The Last Victim (27 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

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“Oh, he’s such a horse’s ass, it makes the bile rise in my stomach just to look at him,” declared Shelley. Her eyes were glued to the little black-and-white TV on the table in the funeral parlor’s employee break room.
Bridget chuckled. “That’s no way to talk about a close, personal friend of Jesus Christ’s.”
Jim Foley was on the TV. The anchorman had just announced that Foley had spoken this afternoon to a crowd in Springfield, Oregon.
Brad and Zach sat with them in the tiny, one-window room. There was barely enough space for the table and chairs, a sink, a minirefrigerator, a coffee machine, and the TV. They were pushing the maximum occupancy at four. When Bridget had asked the funeral director if there was a television on the premises, he’d shown them to this room. She’d left David in charge of his younger brother. Shelley had rounded up Brad for her.
On TV, Foley smiled at his supporters. He wore a denim shirt with the collar open, very relaxed, very folksy. “I don’t know about anyone else here,” he announced to a cheering crowd outside some shopping mall. “But I think most of the people in Oregon are good people, family people, churchgoing people, God-fearing people, people with values.”
“ ‘People who need people,’ ” Shelley chimed in. “ ‘No more hunger and thirst’—”
Brad shushed her, but he was grinning at the same time.
“I wonder if the good people of our state want Oregon’s First Family to have ties with flagrant drug abusers and pushers. I heard on the news that Bridget Corrigan’s husband and his live-in girlfriend might have actually known their killers. These killers may have been guests in their house at one time—at one of their cocaine parties. This is the same house, by the way, where Brad Corrigan’s nephews play—while their mother is out making campaign speeches with their uncle Brad. This isn’t my idea of a good family. And they’re not who I want for the First Family of this state.”
“Oh, crap,” Bridget muttered, over the applause on the TV.
The anchorman came back on the screen. Brad reached over and switched off the television. “Son of a bitch,” he grumbled, getting to his feet. “I must have been an idiot to think he wouldn’t stoop this low. Their bodies aren’t even in the ground, and he’s already on the attack.”
“So are you going to dignify this with a response?” Zach asked.
“I don’t know yet, Zach.” Brad put a hand on his shoulder. “I need some air. Want to step outside with me for a couple of minutes? I could really use your advice.”
Zach threw a puzzled look back at Bridget; then he shrugged. “Sure.”
Brad patted his shoulder and led him out of the little room. Bridget watched them head across the hall toward a side door. Brad seemed awfully friendly to Zach all of a sudden. She was glad to see her brother warming up to him. Then Bridget remembered something Brad had said a few nights ago: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
“That Jim Foley sure knows how to bust up a party,” Shelley said. Then she gently nudged Bridget. “How are you coping, hon?”
“Oh, I’m just peachy,” she muttered, pushing herself up from the chair. “We should get back to the wake.” Bridget linked her arm in Shelley’s; then they started down the hallway toward the viewing room.
They entered the funeral parlor’s lobby, a stately-looking area with a big fireplace, framed by two potted palm trees, and a pair of sage-colored velvet sofas facing each other. Sitting on one of those sofas, his restless feet not quite reaching the oriental rug on the floor, was Eric.
Bridget stopped dead.
Someone was talking to her young son. He was patting Eric’s shoulder and mussing his hair.
Bridget recognized him. He was the pale, lanky red-haired “waiter” from the Mexican restaurant last week. Only this time, he was dressed in a dark gray suit.
“Excuse me!” David emerged from the crowd of mourners, then hurried toward his brother and the red-haired man.
Bridget started toward them too.
The man looked up and saw them both zeroing in on him. He grinned at Bridget for a second. “Bye, Eric!” he said, then ran out the front door.
Eric seemed to shrink when he saw his mother and brother rushing at him. “Are you okay?” Bridget asked.
Visibly frightened, Eric gazed up at her and nodded.
Bridget hurried toward the door and opened it. A couple of photographers snapped her photo, and the flashbulbs blinded her. She quickly ducked back inside.
She couldn’t see where the red-haired man had gone. She couldn’t get a look at his car or license plate number. She couldn’t see a damn thing past the spots in her eyes.
Zach stayed on at the wake. Bridget caught sight of him every once in a while, mingling in the crowd, sometimes talking with Brad. She thought back to when she’d been so unnerved by the sight of him. Now he was no longer a stranger to her. Or was he? How well did she really know him?
He and Brad had run out to the parking lot after she told them about Eric’s brush with the red-haired “waiter.” But they hadn’t seen anyone—only a few reporters, who snapped Brad’s picture again.
Eric was a bit confused about all the fuss. He hadn’t recognized the friendly man as their waiter from the Mexican restaurant. “He axed if Dad and Leslie had any parties while I stayed there,” Eric said. “I told him about the fountain and the goldfish. Oh, and he axed if I ever saw you put stuff up your nose, Mom. Ha!”
Bridget wondered if the “waiter” was a spy for Foley. Was he the one watching her, skulking around her house, and hiding in the alley?
She didn’t want to subject David and Eric to any more strangers at this wake. Still, Bridget felt compelled to stay on for her in-laws, who were picking up the funeral parlor bill.
Brad volunteered to take the boys to his and Janice’s house. He needed to go home for an emergency conference call with Jay and his public relations team—so they could discuss possible responses to Foley’s Springfield speech.
“I still don’t trust our buddy Zach,” Brad cautioned her. “He’s up to something. Do me a favor and stick close to him. Find out what his deal is. I have a real bad feeling about that guy.”
Before heading out with the boys, Brad stopped to shake Zach’s hand. Brad gave him the double handshake to show extra warmth and sincerity. Frowning, Bridget watched them. She hated to see her brother act so phony. Was he that way with all his
enemies
? Or was he just becoming a full-time political phony?
Zach was among the dozen or so people still at the wake when Bridget said her good-byes to Gerry’s family. He asked if he could walk her to her car. In the lobby, he helped her on with her coat. “Your sons are terrific,” he said. “I chatted a bit with David. He wanted to know if I was the
dude
who asked his mom out for a date. He heard me babbling on your answering machine. And he said he saw my picture in the old high school yearbook. I looked like a geek, he said.”
Bridget grimaced. “Oh, Zach, I’m so sorry—”
“We had a good laugh over it,” he assured her. “He’s a nice kid.”
Zach opened the door for her, and they headed for her minivan. The reporters must have gotten tired and left, because no one was outside the funeral parlor.
Bridget reached into her purse and fished out her car keys. “So—are you going to keep working on that feature story about Mallory Meehan?” she asked—ever so casually.
He leaned against her minivan. “Yeah, I’m still hacking away at it.”
“Really? It seems like such a dead end, Zach. Aren’t you afraid you’re wasting your time?”
There was a wounded look on his handsome face. “No—”
“I didn’t mean to shoot you down, I—”
“Mallory’s mother didn’t seem to think we were wasting our time the other day. And Sheriff Miller thought enough about it that he was recalling all those details from twenty years ago. Hell, I’m just getting started. And you know, I have a feeling Mallory might have been killed in McLaren. I mean, a lot of people in that town hated Mallory, three-quarters of our class, for starters. She wasn’t easy to like. I keep thinking about Cheryl Blume, out for blood back when Mallory ratted on her, your brother, and the rest of them for the water tower fiasco.”
Bridget tried to laugh. “Yeah, but are you saying she murdered Mallory over
that?
C’mon now . . .”
“Well, she was one of many people Mallory had pissed off. I think it’s worth talking with her. Anyway, I’m driving to Eugene tomorrow to meet with her.”
Bridget stared at him.
“You’re meeting with Cheryl Blume?”
He nodded. “Only her last name’s Lassiter now.”
“But—but that’s silly.” She tried to laugh again. “Do you really think Cheryl had anything to do with Mallory’s disappearance?”
“That’s what I want to find out. She might know something.”
“But don’t you think it’s a waste of time—and gas?”
“No, not at all. But you certainly seem to think so.”
“Well, what are you expecting? The police interviewed all of us after Mallory’s disappearance. If Cheryl had something to tell them, we would have heard about it. Do you really think she’ll suddenly remember something after twenty years? I mean, c’mon. Do you think Cheryl is going to sit down with you tomorrow and give you a full confession?”
“Not exactly. I just want to talk with her about Mallory.” He looked at Bridget dead-on. “See, I can usually tell when a person is lying to me—or covering something up.”
All at once, Bridget felt as if he could see right through her. She stepped back from him. “Well, good luck with it, Zach,” she managed to say. Fumbling with the keys, she tried to unlock the minivan’s door.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, finally getting the door unlocked. She turned toward him and shook her head again. “I just—I don’t understand why you’re all of a sudden so interested in finding out what happened to Mallory Meehan.”
He frowned. “And I don’t understand why you’re so opposed to the idea.”
“I’m not,” she lied. “I . . .” Bridget hesitated.
He was staring at her as if he didn’t know her at all. He looked so disillusioned.
Bridget took a deep breath. “I really hope you—
bust this case wide open
. I mean that. Good luck with it, Zach.”
She ducked inside the van, switched on the ignition, and started to pull away. She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Zach still had the same expression on his handsome face. He was staring at her—as if she were suddenly a stranger to him.
Bridget pulled out of the parking lot. She didn’t look back at him again.
She didn’t get very far. Only five blocks from the funeral home, Bridget pulled over to a parking space on the side of the street—across from a Denny’s restaurant.
She couldn’t stop shaking. Bridget was gripping the wheel so tightly, she thought she might break it. If she kept driving, she could have gotten into an accident. Turning off the engine, and switching off the lights, she sat back and told herself to calm down.
Deep breaths, deep breaths.
How could she tell Zach the truth?
If you like me at all, you’ll stop investigating this . . .
She hated lying to him. How could she make it right?
How could she ever make it right?
For twenty years, she had been asking herself that question. Now her past was catching up with her. She always knew it would eventually.
Brad said he didn’t trust Zach. But she and Brad were the ones who couldn’t be trusted. Zach was just trying to get to the truth.
Bridget didn’t know how long she sat in the parked minivan while other cars sailed by. She lowered the window a few inches for some air, and glanced over at the Denny’s restaurant.
Zach was in the parking lot, climbing out of his car.
Bridget numbly stared at him. Here was her chance. She could go to him and tell him everything. A full confession. She couldn’t keep on lying to him. He was going to find out soon enough. She would have to trust Zach and ask him to drop his investigation.
Her stomach was tied up in knots.
Go in there, have a cup of coffee with him, and tell him.
He glanced toward her. Bridget raised her hand to wave. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was watching a Subaru pull into the lot.
Bridget realized he was waiting for someone.
She watched a man get out of the Subaru. The car beeped and its headlights flashed as he locked it with the automatic device on his key chain. He strutted over to Zach, and they started toward the restaurant together.
Bridget recognized the man with Zach.
She’d seen him earlier tonight—talking to Eric. And the time before that, she’d seen the lanky, pale red-haired man at another restaurant, where he’d been posing as a waiter.
Cheryl Blume was late.
Zach sat at a table in the bar at Johnny Ocean’s Grill in Eugene’s Oakway Center. Though it was warm in the bar, Zach had a blue-and-gray-striped scarf hanging around his neck. Cheryl had asked him to wear a scarf so she could recognize him. Meeting in the shopping mall restaurant had been her idea.
He hadn’t been completely honest when he’d talked to Cheryl on the phone. Apparently, the previous week, she’d put an ad in the personals,
Attractive, Sexy, Divorced, 30-Something WF Seeking 30–50-Something SWM. U-B: Professional, Handsome, Honest . . .
When he’d phoned and told her, “Hello, my name’s Zach,” Cheryl immediately thought he was someone who had answered her ad.
“I called back a bunch of guys,” she’d explained. “So—I’m not sure which one you are, but it doesn’t matter. I only called back the good ones. Why don’t you tell me what you look like?”
Zach played along. He had a feeling that Cheryl would be more willing to meet if she didn’t know he was Zachary Matthias from old McLaren High.
When phoning some of his former classmates about Brad and Bridget Corrigan a few weeks ago, he’d learned that Cheryl had severed ties with nearly everyone from her old hometown. It was similar to the way Bridget and Brad had fallen out of touch with their friends once they’d moved to Portland. Though Cheryl’s parents had still been living in McLaren at the time, Cheryl rarely returned there after starting college. She spent most of her school vacations with an aunt in San Diego—or with college friends. It was as if she wanted nothing more to do with the town and the people in it.
According to Mary Drollinger, who had grown up with Cheryl and stayed close to her at McLaren High, Cheryl started to pull away about three weeks before going off to college. “She broke up with Brad over the phone,” Mary had told Zach. “She didn’t bother saying good-bye to me or any of her other friends. I left a ton of messages too. I even wrote and called her while she was away at school. On the phone, she never had time, and as for writing me back, forget about it.”
When Zach had talked with Mary, he’d hoped to get in touch with Cheryl so he could interview her about Brad Corrigan. The notion of investigating Mallory Meehan’s disappearance hadn’t come to him yet. But it struck him as peculiar that Mallory had vanished at just about the same time Cheryl started pushing her friends away.
Zach asked Mary if she and her former friend had ever discussed Mallory Meehan’s disappearance.
“I brought it up a few times,” Mary told him. “For someone who hated Mallory’s guts, Cheryl didn’t seem at all interested. One of the last times I mentioned it, Cheryl got really ticked off and said she was sick of me talking about it. I mean, really,
everyone
was talking about it at the time. Anyway, I never saw Cheryl after that.”
Mary’s parents had kept in touch with Cheryl’s widowed mother. Mary didn’t have Cheryl’s phone number or address, but she knew her former friend was now living in Eugene, and her
most recent
married name was Lassiter.
Zach sipped his Amber Ale, then glanced at his wristwatch again: 4:10. She was ten minutes late. He drummed his fingers on the varnished tabletop and gazed at the TV above the bar—a football game on ESPN.
“Zach?”
He looked up at her, took off his scarf, then quickly got to his feet. She was still a knockout—with a trim, sexy figure. She wore a black lambskin blazer, a white blouse, and formfitting jeans. She had a few tiny lines around her eyes, and the straight, shaggy hair was more ash-colored than honey blond. Still, he recognized her right away.
But Cheryl obviously didn’t recognize him. They shook hands; then she sat down and ordered a wine spritzer. She looked across the table at Zach and smiled coyly. “Well, Zach, I must say, I’m not disappointed.”
He couldn’t believe stuck-up A-lister Cheryl Blume was actually flirting with him. She started talking right away—exclusively about herself, but he chalked that up to blind-date-jitters. She worked part-time in a travel agency. She’d been divorced for five months. She and a girlfriend—another divorcee—placed personal ads in Eugene’s weekly newspaper as an experiment. The ads were free that week. She got more responses than her friend, nineteen. She hoped he liked kids, because she had two—Amy, eleven, and Josh, nine. They were with their father; but she had them every other weekend and holidays.
Ten minutes went by, and Cheryl still hadn’t asked Zach anything about himself. Her cell phone went off, and she took the call. “Hello? Oh, hi . . . Yeah, I’m fine, really fine . . . Can I call you back?”
Zach waited until she clicked off; then he asked, “So—was that your friend, giving you the optional ‘emergency phone call’ if this wasn’t working out between you and me?”
Cheryl burst out laughing. She reached over and put her hand on top of his. “God, you see right through me! I guess I can’t put anything past you, Zach.”
He smiled, and hoped she was right about that.
Cheryl didn’t let go of his hand. She looked directly into his eyes for a moment. “I’ve gone on four of these ad dates so far,” she admitted. “And this is the first time I haven’t exercised my escape plan.”
Zach raised his beer stein. “I’m flattered.”
She nudged his leg with her foot. “You should be.”
“So tell me, Cheryl,” he said, “where are you from originally?”
She sat back. “Oh, this three-stoplight little town near Longview, Washington.”
“McLaren?”
The smile vanished from her face. “Yeah. How do you know McLaren?”
“I thought you looked really familiar,” Zach said, with an appropriately stunned, isn’t-this-a-coincidence laugh. “Is your maiden name Blume?”
She nodded apprehensively.
“We went to McLaren High together. I’m Zach Matthias.”
“You mean, the fat kid with the thick glasses?”
Zach figured he deserved that. He laughed a little, and nodded. “Yeah, that’s me, the former fat kid.”
She squinted at him. “Well, you—look good. Better.”
“Thanks. You know, if someone back in high school had told me one day I’d be on a date with Cheryl Blume—one in which she didn’t exercise an
escape plan
—I would have said they were crazy.”
She gave him a faint smile, then sipped her drink.
“Small world, huh?” he said. “I mean, I answer some ad in the personals, and it turns out to be Cheryl Blume. What are the odds of that happening?”
“Pretty slim,” she muttered.
“So—have you been back to McLaren at all—recently?”
She shook her head. “Not recently. Have you?”
“Yes, I went back there last week. I’ve been living in Europe the last four years, and just got back to the States a couple of months ago. I was feeling nostalgic, so I took a drive up to good old McLaren.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, squirming a bit in her chair. Unlike Bridget Corrigan, she didn’t seem interested in what he’d been doing in Europe all that time. Cheryl nervously glanced around the bar, and her gaze seemed to stop for a moment on a short, muscular, balding man, seated alone on a bench in the mall—just outside Johnny Ocean’s bar area. The man wore a tight short-sleeve shirt. He was so hairy, he looked a little like a chimpanzee. He was staring back at her.
Zach caught it. “Is he someone you know?”
“Never seen him before.”
“He was staring at you a minute ago.”
Cheryl gave a wistful shrug. “I’m used to it. Guys have been staring at me ever since I was twelve years old.”
He smiled. “I know. I was one of them.”
“So—what were you talking about?” she asked with thinly veiled indifference.
“McLaren,” he said. “The town hasn’t changed much. I didn’t see many familiar faces. Oh, but you know who I ran into there?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Mallory Meehan’s mother. Remember Mallory?”
“Vaguely,” Cheryl allowed. She glanced at her wristwatch. “We didn’t exactly travel in the same circles.”
He laughed. “Oh, c’mon, you have to remember Mallory. You hated her guts! Remember how she ratted on you, Brad, Fuller—”
Cheryl was shaking her head. “You know, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You don’t want to talk about Mallory—or McLaren—or what?”
“Any of it,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Cheryl drank her wine spritzer, draining the glass.
“I suddenly feel like I’m in a conversational minefield,” Zach said. “So
Mallory
is the taboo subject, huh?”
“I’m just not interested in discussing her,” Cheryl said, “okay? I hardly knew the sorry bitch.”
“So when Mallory disappeared, it wasn’t any big deal to you?”
She glared at him. “What are you getting at? Why are you harping on this?”
He laughed. “Why are you so sensitive on the subject?”
“Who sent you?” she asked pointedly. “This was no accident—us getting together like this. Somebody used you to set me up. Who was it?”
Zach shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit,” she hissed. “I know when I’m being set up. I’m not stupid. This is some kind of trap. And you—” She stood up and grabbed her purse. “You know something,
Zach?
You’re still a loser-geek.”
She snatched her coat off the back of her chair, which tipped over and fell on the floor with a clatter. Then Cheryl stormed out of the bar.
Zach watched her flounce past the restaurant’s window. She was throwing on her coat. The balding, ape-faced man was still sitting on the mall bench. He was watching her too.
Zach picked up Cheryl’s chair. Then he glanced out the window again. The bench where the man had been sitting was now empty.
She knew something weird was going on. For starters, her mother had called last week to tell her that Fuller Sterns died in a car accident. Sad news. But the way that son of a bitch used to drive, small wonder it hadn’t happened sooner.
Then a couple of days later, Bridget Corrigan phoned her, asking all sorts of strange questions. Cheryl wasn’t sure if Bridget had been trying to scare her or intimidate her or what.
And now, this afternoon, Cheryl thought she’d finally hit gold with this great-looking ad date, and he turned out to be that fat geek from McLaren High, asking all these questions about Mallory Meehan.
Yes, something weird was going on.
When she returned home, Cheryl poured herself a glass of white wine. No spritzer this time. She needed the alcohol’s full, undiluted punch. She couldn’t stop shaking. She had to relax.
Cheryl took her wine upstairs. In the bathroom, she turned on the water and started filling the tub. She threw in some bubble bath salts for good measure—and even lit a candle on the edge of the bathtub. If this didn’t relax her, nothing would.
As she undressed in the bedroom, Cheryl glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It was almost five. She’d become hooked on the local news lately. She was closely following every development in the senatorial race. It was silly, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself. She still had a thing for Brad Corrigan, the bastard.
After that debacle with Mallory Meehan in Gorman’s Creek, Brad had totally pulled away from her. Whenever she’d phoned him, he got paranoid: “You didn’t go back to Gorman’s Creek, did you? We shouldn’t be talking to each other. You didn’t move the Volare, did you? You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
Before going away to college, he’d broken up with her over the phone. Over the goddamn phone, for Pete’s sake. End of story. She never saw him again—except on TV.
Why she still cared about him was beyond her. One minute, she wanted Jim Foley to whip Brad’s ass at the polls. The next, she hoped Brad would win. Maybe she just wanted to brag to people that she’d fucked a senator. And the way Brad’s old man pushed and pushed him, maybe it would end up that she’d fucked a president of the United States.
Either way, he’d certainly screwed her.
Cheryl had a mini-TV on a little shelf above the sink and vanity. The cord was long enough to reach across the bathroom. So she moved the chair from her vanity to the foot of the tub, then set the tiny television on top of it.
Placing her wineglass on the edge of the tub, Cheryl lowered herself into the warm water. With her toe, she absently poked at the faucet. The news came on TV.
“Tonight’s top story,” the dapper, gray-haired anchorman, Don Gannon, announced. “Controversy in the race for senator, and a startling new development!”
Cheryl sipped her wine.
The picture switched to Jim Foley, with his blue shirt open at the collar and the sleeves rolled up, addressing the crowd outside the Springfield Mall. Cheryl had seen this footage already—on yesterday’s broadcast. It was the same speech:
“I wonder if the good people of our state want Oregon’s First Family to have ties with flagrant drug abusers and pushers.”

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