Vicious (24 page)

Mattie’s irritable cries competed with the sound of the approaching vehicle, but Susan could still hear it, coming up the driveway. “Mattie, sweetie, enough is enough,” she growled. She nervously twisted the loose indicator handle. She kept fiddling with it until she’d completely unscrewed it from the steering column. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, screwing it back into place. Mattie didn’t hear her swear. He was still crying.

In her rearview mirror, Susan watched a police car come around the tree-lined curve in the driveway. “Oh, great,” she grumbled, switching off the ignition. It was the sheriff,
that panty-bandit
. But maybe he’d come with some news; maybe they’d located Allen.

Biting her lip, she glanced over her shoulder as the patrol car parked behind her Toyota.

“I don’t wanna ride in the car!” Mattie was complaining.

“Sweetie, please,” she said, shushing him. She watched and waited while the cop remained in the front seat of his prowler for a few moments. When he finally stepped out of the patrol car, Susan saw it was the deputy. A notebook in his hand, he started toward the house.

Susan opened her door. “Deputy?” she called.

The solidly built blond cop turned. “Oh, Ms. Blanchette, there you are….”

“Did you find Allen?” she asked apprehensively.

“I’m afraid not,” he said—talking a bit loudly to be heard over Mattie’s cries. He waved at him, but it didn’t do any good. Mattie kept screaming. “Somebody’s not too happy….”

“He got shortchanged in the nap department this afternoon,” Susan explained, rubbing her forehead. From this part of the driveway, she had a view of the backyard—and the boat by their dock.
U know better than 2 involve police,
the e-mail had said. Then again, maybe the police were already involved. Maybe they were looking for that poor girl.

“Ah, if you didn’t come about Allen, what—what can I do for you, deputy?” she asked.

“Oh, please, call me Corey,” he replied with a cordial smile. “Nancy gave me your message….”

“Nancy?”

“Yeah, Nancy Abbe, our operator at the police station,” he explained. “She said you’d called and left a message for the sheriff. He’s off duty now. So—I’m just following it up. If you’d like, I can put out a statewide APB to be on the lookout for your fiancé’s vehicle.” He glanced at his notepad. “Black 2005 BMW with Washington plates, KKC405. Is that correct?”

Susan nodded eagerly.

“While I’m at it, I’ll notify my buddies in blue at Mount Vernon, Anacortes, Bellingham, and Everett. I’ll get word to the ferry terminals, too.”

“That would be terrific,” Susan said with a dazed, grateful smile.

“Okay then,” the deputy said. “I’m on it.” He headed back to his patrol car.

Susan opened the back door of her Toyota, then unfastened Mattie from his car seat. He was still crying—but more softly now, as if he might fall asleep soon. Susan grabbed his Woody doll, then shut the car door with her hip. She carried Mattie to the police car, where Deputy Corey—she’d forgotten his last name—was sitting in the front, talking on the police radio to the woman she’d spoken with earlier. Susan recognized her voice—even through all the radio static and Mattie’s whining. The deputy was instructing Nancy to phone and fax all the surrounding police stations and the ferry terminals to keep a lookout for Allen’s car. In the middle of it, he stopped and looked up at Susan. “Hold on a sec, Nancy,” he said into the radio mike. Then he nodded at Mattie. “Ms. Blanchette, if you’d like to take our buddy there inside the house, that’s cool. Maybe you can give that nap a second try. I’ll check in with you once I’m finished up here.”

“Of course, I’m sorry,” she said. Then she headed toward the house’s front door. She could hear the deputy talking into his police radio.

“We’re looking for Meeker, Allen, male, thirty-nine, black-grey hair….”

She began to feel a little bit better, enough so she could talk calmly to Mattie once she’d laid him down on the sunroom sofa. She put his Woody doll in his hand, then took off her windbreaker and covered him with it. “You know, we’re going back home tomorrow,” she said. “Won’t that be nice, sweetie? Just you and me, and we’ll take it easy. Maybe we’ll order a pizza and watch TV. What do you think? Just a boring night at home, doesn’t that sound pretty wonderful right about now?”

“’Kay,” he murmured, nodding tiredly. “Can we watch
Shrek
when we go home?”

“Of course,” she said, smoothing back his light brown hair. “Anything you want, sweetie.” She watched his long-lashed eyelids flutter and then close.

While he dozed off, Susan glanced over toward the sliding glass door—at
The Seaworthy
moored to the old dock outside. She thought about the e-mail warning her—or more specifically, warning Allen—not to involve the police. The person who had sent that e-mail had said he wasn’t far away. Well, if he was watching the house, he knew the police were here now. He probably figured she was telling the police everything anyway. She wasn’t putting that girl in any more danger by letting this deputy know what was going on.

Just then, the deputy lumbered up the steps to the back porch. As Susan tiptoed over to the glass door, slid it open, and stepped outside, he took off his police cap.

“Well, we’re getting the word out there,” he said. “Someone’s bound to spot his car soon.”

“Thank you very much,” Susan whispered. “Listen—ah, Corey, have you had any other missing persons cases today?”

Frowning, he shook his head.

“There’s this teenager named Moira, and I think she’s in trouble….” Susan glanced back at Mattie on the sofa. Shedidn’t want to be gone too long—and have him wake up to find himself alone again. “Could I—very quickly show you something on the boat?”

At a brisk clip, they started down the back lawn together. Susan told the deputy about the pink brassiere she’d found and the cryptic e-mails. Listening intently, he kept scratching his blond head. He stepped aboard the boat first and then reached out his hand to help her onto the deck. Susan had been in such a rush earlier she’d left the cabin open and the power on. She took one last look back at the house before she went below.

In the boat’s cabin, she pointed out the bra with the torn strap on the galley table. The deputy advised her not to touch it again. “This is way out of my league, and Stuart’s, too,” he murmured, bent over the table with his hands behind him as he closely studied the bra. “We’ll have to get the state police on this pronto. Let’s leave this right where it is….”

Susan sat down at the navigation station. The computer screen had turned black except for the floating Windows logo. She clicked the mouse, and a porn site came up on the screen:
BOOBS BONANZA—XXX-RATED!
flashed across sexually explicit photos of nude, large-busted women in various provocative positions.

“Now, that’s some evidence I don’t mind reviewing,” the deputy remarked.

Susan tried to clear it, but the pornographic images remained on the screen. She couldn’t even go back to the menu screen. “What is this?” she muttered, frustrated. “This wasn’t here before….”

Corey was looking over her shoulder. “You said you downloaded a picture of the girl? I bet you anything the guy sent you a virus. Mind if I get in there?”

Susan surrendered the chair, then anxiously glanced out the window at the house again. The deputy managed to clear the screen, but he was having difficulty bringing up anything else. “If you can bear with me for just a few minutes,” he murmured, “let me try a few things, here. There’s still a chance we can get something off the hard drive….”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to leave my son alone in the house,” Susan said. “I need to be close by in case he wakes up.”

Eyes on the screen, the deputy nodded. “Go, go,” he urged her. “I’ll meet you on the back porch. I won’t be more than two minutes here. If this is a dead end, I don’t want to waste any more time on it—especially if this girl’s in any kind of real danger.”

Susan nodded and then headed up on deck. She jumped back onto the dock and scurried up the lawn toward the house. At the porch steps, she slowed down and crept up to the sliding glass door. Mattie was on the sofa, fast asleep. She caught her breath, then turned and glanced back at
The Seaworthy
. The boat’s outside and interior lights glowed against the darkening sky.

After a few minutes, the boat’s lights went out, and the deputy climbed up from the cabin. Susan watched his silhouette as he stepped onto the dock and hurried up the sloped lawn toward her. As his face emerged from the shadows, she could see he was frowning. “No luck,” he grumbled, shaking his head. “But maybe if we got some computer geek to tinker with it, we’d recover those e-mails.” He gave her the keys to the boat and then glanced toward the glass door. “Is he still sleeping?”

Susan nodded. “Thank God.”

“Any clue at all who might have sent those e-mails?” he asked. “Anything more you could tell me about the girl would be a helluva lot of help.”

“Her name’s Moira, and she’s here for the weekend with Jordan Prewitt and another friend. They’re staying at this house on—ah—”

“Cedar Crest Way?” the deputy finished for her.

Susan nodded again. “I stopped by there about two hours ago, hoping they might know where Allen was. Jordan was the last one to see him.” She sighed. “Anyway, Moira wasn’t there when I dropped by. They didn’t invite me in or anything. They were acting sort of peculiar. I can’t put my finger on it exactly. They were just acting kind of funny….”

“Well, Jordan Prewitt’s a pretty strange kid,” the deputy said. “Then again, I can’t blame him. He’s been through a lot.”

“I know,” Susan murmured. “I talked at length about him with our neighbor, Tom Collins, this afternoon. He told me about Jordan’s mother—and what happened at this house with Mama’s Boy ten years ago.”

The deputy nodded glumly. “Huh, that Collins guy is a pretty weird character himself.”

Susan didn’t like hearing that. “What do you mean?” she asked warily.

He shrugged. “The guy’s a real hermit, all holed up in that house every other weekend. No friends or visitors. I don’t think anyone besides him has ever been inside that house since his father moved away. God knows what he’s up to.”

Susan stared at him and shook her head. She hated to consider it, but indeed there was something odd about Tom not even letting them inside the house for a moment.

“Anyway, you were telling me about your visit with Jordan Prewitt,” the deputy said.

“Yes, well…” she shrugged. “I asked Jordan and his friend if I could talk with Moira in case she’d run into Allen or seen his car. They said she’d gone for a walk in the woods. They said they’d get back in touch with me once Moira returned from this nature hike. But that was over two hours ago. Anyway, I have a feeling something’s going on over at that cabin.”

The deputy nodded. “I’ll go check it out.” He glanced toward Mattie in the sunroom. “I think you and your son will be okay here for the next half hour. But you better double-lock your doors just to be safe. When I radio in about the girl, I’ll have Nancy pull some strings and get you a room at one of the inns in town. They’re usually booked solid on weekends. But we’ve got some clout. I don’t like you two staying out here alone any longer than you have to. Do you have anything for self-defense besides that flare gun?”

Susan shook her head. “Allen had a revolver, but it was in the car with him.”

The deputy’s eyes narrowed at her for a moment, but then he just nodded. “Well, you could start a fire with that flare gun. Listen, there’s a whole arsenal in the trunk of my prowler. I’ll loan you something. Be right back….”

Susan followed him as far as some bushes near the side of the house. She watched the deputy duck into the driver’s seat of his patrol car. He left the door open, so she could just make out what he was saying on the radio: “We have a possible kidnapping or hostage situation involving a teenage girl, too soon to tell for sure right now. But put Stuart on alert. I’m headed to the Prewitt cabin on Cedar Crest Way for a follow-up. Stay tuned, over and out.”

He popped the trunk, then climbed out of the car and lifted the hood. Susan watched him hover over the trunk for a minute. Finally, he shut the hood, turned, and then swaggered toward her with a pistol in his hand.

From the corner of the house, Susan glanced toward the open sunroom door. Not a peep out of Mattie so far. The deputy came through a pathway in the bushes and plopped the pistol in her hand. “This is a semiautomatic pellet gun,” he said. “It won’t do as much damage as a regular handgun or your flare, but it’s still very effective. It’s used for riot control, and we don’t get too many violent demonstrations here in Cullen. That’s on loan for the next half hour. Don’t tell Stuart I let you borrow it, or he’ll have my ass in a sling. It’s all loaded and ready. FYI—you can do a lot of damage if you aim for the head or groin. But you’re probably not going to need it….”

Susan looked at the gun in her hand and nodded nervously.

“Give me forty-five minutes,” the deputy continued. “And if I’m not back by then, you and your boy hightail it to Rosie’s, and then call Nancy at the police station. Until then, stay inside and keep the doors locked, okay?”

She nodded again. “Thank you.”

“Be back soon,” he said. Then he turned and hurried toward his patrol car.

The pistol felt awkward and heavy in her hand. A cool wind came off the bay, and Susan shuddered. She watched the police car back into the turnaround and then head out the driveway. It took a curve in the drive and disappeared behind some trees.

Susan retreated back inside the house and quietly slid shut the sunroom’s glass door behind her. She locked it. Then she checked the front door to make sure it was locked and bolted. Returning to the sunroom, she checked on Mattie. He hadn’t stirred.

She tucked her windbreaker around his neck. Then she sank down in the nearby easy chair. She glanced at her wristwatch: 5:20.

Susan held on to the gun. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feel of it. All she could do for the next forty-five minutes was wait.