Killing Spree (16 page)

And God help him, he didn’t want to be picked last.

“It’s just you and me, honey,” Mark said.

“Please don’t call me honey,” Ethan growled. He’d never noticed Mark in the locker room, and wondered where he changed his clothes. Maybe a nearby restroom? Mark probably didn’t need to take a shower. He rarely broke into a sweat during gym class. Considering what had happened yesterday, Ethan wondered if he’d be relegated to dressing for gym in some nearby bathroom with Mark Phair.

He hadn’t seen Tate Barringer yet today. The sophomores were playing touch football at the other end of the field.

He’d worry about Tate later. One godawful hurdle at a time. That was how he’d managed his days at school lately—like running an obstacle course. He navigated the hallways between classes, avoiding Tate and his buddies; he endured lunch periods alone; and prayed he’d survive gym class with some of his dignity intact. Afterward, in the locker room, he always kept his eyes downcast, and wouldn’t look at anyone in the showers (at least, he wouldn’t be caught looking). And every day it was a crapshoot whether or not he’d make it home on the bus without someone trying to steal his violin case. Until recently, he’d always had Craig to remind him that he wasn’t totally friendless and pathetic. Not anymore.

Craig wasn’t looking at him. But a couple of Craig’s teammates were staring—and smirking. They whispered to each other and cackled.

Ethan wondered if Craig had told them all about the last sleepover, when Craig had caught him checking out his butt. Craig probably had a bunch of other stories about him acting like a “fag.”

“Okay, we’ll take Phair,” Craig grumbled.

Mark nudged Ethan. “Better luck next time, honey.” He sauntered toward Scott’s team.

His head down, Ethan slinked toward the opposing squad. That was the extra twist of the knife in being picked last—most of the time, they didn’t even bother calling your name.

He played miserably. He was trying too hard, and every time the soccer ball bounced his way, Ethan got all clutched and kicked it wrong. Twice Craig’s team intercepted his kicks. Ethan even tripped over the ball once.

There was no excuse for his poor performance. He had nothing to distract him today. The vintage black Mustang was nowhere in sight. He’d half-expected to see it while waiting for his bus this morning, but he hadn’t noticed any cars cruising the area. He figured it must have been a fluke. He was glad he hadn’t told his mother about the black Mustang. She couldn’t have done anything about it anyway—except worry even more.

Suddenly, he noticed the ball rolling toward him again. But Craig intercepted it. Ethan stayed on his friend, trying to guard him. He ran alongside him for a quarter-length of the field before Craig kicked the ball toward a teammate. But it was a wild kick, and the ball sailed over the field’s boundary line.

Craig suddenly turned and slammed into Ethan with his elbow. It hurt like hell. Ethan went crashing to the ground. He fell on his back, and got the wind knocked out of him. Just then, he heard the coach blow the whistle.

Craig stood over him for a minute, looking off toward the coach. Ethan couldn’t believe the stupid coach was ignoring what Craig had just done. Hell, it was a foul. But the coach was making a call about the stinking ball flying out of bounds.

Ethan caught his breath and managed to get to his feet. “Why’d you do that?” he whispered to his friend. He brushed himself off. “Craig? What’s going on? I don’t get this. Why didn’t you pick me for your team?”

His buddy frowned at him. “Can I help it if you aren’t any good?”

“That didn’t matter before,” Ethan said in a quiet voice. “What happened? Why haven’t you talked to me? Don’t you—” He was about to ask, “Don’t you want to be friends anymore?” But that sounded so pathetic. He really didn’t want Craig to bring up the sleepover incident when he’d been
caught looking
. But he had to know. He swallowed hard. “Why are you being this way?”

“Fuck off,” Craig muttered, not looking at him. He trotted toward a bunch of his teammates on the other side of the field.

Craig’s team lost, and they had to run a lap. The sophomores were still at the other end of the playfield. Ethan hoped to get in and out of the locker room as quickly as possible, maybe even go without a shower. Otherwise, he might bump into Tate. He dreaded a replay of yesterday’s episode, and imagined how it could be even worse this time. What if Tate started picking on him in the showers—while he was naked?

Ethan beat a path toward the school’s athletic wing. He was hurrying through the break in the playfield’s bleachers when he heard someone call his name: “Hey, Tanner! Tanner, wait up!”

Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking
, he told himself. His heart pounded furiously.

“Hold it a minute!” Someone patted him on the shoulder.

Ethan swiveled around. He was looking at Larry Blades, his team captain. Larry had wavy, light brown hair, perfect teeth, and an almost-too-muscular body. He slapped Ethan on the arm. “Hey, that was great the way you stuck with Craig Merchant out there. You were on him like stink on a monkey. It really threw off his game. I thought for sure he had a goal coming, but you snatched that away.”

Ethan felt himself blushing. “Oh, well…thanks.”

“I’m really glad you ended up on my team, Tanner.” Larry patted his shoulder again, then ran ahead of him and started talking to someone else.

Ethan stood and just watched him walk away for a moment. He thanked God for Larry Blades. A few classmates brushed past Ethan, and he continued toward the locker room door. He hadn’t totally sucked after all. He’d redeemed himself. Maybe he wouldn’t get picked last tomorrow.

“Hey, Tanner!”

Ethan still had a dazed smile on his face as he stopped in front of the entrance. He turned to see a horde of sweaty, exhausted boys coming at him. Ethan stepped aside as they poured into the locker room. “Hey, Tanner! Hold it right there!”

Ethan saw who was calling his name, and the smile fell away from his face.

Tate Barringer emerged from the crowd. Tate’s dumb-ass friend, the one who had stood “guard” at the locker room door yesterday, was now behind him. He was grinning. “I told you, the men’s locker room is not for faggots,” Tate said.

Ethan felt this awful vise-like grip in his stomach. He started shaking. “Listen, why don’t you just leave me alone, okay?” he said, a tremor in his voice. He tried to get a breath, but it wouldn’t come. “I’ve never done anything to you. Why are you picking on me? I hardly even
know
you.”

Tate and his friend snickered. “But I know
you
, Tanner,” Tate replied, grabbing the collar of Ethan’s sweatshirt and tugging the material up to his chin. “I know you, and you’re a homo. And I don’t like homos watching me get undressed. So—you aren’t going inside that locker room. Do you understand me, queer?”

A few stragglers were still brushing past them. Tate dragged him by the collar and pushed him against the wall—right by the locker room door. “Understand?” he repeated. With a flick of his finger, he snapped at Ethan’s ear. “Did you hear me?”

It hurt. Ethan winced and felt tears stinging his eyes. But he wasn’t going to cry in front of Tate Barringer, goddamn it. His hands clenched into fists.

Tate gave his ear another flick. “Did you hear me, faggot?”

“Hey, you guys are blocking the door. Would you mind getting the hell out of my way?”

The voice belonged to a good-looking older guy, probably a senior. He wasn’t in gym clothes. He wore jeans, a black T-shirt, a brown leather jacket, and boots. He was about six feet tall, with black hair, light green eyes, and full lips.

Tate glanced over his shoulder at the guy. “Go around us,” he muttered with a little chuckle. “I’m just trying to keep the faggots out of the locker room.”

“Nasty job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Tate’s lamebrain buddy said with a snicker.

The young man didn’t laugh. He scowled at Tate. “Say that to me again.”

Ethan felt Tate’s grip on his sweatshirt slacken. “Say what?”

“Say you’re not going to let faggots in there. Say it to
me
.”

Tate let go of Ethan and turned toward the other young man. He cackled. “What the fuck is your problem?”

His back pressed against the wall, Ethan saw a look pass between Tate and his buddy—as if they figured the two of them together could beat the crap out of this pest.

“Assholes like you are my problem,” the young man whispered.

Approaching him, Tate’s friend laughed. “Hey, you can suck my—”

He didn’t finish. Before Tate’s friend got another word out, the young man kicked him in the groin—very hard. There was only a gasp, and then Tate’s pal crumpled to the ground. Clutching his lower stomach, he started to curl up into a ball.

“What the…” Tate started to say.

The young man punched him in the nose, a direct hit. Ethan thought he heard something snap. Blood seemed to explode from Tate’s face. Ethan blinked, and felt the warm, wet spray on his cheeks.

Tate let out a howl. A hand went up to his crimson-soaked face. It left the rest of him vulnerable. The young man swung at the side of Tate’s neck with his elbow.

Ethan dodged Tate’s body as it came crashing toward him. “Jesus!” he heard someone say. A couple of stragglers from gym class had stopped to witness the assault. Tate collapsed beside his buddy, who was still curled up on the ground, gasping for air.

The young man gave Tate a savage kick in the stomach. “What are you gonna say now, hotshot?” he growled. “Want to call somebody a fag?”

In response, Tate could only sob. He rocked back and forth on the cement. His face and hands were covered with blood. “If you harass this kid again, I’ll rip your fucking head off,” the young man said. Then he turned toward the two stragglers from gym class. “What are you guys looking at?”

“Nothing…nothing!” one of them answered nervously. They quickly retreated into the locker room.

His back against the brick wall, Ethan gaped at the crazy young man who had just come to his rescue. His heart was racing.

“Well?” the handsome guy said to him. He cracked a tiny smile. “What are you standing there for, dude? Go get cleaned up. You’ll be late for your next class.”

His mouth open, Ethan wordlessly nodded.

Then he did what the young man said, and hurried into the locker room.

No one was stopping him.

“Hi, Gill, it’s Dianne. I—I’m sorry I’ve been a couple of days getting back to you….”

Gillian ran across the living room and snatched up the phone. “Dianne?” she said, switching off the answering machine. “Hi. I just got in the door. How are you?”

“Um, not too good, Gill. The last forty-eight hours have been—awful.” Gillian heard a muffled little sob on the other end of the line. “My friend, Joyce…you’ve heard me talk about her….”

“You mean Joyce from Milwaukee?” Gillian set her purse on the desk, and kept the phone against her ear while she took off her trench coat. “What happened? Was she in an accident?”

“She—she’s dead. She was house-sitting for me while I was in Palm Springs. She went out shopping the other morning. They found her in the changing room of this clothing store. She’d been strangled.”

Gillian blindly felt around for her chair, then she sank down on it. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Di, I’m so sorry. Do the police know who did it? Did they get the guy?”

“No. It looked like a robbery, they said. Joyce’s empty wallet was found about two blocks from this clothing store. I can’t imagine she had much money on her.” Dianne started to cry. “It’s just so senseless.”

“When did this happen?” Gillian asked.

“Day before yesterday.”

“Oh, my God, Dianne, I—I think Joyce tried to call me around one o’clock that day. Did you get my message about the hang-ups?”

“Yeah, but it couldn’t have been Joyce. She was killed at around ten-thirty in the morning.”

“But the hang-ups were from your home phone, Di. There were four of them, all just a few minutes after one o’clock. Even with the time difference, that’s still a little after eleven in Chicago.”

“Gillian, I’m telling you, Joyce was already dead by eleven o’clock. She was in the changing room in a clothing store several blocks from here. She couldn’t have made those calls.”

“Well,
somebody
called from your place. Did Joyce have someone else over that day?”

“How would I know?” Dianne answered testily. “I was in Palm Springs, for God’s sakes. Gill, you sound just like the police.”

“I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

“You can’t make sense of something that’s senseless. And you can’t expect to solve a murder here in Chicago when you’re in Seattle and you just found out about it.” Dianne’s voice was cracking. “This isn’t one of your books, Gill. This is real. Joyce was my friend, and she was murdered.”

“I’m sorry,” Gillian muttered. But it was something from one of her books; she realized that now.
A woman strangled…a department store changing room
—it was right out of her book,
For Everyone to See
. And
somebody
had repeatedly called her from Dianne’s place shortly after the murder.

Dianne let out a sigh. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off, Gill. I’m tired. The police have been questioning me for the last day and a half, and I’ve been helping Joyce’s family with the funeral arrangements.” She started crying again. “I just keep thinking,
Why Joyce? Why her?”

Gillian felt awful for her friend. And the same question haunted her:
Why Joyce?
She wondered if this copycat killer had originally gone after Dianne, and found the wrong woman at Dianne’s place. But how did he even know Dianne was good friends with his
favorite author?
Gillian hadn’t talked about Dianne in any of her interviews. She might have mentioned “my friend, Dianne from Chicago” to her night class on occasion, but she’d never used Dianne’s last name.

“Gillian, can you hold on for a second?” Dianne asked. “My other line just beeped. It’s been like this all day. Be right back.”

Gillian kept the phone to her ear. She glanced over at her desk, where the advance reader’s copy of Jennifer Gilderhoff ’s
Burning Old Bridesmaids’ Dresses and Other Survival Stories
was sticking out of her purse. She stared at the book.

That was how the killer knew about Dianne. He read about her in a book. Dianne’s name was at the beginning of Gillian’s first thriller: “
This book is dedicated to my oldest and dearest friend, Dianne Garrity
.”

The blurb under Gillian’s author photo on the inside back cover of
Killing Legend
said she was born and raised in Chicago. It couldn’t have been too tough to put it together that Dianne Garrity still lived there. All he had to do was check a Chicago phone book for Dianne’s address.

She’d
done exactly the same thing to track down Jennifer’s friend, April Tomlinson.

It was horrible realizing that she and this killer had the same way of thinking.

“Gillian, are you still there?”

“Um, yes, hi.”

“That was my mom. I’m calling her back later. She says hello. She’s reading
Black Ribbons
, by the way. But I think she’ll be putting it down for a while. This thing with Joyce has really shaken her up. Huh, I’m not doing too well either. The police were here last night, going through Joyce’s things…” There was a tiny break on the connection. “Oh, damn, another call. I’m sorry, Gill.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll hold. If you need to get rid of me, I understand.”

“Be right back,” Dianne said.

Gillian heard a little click on the line. While she waited, she scrolled down the numbers on her Caller ID box. She looked at the four calls from yesterday afternoon:

After he’d followed Dianne’s friend, Joyce, to that clothing store and re-created the changing-room strangulation from
For Everyone to See
, the killer must have returned to Dianne’s apartment. It was only a few minutes past eleven Chicago time. Joyce had been killed around ten-thirty. From Dianne’s phone, he made those four aborted calls to his favorite author in Seattle.

He must have figured out she had Caller ID, or maybe he’d just taken a chance that she had it. He’d counted on her responding to those hang-ups. And she’d fallen right into his hands. She’d tried calling Dianne back yesterday. She’d planned to try again tonight. He must have known she’d keep trying until she got ahold of her friend.

He’d wanted her to be one of the first people to talk to Dianne Garrity after the murder of her friend, Joyce. He’d wanted her to know what he’d done.

She’d created a fictional murder, and this was his twisted, horrible homage.

“God, I’m a wreck,” Dianne said, getting back on the line. “Gillian, are you still there?”

“Yes. Do you need to take that?”

“No, I’ll call them back later. Where was I?”

“The police were going through Joyce’s belongings.”

“Yeah, anyway…God, I keep thinking…poor Joyce…” She paused. Her voice was choked with emotion. “You know, this might not have happened if I hadn’t asked her to come here and house-sit for me.”

“It’s not your fault, Di,” Gillian said. “It’s not your fault at all.”

No,
she thought,
it’s mine.

REDI-RENTAL! NATIONWIDE SERVICE!
said the large magnet on the side of Gillian’s refrigerator. She’d used Redi-Rental a few times when she couldn’t take a bus or a cab to a book signing. There was an 800 number on the magnet—and a crude little map of the United States with stars signifying cities where you could rent a Redi-Rental car.

Gillian peeled the magnet off the refrigerator, and sat down at her desk. She hadn’t told Dianne her theory about why Joyce Millikan had been murdered. Poor Dianne didn’t need to hear it right now. Gillian needed to uncover something more substantial to back her theory about this copycat killer. In the meantime, she figured Dianne was safe in Chicago. One look at the little map on that Rent-a-Car magnet assured Gillian that Joyce’s killer had already left Chicago.

With the magnet in front of her, she jotted notes:

Gillian glanced at the little map again. Her killer was making his way across the United States.

And he was headed toward Seattle.

“Cool it, Eustace!” Ruth hissed at her Jack Russell terrier. The dog kept barking and jumping at Gillian anyway. Eustace was just about the only living thing Ruth couldn’t intimidate. “Eustace, did you hear me?”

Gillian had phoned Ruth, asking if she could come by and borrow her car. She needed something else from Ruth, but wanted to talk to her about it in person.

Ruth lived on Sixteenth Avenue, near Group Health Hospital. It was only about a mile from Gillian’s place. Threatening gray rain clouds filled the November sky. Walking to Ruth’s place, Gillian had repeatedly looked over her shoulder. She hadn’t been able to shake the sensation that someone was watching her.

Ruth’s house was a quaint saltbox from the forties, prettied up with some window flower boxes and a recent paint job—yellow with white trim. Standing in Ruth’s doorway, Gillian scratched Eustace behind the ears, and he calmed down. Ruth dragged him away by the collar. “C’mon, killer,” she muttered. “Get off the company. Save your strength. You have a busy night ahead, eating and napping.”

Gillian closed the door behind her and stepped into Ruth’s living room, which was more like an office. There was a big, old wooden desk with a computer on it, and a gray metal file cabinet. African art and tapestries covered the walls, and newspaper sections were strewn across the maroon sofa. The fire in the hearth gave the room a cozy feeling. And as usual, the house smelled of coffee brewing.

Ruth led Eustace into the kitchen, and then emerged, carrying two cups of coffee. “I’m sorry about Dianne’s friend in Chicago,” she said soberly. “You mentioned on the phone that this copycat might be on a cross-country killing spree.”

Nodding, Gillian pulled the list she’d made—showing the dates, the cities, the books that inspired the killings, and the victims. She set it on Ruth’s desk. “Three cities so far. The first victim—at least, the first
known
victim—was my former student, Jennifer, in New York. Then in Chicago, I think his original target might have been my friend, Dianne. But he settled for her house-sitter.”

“And we don’t have an identity yet for this dead drifter in Montana,” Ruth said, over her coffee cup. “But the poor guy might have been in the same night class as Jennifer. But not necessarily. His targeting your friend in Chicago—or your friend’s friend—shows he’s not just limiting his—
prey
to people from that particular class. So—New York, Chicago, Billings, Montana. The next logical stop is here in Seattle, where he’ll probably go after someone else you know.”

Gillian nodded glumly. “Ruth, I dedicated my first book to Dianne. I think that’s why he might have gone after her. My fourth book is dedicated to you. You’re mentioned in all my acknowledgments since the third book. I’ve talked about you in several interviews. And you were in that night class with Jennifer.”

“Is this your sweet way of telling me that I should get my will in order and wear clean underwear for the next few days?” She put her coffee cup down on the desk. “Do me a favor and stop publicly thanking me, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Gillian muttered.

“Lighten up, honey. I can look after myself.” She patted Gillian’s back. “Sit down, take a load off.”

“In a minute,” Gillian said, still looking at her list. “Do you have a phone number or address for your Internet friend, the one who e-mailed that article to you about the murder in Montana?”

“You mean Hester?” Ruth shrugged. “I know she lives in Great Falls, but no, I don’t have a phone number or an address for her. Why?”

“E-mail her.”

“Now?”

Gillian nodded. “Please.”

Ruth plopped down in her chair and her fingers started working the keyboard. Her AOL e-mail account came up. She scrolled down her recently read correspondence, and clicked on one.

Standing behind her friend, Gillian read over Ruth’s shoulder: