Don't Be Afraid (25 page)

“I’m concerned about Emma.” Dr. Sirisha Reddy, the pulmonolgist, spoke to Amy in the hospital corridor outside Emma’s room. “The attacks are increasing in frequency and intensity. Her levels are all over the board.”

Amy nodded, her arms folded tightly over her chest. She was so nervous she couldn’t speak.

“We’ve talked about her triggers,” Dr. Reddy said. She was a tiny woman and made up for that fact by wearing three-inch high heels, which still left her four inches below Amy. “What do think could be causing it now? Is Emma under any particular stress at the moment?”

“Yes, quite a bit.” Amy struggled to explain what had happened in the last few weeks while Dr. Reddy listened quietly, hands deep in the pockets of her white lab coat.

“I know that Emma wants to go home, and perhaps being here will not help lower her stress,” Dr. Reddy said when Amy had finished. “But I want to see those levels at the same place for at least forty-eight hours before we consider a discharge.”

She patted Amy’s arm in a maternal fashion that was reassuring. “You’re not to blame yourself,” she said kindly but firmly.

“I’ve talked to Mommy,” she said to Emma once the grown-ups were done conversing in the hall. “And you’re going to stay here another night.”

“I want to go home,” Emma said, pulling fretfully at the oxygen mask.

“I know, sweetie, and you’ll be going home very soon, but you need to get all better first,” Amy said.

“Guess what I have for you because you’ve been so brave?” Dr. Reddy slipped a hand into the pocket of her lab coat and Emma’s eyes widened with anticipation. Dr. Reddy produced a sparkly pink pencil with a fluffy pink topper. “Surprise!”

Emma reached out and the doctor gave it to her. “What do you say?” Amy reminded her in a low voice.

“Thank you,” Emma chirped.

“You’ve very welcome.”

Dorothy Busby admired the pencil, too, and promised to find a pencil sharpener for Emma. Now that Emma was feeling better, she’d gotten fretful.

“This mask is itchy.” She tried to pull it off, but Amy restrained her.

“Leave it on for now, okay? Let’s wait for Dr. Reddy to say it’s okay to take it off because it’s helping you to breathe.”

Emma looked tearful, but she listened. Her voice was hoarse, like it always was after an attack, and she had bruises from the IV.

“I’m thirsty.”

Amy poured ice water from the plastic pitcher into a cup and reached for the bed’s remote control.

“No, me! Me!” Emma grabbed it from her mother and moved the bed up. Amy smiled, happy that something about these hospitalizations pleased her. She held the mask away and helped Emma take several sips from the cup. The little girl fell back against the pillows and stared at her mother for several minutes.

“The police are bad, Mommy. They messed up our house.”

Dorothy started to say something, but Amy shook her head. “Did that scare you, Em?” she said in a casual voice.

Emma nodded. She was quiet for a few more minutes, and then she shifted the mask to ask, “Are you a criminal, Mommy?”

The question took Amy by surprise and her mother answered for her. “Emma! Of course not!”

“Why do you ask?” Amy said.

“Because the police took you,” Emma said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world, but Amy could see the fear deep in her eyes.

“It wasn’t like that, Em,” she said, trying to explain but her daughter cut her off.

“Are you going to leave me, like you left Daddy?”

Amy’s breath caught in her throat. For a second she couldn’t speak. “No, sweetie,” she said when she was able to talk. She tried to sound as calm as she didn’t feel. “I am not going to leave you. Not now. Not ever.”

And as quickly as she’d brought it up, Emma dropped the subject, seemingly reassured for the moment and her interests darting to the bed again. She giggled as she used the remote to raise it up and then down.

Dorothy Busby admonished her to be careful that she didn’t break it and gestured to her daughter. She waited for Amy to step to the doorway and then she launched. “Do you hear what that child is saying?”

“My hearing’s just as good as yours, Mom.”

“Don’t get smart with me. She’s frightened. She misses her father.”

“I know—”

“Did you talk to Chris about going back to New York?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you got over this?”

“Don’t you think he could change his behavior?”

“He’s a man, Amy—”

“So what? Being a man means he can’t be honest or trustworthy?”

“Your daughter needs a father, Amy.”

“She has a father.”

“She needs the security of a man in the house. You need that security. Look at what’s happened.”

“Believe me, Mom, I’m well aware of what’s going on.”

“Do you really mean to tell me that you think any of this would have happened if you hadn’t left Chris and moved here?”

It was exactly this sort of statement by her mother that took Amy’s breath away. “Do you think that my leaving Chris is responsible for my friend getting murdered?”

“Of course not. But if you hadn’t left Chris you wouldn’t be dealing with any of this, would you?”

Emma called to them from the bed. “Mommy? Nana? I’m hungry.”

Dorothy returned to Emma’s side and patted her arm. “I’ll go ask the nurses when you can eat. How about a popsicle, sweetie?”

“Cherry!”

“Okay, a cherry popsicle if the nurses say it’s okay.”

Emma was kneeling on the bed, playing with the remote for the TV.

“Careful of your IV,” Amy said, gently moving her back to a sitting position. She picked up the oxygen mask that her daughter had abandoned on the bed and put it back on over Emma’s protests. “You’ve got to wear it for now. Just a while longer, I promise.”

They found a children’s show on PBS. Amy sat next to Emma on the bed, her arm wrapped protectively around her daughter’s shoulder. She stared at the bright, flickering images on the screen without really seeing them.

Maybe her mother was right and none of this would have happened if she hadn’t left Chris. But what other self-respecting option did she have?

She was bitterly ashamed of having fallen for his charm again. She’d believed him—really believed him—when he said he was sorry. In the cold light of day she could see how much she’d wanted to believe that he’d changed his behavior.

Suddenly Amy thought of something that this second betrayal had completely pushed from her mind. If the flowers and other gifts hadn’t come from Chris, then who on earth had sent them?

 

 

Detective Jimmy Shuster of the Elizabeth, New Jersey, police department sounded like a two-pack-a-day smoker.

“I got all the files,” he said to Mark, sounding like he’d just that moment climbed up from the dim environs of the department’s basement with a boxful of information. “What do you want to know?”

“Mainly about the woman your perp didn’t manage to kill. What happened there?”

“Well, we’re not even sure it’s the same perp, but there were a lot of similarities. She answered an ad to see an apartment in a newer high-rise. She calls and leaves a message and a man calls her back. Tells her to show up at two
P.M.
on a Thursday. She shows up. Man attacks her, tries to strangle her, but she manages to get loose, break a window and scream for help. Perp took off.”

Mark held the phone with one hand and took notes with the other. He was sitting at his parents’ kitchen table after returning home, ostensibly for a late lunch. He couldn’t let Farley hear him making this call. He thought his parents knew about his reassignment—there was something in his mother’s face—but they didn’t say anything so neither did he. His mother had run to the grocery store and his father was working with a speech therapist upstairs.

“What made you think it was the same perp?” he asked Shuster.

“Well, the weapon for one. All of the victims were killed using a pair of stockings. Then there were the doors. There was no sign of forced entry in any of these cases. Either the guy knew these women or he had some way of getting in the house. The vic who survived said she’d never seen him before and his description didn’t ring any bells for the condo owner, but somehow the guy managed to get into a unit.”

“Anything else?”

“He’d watched the women. Probably stalked them for some time before killing them. This is one careful motherfucker. He knew when these women would be alone.”

“Any trophies?”

“Oh, yeah.” Jimmy laughed, a harsh, cackling noise. “Fingers. Fucker’s obsessed with ’em.”

Mark punched a fist in the air in triumph. This was the same guy!

“Always the ring finger,” Shuster said. “At first we thought it was the rings he wanted, but one of the vics didn’t even have a ring, so it had to be the fingers themselves. Sick bastard.”

“I want to talk to the survivor. Do you have a name and address for her?”

“Sure. Patty Bulowski.” He spelled it for Mark and gave him the address. “But good luck with trying to talk to her.”

“Not receptive?”

“A whack job. Don’t know if it was just the attack or she was always like that.”

Chloe didn’t recall who’d brought the flowers. “I don’t remember them being delivered,” she said when Amy caught up with her on the university campus. “Are you sure they arrived while I was at your house?”

“I thought so because they were there when I got home.”

Chloe shifted her messenger bag to the opposite shoulder and played thoughtfully with a piece of her long, blonde hair. They’d paused on a walkway that crossed the middle of campus and a continuous stream of students flowed around them like a river around rocks.

“I just don’t remember them being delivered—wait! They were there when we got back from the park. So they must have been delivered while the police were searching the house.”

She looked pleased, but Amy felt far from it. “The
police
signed for the flowers?” She found that hard to envision. She thanked Chloe and watched her walk off toward one of the ivy-covered brick buildings. It took five minutes to walk briskly back across campus, only to discover that she’d been ticketed for parking too close to a fire hydrant.

She drove to the office next and was happy to find Bev dozing behind a copy of
People
magazine at the front desk.

“Do you remember the delivery of wine I got?” she said.

“Sure,” Bev said. “Your secret admirer!” She grinned and winked.

“Do you keep a record of deliveries? Is there any way to tell who delivered it?”

Bev held up one manicured finger. She opened a drawer, pulled out a notebook and plopped it on the desk. “Let’s see,” she said, opening it and flipping through the pages. “Do you remember what day it was?”

Amy tried to remember the possible day or days in question. Bev traced down a long line of signatures. “Here you go. Bob from Minuteman Delivery Service. That’s who brought it.”

“Minuteman? I’ve never heard of them before,” Amy said.

“They’re local. Here, you can look them up.” Bev produced a hefty Yellow Pages. Amy was writing down their number when Poppy Braxton and Hope Chiswell breezed through the front doors, wafting a heavy floral scent ahead of them.

“Amy!” Poppy exclaimed in a falsely enthusiastic voice. She was wearing a full-length mink coat. Her blonde pageboy glowed against the gleaming fur. “Congratulations on the sale! You must be thrilled.”

The house where Sheila had died had finally sold, below value and not to the original buyers. The sellers had complained through the entire process, finishing by berating Amy at the closing. The only people thrilled were the Patwardan family who’d bought the place.

“Thanks,” Amy said, returning a terse smile. She was not in the mood for Poppy and Hope, not that she was ever in the mood for the bitch duo, as she’d come to think of them.

“Is that a new coat, Amy?” Hope said, rubbing the sleeve of the red wool jacket that Amy had dug out of mothballs that morning. Hope’s entire ensemble was in creamy, winter white, all the better to show off her auburn hair. “No? Well it suits you. Red must be your color.”

It fell like middle school all over again, when Amy wasn’t one of the popular girls and didn’t understand the games they played.

“Now if you can just manage to sell the Chomsky house,” Poppy said.

“Without another killing,” Hope added.

They both laughed. Ha, ha, yes, murder was so funny. Bev was smiling in a dopey sort of way, looking as if she didn’t understand the joke, but was happy to be included. Amy flipped the Yellow Pages closed and handed it back to her with a quiet thanks.

“Maybe you’ll be the one to sell the new construction at the Bellamy Estates,” Hope added over her shoulder as the duo continued on into the main of the office. Their laughter floated behind them.