Terrified (23 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Terrified
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“Thanks,” Megan murmured.
She wandered toward her office, where Josh was waiting for her.
She felt a knot tightening in her stomach. And she knew it wouldn’t go away until she and Josh moved someplace else—somewhere that man on the phone couldn’t find them.
 
Maple Hill Beach, Glencoe, Illinois
 
It was getting dark, and eleven-year-old Sam Leonard could see the moon over the lake. He was the only one on the narrow strip of sand along the private beach. The waves were almost as tall as he was. They splashed against the tilted, old concrete blocks that made up the pier.
Sam knew if he stayed on the beach any longer, he’d be late for dinner—and in a whole lot of trouble. But he wanted just a few minutes more.
With a small shovel and a metal-detecting device, he combed the woods on the edge of the beach. He’d already made some interesting finds: a bullet, a woman’s bracelet, an old, broken watch, two dollars and eleven cents in change—including a buffalo nickel—and about a dozen bobby pins. He didn’t want to give up his expedition just yet. So Sam kept searching for hidden, semi-buried treasure. He told himself that as soon as he found one more thing, he’d go home.
He waved the device beyond the sand and over the dirt, dandelions, and weeds. He moved it under bushes and around tree trunks. The detector started beeping as he wielded it near a huge elm. He forged past some shrubs and moved it to the other side of the tree’s thick trunk. Then the beeps came at an even more rapid pace.
Sam put the metal detector down and started digging. He had to stomp his foot at the top of the shovel blade to get past some of the hard earth, but the digging got easier about six or eight inches down. He tested the metal detector on the hole—to make sure he was in the right spot. It went off again, beeping like crazy.
As he resumed digging, Sam’s imagination ran wild. Maybe someone had buried a whole bucket full of silver dollars—old, hard-to-find silver dollars, worth a ton of money. He kept scooping up dirt until he hit something. He didn’t think it was a tree root. He carefully dug around it.
The thing was shaped like a huge egg—and wrapped in black plastic that had since decomposed to an ashy film. Sam kept brushing away the soil and the flakes of dried black plastic—until he realized he’d found a human skull.
Horrified, he reeled back. He felt certain it was real and not some Halloween decoration. He braced a hand against the elm for a few minutes. He took a few deep breaths, and felt his heartbeat starting to slow down again.
Then Sam got curious. He picked up the metal detector again and waved it over the skull. It beeped in rapid succession.
Silver or gold fillings
, he thought. He’d seen something like this on one of those
CSI
shows. But he accidentally nudged the device against the severed human head, and it shifted. The flesh had long ago rotted and become part of the earth. The ears were gone. But on each side of the skull a pearl earring was trapped in the decayed layers of black plastic.
The earrings had been a gift from Dr. Glenn Swann.
C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN
D
riving Josh to the Hannahs’ and saying good-bye to him in the car that Saturday afternoon, she’d had a horrible apprehension.
After those phone calls for Lisa day before yesterday, she’d almost reneged on letting him go away for the night. But then she’d realized if Glenn knew where she and Josh lived, Josh was safer spending the night somewhere else. And it gave her an opportunity to pack some things in secret—because they were definitely moving within the next day or two.
By evening, Megan realized it was almost like any other Saturday night alone—except tonight she’d weeded out all the books, DVDs and old VHS tapes she wouldn’t be taking along when they moved. She’d also checked online for the latest articles on Dr. Glenn Swann, and had come up with nothing new since yesterday, thank God
.
She did some laundry. In that little room off the back hallway, she noticed by the fuse box, her Art of Edward Hopper wall calendar was still turned to August. Megan flipped up the page to September and rehung the calendar. She wished it was last month again—before everything changed. She’d thought no one from her past was anywhere near Seattle. And she’d been checking online for updates of her estranged husband once every two weeks at the most. She’d always come up with nothing, and that had made her feel safe.
Not anymore.
She stood there in her laundry room for another few minutes, remembering her basement apartment with the shared laundry room down the hall. She wished she was back there, and Josh was a little boy again. Maybe it just seemed better because it was in the past.
She ate leftover chicken casserole in front of
My Best Friend’s Wedding
from her DVD collection. She’d cried during it three times, and the movie was a comedy, for God’s sake.
At 11:15, Megan took one last look on the Internet before going to bed. She wanted to price and compare moving companies.
She found two new emails waiting for her, and didn’t recognize the senders:
9/24/2011
teacherguy75@comc …
Just Checking In
9/24/2011
rmembr1996@foxch …
Thinking of You, Megan
She opened the first email, and realized
Teacher-guy75
was Dan Lahart:
Hi, Megan,
 
It’s been nearly two weeks since we last talked. I’m sorry you weren’t free to get together for a second date. I really enjoyed Date No. 1 with you. In fact, would it be creepy to admit that I still have your note (the one in which you said you had a terrific time meeting me and wanted to get together again) in my email-box? Yes, probably. Anyway, on the off-off-chance you’re flattered (which was what I was going for here, believe it or not) and your schedule has lightened up, please give me a call or drop me an email. It would be terrific to reconnect with you, Megan. I hope you’re doing great.
 
Take care,
Dan Lahart
“Oh, shit,” she murmured. It was an awkward, sweet, brutally honest note—with just the right touch of self-depreciation. And she liked him, damn it. After fifteen years, she had finally found a nice man. But nothing would ever happen with him, because she would be gone—untraceable, she hoped. Her finger hovered over the
Delete
key for a moment, but then she hit
Keep as New
instead. Maybe she’d write him back later—just to tell him how sorry she was it didn’t work out.
She clicked on the email with the subject heading,
Thinking of You, Megan
. There was nothing, only a link:
She’d gotten these types of emails before, and automatically deleted them. Either it was spam or the link would give her PC a virus. But her name was in the subject head. And the link was to the
Chicago Tribune
online—with tomorrow’s date. Then she remembered—it was already tomorrow in Chicago.
Megan took a chance and clicked on the link. The
Tribune
story came up on her screen. She stared at the headline and a photograph. The photo was of a young, pretty brunette. Megan knew her. Yet the first thing she thought of when she saw the photograph was that it seemed to belong in a row along with the pictures of the victims in the Seattle-area Garbage Bag Killings.
The headline read:
Shocking Discovery Brings New Twist
To 15-Year-Old ‘Garbage Bag’
Murder Case
 
HUMAN SKULL UNEARTHED ON GLENCOE BEACH
 
She Knew Doctor Recently Pardoned
For Wife’s Murder
Megan recognized Glenn’s onetime mistress in the photograph that someone must have snapped at a party. With a bright smile, Willow was casually dressed in a dark T-shirt and jeans. The photo caption read:
Dental records verified a human skull uncovered on a Glencoe beach Wednesday night was that of 22-year-old Willow Dwyer, who disappeared in October 1996. DNA tests also matched Dwyer with the severed remains from the notorious “Garbage Bag” murder.
Megan had always wondered about the three burn marks on the torso of that dismembered corpse they found. On the night of that party, Glenn had burned her three times with his horrible cigar. And he’d dumped Willow shortly after that. Had Glenn given Willow the same cigar treatment? Was that his way of
branding
the women in his life?
Perhaps Willow hadn’t walked out of his life without a fight. Maybe Glenn had gotten mad and started in on her. Megan used to think one bad blow to the head or a fall, and that would be the end for her. Maybe it had happened that way to Willow. Maybe it was an accident. Megan imagined JJ helping Glenn cut her up, and even getting rid of the stuffed garbage bags for him. With everything she’d read about the trial, the name Jimmy Jordan had never come up at all. Still, Megan had a feeling he could have been involved.
That’s JJ… . He gets the job done.
The
Tribune
article pointed out Willow had been an X-ray technician at the same Evanston hospital where Dr. Glenn Swann worked. A chum of Willow’s didn’t mince words about their relationship:
“Willow had an affair with Swann for three months in the spring of 1996,” claimed Dwyer’s friend, Elisa Middleton. Middleton, 39, worked alongside Dwyer at Evanston-Northwest Hospital. “I know Dr. Swann was physically abusive toward her when they were breaking up. Yet, Willow never totally stopped seeing him until she disappeared that October.”
Although Lisa Swann was mentioned a few times throughout the piece, there were no updates about reopening the investigation into her disappearance. The most alarming part of the story came two paragraphs near the end:
Investigators have been unable to reach Dr. Swann, who was released from the Stateville Correctional Center two weeks ago. Swann was scheduled to start volunteer work at Chicago’s Lakeside Women’s Shelter on Wednesday night, but he never appeared at the homeless facility. Authorities checking Swann’s recent credit card activity learned he flew to Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday morning, but his whereabouts since then are unknown. A source with the police department indicated that Swann may have violated stipulations in his pardon by leaving the state while the investigation into the 1996 murder case remains open.
“My God, he’s in Portland,” Megan murmured, gazing at the computer monitor. As of Wednesday, Glenn had been just three hours away. There was every possibility he’d come to the Pacific Northwest to hunt her down. And he could very well be in Seattle right now.
Hunched over her computer desk, she clicked off the
Tribune
story, and the original email with the link came up on the screen. She stared at the address of the person who had sent her the piece:
Rmembr1996@fox chat.net.
Remember 1996? It was the year she’d disappeared, the year Glenn had been arrested. Megan’s hand was trembling as she hit the
Reply
button. Her fingers started working on the keyboard:
Who are you?
She hit
Send.
Only a few moments passed before she heard a tick, and the mail icon showed she had a new message. She clicked on the icon, and saw the response to her inquiry:
9/24/11
MAILER-DAEMON …
Returned mail: see transcript for details
She’d had a feeling the email wouldn’t go through. The address was temporary or bogus. Remember 1996?
From her chair, Megan glanced out the big living room window. She wondered if the sender was watching her right now.
The telephone rang, giving her a start. Megan almost tipped over her chair standing up. She hurried into the kitchen, and grabbed the cordless phone by the third ring. “Hello?” she said, a little out of breath. She caught a glimpse of the digital clock on the microwave oven: 11:48
PM.
“Is Mrs. Keeslar there?” a woman demanded to know. Her voice was shrill—like she might be in the middle of some sort of emergency.
“This is Mrs. Keeslar. Who is this?”
“This is Angela Brinkmeyer,” the woman said—as if Megan was supposed to know the name. There was a silent beat.
“Yes?” Megan said tentatively.
“My daughter, Laney, is in school with your son,” the woman explained. “He and some of his friends were trying to get her to—well, let’s just say you’re lucky I’m not going to the police.”
“I’m sorry,” Megan replied, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your son and some of his friends tried to get my Laney involved in a skinny-dipping party at a pool. The people who own this pool are out of town. So right there, it’s a case of trespassing or maybe even breaking and entering. It just so happens, a good friend of mine lives next door to this house… .”
There was a call-waiting beep on the line, and Megan glanced at the caller ID. It was Josh phoning.
“Um, excuse me, Mrs. Brinkmeyer. My son just beeped in on the other line. I’m sorry. Could you hold for a minute?”
There was a click on the other end.
“Hello?” Megan said. She realized the woman had hung up. “Fine,” she muttered. She switched over to the other line. “Josh?”
“Hi, Mom,” he said. “Ah, I got into a little bit of trouble with some of the guys on the team, and Mrs. Hannah thinks it would be a good idea if we—um, well, she thinks you should come pick me up… .”
 
 
“Believe me, Mom, it wasn’t like a big sex-party-orgy or anything like that,” Josh explained. He sat across from her in the passenger seat, slouched against the car door. He was wearing his orange Sunset Bowl jacket. His overnight bag was on the floor in front of him. “I swam in my underwear the whole time. Garth only took off his underpants after he got into the hot tub. Nobody else really got naked—except for Laney Brinkmeyer, who was prancing around topless. She kept telling Pat, Garth, and me we should get naked. The other two girls kept their bras on, but they wouldn’t stop screeching at Laney. I’m sure that’s why the neighbor called Laney’s mom. She must have had binoculars or something, the old busybody. And it wasn’t like we were totally trespassing, either, because it was Pat’s cousin’s pool we were using. They were out of town… .”
Megan glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 12:27. She’d kept her eyes on the road for the last few minutes while Josh apologized and tried to explain he wasn’t “a major pervert or anything like that.” He probably mistook her silence for anger. In truth, she was only half-listening to him. She couldn’t stop thinking about
[email protected],
and those phone calls for Lisa.
“I don’t know what else that crazy Mrs. Brinkmeyer told you,” Josh continued, as they drove along Eastlake Avenue. “But there was only one crummy six-pack of beer—for all six of us. I didn’t even have a sip.”
Megan turned down the access road to their street. She glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure no one was following them.
For the last hour, she’d had a knot in the pit of her stomach. If she and Josh left town tonight, they might be able to elude whoever this Rmember1996 was. She had the keys to the rental office. They could pack up and drive there. She’d rent a car to herself under a different name, then juggle the records around. If she was clever enough, they wouldn’t be able to figure out for a while which car she’d taken. She’d drive to some hotel out of town and they could lie low for a while—at least, until she came up with a better plan. She’d have to improvise, and hope for the best. And she had no idea how she would explain it all to Josh.
“Mom, you’ve hardly said a word in the last fifteen minutes,” he remarked. “You must be so majorly angry with me. Believe me, I’m really sorry… .”
Megan noticed a silver SUV in front of the duplex. It hadn’t been there before. It was parked right up to the edge of their driveway, the front tires against the yellow curb. She automatically thought the SUV might have some connection to Rmembr1996. But it didn’t make sense that he’d park right in front of their house for her to see. No, that wasn’t how this person operated—at least, not so far. He would have stayed well-hidden until he wanted to be seen.

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