Terrified (31 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Terrified
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Megan gazed down at her niece.
Candy stared back up at her with dead eyes. The color had drained from her face. Blood from the slash across her throat soaked her long curly ponytail and the top of her T-shirt. Crimson puddles had formed around her arms, and made a trail to the tub’s drain. Candy’s mouth was open—in an astonished look that had been frozen in death. Her hands were folded on top of her stomach. Obviously, someone had arranged them that way. Just a few inches above her hands—on the bib of her overalls, between her breasts—the cell phone twitched and lit up as it continued to play the tune.
Megan stood there, paralyzed. The phone stopped ringing, only to start again just moments later. That was when she noticed the number on the illuminated caller ID screen.
It was Glenn calling.
Cringing, Megan finally tucked the gun back into the waistline of her jeans. Then she reached for the phone, plucking it off her slain niece’s chest. She clicked it on, but didn’t say anything. She just listened. She could hear someone breathing on the other end.
“Go ahead and have a bite,”
the woman on TV was saying.
“Isn’t it delicious? Have you ever tasted chicken so tender and flavorful?”
With the phone to her ear, Megan turned away from the tub and retreated toward the bedroom area. “Glenn?” she whispered, no longer able to keep silent. “My God, how could you do it? How could you do that to your own flesh and blood?”
There was no response for a moment. Then she heard that low, gravelly voice: “I should have made her tell you to come by at four-thirty. It would have given me time to cut her up.”
Megan didn’t say anything. She leaned against the bathroom doorway, and tried to keep from getting sick.
A click on the other end of the line was followed by that squeaking noise, and she knew it was the tape recorder again. There was another click, then Candy’s voice, shrill and panicked:
“Josie, that blond woman you saw me with at work earlier, the one with the bandage around her hand—she’s my Aunt Lisa, you know, the aunt who’s supposed to be dead. But she’s alive. She lives here—in Seattle… .”
“Wait—wait a sec, Candy,”
another voice chimed in.
“You—you’re not making any sense. You’re telling me that woman today—she’s the woman who got killed years ago, the one married to your uncle?”
Megan listened intently. Somehow, he’d managed to record a telephone conversation between Candy and a coworker.
“Yes, that’s her,”
Candy said.
“She goes by the name Megan Keeslar now, and she’s crazy. She came back to the shop and forced me to leave with her. That’s why I never returned from my break—”
“Are you bullshitting me? C’mon, Candy, what is this?”
“Listen to me! She’s locked me in my bathroom. She’s gone now, but I swear to God, I think she’s coming back to kill me. I don’t know what to do… .”
“If you’re serious, why are you calling me? Why don’t you call the police?”
“I’m scared! Oh, I—I think I hear someone… .”
Megan heard another mechanical snap, and then his guttural voice again: “It’s three-fifteen. That conversation took place almost a half an hour ago. Candy’s phone has been ringing and ringing ever since. Wasn’t she convincing? Wasn’t she a good little actress? She was very cooperative. She did everything I told her to do—right up until I slit her throat.”
“Who are you?” Megan whispered. “You’re not Glenn. He wouldn’t have murdered his own niece.”
“Smart girl,” he replied. “You’re right. He had me do it for him. And now you need to do something for Josh. You need to hold on to that phone I left for you. From now on, it’s how I’ll keep in touch with you. That phone is your lifeline to Josh. Don’t lose it.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“You don’t have time to ask questions, Lisa,” he said. “Just listen. Remember how I said I’d kill Josh if you went to the police? Well, the same rule applies if the police come to you. And they’re coming for you, Lisa. If Candy’s friend hasn’t called them already, I will as soon as I hang up here. ‘I heard screams from a loft on Leary Way,’ I’ll tell them. I’ll give them the address, but not my name. Did you recognize the knife I left for you in the elevator? It’s from your kitchen. If it didn’t have your fingerprints on it before, it does now. The knife might have looked clean when you touched it, but the blade has Candy’s blood on it now. I saved some in a little vial. Don’t bother trying to find the knife anywhere around the building, because you simply don’t have the time. The police will find it soon enough. But you can’t let them find you—or else Josh will meet the same fate as his cousin in the bathroom.”
With the phone to her ear, Megan headed to the window. She moved the mini-blinds and glanced down at the street. If just minutes ago he’d tampered with the knife and planted it somewhere around the premises, he couldn’t be far away. She looked for a man on his cell phone, walking from the building. But she didn’t see anyone like that. Megan noticed several pedestrians in the general vicinity. Two of them were on their cell phones, both women. None of the others looked like they could have been her man.
“If I were you, I’d stop looking out the window,” he said. “I’d run. I’d get out of there now. You run, keep running and stay hidden. You know how to do that, Lisa. You were very good at it for a while fifteen years ago. Just remember, your only link to your son is that phone in your hand.”
She heard him hang up, and the line went dead.
Megan anxiously studied the cars parked across the street. But from her vantage point, she couldn’t tell if anybody was sitting inside one of them. She kept waiting for a vehicle to peel away, but they all remained perfectly still. She didn’t see the silver SUV among them.
In the distance, past the noisy TV, she heard a siren. The police couldn’t be responding to his call already. Then again, maybe he was right about Candy’s coworker friend. Perhaps she’d called them. If she had, Candy’s friend had probably given the police a complete description of her—along with
both
her names.
Megan shoved the cell phone in her sweatshirt pocket. Wiping her eyes, she hurried out the door and shut it behind her. In the hallway, she found the stairwell door. As she raced down the stairs, Megan tried not to think about Candy, otherwise she’d fall apart. The police would be after her soon, and she had to disappear. She wondered if she’d left in too much of a hurry. Had she forgotten something in Candy’s apartment that might have been of use to her?
Megan kept running down the gloomy staircase—one flight after another. She reached the first floor, and caught her breath before opening the door an inch. She peeked into the empty lobby.
Her footsteps echoed against the old hexagon tiles as she darted for the door. Heading outside, she forced herself to slow down. As she crossed the street for her car, she could hear the sirens again. They didn’t sound so far away anymore.
With the device on her key chain, Megan unlocked the car. She climbed inside, started the engine, and slowly pulled into traffic.
She told herself there was nothing she’d left behind in Candy’s apartment that might have helped her. She started thinking about Candy when she’d been a teenager, when they’d been pals and confidantes—especially her last summer in the Chicago area. Candy had been like the kid sister she’d never had. Megan couldn’t help it. The tears started to come back.
But she tightened her grip on the steering wheel and kept driving. There was nothing—and no one—back there to help her anymore.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE
I
n the mess that had spilt from her purse onto the floor of the car’s passenger side, Megan found her hairbrush, compact, and lipstick. She gave her face and hair a quick touch-up in the car while parked in the lot for Bank of America’s Eastlake branch. She didn’t want to walk in there looking disheveled and desperate.
She stashed the gun under the car seat again, and then refilled her purse. Stepping out of the car, she pressed the automatic lock device on the key chain and started toward the bank. Megan took a deep breath before pulling open the glass door and heading inside. She had her purse strap over her left shoulder, and hid her bandaged hand behind the satchel. If she hoped to remain anonymous for the next twenty-four hours, she had to come up with some ways of concealing that hand.
She eyed the different cameras mounted on the walls as she strolled over to the table at the center of the bank. On one side of her was the counter—with a glass partition for the four teller stations. On the other side were three mini-offices with windows. Each one of the desks had someone seated at it.
Megan took a withdrawal slip and filled it out. She wondered just how efficient the police were. If they had her name, had they already tracked down her address and bank account information? She’d find out soon enough.
One thing she’d learned from when she’d disappeared fifteen years ago was that she couldn’t leave a credit card trail for the police or anyone else. She’d have to exist on cash only for the next day or two. She prayed she’d have Josh back by then. But she couldn’t be sure. She filled in the withdrawal amount for forty-five hundred dollars. It would practically clean out her savings.
With the slip, her bank card, and her driver’s license in her good hand, she approached one of the teller windows. The clerk smiled at her on the other side of the glass. A handsome Asian man in his twenties with a modified buzz cut, he wore a red shirt and a skinny, shiny black tie. “How’s your day so far today?” he asked, collecting the slip, card, and license in the pass-through slot under the glass.
“Oh, it’s been a little crazy,” Megan replied. She watched the smile fade from his face as he studied her cards and the withdrawal slip. “I’m buying a used car, and I thought I could pay with a check, but the owner is insisting on cash.”
“A cashier’s check might be a better way for you to go, Megan,” he said.
“I’m sure it’ll be okay. The seller is a good friend of my brother’s. I’ve known him for years. I don’t think he’s trying to rip me off.” Her eyes wrestled with his. “So—that’s why I need the withdrawal in cash. Is there a problem?”
With a tiny frown, he glanced at the slip again, then at her, and then over her shoulder. “If you could hold on a minute,” he said, suddenly very businesslike. “I just need to get authorization for an amount this size.”
Megan nervously drummed her fingers on the marble counter. She watched him walk down to one end of the teller section, where he stepped through a door and across to one of the offices. He spoke to a stocky woman with short, frosted brown hair and designer glasses. Megan figured she was the manager. The teller showed her the license and bank card. The woman glanced up and her eyes met Megan’s across the room.
Megan quickly looked away—at the cameras, then at another customer by the next window, then at the clock, which said 4:10. Finally, she stole a glimpse at the bank manager again. With one hand on the teller’s arm, the woman spoke so closely to him that Megan thought she might be whispering. The teller nodded soberly. As he started to leave her office, the manager shot another look at her, and then reached for the telephone.
The clerk made his way back to his window in the teller area. “Thanks for waiting,” he said. He slipped her license and bank card back into the pass-through slot under the glass partition. “How would you like that? Are hundreds and fifties okay?”
She nodded. “And about five hundred in twenties, please.” She glanced over her shoulder again. The manager was still on the phone, and for a second, their eyes met. Megan turned to the teller. “My brother’s friend—ah, he’s selling the car at a group garage sale, and I may end up buying some other things.”
“That will leave just over seven hundred dollars in your savings,” he said, reaching for a stack of twenties. “Would you like a balance today?”
“No thank you.”
He seemed to take forever counting out the twenties—and then the hundreds and fifties. Meanwhile, something was going on in the manager’s office, because she’d gotten off the phone, and now one of the other bankers and another teller were in there, consulting with the woman. Megan could have sworn they kept looking past the office’s window divider at her.
“… thirty-nine-f ifty … four-thousand … four-thousand-fifty…” the clerk was saying.
Megan started nervously drumming her fingers on the countertop—until she caught herself doing it and stopped. She noticed a line had formed in the roped-off area behind her. She also noticed the distant wail of a siren.
The teller heard it, too, because he paused in his count and glanced over toward the bank’s glass doors. Then his eyes met hers for a second and he went back to counting out the money. “Forty-two-fifty … forty-three…”
The siren sounded louder and louder as it drew nearer. Megan was almost certain it was coming down Eastlake. If it wasn’t the police zeroing in on the bank, maybe they were headed for her duplex—five blocks away.
“Would you like a big envelope for this?” the teller asked.
Distracted, Megan watched an ambulance zoom down Eastlake. She let out a sigh, and turned to him and nodded. “Yes, that would be great, thank you.”
He loaded the stacks of bills into a large manila envelope. It barely fit through the pass-through slot. “I hope you enjoy your new car, Megan,” he said.
She thanked him. Turning for the exit, she stole another glance at the bank manager. The woman was on the phone again, and staring back at her. Megan couldn’t help wondering if the police were waiting outside for her in the bank’s parking lot. She stashed the manila envelope in her purse. Heading toward the glass double doors, Megan felt like she was walking right into a trap. With her limited view of the parking lot and the street, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Traffic on Eastlake was moving at a normal speed.
She pushed opened the door and stepped outside. There wasn’t a cop or a patrol car in sight.
Megan let out a sigh of relief. Her legs felt wobbly as she headed toward the Taurus. By tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest, the police would have figured out she worked at Destination Rent-a-Car, and they’d have information on the make, model, and plates on this car. She’d have to ditch it someplace—far from where she planned to spend the night.
There were still some more hoops to jump through before that. She still had to go home and pick up some things before the police got there—if they weren’t there already.
 
 
Cruising down her block five minutes later, Megan didn’t see any police vehicles. But for all she knew, there could have been an army of unmarked cars lying in wait for her. She passed the duplex and saw her blue Neon in the driveway and the living room curtains open. Everything was just how she’d left it this morning. That seemed so long ago now.
Before turning down the next street, she checked the rearview mirror. There was no sudden burst of activity. No one came out of hiding; no policemen darted out from behind trees or parked cars. Everything looked quiet.
From the side street, she pulled into the alley behind her duplex. She parked in a spot that was always empty across the way and two apartment buildings down. Megan kept glancing over her shoulder as she hurried up the alley. Then she let herself in the back door.
She didn’t waste any time. She quickly ducked into the laundry room and grabbed a big shopping bag from Macy’s. Hurrying upstairs, she made a beeline into the bedroom and over to her brass bed. The sage-colored, brocade-patterned bedspread was still slightly disheveled from when she’d fallen asleep on top of it two nights ago. Using her shoulder and her good hand, she bent forward, and shoved the entire bed to one side. She reached beneath a section of the beige shag rug and found a folder she’d kept hidden there ever since moving into the apartment. She’d had it well-hidden in the last apartment, too. She’d had the folder ever since she’d left Winnetka. She quickly checked the contents: one thousand dollars in cash and two fake driver’s licenses that Bob Gold had made for her—on the off chance that she might have to stop being Megan Keeslar for a while. She remembered Bob saying he hoped she’d never have to use them.
She tossed the folder into the Macy’s bag—along with a change of clothes and underwear. Silly as it was, she stashed the photo album in there, too. She thought about the Nordstrom box on the top shelf in the back of her closet, but she couldn’t afford to take anything from her old life with her. Photos of Josh were more important.
In the bathroom, she took a few overnight things from the medicine chest.
She stopped by Josh’s room, and stood in the doorway for a moment. She grabbed his orange jacket from his bed and stuffed it in the bag. On his wall, Josh’s framed plaque from the mayor caught her eye. But she passed it by and headed for the door. She took one last look at his room, and prayed he’d be back in there soon, sleeping in his bed.
But everything would be different by then. Even under the best-case scenario, Josh would know the truth about his father—and her. She might not have to go to trial for Candy’s murder, but she’d be facing a number of charges—including fraud, forgery, and obstruction of justice. If she was lucky, the jury and judge might take pity on her, and she’d end up with a suspended sentence—but only if she was lucky.
With the bag in tow, Megan headed downstairs. In the living room, she stopped to look out the window. She focused on the two small condominiums across the street—and the five-story, early eighties apartment building behind them. The man who worked with Glenn—the same monster who had slit Candy’s throat—had obviously taken temporary residence in one of those buildings. How else could he have had such a close, unobstructed view into her living room? Megan’s bet was on the tall apartment building. It had a lot more units; so it would have been easy for him to blend in, and come and go unnoticed. She knew about such things.
Megan was studying the darkened windows of the building’s top floor when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. A police car turned up her block. Its flashers were on, but there was no siren. Obviously, they didn’t want to announce their arrival. Megan quickly glanced in the other direction. A second prowler was blocking the other intersection. Its red strobes were on, too.
Megan turned and ran for the back door, slowing down only as she opened it and peered up and down the alley. The police hadn’t cordoned it off yet. She hurried to the car, tossed her bag and purse on the passenger side floor, and then started up the engine.
Biting her lip, she slowly drove up the alley and turned left. She checked her rearview mirror. The patrol car was now parked at that intersection, too—so her whole block was cut off. Another cop car was crawling up behind it.
She turned right onto a shady, one-lane road along Lake Union and a series of docks for houseboats. She started to pick up speed and hoped the police hadn’t blocked off all the side streets in the area. After three blocks, Megan took another right and cruised up the hill toward Eastlake. She didn’t see any patrol cars, but she stole a look down the block as she passed her street. In the distance, she spotted several red strobe lights flashing.
She also looked up at that five-story building. She’d have to come back and talk to the manager, and ask about any new tenants along the top two floors. But she couldn’t do that now.
Right now, she had to get as far away from there as she could.
 
 
“C’mon, c’mon, please, God,” he murmured.
Crouched down in front of the bathroom door, Josh managed to wedge the rusty metal rod past the lip of the built-in drawer. If he could just get to the latch on the outside, maybe he could yank the drawer out and crawl through the opening. He’d already tried kicking at it. He’d waited until they were having one of their symphony sessions up there—so they wouldn’t hear the noise past their music. But with his bare feet, he’d only been able to get in a few hard kicks before his heel had started to hurt like hell. After several tries—and only a faint dent in the drawer—he’d given up.
He’d finished the rest of that big Nestlé Crunch bar—even though some of it had landed on the grimy bathroom floor. He’d decided the five-second rule didn’t apply to starving prisoners of psychopaths. He’d also guzzled down both bottles of water. He wasn’t sure how long ago those goodies had been delivered. It had seemed like at least a day ago. But maybe it was just a few hours. Either way, he was hungry and thirsty again.
At least he had a blanket in which he could huddle for warmth, and he had light.
The light had briefly gone out a while back. It had all happened so fast that Josh still wasn’t completely sure what they’d done. First there had been the footsteps, someone coming, and a lock clicking outside—then suddenly, Josh was engulfed in total darkness again. A panic swept through him. He heard a click, and then the door swept open. The two people in the doorway were silhouetted by a light in back of them. They both wore ski masks. One of them had a knife. Josh reeled back, almost tripping over the toilet.

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