The Fear Collector (29 page)

“You didn’t send him a photo, did you?” she asked

Anna shook her head and motioned for Grace to pour her some water from a plastic pitcher on a tray next to her bed. It was the first time that Grace noticed the oxygen tank—at the ready, but not in use.

“Of course not. I thought of sending a picture of some minor TV actress or even another family member and saying it was Susie. Someone who looked like her. I wondered what he would do if he knew that I didn’t trust him.”

“But you
didn’t
trust him, did you?”

Anna sipped her water and set down the glass. “Of course not. But I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want him to go away. You know how you cops on TV sometimes try to keep someone talking on the phone so you can get more info?”

Grace nodded. “Yes, to trace them?”

Anna took another sip of her water. “Right. Well, I know with a letter you can’t trace anything, but I thought that the more I could get him to write, the more he’d tell me. Maybe among his garden of lies, I’d be able to weed out a little bit of truth. Maybe I’d be able to get him to admit that he’d killed my Susie.”

Grace understood completely. In so many ways, Anna was like her own mother. She wondered just how many others were out there wondering about their daughters and if Ted had been their killer.

A nurse came in with a small loaf of banana bread.

“We’ll each have a piece,” Anna said. “They make it from my recipe. Susie loved the cinnamon butter.”

Grace smiled. It was a sad smile, but it was all she could manage. While the nurse set down the banana bread, she read another letter.

Dear Mrs. Sherman,

You are well, I hope. They want to kill me, as you probably have heard. All I want is peace. Did you know that I’ve been corresponding with other friends of yours? I know that you are a game-player. That’s all right. While I prefer people be direct, I’m sure that there are others who are less inclined to be honest. I’m not saying that you’re a liar, Anna Sherman, I just know that you can’t be trusted.

peace, Ted

Grace put down the short letter, a note really, and fastened her eyes on Mrs. Sherman’s.

“Was he talking about my mother?” she asked, a little unsure. “She was playing him, too.”

Anna finished a bite of banana bread and brushed a crumb from her chin.

“Honestly, I don’t know. The way I always looked at it, Ted probably got more mail than Santa Claus back then. Everyone—reporters, victims’ families, groupies, what have you—wrote to him.”

“If he wasn’t referring to my mother, what other ‘friends of yours’ was he getting at? If you know?”

Anna shook her head. “Not sure. It could have been Peggy Howell.”

Grace put the letter back into the envelope, the look of recognition washing over her face. “Peggy?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “
Her
. I know your family has a history with the girl. I guess I did, too. She befriended me over Susie’s death, and, of course, you know your sister’s connection to Peggy.”

* * *

Emma Rose hadn’t given up all hope. Not completely. As dire as things had been, there was still plenty for which she could be grateful. Yes, she’d been tied up and her skin was colored by bruises that had passed from blue and black to a ghastly yellow hue. But he, the creeper, hadn’t tied her up for a while. As she lay on the smelly mattress in the dank subterranean space, the so-called apartment, Emma had taken to keeping her eyes tightly shut. Truth be told, what was there to really see? The only time she bothered to open her eyes was when he came down the stairs. When the door opened and the stabbing light cascaded against the walls, Emma would run her eyes over every surface. Was there a door? A boarded-up window? Was there a way out of there?

She’d never seen any.

As she lay there, something else crossed the young woman’s mind. At first, she wasn’t sure if it had been a dream, a hallucination. Emma felt something.
Air
. Air ran over her cheek. It was cold, not the hot breath of the creeper who’d held her. Cool. She licked her palm and pressed her hand outward; turning it slightly like it was a metal detector or radar device.

There.

Emma felt the unambiguous movement of air.
Air!
It brushed against her in a slight, but steady stream.
Air!
Emma felt her pulse quicken and she instinctively turned to listen for her captor. Was he coming? Was she dreaming? No. All quiet. Next, she slid her feet to meet the floor and she stepped slowly and quietly closer to the moving air. She moistened her palm a second time, no longer reviled by the filth of her own skin. She ran her hands, cut and sore, over the cement and cinderblock wall. She held her breath.

And there it was, air was pouring in through a crack at about knee height. She stuck a finger into the jagged fissure.

Could this be a way out?

Had God answered her prayers?

Or was this just a cruel joke made by a man who’d kept her like a zoo animal?

She heard his footsteps and she hurried back to the mattress. If it was the promise of a way out, she wasn’t going to squander it by lamely standing next to it. She wouldn’t tip off the man. She’d kill him first.

He opened the door.

“Stay down,” he said. “Or I’ll beat you until you can’t stand without being bound to a two-by-four.”

He set down the tray and shut the door. The lock dropped back into place. Her mind on the fissure in the wall, Emma Rose still needed to eat and drink. She started on the sandwich and washed it down with a different drink, a citrus-flavored soda.

Her legs started to wobble and she went back to the mattress.

G
race Alexander studied the man across from her. They didn’t get many like him in an interview room at the Tacoma Police Department. Paul Bateman looked at her and nodded. Palmer Morton, dressed in a European cut suit with shoes that probably cost a week’s wages—a detective’s wages, that is—was a smug little prick. He was puffed up and trying to appear as if he was a gracious sort of person.

It wasn’t a good fit for his personality.

“Glad we could have a little talk,” he said.

“Frankly, we’re surprised to see you,” Paul said. “You know, without an attorney.”

Palmer smiled and shrugged a little, his perfectly fitting suit flowing effortlessly with each muscle movement. “If you ask me, attorneys and accountants have ruined the world.”

The remark was meant to be a kind of “everyman” statement. But he was far from everyman status.

“Real estate developers haven’t been so great, either,” Paul said, with a slight laugh. It was meant to be a little dig, but Palmer didn’t bite. He was there for a reason and taking the obvious bait was a fool’s mistake. He prided himself on being a smooth negotiator and that’s just what he was there to do. He considered Alex a piece of crap, but the boy was
his
piece of crap. If his kid went down, he’d go down along with him.

“It’s nice of you to stop by. But really, we’d like to interview Alex,” Grace said. “Maybe you can call him and have him come down.”

“He’s a kid,” Palmer said.

“He’s nineteen. He’s an adult.”

Palmer ignored the detective’s remark and didn’t say anything. It was strategic, a way to get the detectives to reveal more about their motives in talking to Alex in the first place.

“We’re surprised that you wanted to see us,” she said.

Palmer Morton folded his hands on top of the table. “I was on my way to a meeting and I thought I’d stop by. A little out of the blue, I guess. Hope I didn’t interfere with any of your investigation into the disappearance of the girl.”

“That girl is Emma Rose,” Paul said.

A look of obvious recognition over his face, Palmer nodded. “Yes, Emma. Nice girl. Some problems, but nice.”

Grace could have guessed it. Palmer Morton was there with a gas can. He was going to douse Emma Rose’s character and drop a lit match. It made her even more suspicious of Alex and what kind of role he might have played in her disappearance.

“What kind of problems?” Grace asked, not giving away her irritation.

“I don’t know how to say this, because I want to be PC,” he said, looking first at Grace then at Paul.

“We’re trying to find her, so tell us what you know,” Grace said.

“I hate talking about anyone like this, but she was like a lot of girls. She wasn’t interested in my son at all. She was just using him.”

“Using him how?” she asked.

Palmer shrugged a shoulder. “Using him, you know . . .” His voice trailed off. “Look, my son’s not the brightest bulb in the box and he sure as hell didn’t inherit much of anything from me. Looks like his mother’s side, that’s for sure.”

“I’m sure your family tree is fascinating, Mr. Morton,” Grace said, her tone a little less polite than she’d intended. “But what, exactly, are you getting at?”

Palmer stared hard at Grace. “She was a little bit of a whore, a gold digger. She just cozied up to my son because of his big, fat trust fund.”

“I see,” she said, barely believing she’d heard him correctly, but knowing full well that she had.

He didn’t like her tone and bristled right away. “Don’t look at me like that, Ms. Alexander.”

“Detective,” she said, coolly correcting him. “How do you know this?”

“I know it because I saw it. Look, I don’t want to embarrass my boy. He’s already embarrassed. But Emma hit on me.”

“Hit on you?” Grace asked, suppressing the desire to roll her eyes at her partner. The man across from them really was the biggest jerk in Tacoma.
Bar none
.

Palmer Morton fiddled with the money clip in his pants pocket. It was a platinum affair that had an angel on one side and the devil on the other. “Look, it happens a lot,” he said in his best imitation of being somewhat sheepish. “I get it. Girls are looking for their daddies. Roll in some serious money and a manse like mine and it happens. All the time. Truth be told, I’m kind of sick of it.”

Grace didn’t need to make a mental note. With that remark there was no doubt that she and Paul would be joking about that ridiculous line for years to come.
So sick of being hit on!
And really, who in the world but an egomaniac uses the term “manse”?

“I imagine it happens a lot,” she said, convincingly deadpan. “Considering who you are.”

Palmer brightened a little. “Then you get it, right?”

She nodded. “Oh yes. Big-time.”

The interview with Palmer Morton over, Grace hurried to her desk to get her purse and coat.

“Where you headed in such a rush?” Paul asked when he caught up with her by the stairs.

“Got an interview,” she said.

“I’ll get my coat.”

“No. This is personal,” she said, heading down the stairs.

And it was. Very.

Across town, Anna Sherman looked at the box of Ted stuff she’d kept all those years and noticed that inside a copy of
The Only Living Witness
, she’d hidden that horrible letter that Ted had sent her. Not one that he’d written, but one that he’d
sent
her. On purpose? Or a mistake?

She’d forgotten about it completely. She’d forgotten about many things and it scared her. She could no longer recall Susie’s laugh. That hurt so, so much.

She reread the letter. With each word, she felt a pang of worry, anxiety.

Dear Ted,

Sometimes I just want to call you Teddy! You are my huggable Teddy Bear! Don’t be embarrassed. I know that you don’t mind a pet name. I saw a new photograph of you on the news this morning. I think it was an older photograph. Maybe taken last year? You are wearing a turtleneck and it fits you like a glove. I thought that jail made guys pudgy. But not you. You are just as handsome and fit as ever. I am looking forward to seeing you. I have been over at Tricia’s mom’s house just to keep in touch with the O’Hares. You know, keep your enemies close. I tried to tell Tricia’s mom that she would be surprised when the real truth comes out, but she says that I’m a fool to think that you are innocent of anything. She’s the fool. She thinks that I care more about doing interviews with the newspaper than trying to prove who killed her daughter. Tricia is dead. She is over. What is the point on trying to assign blame now? No point if you ask me. Let Tricia rest in peace and leave me/us alone.

Now back to you. I heard an old song on the radio today and it made me think of you. I don’t know if you will think that this song is silly, but I kind of think of it as our song. It is called “Love Will Keep Us Together.” The group is a husband and wife group called The Captain and Tennille. I almost didn’t want to tell you about this, but I really do think it fits us. No matter what happens, Ted, love will keep us together.

I promise to write tomorrow. I’ll keep the letters coming. I haven’t heard from you in a week or so. I hope you get this.

Love, Peggy

Peggy. Peggy Howell
. Just as Anna finished reading, a nurse came in to check on her. It was medicine time. She put her hand up to her chest.

“Saved the best for last,” the nurse said, like she always did. “The pink one.”

Anna didn’t respond. Usually she laughed and said something about how the blue pills were her favorite. She sat motionless, clutching the letter.

“Anna, are you all right?”

The old woman shook her head.

“Do you need the doctor?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I need you to do something for me,” she said, pushing the letter into the nurse’s hand.

The nurse, a younger woman with a normally sunny disposition, took the letter, her eyes falling on the paper.

“You can read it,” Anna said. “But it won’t make sense to you. I need you to fax this letter over to Detective Alexander at the Tacoma Police Department. Her card’s over there on the table.”

“Murder is not about lust and it’s

not about violence.