Vicious (25 page)

“MOIRA, ARE YOU OUT THERE?” he called.

Leo stood at the edge of the darkened woods behind Jordan’s family cabin. He’d switched on the outside lights in back of the house, hoping that might help Moira find her way in the dark. It was officially nighttime, and he was officially scared for her now. Tears came to his eyes as he stared at the blackness past the first cluster of trees. Leo had quickly thrown together a cold ham and cheese sandwich to keep his blood sugar in balance. He had it in his hand, but couldn’t eat or swallow just now. His throat was closing up from crying.

He was so worried about her—and worried about Jordan, who was acting like a crazy man—a dangerous, crazy man. His buddy had asked for just twenty more minutes to get a confession out of his captive. But that had been almost an hour ago. Meeker had tried to confess, but Jordan still wasn’t satisfied. Leo had a feeling Jordan wouldn’t be satisfied until the man was dead.

And all the while, Moira was missing. He should have driven to the store and phoned the police at least two hours ago—while it was still daylight and they still had a chance of finding her in these woods. Why the hell had he left her alone earlier? It was his fault she was lost.

And if anything happened to Susan Blanchette and her little boy, it would be his fault, too. Meeker had sworn up and down his fiancée and her son were in danger. He’d said if any harm came to them, he would blame him.

It was all Leo could do to keep Meeker alive, to keep his friend from killing him.

At the moment, he was pushing his luck by leaving them alone in the basement for just these few minutes. Any time now, he half expected to hear a muted gunshot from within the house, and then he’d know that Jordan had murdered the man.

He called out for Moira again. But there was no response from within the gloomy woods, just leaves rustling in the wind.

Turning toward the house again, Leo wiped the tears from his eyes and managed to take a few bites of his sandwich. He noticed Jordan’s car parked in the driveway. It was only a five- or ten-minute drive to that store and the pay phone, where he could call the police—and finally put an end to this. Then they could start looking for Moira, too.

But he didn’t dare leave Jordan alone with that man for even the short time it would take to drive to the store and back. Plus, Jordan was acting so crazy right now. What was to keep him from shooting at the police when they arrived? A lot of people—including Jordan—could end up dead.

At the kitchen door, Leo took a long last look at the darkened woods. He thought of how three hours ago, he’d been worried Moira would return to the cabin and discover the bizarre, horrible thing Jordan had done. He’d started packing her things to head her off when she returned. He remembered the prescription bottle in the dresser drawer of Moira’s room:
TAKE ONE CAPSULE BY MOUTH
30
MINUTES BEFORE BEDTIME AS NEEDED FOR SLEEP
.
DO NOT EXCEED DOSAGE
.

He tossed aside what was left of his sandwich and then hurried into the house, through the kitchen, and up the stairs to the master bedroom. Taking the prescription bottle from the dresser, he shook out five capsules and shoved them in his pocket.

He swung by the bathroom, waited a few moments, and then flushed the toilet—just in case Jordan wanted to know why he’d gone up to the second floor.

Returning to the kitchen, Leo dug out a half-full bottle of citrus-flavored Vitaminwater from the refrigerator. Jordan had been drinking it earlier. Leo reopened it and set it on the counter.

The basement door was open, and he could hear Jordan talking. “Why the toys?” he was asking. “It always struck me as an empty gesture, since the cops took away those mangy, used toys as evidence. You had to know that. You knew us motherless boys would never get a chance to play with them—even if we wanted to. Was it all for show, just something for the newspapers?”

“I give up,” Meeker replied in a weak, raspy voice. “I don’t know what you want me to say….”

“Some of the toys were eventually traced to a Value Village secondhand store in Seattle,” Jordan continued. “But I always had a feeling that a few of those consolation prizes might have been yours when you were a little boy….”

He heard Meeker mutter something but couldn’t make out what he said.

Hovering over the counter, Leo nervously twisted open the sleeping capsules and dumped the powder into Jordan’s Vitaminwater. He shoved the empty capsules in his pants pocket. Putting the cap back on the bottle, he gently shook it until he couldn’t see the sediment anymore. Then he quickly shoved the bottle back in the refrigerator.

“For me, you left a little sailor doll,” Jordan was saying. “Remember? It was very appropriate. How did you know I was going to be in a boat when you took my mother away?”

Leo crept down the stairs, and every step creaked. Both Jordan and Meeker glanced at him for a moment. Jordan was standing directly in front of his prone captive.

Jordan sighed and gazed down at the man. “Answer me.”

Meeker closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to the tabletop. “I had a whole collection of old toys in the trunk of my car,” he murmured. “Some of them were mine, and some were from secondhand stores, like you say. Leaving the toy was my trademark. When I saw you in the boat, I remembered I had the sailor doll, so I snuck back to the car and grabbed it from the box of stuff.”

Leo froze at the bottom of the steps. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Meeker was admitting it now. He was even giving details.

“Were you following my mother and me around the day before you abducted her?” Jordan pressed.

“Yeah, I did that sometimes. If I could, I’d watch them for a few days before I made any kind of move.”

Jordan started breathing heavily. “How did you decide on my mother? Why her?”

“I don’t know. I guess because she was pretty.”

“How long were you watching her?”

The man sighed. “I don’t know, about a week.”

Suddenly, Jordan slapped him across the skull with the back of his hand. “Fucking liar!”

Meeker grimaced in pain.

“Jesus, Jordan, what are you doing?” Leo started toward him.

“He’s lying!” Jordan yelled. Some spit flew out of his mouth. “He’s just been saying what he thinks I want to hear! But he’s lying.” He swiveled around and glared at Meeker, who started to weep again. “You couldn’t have been following my mother around for only a week. It had to be a lot longer than that—or maybe she was just an impulse kill.”

Leo shook his head. “Jordan, you’re not making any sense—”

“The day my dad dropped me off at the house on Birch—the day before my mother was killed—I hadn’t seen her for three weeks. Don’t you understand? He wouldn’t have been following her around for a week just because she was pretty. He only went after women with sons. In my mother’s case, he couldn’t have known she had a son until the day before he killed her. Like I say, I hadn’t seen my mother in three weeks.”

He turned and swatted him on the back of the head again. “You think you’re being so clever. You’re purposely making mistakes like that so you can point out later that you were making it all up.”

“Oh, God, please, stop it!” the man cried.

“She was an impulse kill, wasn’t she?” Jordan hissed, raising his hand again.

Leo grabbed his arm. “No! Jordan, that’s enough….”

Jordan pulled away from him, then retreated to the stairs and sank down on one of the lower steps. He put his face in his hands. “There were a few boats out on the bay the day I arrived, even with the choppy water,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “I always figured Mama’s Boy must have been on one of them. With a set of binoculars, he could have seen my mom and me in the backyard. Maybe he saw me trying out the kayak. I think he started following us around that first afternoon.”

Standing over his friend, Leo said nothing. But he remembered Meeker mentioning that he was going to take his fiancée and her son sailing today. So Meeker was an experienced sailor. He remembered something else Meeker had said:
For all I know, maybe this is some “good cop, bad cop” routine you two dreamed up.

He reached under the banister, between the posts, and patted Jordan’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take a break?” he whispered. “Go upstairs, get something cool to drink. Let me ask him some questions for a while.”

Rubbing his eyes, Jordan nodded. “I’ll go up in a minute,” he murmured.

Leo glanced over at Meeker, half naked and shivering, stretched across the worktable. Leo moved over toward the washer and dryer, where he grabbed a plaid blanket from a laundry basket. He shook out the dust and brought it over to Meeker and laid it over his shoulders. Over the blanket, Leo rubbed Meeker’s taut, tense back and arms. The man shuddered and moaned gratefully. Leo returned to the laundry sink and refilled the measuring cup with cold water. He brought the cup to Meeker and then set it to his lips. Meeker quickly drank the water down. Leo rubbed his shoulders again.

“Why don’t you give him a goddamn manicure while you’re at it?” Jordan mumbled.

Leo shot his friend a look; then he went back to rubbing their prisoner’s aching shoulders and arms. With a sigh, Meeker seemed to melt against the table.

Leo didn’t know very much about the Mama’s Boy murders. He certainly didn’t have Jordan’s expertise. But Moira read like a fiend, and true crime was one her favorite subjects. She’d once told him that studies revealed serial killers and mass murderers were often the victims of violence and abuse in their own childhoods. A serial killer with the nickname Mama’s Boy certainly had a good shot of being among those childhood victims.

Jordan, the bad cop, had tried to get their Mama’s Boy suspect to talk about his crimes. But that hadn’t worked out. Leo figured it was now his turn to be the good cop and get Meeker to talk about the crimes committed against him when he was a kid—if there were any.

The notion that he was rubbing the shoulders of a possible serial killer—even with an old blanket between them—sickened Leo, and he stepped back. He wiped his hands on his shirt and then nervously stuck them in his pants pockets. “Okay, I—I’d like to ask you some questions now—ah, Allen,” he said, trying not to stammer. “Then we’ll wrap this up, I promise. But I—I really need to warn you, we can check all this out with your fiancée to find out if you’re telling the truth.”

“Go ahead,” Meeker murmured.

“Were you an only child?”

The man squinted at him. “What?”

“Were you an only child?” Leo repeated.

Meeker was scowling. “What the hell?”

“It isn’t a tough question,” Leo said. “Do you need time to think up an answer?”

“I—I—have a younger stepbrother. We were never very close.” Meeker closed his eyes. “If I hesitated, that’s why. I don’t really count him as a sibling.”

“So—you have a stepbrother. That means either your parents divorced or one of them died. What happened?” Meeker hesitated. “Why are you asking all this shit?”

“Why can’t you just answer?”

“I just don’t understand what this has to do with anything—”

“Answer the goddamn question!” Jordan bellowed, getting to his feet.

Leo furtively shook his head at him.

With a sigh, Jordan sank back down on the step. But his hand still gripped the banister, and he watched them intently.

“Was it a death or a divorce, Allen?” Leo asked him quietly.

Meeker turned his face away. “A death, my mother died. Okay?”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Eleven,” he muttered.

“How did she die?”

He hesitated again. “It was a car accident.”

Leo said nothing for a moment. He glanced at Jordan and then at Meeker. Finally, he sighed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you. It’s too vague. ‘Car accident’ is how Jordan said his mother died. And I know now, he wasn’t telling the truth. So—how did your mother
really
die, Allen?”

He didn’t respond.

“Keep in mind,” Leo said. “We can double-check with your fiancée. She’s only five minutes away by car.”

Meeker’s shoulders started to shake beneath the blanket. Leo couldn’t quite tell if he was laughing or crying. Then he realized it was a little bit of both. “Susan will tell you that my mother died in a car accident,” he said. “But the truth is that one March afternoon, she locked herself in the family station wagon inside the garage, and she left the motor running. Guess who found her. Me, that’s who. She didn’t leave a note or anything—nothing at all.”

“So you have a pretty good idea what it’s like to lose a mother very suddenly,” Leo said quietly.

“That doesn’t make me a murderer,” Meeker said. “In fact, I sympathize with those kids whose mothers were killed.”

“Is that why you left each one of us a toy?” Jordan asked.

“I never killed anybody!” he cried. “You were right earlier, okay? I was making up everything, because I thought if I confessed, you’d turn me over to the police. Listen to me—for the last time, I’m not a murderer. I’m a nice guy, damn it! Ask anyone!” He glanced at Leo. “You said you were going to wrap this up. Well, when?”

Leo nodded. “Just a few more minutes, okay? We were talking about your mother. You said she didn’t leave a note when she killed herself. You—um, after all these years, you must have come up with some idea about why she committed suicide.”

Meeker pressed his forehead against the table again. He said nothing.

“Why do you think she killed herself, Allen?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered

“You must have been pretty angry at her for deserting you at such a young age,” Leo said quietly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, don’t kids sometimes resent a parent who dies on them?” Leo pointed out. “My father was killed in Iraq when his jeep ended up in a ditch two years ago. And when I think about it, I still kind of get pissed off at him for dying on me. I know it sounds crazy. But I sometimes think he should have tried to get out of going overseas or he should have been more careful behind the wheel. This grief counselor the army fixed us up with—she said it was perfectly normal to have that kind of anger and resentment. She said that with some therapy, I’ll get over it. But I think maybe I feel that way because I really miss him.” He gazed at Meeker. “Weren’t you ever angry at your mother for killing herself?”