The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (130 page)

“I’ll find you,” Reggie said to the empty bed. She picked up the half-full glass of water, took a sip, imagining Tara’s lips on this same glass the night before last.

Reggie went over to the bookshelves, hesitating a moment before she finally gave in and pulled out
War and Peace
. There, behind it, she found Tara’s hidden dog-eared copy of
Neptune’s Hands
.

“Ha!” she said out loud. Evidently the boy detective had neglected to search the shelves.

She moved her fingers over the raised silver trident on the cover, felt the gaudy crimson drops of blood that dripped from it.

Reggie tucked the book under her shirt in case she met up with Lorraine in the hall, and headed back to her own room, checking in on Vera—still sleeping.

Back in her old bedroom, she closed and locked the door, and set
Neptune’s Hands
down on the bed, neatly made with the Drunkard’s Path quilt. She grabbed her messenger bag and pulled out her sketchbook and pens. Then, with sure steps, shoulders squared, Reggie went right for the closet, flung open the door, and reached for the old cigar box on the shelf, carrying that over to the bed as well.

She opened the lid with trembling fingers and with a horrible sense that she’d just let the genie out of the bottle.

Chapter 24

June 20, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“Y
OU’VE GOTTA SAY SOMETHING,”
Tara said.

Reggie, Charlie, and Tara were in Reggie’s living room, listening to Lorraine in the kitchen. She was cleaning fish for dinner, humming as she worked. They could hear water running, the sound of a knife on a cutting board and sticky scraping sounds. Reggie pictured Lorraine deftly slitting open the belly, pulling out skeins of entrails, her fingers covered in sparkling scales.

Lorraine had been gone all day, and Reggie was starting to get worried. Then, half an hour ago, she, Charlie, and Tara had spotted Lorraine stepping out of the woods in her huge rubber waders and fishing vest, carrying her fly-fishing pole and a string of trout. From a distance, she looked like a strange monster—half frog, half woman—squishing her way up the bank.

Now she cleaned fish in the kitchen, oblivious to the news that a new hand—a hand thick with scars—had been found.

Tara was pacing, unable to hold still. “Vera’s her sister! She should know.”

“I already tried,” Reggie said, sitting because she felt queasy. “Last night I told her about my mom getting into a tan car. She said she didn’t want to hear another word about it.”

“The scarred hand, Reg,” Tara said, stopping to gesture at Reggie with her own intact right hand with its chipped blue nail polish. “The tan car. Did you see Charlie’s dad’s face when you told him that part? And that thing about what your mom said about getting married—what if that’s how Neptune lures the women away? You need to tell Lorraine all of it. Tell her you went to the cops and that they’re checking into it.”

“I can’t tell her I did that!” Reggie yelped. “She’d shoot me!”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“Because. She’s kind of a freak about my mom. And besides, I promised her I wouldn’t even leave the house. If she finds out I went to the police station this morning—”

“But this is her sister!” Tara shrieked. Maybe she was hoping Lorraine would hear them, come in to see what all the fuss was about, and learn the truth. “And Neptune might have her right now at this very minute. Don’t you think she might want to know?”

Reggie shook her head. “I think she’d be glad.”

Charlie gasped. “What? How can you say that?”

“You should have heard Lorraine the night before last. She threw my mom out of the house! She hates her.”

“I don’t believe it,” Charlie said. “Lorraine may be a little weird, but she’s not like that.”

“That’s what you think,” Reggie said.

“I don’t get it,” Tara said, scowling. “Your mom is so cool. How could her own sister hate her?”

“I don’t know. But she always has. Maybe she’s jealous. My mom’s got the looks, the talent, and what has Lorraine got? A bunch of dead trout, her weird little bench in the garage where she sits for hours tying flies being watched over by Franken-fish.”

“Holy shit,” Tara said, eyes huge as she smacked herself in the forehead. “What if Neptune’s not a guy at all? Maybe it’s Lorraine!”

Sometimes Reggie really couldn’t believe the things that came out of Tara’s mouth. Her dowdy aunt in her fishing vest a serial killer? Reggie had to swallow down a laugh.

“You’re nuts!” Charlie yelped. “There is no way Reggie’s aunt is a serial killer.”

“Think about it, Charlie,” Tara said, voice raised with excitement. “She’s jealous, antisocial, and great with a filleting knife. And you should see all the crazy stuff she’s got in that garage—I mean, what kind of person is into taxidermy?”

Charlie rolled his eyes and let himself sink farther back into the couch.

“And didn’t you say you couldn’t find her this morning?” Tara asked Reggie. “That you called out over the bank and she didn’t answer? If she was really fishing at the brook all day, then wouldn’t she have heard you?”

“Maybe she walked down to the pond,” Reggie said, a lump forming in her throat. There was no way Lorraine was a murderer. But isn’t that what all the people close to actual serial killers always said?

The doorbell rang and they heard Lorraine running water, then walking across the kitchen and down the hall.

“Lorraine Dufrane?” a male voice said. Reggie got up and peeked down the hall. Her aunt’s tall frame filled the doorway, but in front of her was a man Reggie recognized at once: Stu Berr. Reggie’s stomach felt tight and twisted. She turned her head so that she could hear better.

“I’m Detective Berr with the Brighton Falls Police Department.”

“Yes, of course. I remember you, Stuart.”

“Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Lorraine stepped outside, closing the door.

“Oh my God, was that Charlie’s dad?” Tara’s breath was hot in Reggie’s good ear.

Reggie couldn’t answer. She stood frozen in silence.

“We’ve gotta find out what they’re saying,” Tara said, standing on tiptoes to look out the window at the top of the front door. Lorraine and Detective Berr were standing in the yard. “Come on, let’s go out the back and sneak around the house. We can hide in the bushes.” She tugged on Reggie’s arm, but Reggie couldn’t move, so Tara let go and ran off toward the kitchen. Reggie watched her go, then slowly, with leaden legs, walked back into the living room and took a seat on the couch beside Charlie.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Your dad’s here.”

“What?”

“He’s outside, talking to Lorraine. Tara went on a recon mission to see what she could find out. She probably thinks he’s gonna arrest Lorraine or something.”

Was he? Or was he here to tell her they’d identified the hand?

Charlie stood up.

“Please don’t,” Reggie said, reaching for his arm and holding it a little too tight. “I think we should just wait here. Can we do that? Can you just wait here with me?”

Charlie nodded, looking down at Reggie’s hand on his arm, probably wondering if he really had a choice.

“Reggie, there’s something you should know. Something my dad told me, but he made me swear not to tell anyone, because it’s like confidential police stuff.”

Reggie nodded, waiting.

“Tara was caught breaking into Ann Stickney’s apartment a couple days ago.”

“What?” Reggie pictured the photo of the fresh-faced, smiling college student that had appeared on the front page of the
Hartford Examiner
after her body was found.

“Ann’s roommate came home and found Tara in the kitchen. I guess she’d picked the lock. The roommate found her just sitting there, eating a bowl of cereal. They aren’t going to press charges or anything.”

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Reggie asked.

Charlie shrugged. “Why would she? I mean, it’s kind of a screwed-up thing to get caught doing. Nothing to go around bragging about.”

Reggie opened her mouth to tell Charlie about the little doll shoe Tara carried that she’d stolen from the first victim’s house, but she couldn’t do it.

Instead she turned on the TV and watched a car chase that seemed to go on forever. She set the remote back down on the coffee table and noticed a safety pin there. She imagined picking it up, opening it, running the point across her skin.

In ten minutes, Tara was back. She grabbed the remote and hit the mute button, standing in front of the TV. Behind her, one of the cars had crashed and was in flames.

“It’s her,” she announced. Her eyes, ringed with smudgy kohl black makeup, were open wide. She looked like an excited panda bear. “The hand belongs to your mom, Reg.” Tara’s mouth trembled a little, and Reggie was sure she was suppressing an excited smile.

Everything started to spin and Reggie closed her eyes.

“How do they know for sure?” Charlie asked, his voice low and serious.

“Fingerprints,” Tara explained. “I guess Vera was arrested once or something and they had her prints on file.”

“Arrested?” Charlie said.

Reggie remembered going with Lorraine to pick her mother up from the police station. What had she been arrested for?

Reggie stood up and walked down the hall.

“Reg,” Tara called after her.

“Leave her,” Charlie said.

Reggie went through the front door in time to catch the taillights of Stu Berr’s car moving down the driveway. The door to the garage closed with a quiet thud, signaling that Lorraine had retreated to her fly-tying workshop. Reggie followed, walking up to the door, not sure what she was going to say, but knowing she needed to find a way to make her aunt tell her everything: what Detective Berr had said, why the police had had Vera’s fingerprints on file.

She’s my mother
, Reggie planned to say.
I have a right to know.

She put her hand on the doorknob and was about to turn it when a sound stopped her. It began as a low moan and worked its way up to the fierce howl of an animal in pain. Reggie let go of the doorknob and stepped sideways, peeking in the small window. Her aunt was doubled over, hands clenched into fists, screaming. When she straightened herself, she began flinging everything off her workbench: tiny hooks, feathers, thread, wire, and tools all falling to the cold cement floor. The hideously deformed stuffed trout watched from the far wall, his glass eye dull. Reggie took a step back, then turned and ran back to the house, knees wobbly, chest aching.

“T
HE COPS AREN’T GONNA
do shit,” Tara was saying when Reggie walked back into the living room. Tara caught sight of her and said, “I’m sorry, Reg, but you know it’s true. If we want to find your mom, we’re gonna have to do it on our own.”

“Right,” Reggie said, trying to swallow the lump in her throat back down. “And how are we supposed to do that?” She looked back down at the safety pin, her skin feeling prickly, almost like it was begging for her to pick the pin up and open it.

“We go to the places where you know she hangs out. We look for the theater she’s been rehearsing at and find some of her friends. Someone’s bound to have seen her. Someone’s gotta know who this guy is she was planning on marrying.”

“Don’t you think my dad and the other cops have already tried that?” Charlie asked.

“No doubt. But come on, who’s gonna talk to cops? You’re Vera’s daughter. Her friends will talk to you. I’m sure they will.” Tara’s eyes were bright and glittering. She fingered the hourglass charm around her neck. “Your mother deserves our best shot, Reg. So do the other victims—Andrea, Candace, Ann.” Tara reached into her pocket and fiddled with something. Was she still carrying around that doll shoe? Did she have something new in there as well—a little trinket picked up from Ann’s apartment?

It scared Reggie a little—how
consumed
Tara had become with all of this. But deep down, she believed Tara was right—the police were not going to catch this guy. They’d had their chance and failed three times. And this time was different. This time, it was her own mother’s life at stake.

“I don’t know the name of the theater—it’s down in New Haven somewhere. I know the director’s name is Rabbit. He lives around here, I think. I know that sometimes they drive back and go to the bars on Airport Road. My mom’s bag is always full of matchbooks from those places—places like Runway 36 and Reuben’s.”

Tara nodded. “So we start there.”

DAY TWO

Chapter 25

October 21, 2010

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

R
EGGIE WAS ON HER
back in a cave, someplace dark and airless. Her hands and feet were bound. A bell was ringing, quietly at first, then louder, like the clattering warning of a railroad crossing—the train is coming, stay back.

She thrashed her way into a sitting position, opened her eyes. Her watch said 8:00
A.M.
Reggie squinted at it, then around her childhood bedroom, up at the water stains on the ceiling.

She wondered what Tara was looking at right now.

Down the hall, Vera’s bell was ringing.

Reggie was on top of the covers, still dressed, the contents of the memory box strewn out on the quilt around her: matchbooks, photographs, the wooden swan George had given Vera just before she disappeared.
Neptune’s Hands
lay open on her lap. She must have drifted off around four in the morning, eyes and brain fuzzy.

The room felt hot and stuffy. She needed to get that window open. She’d bring in some tools later, see if she could loosen it.

“Coming, Mom!” Reggie shouted, grabbing the book and stashing it under her mattress, like a kid hiding porn. Her back ached and her skull was vibrating with names and little details—the men her mother dated: Rabbit, Sal the photographer, Mr. Hollywood; the bars her mother frequented, places Reggie hadn’t thought of in years, places whose very names conjured up the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke: Reuben’s, Runway 36, Silver Wings—she had matchbooks and paper coasters from each of these places. She thought of the bar her mother had taken her to the day she lost her ear, the place with the spinning stools where they’d met the Boxer.