Munchel at this game today. Jim was a nice guy—and popular—but Ethan didn’t know him very well.

He didn’t know Joe Pagani very well either. Ethan was a little nervous about his secret rendezvous with the cool, edgy, handsome senior. Hell, his idea of a wild time was sitting at home and watching TV. This was a real adventure for him.

Stepping off the bus by Ballard High’s football field, Ethan anxiously glanced around for Joe Pagani, but he didn’t spot him anywhere. Ethan felt so disappointed. Maybe it was some kind of trick. Maybe Joe was having a good laugh about this with his pals.

Frowning, Ethan glanced around for a restroom. On the side of the school, there was a line of guys on a short, wrought-iron stairway leading up to a men’s room door. “Damn,” Ethan muttered. He was pee-shy. He’d have to wait to sneak away during the game, so he could pee without an audience in there.

Turning, he headed for the bleachers, and noticed a man coming toward him. The shirt caught Ethan’s eye. It was kind of ugly, but cool at the same time—probably a vintage treasure from some thrift store. Ethan suddenly realized the man was staring back at him. He even smiled a tiny bit.

Ethan quickly looked away, then hurried toward the football field’s bleachers. He took a spot by himself—a couple of seats down from the nosebleed top row. He didn’t mind sitting alone at games. It beat eating by himself in the cafeteria at lunchtime; that really made him feel pathetic.

He hadn’t been sitting there for even a minute when he glanced around, and over his shoulder, he noticed the man—one bench up and a few spaces away. The man’s eyes locked with his.

Ethan’s head snapped forward and he pretended to gaze at the field. All the while, he wondered how the man had gotten up there so fast. The guy must have followed him. Ethan kept thinking about his mother’s stalker. Or was he one of those mobsters looking for his father? He remembered the black vintage Mustang from the day before yesterday. Maybe he was the driver. Vintage car, vintage shirt.

That had been twenty minutes ago, twenty minutes of agony, because on top of everything else, he still had to pee. Ethan had casually glanced over his shoulder on several occasions, and practically every time, he’d caught that man staring. He was afraid to go to the bathroom for fear that creepy guy might follow him in there.

Their team was getting slaughtered. Craig played miserably. From the bleachers, big-mouth Richard Marshall kept heckling him: “Nice going, Merchant, you pussy!” Ethan didn’t enjoy seeing his friend perform so badly. Despite everything, he couldn’t bring himself to hate him.

He turned his head ever so slightly and glanced back. He didn’t see the man. Ethan swiveled around. The guy wasn’t there. Ethan scanned the crowded bleachers and couldn’t find him. From where he sat, he had a view of the side of the school. He didn’t see Mr. Weird Shirt outside the men’s room.

Ethan waited another minute before he got up. Making his way down the bleachers, he kept a lookout for the stalker man. But there was no sign of the guy.

He walked around the back of the bleachers to the side of the school. A bunch of people in the stands let out a cheer about something. Ethan headed up the half-flight of wrought-iron stairs. They reminded him of a fire escape. His footsteps made strange hollow reverberations on the grating. At the top step, he hesitated and listened for a moment before opening the men’s-room door.

The place stank, but at least it was empty. Graffiti was scrawled over the gray tiles on the wall; dirt and God only knows what else covered the cement floor. A bare fluorescent bulb hummed overhead. The bathroom only had a sink, one urinal, and one stall. Small wonder there had been a line to get in. Some clown had stuffed a wad of toilet paper in the urinal, and now it was yellow and soggy. “Gross,” Ethan muttered, bypassing it for the stall.

At least no one had left any surprises in the toilet. He closed the stall door, lifted the toilet seat with his foot, then unzipped his fly. Sometimes, he got pee-shy even when he was alone in a public restroom. There was always a chance someone could walk in.

“C’mon,” he muttered. “So go, already.”

Then he heard the footsteps, they reverberated on the grated stairs. “C’mon, c’mon,” Ethan whispered to himself.

The door squeaked open.

Ethan stood there in the stall. He glanced toward the gap between the bottom of the stall door and the dirty floor. He saw shadows moving.

“Shhh,” someone whispered.

Ethan tucked his penis back inside his trousers, then quickly zipped up. He saw someone standing on the other side of the door. He wore jeans and boots.

“He’s in there,” someone murmured. “Let’s get him….”

Ethan froze.

All of the sudden, there was a loud pounding on the stall door. “You’re a dead man, Tanner!” the guy shouted.

Ethan recoiled, his back against the grimy wall. “Leave me the hell alone!” he bellowed.

The pounding abruptly stopped. “Ethan?”

“Yeah?” he said, catching his breath. His heart was pounding furiously.

“I’m just screwing with you, dude. It’s me, Joe. Sorry I’m late. I got held up with something at home. Are you coming out of there? Ethan?”

“I—I haven’t gone yet,” he replied finally.

“Well, go. I want to get out of here. This place stinks.”

“I—um…”

“What? Are you pee-shy? I’ll wait by the stairs outside. Take your time, sport.”

Once alone, Ethan was able to go to the bathroom—at last. When he finished up, he met Joe at the bottom of the stairs. Grinning, Joe mussed his hair. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. All these people are making me nervous.”

As they walked toward Joe’s car together, they passed by the football field. Ethan spotted the man with the weird shirt. He was down by the sidelines, talking to a kid on the other team. The guy must have been his dad or something.

Ethan felt silly for being so scared. He’d been perfectly safe all this time.

“C’mon, hurry up,” Joe said, nudging him. “I don’t want anyone seeing me here. That’s my piece-of-shit Subaru up ahead.”

Ethan eagerly picked up the pace, even though he had no idea where Joe was taking him.

Tim couldn’t tell her anything about a St. Lambert’s sixth-grader from 1989 named Scott Chase. Boyd had never mentioned the boy. And to Tim’s knowledge, no one named Scott Chase—or Chase Scott, for that matter—had ever come forward with accusations of having been molested by Boyd Farrow or any other priest. He let Gillian take the St. Lamberts sixth-grade class composite—as long as she promised to return it.

Gillian had made him another promise. Even if she didn’t write an article or a book about it, she swore she’d do her damnedest to find the real Schoolgirl Killer.

Stepping outside Ballard Botanical, Gillian pulled out her cell phone and dialed her home phone to check for messages. Nothing. Then she tried Ruth’s number and got her machine.

“Hi, Ruth, it’s me,” she said after the beep. “I’m in Ballard, and it’s around noon. I’ve uncovered an interesting connection between the Schoolgirl Murders and Chase Scott. I’m hoping to meet with him today, but I don’t want to do it alone. I thought you could come along—if you’re free. I phoned Chase and left him a message last night, but I still haven’t heard back from him. I doubt I’ll be able to get ahold of him today, but I’ll give it a try. Buzz me on my cell if you get this any time soon. Thanks, Ruth.”

Fishing into her purse again, Gillian pulled out the slip of paper with Chase’s address and phone number on it. She dialed the number in Bremerton. It rang twice.

“Hello?”

She’d expected to get his machine again. “Um, is Chase there, please?”

“Is this Gillian McBride?” he asked.

“Yes—”

“I got your message last night, but it was too late to call you back. Are you serious? Do you really think your agent or your editor might be interested in my story?”

“Yes, it’s worth a shot,” Gillian said into the phone. She covered her other ear to block out traffic noise on the street. “I thought we could meet for coffee and discuss it sometime. Are you free tomorrow?”

“God, I’m sorry, no. I’m flying out to Boston on a red-eye late tonight. I’ll be gone until next week. Could we meet when I get back?”

“Do you have time this afternoon?” Gillian asked.

“Well, I live in Bremerton, and that means taking a ferry back and forth. I’m on kind of a tight schedule because of the trip. Would you mind coming out to see me?”

Gillian bit her lip for a moment. “Let me check the ferry schedule and get back to you, okay? Will you be home?”

“You bet, Teach. I’ll just be here packing. Hey, you know, I’ve almost called you several times since that class wrapped up.”

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah, but I felt too weird about it, because of that one weekend you busted me for phoning you and hanging up a few times.”

“Oh, I—I hardly remember that,” she lied.

“Well, you want to hear something strange? I almost called you about this because it happened right after the semester ended. You know the Schoolgirl Killer, Boyd Farrow? He was a priest in my parish when I was a kid. How about that for a bizarre coincidence? The guy used to coach my sixth-grade basketball team, and fifteen years later, he ends up teaching at the same community college where I’m taking your class. I had no idea. And then he turns out to be a serial killer.”

“Yes, that is a coincidence,” Gillian said carefully. She couldn’t believe he was volunteering this information. She’d expected she would have to drag it out of him. Maybe he was just being very clever.

“Um, I read a lot about the case,” Gillian said. “They quoted all these people who knew Boyd Farrow. But I never ran across your name, Chase.”

“Well, I told the cops what I remembered from when I was eleven. I didn’t know Farrow that well. He was supposed to have molested this classmate of mine on a camping trip. I always figured it was bullshit. But now, I’m thinking maybe there was some truth to that old story. Anyway, I guess we can talk about this over coffee, right? So—you’ll call me back after you check the ferry schedule?”

“Yes, I’ll do that, Chase,” she said. Just a few minutes ago, she’d been so convinced of his guilt. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Nevertheless, she still didn’t feel very safe going to meet him alone.

“If you get my machine, just keep talking,” Chase said. “I’m screening lately. I’ve had some weird goings-on around here. It’s like something out of one of your books.”

“What do you mean?” Gillian asked.

“Oh, some crank with a blocked number keeps calling me up, saying he’s
watching
me. The other night, I even had to call the cops, because I had a prowler outside my house.”

“Did they catch him?”

“Nope. The son of a bitch got away.”

“During these phone calls, has he said anything else?”

“Yeah—” Chase Scott started to answer, but someone nearby on the street honked his horn.

Gillian covered her other ear again. “I’m sorry, could your repeat that, Chase?”

The horn stopped blaring. “I said, yes, last time this guy called, he told me, ‘You can go to the head of the class. You’re next.’ I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

Gillian just shook her head.

“You still there?” Chase asked.

“Um, yes. I—”

“Listen, I found a ferry schedule. You can probably catch the one o’clock from Seattle. It’ll get you into Bremerton at two. I can come pick you up at the ferry terminal.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’ll take a taxi. Where can I meet you?”

“Well, why don’t you come to my place? I have the manuscript here.”