Don't Be Afraid (32 page)

Deciding on the bus that she couldn’t hurt her mother, she’d said nothing, using a headache as her excuse for going to bed early, beating her father’s return home. She lay awake in bed until she heard his car pull in the drive and then she’d feigned sleep when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

The door creaked open, she’d felt the light from the hall across her face, but she wouldn’t open her eyes to see him standing in the doorway. After a moment he shut the door.

She waited until he left in the morning, which wasn’t hard because he took the early train into Manhattan. When she came down for breakfast her mother fussed over her, but waited until Michael had gobbled up his meal and left before sitting across from her daughter.

“Daddy told me that he saw you at the mall yesterday,” her mother began and Amy looked up at her, unable to hide her surprise.

“He said you seemed upset,” Dorothy Busby continued. “I don’t want you to be upset, Amy.”

“Did he say
who
he was with?”

Her mother nodded. Took a sip of tea. “I know who he was with, Amy. That was Daddy’s special friend.”

“But she and Daddy, they were—”

Her mother held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about what she and Daddy were doing, Amy. That’s not important. What’s important is that you know that your daddy loves all of us very, very much and wouldn’t want to hurt us.”

“But, Mom, he was with another wo—”

“I know, Amy!” The words barked, shutting her up. It was the only time her mother expressed any emotion about it. “What Daddy does with his special friend doesn’t matter because he still loves us.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true. You’re not a little girl anymore. I know you’ve had sex ed. It’s time you learned one of the fundamental differences between men and women. To men sex is like water.”

And here Dorothy Busby was, fifteen years later, saying the same thing. She’d never let on that her husband’s cheating bothered her. Appearances mattered. This was what Amy had been taught from an early age.

It was important to dress nicely when you went into the city. It was important to comb your hair even if you were sick with the flu. It was important that the neighbors not hear you shrieking even if you’d been stung by a bee. And it was important that you never, ever acknowledged your husband’s infidelity.

Throughout the family’s house were photos of her mother and father. The loving couple on their wedding day, smiling on an anniversary cruise, standing on the front lawn of the Episcopal church on Easter Sunday with their two children, all of them looking like they’d stepped out of a Talbots catalog.

Nowhere was there a picture of Dorothy Busby in her nightgown sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of bourbon open in front of her, drinking alone because her husband was spending the night with someone else.

When she was eighteen, Amy rebelled. She went to school in Rhode Island and left her hometown far behind. She adopted black as her favorite color and took up photography in earnest, focusing on nudes because it shocked her mother.

She hadn’t realized until this moment that while she’d put so much energy into ridding herself of the external markers of her parents’ lives, she’d continued to carry around the same internal messages and had re-created, unwittingly, the exact same life with Chris.

“You didn’t like it that Daddy cheated on you, Mom.”

Dorothy Busby flinched. “I don’t know why you’re bringing that up. That has nothing to do with this.”

“You didn’t like it, but you pretended it was okay. You taught me that it was okay if my husband cheated. You taught me that I couldn’t expect fidelity from a man. You and Daddy taught us that this was the model of marriage and look what it’s done to me and to Michael.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Michael is perfectly happy in his marriage.”

“He cheats on Bonnie!”

“Oh, Amy, I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”

“Why? Because it’s the truth?”

“Because it’s vulgar.”

“Well, it’s a pretty vulgar thing to do, to break your wedding vows and have sex with another person.”

“Men and women have different needs.”

“I don’t believe that, Mom. I believe that some people are selfish and they lack self-control. I believe that Daddy played around because he wanted to.”

“Your father was a good man.”

“And because he knew you wouldn’t do anything about it, no matter how much you hated it.”

The slap came so fast and as such a surprise that Amy had no time to duck. Her cheek blazed with pain and she raised her own hand to it, staring at her mother with wonder.

“Don’t you talk about your father that way,” Dorothy said, two spots of color high on her own cheeks, her eyes hard and shiny. “He was a good husband and a good father. Did you ever want for anything? Who do you suppose paid for all your riding lessons and your art school and your trip to Europe your junior year?”

“He hurt you, Mom. He hurt all of us. Not all men cheat.”

Emma ran up to them. “Did you see? Did you see?”

“No, sweetheart, what?” her grandmother said, grateful, Amy could see, for the interruption.

“It skipped seven times!”

“Wow! That must be a record!”

Dorothy took Emma’s hand and they stood together, talking about the pebbles and looking out at the sound toward the sea. Amy didn’t know if her mother had really heard her, but she realized it didn’t really matter. She’d faced the truth, faced her own desire to live in a fairy tale. Now she knew she could let that go.

The walk home was quiet, the two women swinging Emma by the hands. There was a small package on the front porch next to the door.

“It’s addressed to you,” Dorothy said, handing it to Amy so she could unlock the door. “Did you have your mail forwarded? Who on earth even knows you’re here? Mmm, that chicken smells good. I’ll bet it’s done.”

Emma ran ahead of her grandmother into the house, hurrying to go show Riley her small collection of shells. Amy slowly followed, looking at the address on the box. Her name was printed in black ink on the plain brown wrapper. No return address.

“Oh, yes, it’s just perfect,” she heard her mother say as she placed it on the secretary in her mother’s living room and fetched a silver letter opener from one of the drawers. The paper fell away. Inside was a plain cardboard box. Her mother hummed in the kitchen and something clattered in the sink.

She sliced the tape that held the lid closed. Lifted the white tissue paper inside. And screamed.

“Jesus, Amy! What on earth is the matter?” Dorothy Busby stood in Amy’s peripheral vision, hand to her chest. Amy couldn’t look at her; she couldn’t look away from the box. Lying on a bed of cotton was a severed white finger, complete with lacquered red nail.

Her stomach heaved and Amy held one hand to her mouth, waving her mother off with the other hand. “Don’t look!” she cried. “Don’t look!”

Another ear-splitting scream, this time from Emma. Amy ran for the back door, her mother ahead of her.

Emma was standing near Riley’s house, the dog at her feet, screaming and screaming. There was red on her face and her hands.

“What? What is it?” Amy grabbed her by the shoulders, checking her for injuries.

“Riley’s dead! Riley’s dead!”

Only then did Amy notice that the dog hadn’t moved, that his head was slumped at a weird angle. She knelt and carefully lifted his head by the fur on top. Blood was thickly matting his neck, dripping onto his front paws and soaking into the grass between his feet. His throat had been slit.

She’d left without saying goodbye. That wasn’t polite. She’d gone before Guy knew if she’d received the pictures. He’d gone to such trouble to deliver them, too. Impersonating a security system employee required careful attention to detail. He created a uniform, complete with fake ID. With a computer, color printer and a laminating machine he could become virtually anyone. That and the magnetized company logo he’d stuck on the van seemed to convince the cops.

After that, it was simply a matter of using the copy of Amy’s key that he’d made. He left the envelope in a prominent spot, making sure that they’d been seen. He’d taken such great care with the photos, especially with the lighting, and he’d been pleased with the thought that a professional would be evaluating them.

Amy wouldn’t be able to ignore the package. Perhaps she thought she was escaping by staying at her mother’s, but it had taken only a little ingenuity to get that information out of the babysitter. After that it was more a matter of when to send her a clear message than how. The how came to him in one brilliant stroke and he enjoyed every bit of the execution, the careful wrapping of his present, the marking of the box.

All of it with gloves of course. Guy was both amused and amazed by the stories of other supposedly brilliant minds who left DNA on stamps or put their fates into the hands of local postmen. When the box was ready, he carried it in a small plastic bag out to the car. When he’d gotten close to the exit, he pulled over to the side of the road and while he pretended to be checking something under his car, actually changed license plates.

Guy wore the drab brown pants and shirt of a deliveryman, but the license plate and the uniform wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Killing the dog eliminated his barking, but he had to admit it was an extra little stroke that brought him pleasure.

He’d gotten the idea when he saw Emma playing with the beast, hugging its shaggy neck, lolling around on the same dirty ground. Amy should be more careful. Animals carried germs. She didn’t want Emma to catch something, did she?

He befriended the dog with a little whistle and a pat, and once he’d gotten close he slipped the knife from his boot and slit it from ear to ear.

He had a talent for improvisation, for thinking on his feet, for knowing how to seize the day. Violet should have appreciated this in him, but the truth was that she was too pedestrian. She didn’t understand that he was exceptional, just that he was different. And different to her was bad. Just like his mother. Another woman of limited vision.

If he had one fault, it was his inability to choose women well, for now it was clear to him that Amy was limited, too. He needed to dispatch her. It was time to move on.

After Feeney’s death, the mood at the station turned both grim and determined. The officers, dispatchers and even the secretaries moved at a faster pace and with resolute looks on their faces. Black ribbons were worn across the badges of uniforms and a makeshift memorial had been set up near the entryway, with an airbrushed photo of Feeney and a small votive candle and flowers.

Despite this, a calm had come over Mark that allowed him to face the longer hours and tedious work of investigation with a determination he’d previously lacked. He wasn’t drinking anymore, either. Not that he didn’t have a thirst for it, but he didn’t need to hide anymore and so much of his drinking had been about hiding.

He stopped for his own health. And he stopped for his partner. Partner as in boyfriend. It was still a hard word for him to say. He couldn’t say it at work. He hadn’t said it yet to his parents, but he would just as soon as the stress of this case was behind him.

He told his parents he was moving back to the city just as soon as he helped them find a night nurse for his father. He’d said he was going to be staying with a friend, but he thought his mother might know. Once this case was behind him he would talk to her, talk to them.

Done fighting with his own feelings, he was finally free to enjoy them, to enjoy being in love, to enjoy having someone to wrap his arms around.

The hard part was going to be getting up and out of Manhattan early in the morning. He couldn’t keep up this commute, he was already thinking about transferring back to the NYPD and maybe law school. He’d thought a lot about going to law school and it was something Ash was encouraging him to think about.

Sophisticated Ash, who’d come out at prep school when he was fifteen, was amused by his transformation and more than a little pleased to be the cause of it.

“You’ve got the most hopeful look on your face,” he said when he swung open the door the next night after their reconciliation. “I feel just like the Pope about to offer a benediction.”

In six months of fighting his own desires, Mark had suppressed the simple pleasures he’d shared with Ash. Watching TV together. Sharing a meal. Snuggling in that ridiculously large bed.

“You thinking about banging someone?” Black interrupted his reverie and Mark blushed.

“Yeah. You were.” Black grinned, looking more than ever like an albino jack-o-lantern. “Caught you out, hound dog.” He thrust a sheaf of paper at Mark. “Look at this and tell me if you notice anything.”

“What is it?”

“Employment records from the Steerforth Hospital for the last three weeks for our good buddy Ryan Grogan.” His grin threatened to split his face.

“No way.” They’d been working their way through the list that Amy Moran had given them. Ryan Grogan’s name had been low on the list. He knew the last names on the list had been added almost as an afterthought, like she didn’t even remotely consider them to be possible suspects.

“Yes!”

Mark scanned the papers eagerly. “A late shift on the Sylvester murder and out sick on Feeney’s.

“Bingo.”

“But he was on the clock when Meredith Chomsky was murdered.”

“So he swings by that house on the way in or he takes one of the vans out there.”

“Yeah. It’s possible. But we’ve still got Douglas Myers unaccounted for that first morning, plus he could have done day two and three and he has motive. What’s Grogan’s motive?”

Black frowned, tapping his hand on the edge of Mark’s desk. “No idea, but I’ll bet he’s got one somewhere. Plus, how much of a motive does he need if he’s serial? For all we know he’s been killing them for years and hauling them around in the EMT vehicle.”

“I’ve been trying to track down Douglas’s history, see if there are any hits with New Jersey. I’ll add in Grogan. See if I can find any links.”

This was among the most tedious parts of police work, but the stuff that usually paid off. It was three days since the last crime scene had been cleared and the early word from the crime lab wasn’t great. The partial they’d taken from the back door turned out to be Feeney’s and results weren’t back yet from the black fibers found in the pool house.

They were going to need some other piece of evidence, if not a positive ID, before they could nail the Toolman and who knows how many more people he would kill before they managed it.

He called the hospital to request that a copy of Ryan Grogan’s resumé be faxed over and then pulled the copy of Myers’s off the fax machine. He’d had to call Braxton Realty three times to send it. The office had completely shut down since Poppy Braxton’s murder.

Douglas had been working for Braxton Realty for twenty-odd years, putting him in Steerforth during the killings in New Jersey. Disappointing, but not definitive. He could have traveled the distance to troll for victims.

And this was interesting. Before getting his realtor’s license, he’d worked for a small law firm in Union, New Jersey. Right next door to Elizabeth.

The thing was, though, that he didn’t peg Douglas for the crimes. There was something smarmy about him, no doubt about that, but that didn’t make him a killer. Still, his instincts could be wrong. It wouldn’t hurt to call this other company and see if they remembered old Doug.

The fax machine was churning. The record keepers at the Steerforth Hospital were gratifyingly efficient. He scanned the sheets of paper quickly.

A single line, buried in the middle of the page, sent him running for his jacket.