Sue (12 page)

She quickly chose a couple pairs of
argyle socks for her dad and hurried to the checkout stand, leaving Melvin with
mouth agape.

Smiling triumphantly, Sue took her
packages and headed toward the door into the Mall proper.

Just as they were stepping outside,
Melvin stopped. He slapped his coat pockets and looked around his feet.

“What?” Sue asked.

“I lost a glove. Promise not to
move from this spot and I’ll backtrack to see if I can find it.”

“I’ll wait in the bookstore.” Sue gestured
to a store two doors down “I want to get my mom a couple of books and my dad
some magazines.”

It wasn’t too long before Melvin
was beside her once more. “Did you find it?” Sue asked.

“Right here.”
Melvin held out both gloves.

“Good for you,” she joked. He
seemed extremely pleased with himself.
He’s so funny.
“Ok. Let’s go buy
my gun.”

At the sporting goods store Sue
chose a 9 mm
Glock
.

“Is this a gift or for you?” the
clerk asked.

“It’s mine. Why?”

“Well, this gun has quite a kick.
It might be too much for someone as small as you.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve been shooting
one all month. But thanks for your concern.”

As Melvin pulled into Sue’s
driveway he asked, “Are your parents going to have a fit over the gun?”

“Nope,” Sue said.

“No?”

“I have no intention of letting
them know I have it. Now stay put. I can get inside on my own.”

“Alright,
alright.”
Melvin held up his hands in surrender but he was smiling.

That evening at supper, Sue quizzed
her folks. “How much are you paying Will for Melvin to take me around?”

The fork stopped halfway to her
father’s mouth. “Not that much. Why?”

“Well, it seems like an unnecessary
expense.” Sue kept her voice casual.

Frank gave Linda a look and slipped
the food into his mouth. He chewed slowly and swallowed before laying the fork
aside. “Susan, it’s worth it. That kidnapper probably won’t come back around,
but you never know. We want to keep you safe.”

Kidnapper?
Her dad’s persistent denial always gave her a small rush of shame.

“We’re not worried about the money,
Sue.” Her mom pressed a palm to her cheek and Sue could see the subject upset
her.

Holding up her hands, Sue relented.
“Okay. It’s fine. Melvin can stay. I was just curious is
all.
”

Her mom looked relieved. “Well,
that’s all settled then.
More meatloaf, dear?”
She
pushed the platter toward Sue before turning to her husband. “Now, tell us
about your day, Frank. Did you get those parts in your boss was so worried
about?”

Sue let the conversation flow over
her while she ate, though her mind was elsewhere.

A beautiful snow fell on Christmas
day, dusting trees and houses with a thick layer of white. Looking outside, Sue
smiled in satisfaction. It would be a good day.

Along with presents from her
parents, Sue opened the tiny box Melvin had given her. Inside she found the
necklace she’d admired at the mall. She flushed in pleasure and wondered if
he’d opened the package containing the socks she’d supposedly bought for her
aunt.

The day passed pleasantly enough.
After dinner, Melvin called from Kansas,
where he’d gone for the holidays, to thank her for the gift. “I love the
socks.” There was a smile in his voice. “Was Aunt Murielle very disappointed?”

“Crushed.
But I’ll make it up to her. I have my eye on a set of wrenches.”

“There is no Aunt Murielle, is
there?”

“No.” Sue chuckled. “I made her
up.”

“I suspected as much. I’m not a
detective’s assistant for nothing.”

“Yep, can’t fool you.” Sue rolled
her eyes,
then
grew serious. “Melvin, I really like
the necklace. It was very thoughtful of you.”

“I almost bought the one you didn’t
like, you know, as a joke. Then I decided that really wasn’t very funny.”

“What you did was perfect,” she
assured him and could almost hear him blush over the phone. “When will you be
back in town?”

“I’m flying back in two days. I
love my relatives, but I’m ready to be home.”

They talked a bit about what they’d
had for dinner and the other gifts they’d received. After that, conversation
fell off and they soon hung up.

Sue wrote in her journal and then
spent several hours on her computer in her quest to track down Zeke.
Ian,
she corrected herself. These searches always left her feeling down, almost
dirty. But she couldn’t stop. On impulse, she typed in Ian and got
148,000,000 results
. Typing Zeke into the search engine
garnered a mere
4,940,000 hits.
She’d known it would
be useless, but she’d had to try.

She reverted back to her usual
habit of scrolling through reports of missing women. The name of a town
screamed out at her.
Merlington
,
Missouri. That was one of the last towns
she and Zeke had passed through. It was outside
Merlington
that Zeke had dug up the head of one of his victims, Daisy
Swak
,
and shown it to Sue. Fingers trembling, Sue clicked and opened the page. An
assistant librarian had gone missing weeks earlier. Sue typed in her name, Anna
Blythe, and performed another search. There were a few entries, among them, a
website obviously set up by her worried family with contact numbers for any
information. Tears filled Sue’s eyes as she stared at the young woman’s image
on the screen.
A round cherubic face, more cute than pretty,
long auburn hair, and brown eyes crinkled at the outside corners by a sweet but
slightly crooked smile.
Like a fist to the gut, Sue instinctively knew
this girl no longer lived. Or if she did, she wouldn’t soon.

She sprang to her feet and looked
out the window, twisting her hands. Taking a deep breath, she returned to the
computer and searched to see if Anna Blythe had been found and Sue somehow
overlooked it in the entries. But it appeared that neither Anna nor any remains
matching her description had yet turned up.

Now Sue was on fire. She spent the
rest of Christmas day on her project, only getting up every so often to use the
bathroom or stretch her muscles. There were so many missing people! It was
astounding. She found reports that ranged across the country. She decided to
focus on the area where she’d last seen Zeke. Hours later, she discovered
something that made her skin crawl. Another woman had gone missing shortly
after Anna Blythe; this time in Edison, Kentucky,
another town Zeke and Sue had gone through. Diane Swanson, realtor,
mid-thirties. Sue stared at her image. Light brown hair, close-mouthed smile,
chic hairstyle. She’d left to show a property and never returned to her office
in Edison. A chilling thought occurred to Sue.
Zeke’s
killing his way back to me!

She strained to remember the towns
they’d traveled through on their road trip, her thoughts skittering around her
head like a handful of teeth thrown across a tile floor. Reason soon prevailed
and she calmed herself. Just because women went missing in those two towns did
not necessarily mean the disappearances were connected, much less related to
Zeke. Coincidence, that’s all. Nonetheless, she printed out the pages and added
them to her growing file.

Two days later, Sue had an
interview with an insurance company for a secretarial position. She left having
secured the job and grinned at Melvin as she approached the car. “I start the
first Monday in January.”

He put the car in gear and pulled
into traffic. “That’s pretty quick. You won’t be able to give notice on your
other job.”

“I know. But I don’t care. I’ll be
glad to be out of that place.”

“I thought you liked your job.” He
signaled to turn.

Sue tensed up. “Why do you care? I
don’t have to explain myself.”

“Not asking you to.
Just making an observation.”
He kept his voice calm, but Sue
could tell she’d hurt his feelings.

“Look, I’m sorry, Melvin. The truth
is I just don’t like some of the club members. Plus, I hate working nights.”
Sue looked out the window and sighed. “But I suppose you’d better take me there
now so I can at least tell them I’m leaving.”

“Will do.”
He drove her to the country club.

Ms. McCloskey frowned at Sue over
her desk. “We don’t have time to hire a replacement and New Year’s Eve is our
busiest night! Can’t you at least work that night?”

Sue squirmed. “No, I don’t think
so. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

The woman looked down at the
schedule on her desk. “I suppose I can get Gary
to fill in, but he doesn’t know much about bartending. Maybe he can wait tables
or something. You’re really putting me in a bind.” She rubbed her forehead with
a manicured finger before fixing her gaze on Sue. “You haven’t been here long.
This isn’t going to look good on your resume.”

“I don’t have much of a resume yet
anyway,” Sue said quietly, hating this confrontation. She wished she’d gone to
Martin instead. It would have been easier to tell him since he seemed to like
her. She rose to leave. “I’ll bring in my uniforms next week.”

Ms. McCloskey stood too. “Yes,
well, good luck to you.”

“Thanks.”

Sue hurried to the car and got in.

“Well?” Melvin asked.

“It’s done and I’m glad.” Sue took
a deep breath. “I didn’t get paid much anyway, though I’ll miss the tips.”

On New Year’s Eve, Sue slouched in
front of the television and watched the Times Square
ball fall in New York. She
wondered who Zeke was kissing to bring in the
new year
.
Her dad had the night off and was asleep in his easy chair. Her mom had
volunteered to work a shift at the supper club and wasn’t home yet. On the
bright side, Sue was relieved that her feet no longer hurt and her side hadn’t
bothered her in a long time.

When she crawled into bed shortly
before
one a.m.
, Sue made a resolution
to get an apartment. Home didn’t feel the same to her anymore. She could thank
Zeke for ruining that, and for tainting her feelings for her parents. Things
that used to be easy and mindless were now tricky and prone to go wrong in
unpredictable ways. A new place would make her feel better, a place where she
could control the environment.

Chapter 18

Sue carried the last box out to her
car, her mother following closely.

“Honey, you know you can come home
anytime.” A tear trickled down her cheek. She removed her glasses and wiped
them on the hem of her blouse. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”

“It’s time I had a place of my own,
Mom.” Sue maneuvered the box into the trunk and shut the lid. She reached out
to hug her mother. “It’s not like I’m going across the country. I’ll be a
ten-minute drive away. Stop worrying.”

Her mom sniffed and then released
her. “I’ll try. But it’s hard to think of you living all by yourself. Your dad
and I wish you’d wait.”

“I’ve waited long enough already.”
Sue patted her mother’s shoulder and got into her car. “I’ll call you every
day. And I’ll come over a lot. You won’t even know I’m gone.”

“I’ll know,” her mother whispered.

A lump rose in Sue’s throat as she
closed the car door. She gazed at her mom standing by the driveway in a print
dress and her usual light sweater, shivering in the cold.

Panic threatened deep inside her,
but Sue choked it down. She was leaving a safe environment, striking out on her
own, and it was frightening. But living around her parent’s constant concern
made her feel like she was under a microscope. It interfered with her progress,
even her therapist said so. It was time she grew up.

Sue rolled down her window. “Look
at it this way,” she said, “you and daddy can get back on the same work shifts
now and spend time together.”

“Oh, I think we’re fine like we
are, for a while yet anyway.”

Sue knew they wanted to remain
available at all hours. They’d even gotten cell phones, entered the modern age.

“Well, I’d better hurry; Daddy’s
probably wondering what’s taking me so long to get there.”

“Okay, honey.” Her mom smiled sadly
and waved.

Sue shook her head as she backed
out of the driveway and headed toward her new place. It was a lucky find. The
rent was reasonable, utilities included, and the location was close to work and
shopping. She was ready to begin a new phase of her life.

A short time later, Sue unlocked
the front door and tossed her keys on the coffee table she’d bought from a
thrift shop. “I brought food,” Sue hollered over the sound of her dad’s
electric screwdriver.

His head peeked from the bathroom
door. “Did you say food? Let me wash up and I’ll be right there.”

Sue looked around while she waited.
She was pleased with what she saw. The apartment was small, but freshly
painted, clean. Her dad had already hung the blinds in the living room. She’d
chosen wide-slatted horizontal blinds in a light wood-grain to match the trim
and they looked good against the beige painted walls. The furniture was
second-hand, but it was decent and she’d selected it herself. No one would
choose for her again. A sense of pride almost broke through her usual grim
demeanor, but receded before she could fully experience it. Twisting the hem of
her shirt, she sighed. She and Dr. Camden had more work to do. Then she pushed
aside the soft weight of melancholy. This was her new home and she was
determined to be happy here.

“What’s for lunch?” Her dad
interrupted her thoughts.

“I picked up sandwiches from
Subway. You can have either turkey or beef and I’ll take the other.”