Vicious (28 page)

Up ahead, she thought she saw a light sweeping through in the parking lot.

Moira staggered forward and watched the beams of light. Past the flapping window shades and the howling wind, she heard the purr of a car engine.

She was about to scream out for help, but hesitated. What if the car she heard was that black Jetta—the one driven by that man calling himself
Jake
?

Moira peered around the corner, and for a moment, the headlights blinded her. She ducked back and fell to the ground. When she peeked around the corner again, she saw the vehicle veer around a little guard house toward a driveway. It was a police car.

“WAIT!” she cried. She tossed aside the empty beer bottle. On all fours, she scurried onto the cracked, potholed pavement. She frantically waved at the patrol car. “Help me! Please, help me….” But her throat was so dry and sore. As much as she tried to scream, all that came out was this pathetic, squeaky little voice.

Helplessly, she watched the squad car turn down the driveway.

Moira got up and hopped on one foot to chase after it. She kept waving her arms above her head and trying to shout. “Please…please…stop….”

The patrol car’s taillights got smaller in the darkness as it drove farther and farther away down the narrow road. But Moira kept pursuing it, always on the brink of tripping and falling on her face. She couldn’t give up. It looked as if the squad car was about to disappear in the night. But then Moira saw the brake lights go on.

“Yes!” she cried, staggering down the road toward it. “Yes…please…dear God…”

Moira watched the prowler make a U-turn. Exhausted, she stopped and collapsed to her knees. She began to laugh and cry at the same time. She kept waving her arms.

The cop car slowly approached her, and its high beams went on. Squinting at the patrol car, Moira dragged herself up from the cracked pavement. The squad car came to a stop about twenty feet in front of her. Past the headlights’ glare, she saw the cop step out of the car and hurry toward her.

Moira smiled gratefully at him.

Then she saw him reach for his nightstick. And she saw his face.

“Oh, God, no!” she screamed, recoiling.

“How the fuck did you get out?” he asked.

Deputy Corey Shaffer didn’t wait for an answer. He cracked her over the skull with his nightstick.

Susan never packed so quickly in all her life.

With Mattie at her side and the pellet gun in the pocket of her russet cardigan sweater, she quickly gathered up all her clothes and toiletries, then shoved them in her overnight bag. At this point, she didn’t give a damn about wrinkles. She just wanted to get the hell out of this house.

Deputy Shaffer had told her to stay inside and keep the doors locked. He’d also said he would be back in forty-five minutes.

That had been nearly an hour and a half ago.

Susan glanced at her wristwatch: 6:45.

She’d waited all this time downstairs in the sunroom, sitting in the same chair where Allen had pulled guard duty with his revolver last night. She’d done the same thing, only with a different kind of gun. While Mattie had slept, she’d sat there, afraid she’d suddenly see that man in the army fatigues on the other side of the sliding door—his face against the glass.

Ten years ago, she and Walt had been so concerned because one of the Mama’s Boy victims had been abducted in a park five blocks away from their home.

And here she was now, in a house occupied by another Mama’s Boy victim.

As Susan zipped up her suitcase on the bed, she thought about Jordan Prewitt’s mother, spending the last night of her life in this very room.

“Okay, sweetie, we’re out of here,” she said, grabbing the overnight bag. She’d already packed Mattie’s suitcase—in less than three minutes. It was now by the front door, along with the bin full of his toys. She hadn’t packed Allen’s things. When he came back, he could do his own packing.

As she started down the stairs after Mattie, Susan half expected to hear a sudden pounding on the door—or perhaps a window shattering. She couldn’t get past the weird notion that Mattie and she were reliving Jordan Prewitt and his mother’s last night in this house—and they might not make it out alive.

Her purse was hanging on the newel post at the bottom of the banister. Susan realized she still had the flare gun in there. She took out the gun and the extra flares and set them on the half table in the front hallway. She thought about stashing the pellet gun in her bag, but decided to keep it in the deep pocket of her cardigan. That way, it was easier to reach—in case of an emergency.

“You don’t have to go potty, do you?” she asked Mattie, pausing by the door.

“Nope,” he said, tapping Woody’s head against the doorway frame.

“I want you to stay right here like a good boy while I load up the car.” She mussed his hair, then opened the door and took her suitcase outside.

The car was parked just a few feet from the burnt rain barrel—by the trees where that hunter had been lurking. Susan made three trips back and forth, loading up the car, and for each brief trek she glanced at those woods with trepidation. She kept waiting for someone to leap out of those bushes.

Finally, she strapped Mattie into his child’s seat, then hurried around and ducked behind the wheel. She quickly locked her door and then started up the car.

As she pulled out of the driveway, Susan glanced in the rearview mirror. She took one last look at the house—and hoped to never see it again.

“You only have a few more sips left,” Leo said, nodding at the near-empty bottle of citrus-flavored Vitaminwater. “Why don’t you polish it off?”

They sat at the kitchen table. Leo had half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a paper plate in front of him. He felt horrible as he watched his trusting best friend swill down the rest of the Vitaminwater he’d laced with sleeping pills.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a few minutes earlier when Jordan had mentioned he wanted to go back down to the basement again, Leo had lied, saying he felt another diabetic episode coming on. So Jordan had gotten all concerned and made him the PB and J.

“This isn’t exactly the birthday dinner I’d planned for you,” he’d said, setting the sandwich in front of him.

Leo had noticed Jordan slurring his words a bit. And the way he’d moved around, he’d seemed slightly drunk. That had been about ten minutes ago.

“We gotta go back down there, Leo,” he announced with a sigh. He rubbed his mouth as if it weren’t working right. “I know you hate it, and I hate it, too. But we’re so close to making this son of a bitch crack. We’re so close….”

Jordan got up from the kitchen table, but started to lose his balance. “Whoa, head rush,” he muttered. He went to grab his chair and tipped it over. It clattered against the tiled floor.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked, springing to his feet. He grabbed Jordan’s arm. He felt like such a weasel, pretending he didn’t know what the problem was. He wondered if he’d put too many pills in that drink.

Weaving slightly, Jordan numbly gazed down at the fallen dinette chair.

“Y’know, maybe you ought to lie down for a few minutes,” Leo suggested. He picked up the chair and set it by the breakfast table. “You’re tired. You’ve been through a hell of a lot today. It’s catching up with you….”

But Jordan was shaking his head. “No, no, we gotta go down there and get a confession out of him. We—we can’t give up now.”

Leo tried to take hold of his arm again, but Jordan pulled away and staggered toward the basement door. “That deputy is coming back in less than an hour,” he said sluggishly. “We don’t have much time. As soon as we get a real confession from this son of a bitch, we can—we can go look for Moira. Poor Moira, lost all alone in those woods…”

Leo hovered behind his friend as he teetered down the basement stairway. Halfway down, Jordan stumbled, but he grabbed for the banister and landed on his butt. He sat in a stupor on one of the lower steps. “Geez, what’s going on?” he murmured.

“Like I said, you’re tired,” Leo whispered. “Really, you ought to go upstairs and lie down—for just a few minutes. This can wait.”

As he helped Jordan get to his feet, Leo glanced down at Meeker, sprawled across the worktable. With a cold look in his eyes, he seemed to study their every move.

Leo ignored him. “C’mon, Jordan, let’s get you upstairs. You can catch a few Z’s. A fifteen-minute break, and you’ll be good as new.” He led Jordan up the cellar steps. All the while, he felt Meeker’s eyes on him.

He almost had to hold Jordan up as they staggered through the kitchen to the next set of stairs. They made their way up to the second floor, but at the landing, Jordan stumbled once again—almost falling down the staircase. Leo caught him and steered him toward Moira’s room.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with me?” Jordan mumbled. “All of the sudden…did you…” he shook his head. “No, no, you wouldn’t have…. You wouldn’t have done anything like that to me….”

Leo knew what he was talking about. But he pretended not to hear. He pulled back the quilt and sat Jordan down on the bed. Reaching back under his friend’s shirttail, he took away the gun and set it on the nightstand.

Jordan flopped to one side, then rolled over and laid his head on the pillow. “We got him, Leo,” he murmured sleepily. “We got Mama’s Boy.”

“Yeah, we got him,” Leo said. “Justice will be served, I promise.” His heart ached as he pulled off his friend’s shoes. He kept telling himself this was for the best—even if it meant betraying his best friend. Eventually, Jordan would forgive him.

He reached into the pocket of Jordan’s jeans and took out his car keys.

His friend squirmed. “I’m going to let all the others know,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m going to look them up, all the Mama’s Boy orphans like me. Maybe they—maybe they’ll finally be able to live with themselves and move on, y’know?”

Leo covered him with a blanket.

“Wake me in fifteen, okay?” Jordan asked.

Leo patted his shoulder. “I’ll make it twenty,” he said.

He figured that was how long it would take to drive to the store and back. Just one phone call and the state police would be on their way to resolve this whole mess—and no one had to die. He watched Jordan start to doze off. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hand lingering on his friend’s shoulder for a moment.

Then he took the revolver from the nightstand and headed downstairs. He hid the gun in the kitchen cabinet—behind the Cap’n Crunch. At the top of the basement stairs, he hesitated. He hadn’t been down there alone with that man—not without Jordan alert and close by.

Leo started down the creaky cellar steps.

Meeker was watching him. “You drugged him, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice raspy. “What, did you slip something in a drink of his?”

Leo said nothing. He wondered how the man could have figured it out. Perhaps he’d had several opportunities to observe someone who had been drugged. Maybe Mama’s Boy hadn’t always taken his victims by gunpoint. Maybe he’d drugged a few of them.

Leo warily moved toward the worktable.

Meeker laughed and shook his head. “I don’t care what you did,” he sighed, “as long as that crazy-shit friend of yours is out of commission. Thank you. Thank you, Leo.”

Biting his lip, Leo avoided Meeker’s eyes. He tugged at the rope around his wrists.

“That sucker’s so tight, you’ll need a knife to cut it loose,” the man said.

But Leo made certain the rope was secure. He bent down and checked the tape around Meeker’s ankles.

“What the hell are you doing?” Meeker asked. “What’s going on? Aren’t you going to untie me?”

“I’m driving to the general store, so I can call the state police,” Leo said, backing away from him. He thought of Jordan upstairs, asleep and vulnerable. “I’m taking Jordan with me,” he lied. In truth, it would slow him down terribly if he attempted to move his unconscious friend into the car. But Meeker didn’t need to know that. “When we come back—”

“NO!” Meeker shouted. “You gotta untie me! At least, loosen the rope, for Christ’s sake. I’m dying! You can’t do this to me….”

“We’ll come back here and wait for the police together,” Leo said, edging toward the stairs. “All of this will be over in about a half hour.”

“Goddamn it, don’t leave me here like this!” Meeker bellowed. He squirmed on the table and tugged at the rope around his bound wrists. “Don’t leave me alone! You gotta untie me!”

Leo headed up the stairs.

“You son of a bitch!” he heard Meeker scream. “Get back here!”

Leo shut the basement door, but it didn’t block out Meeker’s tirade. The man downstairs kept screaming and cursing at him. Leo locked the basement door. Then he dragged one of the dinette chairs across the kitchen floor and wedged it under the doorknob.

Fishing the car keys from his pocket, he hurried out the front door and climbed into Jordan’s Honda Civic. It smelled like a bakery cake inside the car. Leo turned the key in the ignition. But then he hesitated, turned, and pulled at the string around the bakery box. He opened the top flap.

Inside was the cake with Speed Racer’s likeness in the frosting and a tiny green plastic race car by the words
Happy Birthday, Leo!

He let out a little laugh, but then tears stung his eyes and he began to cry.

Leo closed the top flap of the cake box. He wiped his eyes, took a deep breath, and started out of the driveway.

“Hi, um, Nancy, this is Susan Blanchette calling again,” she said into the telephone. Rosie had let her use the corded slim-line phone by the register. Susan leaned over the counter to glance past the lottery machine at the play area, where Rosie was keeping Mattie entertained. He was in Fisher-Price heaven.

“Yes, Ms. Blanchette,” the police operator said on the other end of the line. “Can I help you?”

“I’m wondering if you’ve heard from Deputy Shaffer. He stopped by where I’m staying this weekend—at Twenty-two Birch. He said he’d be back in forty-five minutes. And that was nearly two hours ago. Do you know where he is? Has he radioed you?”

“No, Ms. Blanchette,” the operator said. “I haven’t heard from him since we put out that APB on Mr. Meeker’s car. And that was just about two hours ago—like you say.”

Susan anxiously tugged on the phone cord. “Have you had any response to that bulletin yet? Any leads as to Mr. Meeker’s whereabouts?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m awfully sorry.”

“What about the girl? Do they have any updates on the girl?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What girl?”

“The teenager, Moira,” Susan explained. “The deputy radioed you about her just a few minutes after he spoke to you about Allen—Mr. Meeker.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Blanchette. Corey didn’t report anything to me about a teenage girl—at least, not today.”

Susan didn’t understand. “But I heard him on the radio with you. He said it was a possible kidnapping and that you ought to notify the sheriff.”

“Well, Sheriff Fischer has the night off. Corey knows that. Stuart and his wife left for Whidbey Island late this afternoon. He’s had it on the schedule for weeks now.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Susan murmured.

“Well, maybe you heard him talking to the state police,” the operator said. “Or maybe you misunderstood. I’ll try to get ahold of him and straighten this out. His radio was off when I tried him about twenty minutes ago. The caller ID shows you’re phoning from Rosie’s store. Is that a good number to call you back?”

“Yes, thank you,” Susan said numbly.

“Okay, stay put, and I’ll give you a call there,” the operator said. Then Susan heard a click and the line went dead.

Susan hung up the phone. Leaning over the counter, she glanced toward the play area. Rosie caught her eye and shuffled toward her. “Any luck?” she asked.

Susan sighed and shook her head. “They’re supposed to call me back here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, please,” Rosie said, with a wave of her hand. “Are you kidding me? I could use the company. It’s deader than Hector here.
Mi casa, su casa!
” Donning her glasses from the chain around her neck, Rosie got busy at the cash register. She pressed a button on her credit card machine, and it began to spit out a long roll of paper with tabulations on it.

Susan wandered over to the play area and watched Mattie crawling in and around the mini jungle gym.

She kept thinking that it didn’t make sense, what the police operator had told her. Susan had heard the deputy on his car radio earlier. She remembered him describing a “possible kidnapping or hostage situation,” and he’d said, “put Stuart on alert.” Then he mentioned that he was headed to “the Prewitt cabin on Cedar Crest Way.” He wouldn’t have talked like that to the state police. He had to have been talking to someone local.