Almost Dead (7 page)

CHAPTER 15

The house was a fortress, Lizzy thought, with never-ending hallways and a lot of unused rooms, wasted space. She had no idea where Kitally and Hayley were, but she wasn’t their mother and she wasn’t about to call and check up on them.

She was a visitor, a temporary guest, nothing more.

Lizzy left the office at the end of the house and headed for the kitchen. She wasn’t hungry, but she hadn’t eaten all day. She would force something down. Maybe some soup. She walked across the hallway, each step echoing off the polished wood floors.

She felt suddenly very alone.

A sharp creak froze her blood.

She took a step backward. Right there, where the hallway transitioned from wood to stone.

CREAK.

A loose board. That’s all it was. Nothing to worry about.

She stepped into the living room. Moonlight spilled in through high windows, shedding an eerie light over still unfamiliar terrain. Most of the furniture, in her opinion, was cold and uninviting. She’d never claimed to have any sort of flair for interior design, but the place needed a makeover—a throw rug and a few decorative pillows.

In the kitchen, she looked out the window above the sink. One of the girls usually turned on the outside lights, but since neither of them was home, the lights weren’t on. It was pitch-black out there.

A
tap-tap
on the window nearly brought her out of her skin. Instinct kicked in. Both hands shot up, her gun clasped unsteadily between them, her finger on the trigger.

She saw nothing but the dark expanse of the lawn and the black trees beyond.

She took a few breaths before finally pointing the gun at the floor. Hadn’t even realized she was carrying her gun around until that moment.

Her heart pounded against her chest. She’d heard a tap; she knew she had.

“Hayley, is that you?”

No answer.

She needed to calm down.

She locked her gun in her holster and concentrated on finding a damn light switch. Once she located the first switch, she flipped on every one she could find in the place. By the time she was done, the front yard was lit up like Christmas.

Better.

She could see past the front lawn all the way to the mailbox.

She unlocked the door and stepped outside, leaving the door open. A couple of acorns and a branch lay on the ground in front of the window. She looked up. A tall oak was the culprit.

Back inside, she sucked in a deep breath.

The cat circled her legs. Hannah.
Where did you come from?
She’d forgotten all about the cat. Never once in these past few weeks had she wondered or worried about Hannah’s fate.

Lizzy sank to the floor and scooped the cat into her arms, holding her close. Hannah purred against her chest as Lizzy ran her fingers through soft fur. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m not good at taking care of animals. I warned you right from the beginning, you know.”

More purring.

“Let’s get you something to eat.”

Lizzy stood, leaving Hannah to follow her to the kitchen. Like the outside, the entire house was lit up, giving plenty of light as she searched cupboards and finally the pantry, where she found everything she needed.

After feeding Hannah, she warmed up some vegetable soup. It had no taste, but she ate it because she’d told her therapist she was eating every day.

Her cell phone rang. She pulled it from her back pocket and hit Talk. “Hello?”

“It’s me . . . Kitally.”

“Hey, where are you guys?”

“I don’t know what Hayley’s up to, but I should be home in thirty minutes. I just thought I should let you know.”

“Are you checking up on me, Kitally?”

“No, of course not. Why would I?”

“No reason,” Lizzy said. “Thanks for taking care of Hannah. I didn’t realize she was here until two minutes ago.”

“She likes to hang out in my room. I keep dry food, water, and a cat box in my bathroom.”

“Oh.”

“How’s it going over there at the house?”

“Fine,” Lizzy answered. “Everything’s fine.”

“Well, OK, I’ll see you soon. If Hannah starts meowing, that means she’s ready to go down for the night. She sleeps in the bed with me. And she likes it if you turn on the television.”

“You sleep with the cat?”

“Yeah, why? Is that a problem?”

“No. Not a problem.”

“OK, well, see you soon.”

After Lizzy hung up the phone, she realized she didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to think. Nothing made sense any more.

The cat wouldn’t stop meowing, something Hannah never did before. Lizzy snapped her fingers as she led Hannah down the long hallway to the room where Kitally slept. The master bedroom was bigger than an apartment. The bed could fit an entire family in it. She leaned over, picked up Hannah, then settled her gently on the middle of the down comforter.

Lizzy sat on the edge of the bed, even found herself smiling as she watched Hannah curl into a ball and settle down for the night. Lizzy picked up the remote from the nightstand and then joined Hannah on the bed. She rested her back against the soft pillows as she scratched Hannah between the eyes and pushed the Power button.

Channel 10 News
came on, the images on the screen a blur as she thought about Jared lying alone in the hospital. Nighttime was always the worst. Lizzy had asked the doctors and nurses if she could stay with him, but the hospital had rules and strict visiting hours.

Jared was in coma.

At times like this, the idea of it seemed surreal.

During the first week that Jared was in the hospital, she’d left a portable radio close to his pillow, but the nurse told her he couldn’t hear anything. It wasn’t long before she’d overheard the nurses talking in private: Jared’s body was shutting down, one organ at a time. They were losing him. But before she’d had a chance to talk to Dr. Calloway and sign the necessary papers, Jared’s family showed up and chaos quickly became the norm. His dad started making threats, unable to comprehend that his only son had signed his life over to Lizzy. At least that’s how Mr. Shayne saw things. He had petitioned the court for guardianship over Jared’s health. Until the court decided what to do, it didn’t matter what Dr. Calloway had to say about Jared’s condition.

Lizzy tried to think of happier times but saw nothing—a blank slate. It wasn’t happening, and she couldn’t seem to force it. She felt nothing. All of her senses had deserted her. No taste. No memories. No emotions.

“Freak accident,” the on-site reporter said into the microphone. “Melony Reed died after slipping on her kitchen floor and landing upright on a cutlery basket.”

Lizzy sat up and turned up the volume.

A picture of Melony Reed, the same woman she’d met with flashed across the screen.

“Melony Reed managed to get to the phone and dial 911,” the reporter said from outside Melony’s home, a house Lizzy recognized because she’d sat inside the living room with her just over forty-eight hours ago, “but she died shortly after arriving at Sutter General.”

As soon as a commercial aired, Lizzy rushed to the other room to grab her laptop and the list of names Melony had given her. Back on the bed, Hannah curled up closer. Lizzy’s fingers clacked against the keyboard as she got to work. Melony Reed graduated from Parkview High School in 2002. There were over six hundred in her graduating class. Some of the school’s notable graduates included politicians, athletes, and a journalist. Lizzy scoured the Internet for anything she could find on Melony’s personal list of suspects.

She read the scribbled notes next to each name: mentally unstable, suicidal, abused by parents, et cetera, et cetera, which in Melony’s narrow-mindedness made these particular people capable of murder.

And now Melony was dead.

As much as Lizzy hated to admit it, the woman had been onto something. The coincidence of another “accident” was just too damned far-fetched. Having access to a much broader database than Melony made it easy to cross a few people off the list. If someone had moved out of state, Lizzy put a dark line through their names and jotted down their new locations just in case she’d need it down the road.

By the time she heard a car pull into the garage, half of the names had been crossed off the list.

Big deal
, Lizzy thought. No matter how many names she eliminated, it didn’t change the fact that once again she had failed someone. Melony had been right when she’d said Lizzy sounded like the police. Lizzy had taken the case for all the wrong reasons. Melony was dead, and Lizzy hadn’t done a damn thing to help her.

CHAPTER 16

A sliver of a moon shone above him, shedding little light. Not enough light to leave a shadow as he emerged from the depths of tall oaks. He made his way around the house, careful not to make any noise as he checked each door and window.

He felt neither excitement nor fear. No emotion whatsoever.

Sometimes he wondered if he was human.

Since being released from prison, he’d been living outside among the stars and trees. He’d slept in parks and playgrounds, on rooftops and in abandoned buildings. Deep in the woods was where he kept his few belongings. To keep up appearances, he made a weekly trip to the public library, where he used the bathroom to shave and wash up. Food was easy enough to find if you knew where and when to look through Dumpsters.

He was a Dumpster diver.

He was a survivor.

He was a killer.

The truth was, he was also human, but his needs were mostly animalistic. He possessed an indifference to all but his physical needs . . . and now Lizzy Gardner, and his need for vengeance.

When he was younger, when he actually cared what other people thought, when he had hopes and dreams, he was what one teacher called socially awkward. He was excessively shy, and he had a lot of anxiety back then.

Retarded, moron, loser. He’d been called a lot of things in his lifetime, but that was because nobody had ever understood him. Nobody knew who he really was. Nobody cared.

People liked to say that everyone in the world had a mother and everyone had a father. What a joke. Some people just weren’t meant to procreate. Period. He used to think his mother was a magician: one minute she was there and the next she was not. His father was the embodiment of anger and fear—a raised hand, a harsh voice, pain and suffering tied to everything he said and did. Together they raised a paranoid, confused kid who seldom went to school. Every once in a while, a nice young lady or man from the state would stop by to check up on him. They would ask his mother or father, or whoever the hell was around, a few questions as they filled out some forms. They always left with concerned expressions on their faces, but the same person never came twice. There was a short time, maybe a week or so, when he’d been dropped off at his grandparents’ on his mother’s side, and there was a golden moment in time when he’d hoped that they might be his saviors. But no sooner had his grandmother fondled him under the pretense of wanting to be sure he was healthy and whole than he’d found his grandfather down at the lake, drowning the kittens they’d found that very morning at the end of their driveway.

That particular day was forever engraved in his mind.

That was the day he’d lost
all
hope.

Putting old memories behind him, he withdrew into the dark among the tallest trees in the backyard of the large house, where a creek ran along the back of the property. Everything was locked up tight, including the windows framing the downstairs bedroom, the only room with the lights on.

She
was in there.

He was sure of it.

He’d followed her here from her downtown office the other day. It seemed he’d been watching Lizzy Gardner for most of his life, or at least had known of her. In fact, he thought he knew everything about her, but he had to admit, he wasn’t exactly sure why she was staying at this particular residence. After the death of her fiancé, it made sense that she’d moved in with her only sister. But it made even more sense to see her move out, away from her brother-in-law. The man had the innate sort of stupidity that came from being born with inferior genes. He’d thought about killing him just for sport, but that would only serve to make Lizzy happy. The last thing he wanted to do was make her happy.

Lizzy Gardner had ruined his life.

She was a bitch, and he planned to fuck with her, starting with her students. He had one picked out. The one she obviously cared for the most. His greatest regret was that someone else had tried to kill her fiancé before he had a chance to. Lizzy deserved everything she got. She liked to meddle in other people’s business. His business.

He closed his eyes, breathed in nature’s scent. His name was Frank Lyle.

Frank’s first kill was an accident, more or less. Happened when he was having sex with a girl. First time in his life. She’d gotten all bitchy, called him impotent and shit like that. He had wanted to shut her up . . . quick. So he’d killed her. Strangled her. Then he’d shoved his dick down her throat and it was amazing how hard he got.

He never got caught for that one.

He’d killed two more girls after that, and it was the second whore who sent him to prison. Two days after he killed Jennifer Campbell and left her body in Folsom Lake, the second whore, the one he’d strangled and left on the side of the road, managed to trick him. She’d played dead, and, after he left her, she had found a way back to civilization. When he was brought in for questioning and told that the girl was alive and well, he didn’t believe it until he saw her in the courtroom. There she was, sitting at the witness stand looking prim and proper, whining and crying as she recounted the horrors he’d put her through. She sure could tell a story. Made him sound like Jack the Ripper. Not once did she mention that he’d washed her up each night and heated her up some soup, even fed it to the bitch.

The jurors took less than an hour to come to the conclusion that he was guilty and should be locked up. They gave him ten years without parole. And they didn’t even know about the first two chicks he’d killed. The woman he’d thought he’d killed had told such a titillating story, word got around fast that, as far as rapists went, he was about as bad as they got.

It made no sense. He was put away for what? He didn’t even kill the bitch!

But that was nothing. Next thing he knew, rumors were flying and every dead body that floated to the surface of a lake or body of water was being attributed to him. He was being called “Spiderman,” a serial killer everyone was in a lather about.

Prior to Frank’s incarceration, at least four young girls had been abducted and murdered, their bodies left in various locations throughout Sacramento. Each child was held captive for months before being killed. The string of deaths had triggered a murder investigation, one of the largest in the history of the state. Hysteria reigned. Parents stopped dropping off their children at bus stops. Young people were afraid to walk outside without an escort. Playgrounds were empty.

Until somebody got the bright idea to hang the crimes on mad rapist Frank Lyle, since he was handy.

At first he didn’t like the crush of attention being thrown his way. Suddenly, everybody wanted to interview Frank Lyle. But as it snowballed, it started growing on him. He was a celebrity, even wound up on the cover of
Time
and
People
. For the first time in his life, he was somebody. Everyone knew his name. Everyone wanted to talk to him. His face was all over the news. Over the next decade, Frank aspired to have his image on serial-murder trading cards, comic books, T-shirts, and calendars. Book deals were in the talks—even a fucking movie!

And then, poof! Lizzy Gardner came onto the scene and told the media that Frank Lyle was merely a wannabe and a copycat. After that, every doctor in California was saying that he had a pathological need for notoriety and that he was delusional.

He passed the damn polygraph. Didn’t that mean anything?

Saying he bore a grudge would be downplaying his feelings toward Lizzy Gardner. He resented her. Hated her. Abhorred her. For the first time in his life, he’d had an identity . . . He’d been somebody. And she took it all away.

As it turned out, the real Spiderman had indeed come back to town to take care of unfinished business. But Lizzy Gardner proved resilient and took care of Spiderman once and for all.

Having served his time, Frank was promptly released. With his newfound anonymity, he quickly became unrecognizable. People didn’t look twice when he walked by. His book deal had crashed and burned. Nobody cared what he did or where he went.

He was back to being what he’d always been—a nobody.

But not for long.

As he planned and plotted, he felt a stirring of excitement building within. He felt alive again. He’d risen from the dead, and this time he would make them all pay. Nobody was safe. Not the granny walking less than a block from the bus stop. Not the jogger on American River trail or the speed-walker taking a quick break from work. Over the years he’d been watching, learning. Random acts of killing kept the police in the dark. And nobody liked the dark better than Frank Lyle.