Cold Midnight (29 page)

“May we come in and talk to you?”

She opened the screen door and stepped back.

The inside of the house was cool and orderly, quiet except for the distant sound of a television tuned to a talk show, perhaps
Oprah
.

Chase didn’t stall with small talk. “Ten years ago, you filed a missing-persons report on your son, Mark.”

She nodded, her expression grave. “Yes. I . . . Have you found him?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, ma’am, but Mark is dead.”

She jolted as if he’d pinched her, and the color washed out of her cheeks. “Oh.”

Chase reached out to give her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “I’m so sorry.”

“How did he . . . I mean, how—”

“I’m afraid that it appears he was the victim of homicide.” Her hand flew up to cover her mouth, and her eyes immediately brimmed with horrified tears. “Oh my Lord.”

Chase took her arm and gently steered her down a short hallway toward the living room. “I know it’s a shock, Mrs. Hanson. Let’s sit down, okay?”

As she perched on the edge of the sofa facing the TV, she picked up the remote control with a badly shaking hand and muted
Oprah
.

The living room was comfortable and free of clutter, the air scented with lemon furniture polish. As Sam hovered in the hall, studying a montage of framed family photos on the wall, Chase sat on a solid blue recliner adjacent to the matching sofa.

Pressing her lips into an emotion-stifling line, Sheila asked, “Would you boys like something to drink?”

“No, ma’am, thank you.” Chase’s heart went out to her. She’d just found out her son was murdered, and she still offered them drinks. Denial, maybe. Or just an ingrained urge to always be polite no matter what. Sort of like Kylie’s need to always be in control.

She craned her head to see Sam as he joined them in the living room. “Detective?”

“No, thanks,” Sam said.

Her sorrowful gaze lingered on him. “Are you—”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Sam cut in, and ducked his head, clearly uncomfortable.

Chase cleared his throat to save his partner from her continued sad perusal. “Mrs. Hanson, what can you tell us about Mark’s behavior before he disappeared?”

She looked at Chase, shell-shocked and confused. “Why would someone kill my boy?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, but we do need to get some questions answered.”

Sniffling, she blotted the outer corner of her right eye with one knuckle. “He wasn’t a good boy, Detective. I hate to say that, but he wasn’t.”

“I understand.”

“He had troubles,” she said. “Drugs. He never told me, of course, but a mother knows these things.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that they made him mean.”

Chase remembered Kylie’s account of the attack. She’d said that one of the attackers had seemed over the top calling the other one names:
“Giddy one minute and mean the next, like he was high.”

“Before he graduated,” she went on, “he was getting into a lot of fights at school. He was so angry all the time.” She plucked a Kleenex from a box on the coffee table. “I blame his father. He left us when Mark was ten.” She delicately blew her nose before going on. “When Mark went missing, I thought he ran away again. He’d done that several times already, so I didn’t report it right away. After about a week . . . he always came back by then, you see, and I was afraid the police would think I cried wolf too many times . . . but this time, after he was gone for six days . . . the most ever . . . I contacted the police.” Her chin trembled, and she pressed the Kleenex to her lips. “And now he’s dead.”

Chase patted her shoulder in sympathy. The awkward gesture was inadequate, but he didn’t know what else to do.

As she dabbed at her eyes, Chase gave her a few moments before he resumed his questions. “Do you have any idea who might have had something against Mark?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, he got into fights, but I don’t know anything about the boys he fought with.”

“You don’t remember any names?”

“I don’t. I . . . I . . .” She teared up again and struggled for words. “I always assumed he started the fight, because of his attitude, so I didn’t pay much attention to that. I should have, though. I mean, now that he’s . . .” She trailed off and bit her bottom lip.

Chase tugged a fresh tissue from the box and handed it to her. “I have just a few more questions, if that’s okay.”

She nodded.

“Do you remember Mark ever mentioning anything about Kylie McKay?”

Her grief took on an edge of bafflement. “The tennis player? Like what?”

“Anything at all.”

“They went to school together. I believe she was a year ahead of him.”

“Did he have classes with her? Maybe talk to her sometimes?”

“I highly doubt it. She ran with the popular crowd. He didn’t like those kids at all. Though, I do remember he had a little bit of a crush on her younger sister. What was her name? Judy? Jennifer?”

“Jane.”

“Right, Jane. She wasn’t like her sister. That’s what Mark said anyway.”

A new knot of tension began to form in Chase’s gut. “Jane wasn’t like Kylie how?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Popular? He really despised that crowd. The ‘in’ crowd.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Specific how?”

“What, for instance, did he not like about the ‘in’ crowd?”

“Just, you know, the way a boy of normal means resents classmates that seem to have everything. Money. Designer clothes. Fancy cars. Friends who are cheerleaders and football players.”

“Did he talk about resenting Kylie McKay specifically?”

Shocked realization made her mouth drop open. “You think my Mark had something to do with what happened to her?”

“I’m afraid his disappearance has become a part of the investigation into her attack, yes.”

“Why?”

Chase hesitated before deciding the poor woman didn’t need to be shocked if the news ended up in the paper because of a department leak. “Your son’s body was buried at the same site where the baseball bat used in the attack was found.”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Chase interrupted, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “We’re just covering all our bases. I hope you understand.”

“I can’t imagine Mark had anything to do with what happened to her,” she said. “That was . . . it was just vicious and brutal, and Mark might have been an angry young man, but he wasn’t . . . he wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t have hurt anyone like that, especially a defenseless girl. I’m sure of it.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “Do you think the people who attacked her killed my son?”

“We don’t know, but we’re going to find out.” He paused as she blew her nose again. “Do you know if Mark knew or hung out with Quinn McKay?”

Her bloodshot eyes narrowed. “That’s her brother, isn’t it?”

Chase nodded.

“I saw those stories in the newspaper. He’s the one who tried to cripple her, if you ask me.”

Chase imagined the entire jury pool of Kendall Falls was similarly tainted. Not that he could do anything about it now. “Did you ever see Quinn and Mark together?”

She thought about it for a long moment. “Maybe.”

Chase doubted it. At this point, the woman just wanted to cast the shadow of guilt off her own child. Which meant he’d gotten all the information he could from her. “Mrs. Hanson, do you have a photo of your son from just before he disappeared?”

Rising, she chose a framed photo from the top of the TV and faced him, her gaze imploring. “Will I be able to get it back?”

“Absolutely. I’ll make copies and return it to you right away.”

Her hands shook as she worked the photo out of the frame and handed it over.

Chase studied it briefly, taking in the dark brown eyes, brown hair, acne and braces. The guy didn’t look the least bit familiar to him, but he would have been a senior when Mark was a freshman, so that wasn’t unusual.

“I often wonder how he’d look with straight teeth,” she murmured.

43

KYLIE WAS FINISHING UP MAKING THE BED—
stalling, really, before venturing out of her room to face Chase—when she heard a phone begin to ring somewhere else in the house. It wasn’t a regular phone, though. Someone must have been calling Chase on his cell. But even the ring tone sounded unfamiliar. When it continued to ring, she went to the bedroom door and pulled it open. The house beyond was silent until the phone rang again, coming from the kitchen.

“Chase?”

She walked down the hall, wondering why everything was so quiet. Surely Chase hadn’t left her here alone. Had he?

In the doorway to the dining area, she paused, surprised to see a uniformed police officer sitting at the table, his back to her, his head down on the newspaper spread before him, as if he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the Sports page. The cell phone sitting near his hand chirped, but he didn’t stir. Chase must have been called to work, she thought, and called in an officer to stay with her.

Or perhaps he’d decided he couldn’t stand being near her anymore and bailed. She wouldn’t blame him. She’d irritated the hell out of herself in the past few days. And, really, him not being here made things easier anyway.

“Hello?” she said, then raised her voice when the cop still didn’t wake up. “Officer?”

She took another step, intending to shake his arm, but that was when she noticed what looked like thick, red syrup dripping off the edge of the table under his arm.

Her brain stalled, refusing at first to attach meaning to what that viscous liquid could possibly be. Blood? No way.
Blood?

“You’re kinda dense, aren’t you?”

The voice came from behind her.
Close
behind. She whipped around, and several things registered at once. Smooth, black ski mask. Black jeans. Black shirt. Bloody knife.

She stumbled back with a gasp, her hip slamming against the police officer’s chair as terror and nausea surged into her throat. Behind her, the officer’s body shifted and slumped. She whirled toward him, horrified, reaching out to try to break his fall. She caught his dead weight, but it was too much and she wobbled to her knees, unable to keep him from pitching face-first onto the hardwood floor. Terrified—thinking oh, God, he’s dead, oh, God, he’s
dead
—she threw her weight against his side, trying to turn him over to check, to see, knowing as she did it that it was crazy, that it didn’t matter. What mattered was the guy with the knife.

Then an arm hooked around her throat from behind and jerked hard, tearing her fingers free of the cop’s shoulder and cutting off her air.

“I’ve been delivering messages for weeks now,” the man imprisoning her said, grunting between words as he dragged her toward the living room, “and you haven’t been getting it.”

Choking, fighting the stars bursting in her head, she grabbed on to the assailant’s arm as her lungs started to burn. Air. She needed air.

“All you have to do,” he growled, “is get the fuck out of town and don’t look back. But, no, you’re too clueless. I fucking hate clueless.”

She reached back with one hand, groping for something, anything to grab on to, perhaps eye holes she could jab her fingers into, to get him to loosen his hold, to let her breathe. When her hand skidded across the front of the cotton mask, she hooked and twisted her fingers into the material, hoping to get a hunk of hair, and yanked. The mask came free in her hand, followed by the attacker’s gasp. “Shit!”

He let her go, and she dropped to her knees with jarring impact. The knife fell right in front of her, bouncing and skittering on the floor. She flung out a hand to reach for it, but the intruder swept his foot sideways, sending the blade on a long, smooth slide into the wall board several feet away.

She looked up at him and froze, realizing with a jolt that she could clearly see his face: pasty, unhealthy skin, with dark circles under red-rimmed eyes that were so light blue they were almost clear.

His panicked eyes locked on hers before popping wide with crazed disbelief, and he stumbled back as though she’d spit acid at him. “Fuck!”

Pacing like a wild animal now, he let out a tortured groan between his teeth. “Stupid bitch. Stupid,
stupid
bitch!”

She didn’t plan to stick around to see his next move. Pushing to her feet, she lunged toward the living room and the fastest way out. He came after her in a heartbeat, the thud of his feet heavy as he chased her toward the front door and escape. He gained on her quickly and gave her a hard shove from behind, pitching her forward and off balance.

She hit the floor, palms skidding across the carpet, but didn’t stay down. She scrabbled up and whirled to face him, panting and assessing. He lunged at her, and she feinted to the left, then surged right and past him, tearing back toward the kitchen and the back door. Any way out. That’s all she needed. And a break.

Strong fingers dug into the back of her shirt and jerked backward. She stumbled back as seams gave, and as soon as the shirt ripped free in his hand and cool air washed over her back, she shifted balance and kept going.

She’d taken two more steps when he swept her feet out from under her. She went down hard on her hip, gasping at the agony that shot down her leg and instinctively curling forward around the pain. In the next instant, he was on top of her and, wrestling her desperately wriggling body onto her back, fell across her. He locked her in place, using his entire length to hold her down.

Fighting the panic constricting her lungs, she slapped at him, hitting at anything she could get at, all the while screaming for help in a voice that had already gone hoarse.

He reared back and backhanded her.