The Last Victim (15 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

BOOK: The Last Victim
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“How do you know?” Bridget asked.
“I got curious and looked into it,” he replied. “I talked to the cops and the coroner. Fuller Sterns had a gun in the car with him—along with a bottle of bourbon. It was smashed up from the accident. There was booze everywhere—except in Fuller’s bloodstream. The coroner told me. Fuller was sober at the time of his death.”
Zach glanced back at the coffin near the front of the church. “So where was he going at two in the morning with a gun and a bottle of bourbon in the car?”
Bridget kept thinking about the accident occurring on Garrett Road, so close to Brad’s house.
“I talked to Fuller’s neighbor yesterday,” Zach continued. “This lady would have put Gladys Kravitz to shame. You know, the busybody on
Bewitched?
Her windows look right across to Fuller’s house. And ‘not that she makes a habit of minding other people’s business, but she couldn’t help noticing’ that Fuller was home by eleven o’clock on Saturday night. She saw the light from the TV in his den until just past midnight. The old snoop even caught him getting ready for bed shortly after that.” Zach frowned. “Then two hours later, Fuller smashed up his BMW on a lonely road—twenty miles away. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
Bridget just shook her head.
“I keep wondering why he had the gun in the car with him.”
Bridget shrugged uneasily. “Maybe he was scared.”
“Maybe. Might explain the booze too. What’s that old expression about booze? Dutch courage? Maybe he was going to meet someone he didn’t want to face.” Zach paused, and his eyes wrestled with hers. “Do you have any idea who that might be?”
Bridget shook her head. “Why should I?”
“Well, I saw you talking with Fuller at Olivia’s wake, and then again at the Little League game. I didn’t notice any kids here today, so my guess is the only reason he came to that game was to see you.”
Bridget said nothing. She dipped her fingers in the holy water, then crossed herself. She headed through the vestibule and out the door. The afternoon sun was blinding after the church’s gloomy interior.
Zach followed her. Stopping on the steps, Bridget fished her sunglasses from her purse and slipped them on. Then she turned to Zach. “You know, I asked you a few minutes ago why you were at that ball game. And I asked what you were doing in the hospitality suite at the Red Lion a few days ago. You still haven’t answered me.”
He gave her that disarmingly shy smile again. “Well, Bridget, I’m a reporter. I just started working for the
Portland Examiner
. If it seems like I’ve been following you around lately, I assure you, it’s purely intentional. I’m doing a story on the election, a personal profile of the Corrigan twins.”
“As told by an old acquaintance?”
she asked, frowning. “The
Examiner
is blatantly pro-Foley.”
He nodded glumly. “Yeah, I know.”
Bridget felt as if he’d just punched her. She’d been talking to a pro-Foley reporter about Fuller and Olivia. If there was a connection between their deaths, he was on his way to finding it.
“So—I answered your question,” he said. “Maybe you can help me figure out what happened to Fuller. Why did he come to that Little League game? What did you two talk about?”
“No comment,” Bridget replied.
She hurried down the church steps and headed for her car.
She wasn’t the type who drank in the middle of the afternoon, but Bridget could have used a cocktail when she returned home at 3:20 that day.
After Fuller’s memorial service, she’d spoken at a Literacy Awareness event. All the while, she’d tried not to think about Zach Matthias, working for Foley’s newspaper, asking questions about Fuller Sterns, and watching her every move. At least Zach hadn’t shown up at the literacy event. And she’d managed to muster up enough poise to get through the proceedings.
After coming through the front door, Bridget settled for a Diet Coke and some barbecue potato chips. As much as a drink might have calmed her nerves, she didn’t want to be like her mother.
She double-checked the locks on the doors and on the first-floor windows. David and Eric wouldn’t be back from school for another half hour. Though it was still light out, Bridget didn’t like being alone.
She now knew Zach Matthias was the man she’d noticed at the memorial services, at the game, and at the hotel. But what about the man she hadn’t seen? He’d been waiting for her in the alley alcove, and he’d been lurking outside this house a few nights back.
How many nights ago had the exact same thing happened to Fuller Sterns? How many nights after that did he die in a strange, unexplained accident?
Bridget hadn’t talked to Brad since that morning. She was miffed he hadn’t had time to hear about Fuller’s death. The news had seemed to shock him, but he hadn’t cared enough to call back yet. No matter. She wasn’t anxious to tell Brad that a former high school classmate was now working for a Foley rag and asking a lot of questions.
Still working on the Diet Coke, she dug her high school yearbook out of the storage closet, then plopped down on the sofa in the den. She cautiously glanced over at the picture window, where she’d first seen that man in her yard.
No one, just a lot of fallen leaves blowing in the wind, and a lawn that needed mowing.
With a sigh, Bridget opened the McLaren High yearbook, and turned to the class of ’85 graduation portraits. She stopped on the M’s page and stared at the photo of a young Zach Matthias in a coat and tie—the wild black hair, baby fat, thick glasses, and that sweet, guileless smile. Bridget could see why her old friend Kim had had a little crush on him. Under the portrait were his credentials:
ZACHARY L. MATTHIAS
“Zach”
Student Council; Yearbook Staff;
The McLaren Bobcat Gazette
; French Club;
Teen Big Brothers; Glee Club; Bobcat Boosters.
Parting Words:
“Hello, I Must Be Going”
—Groucho Marx.
Despite herself, Bridget smiled at his sentiments. Then her eyes wandered over to another portrait on the same page. She swallowed hard, and the smile ran away from her face.
The photo showed a plump girl with stringy brown hair and a superior look behind her glasses. For the photo-shoot, she’d dressed in a black T-shirt and a ratty old wide-knit sweater vest.
During the summer after graduation, that same photo had been posted all over McLaren and neighboring Longview in hopes that the missing eighteen-year-old would be found. In the flier-bulletin, they’d listed her name, height, weight, eye color, hair color, date of birth, and when she’d last been seen. There was also a contact number.
But in the McLaren High yearbook, the listing was more terse:
MALLORY MEEHAN
“Mallory”
Glee Club
Parting Words:
“To riseth above the crass and
common crowd is never easy.”
—M. Meehan
Mallory often broadcast to anyone who bothered to listen that she had an IQ of 141. “That’s my ‘intelligence quotient,’ ” she would add with haughty condescension. Despite her constantly reminding people of this, the story that stuck with Mallory for years was that she’d pooped in her pants during math class in the fifth grade. The students at McLaren High wouldn’t let her forget it.
They might have been more kind if Mallory hadn’t alienated everyone—including their teachers. Mallory often challenged them for not working hard enough—or knowing enough. The teachers retaliated by giving out a ton of homework assignments. Mallory was critical of her classmates too—almost vicious toward the slower ones.
Mallory Meehan wasn’t one of those not-so-popular kids whom Brad befriended during a school outing. No, befriending Mallory was Bridget’s mistake.
She thought Mallory was merely insecure and lonely. She tried to be her friend. Kim said she was committing
social suicide.
“Not that I give the tiniest crap about what people in this school think of
me
,” Kim told her. “But I know it matters to
you
. And if you get too chummy-chummy with Miss Pain-in-the-Ass Poopy-Drawers, believe me, no one will have anything to do with you.”
But Bridget wanted to follow her brother’s example and reach out to a less-popular classmate. She found it strange that Kim would object to her making friends with another extremely intelligent, above-the-crowd girl, someone very much like Kim herself. Bridget figured she was a bit jealous.
Mallory had her own theory: “I think she’s a lesbian.”
“No, she isn’t,” Bridget whispered. “Kim would have told me if she was gay. She wouldn’t hide it. She knows it wouldn’t make a difference to me.”
They were huddled in a cubicle in the main room of the town library. Bridget imagined that the converted old mansion off Main Street in McLaren might become their after-school hangout. The library was a strange, unsuccessful melding of old-world charm with seventies-style utilitarian furnishings. Ugly metal bookcases were pushed against the elegantly paneled walls; track lighting was installed by a beautiful old chandelier; and a cheap black-and-brass fireplace insert had been stuck inside the handsomely manteled hearth. All the furniture was chrome and faux wood with orange and green imitation leather coverings. Two gray-cloth quad cubicles had been planted in the big room. Bridget and Mallory were crammed into one partition.
“I still say she’s a lesbian,” Mallory insisted. “She looks like one.”
“Well, she isn’t,” Bridget said, rolling her eyes.
She tolerated Mallory because she was so damn fascinating. Mallory claimed she was writing an “exposé” of the whole town—like Grace Metallious did with
Peyton Place
. But Mallory wasn’t going to change names, places, and dates. She was especially interested in murders, suicides, and missing persons cases. McLaren was a small, sleepy town, but it had had its share of the bizarre and macabre—even before the case of Andy Shields and the Gaines twins. And in nearly all of those stories, something horrible had happened in Gorman’s Creek.
Bridget chalked the creepy tales up to local legend. If enough teenagers believed those vague, spooky yarns, they wouldn’t trespass on the property. But Mallory claimed the stories were true. She had facts.
In 1932, a successful businessman, Henry Bowers from nearby Olympia, built a house overlooking the creek—on a piece of land named after one of the town’s early settlers, Eli Gorman. The isolated cottage was meant to be a family retreat. But the Bowerses didn’t have much time to enjoy their home away from home. The house was only a year old when most of it fell down the gulch during a horrible mud slide. The Bowerses’ six-year-old daughter, Amy, was buried alive.
Another story about Gorman’s Creek smacked of urban legend. Apparently, a teenage couple had gone skinny-dipping in the pond one summer night in the midfifties. They were still naked when their bodies were found. It appeared as if the boy had killed his girlfriend, then taken his own life. He’d hanged the girl from a tree limb, then disemboweled her. With a similarly fashioned noose around his neck, his naked corpse hung beside her—on the same branch. Their clothes—and a murder weapon—were never found.
“I’ve always found that tale tough to swallow,” Bridget declared.
“Well, I’ll show you—it’s true,” Mallory insisted. She peeked around the side of the cubicle toward the library’s front counter. “It’s in this article I want you to see—if that old queer behind the desk would hurry up and get the newspaper I asked for.”
Bridget frowned. “Mallory, I really don’t like—”
“Oh, I think he has it now,” she interrupted, getting to her feet. She hurried toward the front counter. Bridget watched her mutter something to the slightly prissy, middle-aged Mr. Needler, who was the head librarian. Mallory scribbled on a sign-out sheet, slapped down the pencil, and snatched the book off the counter. As she stomped back to the cubicle with her book, Mallory didn’t see Mr. Needler frowning at her.
“Look at this,” Mallory whispered, plopping down in the chair beside Bridget. She opened the book. It was a bound edition of
Cowlitz County Registers
from January through June, 1956. The
Register
was a weekly newspaper-magazine for Longview and surrounding communities. The cover of every issue was always some community event or a lighter-side news item: the Cowlitz County Teacher of the Year; a Cub Scout Banquet; Cowlitz County Players presents
The Man Who Came to Dinner
; art shows; and pancake breakfasts.
Mallory furiously turned the pages. “This isn’t about the couple who were found hanging from the tree, but they’re mentioned here. I haven’t been able to track down an actual story on them. This stupid library doesn’t carry any newspapers before 1955. Oh, here it is.” She paused to check an issue, dated June 7, 1956. Mallory turned a few more yellowed pages. Then she stopped and pointed to an article.
Alongside the story was a slightly blurred photo of a smiling, dowdy woman with dark hair and glasses.
Eloise Fessler, 49, left a husband and two children
, said the caption.
The headline read:
MCLAREN WOMAN FOUND DEAD
Tragic End to Two-Day Missing-Person Search
“Is this Sonny and Anastasia’s mother?” Bridget whispered.
Mallory nodded. “And Loony Lon’s wife. Read on.”
Biting her lip, Bridget read the story:
The body of housewife Mrs. Eloise Fessler, 49, was discovered on the bank of a small lake just a mile from her home in McLaren on Tuesday afternoon. She had been missing two days. Investigators on the scene are calling her drowning an apparent suicide.
Mrs. Fessler had recently been under a nurse’s care after swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills. She disappeared Sunday morning, June 3, triggering a county-wide search.
Eloise Fessler was the wife of industrialist Lon Fessler, 51, and mother of two, Lon Jr., 22, and Anastasia, 19.
Authorities focused their search for Mrs. Fessler in a two-mile wooded ravine area behind her home. . . .
“Did you get to the part about Gorman’s Creek yet?” Mallory asked impatiently.
“I’m just there,” Bridget replied. “But they don’t say exactly how she drowned.”
Mallory whisked her hand over the page as if shooing away a fly. “Well, it’s not in there. Loony Lon must have paid someone to leave out the details. Don’t you know about it?”
Bridget shrugged. “I’d heard Mrs. Fessler drowned in that pond, but I never knew it was a suicide.”
“Sure was.” Mallory nodded emphatically. “She put on a big, heavy fur coat and walked the trail along Gorman’s Creek. Back in the fifties, it wasn’t so overgrown, because that used to be the Bowerses’ driveway. Some of the property still belongs to the Bowers estate, the older sister of the kid who died in the mud slide. She inherited the place, but didn’t want anything to do with it. The Fesslers are so nuts, they think the whole ravine is theirs. Loony Lon used to have a rowboat in that little lake. They even built a dock there. But old Lon had it torn down after Eloise killed herself.”
“How did she do it?” Bridget murmured.
“She took the rowboat to the middle of the lake, then jumped in. The fur coat got all wet and dragged her down. I found out from a couple of my mother’s friends, who both grew up here. One of them was the sheriff’s daughter. So I have it on extremely reliable authority. They verified the story about the two teenagers as well. And it’s mentioned right here. It’s no urban legend, Bridget.”
Mallory pointed to a paragraph near the end of the article. Bridget obediently read:
The lake was the site of another tragedy in June, 1953, when the dead bodies of McLaren residents Frank Healy and Janette Carlisle, both 18, were discovered hanging from a nearby tree. The grisly scene reportedly shook several experienced lawmen. Authorities ruled the deaths a murder-suicide, determining that Healy had killed his girlfriend, Carlisle, and then himself.
Gorman’s Creek, the ravine area and pond are on private property. McLaren police have announced their intention to prosecute trespassers to the fullest extent of the law.
Funeral services for Eloise Fessler will be private. In addition to her husband and two children, she is also survived by a sister, Mrs. Sarah Ballard. . . .
“In the book I’m writing, I’m calling Gorman’s Creek
The Devil’s Gulch
,” Mallory bragged. “It’s the only name I’m changing. After all, it’s
cursed ground. Devil’s Gulch
is a better name for the place, don’t you think?”

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