Terrified (38 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Terrified
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“My God,” Teresa whispered. “What are you going to do?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Right now, I need to get out of here. I called nine-one-one a few minutes ago.” She nodded toward the man and the car zeroing in on them. “I think one of them just called the police, too. Did you get a look at the man driving the car?”
“A white guy in his thirties,” she said. “I couldn’t see his hair. He had a stocking cap on. I couldn’t see much past the gun in his hand. But I can tell you this. They’ve showed photos of your husband on the news, so I know what he looks like, and I don’t think it was him.”
“Are you all right?” the man called to them.
Teresa waved and nodded at him.
He slowed down a bit, and stopped to talk to whoever was in the station wagon.
Megan knew she had to disappear. She could hear a siren in the distance.
“The police found the Taurus,” Teresa said. “How did you get here?”
“As soon as I heard your message, I ran all the way up from Broadway.” She took hold of Teresa’s arm. “Tell the police exactly what happened here. Only leave me out of it. Tell them I was just some stranger who stopped by to help. Okay?” She hesitated before turning away. She felt awful for not having told Teresa the truth after all this time. She looked at her with regret. “I guess with everything you’re finding out about me now, I must seem like a stranger.”
Teresa shook her head. “That’s not true, Meg. You’re still my friend.” She shoved something in her hand. Megan realized it was a set of car keys. “Take my Mazda,” Teresa whispered. “It’s parked across the street. It’ll be good for the next few hours until the cops catch on. Try not to bang it up. It’s not completely paid for yet… .”
Megan hesitated again. “Oh, Teresa, I couldn’t. I—”
Then she fell silent. She saw the man coming closer, close enough for her to see his face. A woman and two kids on bikes were peddling toward them. The siren in the distance was growing louder.
Teresa gave her shoulder a push. “Go, go on,” she murmured. “Get out of here while you can, honey.”
“Thank you,” Megan whispered. Then she retreated toward the red Mazda 3 hatchback parked across the street from the cemetery. She moved at a brisk clip, but didn’t run.
“Hey, hold up!” she heard the man yell. “The police will need a witness! Hey, you… .”
Megan didn’t turn around. She unlocked the car with the remote device and quickly climbed inside. Her hand was shaking so much she could barely get the key in the ignition. At last she started up the car.
The police siren was getting louder, closer.
Megan pulled away from the curb, and drove at a steady clip. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw the police car with its flashers on. It seemed to bear down on her. With a taut grip on the steering wheel, Megan didn’t slow down or pull over. She watched the patrol car turn into the cemetery. The siren suddenly shut off.
Megan kept driving. She focused on the road ahead.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE
“
G
oddamn it,”he hissed, stashing the Glock 17 pistol under the SUV’s front seat. He idled at a stoplight at one end of an overpass to Interstate 5.
He’d fired three times and hadn’t even grazed her.
If that dumb bitch and her two kids on bikes hadn’t pedaled through the cemetery gate at just that moment, he might have nailed Lisa’s friend when he’d meant to shoot her. Instead, he’d pulled out of the graveyard, turned around, and come back again. It had thrown him off his game.
Peeling out of the cemetery, he’d spotted Lisa in his rearview mirror. She’d been across the street from the entrance.
He’d known ahead of time she was on her way up there. Teresa must have called and left her a message after receiving his text. Obviously, Teresa had fallen for the text—to a point. And Lisa had raced up from the café on Broadway to warn her.
While parked in the cemetery, he’d tracked Lisa’s progress on his smartphone. Earlier today, he’d had Glenn ask her where she was, but he’d already known. He’d known where she’d stayed last night, too. He’d paid an electronics expert sixteen hundred bucks to insert the workings of a Spark Nano 2.0 Real Time GPS Tracker into that cell phone—and he got him to program “Every Breath You Take” as the ringtone as well. But what really baffled the guy was filling the request to program a Geiger-counter-like beep into his smartphone. It could be silenced, but went off automatically, so he’d always know if Lisa was near. He’d been keeping tabs on Lisa ever since she’d plucked that cell phone from the hands of her dead niece. Lisa’s lifeline to Josh was keeping him updated to her exact location at every minute.
He’d listened to the staccato beeping become more and more rapid as he’d sat there in the cemetery. And he was listening to it now. He checked the map on his smartphone screen again. Seeing that illuminated white dot blinking against the grid made him smile. It was like having Lisa with him all the time. At the moment, she was about a mile in back of him—on the residential road that curved behind the cemetery. She was homing in on him pretty fast. The beeps were getting closer and closer together. She couldn’t possibly be running at that speed. Teresa must have loaned Lisa her car.
The traffic light turned green, and he hung a left onto the road that would eventually lead to the I-5 southbound ramp. As he drove, he told himself this was just a temporary setback with Teresa. He’d find another way to kill her.
The idea was to leave Lisa with no one—except him. For years and years, he’d imagined Lisa belonging to him; staying in her room in his basement, grateful for every scrap he gave her and every minute of his company. It would be so much easier to keep her there if she didn’t have anyone on the outside wanting her—except maybe the police. She would become totally dependent on him, as the others had. True, those women—those substitutes—had begged to be reunited with their friends and families. But Lisa would have no one.
Just him.
For the time being, Lisa couldn’t ask for Teresa’s help. Her friend would be tied up with the police for the next few hours; then she’d have detectives on her tail after that.
Up ahead, he saw the on-ramp for the Interstate. On his smartphone, that little blinking white dot was stationary at the corner of Roanoke and Boylston, the same traffic signal he’d been at just minutes ago. Was she following him? Was she trying to chase him down?
It was funny that after all these years, she was now pursuing him.
He thought about pulling over for a few moments—just to screw around with her a little. He’d let her see his SUV, and make a game of it, have some fun.
But he decided against it. Taking the ramp, he pressed harder on the accelerator and merged into traffic on the Interstate. The beeps from his smartphone grew further and further apart.
After a minute or two, he checked his smartphone again. The blip on the small screen hadn’t followed him onto the Interstate. From what he could tell, Lisa had continued along the road as it curved under the freeway. She was headed back up to Capitol Hill—or perhaps back to her room at the Lamplighter.
It was just as well he’d decided not to waste any time letting her chase him around. He needed to get back to the farmhouse. He had work to do there.
He had a body that needed cutting up.
 
 
Megan held the cell phone in her bandaged hand, but she hadn’t touched any numbers on the keypad yet.
The phone had rung twice within the last ten minutes. Both times it had been the police, probably in response to her 911 call. She’d let the calls go to voice mail. The greeting was generic, but the caller ID showed
Destination Rent-A-Car
. If the 911 operator was clued in to what the rest of the force was doing, then they’d probably figured out she was the one who had phoned them.
She’d pulled over on Lakeview Drive. Out the passenger window of Teresa’s Mazda, she had a panoramic view that included Lake Union, the Space Needle, the Aurora Bridge, and Queen Anne Hill. Though she’d driven with the window down, Megan still felt clammy and sweaty from the long, frantic sprint up to the cemetery.
She had no idea where she was headed. She’d just needed to get away from the cemetery—and the police—as quickly as possible. At least Teresa would be safe. The police would probably stick close to her for the rest of the day.
She wondered who Glenn and his partner would go after next.
Dan Lahart came to mind. Her feelings for him were so conflicted. Megan liked him, but she couldn’t really trust him. Still, she dialed his number. It rang once before going to voice mail. “Hi, Dan, it’s me, Megan … Lisa … Rachel, take your pick,” she said. “By now you’ve probably read about me in the
Seattle Times
or checked online. As I told you earlier, I didn’t murder my niece. She was killed because she tried to help me. That’s why you’re better off not getting involved with me. So listen, if you get an email or a text that seems to come from me, asking you to meet me someplace, don’t believe it for a minute. It’ll be a trap. It’ll be someone setting you up for God knows what. If I need to get in touch, I’ll call and talk to you—but not from this phone. I’m getting rid of it. No emails or texts. Please, be careful for the next day or two. The people who put me in this spot, they know you. So watch your back. I’m really sorry for everything I’m putting you through. Anyway, take care, okay?”
She clicked off. A part of her felt as if she’d just left a message with her tormentor. Another part of her worried they’d get to him before he ever heard a word of that voice mail.
Opening the car door, she stepped out and placed the cell phone in front of the tire. The police were calling her on it now. How long would it be before they started using some kind of mobile phone tracking to find out where she was?
She got back behind the wheel. She couldn’t stop thinking about Dan. She wouldn’t blame him if he swore off computer dating after this. He said he was teaching English literature at Seattle Central Community College today. That was where he was right now. He’d get her message later. Then again, she wanted to make sure he was all right. And it wasn’t like he’d be able to call her back—not with what was about to happen to that cell phone.
She could be at the community college in just a few minutes.
Megan started up the car. She heard the cell phone crack under the tire as she pulled back onto the road.
Seven minutes later, she parked Teresa’s Mazda in a small lot beside a funeral home across the street from the community college—a bleak, institutional-looking, four-story redbrick building that spanned nearly half a block. Megan found the inside of the place almost as drab as the exterior. Only a few students roamed the first-floor corridor while classes were in session. She spotted the administration office across from the elevators. The office had a sliding glass window with a counter in front of it, where someone had left stacks of brochures.
Megan approached the window, and saw a keyboard and a monitor on top of a counter on the other side. Beyond that was a small office with two desks side by side. They both had computer monitors on them. Tied to the in-tray of one desk was the yellow-ribbon tail of a splashy-colored, foil
Happy Birthday
balloon that needed more helium. Against the back wall was a row of several file cabinets with some dusty-looking plants on top of them.
The woman with the birthday balloon on her desk was in her mid-twenties and plump. She glanced up from her computer at Megan. She had a pretty smile and tawny, corkscrew-curly hair. She adjusted her ice-blue sweater as she got up and approached the window. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes, please,” Megan said. “Dan Lahart invited me to drop in on his class today. I’m wondering if you could tell me the room number.”
The woman worked her fingers over the keyboard and frowned at the computer. “How do you spell that?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s L-A-H-A-R-T,” Megan said, craning her neck for a peek at what the woman was typing. It looked like she was trying several different spelling combinations.
The woman sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t show any instructors here with that name.”
Megan felt a little pang in her gut. “Are you sure?”
The woman was studying the screen. “I have the list right in front of me. It goes from Laird to Lundgren—no Lahart.”
“He’s supposed to teach an English literature class on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Megan murmured. She couldn’t believe she’d rushed over here, so worried about him—when all the while he’d been screwing with her head.
The woman typed on the keyboard again, and then checked the monitor. “Our instructor for English lit is Cornel Dean. That’s going on right now in room three seventeen.”
“Thank you,” Megan muttered, shrinking away from the window.
She felt so stupid—and so defeated. She’d totally bought into his nice-guy act. She figured Dan Lahart was probably behind the wheel of that silver SUV right now. But she still needed to find that classroom and make sure he wasn’t in it. Why couldn’t he have been a nice guy? Why did so many of the men in her life turn out to be snakes? This creep even had Glenn beat. She trudged up the cinder-block stairwell and then wandered the fluorescent-lit hallway in search of room 317.
She found it. The door was closed, but there was a small window in it. Megan spied a classroom of about two dozen students, mostly women—and most of them looking fascinated by what their instructor was saying. Megan couldn’t see or hear him. But when she stepped to one side, she glimpsed him sitting on the edge of his desk at the front of the class. She glimpsed the man she knew as Dan Lahart.
It didn’t make any sense. He’d lied to her about his name, but he’d told her the truth about where he worked. What was it about his name that he had to hide? Megan wondered what the results would be if she Googled
Cornel Dean
and
Willow Dwyer
. Would she find some evidence that they’d known each other?
A wave of laughter broke out inside the room. He must have said something funny. Megan saw him grinning. Then he turned his head toward the door.
She ducked away from the window and retreated for the stairwell.
Hurrying down the stairs, she wondered what part he played in all this. He couldn’t have been driving the silver SUV twenty minutes ago, because he was teaching a class. But Glenn hadn’t been behind the wheel either—Teresa had told her so. Did Glenn have two partners working with him?
On the first floor, Megan turned to exit the building and spotted the birthday girl from the administration office. She stood on the other side of the glass doors, smoking a cigarette.
Megan glanced back toward the window of the administration office. She noticed someone else on duty. A tall, thin, twentyish man with his black hair in a buzz cut stood on the other side of the window. He was looking down at something on his side of the counter.
Megan turned back toward the young man’s coworker, still outside with her back to the door, smoking her cigarette. Megan checked inside her purse. The various fake drivers’ licenses she had were in a plain white envelope.
She headed for the outside door and pushed it open.
“Hey, thanks a lot for your help earlier!” Megan said, still holding the door open. “I got it all straightened out with Cornel… .”
The tawny-haired young woman gave her a slightly startled look, and then she seemed to work up a smile. “Well, that’s good,” she said, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“Anyway, thanks,” Megan continued, maybe too enthusiastically. “I didn’t get your name. I’m sorry… .”
“Rebecca,” she said, with a slightly wary sidelong glance.
“Thanks, Rebecca,” Megan replied. She gave a nod toward the open doorway. “Hey, do you have a restroom in here anywhere?”
“Yeah, just hang a right, and go past the cafeteria. Then you’ll see it on your left.”
“Thanks again, Rebecca,” she said, ducking back into the building.
As she started toward the window to the administrative office, Megan took out the envelope with the drivers’ licenses in it. The young man with the buzz cut was still on the other side of the counter, reading something. Megan saw him lift a folded newspaper, and turn it over. She stopped dead as she caught a glimpse of her face on the front page. His eyes seemed riveted to the article he was reading.

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