Undying (22 page)

“What I was thinking was that you can’t keep running,” Kaleigh said. “That’s what I’m getting. That no matter how scared you are, you can’t outrun it.” She set her cup of ice cream down. “Sometimes, the only way to put out the fire is to turn around and run right into it. You know?”

“What are you talking about?” Macy asked.

Kaleigh got up from the picnic table. She took her paper hat, but she left the ice cream. “I have no idea. But I think you do. See ya around.”

Flabbergasted and scared at the same time, if that was possible, Macy watched the teen walk away. How could that girl have known about Mariah and Minnie? How was it possible?

She watched as Arlan spoke to Kaleigh before she went back into the ice cream shop. He approached the table where Macy still sat.

“What did you tell her about me?” Macy accused him as Arlan sat down.

Having finished his ice cream, he picked up what Kaleigh had left behind and began to eat it. “What do you mean? Nothing. What could I have told her? I don’t know about you. You won’t tell me anything.”

“My sisters died. They were buried in yellow dresses,” Macy murmured. Her hands trembled.

“I’m so sorry, Macy.” He looked up from his ice cream, spoon poised.

“You’re missing the point here, Arlan.
How did she know?
”

“I told you. Kaleigh knows things.” He shrugged, going back to his ice cream. “Around here, we call it a
gift
.”

Macy’s head reeled. None of this made any sense, but did anything in her life? “Kaleigh doesn’t know about Teddy, does she? About him stalking me?”

“She knows Fia’s working on the Buried Alive Killer, but I haven’t said anything to her about you helping out with the case. Fia certainly wouldn’t say anything. Neither would Eva—I mean,
if
you’ve mentioned anything to her.”

Thinking, Macy slid the DQ cup in front of her. The paper was wet and cool. She pulled the spoon up and plunged it into the ice cream. It was melting. Vanilla ice cream with real strawberry bits in it. How the hell had Kaleigh known Macy liked strawberry ice cream? She had never told Arlan. She’d never told anyone. She took a tentative taste.

The cold, sweet ice cream was shockingly good. “Kaleigh told me I can’t keep running. She said the only way to end it was to meet it head on. Something about fire.” Macy looked up at him. “She was talking about Teddy. She knows he’s connected to my sisters’ deaths.”

Arlan watched her through his dark sunglasses. His face was not just handsome, it was sweet. She liked the way he looked at her—like he really did care.

Macy took another tentative taste of the strawberry ice cream, still pensive. “I think I need to talk to Fia.”

He reached across the table, taking her hand in his. He squeezed it. “I was hoping you would.”

While preparing for a presentation the next day, Teddy waited for Marceline. He checked his laptop. It was early still, but he kept his IM program on, just in case she couldn’t resist.

And he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

She never could.

M
acy sat in the booth at the diner, the Nike shoe box beside her. She’d driven all the way to Charlottesville last night to retrieve it. Then back to Clare Point. Oddly enough, she wasn’t tired. Adrenaline, she supposed. And a strange feeling that this was all coming to an end.

Macy wasn’t like Kaleigh, she didn’t
know
things, but she sensed an impending conclusion. She didn’t know if Teddy was going to kill her or if Fia was going to catch him. And Macy wanted to live. For some reason, she’d come back from New Orleans knowing that, and the realization had brought on the seed of an emotion she hadn’t known she could still experience. Fear. Years ago, she had resigned herself to the idea that Teddy would kill her one day. She knew that eventually he would tire of his sick cat and mouse game and he would murder her. She was afraid because she didn’t want to die. But her new desire to live had also planted another seed and that was the will to fight back. She wanted to fight to live.

Fia walked into the diner wearing a fitted suit, her signature dark sunglasses, and a bad ass attitude. On the phone last night, while she’d seemed interested to see the box, she’d wanted Macy to come to the FBI offices in Philadelphia. Macy didn’t do FBI offices. And she didn’t do Philadelphia. She wasn’t sure why. She just didn’t like the city.

“Up all night?” Macy asked as Fia slid into the booth across the table from her.

“Left the crime scene to come straight here. I don’t usually drink caffeine, but I’m having it this morning.” She pointed to her coffee cup and a waitress came to fill it. “Rye toast, dry.”

“Anything for you, Miss?”

Macy shook her head and waited for the waitress to walk away. “Thanks for coming.”

“You’ve got the stuff?”

“As I said on the phone, there’s not much here that is going to help you.”

“And as I said on the phone”—Fia sipped her black coffee—“that will be up to the bureau to decide.” She took off her sunglasses to scrutinize Macy. “Why didn’t you tell me he sent you things in the mail?”

“It was a long time ago. And he only did it for a few years. Once I graduated from college, I started moving around to steer clear of him. And the Internet had become more readily available. He definitely likes the Internet.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me what you had.”

Macy thought about it before she answered, trying to be honest not just with Fia, but herself. She had decided it
was
time to be honest. She was tired of running and she was tired of living with the idea of dying. She was determined she was going to do what Kaleigh had suggested, turn around and run into the fire. Even if it destroyed her. “I think I didn’t want to tell you about the things he sent because you’d want them. You’d want to, you know, keep them.”

“And you want to keep them…
why
? You like mementos from sick fucks?”

Macy tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She’d washed her hair this morning and not yet pulled it back in a ponytail. Fia had a point. Why
did
she want the stuff? But she knew why. She had always known why. She’d kept the clippings Teddy sent her because, as sick as it sounded, he was her only connection to her dead family. The mementos also reminded her, lest she ever forget, the part
she
played in their deaths.

Her whole life was really about that, wasn’t it? All of it, her lack of ability to form relationships with anyone, her promiscuous behavior. Her nonstop travel. The way she had alienated herself from the world.

Fia put her hand out. “Let me see what you have.”

Macy looked down at the old shoe box beside her. She’d driven all the way to Charlottesville and back and not opened it. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she
had
opened it. Not in the year since she’d moved to the cottage, she knew. Her fingers found the box and she grasped it, lifting it slowly to the table. “I don’t think anything is going to make sense in here. I used to ask Teddy why he sent this stuff, but he would never say.”

Fia took the box, sliding it across the table in front of her. She removed the lid and then, glancing inside, pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket and put them on.

“Aren’t you going to look at it back at your office?”

“I am. But I’m curious now. I’d just like to get a first impression.”

“It’s almost all bizarre clippings from magazines. A couple of notes he sent me early on.”

“How early?” Fia glanced up, tearing her eyes away from a clipping of a little boy riding in a wagon, a mother-figure pulling him.

“For fourteen years,” Macy said softly.

“Fourteen years?” Fia repeated. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You said he’d only been contacting you for
a couple
of years. Just since the Smiths.”

“I know what I told you.”

Fia thumbed through glossy magazine clippings that were growing faded with time. “You save the envelopes?”

“No. No return addresses. Postmarks from all over the U.S. I think he travels for work.”

“Good guess. Our profile indicates the same thing.” Fia pulled out a newspaper clipping. “He sent you this?”

Macy leaned over the table to get a better look. It was an article from the
Chicago Tribune
reporting the murder of a family. The Patels, 2001. “The very earliest clippings he sent. I saved the others.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Fia swore under her breath. “They all here? A clipping from each of the deaths?”

“Nothing in there for the Macphersons…or the Millers,” Macy heard herself say. “Eleven in the box.”

“Eleven?” Fia tossed a picture of a boy seated at a table grinning as his mother served him cereal. “The Millers make twelve, Macy. If the Macphersons and the Millers aren’t in the box, there should be ten.”

“Eleven in the box,” Macy repeated.

“More coffee?” The waitress walked by the table with a carafe.

“No thanks,” Macy and Fia said in unison.

“There’s one I don’t know about?” Fia sounded angry but perhaps a little hurt, too.

Fia was disappointed in her. Of course she was. Disappointment was all Macy could offer anyone. And death.

Macy glanced out the window and watched as a family biked by. This was her chance. She could stand up and just walk away. There would be nothing Fia could do about it. Sure, maybe she could arrest her, but there wasn’t enough evidence to link Macy to the crimes. The box was nothing but a collection of old clippings and obituaries. Weird thing for her to have in her possession, but not illegal because it wasn’t really evidence.

“The other family. Who else did he kill?” Fia pressed.

The diner was bright and loud. Patrons were laughing and talking. Dishes clinked as waitresses cleared them away. The smoky smell of bacon frying hung in the air. A child near the cash register cried.

But the diner didn’t seem bright and loud to Macy. Suddenly it seemed dark. Small. It was just Fia and Macy and the darkness that loomed at the edges of Macy’s mind. “Nineteen ninety-four,” she said flatly. “Lawrenceville, Missouri.”

“Macy. The first time the Buried Alive Killer appears on the FBI radar is nineteen ninety-seven.” She watched Macy carefully. “Chattanooga. The Downing family. Mom, Dad, two children.”

“It’s there inside a condolence card.” Macy felt as if she were speaking in slow motion. She pointed to the box. “In the bottom.”

Fia began to leaf through the items. “Lot of cutouts of smiley boys and their mommies, huh?” she remarked.

“Definitely mommy issues,” Macy commented, feeling slightly detached from what was happening.

Fia pulled a faded white greeting card decorated with pastel flowers from the Nike box. She opened it up, catching the newspaper clipping before it hit the Formica table. She quickly scanned the article. “They were strangled in the house and then laid in shallow graves. Not the same MO.” She looked up at Macy.

Macy felt her lower lip tremble. Her voice came out in a croak. “It was his first time, I think.”

Fia watched her intently with those dark eyes that seemed to Macy to be able to see to a person’s very soul. “Who were they, Macy?”

“Husband and wife Alice and John Carpenter, and their daughters Minerva and Mariah, ages four and ten, respectively.” Macy shifted her gaze to look at a clock on the far wall. She focused on the numbers and the black second hand,
tick, tick, ticking
as she spoke. “He strangled them in their beds and then carried them outside to the family farm orchard, where he dug shallow graves and laid them to rest.” Her voice caught in her throat. “He didn’t cover them up. In the morning, the teenage daughter found them there. All lying side by side under a cherry tree.”

Macy was surprised to feel Fia’s hand cover hers on the table. Fia had never struck Macy as the emotional type. Macy hadn’t been entirely sure the woman felt anything at all.

“
You
were the teenage daughter,” Fia said gently. It was a statement, not a question.

Macy intended to answer, but the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. She thought she could handle this, but she realized she was wrong. She got up from the table.

“Macy.”

Macy walked out of the diner, down the street. She’d walk into the fire, but it was going to have to be in baby steps.

Fia’s first impulse was to follow Macy. To demand answers. She usually let her first impulse pass. It was often wrong, and more than once she’d learned that the hard way.

She removed the latex gloves she had donned in case, on the outside chance, there were fingerprints or DNA evidence on any of the clippings or cards. She then put the lid back on the shoe box and finished her coffee. She left the toast untouched. She had to get back to Philadelphia. First, everything had to be checked by Evidence. Then it might take days to go over everything in the box and try to make sense of it. But the first thing she would do was track down information on the Carpenter murders. She’d contact the Missouri State Police as soon as she got on the road.

Fia’s cold-blooded vampire heart ached for Macy. For the girl she had been. For the woman she was now. Tears came to her eyes when she thought of Macy standing under a cherry tree looking down at her dead family.

Saints in hell,
life was hard for humans.

Fia massaged her temples. She didn’t have time for emotion. It wasn’t her place to feel for the victims. If she was going to catch this monster, for the sept, for the world, she had to get her head in the right place. She had to think logically.

Of course
Macy had known some of the Buried Alive victims. Fia had suspected that from the beginning. She should have guessed from Macy’s behavior that this was personal. But how could she have guessed that Macy’s family had
been
victims?

Which led Fia to the next logical question, the question she would have asked had Macy not taken off.

If Teddy killed Macy’s family, why hadn’t he killed her along with them? And why didn’t he go after her when he realized there had been a Carpenter missing that night? Why the years of stalking her?

After paying at the register, Fia went outside into the bright sunlight. She called Arlan as she walked across the parking lot to her car. “I need you,” she said when he picked up.

“Any time, any place, sweet cheeks.”

“How long has she been here?” Arlan asked Eva.

They stood side by side in the sunroom, looking out on Eva’s rose garden. Macy sat on the stone bench, a camera propped on her knee as she studied the garden fence and took notes. If she knew Eva and Arlan were watching her, she gave no indication.

“Not long. Half an hour, maybe. She’s taking the photos herself for the magazine article. She said she wanted to get some preliminary shots, get an idea of what she was looking for.” Eva turned to him. “What’s up?”

“Looks like the shit might be hitting the serial killer fan.” He watched Macy, unsure of the best way to approach her. Fia had been concerned when she called him, not so much about the case, but about her emotional state.

Seated on the bench in the midst of the roses, Macy seemed very fragile to him. All humans seemed fragile, but she more so. Fia said she’d walked out of the diner. Fia had been afraid she might leave town. Arlan, who’d been changing the locks on Victor Simpson’s doors, had gone straight to the hotel when Fia called him. They had agreed that it would be better for Fia to back off a little, that if Macy was going to talk to anyone, it would be him right now.

Macy’s car had been at the hotel. Mrs. Cahall said she’d come in, gotten a camera bag from her room and left through the lobby at 9:37
A.M
., headed east. Arlan wondered if the FBI had room for Mrs. Cahall at the bureau; the old lady was more observant than half the bozos Fia worked with.

Arlan had guessed that Macy had left the hotel, headed for Eva’s. He knew she’d decided to take the photographs herself and had wanted to start today. He hoped she followed through with her plan, despite her meeting with Fia. Fortunately, she had and she was here, safe, at least for the time being. Fia hadn’t given him any details, but she had told him that Macy’s family had been murdered by the Buried Alive Killer when she was a teenager. A case the FBI had been unaware of.