Terrified (8 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Terrified
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Megan numbly gazed at the screen. What had happened to Jade might have been a shock to the veteran Seattle cop, but the news story was all too familiar to her. In fact, for a moment, she hoped against hope that the incident repeated what had happened on the Chicago’s North Shore almost four years ago. Was there a chance that Jade had faked her own abduction? Was she still alive—living in another city or state with a new identity? Maybe it had been some other woman whose severed body parts had been discovered.
No
, Megan told herself. It was no mistake. Not this time.
This time, they’d found the head.
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
Seattle—Saturday, June 30, 2001
 
“
H
ey, Lisa!”
She automatically glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t recognize the voice. It was someone behind her in Fireworks Gallery, a shop crammed with arty-kitschy home décor, cards, and jewelry in the Westlake Center downtown. Her stomach tightened up in knots.
Once in a while it still happened. Even after four and a half years, she hadn’t quite trained herself
not
to react to that name. Squeezing Josh’s hand, she nervously glanced around—until she saw it was a young man calling to a pretty girl behind the counter.
“Ouch, Mommy, you’re hurting,” Josh whined. He pulled his hand away, and then reached for a marble paperweight on a glass display shelf.
“What did I tell you earlier?” she whispered, pulling at his arm. “I said not to touch anything in here.”
He wriggled free, and then repeatedly poked her thigh with his finger. “You’re in here, and I’m touching you.”
“Smart guy,” she muttered, grabbing his hand once more.
“You said we were gonna see fireworks!” he protested loudly.
“I said we’re going
to Fireworks
,” she whispered. “It’s the name of this store. And didn’t we agree that you’d talk in your quiet voice while we’re here? If you can’t behave yourself, well, then you just might not be ready to stay up late Wednesday night and watch the
real
fireworks over the Space Needle on July fourth. You think about that.”
He pouted and said nothing. He was such a cute little boy, and usually so sweet. This morning she’d dressed him in a green polo shirt, plaid shorts, and navy-blue tennis shoes. But his disposition today didn’t match his adorable appearance. He’d been cranky while she’d shopped at Bon-Macy’s for shoes for him. She’d also bought him some clothes. Later, at the Clinique stand, he’d been fidgety, pressing his face and nose against the glass counter display while she’d purchased some cosmetics for herself. And he’d complained that he was hungry when they’d ventured to Fireworks in the mall next door for a string of decorative chili pepper lights to jazz up her kitchen.
From across the store, she stared at them now—lit up and on display with other strings of novelty lights. They dangled from a rack near the store’s entrance from the mall. Megan didn’t try for a closer look, because a uniformed cop stood by that same entrance. He seemed friendly enough—a handsome, cinnamon-skinned thirty-something-year-old with a shaved head. Holding his police hat in his hand, he chatted amiably with the stocky, baby-faced blond security guard.
That was another thing Megan hadn’t gotten used to after four and a half years. She was still nervous around policemen. She constantly drove under the speed limit for fear of getting pulled over. Every time she heard a police siren while behind the wheel, it sent her into a panic. She hadn’t had any brushes with the police since moving to Seattle, and she intended to keep it that way.
She thought about Jade again, dead for over a year now—her murder still unsolved. According to the newspapers, the boyfriend had been a suspect, but only briefly. Megan had wanted to call the police and tell them a similar murder and dismemberment had occurred in the Chicago area only four years before—way too similar, as far as she was concerned.
But the police would want to know who she was. Even if she’d made an anonymous call from some phone booth across town, they’d know a woman in Seattle had information about the murder of
Mrs. Lisa Swann
. She couldn’t risk linking that name to a person in Seattle—even the most anonymous of persons. What if it got back to Glenn?
It had been so unnerving, because she’d just started to feel safe. From what she’d discerned, no one knew who she really was. No one was looking for her here. She had a beautiful little boy, a decent job, a sweet basement apartment, and a nice group of acquaintances. She’d deliberately made sure none of them ever got too close. She’d created this anonymous, detached, comfortable, safe existence for herself and Josh.
Then one of those acquaintances was murdered—with her body parts divided up and distributed in garbage bags. Megan couldn’t help thinking poor Jade had been killed that way by someone who wanted the supposedly dead Lisa Swann to know he was very close.
It was hard not to imagine that Glenn might somehow be behind it all.
She’d gone online and looked up
Dr. Glenn Swann
on
Google.com
. The search engine had been new to her at the time. As far as Megan could tell, Glenn was still incarcerated at Stateville Prison in Illinois.
She’d turned to Google again, typing in the words:
Garbage bag murder, dismemberment.
She’d been stunned by the first page of search results. Almost all the coverage concerned a serial killer from 1977, who preyed on dozens of gay teenagers and soldiers. He shot them and left their remains in garbage bags along the highways or in the deserts of California. There was a 1992 case in Costa Mesa, California, of a woman chopping up her husband and disposing his body parts in garbage bags. Megan read about two teenage girls, dismembered and found in garbage bags in a park in Tampa, Florida, in 2000. Finally, there was the 1995 case of Becky Mae Palin, a seventeen-year-old from Federal Way, whose dismembered body was found in two trash bags in a ditch along Highway 410 near Mount Rainier National Park. So Jade wasn’t the first person in the Seattle area to end up that way.
Three accounts of Jade’s death had been on the second page of the Google listings—and just one search result focused on the apparent murder of Mrs. Glenn Swann from years before. There had been pages and pages of other listings, which had only proved to Megan that what had happened to “Lisa Swann” and Jade Honeycutt wasn’t all that uncommon.
Was it possible Jade’s death had been a tragic coincidence?
With some uncertainty, Megan had decided to believe it had been.
She’d stopped getting her coffee at Café Z. She was worried the police might want to talk to her if they found out she’d spoken with Jade the day she’d been abducted. Megan wondered what had happened to her name and phone number on that napkin she’d given Jade. The very last time she’d glimpsed Jade, the pretty barista had been shoving that napkin in her apron pocket. Why hadn’t the police found it?
Maybe Jade had thrown it out before the end of her shift that day. Megan couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything. She lived in this constant state of uncertainty. She was always looking over her shoulder. Even this morning, as they rode the bus downtown, she’d kept studying the other passengers. Based on nothing but a sixth sense, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them.
That same uncertainty was what now kept her from going anywhere near the novelty lights display—and the nice-looking cop who stood in the entranceway.
“Can’t we go?” Josh announced—to practically everyone in the crowded shop. “I’m hungry!” He took a step back and bumped into a display shelf full of frames, almost knocking it over.
Megan quickly pulled him toward her. “You’re skating on thin ice, mister,” she growled. “What is with you today anyway? You’re usually such a good boy. I’m really disappointed in you, Josh.”
He stuck his thumb in his mouth and sheepishly stared at her.
With a sigh, Megan glanced toward the store entrance again. The policeman was gone. She was so relieved and so ready to go—she didn’t even bother to look at the lights. Pulling Josh by the hand, she hurried out of the store and into the crowded mall.
 
 
“Honey, turn around and eat your chicken nuggets,” she said—over the din of people eating and gabbing. Neil Diamond’s “Cherry, Cherry” played on the sound system at the food court on Westlake Center’s third floor. The glass-enclosed pavilion might have provided the illusion of being outside—if not for the noisy echo. To give the bustling, crowded atrium even more of a circus atmosphere that hot summer afternoon, a trio of jugglers demonstrated their skills over near the escalators. All handsome college-age guys, they were dressed in matching blue tees and khaki shorts. One juggled different fruits; another worked with various-sized bottles, while the third juggled a shoe, a baseball glove, and an alarm clock. Then they’d start mixing up all the objects, tossing them to each other at a frenzied pace. They’d attracted a mob, including Josh—until Megan had dragged Mr. I’m Hungry off for some lunch.
The shortest line had been for a place called Hobo’s. The illuminated sign had a cartoon of a happy tramp eating a Hobo Burger. The seemingly bored, pimply faced teenager behind the counter had dished out nuggets and fries on a paper plate for Josh, while Megan had grabbed a plastic container of salad from the cooler for herself. She’d carried everything on a plastic tray to a nearby orange Formica table—with attached bucket-style seats.
Her big mistake had been thinking that since Josh loved McDonald’s McNuggets, he’d go crazy for the Vagabond Chicken Tenders. He’d quickly gulped down most of his chocolate Shantytown Shake and picked at his Freeloader Fries, but hadn’t even tried one piece of chicken.
“It’s not McNuggets!” he protested, snarling at the crispy, brown chicken chunks spread over half of his paper plate. “It’s not in the box, so it’s not McNuggets!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, it looks and tastes exactly the same,” she countered. Every meal with him lately was like a debate on
The View
. “C’mon, kiddo,” Megan pleaded. “Eat a few of your chicken nuggets, and we’ll go look at the jugglers again, okay?”
With a sigh, he made a big production out of picking up one chicken chunk, touching it to his lips, and wincing. “Gross,” he muttered. He tossed the nugget back on his plate. Then he shoved the plate toward her, knocking over her Diet Coke. The soda spilled over half the table.
Megan sprang to her feet. “Oh, for the love of …” She threw some napkins on the puddle of Diet Coke, then glared at him. “That’s it. No jugglers for you—”
“But it was an accident!” he cried, with a kick at the underside of the table.
“I don’t care,” she shot back, grabbing her purse. “I’m getting more napkins. Lord, what a mess. Don’t you move a muscle, do you understand me? We’re headed home after this, and when we get to the bus stop, you’re having a time-out.”
He glared up at her. But his lower lip started to quiver, and tears came to his eyes.
Megan turned and hurried to the condiments station, where she grabbed a bunch of napkins from the dispenser. Threading through the crowded tables, she made her way to the water fountain and wet a few napkins. Megan started back toward her table, but suddenly stopped dead.
Had she gotten turned around somehow?
She didn’t see their table. She didn’t see Josh.
Megan glanced around to make sure she was in the right place. Yes, there was Orange Julius. Their table was close by. Why couldn’t she see Josh? She suddenly felt this awful pang in her gut. It was hard to breathe.
She spotted their table—the tray, the paper plate of chicken nuggets, a half-eaten salad, and brown soda-soaked napkins on the tabletop. The seat next to hers still held shopping bags from Bon-Macy’s. The other two seats across the table were empty.
Josh had been sitting in one of them just moments ago.
Panic-stricken, Megan glanced around. “Josh?” she called out, then louder: “JOSH!” She spotted two teenage girls at a nearby table. They sat across from one another, each girl with a huge soft drink container in front of her, both of them on cell phones.
“Excuse me,” Megan said, tears stinging her eyes. “Did either one of you notice the little boy who was just here at this table?”
One girl turned away and kept talking into her phone. The other sipped her soda from a straw while holding the phone to her ear. Barely glancing up at Megan, she shook her head.
“Look who I’m asking,” Megan muttered. “Thanks for nothing… .” She wiped her eyes and anxiously glanced around again. “JOSH!” she yelled. “JOSH KEESLAR!”
She saw people seated at several tables look up with annoyance. Shoppers passing by frowned at her as if she were crazy. Megan looked toward the escalators, where the jugglers still had a crowd around them. Josh had been enrapt by them earlier. Had he gone over there?
Grabbing her bags, she hurried toward the jugglers. She kept hoping to see him among the mob that had gathered around them. Where else would he have gone?
“JOSH?” she screamed, “JOSH KEESLAR! JOSH, HONEY?” She frantically made her way through the crowd—toward the jugglers. She must have distracted the fruit-juggling guy, because he fumbled, and a cantaloupe landed on the floor. Several people groaned in disappointment. The other two young men stopped juggling. Suddenly everyone was staring at her.
“My son’s lost,” she heard herself say—in a shaky voice.
“Josh?” one of the jugglers called out. “C’mon, Josh, your mom’s looking for you!”
Megan called out his name again. She saw people in the crowd actually glancing around for him, trying to help. She also heard somebody snicker, “Stupid bitch can’t keep track of her kid… .”

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