Heartstopper (32 page)

“What’d the sheriff say?” Delilah asked as soon as Kerri stepped inside.

“He’s gonna station a man outside the house until he finds Cal.” Kerri closed the door behind her, then locked it. “Bring me a chair from the kitchen, will you?” she instructed her daughter, who promptly did as she was told. Kerri secured the back of the chair under the door handle. “Just in case,” she said, although she doubted such meager precautions would be sufficient to keep an enraged Cal Hamilton out.

“I like Sheriff Weber, don’t you?” Delilah said.

“’Course I like him.”

“But his daughter’s a real pill.”

“Takes after her mother.” Kerri walked into the living room, began retrieving some of the doilies Cal had tossed to the floor.

“I’ll straighten up. You sit down.” Delilah quickly gathered up the remaining doilies, returned each to its former position. “Are you going to call Dr. Crosbie?”

Kerri sank into the sofa and checked her watch. “It’s kind of late. I don’t want to wake him.”

“It’s not that late, and I’m sure he’d want to know what happened.”

“I don’t know. He said he was going to bed early.”

“Mom, for Pete’s sake. He loves you, doesn’t he?”

Does he? Kerri wondered.

“Well, I think you should call him. Tell him what happened.” Delilah handed her mother her cell phone.

Kerri hesitated. What was she so afraid of? “You’re not going to stand here and listen, are you?”

“Oh. Oh, no. No, of course not.” Delilah quickly retreated into the kitchen.

Kerri took a deep breath, then pressed in Ian’s number. Of course he’d want to know what had happened here tonight. And he’d undoubtedly be so concerned, he’d hop in his car and come right over, she was telling herself as the phone rang once, twice, three times, before being picked up.

“This is Ian Crosbie,”
came the familiar, recorded message.
“I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name, number, and a short message, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

Kerri clicked off before the beep, lowered the phone to the cushion beside her, assuring herself that Ian’s not picking up didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t home. It just meant that he’d gone to bed early, exactly as advertised. So why the concern? Why was she feeling so tentative?

“Kerri,” her mother called from upstairs. “Kerri, what’s happening?”

Kerri pushed her platinum hair extensions away from her unlined face, rubbed her lifted brow, and closed her “done” eyes, a deep sigh leaving her enhanced bosom to escape her swollen lips. “I have no idea.”

J
ohn sped away from Kerri’s house at more than twenty miles over the limit. He wasn’t worried about pedestrians. Since Liana’s body had been discovered, no one went for a casual stroll after dark anymore. Besides, he had to put some space between himself and Kerri before he did something stupid. Just the smell of her had been so damned intoxicating, and the way she’d leaned inside the car, displaying her breasts as if they were pots of bright flowers sitting on a windowsill, offering them to him like fancy canapés on a silver platter. For a moment, he’d actually thought she might be trying to seduce him, but then she’d mentioned that asshole Dr. Crosbie, and the name had flooded through his veins like ice water.
I know a good doctor
, she’d said.

He’d been tempted at that moment to tell her everything he’d discovered about the “good doctor,” but instead he’d pressed his foot to the pedal and taken off into the night. Kerri Franklin’s love life was none of his business. His business was to apprehend lawbreakers, and Cal Hamilton’s behavior tonight had definitely crossed the line from the merely objectionable into the downright criminal. You didn’t tear up a woman’s house and terrorize her family, you didn’t slap her around, demanding answers she didn’t have, just because your wife had finally
awakened from her stupor, come to her senses, and run the hell away.

Which was his assessment of what had probably happened regarding Fiona Hamilton.

And now he was only minutes from the Hamilton house, and he prayed that Cal would be there and he wouldn’t have to have his deputies spend half the night driving around looking for him. He also hoped Cal had calmed down enough to take stock of his situation and was even now preparing to turn himself in without any further unpleasantness. A night in jail would undoubtedly sober him up. And as mad as Kerri was, chances were good she wouldn’t press charges if Cal apologized and promised never to do it again.

Unless Delilah’s suspicions proved to be true and Cal Hamilton had slaughtered not only his wife but Liana Martin too—and possibly even Candy Abbot?—John thought, the dull buzz of a headache beginning to circle his eyes like a dying fly, which meant the man was either a deranged serial killer or a cold, calculating murderer.

Somehow neither description fit.

Cal might be an arrogant jerk, but he wasn’t crazy. Nor was he very bright. While John found it entirely plausible that Cal was indeed
capable
of killing his wife, especially if he’d been angry or drunk or, more likely, both, John didn’t think Cal had the brains to try to disguise what he’d done by showing up at Kerri’s door sometime later, demanding to know her whereabouts. And while he might be heartless enough to kill a succession of innocent young women in order to divert suspicion from himself in the death of his wife, John didn’t think he was clever enough by half to have concocted such a scheme. Such premeditation required an active intelligence, an imagination Cal Hamilton sorely lacked.

John had been dealing with the criminal mind for a long time, and while he’d never personally overseen a case
involving a serial killer, he knew two things for sure: one, most criminals weren’t very smart, and two, none of them ever thought they were going to get caught.

He also knew that predators were notoriously good at hiding their sick cravings from the community in which they lived. How many reports had he read, how many cases had he followed, how many newscasts had he seen, wherein clearly shattered friends and neighbors lined up to voice their shock and disbelief when a psychopath was uncovered in their midst? How similar were the statements they gave to the police and the press?
He was so quiet, so unassuming. We never had the slightest idea he could do something like this.

Cal Hamilton was anything but unassuming and quiet. Furthermore, he looked as if he had something to hide, and as a result you suspected him of anything and everything. And while it was true that the most obvious suspect was often the right one when it came to solving homicides, John couldn’t believe this would prove to be true in the brutal slaying of Liana Martin. It was too easy, and nothing in John’s life had ever come easy. Although it would make for a pleasant change, he thought as he rounded the corner of Old Country Road and pulled to a stop in front of Cal Hamilton’s bungalow.

The normally dark house was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. All the lights in the place appeared to be on, although the blinds were down, as always, and two cars were parked in the driveway, as well as several more on the street. John recognized the white van that had picked up Tanya McGovern from the doctor’s office, as well as Joey Balfour’s old blue Pontiac and the red Chevy that Ray Sutter had recently driven off the road not far from where Liana’s body was later unearthed. What was everybody doing here?

“Sheriff,” he heard a woman call softly as he headed up the walkway.

His first thought was that it was Fiona Hamilton, that she’d returned home to find her house ablaze with lights and filled with strangers and had been hiding in the shrubbery ever since, waiting for everyone to leave. But when he turned around, he saw that the woman tiptoeing toward him in her bare feet wasn’t Cal’s missing wife but rather Sandy Crosbie, his next-door neighbor.

“What’s happening?” she asked, tucking her chin-length hair behind her ears. She was wearing yellow pajamas under a long, pink cotton robe. “Have you found Fiona?”

John shook his head. “May I ask how you knew she was missing?”

“Are you kidding? Cal stormed over here about an hour ago, asking if we’d seen her. I told him Delilah Franklin had been by yesterday, asking the same thing, and he just took off. Naturally, my kids were on the Internet the minute he left. And a bunch of people are in there now, trying to organize a search party. Everybody’s talking about a serial killer.”

Jesus, John thought. A search party. In the dead of night. “Look, the fact that Fiona’s missing doesn’t mean she’s dead. There’s a very good chance she left of her own accord.”

“Do you really believe that? She’s such a meek little thing.” A phone rang in the distance. Sandy spun toward the sound. “Oh, dear. That’s my phone again. It’s been ringing all night. Everybody wants to know what’s happening.”

“Please tell them that any speculation at this point is both premature and counterproductive. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” John broke from her side and approached Cal’s front door. He rang the bell several times, then knocked loudly. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he barked as Greg Watt opened the door.

Greg Watt, dressed all in black, stepped back and allowed John entry. “Sheriff’s here,” he announced without answering the question.

“About time,” Cal barked from the living room. “Get your ass in here, Sheriff, and tell me what we’re going to do about finding my wife.”

“
We’re
not going to do anything,” John said evenly, although the sight of Greg Watt, Joey Balfour, Peter Arlington, and Ray Sutter forming a protective circle around Cal Hamilton was enough to make him want to scream. What were these guys doing here? He knew they were all regular patrons of Chester’s, and that Cal, Joey, and Greg had been part of the search team that had discovered Liana’s body, so maybe it made sense that Cal had contacted them to ask for help in finding his wife, but was that really Gordon Lipsman sitting off by himself in the corner? “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked his daughter’s drama teacher.

“I was in private rehearsals with Greg and Peter for the school play when Joey called him and said Fiona Hamilton had gone missing,” the teacher explained with an indignant stiffening of his back. “Greg said they’d meet him here, and I decided to tag along. In case I could be of assistance.”

“And you?” John asked Ray Sutter. “Please tell me you haven’t been driving under the influence again.”

Ray Sutter, roughly forty years old and in need of a good shave, turned his droopy eyes toward the sheriff. He had a long, lived-in face and a head of unruly brown hair and always looked as if he’d either just crawled out of bed or was looking for one to climb into. “I heard about Fiona,” he said, the slight slur in his voice capsizing his valiant attempt to sound wounded by the sheriff’s suspicions. “Thought I’d stop by, volunteer my services.”

John’s gaze shifted toward Peter Arlington.

“Obviously, if Mrs. Hamilton’s disappearance has anything to do with Liana’s murder, then I want to be involved,” the boy offered without waiting to be asked.

Talk about the blind leading the blind, John thought, motioning to Cal Hamilton. “Okay, that’s it. You’re coming to the station with me.”

“What for? We can talk here,” Cal said.

“You’re under arrest, Cal.”

“What?”

“What are you talking about?” Joey Balfour pushed a lock of dark, greasy hair away from his forehead. John immediately noticed a cut above his left eye and a small bruise by the side of his mouth. “You’re arresting a man because his wife is missing? On what charge?”

A few days ago, John might have been upset at the effrontery of a punk kid mouthing off to him in this fashion. But tonight he found such teenage posturing amusing, even comical. “Assault,” he barked, watching Joey take a step back. “Speaking of which, what happened to your face?”

Joey raised a hand to his chin. “Walked into a door,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

“That bitch told you I assaulted her?” Cal demanded.

“What bitch?” Gordon Lipsman asked, the color draining from his face.

“You found her?” Ray Sutter said.

John ignored them both. “Do you deny barging into Kerri Franklin’s house and striking her?” he asked Cal.

“I barely touched her, for Christ’s sake. Did she tell you that psycho kid of hers threatened to shoot me?”

Greg laughed.

John shook his head. The evening was moving beyond the ridiculous into the surreal. “Let’s talk about this at the station, shall we?”

“Shall we?
Shall we?”
Cal mimicked. “Are you crazy, Sheriff? My wife is missing and there’s a killer on the loose.”

“We’ll talk at the station,” John repeated.

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re going to do to find my wife.”

“Exactly how long has your wife been missing?” John asked, trying to diffuse the situation before taking Cal into custody.

“I called her from work. She didn’t answer the phone. I came home. She wasn’t here.”

“So, you’re saying she was here when you left for work,” John reiterated.

“Yes.”

“Which means she’s only been gone a few hours. She could be at the movies.”

“She’s not at the movies.”

“You seem awfully sure.”

“I
am
sure.” Cal Hamilton began angrily pacing back and forth in the confined space. “She hates movies. She doesn’t have any money. She doesn’t like crowds.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like
you.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That we need to continue this discussion at the station.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not giving you a choice.” John placed his hand purposefully over the gun in his holster.

“Shit,” Cal said. “Another gun.”

“Come on, Sheriff,” Ray Sutter intervened. “The guy’s upset. Surely you can understand that.”

John recalled how upset Ray Sutter had been the night he drove his car into the ditch not far from where Liana’s body was later discovered. And now, here he was again. “Oh, I understand
that.
What I
can’t
understand is what you guys are still doing here. I’m tempted to arrest the lot of you.”