Tell Me You're Sorry (20 page)

That had been the last thing she'd heard—until now.

Another car zoomed by. But the vehicle carrying her seemed to have slowed down. From the sound of the motor and the whir of the tires, Jenny guessed it was a camper or an RV. The compartment was too warm to be the trunk of a regular car. And she didn't detect any exhaust smell. The horrible stench that repulsed her was nothing like car emissions. It was more like death.

Jenny had a feeling someone had been in this compartment before her. Either they'd died in here, or puked, or shit themselves. Whatever it was, the smell lingered.

Though her head pounded every time she moved, Jenny managed to roll over within the confines of the compartment. For a few moments, all her weight was on her hands tied behind her—and it hurt like hell. But the pinched skin and crackling wrist bones were nothing compared to how her head felt. Rolling over seemed to take forever, too, yet all the struggling was worthwhile. She was facing the other way now, and could see a thin strip of muted light on this side. Amid the blackness, it was a welcome sight.

Jenny realized a few minutes had passed since she'd heard another car. The road was rougher now, too. Pebbles crunched under the tires. The country and western radio station was breaking up. That wasn't a good sign. They had to be someplace pretty remote. On a long drive, when nothing else was on the car radio, she could always count on picking up some C&W station, clear as a bell.

Where were they? She waited and listened for the DJ to name the city they were broadcasting from, but he hadn't mentioned it yet.

Were they taking her someplace in the mountains or the desert to kill her?

No, she'd heard the woman: “. . . that's no way to talk about your plaything for the next three or four months.”

It felt like the vehicle was turning. The ride became even choppier—and she could feel every pothole in the road. It sounded like a hailstorm as gravel ricocheted against the underside of the chassis.

With a squeal, the vehicle came to a stop. The music got shut off. But the motor was still going. She heard footsteps—inside. They grew louder and closer. After a few moments, she could see a break in the line of light. He was standing right in front of the compartment.

Jenny started to shake.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang. She blinked furiously as dust and bits of debris swarmed around her. He must have kicked the side of the compartment. “Welcome to Nevada!” he announced. She heard a click, and then he let out a grunt. Jenny felt the compartment move. Wheels squeaked, and she realized she was inside some kind of tall storage drawer. Though the room was dim, it still took her eyes a few moments to adjust to the light.

They'd stuck her in a drawer—under a bed. The beige and maroon dust ruffle and spread lapped over one end of the open drawer. She was in the bedroom of an RV. Jenny could see the compact quarters, the ersatz-wood cabinets, and a small TV attached to the wall by brackets.

The man standing over her had his back to the light, and she couldn't see his face. “Well, aren't you the little contortionist, getting yourself turned around in there? I'll have to keep my eye on you. So—listen up. There's nobody within a mile of here. You can yell your head off, and no one will hear you. But I don't want you screaming, because it annoys the shit out of me. So if I take the tape off your mouth, are you going to scream?”

Gaping up at him, Jenny shook her head.

He bent over and quickly ripped off the tape. It hurt so much she almost shrieked, but she managed to hold back. Tears welled in her eyes.

At the same time, it felt good to breathe through her mouth again. And the air wasn't quite so stale and foul. “Listen to me,” she rasped, her throat parched. “I don't have a lot of money. I don't come from a rich family. My parents are dead—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, folding his arms. “We know all about you. We've been watching you, too. We just didn't get close enough to see that hideous scar. Somebody sure did a number on you . . .”

“You've been watching me?” she asked.

“Hell, I've been through your underwear drawer, sweetie. While you were out, I was in your apartment—three times. I had a real close call the other night when you came back from the store. You almost caught me in there. You've even written to me, some real intimate shit, too—about how you like long walks, and how you're looking for a compassionate man . . .”

Jenny stared up at him, and realized he was San-FranMan27. He'd used someone else's photo. He and that woman had set her up. But why? If they weren't after money, what did they want?

“You were looking for someone who likes cats,” he said. “Well, I don't. So if you're not in the mood to cooperate with me, then that cat of yours . . . What's his name again?”

“Simon,” she said.

“I won't have any problem killing Simon, and giving you his head as a souvenir. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “Please, I need to go to the bathroom—and I'm so thirsty. I promise I won't try anything. If you'll just—”

“Question, first,” he cut in. “Who knows about this date tonight? Did you tell anyone?”

“No,” she said. “Wait a minute, that's not quite true. I mentioned it to my upstairs neighbor this morning. But she's ninety years old and starting to go senile. She can't remember my name half the time.”

Jenny still couldn't quite see his face, but she could tell by his stance and the way he nodded that he seemed satisfied with the answer. She wasn't telling the entire truth. She'd also told her friend, Carroll Jordan, about the date yesterday. Carroll would probably be calling tomorrow to find out how it went. When Jenny didn't get back to her, Carroll would know something was wrong.

“I'll get you some water,” the man said. “But you won't get a sip until I have some numbers from you—starting with your ATM code, social security number, Internet server passwords, and phone codes. Then you can get water and make water. But don't expect any privacy while you're in the can, because I'll be right there watching you.”

Biting her lip, Jenny tried to push that disgusting thought out of her mind.

“We've got a long trip ahead, and you'll be spending it in that box. I'll give you a shot so you can sleep through most of it. Believe me, honey, I'm doing you a favor. You don't want to be awake in there any longer than you have to. I'm putting you in some Depends, too—just in case you have an accident in your sleep . . .”

Jenny shook her head. So he had done this before, probably with several women.

She was also thinking about how—near the end—she'd regularly changed her mother's adult diapers.

She started to cry.

He leaned in close to her. She could see his face now and the red burn marks around his eyes from the pepper spray. “Look what you did to me, you bitch,” he whispered. “It still stings, you know . . .”

“I'm sorry,” she whimpered.

“I believe you are. But just the same, I owe you, Scarface.”

He leaned in even closer until his mouth was just inches from hers. “And by the way, you belong to me now.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

“Shit,” Ryan said under his breath.

The underclassman girl at the library desk must have heard him. She was pale and skinny, with her brown hair in braids. She frowned at him.

They were the only two people in the place. School was out. But with summer classes about to start, everything was still open. Hardly anyone else was around. Ryan had passed only one person in the hallways on his way here. With half the lights shut off to save electricity, the empty corridors were a bit spooky. It was a gloomy, rainy day, too. He'd come to the library to study for his makeup exams. But for the last twenty minutes, he'd been on his iPhone, checking his e-mail.

In jeans, a black T-shirt, and sneakers, Ryan was slumped back in his chair at a long table. One of the books in front of him was his father's old yearbook. He'd brought it with him this afternoon, just in case he got another e-mail from one of his father's classmates. He wanted to put a face to each response.

He found Basinger, Joel L., among the senior class photos. The kid with the blond Flock of Seagulls hair looked wimpy and slightly effeminate. He was the only one wearing a bolo tie, which just seemed to be asking for attention—and trouble. Ryan imagined his father and Dick Ingalls making the kid's life a living hell.

With a sigh, he ran his hand over the yearbook page. Stephanie had asked him to scan and e-mail her this section with his dad's classmates' graduation photos. From the names and some research on Google, she'd managed to track down someone named Nancy Abbe on the alumni reunion committee. Then Ryan e-mailed Nancy, asking for contact information for all of his father's classmates. And oh, yes, if she had any updates about who was deceased among them, that would be helpful, too.

In a graduating class of 468 students, almost 20 were now dead. Stephanie started researching the casualties. A few of them were men who had died “after a long illness.” “That used to be how they referred to it when someone died from AIDS,” Stephanie explained to him.

Among the deceased class members, only his dad and Dick Ingalls had suffered untimely deaths along with their respective families. According to Ms. Abbe, the list was about a year old. So—Ryan and Stephanie couldn't be sure that some more recent casualties hadn't slipped under the radar.

While Stephanie had investigated the mortality cases, Ryan composed an e-mail to his father's classmates. In it, Ryan said he was creating a photo tribute to his late father. He had unearthed the attached snapshot of his father with Dick Ingalls and two other friends. Could anyone identify the other two? And did anyone have comments to share about his father?

Stephanie had thought it best that Ryan not mention that he knew the man in the red shirt was Scott Hamner. It was better to wait and see if someone else in the class knew him. Stephanie said they had to be careful. The person behind all the murders could very well have been in that graduating class. It could be someone settling an old score. Considering those boys didn't hang out together after high school, they probably knew their killer back then.

“Whoever this is,” Stephanie said. “You don't want to tip them off that you know about my brother-in-law.”

Four nights ago, Ryan had sent out the note in a mass e-mail.

Scores had come back right away: “MAILER-DAEMON. . . Returned Mail,” or “Out of Office: Auto Reply.” So far, he'd gotten about fifty personal responses. Most of them were polite. They gave their condolences. They said his father was “a good athlete,” and “very handsome,” and “quite popular.” But no one said he was nice.

In fact, one woman commented, “He was a practical joker, and could get pretty mean and cruel sometimes. I'm sure he changed as he grew older.” So Joel Basinger wasn't the only one who thought his father was a jerk.

Only one classmate recognized Stephanie's brother-in-law:

A few other people mentioned that the locale seemed to be outside New Trier's tennis courts. It struck Ryan as odd, because his dad didn't play tennis. Stephanie said that as far as she knew, her brother-in-law had never swung a racket in his life. Ryan went back to the yearbook and searched through the tennis teams—varsity and underclassmen. He scanned the faces in the group photos, looking for someone who resembled the skinny guy in the white shirt. But he didn't come up with anyone close.

He glanced at his iPhone again—at Joel Basinger's e-mail.

Suddenly, the phone rang. His ringtone of U2's “With or Without You” echoed in the near-empty library. Ryan glanced toward the desk, only to get the evil eye from the girl in the braids again. “Sorry!” he whispered to her. He clicked on the phone and hurried for the library door. He didn't even have a chance to check the caller ID. He stepped out to the dim, empty corridor. “Yes, hello?” he said into the phone.

“Ryan, it's me, Stephanie. Can you talk?”

She was always worried someone would catch on that they were communicating. She didn't even want his grandmother to know. She'd e-mailed him a photo of Lacee Roth taken before she'd met Ryan's dad. Stephanie had asked him to show it to his grandmother to confirm this was her daughter-in-law. “Just say somebody sent it to you, but you don't know who,” Stephanie had told him. A lot of good it had done. His grandmother had studied the photograph, and then handed it back to him. “Well, it sure looks like Lacee. But it's not the best picture of her. You have no idea who sent you this? You sure it wasn't that horrible woman from the funeral?”

Ryan had shrugged and said he had no idea.

Stephanie had asked him again just yesterday. “No one knows you've been talking with me, right?”

He assured her that he hadn't told a soul. But that was a lie. He'd blabbed to Billy, who thought they were both crazy not to go to the police. Ryan had tried to tell him about the lack of hard evidence and the different jurisdictions involved.

“Oh, shit, I can tell right now,” Billy had said. “This is not going to end well.”

Still, Ryan knew his friend would keep it a secret.

He leaned against one of the lockers in the row along the corridor. “It's okay, Stephanie,” he said into the phone. “I can talk. There's absolutely no one else around.”

“Well, I wanted to give you a heads-up,” she said. “I'm going to be on the news tonight, CNN and one of the networks. My attorney let me know. One of the other airlines had an emergency landing, because the co-pilot suffered some kind of blackout. It happened this morning in Phoenix. Anyway, they're running a clip of me from two weeks ago, lumping both stories together as part of a—a recent bad trend in aviation or something. Must be a slow news day. This interview with me was right after I came down from the drug. According to my attorney, the way I'm talking in the clip, it sounds like paranoid gibberish.”

“Okay,” Ryan said tentatively. He wasn't sure what any of this had to do with him.

“I just thought you should know,” she explained. “I don't want you seeing me on the news and thinking you're in cahoots with a major loon. Plus, if your grandmother or any of your friends see it, you can't tell them what we're doing—”

“I know that,” he said. “We already talked about that, Stephanie. And don't worry, I haven't told anyone.” He felt bad lying to her.

“Good. That's why I haven't come there to work with you. Whoever is behind this, they've figured out I'm on to them. There have already been two attempts on my life—and one of them while I was staying in your hometown. If they find out we're working together, you and your grandmother could be in danger. I've put you in enough potential hot water by having you send that e-mail to your father's graduating class—”

“Hey, that was my idea, don't forget,” Ryan cut in.

“I'm sorry. It's just that back on Thanksgiving night, when I wasn't sure what was happening to my sister's family, I sent a neighbor girl over to their house. If the killers had still been there—well . . .” She sighed. “It was reckless of me. This poor girl was the one who found them dead. I keep thinking I'm doing the same thing all over again with you. I'm putting you in harm's way so I can figure out what happened to my sister and her family . . .”

“My family got killed, too,” Ryan whispered. “You're not forcing me to do anything, Stephanie. So quit apologizing. In fact, your timing's pretty good. I just got another response from one of my father's classmates.”

“Did they tell you anything? Anything new?”

“Well, he made it pretty clear he thought my father and Dick Ingalls were a couple of a-holes. I'm inclined to believe him.”

“Forward the e-mail to me. Anyone with a bone to pick—justified or not—is a suspect.”

“Will do,” Ryan replied. “Anyway, the guy couldn't identify anyone in the photo except for my dad and Dick. He said he thought the picture was taken by New Trier's tennis courts.” Ryan glanced down the dim hallway and sighed. “You'd think at least one of these people could identify that skinny guy in the white shirt. Do you suppose he was from out of town—like your brother-in-law?”

There was no response on the other end.

“Stephanie?”

“My God,” she said. “I'm so stupid. Everyone's telling us this is the tennis court at the high school. But Scott visited the Ingalls only during the summers . . .”

“So—why would they be at the school?”

“Exactly,” she said. “This picture was taken in the summer. Do you think it's at a public tennis court?”

“Well, Dick Ingalls wasn't on the tennis team. And we know my dad and your brother-in-law didn't play tennis. Why would they—”

“They're at a country club,” she interrupted. “They're not on the tennis court. They're just standing outside it—probably by the club's pool or the refreshment stand.”

Ryan thought of the photograph—so embedded in his brain. “You're right. It's got to be at some country club. The guy's goofy white shirt, it's part of his uniform. He wasn't someone from the high school—or any school nearby. That's why no one recognized him.”

“The three friends were all from pretty well-to-do families,” Stephanie said. “And here's this kid working at a country club, taking orders from them and their fathers. He could have built up a lot of resentment . . .”

Ryan was thinking about the e-mail from Joel Basinger. He wondered if there were any more like him. How many classmates hadn't e-mailed, figuring if they didn't have anything nice to say about his dad and Dick Ingalls, why respond at all?

“He's smiling in the picture,” Ryan said. “Do you think it's possible he was part of their clique?”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe he secretly hated their guts.”

“I guess we shouldn't jump to any conclusions about him just yet,” she said.

“But he knew them at the time when they were hanging out together,” Ryan pointed out. “You talked about someone settling an old score. Well, maybe my dad, your brother-in-law, and Dick did something to really piss somebody off. They all stopped being friends by the end of senior year, we know that much. If something did happen, it was over that summer—when this guy knew them.”

For a moment, she didn't say anything. “Listen,” she said at last. “Find out from your grandmother if they belonged to a country club or if Brent ever spent time at a country club with Dick. I'll see if Scott's mother knows anything. If we can figure out which country club it is, we might be able to find out from their employee records about who this kid was. Maybe we can track him down.”

“Okay, but we—” Ryan hesitated. “We need to consider a possibility . . .”

“That he's already dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, dead or alive, right now, he's all we have to go on.”

 

 

After Ryan hung up, he wandered back into the library to collect his books.

“Oh, there you are,” the girl behind the desk said. “I wasn't sure if you were coming back or not. We're about to close.”

Ryan nodded. “Sorry, didn't mean to hold you up.”

“You didn't,” she said.

He gathered his books. “Well, thanks a lot. Have a nice night.”

She gave him a shy smile. “You're nice.”

Ryan let out a surprised little chuckle. “Well, thanks, so are you.”

“No, I mean it,” the girl said. “You're a big football jock. You don't have to be nice to people, but you are.”