Snake Skin (35 page)

"And Ashley Yeager," Walden added.

Lucy twisted the snake around her left wrist
like a bracelet, its fake plastic tongue catching in her wedding
ring. She focused on the way the light sparked from the gold.
"Places. Fletcher needs to be grounded. Bobby Fegley told me he was
a linear thinker, saw only what he wanted to see, ignored any
flaws. Said he designed Shadow World the same way—lots of
meaningless bells and whistles, but a straight-forward story line.
He's going to have a big complicated grand design, but it's going
to boil down to familiar territory, familiar places."

"Where? Certainly not the house he
torched."

"No. Where he grew up. We'll have to search
tax records, see where Alicia lived thirty years ago, any family
property. I'll bet there were only one or two places his whole
life."

"Unlike his father."

"Exactly. Alicia would want to stay put so
Fletcher Sr could find her when he needed her. They fed on each
other, a symbiosis." Done with the snake, she coiled it so that it
was one perfect circle, eating its own tail, and threw it onto the
conference table.

"Searching records going back that far is
going to take time," Burroughs warned. "They won't be computerized.
Most of them."

"Yeah." She shook her head, pushing
unsettling images of a younger Fletcher with his middle-aged mother
from her mind. "Let's get people started on that, his phone
records, computer, and an in-depth look at his father. I need the
complete police records of his father's and Jane Doe's
homicides."

"Where are you going?"

"To talk with Alicia. Get to the heart of
the matter."

"Why are you wasting time with an old
woman?" Grimwald protested. "Probably senile anyway."

"I think maybe mommy dearest taught Fletcher
everything he knows. Maybe including how to kill."

Chapter 30

Sunday 4:22 pm

"Mrs. Fletcher, I'm here to talk with you
about your son."

"Jimmy? Is he with you? He's such a fine
boy, takes good care of his sick, old mother."

Lucy pulled one of the vinyl chairs closer
to Alicia's, now they sat knee-to-knee, facing each other even if
the old woman couldn't see her. "Mrs. Fletcher, I'm with the FBI.
My name is Supervisory Special Agent Guardino. When's the last time
your son visited?"

Alicia pursed her lips, wrinkles cascading
over her face, a caricature of an old woman searching her confused
memories. "Jimmy, is he with you?"

"No, Alicia. He's not."

"You're the Lucy he works with, aren't you?
He told me about you." Alicia smiled, her dentures slipping, then
clicking into place. "Said you let your daughter get sick 'cause
you were too busy to watch after her. I'd never let anything like
that happen to my child. My Jimmy, he was my world. A mother should
be willing to give everything for their child." Her voice dropped
to a hoarse whisper. "Even their very lives."

Lucy clamped her jaws shut. Despite the
blindness and the age and the failing body, Alicia Fletcher was
sharp and cunning. She was trying to manipulate Lucy the same way
Lucy wanted to manipulate her.

And from the surge of anger and guilt the
old lady's words had produced, Alicia had the upper hand. Lucy was
glad the other woman couldn't see her. "Tell me about Jimmy. When
was the last time you spoke?"

"Jimmy? Oh, he's much too busy to bother
with his old mother. Not with that big case he's helping you with.
Don't you know where he is?"

Cut the crap
, Lucy wanted to yell.
She restrained herself. "No. I need to find him." She swallowed
hard, forcing herself not to gag on her words. "I need his help,
Alicia. A young girl's life may depend on it."

"One of Jimmy's girls? He's had a few you
know—since I left him, had to come here. Poor boy, he gets so
lonely without his mother to take care of him."

"Have you met any of Jimmy's girls? Do you
remember their names?"

Alicia leaned forward. Her hand, soft and
doughy in consistency but wrapped in flaky, parchment like skin,
landed on Lucy's knee and squeezed. "I might. Might could remember.
None of them was good enough, not for my Jimmy. He needs a special
girl, one just like me. Is this girl you're talking about
special?"

Sudden laughter emerged from Alicia's
slit-like mouth, rattling through the room, raising the hairs on
Lucy's arms.

If she was searching for a monster, she had
found the monster's creator.

Lucy laid her own hand over Alicia's and
ground the old woman's bones together. Alicia lurched backwards but
didn't scream or call out. Instead her smile broadened into a beam
of delight. As if Lucy was playing into her expectations. And by
doing so, Alicia had won.

"I'll never help you find my son," Alicia
said, her dead eyes meeting Lucy's gaze as if they could see.

"Then let's talk about Jimmy's father," Lucy
said. She released Alicia's hand, white imprints dug into the
doughy flesh like a handprint etched in plaster. "It must have been
difficult, loving a man like that."

"My husband loved me, he was devoted to me.
Whatever he did, it was for my own good," Alicia declared, her chin
jutting forward into the air.

"Devoted to you? He left you behind every
chance he had. He slept with every pretty girl he ever met, right
up to the day he died."

"He had an eye for beauty and he indulged
it. He always came home to me."

"Not that last time. He wasn't going to come
home then, was he? He was going to leave you for good."

It was total guesswork, but Lucy knew she'd
hit close to the kill zone. The color drained from Alicia's lips,
the last remaining color on her face, leaving her shrouded in
shades of white and ash. She stared, eyes not blinking, and if not
for the pulse jumping at the side of her neck, she could have been
dead.

Lucy continued. "You'd given him
everything—your childhood, your life. Thirty years of your life he
had stolen and now he was going to leave you."

Alicia's head trembled as if palsied by her
need to deny the truth. "No. Never. It was that slut, that girl who
conned him into thinking she was carrying his baby. He would never
leave me, not for a filthy whore like her."

"Then why did you kill him, Alicia?"

Lucy had spoken softly but from Walden's
rigid stance in the doorway, she knew he had heard her. She wasn't
so certain about Alicia. The old woman had stiffened like a corpse
in full rigor.

Then she laughed again. A big, rip-roaring
belly laugh that shook Alicia so hard Lucy almost had Walden get
one of the nurses. The laughter poured forth in waves, hurled into
the air, crashing against the hushed sounds of the nursing
home.

Walden shut the door, blocking the noise,
and leaned against it. Barring any chance of escape.

Finally, Alicia composed herself, one hand
patting Lucy's thigh as she caught her breath. Her color was back,
a florid red suffused her face and neck. "You're good, girl. Do you
know you're the first person in thirty-four years that ever thought
hard enough to put two and two together? Can't tell you how scared
I was those first few months, waiting for the cops to waltz me away
in steel bracelets. But no one ever came."

"Why'd you do it, Alicia?"

"I wanted a baby. I deserved a baby. Someone
to take care of me when I got older. Jimmy's baby."

Lucy had assumed Alicia had killed her
husband and girl friend in a jealous rage while Alicia had been
pregnant with her son. Now she realized that what really happened
was far, far worse. She blinked hard, wondering if she'd heard
correctly. No, no surely….

"He took her side. Tried to stop me when he
found me with her, carving her open. Called me a stupid, fat old
cow and told me to rot in hell." Alicia rocked in her chair. Not
back and forth, not bouncing, not agitated. Instead she cradled her
arms below her shriveled, sagging breasts, a mother comforting her
child.

Her voice dropped, weighted down by the
bitter memory. "But he forgot one thing." She tilted her head up,
her grey-white eyes boring into Lucy's. "He forgot I was the one
holding the knife."

"Who was she, Alicia?"

A heave of Alicia's shoulders was her only
answer for a moment. "Harlot, jezebel. She doesn't deserve a name.
I took from her what was rightfully mine. Jimmy's baby."

Lucy tried hard not to visualize the scene:
a bloodbath, Alicia reaching into the dead or dying woman's womb,
cutting her son free...

"So then it was just you and little Jimmy.
It must have been tough, raising a son all by yourself."

Alicia shook her head, her voice dropping
into a singsong. "No. It was a joy. My Jimmy, he's my joy. My
life."

"Help me find him, Alicia. I can save him,
protect him."

"He's safe at home. No one can hurt him
there." She rocked harder, crooning a wordless melody.

"What about the girl? She might hurt
him."

"No. She won't. He said he got a good one
this time. One just like me." She twisted in her chair, fumbled at
her side for one of the photo albums stacked on the table, chose
one, and hefted it onto her lap. "Here, you tell me." Her blind
fingers traced the embossed words on the cover and then flipped the
album open. "That's me when I was fourteen, when my James saved
me."

Lucy took the album, stared at the black and
white photo with its yellowed edges. Staring back at her was a dark
haired, full-figured girl with a shy smile and down-turned gaze. A
girl who, if she'd been wearing black jeans and a sweatshirt
instead of a gingham dress with ruffles around the hem, could have
been Ashley Yeager.

"Jimmy told me he got it right this time.
What do you think, Supervisory Special Agent Guardino?"

Lucy slapped the album shut and stood. She
wasn't going to learn Fletcher's location, not from this woman. "I
think your husband wasn't the only conartist in the family. You've
been wasting my time, Mrs. Fletcher."

Alicia snatched at the book, cradled it
against her chest like the imaginary child she had rocked earlier.
"You'll never find him. Jimmy's a smart boy. Just like his
father."

Her laughter followed Lucy and Walden as
they escaped from the room.

"Are you as creeped out as I am?" Lucy asked
as she drove Walden towards Sligo. Taylor had found an address for
a Moore family that had reported a daughter missing back in 1944.
The property now belonged to an Arthur Moore, Alicia's younger
brother, a retired PennDot worker and widower.

It was a long shot, but better than sitting
around doing nothing. In the meantime, Burroughs was getting PBP to
sit on Alicia in case Fletcher tried to contact her.

Walden shrugged. "No worse than the usual
shit we see everyday."

"Guess I'm getting old, but our usual child
predator isn't this sick and twisted. I mean," she hastened to add
when she caught his sharp look, "they are warped, perverted
bastards, but they all share basically the same underlying
pathology. Once you figure out their individual take on it, it's
all the same song and dance. Come on, Walden, you've been working
SAFE crimes longer than I have, don't you think that's true?"

"Seems like whenever I start to think that
way, the good Lord throws down the gauntlet and stubborn bastard
that I am, I just have to pick it up."

"So you've seen something like this before?
A woman so warped by thirty years of loving a man who didn't love
her back that she kills him and cuts his child from the womb of
another woman in order to raise it as her own?"

"Love works in mysterious ways."

She glanced over at him, uncertain if he was
making fun of her or not. His face was its usual inscrutable blank
slate.

"You married, Walden?"

He shifted in his seat and she knew she'd
made him uncomfortable. He wore no wedding ring, but he had the air
of a man who'd been happily married. Unlike Burroughs. She waited,
not pressing him.

"Yes. To my high school sweetheart. Sheila."
His voice held a hint of nostalgia.

"What happened?"

"Four—no, it'll be five years this
Thanksgiving—she died."

"I'm sorry."

"You know how they always talk about high
blood pressure and strokes killing all us black men? Well, it's the
black women who should really be worried. Especially those with
high stress jobs like being the wives of federal agents. I was
working the Mara Salvatrucha gang that were responsible for over a
dozen executions around the DC area."

"I remember. They went on a killing spree
when we apprehended one of their leaders. Targeted federal judges,
US attorneys, trying to shut down our case."

"Tense couple of months. I got called out on
a raid night before Thanksgiving. We got the guys, did the paper
work and I went home. The lights were all on, but that wasn't
unusual, Sheila always waited up for me. Said she couldn't sleep
until I got home." He turned his head to look out the window.

Lucy shifted her weight, her back and
shoulder definitely waking up from the numbing medicine the doctor
had used. Sitting still seemed to make the pain worse, so she had
insisted on driving but now was regretting her decision as she
needed both hands on the wheel to steer around the twisting
mountain roads.

Walden made a small sound, half regret, half
grief, and continued. "Found her in the kitchen, turkey sitting on
the counter, a sweet potato pie on the floor beside her. Doctors
said it was a massive heart attack, she died instantly. They
said.

"I never could figure out how they know that
for sure, figured it's the same as when we have to make death
notifications. Always tell the family they went fast, peacefully,
felt no pain. Never give them a reason to think things might have
gone differently, that they could have done anything
differently..."