Terrified (33 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Terrified
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But going back to her old neighborhood tomorrow seemed too risky. Just a few hours ago, the police had the entire block cordoned off. They’d be watching the area for the next few days.
She thought about the rented Ford Taurus, and how they would have to inspect it at the garage at Destination Rent-a-Car once it was returned. Megan saw herself with a clipboard, encircling the vehicle, checking it for scratches and dings. She watched someone pop the trunk open. But it wasn’t one of her coworkers or the mechanic from the garage. It was Glenn in his surgical scrubs. “Look at this,” he said. Then he covered his face with a surgical mask, and nodded at something in the trunk. Megan gazed at three bundled-up, sealed garbage bags. “That’s what’s left of Josh,” she heard Glenn say.
Gasping, Megan bolted up in the bed. She glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand: 5:06
AM
. She realized where she was, and that she’d been asleep for a few hours—though not exactly a peaceful sleep. Had she screamed? She wasn’t sure. What if the person in the next room heard a scream and called the police? She listened carefully for some activity next door, but heard nothing.
Finally, she switched on the light, and shuffled in to use the bathroom. In the mirror above the sink, Megan almost didn’t recognize her own reflection. She’d forgotten about the bad haircut and the dye job.
She staggered back into bed and switched off the light. Her heart was still racing from that awful nightmare. She kept thinking about the Garbage Bag Murders and that gravelly-voiced man on Saturday night. Had it been that Lyle person the police had been looking for in connection with Cheryl Hardee’s death?
She’d thought she recognized Glenn’s cologne on that man. She’d thought she felt Glenn’s hand in the brutal way he’d struck her. But maybe she’d been wrong. After all, Glenn had been in prison when those Seattle-area women had been dismembered and stuffed in trash bags. Glenn wouldn’t have slit the throat of his only niece—even if Candy was partially responsible for his arrest. Megan thought of the man with the affected gravelly voice, making her strip for him. He’d lost that raspy tone when he’d started talking dirty to her, and she’d realized he wasn’t Glenn.
The digital clock on the hotel nightstand said 5:37
AM
, and Megan was wide awake.
She realized her estranged husband may have had something to do with Josh’s abduction. But someone else seemed to be in charge now, someone who had gone haywire. Maybe it was the same someone behind the murder of Willow Dwyer and those five Seattle women.
And now that butcher had her son.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO
R
membr 1996.
It was the temporary screen name of whoever had emailed her the
Chicago Tribune
article about the discovery of a human skull on a Glencoe beach. Obviously, he’d wanted her to know they’d found Willow Dwyer’s head.
He’d also wanted her to remember 1996.
Early this morning, Megan had stepped out for coffee and a newspaper. They’d had an article about Candy’s murder at the bottom of page one of the
Seattle Times.
Megan’s driver’s license photo had run alongside a picture of Candy. She’d graduated from person of interest to murder suspect.
It had also been a leading story on the local morning news, and they’d made the connection to Josh now. They’d shown footage of him receiving his award from the mayor, and talked about how Seattle police were searching for both Josh and his mother. Sitting on the unmade bed in her cheesy hotel room, Megan had started sobbing. That clip of Josh had made her cry the very first time she’d seen it, but looking at it again had been devastating.
Anyone else watching the story must have wondered about this awful woman who had killed someone and then taken her sweet, handsome, “good citizen” son on the lam with her.
One solace, the police were looking for Josh, too. She’d have some help from them. Someone might remember seeing Josh early Sunday morning, and they’d report it. Maybe the police could get a good lead on his whereabouts before it was too late. Was that too much to hope for?
Megan moved over to the desk, where she had some Lamplighter Inn stationery, a pen, and her cell phone from work. The turquoise and brown paisley drapes remained shut and the TV was on mute. Megan tried to remember everything she could from 1996, and scribbled some notes.
1996 – Events
 
•MARRIED GLENN—friends of Glenn’s … JJ? Enemies of Glenn’s?
 
•CLIFF DIED—months in hospital, Doctors & Nurses. Cliff’s first MD … Dr. Siler? (FIRST NAME?) Did JJ beat him up? Left hospital … Nurse’s NAME????? Didn’t like u, Glenn & Cliff. Left hospital, too … (STACEY? TRACEY?) Did JJ or Glenn get to her? Travis … (LAST NAME?) sick sister, bad crush on u, seemed to hate Glenn … LAST NAME??????
 
•YOU DISAPPEARED & MOVED TO SEATTLE … Who could have tracked u here? How?
 
•WILLOW MURDERED—If Glenn didn’t kill her, someone else set him up. Did Willow have family or another boyfriend (besides Glenn)? Someone u didn’t know in 1996, but he knew u. Maybe u know him now … DAN LAHART? Someone from work? Someone u didn’t know in 1996 could have followed you out here then—and you wouldn’t have recognized him …
 
James “JJ” Jordan
Dr. Siler (first name?)
Travis (last name?)
Dan Lahart?
Megan could see Dr. Siler or the intense, troubled Travis wanting to even the score with her for any misery she may have caused them back then. Both had seemed to disappear rather suddenly, which was odd, considering one had had a job at Northwest-Evanston, and the other had had an ailing sister there. Dr. Siler had been severely beaten, and she’d rejected Travis. But she couldn’t imagine either one waiting all these years to exact their revenge—and such a damn excessive revenge at that. She also couldn’t imagine Glenn teaming up with either Siler or Travis. Finally, why would either one of them want to kill Willow Dwyer?
They didn’t seem to fit the sadistic-killer profile the way JJ did. And it was quite possible that Willow had a boyfriend or some secret admirer who had murdered her, someone Megan didn’t know in 1996. Maybe he’d switched the object of his obsession—from Willow to her.
“Eliminate some of these suspects,” Megan muttered to herself. Hunched over the desk with the pen in her mouth, she stared at her notes. The coffee had gone cold.
She wondered if there was some way to get into hospital records at Northwest-Evanston for information on Dr. Siler—and for Travis’s last name. She thought of Cliff’s favorite nurse, Melissa Gable, who had sent her a very touching sympathy card after Cliff’s death. Megan still had it tucked away in that Nordstrom box. She remembered Melissa lived in Evanston, but didn’t recall the street name. How likely was it that Melissa still lived there? How likely was it that she still worked at Northwest-Evanston?
Megan grabbed her work cell phone and dialed directory assistance, area code 847. “Can I have the phone number for Northwest-Evanston Hospital, General Information, please?” she asked. She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten o’clock in Chicago. She told herself to get ready for a long, probably fruitless quest to track down Melissa.
She didn’t think she’d get much help from the woman in Human Resources, who sounded half-asleep when she answered the line. “Hi,” Megan told her. “I’m trying to track down a nurse who was on your staff in the late nineties. Her name is Melissa Gable.”
“Hmmm, please hold,” the woman said.
“Moon River” serenaded her while she was on hold. Megan glanced over toward the muted TV, and saw her driver’s license photo on the screen again—and then footage of Candy from her interview last week. They were repeating the news story from earlier. Now they showed Josh receiving his award from the mayor.
“Intensive Care, nurses’ desk,” the voice broke through the Mancini music. “This is Melissa. Can I help you?”
“Melissa?” She hadn’t counted on being connected with her.
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“Ah, Melissa, hello, I—I’m trying to get some information about a doctor on staff when I was a patient there about fifteen years ago… .”
“Wait a minute, I know your voice,” she murmured. “Who is this?”
Megan hesitated. “You couldn’t possibly—”
“Lisa?” she whispered. “My, God, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“How—how in the world did you know?”
“You were on the news this morning,” Melissa explained. “It’s all over the papers, too. They said you were alive. I couldn’t believe it. Where are you? Seattle? You aren’t here, are you?”
“No,” Lisa answered. “I—well, it’s probably best I don’t tell you anything. I don’t want to get you into trouble—”
“It’s all they’re talking about here at the hospital.”
“What are they saying?”
“Just what’s on the news—that you killed your niece. And now they think you might have murdered Willow Dwyer, too.”
Megan hadn’t heard anything about that last part. The Seattle news hadn’t picked it up yet. For a moment she was dumbfounded, and all she could do was shake her head. “Well,” she said finally. “Aren’t you—aren’t you going to ask me if it’s true?”
“No,” Melissa replied. “Because I know you could never do anything like that.”
“Thank you, Melissa,” she murmured.
“I also figured out why you faked your own death—to get away from him. The son they’ve talked about on the news, he’s Glenn’s?”
“Yes,” Megan admitted.
“Then I can’t really say I blame you for never coming forward to get Glenn off the hook.”
“Really? That’s nice, but I think yours would be the minority opinion on that.”
“Hey, I used to work in the emergency room at Cook County Hospital. Among the domestic abuse cases they wheeled in, most of the time, the sons trying to protect their mothers got the worst of it. No, I don’t blame you one bit. You were looking after your son. I know you must be a good mother. You were a wonderful sister to Cliff.”
Megan felt tears in her eyes, but she held them back. “Thanks,” she said, past the lump in her throat. “Listen, I can’t tell you much beyond the obvious. I’m in trouble—and so is my son, Josh. I’m hoping you might be able to remember a few things from fifteen years ago. It could be a real help, Melissa.”
“I’ll do my best,” she replied. “But I’m here at the nurses’ desk—and people are starting to mill around. Let me get someone to fill in while I take this in the back room. I’m putting you on hold, okay?”
“Okay,” Megan said. “Thanks, Melissa.”
She listened to an instrumental version of the Beatles’s “And I Love Her.” She actually felt a certain reassurance about things for the first time since Josh had been abducted. Melissa understood, and wanted to help her. She wasn’t so alone after all.
But as the Beatles tune wound to a close, Megan started to wonder why it was taking so long. Was it possible that Melissa—with the best of intentions—was getting in touch with the Evanston Police—or the FBI? Megan imagined them telling Melissa to keep the suspect on the line, so they could trace the call. Would they be able to locate where the caller was on this cell phone belonging to
Destination Rent-A-Car, Seattle, WA
?
“Memories” from
Cats
took over for the Beatles song. Megan thought about hanging up before the police put a trace on the call. But then she heard a click, and Melissa came back on the line. “Lisa, are you still there?”
“Yes,” she said, apprehensively.
“Okay. Sorry to leave you hanging. I’m in the nurses’ office right now, and no one’s here. So—talk fast before someone comes in.”
Megan hesitated. If the police were trying to trace this call, Melissa would have been instructed to keep her on the line as long as possible. Instead, Melissa was telling her to talk fast. Megan felt bad for not trusting her more. “Do you remember Cliff’s first doctor, Dr. Siler?” she asked. “Do you recall his first name?”
“Oh, yes,
Mister Personality—
or rather,
Doctor Personality.
That was
Joel
Siler. He was kind of full of himself. Last I heard, he moved to St. Louis and ran into some trouble with a malpractice suit. That wasn’t long after you disappeared.”
On some Lamplighter Inn stationery, Megan scribbled down,
Dr. Joel Siler, St. Louis.
“One of the nurses on Cliff’s floor seemed to like Siler a lot,” Megan said. “Stacey Something …”
“Oh, yeah, her. She wasn’t here long.”
“Do you remember her last name?” Megan asked.
“No. She was on a different shift. I never got to know her. If it’s important, I can ask around and keep it casual, not mention your name. There are some other old-timers here who might remember her.”
“It’s okay,” Megan replied, hunched over her notes. “Stacey left rather suddenly—and so did Siler. I remember Siler was mugged only a few days before he quit working at the hospital. Do you know if anything like that happened to Stacey?”
“I heard she was fired, but I have no idea why.”
“What about Siler and the mugging? Do you think Glenn might have arranged that?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Well, that was the scuttlebutt around the nurses’ station at the time. Joel and Glenn weren’t exactly fans of each other. They’d butted heads on a few occasions before you ever came on the scene. In fact, the year before, Glenn’s car tires got slashed in the parking lot, and everyone said it was Siler’s doing. Anyway, if you’re feeling somehow responsible for Joel getting mugged, you shouldn’t. What’s this got to do with the trouble you’re in?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Megan admitted, leaning back in the hotel chair. If this bad blood between Glenn and Dr. Siler had been going on that long, it didn’t make sense Siler would ever work with Glenn to go after her. Siler’s feud was with Glenn, not her. “Do you know anything about this malpractice suit after he moved to St. Louis?” she asked.
“I can’t help you with that one, sorry.”
Megan glanced at her notes again. “Do you remember another patient on Cliff’s floor, a young woman? She had a teenage brother named Travis… .”
“Good God, Lisa, that was fifteen years ago.”
“She was there a long time. She was just down the hall from Cliff. Her brother used to hang around… .”
“Cassie … Cassie McClaren,” Melissa said. “She had—ah, a kidney problem that developed after an untreated injury. She fell down some stairs or something. The brother had a crush on you, I remember that.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“Well, Cassie got transferred to a different floor,” Melissa said. “She died shortly after that. It was around the time you and Glenn got married.”
“I had no idea,” Megan murmured. She remembered asking Melissa for updates on Cassie’s condition after the transfer. “Why didn’t you tell me that she died?”
“Well, you’d stopped asking about her,” Melissa said.
“Oh, I feel horrible… .”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Melissa sighed. “You had a lot on your plate. You were getting married, and Cliff was so sick. Plus you hardly knew her. You only knew her through the brother, who was crazy about you—crazy with a capital K.”
Megan wrote down:
Travis McClaren … Cassie McClaren (RIP).
“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Travis was pretty intense.”
“You want to hear the really bizarre part?” Melissa said. “He ended up inheriting several million. And I hate to burst your bubble, but he didn’t carry a torch for you too long. Just a few months after you disappeared—when everyone thought you were dead—young Travis got himself married… .”

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