Stranger in the Room: A Novel (45 page)

“Man, this is good. I didn’t think I’d ever eat cake again after seeing the remnants of the creepy birthday party,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

He checked his watch. “We have to be there in an hour. Then I’m taking the rest of the day off. How about we order in tonight, find some chick flick, and process our feelings?”

“Sweet talker.” I smiled and glanced at Hank the poodle. Just outside the glass doors, he was licking a cup of doggie ice cream. His new leash was wrapped around a bicycle rack. Rauser had thrown away his old leash and collar and bandanna and hit the pet store for a new look for Hank. “I really can’t believe you adopted a serial killer’s dog,” I mumbled, my mouth full of cake.

“Oh come on, Street. Poor dog didn’t know the guy was a freak.”

“You held him up like a toddler this morning and baby-talked him, Rauser. I don’t know if it was endearing or just … alarming.” I took another bite of cake so moist and dark it was almost black. “Also, White Trash is
not
happy.”

“It’s gonna take three months to rebuild my house. They’ll get used to one another.”

“He was dry humping my foot in bed last night.”

Rauser took a greedy bite of chocolate cake. “That was me,” he admitted. We both laughed. Life was back to normal. Our normal, anyway. “Listen, Keye, I been thinking. You and me, we get along pretty good. And I love you and all. Why don’t you marry me and make it official. I promise to love you and make sure you get to shoot somebody now and then. We could get old in rocking chairs.”

I set my fork down. “We could talk about all our aches and pains.”

Rauser nodded. “And how all our friends have died off.”

“I could help you to the bathroom, ’cause you know you’re a
lot
older than I am.”

Rauser smiled. We were quiet for a minute.

“That sound like fun to you?” I asked.

Rauser frowned. “Not so much. Forget I asked.”

I leaned over and kissed him. “I love you, Aaron Rauser.”

We left Avondale Estates and drove through Decatur toward Midtown. We were quiet. Hank was lying across Rauser’s lap. Rauser parked in front of a little redbrick building near the power station off Monroe Drive.

“We’ll be waiting,” Rauser told me. “I think Hank misses the freak. We need to talk it over. He’s kinda mopey.” He squeezed my fingers. “Hey, it’ll be okay, Street. It’s like riding a bike.”

I pulled open the glass door and saw a table with foam cups, a commercial coffee dispenser, a couple of boxes of doughnuts. Jon stood at the front of the small room. I hadn’t seen my sponsor in two years. He smiled, held out his hand for me.

I walked past rows of gray folding chairs, turned and looked at twelve complete strangers. “My name is Keye. I’m an alcoholic.”

  
Acknowledgments

T
o everyone at Random House, thank you for your hard work and support, for your faith in me, for your dedication to and love of words and books. And for just being so darn nice. Special thanks to Libby McGuire, Sharon Propson, Lindsey Kennedy, Randall Klein, Susan Corcoran, Kristin Fassler and Ania Markiewicz, Kimberly Hovey, Theresa Zoro, Denise Cronin, Kelly Chian, Benjamin Dreyer, Carlos Beltran, and Toni Hetzel. Thanks also to Amy Brosey.

Kate Miciak, you are my rock star editor, the better, brighter half of my brain. I’m very sorry to tell you I’m preparing another shell of a book for you. And, of course, you will be expected to whip it (and me) into shape. And, of course, you will.

To my superhero agent, Victoria Sanders, and to everyone at Victoria Sanders & Associates, I love you guys! Chandler Crawford and Angela Cheng Caplan, thanks for everything you do and for the gentle nudges that helped me get this done.

I’m so grateful to Benee Knauer, my friend, first reader, and advisor. You are simply the best!

Huge thanks to the following professionals for so generously sharing your time and putting up with all those emails and phone calls: Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Dawn Diedrich; Dr. Jamie Downs, Coastal Regional Medical Examiner for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation; GBI Special Agent Lanny Cox; Brent Turvey,
MS, forensic science; Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit Sergeant Liane Lacoss; Lesley Slone, forensic psychologist; Mitch Holland, director, forensic science, Penn State University, and founder of Forensic DNA Consultants; Gabriel Gates; Angie Griffin and Dragonfly Copters; and Betsy Kidd of Blue For You, Inc.

And finally, to my friends who so graciously offer the names I love and allow me to have my way with them, thank you. Belated thanks to William LaBrecque for playing a bad guy in the last round.

A
MANDA
K
YLE
W
ILLIAMS
is the author of
The Stranger You Seek
. Williams is currently at work on the third Keye Street thriller,
Don’t Talk to Strangers
.

AmandaKyleWilliams.com

If you enjoyed
Stranger in the Room
,
read on for a taste of

Don’t Talk to Strangers
,

the electrifying third novel by
Amanda Kyle Williams
featuring Keye Street

  
PROLOGUE

S
he
was going to make a lot of noise. He could tell by the way she moved, the attitude, the way she spoke to her friends, the way she carried herself. The ring-leader. He could spot them. Some guys, they like the mousy ones, the ones with their little heads down. Not this guy. He liked them smart. He liked the struggle. And the fear. Not just theirs.
His
. The pounding drumbeat in his ears, the way time stretched like a piece of elastic, pulled until it snapped into a few astonishing seconds of utter terrifying pandemonium—fighting, biting, screaming, his skin under their sparkly nails. He liked that too. It was a way inside them.

He pulled a sandwich from a brown bag and took a bite of the bologna and mustard sandwich he hadn’t got around to at lunch, washed it down with a freezing-cold Coke, the kind in the small green-glass bottles from the machine in front of Smith’s Hardware.

He leaned his back into the bench for a little bird-watching. And the chicks were out today. Same time. Same route. Same chatter shooting up over the breeze as they crossed the park. Nothing he could make out, just the high-pitched peaks of girls’ voices stabbing happily at an otherwise serene day.

They would split off in twos soon, head for their own neighborhoods and families and homework and dinners. But she’d walk alone almost a quarter-mile that took her through a strip of woods and down a gravel lane to the empty ranch house with the white fences—a latchkey kid on a quiet stretch of road.

He finished his sandwich, dusted off his hands, and dropped the bag in the trash bin. He didn’t hurry. There was plenty of time. Today the sun felt good against his back as he walked to the car. Today was all about the planning, how it would go, what he’d say, how her smile would beckon him, beg him.
Take me. Take me
.

  
1

I
squinted
through about a million tiny crystal-like dings as the late-day sun landed on my windshield. I’d been sitting here for an hour. Waiting. I do that a lot. I had an address and a hunch. That was about it. That’s about it most of the time.

My name is Keye Street. I am a detective, private, a bail recovery agent, a process server, and a former criminal investigative analyst for the FBI. And when I say former, I mean fired. Capital F. The Bureau likes their profilers sober.

I dropped the doughnut in my hand into the green-and-white Krispy Kreme box on the passenger’s seat and peered through the smoggy, yellow-brown dusk of another hot August night. The house, like the others on the street, had been stamped out sometime in the ’60s with a builder’s cookie-cutter eye, a starter home—one-story brick, two bedrooms, one bath, a thrity-six-inch picture window to the right of the front door, bedrooms on the left end, a quarter acre of grass with poured concrete driveways. The trees that must have been saplings when the neighborhood sprang to life now shaded the street and rooftops against the unflinching southern sun. But they didn’t do anything to take the steam out of the air. So like most neighborhoods this time of year, the whir of condensing units fighting to push cool air through the ductwork was the background music.

I let the sun sink lower, slipped out, closed my car door quietly, and headed down the sidewalk. Four doors down, I veered left and worked my way along a driveway lined with droopy hydrangeas. They looked like they could use a drink. I knew the feeling.

A light clicked on inside the house, and I saw him through the uncovered picture window. He was standing in his living room, a Styrofoam box in his left hand, a remote control in the right, facing a television that was too big for the room. I edged closer to the house, saw him push back in his La-Z-Boy. On the big TV, the Braves were playing the Dodgers at Turner Field. There was a ’69 Dodge Charger in the carport, orange and black. The muffler needed a little work. He’d rumbled past me a few times this week. Hot vehicle, though, if you have an eye for muscle cars. I do. I’d grown up with them and the guys who drove them hard on Friday nights in Georgia.

I moved around to one of the bedroom windows. The house looked empty except for Jeremy Coleman. I was hoping his bail-jumping brother would be here. Ronald Coleman was charged with shooting a man while stealing his car in the parking lot of a Krystal Hamburger joint. He then held up the drive-thru for five cheese Krystals and an order of fries while the car’s owner staggered through the lot begging for help. Great guy, that Ronald Coleman. Coleman’s court date must have slipped his mind. A little thing like aggravated assault with the intent to kill, armed robbery, and carjacking can do that. I’d been watching Jeremy on and off for the last week hoping Ronald would show up. The family history told me the brothers were close. It was Jeremy Coleman who had pulled together ten percent of the $140k the state required for the bail money. Not easy for a working-class guy with a two-stall garage and a Monday-Friday classic auto restoration business. I was betting if anyone knew where Coleman was, it was his little brother, Jeremy. About a week ago I would have bet the burger-eating creep would have shown up by now. So much for hunches.

I passed overgrown shrubs to a weedy backyard with grass tall enough to have gone to seed, the perfect environment for the mosquitoes to come out to play. Nice and dark and moist. I held on to a brick ledge and tiptoed to see inside the back bedroom. Jeremy slept in the front, I knew. If he had a guest, this would serve as the guest room. The bedroom door was open and just enough light seeped in to let me know the room was empty. The bed was made. Everything looked exactly like it had the other five times I’d peeked inside. My hands and neck were stinging. Mosquitoes like dark clothes and dark hair too. I had both.