She reflected that maybe it hadn’t been the best strategy with Brett, but she didn’t intend to talk to Frank, especially on the phone. She was clueless enough about technology that she wasn’t sure he couldn’t plant something on her old phone merely by calling her.
She worried that he might come to the house, so she and Aiden hung out all evening with Alix and Sasha at the grill and went home with them to spend the night. To Aiden it was an unexpected treat. Teresa didn’t let him have a hot dog or macaroni and cheese this time, but he was happy with fish tacos. Frank could find her easily enough at the grill, but she would have Alix and some of the regulars on her side.
When the little ones were in bed—hopefully sleeping and not giggling the night away—Alix turned on her computer, and they Googled Nikki McAllister. They found thousands of hits, but the addition of Frank’s name to the search terms narrowed the results to a handful, including a newspaper headline reading “Fatal Sex Game.” The article said thirty-six-year-old software designer Edris “Nikki” McAllister’s death had been ruled accidental. “McAllister’s lifeless body was discovered at their Genoa home by her husband, SWAT officer Frank McAllister, when he returned from duty on August 3rd. She was apparently home alone when she died of autoerotic asphyxiation, the result of a choking game intended to provide a sexual thrill. McAllister was found in bed, partially nude, with a rope around her neck. Friends stated that she was known to experiment with bondage and other unusual sexual practices.”
They stared blankly at each other, and then Alix opened Wikipedia and typed in Autoerotic asphyxiation. She browsed quickly through the article and read, “No less powerful than cocaine and highly addictive… Deaths often occur…”
Teresa’s mouth had gone dry, and she thought her hands might be shaking. “He…he said she got him into the bondage thing,” she said. She remembered him saying, “She up and died on me.” The words hadn’t sounded as cold and accusatory as they seemed now.
“It says flat out she was alone and he found her, not like there was any question. He was on duty, so he had an alibi.”
“Unless he snuck away for a little afternoon delight, like he did with me.”
“He wasn’t a murder suspect, and you know they always look at the spouse first. So…he tied her up, but he wouldn’t choke her, so she had to do it herself when he wasn’t around? I can see why he left the Genoa PD, once everybody knew about this—I mean, can you imagine?”
“It’s so ugly.”
“Gross,” Alix agreed. “But not his fault. I know how you feel, though. Ick. You must have been like a breath of fresh air to him, Terror. And maybe she cheated on him, so he thought maybe you couldn’t be trusted either?”
“I’m just glad I don’t have to see him again.”
****
He called all day Wednesday, too. I told you I was the tenacious kind. Alix invited Teresa to move in, at least for a little while, but they had figured out long ago that they were better as BFFs than as roommates. She reminded the school that only she and Alix were authorized to pick up Aiden, and she told Aiden to tell her if anybody except Sasha texted him—including Brett or Frank.
Wednesday night they were back at home. Aiden was getting ready for bed when his phone rang. She went into his room to tell him it was too late to communicate with Sasha, but then she realized it was not the usual tone for a text. He handed her the phone, and she recognized the number. She couldn’t let Frank try to use her son as an intermediary. She smiled reassuringly at him, signed, “Pajamas,” and walked out of the room before she took the call.
“Stop calling me,” she said fiercely. “If I see this number again, I’ll tell the police what you did.”
She should have hung up on the shocked silence at the other end, but she was almost too angry to move, and then he said, “What? What are you talking about?” in a tone of such bewilderment that her heart leapt with hope. He didn’t do anything. Brett had made it up. Maybe he told him about the meeting and set him up. “Teresa, please. I’m sorry about using Aiden’s number to contact you, but you didn’t answer yours, and I need to talk to you. I know you were mad because I tangled with Devlin, but I thought you would have cooled off by now. He hit me.”
“He told me what you said, the words you used.”
“Which was what? I didn’t say anything except I wanted him to leave you alone. Cougar is a small town. We’re all going to run into each other now and then, but he needs to know he can’t keep bothering you. He pushes my buttons, but no matter what he told you, I didn’t lay a hand on him. I think I was pretty polite, considering some of the things he said to me. What did he say I said?”
“I’m not going to repeat it,” she said coldly.
“I can imagine what he would have made up. Obviously, it’s his word against mine, but—” It sounded so reasonable, so plausible, so much the charming, seductive Frank, but she remembered Brett’s shock and fury and the words he’d forced himself to repeat.
“He didn’t make it up,” she said.
“He must have made up something, or you wouldn’t be this angry. You know, I don’t even blame him for being a little deranged—he lost you.” She realized he didn’t know she knew about the app—he thought she had frozen him out for three days because he provoked Brett enough to get his nose bloodied.
“You put something on my phone,” she said.
“What do you mean?” He sounded so innocent, so reasonable, but she didn’t doubt herself this time.
“You know what I mean,” she said sharply. “You know it’s illegal, and if you call again, I’ll give the phone to Hal Knight.”
“Wait!” he said, knowing she was about to hang up. “I’m sorry, but I did it to protect you, to keep you safe. That’s why I gave you the phone in the first place, for emergencies.”
“To keep me safe?” she echoed derisively. “By invading my privacy, listening to my conversations, spying on me? You did it behind my back. If it was for my protection, you would have told me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right; I should have told you. But you can’t throw away what we have because of one misstep.” It sounded so familiar—a man she had trusted asking her to forget he had betrayed her. “I love you, Teresa,” he said in his caressing, loving, persuasive way. His voice made her tingle, and it was hard to tell if it was anger or arousal.
“Fuck off, Frank,” she said and hung up.
****
The weather was cold and gloomy through the weekend, and it rained heavily Saturday night. Teresa wasn’t depressed by bad weather; she rather liked it. Rain had its own beauty, and the world would grow greener because of it. She was snug and safe in her little house, listening to the rain on the roof, with her son dreaming his innocent dreams in the next room.
She still locked the doors and windows every night, but she was starting to feel silly about it. That a girl had gone missing from Cougar a few months after another one disappeared from Yaholo didn’t mean she was in danger. If anything, it meant she was safer than before—if a serial killer was out there somewhere, he wouldn’t be seeking a new victim this soon. She couldn’t even be sure Elle Goodman had met with a bad end. Her car was gone too—she could have driven out of town for reasons nobody was yet aware of.
That line of reasoning changed on Monday morning when the Independent confirmed what had been a whispered rumor at church the day before: Elle Goodman’s body had been found. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled, and her partially clad body buried in a shallow grave at the town dump.
The location of the body suggested the killer was an outsider or someone who hadn’t lived in Cougar long. A local would have known the first heavy rain would make the soft earth at the edges of the landfill shift and uncover the body. Now Teresa’s fear seemed only too reasonable. She told herself they couldn’t assume one person was responsible for both crimes, in spite of the similarities. If it was a serial killer, he had taken one victim from Yaholo and one from Cougar—wo
uldn’t he be likely to choose another location next time? In any case, he would know everybody was extra alert right now, extra cautious, so it was the worst possible time.
All of this and more was discussed at length over coffee with Alix before she went to work. In addition to her unease about the murder, she was deeply depressed about her love life. Her anger at Frank had nearly spent itself, and she was sorry the affair had ended so badly. Her relationships always ended badly. Gene, Brett, Frank—three strikes and you’re out.
“Now you’re starting to get it,” Alix said with some satisfaction. “Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the men in the world are not worth the trouble.”
“What happens with the other point one per cent?” Teresa asked. “And how do I find them?”
“They die,” Alix said starkly.
“Oh, Alix!” Teresa put her hand on her friend’s.
“It’s true. My advice? Buy a good vibrator and hire a repairman when you need one. What else do we need them for?”
Chapter 20
It wasn’t raining when she got off work at seven, but thunderheads had been building on the horizon all day. The moon was just past full, and the sky was bright, but the light was beginning to diffuse behind a thin overcast. The wind was cold, and she was glad to pick Aiden up at Alix’s and get home to her space heaters and a hot dinner. She had made a tuna noodle casserole she could pop into the oven while she put together a spinach salad—he would like it if she put enough cucumber in it.
He ate well enough but was a little subdued, and finally he told her what was on his mind: “Bad man killed her.” No doubt Sasha had been filling his mind with gory details.
Teresa took a deep breath. “Yes, but don’t be scared. I’m sure he’s far away now.” She wasn’t sure, of course. She was a little scared tonight herself, and it made her want a man. Not for sex, but to hold her and make her feel safe and protected. She had had that, but nothing precious could last long. Everything was fleeting, including life itself. Elle Goodman and the young woman from Yaholo had probably believed otherwise, had made plans for their futures, and they had been snuffed out.
By the time Aiden was in bed, thunder was rumbling in the distance, and the moon was hidden. The wind made things outside rattle and bang in unfamiliar, unsettling ways. She searched through her DVD collection, now mostly Brett’s choices, for a comedy to cheer and distract her—or would this be the right time for an old-fashioned tearjerker? Maybe what she needed tonight was a good cry.
She decided on The Untamed Heart. She could identify with Marisa Tomei, so unlucky in love, and Christian Slater was cute in a completely nonthreatening way. All she needed to make the evening complete was the carton of Breyers triple chocolate ice cream she happened to have in the freezer.
She was settled on the couch with her bowl of ice cream, her slippered feet propped on the coffee table, feeling a little guilty because she wouldn’t let Aiden do it, when lightning flashed outside the windows. She counted the seconds before the thunder rolled—it was close, but not frighteningly so. Rain pattered on the awnings. She paused the DVD and went down the hall to check on Aiden, because lightning sometimes scared him.
He was sound asleep, facing toward the window, with his blankets wrapped close around his shoulders against the cold. She bent and left a feather-light kiss on his cheek. As she straightened up, lightning flashed again, and for a split second a shadow moved beyond the curtained window. Prowler. The thunder came soon after, but not as loud as before.
She peered out the window, but she couldn’t see anything. She went quickly out and closed the door behind her. She turned off the living room light so she could see out and wouldn’t present a clear silhouette in the window. Her mind was racing—her phone was in her purse—call 911—yell “Call 911” so he’ll think somebody else is here—what if he tries to break in?—what can I use as a weapon? She couldn’t see anything outside; it was too dark. She waited for another flash of lightning to illuminate the scene, and then she heard a sound on the porch, and her heart banged in her ears.
She scrambled for her purse. Just as her fingers closed on the phone, there was a knock at the door, neither tentative nor demanding. She held her breath. “It’s me, babe,” a voice called. What? It sounded like Frank’s voice, but he never called her babe or anything like it. “Open the door,” he said, sounding calm, ordinary. “It’s raining like hell out here.”
She switched on the porch light and opened the door a crack, but kept the chain on. He stood on the porch, dressed in a heavy overcoat, shoulders hunched, trying to shelter in the doorway. The rain was coming down hard now. “Teresa,” he said, as if he was happy to see her, as if this was not in any way unusual. “Let me in before I drown.”
She was still angry with him, but she was glad to see somebody familiar and not a serial killer. Familiar felt safe tonight. She unhooked the chain and opened the door. She didn’t want him in the house, but she didn’t want to carry on a conversation through the door in this weather, either. The air that came in with him was cold and fresh with the scent of rain. She didn’t try to make him welcome. “What are you doing here?” she asked. She stepped back, keeping an impersonal distance between them.
He ran a hand through his wet hair and shrugged out of his coat, very casual, as if this was all perfectly normal. “We need to talk,” he said. “We can work this out.”
She didn’t offer to take his coat and hang it in the closet. He held it uncertainly, as if he expected her to, and then draped it over the back of the easy chair. “This is kind of a strange time to come by,” she said.
“It’s kind of now or never, isn’t it?” She didn’t understand what he meant, but his tone was so reasonable she thought she must have missed something. He made her doubt herself, and she had done a lot of that lately. “Is Aiden asleep?” he asked. She didn’t answer, but he continued as if she had. “I didn’t think you’d want to discuss it in front of him.”
“I don’t want to discuss it at all. Nothing you can say will make any difference.”
“You know you’re breaking that boy’s heart,” he said. “You couldn’t hang onto Devlin, and now you’re cutting me loose? He needs a father.”
“It’s not going to be you.”
“I could do so much for him, though. I love you. I think you owe me a chance—”
“What you did was unforgivable.”
“I was trying to keep you safe. I have a right to protect what’s mine.”
“I’m not yours! I was never yours. I would have married you, but I still wouldn’t have been yours, not that way, not in that tone of voice.”
“You belonged to me even before we met,” he said. “Come on, admit it: you missed me. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?” He smiled, the old charming, persuasive Frank, and put his hands out in a peacemaking gesture. “I’m not here to argue. I’m here to remind you how good it was between us. You can’t throw that away.”
“Actually, it turns out I can.”
He shook his head, amused. “You are so fierce,” he said. “But I know you don’t mean it. I know you better than you know yourself. Teresa!” His use of her name carried a familiar caressing note, but he was half cajoling, half reproachful. “Come here.” She didn’t budge, so he came to her, moved closer, not in a threatening way but as if he were approaching a wild thing in need of gentling. Even now, angry and still a little jumpy from the fright she’d had, she could feel the attraction between them. And no, she was not about to be drawn in, suckered again. “I know your body inside and out,” he said. “I know you’re more adventurous than you pretend to be. I can make you feel so good, and you know it.”
“This is not happening, Frank.”
“Yes it is,” he said and took her arm, gently at first and then more firmly. “Let’s go in the bedroom.”
“No! You said you wanted to talk.”
“We can talk in the bedroom.”
“No!” She tried to pull her arm free,
but he was too strong for her.
“I have something for you,” he said. He reached toward his back pocket. She hadn’t told him what she’d done with the engagement ring—surely he didn’t intend to replace it? Instead, cold steel snapped closed on her wrist.
“No! Take it off!”
“Calm down,” he said. “I know you don’t like it, and I’ll take it off in a minute, as soon as you go in the bedroom with me. Nothing bad will happen to you, Teresa. Quite the contrary.” He didn’t wait for a response and maneuvered her toward the hall. She planted her feet and struggled against his hold, but couldn’t bring herself to kick or scratch. This was Frank; he would come to his senses in a minute and apologize, as he had at Grey Harbor. She could tell he didn’t like her fighting him, but he didn’t hit her or shove her or jerk her arm—that wasn’t his style. He urged her forward, his fingers on her arm just tight enough, as if he was trying not to bruise her. “You know you want this as much as I do.”
But she didn’t. He wouldn’t kill her, but she was pretty sure she was about to be raped. The irony was that it was a crime she could prevent simply by wanting it to happen, by letting her body respond to his. No coercion, no crime.
If she screamed, who would hear her? Old Mr. Poston next door was nearly as deaf as Aiden. The Doolittles on the other side were visiting relatives out of town. With the wind and rain, her voice wouldn’t carry far enough for anybody else to hear. If Aiden had been a hearing child, would she have yelled for him to call 911 or run next door? No—six-year-olds were sound sleepers, and she might have put him in danger.
Frank forced her through her bedroom door and over to the bed, where he fastened the other handcuff to the headboard, making use of those vertical mission-style slats he admired so much. “Relax,” he said soothingly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll be right back and take it off.” He went out, and she looked around wildly for a way to help herself—a weapon, a phone, something to throw. She could barely reach the drawer of the nightstand and tugged on the handle. Her angle was wrong, so it slid out an inch and stuck and slid again with a squeak.
The Rebound Effect Page 16
