Killing Spree (40 page)

Gillian just stared back at him for a moment. He was so convincing. And she wanted very much to believe him.

“Yes, Jason,” she said finally. “I’m so sorry….”

“It’s getting a little bumpy, folks, so we’re turning on the seat belt signs. Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened until we get through this patch of turbulence.”

The fortysomething blond flight attendant, who reminded Gillian a bit of Vicki, maneuvered her way down the aisle of the seventy-seat plane.

Clutching her armrests, Gillian rode the bumps and sudden dips. She chewed gum to combat nausea. Some idiot cowboy in the back wasn’t helping with his loud “Whoowee!” every time the plane took a jolt.

Gillian resisted the urge to grab onto Jason’s arm. Sitting beside her, the experienced charter plane pilot seemed unfazed by the turbulence. Through all the rolling and bobbing, his eyes stayed riveted on the laptop in front of him.

An hour ago, when she’d passed along the news about Vicki, Jason had almost started to cry. She’d seen the tears well in his eyes, and he’d shaken his head. “Who is this son of a bitch?” he’d murmured.

If it was all an act, it was a damn good one.

In the airport, everyone in a uniform seemed to know him—and like him. He reminded her of Barry that way, always charming people wherever he went. Jason put on a friendly smile for all those who said hello. Gillian caught a few of Jason’s female friends sizing her up and frowning a bit.

If he’d hoped to murder her on the plane as in
For Everyone to See,
he was leaving behind a lot of witnesses who had seen them together. Though her suspicions about Jason had eased, she remained guarded around him.

Ruth phoned again just as they’d boarded the plane. She and Ethan were about to head to her place for lunch. At one point during her brief conversation with Ruth on the phone, Jason interrupted: “You know, Ruth should tell the police about me. Remember, I was there on Saturday. I was probably one of the last people to see Vicki alive. They might want to talk to me.”

“That’s a good idea,” Gillian had replied. “Did you hear that, Ruth?”

She’d told Ruth they would meet her and Ethan at the arrival gate. At the time, Gillian had thought she would be safe for the next ninety minutes in the air. But she hadn’t counted on this turbulence.

“Flight attendants, please take your seats,”
the captain announced calmly.

Gillian watched the poor attendant struggle up the aisle, grabbing hold of every seat back she passed to keep her balance. That did it. Gillian finally grabbed Jason’s arm. “Aren’t you even a little concerned?”

“This is nothing,” he said, taking his eyes off the computer screen to look at her for a moment. “Don’t worry about it. I’m looking at some of your reviews on Amazon.com. Do you ever look them up or Google yourself?”

“Only four or five times a week—for the sales rank mostly.”

“When Barry asked me to pay you a visit, I picked up a few of your books and read them. I couldn’t tell you earlier. Anyway, I’m trying to refresh my memory what each one was about.”

Before the plane had started bobbing up and down, Jason had asked her for more details about the schoolgirl killings and her copycat. Then he’d gone online.

“A lot of these readers on Amazon.com keep coming back to review each one of your books,” he pointed out.

Gillian nodded. “Yes, it’s the same way on the Barnes and Noble site. If they like one book, they check out the others.”

“But a few of these readers keep reviewing you even when they’re not crazy about your work.”

He tilted the laptop so she could see the screen. Then he scrolled down the reviews for
For Everyone to See.
Gillian got a bit nauseous as she rode the bumps and tried to read the starred reviews and the reviewers’ computer names: four stars from
msnancyabbe
; one star from
bookworm85
; five stars from
dgotlieb; imalegend2
dished out two stars for it;
chadshclund
and
jbchurch
both gave her five stars. Gillian knew what Jason was talking about.
Bookworm857
and
imalegend2
were always pretty damn critical, but usually provided a begrudging compliment or two.

“It’s kind of like a creative writing class—in reverse,” Jason said. “These reviewers grade your work. I think you’re right about this copycat. He must have been your pupil once, but he’s turning it around and showing the teacher how it’s really done.” Jason readjusted the laptop so it was facing him again. He had to hold onto the little computer to keep it from bouncing off his tray table. “You said the woman stabbed in New York and this Chase person on the ferry were both in that same class?”

“That’s right.”

“And the schoolgirl murders were going on during that particular semester? Are you sure you’ve considered
everyone
from that class?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve been over and over the class list. The two most likely suspects were Chase and Todd. And they’re both dead.”

Jason wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know and hadn’t already considered. It was a bit presumptuous of him to think at this point in time he could ask a few questions, reacquaint himself with her books, and suddenly come to some startling new conclusion about this copycat killer. Gillian had to give him credit for trying, at least. But he was grasping at straws.

The plane took another sudden plunge. The idiot cowboy in the back let out a “Yahoo!” A few other passengers screamed. Gillian kept chewing her gum and clutching Jason’s arm.

“What do you think his next move will be?” he asked.

“I’m afraid he might go after Ethan—or Ruth,” she admitted. She hated even saying it out loud.

The plane wobbled a bit, then seemed to hit an even patch. The sudden calm left Gillian feeling grateful but still uncertain.

“I just started reading
Black Ribbons
this afternoon while you were napping. It’s the only one of your books he hasn’t
paid homage
to yet, isn’t it?”

Gillian nodded. He’d lifted murders from the other five, but hadn’t gotten around to copying
Black Ribbons
. That was what Jason had meant when he’d asked what the killer’s next move might be. She thought about her latest publication—with its serial killer abducting his victims and leaving a black ribbon behind on a nearby streetlight or signpost. Within twenty-four hours, each victim was found dead—and naked, except for a black ribbon tied around her neck. Was this her copycat’s next move?

The seat belt sign went off.
“Looks like we’re through the worst of it, folks,”
the captain said over the speaker.
“Feel free to get up and move around the cabin. We’ll be starting our descent for Seattle in about twenty minutes.”

Gillian was still thinking about her copycat, and how he might be planning his next kill. She barely heard the captain’s announcement. And she didn’t notice the flight attendant coming down the aisle—or some of the other passengers who had gotten out of their seats. Gillian still expected more turbulence—all the jolts and dips, and that awful sensation of the floor dropping out beneath her.

She held onto Jason’s arm.

“What if this copycat has a disciple doing a lot of the killing?” he asked. “After all, you’ve got this killer going from one city to another pretty quickly. Maybe someone you know is pulling the strings, someone with authority and experience, an older person from that class….”

Gillian just shook her head. She was thinking of Glen with his three-pronged cane, affable Gary Connelly, and Luke Huang with his broken English and polite manner. It seemed Jason was still grasping at straws.

“There’s no one,” she started to say.

“What about your friend, Ruth? Is it possible she—”

Gillian quickly shook her head again. “No, not Ruth. That’s crazy.”

Ruth was her friend. She’d been there for her ever since Barry left. She’d been driving her to and from class for two years now. Ruth had helped her with the last four books. And she’d stood by her throughout this whole copycat nightmare, for God’s sakes. Ruth was her rock. Gillian trusted her implicitly.

Yet a sudden panic surged through her. Gillian remembered asking Ruth to take Ethan to her house—away from all the police activity around the duplex. Ruth was alone with Ethan this very minute. “It’s not true,” Gillian whispered.

Still, she felt as if the floor had just dropped out from beneath her.

Ethan missed Ruth’s dog. He’d been to Ruth’s house about a dozen times, and Eustace had always been there to entertain him. But his canine pal was still at the vet’s.

He’d never been to Ruth’s house without his mom either. It felt strange, sitting alone at Ruth’s kitchen table, trying to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She was at the stove, pouring herself her umpteenth cup of coffee for the day. They were supposed to leave for the airport in a few minutes to pick up Jason and his mom. Ethan wished they could just leave now. In the last couple of hours it had been confirmed for him that his father was dead and his upstairs neighbor had been hacked to pieces. Ethan didn’t think he’d start to feel even halfway right again until he saw his mother—and Jason.

Ruth had been asking him a ton of questions about Jason. Apparently, she must have considered him a suspect. But it didn’t make sense to Ethan that his mother and Jason were flying back to Seattle together if they really thought he’d murdered somebody.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to him was coming back here to Ruth’s house for lunch. They could have swung by a McDonald’s or Arby’s on the way to the airport. There were a lot of places to eat in the main terminal too. Why make this special side trip for a bad PB & J?

The peanut butter tasted stale, like it had been opened, resealed, and stuck back on the shelf sometime in 2005. And the milk had a bitter aftertaste. It was making him a bit nauseous. Still, when Ruth asked him how he liked his lunch, Ethan tried to be polite, and lied.

“Great, really great, thanks, Ruth,” he said, nibbling at his sandwich.

She poured some milk into her coffee and sat down at the table with him. “Listen, kiddo. You’ve had enough surprises for the day, so I’ll tell you what the plan is. We’re going to head back to your house right after this. Your mom thought it best that you not be around when they bring the bodies up from the ravine, and I quite agree with her.”

Frowning, Ethan stared at her and blinked a few times. Something weird was happening. Her voice seemed to be coming in and out of a fog.

“We’re going to hitch a ride to SeaTac with Patti,” Ruth continued. “She’s the stocky policewoman we were talking with earlier. I’ve decided some police presence at the airport might be the insurance we need to make sure nothing goes wrong. I know you think the world of this Jason fella, but personally, I’d trust him about as far as I could throw him. I’ll feel a helluva lot better about him once he’s answered some questions the police have. Anyway, you, Patti, and I will be meeting Jason and your mom at the arrival gate. On the plus side, you’ll get to ride in a police car. How about that?”

Ethan numbly glanced around the kitchen. He suddenly felt so tired. He was wondering where the dog had gone. But he knew that already. Of course, Eustace was at the vet’s. Ruth was supposed to pick him up tomorrow.

Squinting at him, Ruth leaned forward. “Honey, what’s wrong with you?”

“I’m dizzy,” he muttered, trying to focus on Ruth.

“You’re probably just stressed out—and hungry,” Ruth replied. She pushed the glass of milk at him. “Here, drink your milk. Eat.”

He sipped his milk. It still tasted funny. He stared down at the glass. “Did you—did you put something in this?”

“What are you talking about?”

Ruth got to her feet. Ethan glanced up at her. The room started spinning. “My God…” he murmured.

“Ethan?”

He felt the chair tipping out from under him. He tried to grab at the table, but he swiped at the air. He tried again, and knocked over the sandwich plate and the glass. They flew off the tabletop, and went crashing to the tiled floor.

He felt so helpless as he toppled onto the floor just a second later. He hit his head against the chair leg.

Then Ethan didn’t feel anything at all.

A woman with ash-blond hair and designer glasses was blocking the aisle. She struggled with her carry-on bag in the overhead bin while holding onto a shopping bag and talking on her cell phone. The gap in the aisle widened between her and the disembarking passengers at the front of the plane. At least thirty people were trapped behind her. Gillian and Jason were among them.

“I hate about half of the people I see on cell phones,” Jason said. He had only one foot in the crowded aisle.

Her back hunched to avoid bumping her head against the overhead, Gillian stood in front of her seat. She watched the plane empty out ahead of the woman, who seemed oblivious to everyone behind her.

Though she was dying inside, Gillian didn’t say anything. Ruth and Ethan were supposed to be waiting for them at the arrival gate. Ruth had said she was bringing the police along to question Jason about Vicki’s murder—among other things. Gillian had told Jason this, and he didn’t object. “Hey, if you think it might help the investigation, I’ll talk to the cops or anyone you want,” he’d said.

Gillian had tried phoning Ruth’s house about forty minutes ago, but no one had picked up. She told herself that Ruth and Ethan had probably already left for the airport. They were both fine—and waiting for her and Jason at the gate. She would see them in just a few minutes—as soon as this stupid woman on the phone moved her ass.

A middle-aged man behind the woman finally helped her with her carry-on, and people started moving. Jason cleared a spot in front of him, and Gillian was able to straighten up and step into the aisle.

She refused to believe Ruth was somehow behind the copycat killings. How could she even think her dear friend had orchestrated those murders? She’d told Jason he was way off base suggesting such a thing. It was ridiculous.

Of course, only two hours ago, she’d been convinced Jason was the killer. She’d even thought that in order to gain her trust, he’d
pretended
to have a daughter. Good Lord, what had she been thinking? They’d run out of suspects, and she was just so tired and frayed. The only thing that made sense to her right now was seeing Ethan again.

They stepped off the plane, and hurried past several passengers on the jetway. “Excuse me…excuse me,” Gillian said over and over again. Her tone became more anxious and edgy with each person she passed. She could see the terminal just ahead.

No one was waiting for them at the end of the jetway. She’d figured Ethan, Ruth, and the cop should have gotten beyond the security checkpoint. Ruth had said she would meet them at the arrival gate. But there was no one.

Gillian was suddenly stricken with an overwhelming dread. It made her sick to her stomach. She somehow knew—they could check the security point, the main terminal area, baggage claim, and the arrivals area outside, and no one would be waiting for them.

She wasn’t going to see Ethan or Ruth here. In fact, Gillian had a horrible feeling she might not see Ethan or Ruth ever again.

The 911 operator kept interrupting and telling her to calm down. He had an
I’m the Voice of Authority
tone, and it didn’t seem to matter to him that she’d had the police excavating two dead bodies from her backyard today. He treated her as if she were just another crackpot 911 caller. Gillian had told him about Ruth’s and Lieutenant Lynn Voorhees’s involvement in the case, and said she was worried about her son. Couldn’t he connect her to someone who
knew something?

He finally put her through to a detective, who didn’t know a damn thing about what was going on. But from him, Gillian got Lynn Voorhees’s number. Of course, Lynn Voorhees wasn’t picking up the phone. Gillian left her a message: “Lynn, this is Gillian McBride. I’m in a taxi on my way from Sea-Tac. Ruth, my son, and someone from the police department were supposed to meet us there at the airport, and they didn’t show. We had them paged and everything. Ruth’s not answering her home phone either. I know something’s wrong. We’re on our way to Ruth’s house right now. It’s—um, 816 Sixteenth Avenue. We should be there in about fifteen minutes. Could you call me as soon as you hear anything?”

Gillian left her cell phone number. Jason had given the taxi driver forty dollars to go over the speed limit. So the guy was driving like a maniac—weaving through traffic and speeding in the HOV lane on Interstate 5.

Gillian stashed her phone in her purse. “Do you have a cell phone?” she asked Jason. “Can I borrow it? I need to call 911 again, and I don’t want them to know it’s me calling back.”

With a baffled look on his face, Jason dug a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

Gillian switched it on and dialed 911. A female operator came on the line this time.

“Yes, hello,” Gillian said. “I was walking my dog on Sixteenth Avenue in Capitol Hill—near Group Health Hospital, and I heard screams and gunshots. It sounded like it was coming from this yellow house. The address is 816 Sixteenth Avenue. I thought you might send a patrol car over to investigate.”

“816 Sixteenth Avenue?” the operator repeated.

“Yes,” Gillian said. “I heard the shots just a little while ago—”

“Your name?”

“Stephanie Merchant. Could you send someone over to check it out—”

“There are officers on the scene, ma’am.”

“Officers on the scene?” Gillian echoed. “The police are already there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is anyone hurt? Can you tell me what happened?”

“All I can tell you is that there are officers on the scene.”

“I know people in that house,” Gillian said, her voice trembling. “Can’t you please tell me what happened?”

“I don’t have that information, ma’am.”

From inside the cab, two blocks away, Gillian could see four squad cars parked in front of Ruth’s house. An ambulance was in Ruth’s driveway, behind her Toyota. It was dusk, and all the red flashing lights seemed to illuminate the block.

As soon as the cab pulled over, Gillian jumped out of the backseat and ran toward the house. A stocky young policeman tried to stop her. “My friend, Ruth Langford, lives here,” she explained. “She’s got my son….”

He let Gillian pass, but ran alongside her as she hurried to the front door. Gillian almost plowed into the paramedics. They were carrying Ruth out on a portable gurney. She looked dazed, and half-dead. “Please, step aside,” one of the paramedics said. He was monitoring Ruth’s pulse.

But Ruth spotted Gillian and her eyes lit up for a second. She waved away the paramedic hovering over her. She tried to say something to Gillian, but could barely talk above a whisper.

As Gillian moved closer, she saw brown stains on the front of Ruth’s blouse. She could smell the vomit.

“I’m sorry, hon,” Ruth said weakly. “He’s got Ethan. It was the poison milk scene from
Killing Legend
, only he used some kind of sleeping narcotic.”

“Did you see who it was?”

Ruth shook her head. “Ethan drank the milk—and just collapsed. I went down right after him. I don’t know, Gill. I’m still a little out of it, I’m sorry. They pumped my stomach.” She squinted at Jason, who stood behind Gillian with his laptop case. “Are you Jason?”

He nodded.

Ruth seemed to have trouble focusing on Gillian again. “If he’s been with you all this time, he’s off the hook. It’s somebody else.”

Gillian just stared at her. She couldn’t talk.

The paramedics started pushing the gurney toward the ambulance again, but Ruth grabbed Gillian’s sleeve. “Wait,” she said, her voice still raspy. “Gill, remember what I said this morning about Jennifer hiring a detective to find Barry—eighteen months after they broke up? Why did she do that, Gill? Why?”

The paramedics continued on. Numbly, Gillian watched them load Ruth into the back of the ambulance.

A plainclothes detective with a pale complexion and receding reddish hair approached her and Jason. He said he was the officer in charge. Gillian didn’t really hear his name. Jason was answering his questions and explaining as much as he knew. Gillian watched the ambulance back out of the driveway.

She heard the detective say something about an Officer Patti Renner, who apparently had been at the duplex with Ruth this morning. She was supposed to have driven Ruth and Ethan to the airport after they’d returned from lunch at Ruth’s house. But Ruth had never come back to the duplex. When Officer Renner couldn’t get ahold of her, she had checked Ruth’s house and found Ruth unconscious. There had been no sign of Ethan Tanner.

While the detective was talking, Gillian kept staring at this one cop, who stood by himself on the parkway. He looked bored. Someone had taken her son, and this cop wasn’t doing anything. Then again, what did she expect him to do? No one had a clue who this killer was—or where he’d taken Ethan.

She couldn’t just stand here wringing her hands and waiting for the police to find Ethan. She had to
do something
. More than anyone, she knew what this killer was like. Ethan’s survival was up to her.

She thought about what Ruth had said. Why had Jennifer hired a private investigator to track down Barry—eighteen months after breaking up with him? Had someone put her up to it?

The bored-looking cop on the parkway lit up a cigarette.

Gillian kept staring at him and remembered Jennifer’s friend, April, lighting up a cigarette outside the Seattle Aquarium.

That woman knew something. Gillian recalled how April had been ready for a cigarette break, but as soon as Gillian had said she was Jennifer’s teacher, April suddenly hadn’t any time for her—or a cigarette. It made sense now. Jennifer’s friend knew about the affair with Barry.

“We talked to some of Ruth’s neighbors,” the officer in charge was telling Jason. “One of them saw a dark green SUV pull into the driveway here a little over an hour ago. We’re still interviewing other people on the block….”

Stepping away from them, Gillian pulled out her cell phone. She got the number of the Seattle Aquarium from Directory Assistance, and then called the Aquarium. After listening to the automated voice menu for what seemed like forever, Gillian finally got through to a real person. She asked if April Tomlinson was working today—and when they were closing.

April was there; and Gillian had thirty-five minutes to make it down to the Waterfront area and talk with her. This time, she was determined to get some answers.

Putting her phone away, she stepped up to Jason and the detective. “We—we have to go,” she said, taking hold of Jason’s arm. “Now, we have to go
now
.”

The detective gave Jason his card, and then he waved over the stocky, young cop—the one who had tried to keep Gillian from going into Ruth’s house. The two policemen spoke in hushed tones for a few moments. The young cop nodded, and then broke away from his superior. “I can take you wherever you need to go,” he said to Gillian.

“Can you make it to the Aquarium in thirty minutes?” Gillian asked anxiously.

The young cop nodded. “You bet.”

He led them toward his patrol car, parked near the start of Ruth’s driveway. Nearby, there was a small light post—with a shingle that had Ruth’s address number on it. The light wasn’t on. Maybe that was why Gillian hadn’t really noticed what was different about it tonight. But now, on her way to the patrol car, she saw the light post in front of her. She stopped in her tracks.

“What is it?” Jason asked.

Tears in her eyes, she stared at the post. “Ethan will be dead in twenty-four hours if we don’t find him.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because I wrote it that way,” Gillian whispered.

Tied to the lamppost, a black ribbon fluttered in the wind.

“I think she might freeze up and not say anything if there’s a policeman with us,” Gillian told the young cop as they pulled into a loading zone in front of the Seattle Aquarium. “You understand, don’t you?”

He glanced at Jason in the front passenger seat, and then at her in the rearview mirror. “Sure, no problem. I’ll wait here.”

“Thanks very much.”

Jason climbed out of the front, and then opened the door for her. It was rush hour, and the sidewalk was jammed with tourists and people rushing to make the ferry. Weaving through the crowd, Gillian and Jason hurried toward the Aquarium entrance, only to find the ticket window closed. They tried the main doors, but got no further than the foyer. The same thin Asian man who had taken her ticket a few days ago stopped them. “I’m sorry, but we’re closing in ten minutes.”

“I’m here to see April—April Tomlinson,” Gillian said. “It’s kind of an emergency.”

The ticket-taker shook his head. “You just missed her. She got some bad news this afternoon, and they let her go home a little early.”

“What kind of bad news?” Gillian said. “It’s all right, I’m family.”

“Well, I heard a friend of hers died today. A woman in New York, she’s been in a coma for a while.”

“Oh, my God, no,” Gillian whispered.