The Last Victim (21 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

BOOK: The Last Victim
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At least Cheryl wasn’t being followed, and there weren’t any early warning signs that she’d been targeted. Bridget could be grateful for that.
Still, she didn’t know what to make of Cheryl’s hostile attitude. Cheryl hadn’t seemed too concerned about the deaths of Olivia and Fuller. Nor had she seemed to give a damn about Bridget’s own stalker situation. And did she really have to be so damn snotty?
Then again, perhaps more than anyone, Cheryl Blume wanted to forget about Mallory Meehan and Gorman’s Creek. Although Bridget had been responsible for the revenge fantasy, Cheryl had developed it into a plan of action. She’d even wanted to crush Mallory’s skull—in case Mallory was still alive in that well. And who knew? Perhaps she’d been the one who had moved Mallory’s body.
Bridget remembered how terrified she’d been, returning alone to Gorman’s Creek that night. She remembered how she couldn’t get out of those dark woods fast enough. Racing down the crude path to the Fesslers’ fence, she’d stumbled twice. By the time she’d reached the car, Bridget was covered with dirt and sweat.
Once home, she found her father had come back from a business dinner. He’d changed into a pair of khaki shorts and an Izod golf shirt. He sat in his recliner chair with the TV remote in his hand. The light from the TV flickered across his handsome face. A glass of scotch was within reach on the side table.
Bridget wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him everything. But Brad was right. Their father had just been through hell with their mother dying. He didn’t need to know about this. So Bridget just smiled and kissed her father on the forehead. “Hey, Pop.”
He looked her up and down. “My God, what in the world have you been doing? Rolling around in the mud?”
She made up some lie about running into Kim and horsing around in the high school playfield. “Where’s Brad?” she asked.
“He took his bike and went for a ride,” her father said. “Is Brad all right, honey? Is something the matter? He was acting kind of strange.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s okay, Dad,” she lied.
Her father went back to watching TV and switching channels with the remote.
He was in bed by eleven. Bridget waited up for her brother. She thought about that empty hole in the ground. She wondered if perhaps Mallory had survived the fall, then pulled herself out of the well. If that was the case, Mallory would have called the police on them by now. Or had she gotten out of the well—only to have fallen into the ravine?
Bridget didn’t know what to do. Going to the police at this point no longer seemed like a viable option—not without giving them a full confession.
And not without a body.
Brad returned home—looking like hell—at four in the morning. “I’ve been riding all over the place, just riding,” he explained, hunched over the kitchen sink. He slurped water from the faucet and wiped his face with a wet paper towel. “I rode past the police station—and almost went in—three different times. . . .”
Bridget told him about sneaking back to Gorman’s Creek—and about the empty well. She thought he would be furious she’d broken their pledge. But Brad just looked numb.
“It’ll be light soon,” he whispered, after a minute. “If she fell down the ravine after crawling out of that hole, we might be able to see her.” He swallowed hard. “We should take our bikes so Dad won’t hear the car.”
It was strange, riding her bike alongside her twin brother for the first time in years. They’d planned to hide their bikes in the bushes at the start of the Gorman’s Creek trail. As they turned down Briar Court, the streetlights started going off.
Halfway down the cul-de-sac, they both stopped. Bridget gripped her handlebars tightly. She had one foot on the bike pedal and put the other on the concrete.
“My God,” she heard Brad whisper.
Mallory’s mother’s burnt-umber Volare was gone.
They didn’t know what to think. First Mallory disappeared, and now her car had vanished.
Returning home, Bridget and Brad sweated it out. Filled with dread, they waited for that call from the police which would wake up their father. Or perhaps the cops would just come knocking on the front door.
But the police never paid a call. Bridget and Brad were like zombies the following day. Their dad kept asking what was the matter with them. Every time the phone rang, they both nearly jumped out of their skin.
One of those false alarm calls was from Fuller—at nine-thirty at night. He talked with Brad, but Bridget got on the other extension. Fuller had checked out Briar Court too. After seeing the Volare was gone, he’d driven past the Meehan house. “No Volare there either,” Fuller said. “What the fuck do you think is going on?”
By Monday, Brad and Bridget wondered if perhaps Fuller had taken it upon himself to hide Mallory’s car—and her body—some place else. After all, he’d been nervous about leaving the Volare parked in the cul-de-sac. Maybe he’d just been playing dumb on Sunday night.
Either that, or Mallory Meehan was alive, hiding somewhere, and having herself one hell of a laugh on the people who had tried to pull a prank on her.
By Tuesday, Mallory’s graduation photo started popping up on miniposters around town—on telephone poles and in store windows.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS YOUNG WOMAN
? the bulletin asked—over the photo of a haughty, bookish-looking Mallory. The police interviewed most of her classmates, including Bridget, Brad, Fuller, Cheryl, and Olivia. None of them could offer any help. The police didn’t ask what they were doing the day Mallory had disappeared. No one had to resort to the cover story they’d prepared about hanging out at the Corrigan house most of the afternoon and evening.
The police already had a theory about what had happened to Mallory Meehan. The unhappy only child of a divorced, working mother had often driven that Volare to the Pacific Coast to “meditate.” Most of her classmates attested to that. Maybe this time around, Mallory had decided to keep driving—down to Oregon or California. Maybe she’d run away. Or perhaps she’d been abducted in a different city—or state.
Mrs. Meehan hoped to find clues to Mallory’s whereabouts from a stack of journals she’d discovered. But Mallory had written all the entries in her own special code. No one—not even the police—could decipher any of it.
Brad and Cheryl broke up over the phone that week. Everyone in the group avoided each other in what little time remained before they went off to their respective colleges.
The Corrigans moved to the Portland area during Christmas break. There was no longer any reason to associate with Olivia, Fuller, or Cheryl.
Now, twenty years later, two of those people were dead within a couple of weeks of each other. Was Brad right? Was it just a coincidence? Cheryl didn’t seem to be in any danger. Bridget wondered if perhaps her stalker was just some nutcase who had seen her on TV.
Her cell phone rang.
It gave her a start. Ever since yesterday’s call after that near-miss in the alley, she shuddered at the sound of the cellular ringing. Whoever this stalker was, he knew her number.
Eyes on the road, Bridget reached for her phone and switched it on. “Yes, hello?” she said.
“Brigg, it’s me,” Brad said on the other end.
“What happened? You sound weird.”
“I feel weird,” he replied, a tremor in his voice. “Um, are you on your way back from Salem?”
“Yeah, I’m in the car. What’s going on?”
“It’s Pop. He’s in the hospital. They think he’s had a heart attack.”
Two video cameramen and several reporters accosted Bridget at the main entrance of Portland General. She’d had no idea they would be there. She couldn’t understand why her father’s heart attack warranted this kind of press coverage. For a few moments, she wondered if Brad had been letting her down easy on the phone earlier. Was he waiting for her to arrive here before telling her that their father had died?
From the car, she’d phoned Gerry at the office. To her astonishment, he’d promised to pick up David and Eric from school, then take them to his place. “I hope your dad will be okay,” he’d said. After clicking off the phone with him, she’d had a crying jag that lasted several miles.
And now, as she shied away from the throng of reporters outside the hospital’s main entrance, she felt the tears welling in her eyes again.
“When did you first hear about your father, Bridget?” one reporter yelled out.
“We understand a priest was called in,” another said.
“Do you have any comment, Bridget?”
In the glass doors, she could see her own reflection. She also noticed someone inside, coming out to greet her. She couldn’t make out his face.
“Wait a minute!” another reporter said. “Here he comes!”
The automatic sliding glass door opened. Bridget gaped at the gray-haired, ruggedly handsome man approaching her. Camera flashes went off, and video cameras hummed.
Jim Foley looked very solemn as he took Bridget’s hands in his. “I just want you to know, Bridget,” he announced, “that Cindy and I are praying for your dad—and your family. And if you need anything, Bridget—anything at all—don’t hesitate to call on your friend Jim Foley. God bless.”
Dumbfounded, she stared at him. “Um, well, thank you,” she said after a moment. “I need to see my father now.”
Foley suddenly looked annoyed with the reporters and photographers he must have summoned to the scene. “Don’t you think we can give Bridget some privacy here, fellas?”
Bridget broke away from them and hurried to the front desk. She asked the receptionist where she could find her father. “Corrigan, Bradley Senior,” she said, her voice cracking. “And could you tell me if—if he’s okay? I mean, is he still alive?”
“They have your father in C-216,” she replied. She didn’t mention his condition. But she did give Bridget some very involved directions on how to find C-216. Bridget had to take an elevator to a sky bridge on the third floor, and then another elevator down to the second floor in another wing of the hospital. She got lost twice and had to ask two different nurses for help. She was in tears by the time she spoke to the second nurse.
After fifteen minutes of wandering around the hospital, she finally found herself in a wing marked
CORRIDOR C
, ROOMS 200–220. And when she saw Brad’s assistant, Chad Schlund, down the hallway, Bridget actually let out a little cry of relief. Chad was a cute guy in his late twenties with a penchant for bow ties. He saw her and waved. Bridget hurried toward him. She almost wanted to hug him.
“Your dad’s okay, Bridget,” he said. “Brad’s in there with him right now. I got a hold of Janice, and she’s on her way.”
According to the doctors, their father hadn’t suffered an actual heart attack. He’d had an “episode,” whatever the hell that meant. The doctors wanted him to stay the night for observation. Brad seemed to be holding up well under the pressure. He even found a few minutes to schmooze with the doctors, nurses, and some visitors. More votes for Corrigan.
It gave Bridget a few minutes to be alone with her dad. If she’d thought her father looked rather frail on his seventy-seventh birthday, that was nothing compared to today. He had a tube up his nose, and a bruise from hitting his head in a doorway when he’d experienced his “episode.” His face looked pale and droopy, and his white hair was a mess.
Bridget sat at his bedside and smoothed his hair back in place. “Brad’s out there,
campaigning
,” she said with a wry smile. “I swear, he never quits.”
“Good,” her father grunted. He was slightly dopey from the drugs. “I told him to go talk to some of these medical people here, shake some hands, get their votes. You should go out to the hall there and do the same thing—instead of playing nursemaid to me.”
“Oh, give me a break, Pop.” She managed to laugh. “I just got here from a gig in Salem, the League of Women Voters.”
Her father’s bony hand grabbed her wrist. “You have to keep at it, honey,” he said emphatically. “I thought I’d be around to see Brad become senator. But now I don’t know if I’ll make it—”
“Oh, now, Pop—”
“I mean it,” he said.
Bridget noticed Janice in the doorway. Her blond hair was a bit mussed, and she had tears in her eyes. She’d thrown a trench coat over her maternity sweater and jeans. She held a hand over her heart.
Bridget nodded at her, then turned to her father again. “You’re going to be fine, Pop,” she said. “They’re kicking you out of here tomorrow—if you behave yourself.”
“I’m serious,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’m counting on you, sweetheart. You have to make certain Brad wins the election. You have to do whatever it takes—”
Bridget smiled patiently. “Pop, it’s really up to the voters who will win in November. Now, you really need to relax and—”
“You heard what he said,” Janice interjected, stepping up to the foot of his bed. She glared at Bridget. “We’re going to make sure Brad wins. We’ll do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary.”
Janice turned to her father-in-law and started crying. “Oh, Dad! My God, how could this have happened?” She rushed around to the side of his bed—across from Bridget. Bending over, she squeezed his shoulder and kissed him on his cheek. Then she kissed him on the mouth. “I’m staying here with you tonight,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You shouldn’t be alone here, I won’t allow it—”

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