The Last Victim (31 page)

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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

BOOK: The Last Victim
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“Why?” Bridget asked, still hovering over him. “What—”
“Won’t look good,” he said, his eyes closed. “Brad Corrigan’s recently widowed sister shouldn’t be caught in some man’s apartment in the middle of the day. You should go before the cops arrive. In fact, it’s best you were never here.”
Zach unsteadily got to his feet. He checked the towel to see how much blood there was, then reapplied it to the side of his head. “I’m all right. I don’t think I’ll need stitches or anything.”
“I’ll get you some ice for that,” she said.
“No. You need to go. I’ll walk you to your car.”
In the courtyard, Bridget kept glancing around to make sure the man in the ski mask wasn’t still lurking about. Holding the dish towel to his head, Zach had his other arm around her. She stopped for a moment and pulled away from him. She hated to ask it, but she had to. “Zach, what are you going to tell the police?”
“That I walked in on a burglar—and he attacked me.”
“There’s more to it than that,” she whispered. “Are you going to tell them anything else?”
He shook his head, then put his arm around her again. They continued walking toward her car. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“You should have those guys who are watching your house at night make it a twenty-four-hour job,” he said. He checked the backseat of her minivan before opening the driver’s door for her.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked.
Zach nodded; then he kissed her gently on the lips. After he pulled away, Bridget touched his cheek and smiled gratefully. Then she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Listen, can you do me a favor?” he asked, leaning on the open car door. “Don’t tell Brad that I know about Gorman’s Creek. And don’t tell him we’re going there tomorrow. Don’t say anything about getting together with Mrs. Rankin either.”
Frowning, Bridget started to shake her head. “Zach—”
“I’m not saying Brad is the enemy here. But I think he may have someone in his confidence who’s connected with these murders. Just don’t say anything to Brad. I’d like to live a little longer.”
With a sigh, Bridget nodded. “I promise.”
He closed the door, stepped back, and gave her a little wave.
Bridget smiled at him through the window, then started up the car and pulled away from the curb.
She saw him in the rearview mirror. He was starting back toward the courtyard. Bridget swallowed hard. She prayed like hell he’d still be alive in the morning.
There were nine houses on Briar Court, and no one was home at the first two. The third house was the smallest, but prettiest on the block—a little chalet with green shutters and flower boxes under the windows. The front yard was beautifully landscaped.
The forty-something man who answered the door was also impeccably groomed. He wore a long-sleeve T-shirt and pressed jeans. “Well, you two don’t look like Jehovah’s Witnesses, so I took a chance and came to the door,” he announced. “What can I do for you?”
Zach and Bridget had dressed for their trek through Gorman’s Creek—sweaters, jeans, jackets, and hiking boots. It wasn’t such a bad day for it, chilly and slightly overcast. Most of the trees along Briar Court were quickly losing their leaves.
Bridget felt strange returning there after twenty years. She remembered that Mallory’s mother’s car had been parked in front of the house next door to this one. And she couldn’t help thinking of Andy Shields and the Gaines twins, last seen heading down this street.
Yet the cul-de-sac seemed rather benign now. Even the woods of Gorman’s Creek at the end of the block seemed less ominous, somehow smaller, scrawnier.
Zach gave the man a friendly smile. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and he looked sexy with his five o’clock shadow. He’d combed his hair to cover up the cut and the bump on the side of his head. “Good morning,” he said to the man. “My name’s Zach, and this is Bridget—”
“Oh my God, you’re Bridget Corrigan!” the man interrupted, gaping at her.
She smiled and nodded. “Hi . . . hello.”
“I’m crazy for your brother,” the man declared. “My partner will be so sorry he missed you. I almost wished we lived in Oregon—just so we could vote for Brad. That Foley is such a homophobe! If he wins, God help us—and not Foley’s God, please!” He opened the door wider. “I’m sorry. Do you folks want to come in?”
“That’s okay,” Zach said. “I’m a reporter, and Bridget’s helping me with a story I’m writing about an incident that happened on this block back in 1985. I was wondering—”
“What incident?”
“Um, a missing person case from that year, a teenage girl.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” he muttered. “Well, we weren’t living here back in eighty-five. No, my partner and I moved here in ninety. We’ve been together seventeen years, living here fifteen. Of course, Foley and his followers are making sure we’ll never be able to get married. That’s too much of a threat to families. Huh! The good news is we can still buy any number of deadly assault weapons we want to. People don’t seem to have a problem with that. I mean, really, file that under C for Crazy! You just ask any person on this block if Rick and I aren’t wonderful neighbors—”
“Um, yes, I hear you,” Zach interrupted. “I really do. And speaking of your neighbors, do you know if any of the people on this block were living here back in eighty-five?”
The man took a deep breath, then shook his head. “Well, except for old Anastasia Fessler down at the end, I guess Rick and I have lived here the longest. But I wouldn’t bother talking to Anastasia. She’s as nutty as a Clark Bar, poor thing.”
“Is
Sonny
Fessler still around?” Bridget asked.
“Sonny?” The man squinted at her. “Anastasia has a kid?”
“No, this would be her older brother,” Bridget explained. “He was kind of the town character—”
“Oh yeah. I remember hearing something about a brother.” He shrugged. “I think he’s in a rest home or in one of those assisted-care places.”
“Do you know if anyone who lived on this block when you first moved here is still around?” Zach asked.
“You mean, still here in McLaren?” The man shook his head. He pointed to the house next door. “The Cronins were the old-timers when Rick and I moved here. But she died six years ago, cancer. Rick and I used to take turns driving her to chemotherapy. The husband’s in a nursing home. Alzheimer’s, I hear. We’ve lost touch with the others who moved away.”
Sighing, Zach shot Bridget a defeated look. Then he smiled at the man and extended his hand. “Well, thanks, I think we’ve taken up enough of your time.”
The man shook his hand. “I’m Lance, by the way,” he said. He turned to Bridget and shook her hand too. “It was a thrill meeting you. Please, say hi to your brother for me. I’ll keep my fingers crossed he beats that fascist Foley.”
Zach started to back away.
The man held on to Bridget’s hand and pulled her closer. “Bridget,” he whispered, “if you don’t mind me saying so, hold on to that Zach fella. Talk about a major dreamboat.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks, Lance. I think so too.”
She caught up with Zach, and they started toward the end of the block together. Bridget eyed the Fessler house. It was as dark and dilapidated as ever, almost swallowed up by overgrown bushes and trees. Bridget wondered if any kind of maintenance had been done on the place since the eighties. She thought of Sonny’s sister, living there all alone now.
“Should we try Anastasia?” Zach asked, shoving his hands in his pockets. “We’ve come all this way. We might as well give it a shot—even if she is nuts.”
Bridget nodded. “If anyone on this block noticed something that night, it would have been one of the Fesslers. They were always home.”
As they approached the driveway, Bridget remembered standing at approximately that same spot with Sonny—while the police were searching the forest for Andy Shields and the Gaines twins. She noticed a sign in front of the old pathway to Gorman’s Creek that hadn’t been there before:
NO TRESPASSING—VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
. Beneath the warning, someone had scribbled:
Eat Me.
“Looks like we’ll be breaking the law if you want to see Gorman’s Creek,” she remarked.
“Also looks like people don’t take that sign very seriously,” Zach said.
They headed up the walkway, surrounded by overgrown weeds and shrubbery, to the Fesslers’ front door. Zach rang the bell. “It’s kind of weird,” he whispered. “I almost expect Lurch to answer.”
Instead of the
Addams Family
butler greeting them, the door was opened by a thin, sixtyish woman with short-cropped beige hair. She wore a powder-blue sweat suit, sneakers, and just below her shoulder, a silver broach of a frog. “Yes?” she said, with a wary look on her wrinkled face.
“Ms. Fessler?” Zach said. “I’m sorry to drop by unannounced—”
“Oh, I’m not Ms. Fessler,” the woman interrupted, slowly shaking her head. “I’m her assistant, Edna. Did you wish to speak with Ms. Fessler?”
Zach nodded. “Yes, please. We just needed to ask a few questions about . . .” He trailed off, then gave Bridget a look.
Edna didn’t seem to be listening. Rather than look over her shoulder, she took small, deliberate steps until she’d made a semicircle and her back was to them. “Anastasia!” she called. “Anastasia, there are people here to see you! Do you want to see people? Anastasia?”
“What do they want? Find out what they want!” squawked a woman somewhere in the house.
Bridget peeked over Edna’s shoulder and she saw a portly, old woman in a recliner chair with a remote control device in her hand. Bridget couldn’t see the TV from where she stood, but there was a flickering light, so Anastasia must have had her program on mute or pause. The Fesslers’ sunken living room was a large, cluttered area with a huge picture window. At the moment, the blinds were drawn, and only a dim light crept through the slats. The place was decorated with big, bulky, old furniture and too many dried flowers. Surrounding Anastasia in her recliner chair were a wheelchair, a walker, and a dainty little striped wastebasket filled to the brim with tissues and garbage. At her side sat a TV table, holding a box of Kleenex, several bottles of pills, a water tumbler, and an open bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies.
Anastasia was about seventy, but she seemed so much older. Bridget remembered the article about Mrs. Fessler’s suicide, and saw the resemblance to the dowdy-looking woman pictured in that old
Cowlitz County Register
.
“We were hoping you could help us with some information about a missing person, Ms. Fessler,” Zach called—over Edna’s shoulder. “This was in 1985. A teenage girl was last seen heading into the woods behind your house here—”
“That’s private property!” Anastasia barked.
“Yes, ma’am, I know,” he said, still at the threshold and speaking past Edna. “We were hoping you might have seen something. It was a long time ago, but maybe you remember. She was a big girl with brown, frizzy hair—”
“Tell him to call the lawyers,” Anastasia said.
Edna held up a finger to indicate Zach should wait a minute. Then she shuffled away from the door.
Bridget took a step into the foyer, and was hit with a blast of warm air. The place smelled a little rancid—like old, wet clothes and mold. “Anastasia? I used to live here in McLaren. My name’s Bridget Corrigan. Your brother, Sonny, might remember me. Maybe Sonny or your father saw something that night, and told you about it,” she went on. “It was toward the end of summer, 1985. There might have been somebody—maybe even two people—taking a girl to a car. They may have been carrying her—”
Anastasia started shaking her head. “I don’t talk to anyone about things like that without my lawyer.”
“Well, do you think Sonny would mind talking to me?” Bridget pressed. “He always seemed to like me. I’d love to have a chance to visit with him, catch up—”
“Edna? Give her one of the cards,” Anastasia said to her assistant. “Give her one of those cards from the lawyer!”
“That’s what I’m doing!” Edna shot back. She searched through the top drawer of a dresser next to the front door. “I’m looking for them right now! Hold your horses!”
“Well, they’re in there, right in front of your face.”
“Oh, here they are, right in front of me,” Edna remarked. She shuffled over to Bridget and carefully set a business card in her hand. “You’ll need to talk to the lawyers,” she said. “And Sonny isn’t here. He’s in a rest home, and doesn’t take no visitors.”
“Ms. Fessler,” Zach piped up, “there really isn’t any reason to involve lawyers. We just thought you might be able to help us out. This was a classmate of ours who vanished without a trace. You probably remember—”
“Did you give them the card?” Anastasia interrupted, shooting a peeved look toward her assistant.
“Yes, yes, I gave it to them already,” Edna retorted. “For Pete’s sake—”
“I’m missing
Matlock
,” Anastasia complained.
“She’s missing her
Matlock
,” Edna said to Bridget under her breath. “You need to go now.”
Anastasia’s assistant led Bridget to the door. The volume on the TV suddenly came on—quite loudly.
Bridget paused in the doorway. “I’m sorry we bothered you, Ms. Fessler,” she called—over a police siren on TV. She glanced back toward the living room.
Anastasia Fessler stared at the television set. She seemed mesmerized—almost dazed. The light from the TV flickered across her face, and her tired, old eyes were filled with tears.
Rachel Towles, Attorney
BARD & MITCHELL ASSOCIATES
Law Offices
Bridget had heard of them—through Gerry. It was a very powerful firm with a lot of rich clients and half a floor in one of Seattle’s tallest buildings.
“For some reason,” Zach said as she showed him the card, “I figured old Anastasia’s lawyer would be some local yokel, not this big-time firm up in Seattle.”
“Makes sense,” Bridget murmured. “The Fesslers always had a lot of money—and a lot of problems. Just when we were leaving a minute ago, I saw her crying. I’m wondering what we said to trigger that.”
Zach shrugged. “Maybe she was just upset she was missing
Matlock
.”
Bridget glanced over at the
NO TRESPASSING
sign at the beginning of the Gorman’s Creek trail. Once again, she remembered standing at this same spot with Sonny Fessler. “Maybe she misses her brother,” Bridget murmured. “I wonder if Sonny did see something that night. We should have asked Anastasia’s friend for the name of the rest home where he’s staying.”
“ ‘Doesn’t take no visitors,’ remember?” Zach said. He nodded at the sign. “Well, are you ready to trespass?”
Bridget sighed. “Sure.”
She glanced at the attorney’s card again, then shoved it in her pocket.
They found an opening in the barbed-wire fence—not far from the Fesslers’ driveway. Walking along the pathway, Zach wordlessly reached over and took hold of her hand.
The trail was covered with fallen leaves that rustled in the chilly wind. The forest didn’t seem quite so dark and menacing in the middle of the day. Still, Bridget felt the ghosts all around them.
Zach squeezed her hand and smiled reassuringly at her. “How are you doing so far?”
She nodded. This was her first time back to Gorman’s Creek since the night Mallory had disappeared, but she wasn’t thinking about that. Bridget was wondering if Janette Carlisle had been holding hands with her boyfriend that summer evening in the early fifties when they’d walked down this trail to go skinny-dipping in the pond.

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