The Serial Killer's Wife (17 page)

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. This entire conversation had taken a completely different direction in which she had imagined. She said, “Look, I don’t know what your issue is, but I really need to speak to Sheila or Michael Foreman. Do you know how I can contact either of them?”
 

The woman continued to stand there, glaring back at her.
 

“What about Bill?” Elizabeth said, her patience starting to wane. “Let me speak to him if you don’t think you’re capable of helping me.”
 

The woman’s jaw tightened. “He’s not home,” she said through gritted teeth. Then, “Wait here,” and she walked away, leaving the door open. She was gone for maybe a minute, while Elizabeth could hear the twins running around inside the house, shouting and laughing. Then the woman appeared with a Post-It in hand and held it out to Elizabeth. “That’s her address, okay?”
 

Elizabeth took the Post-It and stared at the woman’s loopy cursive script, and before she could say anything (even a half-hearted thank you), the woman had shut the door in her face.

CHAPTER 33

T
HE
ADDRESS
THE
woman had given her took them to an apartment complex on the other side of Lanton, the side that they had entered nearly a half hour before. Elizabeth was immediately put in mind of Summer Ridge, her own apartment complex back in Kansas, cookie cutter buildings all huddled close together, the only thing distinguishing them the different colors—reds, blues, greens, yellows—of the doors and window frames.
 

Todd drove them through the sprawling serpentine of townhouses until they spotted 178. This time Elizabeth waited until they were parked before she unclipped her seatbelt. The entire drive, she had been replaying her conversation with the woman—the new Mrs. Rodgers, apparently—and none of it made sense. The last time Elizabeth had seen Sheila, her best friend had been happily married and very much in love with her husband.
 

She walked up to 178—this door was painted a faded red—and knocked. Like before, she glanced back at where Todd had parked the car, imagining all the different things that might happen when Sheila opened the door. And like before, when the door finally did open, Sheila was not the one standing there.
 

“Help you?”
 

A man stood in the doorway, big and bald and wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist. He had a tattoo of an eagle over his left bicep.
 

“I’m looking for Sheila,” she said, then quickly added: “I’m an old friend.”
 

The man stepped back and shouted, “Yo, Sheila, somebody’s here to see you!”
 

“Be right there,” a voice called back, and the man looked at Elizabeth just once and shrugged and walked away, leaving the door open.
 

Elizabeth didn’t move. She just stood there, waiting, until forty seconds later a woman came down the steps, a big-breasted, heavily-makeup-faced woman wearing a bathrobe who looked nothing like her best friend.
 

This woman, this woman who could not be Sheila Rodgers, saying, “Hi, can I help—”

Their eyes locked then, Elizabeth’s and Sheila’s, because yes, of course this was Sheila, this was her old best friend, her dearest friend in the entire world, and so what if she was wearing way too much foundation, so what if the red of her lipstick was enough to make Elizabeth cringe? This was Sheila, Sheila Rodgers, and nothing—not the day-old perm, not the apparent work she’d had done on her breasts, not the smell of sex wafting off her body—changed that at all.
 

“Liz?” Sheila’s tone was incredulous, just as it was to be expected, though somehow her voice managed to raise an octave on the end of that simple one-syllable word. “Is it—is it really you?”
 

Elizabeth said, “You need to get me in contact with Michael.”
 

Something changed in Sheila’s face, her nose crinkling just slightly, and she glanced back inside, then stepped out and shut the door behind her. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”
 

“I’m in some trouble. That’s all you need to know. And it’s very important I speak with Michael.”
 

“How’s Thomas? Where have you
been
?”
 

“Sheila, please, I need to speak with Michael. Can you tell me where he lives?”
 

Sheila’s face fell, and she studied Elizabeth for a few seconds. “What kind of trouble are you in? Legal trouble?”
 

“It’s best if you don’t know the details.”
 

“Liz, you show up at my door after five years ...” She shook her head. “I’m trying to get my thoughts collected.”
 

“When did you and Bill separate?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
 

“If you’re in so much trouble,” Sheila said, crossing her arms over her chest, “why don’t you go to the police?”
 

The sudden hard tone wasn’t one Elizabeth had expected, not from the woman who had once been her best friend and who had helped her escape her old life with the idea to start a new one. This hadn’t turned out anything like she had imagined, and so she crossed her own arms over her own chest and glared back at Sheila.
 

“Do you or do you not know where Michael Foreman now lives?”
 

Sheila glared back at her for another second or two, before nodding slowly. “I do. And when I tell you, you’re not going to believe it.”

•
   
•
   
•

I
T
WAS
TRUE
: Elizabeth didn’t believe it. None of it made sense. She felt like a storybook character, falling down a hole or walking through a wall or going through some kind of portal that brought her to a world that was similar but completely unlike the one she remembered.
 

When she returned to the car, Todd said, “What’s wrong?”
 

She didn’t answer.
 

“Elizabeth”—he reached over, placed a hand on her leg—“you’re trembling.”
 

“Drive,” she said.
 

By now Todd had learned it best not to ask questions and shoved the Prius into gear. After a couple miles he asked where they were going and she started giving him directions. It felt strange, giving him directions like this, especially to this particular address. But then minutes later they arrived, and the house looked no different than the last time she had seen it.
 

“This one?” Todd asked, pulling into the driveway.
 

“Yes.” Elizabeth couldn’t take her gaze off the house. “I can’t believe he’s now living here.”
 

“Why? Who lived here before?”
 

“I did.”

CHAPTER 34

T
HE
LAST
TIME
she had seen Michael Foreman was in the rearview mirror of the car he had purchased for her for five hundred dollars, a rundown Dodge Neon that was hardly a promise to take her halfway across the country. He had been forty-one then, already had a gut, was already losing his hair, and wore glasses only for reading.
 

The man that opened the door now looked not five years older but at least ten, his gut still there, his hair almost all gone, and the glasses perched on his nose the kind a person wears from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they lie down to sleep at night.
 

He didn’t seem at all surprised to find Elizabeth standing on his doorstep. He simply glanced past her at the Prius in the driveway, tilted his gaze back at her, and said, “I can’t believe you actually showed up.”
 

This wasn’t quite the greeting Elizabeth had expected. “Sheila called you?”
 

“An FBI agent. He called earlier this morning. He said there was a chance I might see you.”
 

“Why?”
 

“He wouldn’t say. But he left his number. He said it’s important that you call him immediately.”
 

Elizabeth didn’t know how to react to this news, so she didn’t react at all. She said, “I’m in a lot of trouble.”
 

Foreman nodded. “I assumed as much.”
 

“Can we come in?”
 

“Sure,” he said. “But who’s we?”

•
   
•
   
•

I
T
WAS
FOREMAN
’
S
idea to switch out his car in the garage with the Prius. That way if anybody passed by on the street (such as, say, the police or FBI) all they would see was Foreman’s second-rate Mercedes in the driveway.
 

Once they were inside, Elizabeth made quick introductions. Foreman nodded and smiled and shook Todd’s hand like it was just any other day. Then he turned to her, his face all at once serious.
 

“Where’s Thomas?”
 

She handed him the BlackBerry and gave him a condensed version of the past two days. Foreman listened carefully, his gaze focused on the BlackBerry screen, and when she was done, he said the exact thing she knew he would say.
 

“You need to contact the FBI.”
 

“I can’t.”
 

“Why not?”
 

“If I do that, Cain will kill Matthew.”
 

Foreman frowned. “Who?”
 

“Thomas,” she said. “His name is now Matthew.”
 

“Why are you here?”
 

“I thought that would be obvious by now.”
 

“Such as?”
 

“Such as you need to get me in contact with Mark Webster.”
 

“I don’t think I can do that.”
 

“You’re going to have to.”
 

They were standing in the living room, which hadn’t changed at all since the day Elizabeth walked away from her old life. The carpet, the couch, the armchairs, even the coffee table—they were the exact same.
 

Foreman said, “You’re wondering why I’m living in your old house, aren’t you?”
 

Elizabeth nodded.
 

“I figured as much. But it’s not as weird as you might think it is. At least not yet. Let me show you the basement.”

•
 
•
 
•

T
HE
LAST
TIME
Elizabeth went down into a basement she had found a half-naked man strapped to a chair, an explosive collar around his neck. She knew she would find neither of those things here, not in this basement, but still her mind played tricks on her, telling her that while she might not find Reginald Moore tied to a chair, she might find somebody else.
 

Foreman led the way. He seemed to have trouble walking down the steps and needed to grip both railings tightly. At the bottom he paused, took a breath, turned to her.
 

“As you can see, I did my best to keep them as organized as possible.”
 

She had about ten more steps to go, her view of the basement itself blocked by the sloping ceiling. She had no idea what he was talking about but then she reached the bottom and as she stared around the basement her heart skipped.
 

Plastic storage containers, hundreds and hundreds of storage containers, stacked up and labeled by a deftly skilled hand in black Sharpie marker. One said,
Books: nonfiction
. Another said,
E’s dress shoes
. A third,
Kitchen utensils
.
 

She took in the entire basement—all that was here were those storage containers, nothing else—and then she glanced at Todd. She could tell at once he saw the distress in her face. He gave her a questioning look, and she shook her head once and turned to Foreman. The light wasn’t bad but still he appeared to have aged an additional five years in the space it took him to walk from the first floor down here to the basement. His face was wrinkled, he had bags under his eyes, and his shoulders appeared more slouched than ever.
 

“You kept everything?”
 

He nodded. “I didn’t have much choice.”
 

“What does that mean?”
 

“Until the whole thing happened with Eddie, I never knew there were so many people interested in the belongings of serial killers.”
 

“Death collectors,” Elizabeth said.
 

He nodded again. “Weeks after you had left, when it was clear you wouldn’t be coming back, some people started trying to break into the house. It was just some kids at first, some teenagers, but then the police caught actual adults. One guy had driven five states away just to see the house. He said he didn’t want much, just a coffee mug would do.”
 

Foreman paused, and in that pause the silence that embraced them was a scary thing. Down here in a basement she had once called her own, surrounded not just by the house she had once lived in but by everything that had once been hers and Eddie’s—even Matthew’s back when he was named Thomas—she almost preferred to be back in Reginald Moore’s basement. At least that, in the most morbid way, made some kind of sense. This here now, all these things that she had managed to forget, waiting for her like one day she would return looking for an old hair brush, unsettled her.