Killing Spree (22 page)

He’d skipped Taco Bell this evening, and gone for a couple of drinks instead. Maybe that had been a mistake, because he’d started thinking about how fed up he’d gotten with this goddamn assignment—and with all her teasing. He’d been watching her for several days and nights now. He couldn’t take it anymore, he couldn’t just keep
looking
and nothing else.

He knew her routine. Whenever she came home at night, she went into the bedroom and changed her clothes. That would be when he got her, a sneak attack. The kid wouldn’t hear anything. The bathroom was between their bedrooms. After finishing with her, he’d keep the gun to her head and make the bitch tell him where Barry Tanner was hiding. He was sick of all this sneaking around. He’d force it out of her, and he’d be a hero with his cohorts.

He noticed that the upstairs neighbor had become awfully quiet, which allowed him to hear something else more clearly. A strange rustling came from the ravine area—along with a grunting noise that sounded almost human. He crept across the yard to the edge of the gulch. In the darkness it was hard to see anyone amid all those trees and bushes. But everything was perfectly still. There was no wind tonight. Yet he could hear those rustling sounds and someone breathing hard—and something else now, an intermittent tapping.

He ventured further down into the darkness, and made out a silhouette moving amid the foliage. “Jesus, what the hell?” he muttered to himself. The ravine leveled off at one spot, and on that little plateau, someone was digging a big hole in the ground. He could see the guy hitting the back of the shovel scoop with his heel—tap, tap, tap. He heard him grunting with every pile of earth he excavated. But he couldn’t see who the crazy son of a bitch was. Twigs snapped and dried leaves crunched under his feet as he made his way further down the gully for a closer look. He wasn’t afraid. He had his gun.

He reached the small ridge, where the crazy man had been digging just a minute ago. But there was no sign of the guy—or his shovel. He almost tripped over one of several mounds of scooped-out dirt. A five-by-three sheet of cheap wood paneling rested against a tree by the big crater.

It took him a moment to realize that it was a lid for the grave, something to cover the empty plot until he was ready to fill it with a body. The crazy bastard was going to bury someone back here, but obviously not tonight. In the meantime, that panel of wood with a few scoops of dirt spread over it would hide his work nicely.

He started to snicker. He’d stumbled upon someone in the middle of an elaborate murder scheme. This was the final resting place for an unwanted spouse or business partner or whoever needed to die. He couldn’t help laughing.

But then he heard a rustling noise again. It was just behind him.

“
Shhhhh!
” He felt someone’s breath on his ear.

Reaching for his gun, he started to swivel around. But a hand came up over his mouth and snapped his head back. His throat was exposed.

He saw the knife coming toward him, then felt the steely sharp pain at the side of his neck. The blade raced across his gullet, sending a jolt through his entire body.

He knew he was already dead.

Ethan didn’t want to say anything, but his mother and Ruth were starting to scare him.

“Blink the porch light a few times to let me know you’re okay,” Ruth had told his mom when she’d dropped them off at the duplex.

Stepping into the house, Ethan half-expected to find some ax-wielding guy in a hockey mask. His mother checked the kitchen, both bedrooms, and the bathroom. Then she returned to the front door, and flicked the light switch several times. Ethan watched the porch light blinking. His mom double-locked the door, and then moved to the living room window, where she waved to Ruth. The Camry’s headlights blinked as it pulled away from the curb.

“I gotta admit,” Ethan finally said. “This is freaking me out a little.”

“I’m just being cautious,” his mother said, hanging her coat in the closet.

She’d told him about it in the car yesterday. Some “dangerous” weirdo fan might be stalking her. They had to be careful. Ethan didn’t think his mother was famous enough to have stalker fans.

As he took off his jacket, Ethan heard footsteps above them. It sounded like Vicki had company. The thought that two more people were in the duplex made him feel safer. Ever since his dad had disappeared, Ethan had slept with a baseball bat by his bed. He didn’t remember being scared at night when his dad had lived there. But now he always worried about someone breaking into the duplex and killing them. Having the bat close at hand gave him a sense of security. At least it was good for something, because he sucked at baseball.

“I’ll need you to stick close to home for a while, at least until this blows over,” his mother said, heading for the kitchen. “Maybe we can go buy you a cell phone tomorrow. I’d feel better knowing you can get ahold of me more easily.”

“I’m supposed to go to a football game in Ballard tomorrow, remember? You signed the permission slip a couple of weeks ago. A bus is picking me up at ten forty-five.”

At the refrigerator, his mother stopped to frown at him. “Oh, honey, I don’t like the idea of you going off to some game when this—this wacko is on the loose. You don’t really want to go, do you? I can tell them you’re sick.”

“No, I
want
to go,” he protested. “There’s only like—two hundred people going, Mom. I’ll be okay.”

“Well, do you have a friend you can stick close to? I don’t want you to be by yourself—not for a minute. I’m serious, Ethan. I don’t even want you going to the restroom by yourself.”

“I have somebody I can hang with,” he said. He was thinking of Joe Pagani. If anyone could protect him from some weirdo stalker, it was Joe Pagani. “I’ll be fine, Mom.”

His mother sighed, then reached into the refrigerator for her seltzer water. “I’ll think about it.”

Ethan retreated to his bedroom and closed the door. His walls were decorated with a couple of M. C. Escher posters, a beer sign, an autographed photo of Itzhak Perlman, and a Seattle Seahawks poster that he wasn’t crazy about, but it helped make the room seem more masculine. Ethan figured it might help him feel more masculine too. So far, it wasn’t really working. He had a lava lamp on his bookcase, and on his desk, a fiber-optic gizmo with a metal base sprouting iridescent-tipped stems.

Ethan kicked off his shoes, sat down, and opened the bottom drawer to his desk. He listened to his mother moving around in the kitchen. Her computer beeped on. She’d be busy for a while.

Reaching into the drawer, Ethan dug under a pile of papers and old music sheets to uncover a spiral notebook. He pulled out the book, and opened it to the first page:

Ethan figured it might have been easier if he’d just written, “Mom, please don’t read this.” But he was extremely nervous about someone finding his journal. He kept it stashed in a spot second only to his hiding place for the gay magazine he’d held onto for a while (until he’d destroyed it, that prize had been tucked beneath a loose section of carpet, under his bed). At the same time, he liked having the journal. He could be completely honest, and write things in it that he couldn’t tell any human being. And it kept him from feeling so alone.

He paged through the journal, stopping to glance at bits and pieces from random entries:

Ethan stopped reading when he heard his mother talking on the telephone. “Hi, Dianne,” she was saying. “I hope you’re doing all right. You might be in Milwaukee for Joyce’s funeral. Anyway, when you get this message, call me, okay? I talked with this police lieutenant tonight, and she was concerned about those four phone calls from your place after Joyce was killed. She thinks you should have the investigating officers look into it. I’m sure dealing with the police again is the last thing you want to do right now, but it’s important. Anyway, I should hang up before your machine cuts me off. I’m thinking of you. Take care. And call me.”

Ethan heard some papers rustling. He wasn’t sure what his mother was talking about on the phone. Some friend of his Aunt Dianne’s was killed? He wondered if there was a connection to his mother’s weirdo fan and the death of this Joyce person.

“Hello, is Shauna there, please?” his mother was saying. She suddenly sounded more cheerful: “Oh, hi, Shauna. This is Gillian McBride calling…yes, a voice from your past. How are you?”

His mother started gabbing with this Shauna woman about some class from two years ago. She didn’t sound so grim anymore. Ethan figured she must be okay. He switched on the radio. It drowned out the chatter, but he could still hear if his mother was coming toward his bedroom. She always knocked when he had the door closed. That gave him plenty of time to stash the journal before she poked her head in.

He grabbed a pen, and started writing:

Ethan stopped writing for a moment. He wasn’t listening to his mother, who was still talking on the phone. He could barely hear her. He was thinking about his rendezvous with Joe Pagani tomorrow. For the first time in a long, long while, he actually looked forward to seeing that school bus in the morning.

“Oh gosh, no, I haven’t seen anybody from that class since—like—two years ago when the semester ended,” Shauna said to Gillian over the phone.

It wasn’t what Gillian had wanted to hear. She’d figured Shauna was the type who kept in touch with classmates long after they’d stopped caring, the well-meaning busybody who circulated group e-mails and planned reunions. She’d hoped Shauna would know if Jennifer had recently been dating someone from the class—or perhaps another teacher from the college. She’d also wanted to hear updates on Chase and Todd.

Instead, she got an explanation from Shauna about what she’d been doing the last two years. Shauna had moved to Bellingham, found a features writing job for the
Bellingham Herald
, met a man, gotten married, and now she was going to have a baby.

Gillian listened to her former student, and thought about her own life these last two years: staying in the same place, writing “medium-selling” books, and waiting for a husband who was never coming back to her. She told Shauna how happy she was for her.

“How about you?” Shauna asked. “Seen any of the old gang? I know you’re still writing, because I saw your new thriller at Village Books. Did anyone in the class ever get published?”

“As a matter of fact, Jennifer Gilderhoff has a collection of short stories coming out next month,” Gillian said. “She—ah—”