Terrified (40 page)
Megan couldn’t answer him. She just started crying.
He pulled her toward him, and held her in his arms.
“Hush, now,” he whispered. “You don’t have to answer. If I were you, I wouldn’t trust anybody right now. But you need to lie down for an hour or two. And when you wake up, I’ll make you an omelet and we’ll figure out how to get your son back… .”
That was the last thing Megan remembered him saying. Just minutes later, she was lying on the sofa in his living room, looking out at the silver ripples on the water of Portage Bay. The sun was setting. And Dan was kissing her forehead.
She was uncertain what would happen when she woke up. She was supposed to meet Glenn at her hotel at eight o’clock. But that was three hours away.
For now, she surrendered to sleep.
“The text asked me to meet her at the cemetery entrance.” Teresa spoke into three handheld microphones thrust in front of her. Her hair was slightly disheveled, and there were cemetery headstones in the background of the shot. “Even though it was her cell phone number on my caller ID, I should have known the message wasn’t from Megan. She’s not very text-savvy. Plus she didn’t answer when I tried to text her back. So I left a voice mail message on a work line she sometimes uses, agreeing to meet her… .”
“Weren’t you concerned that by meeting Megan Keeslar you might be aiding and abetting a murder suspect?” asked one of the reporters.
Teresa gave the man one of her trademark don’t-mess-with-me frowns. “I thought I’d convince her to turn herself into the authorities. I know Megan. She’s not a murderer. Somebody set her up—probably the same person who tried to kill me. I saw who shot at me, and it wasn’t my friend Megan Keeslar… .”
“Thank you, Teresa,” Megan murmured, watching the TV in the corner of the living room.
She sat on Dan’s sofa—with a balled-up blanket beside her. She nibbled on a piece of toast from the plate on the coffee table in front of her. She’d eaten only half the omelet he’d made for her. He’d had the food and a Coke ready for her when she’d awoken from her nap.
Looking at the TV, Dan sat on the sofa arm.
The shooting incident at Lake View Cemetery was one of the lead stories on the local news. Introducing the segment, they’d shown Megan’s driver’s license photo in a box over the pretty news anchor’s shoulder. For Megan, that photo was starting to resemble a mug shot. They’d said she’d set up her coworker to be shot. While the reporter had described what had happened, they’d shown two chips in a tombstone, where bullets had nicked it. Then they’d switched to Teresa being interviewed.
Megan had a feeling all of Teresa’s efforts to defend her were falling on deaf ears.
Someone pushed a handheld microphone closer to Teresa’s face. His whole arm was in the shot. “There was an anonymous 911 call to the police,” said the same reporter from before. “Witnesses in the cemetery said a woman came to your aid, but then she quickly ran off. I understand you’re not saying who it was.”
Teresa gazed right at the TV camera and deliberately shook her head. “I don’t know her name.
I say that in all honesty
. But I owe her. I hope I can meet up with her again soon—one of these days, and then maybe I can thank her in person.”
I say that in all honesty
. But I owe her. I hope I can meet up with her again soon—one of these days, and then maybe I can thank her in person.”
Megan realized Teresa wasn’t lying. At this point, her friend couldn’t be quite sure what her real name was.
The pretty anchorwoman came back on the screen. She was smiling now. “Next … is there rain in the forecast? Our stellar meteorologist, Roseann Stella, has the weather… .”
Dan switched off the TV with the remote. “I have to agree with Teresa,” he said. “I think you should go to the police and tell them what you’ve told me. With their help, you stand a better chance of getting your son back.”
Megan gazed at the lights from the boats outside his window for a moment; then she got to her feet. “As soon as they find out I’ve gone to the police, they’ll kill Josh.” With a sigh, she carried her plate into the galley. “They made that very clear. No, what I need to do is get back to the Lamplighter Inn. Glenn said he’d meet me there at eight o’clock. I want to arrive early—”
“But you realize he’s setting you up for something, don’t you?” Dan took the plate from her and set it in the sink. He turned toward her. “It’s the same way he set up your friend, Teresa—and your niece. You’re walking right into a trap. I won’t let you go—at least, not alone.”
“If they see someone with me or watching me, they’ll take it out on Josh. And they know you, Dan. They probably know your car.” She shook her head. “I need to go alone, and get there early. I want to catch him arriving. That way, I can get a license plate number off that SUV his friend is driving. Do you have a pair of binoculars I could borrow?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s safe for you to—”
“It’s okay, I have a gun with me,” she interrupted.
“Somehow, that doesn’t set my mind to rest.”
Megan clutched his hand. “I’d feel a lot better if I knew I could come back here afterwards. If I don’t get in touch with you by eight-thirty, you can phone the police and tell them everything.”
“The police have probably figured out by now that you have Teresa’s car,” Dan warned. “They’ll be looking for it.”
She shrugged. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
“So am I just supposed to sit here and wait while you meet with these killers?”
“Well, you could look something up on the Internet for me,” Megan said.
He rolled his eyes.
“Believe me, Dan,” she said. “You’ll be doing me a huge favor. I need to find out what happened to a Dr. Joel Siler from Evanston, Illinois—or St. Louis. Anything you could find out about him would be helpful. The other thing I need to check into is whether or not Willow Dwyer had a boyfriend or a brother. If Siler isn’t responsible for what’s happening, then it’s got to be someone who was close to Willow Dwyer.”
Frowning, Dan heaved a sigh—as if he was accepting behind-the-lines grunt work when he could have been a frontline hero. “How do you spell those names?”
Megan wrote them down for him. She splashed cold water on her face in his bathroom. Then Dan gave her a pair of binoculars, and walked her down the pier to where she’d parked Teresa’s car. She let him kiss her before she climbed into the driver’s seat, and it felt right.
As she drove away, Megan spied him in the rearview mirror. He held his hand up—an ambivalent wave.
Turning the corner at the end of his block, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d ever see him again.
She parked in the lot of Sunny Noodle, a Chinese restaurant across the street from the Lamplighter Inn. The food couldn’t have been very good, because there were plenty of vacant spaces. Megan picked one far from the streetlights, close to a sign that said, RESTAURANT PARKING ONLY, UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED.
She watched the front of the inn from the driver’s seat of Teresa’s Mazda. With Dan’s binoculars, she could even see through the lobby’s glass doors. The nerdy, twenty-something clerk was working the front desk. A black van parked in the hotel lot partially blocked her view of her room, but she could still see if anyone was passing by the sliding glass door. The curtain was shut—just as she’d left it.
Over the last half hour, she’d counted seven different people—two of them couples—heading into the hotel, and three more coming out. She’d studied their faces with the binoculars. None of them looked like Glenn or anyone she might remember from 1996.
Megan kept her eyes peeled for the silver SUV. But she was also on the lookout for police cars. At 7:35, a prowler turned up the street—between the restaurant and the inn. Megan slouched down low in the front seat. She remembered Dan warning her that the cops would be looking for Teresa’s Mazda. She held her breath while the patrol car slowed down in front of the lot of Sunny Noodle. “Keep going, keep going,” she whispered.
The cop car picked up speed again and continued down the road.
With a sigh, Megan straightened up behind the wheel to watch the hotel again. She wondered if she should pull a no-show for this meeting. Maybe she could try the strategy she’d planned for that botched rendezvous with Glenn in Volunteer Park. She could watch him arrive at the inn, and then when he left, she would follow him back to his home base, where they were holding Josh hostage. Could she risk that? What if Glenn got angry, and he decided to punish Josh? All he had to do was phone his partner, and tell him to get the boy and cut off a finger or an ear.
Suddenly, a loud clatter rang out behind her. Startled, Megan swiveled around and gaped out the rear window. One of the cooks from Sunny Noodle was unloading a garbage can into the big Dumpster at the side of the restaurant. He banged the trash tin against the edge of the Dumpster twice—to shake out all its contents. Then he slammed the Dumpster lid down, and dragged the garbage can back into the kitchen entrance.
Megan caught her breath. She turned her attention to the Lamplighter again. It was 7:55. Glenn was supposed to be there any minute now. Megan watched an old beat-up VW come up the street and turn into the lot. Then a woman who may or may not have been a hooker climbed out of the car and sauntered into the lobby.
Nervously picking at her bandage, Megan remembered how adamant Glenn had sounded about this eight o’clock meeting. He’d broken all those years of silence—and admitted his culpability in Josh’s abduction—just to make this appointment with her.
She’d hoped the silver SUV would have pulled up in front of the hotel by now.
Megan knew she was being set up, but she had to go inside and wait in her room for him—as instructed. Glenn was calling all the shots. As long as he and his partner had Josh in their custody, she had no choice.
Starting up the car, Megan pulled out of the restaurant lot and turned into Lamplighter Inn’s lot across the street. She parked near her room, then took a minute to find the hotel key and the gun inside her purse. She remembered Candy showing her how to work the safety. She made sure it was on as she tucked the gun in the waist of her jeans and covered it up with the bottom of her sweater.
Cautiously looking around the lot, she didn’t notice anyone sitting in any of the other cars. No pedestrians were passing by on the sidewalk. Down the street, she heard some traffic noise, some rap music on a car radio, and a bus churning to a stop. With her key ready, Megan crept toward the sliding glass door to her room. She reached the door and stopped.
The handle on the glass door was askew. Someone had broken the lock.
Megan glanced over her shoulder, and then reached under her sweater for the gun. With her bad hand, she carefully pushed at the broken door handle. The door squeaked as she slid it open. The heavy drapes swayed. She moved them aside, and gazed into the darkened room.
She pushed the curtain open all the way. The lights from the parking lot bathed the room in a bluish hue. The sliding door was still open behind her. Megan reached for the standing lamp by the desk and switched it on. From what she could tell at first glance, no one else was in the room. She didn’t see anyone on the other side of the bed or in the closet alcove. The bathroom door was about a quarter of the way open. The light was off in there.
Megan turned to look behind her again. She noticed a big, dark stain on the light brown shag carpet—by the tracks of the sliding door. A piece of black plastic was trapped in part of the hardware. It fluttered slightly with the breeze.
Bending down, she touched the stain on the carpet. It was damp and cold. She gazed at the blood smeared on her fingertips.
Turning around once again, Megan noticed a thick, dark line across the carpet, leading to the bathroom. She immediately thought of Candy, and how she’d found her corpse in the tub.
Megan started shaking. She anxiously followed the dark trail to the bathroom door.
She knew what must have happened. The black plastic bag must have snagged against something when he’d dragged it across the threshold of the sliding door—and it had caused a leak. From what she could see, he’d made true his promise about delivering Josh to her in sections. Her nightmare was coming true.
She switched on the bathroom light and saw the crimson streak against the beige tiled floor. It led to the bathtub. The white shower curtain was closed, but one patch of it was wet with blood and clung to the tub’s side.
Megan started crying. Her hand shook so hard when she grabbed the shower curtain, the hooks rattled before she even moved it. She whooshed open the curtain, and stared at the black plastic garbage bag in the tub. A crooked blood trail beneath it ran into the drain.
She realized the bag wasn’t big enough to hold all of him.
She couldn’t stop weeping. Her deep, inconsolable sobs echoed off the tiled walls.
Bent over the tub, Megan unfastened the twister seal around the top of the bag. She heard something shifting inside the plastic sack. No matter how horrible it was, she had to see him. She had to make sure it was Josh.
Opening the bag, she gaped down into it. She stared at the side of a severed head—the black hair graying at the temples. Only a portion of his face was visible, but she noticed the black-gray beard stubble.
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