Freak

by Jennifer Hillier

  Morris swallowed, then took a long sip of his coffee. He wiped his mouth again, then took another long sip. It was a pathetic attempt at stalling. No problem. Sheila crossed her arms over her chest. She could wait all day if she had to.

  Finally he said, “A lot has happened since we first tried to get married, darlin’. Tried being the operative word.”

  “So you’re having second thoughts?”

  “Of course not.” He fiddled with a jelly packet. “I love you. I want to be with you.”

  “But you just don’t want to marry me.”

  And then, just like that, Sheila felt it coming. Tears, hot and salty on her lower lids, threatened to spill over. She was horrified. This was not okay. Yelling in a restaurant was one thing; crying was another. Mortified, she touched her napkin to her eyes, hoping to cut the tears off at the pass.

  “That’s not it.” Morris reached over and touched her hand, alarmed. He knew his fiancée wasn’t a crier. “I asked you to be mine again, didn’t I? You know I never say anything I don’t mean.”

  “And yet we haven’t set a wedding date.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t think the timing is right.”

  “Oh God.” Sheila pulled her arm away. The tears flowed freely down her cheeks and she blotted furiously, aware that everyone was staring. Through the haze she could see their server standing in a corner with a bunch of other restaurant employees, looking over and whispering furiously. She was putting on a show, apparently. Well, too bad. They could stare all they wanted. “I’ve been suspecting you felt this way for a while now, but I never thought you’d say you didn’t want to marry me.”

  “But I didn’t say that!” Morris’s own frustration caused his naturally loud voice to become even louder. All chatter around them came to a complete stop. Great. Forget watching, now everybody in the restaurant was listening, too. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Sheila. I’m not saying never. I’m saying not now.”

  “Same thing.” Sheila’s voice was dull. She wiped under her eyes. Dark blotches of mascara were transferring to her cotton napkin, and she knew she probably looked smudgy and clownish. She didn’t care. All she could hear was that Morris didn’t want to marry her, and the realization that her deepest fear was coming true was more painful than anything she’d felt in a long time. She’d almost lost him once. She couldn’t believe it was happening again.

  “Why don’t we get our brunch to go?” Morris stared down an older couple at the next table who’d been watching them with great interest, and they finally looked away. “I feel like we’re in a fishbowl.”

  “We’re finishing our discussion here.”

  “Hon, people are staring—”

  “I don’t give a shit!” Sheila’s voice was high and shrieky. “Let them look.”

  An awkward silence passed between them. Morris picked at his food, but it was clear he’d lost his appetite. Sheila’s food stayed on her plate, untouched. Seconds ticked by like minutes. Slowly, the conversations around them resumed to normal levels. Finally Sheila leaned forward.

  “I thought we were working through everything that happened,” she said. “Or am I misreading things? I thought the counseling was helping us both. You know I’m in a good place.”

  “You’re in an amazing place. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Then what’s the problem? Talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

  Morris sighed and put his fork down. He reached for her hand once again. “I just . . . I think it’s too soon.”

  “It’s been a year since everything happened.”

  “Yes, and maybe we need another year.”

  Another year? He couldn’t be serious.

  “Are you still thinking about . . .” Sheila stopped, not actually able to speak the name that was on the tip of her tongue aloud.

  “Ethan.” Morris said it for her, his voice flat. “Yes, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about him. Maybe more than I should be.”

  “Because of Abby Maddox being all over the news right now? Because I thought we had worked through that. I know it takes time, but—”

  “Maybe the press has something to do with it, yeah.” Morris’s jaw clenched and he was looking away—both surefire signs of his agitation—but he didn’t let go of her hand. “It’s definitely not helping. With all the media attention on Maddox right now, and the press talking about all the murders from last year, it’s hard not to think of that . . . other stuff.”

  Sheila didn’t ask him to clarify what he meant by that, because she already knew. She was a tenured psychology professor at Puget Sound State University, and around this time last year, she’d been having an affair with one of her teaching assistants, a graduate student named Ethan Wolfe. Yes, she’d been in a serious relationship with Morris at the time, and no, the affair had not ended well. In fact, it had ended so terribly that Ethan had nearly killed her. If it hadn’t been for Morris . . .

  Sheila closed her eyes. It hurt like hell to think of Ethan now, but her ex-lover was impossible to forget. Ethan Wolfe had fooled everyone. On the surface, he’d seemed like your average brilliant and charming graduate student. But underneath, he was a raging psychopath, and after Sheila’s rescue, the dismembered remains of fourteen homeless women were found in the walls of Ethan’s basement.

  Fourteen dismembered bodies. And he’d only been twenty-three years old. The press had nicknamed him the Tell-Tale Heart Killer.

  And even though he was dead, the nightmare still wasn’t over. Abby Maddox, Ethan’s longtime girlfriend, was front-page news once again, making it very difficult for Sheila and Morris to move forward. Though Abby was tucked away safely at Rosedale Penitentiary, serving out a nine-year sentence for first-degree assault on their friend and retired cop Jerry Isaac, it wasn’t nearly good enough for the prosecuting attorney.

  The King County PA, up for reelection next year and in need of good publicity, wanted somebody to pay for the murders of those homeless women found in Ethan’s basement. Who better than his girlfriend Abby Maddox, who’d slashed the throat of a retired cop and had gone on the run for seven weeks?

  Unfortunately, though, the evidence-gathering had been difficult. There was simply nothing linking Abby to the bodies found in Ethan’s house. They couldn’t prove Abby even knew about her boyfriend’s proclivities. For months, it was looking like nothing was going to stick, and gradually, public interest in Abby Maddox waned. Things had blissfully quieted down for a few glorious months.

  Until last week.

  In a spectacular turn of events, the PA announced she finally had enough to charge Abby Maddox with the murder of Diana St. Clair. Diana had not been one of the victims found in Ethan’s basement. She had not been homeless. On the contrary, Diana had been a fellow student at Puget Sound State, thought to have been romantically involved with Ethan Wolfe, her TA. She’d gone missing for a week until her body had turned up floating in the Sound. She hadn’t drowned—of course not, Diana had been a contender for the U.S. Olympic swim team. She’d been stabbed to death. A year later, her poor parents were still demanding justice. It was believed that Ethan had killed her, but with him dead, nobody had ever been charged with her murder.

  Until now.

  During the announcement, the prosecuting attorney had expressed confidence they could prove Abby Maddox knew about her boyfriend’s affair, and that she had killed Diana in a jealous rage. The trial was set to begin a month from now. Meanwhile, the PA’s investigation into Abby’s involvement in the deaths of the homeless women would continue. There was no statute of limitations on murder.

  And just like that, Abby Maddox and, by extension, Ethan Wolfe were back in the spotlight. Of course it had to be hard on Morris. But still, his words hurt like crazy.

  “I need more time,” Morris was saying. “That’s all it is. A wedding right now just seems so . . .”

  “What?”

  “Out of place.” Morris shrugged, helpless. “Everything still feels fresh. I can
still remember the night I found you, the night I shot him . . .” He closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t want those images floating around in my big head, even if they’re pale and fuzzy and in pieces. Because I still see them, when what I should be seeing is you and our future. Not our past.”

  His words were like sharp needles, poking her over and over again. But deep down, Sheila knew he was right. She was pushing for this wedding because she was terrified of losing him, but if she continued to push, she would lose him.

  “Okay,” she said, relenting. “I hear you. I’m sorry I caused a scene.”

  “Don’t apologize, darlin’. We should have had this talk months ago. It was cowardly of me to not tell you how I was feeling.”

  She held up her left hand, where a diamond the size of a small marble sat on her ring finger. “Should I still be wearing this?”

  “Of course!” Morris kissed her hand. “Don’t you dare take it off. You’re my fiancée, and someday, you’ll be my wife. When the time is right. When we’re both . . . healthier.”

  Healthier. Nice way to put it. Morris was a recovering alcoholic, and she was a recovering sex addict, and a year ago, they had both fallen off the wagon. The road to recovery was a long one, and not a straight path by any means. Sheila knew that better than most.

  “Can you live with giving it a bit more time?” Morris’s voice was gentle.

  She looked at him, looked at his handsome face in the glowy light of the restaurant, his kind eyes, his hopeful expression. The doubts were still screaming like banshees inside her chest, but she forced them down and nodded. “Yes.” She wiped her eyes, feeling self-conscious. “God, I must look like hell.”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room right now.” Morris kissed her hand again. “You hang on to that wedding planner. We’ll need it someday soon.”

  “Sure.” Sheila looked down at the leather binder. The tears were threatening her again. She willed them not to drop. “No problem.”

  chapter 4

  ROSEDALE PENITENTIARY WAS a cold, lifeless place. Which was to be expected, considering it was a prison.

  Abby Maddox sat facing her high-powered attorney, a man with a thick mop of silver hair and a ruddy alcoholic’s complexion. They were in one of the prison “conference rooms,” a laughable name for the space, considering it was only ten by fifteen feet, with painted concrete walls, a metal table, and four folding chairs. The steel was hard underneath Abby’s ass, and she shifted periodically in her seat as her lawyer droned on. He had been speaking non-stop for five minutes. The man loved the sound of his own voice.

  Which wasn’t to say that Bob Borden wasn’t a hell of a defense attorney. He was, and that’s why she’d picked him. When word of Abby’s arrest last year in Florida leaked to the media, a dozen criminal attorneys from prestigious law firms had contacted her, all offering to represent her pro bono. She knew right away she wanted Borden. His success rate at trial was impressive, he was male, and he’d been married for over twenty-five years.

  And that last part was key. The more married a guy was, the more pliable he tended to be.

  Abby nodded every few seconds to show she was listening, which she was, for the most part. Borden’s animated gestures were difficult to ignore. Though he was in his mid-fifties, he was far from unattractive, dressed in a gray custom-tailored pinstripe suit and a teal necktie that brought out the bright blue of his eyes. The man was skillful, manipulative, and aggressive, and his intensity was exactly what she needed.

  Borden’s only weakness? His ego. Men.

  “So where do things stand?” she asked when he finally paused. She was careful to keep the impatience out of her voice.

  “They don’t have much.” Borden’s gaze flickered to her lips, as they always did when she spoke. On cue, she licked them, watching as his breath quickened slightly. Really, it was too easy. It almost wasn’t even fun.

  “What do they have, then?”

  “It’s turning into a clusterfuck over there.” His gaze lingered on her mouth for a few seconds more. “No doubt they’re trying to find DNA and trace that will tie you to the murders of those homeless women. But if they haven’t found anything yet, they’re not going to. From what my sources are telling me, they’re not even finding any of Ethan’s DNA. He took great care to be clean, I’ll grant him that. So our focus is on Diana St. Clair.”

  “And the professor’s testimony?”

  Borden waved a manicured hand. “Sheila Tao won’t testify, I’ll see to that. Anything she has to say about you is hearsay. She was locked in Ethan’s basement for three weeks and nothing he said to her can be corroborated, so don’t concern yourself with her.”

  Sheila Tao. The mere mention of the bitch made Abby want to scratch Borden’s eyes out, just because he was there.

  She kept her face composed. “So I continue to sit here and rot while we wait for the trial to start, and in the meantime the prosecuting attorney is still trying to pin the homeless women’s murders on me. It’s really not looking good for me now, is it, Bob? I’m already in for nine years because you said that was the best you could do.”

  “It was, Abby. And it won’t be nine years, trust me. You’ll be out in four for good behavior, and since you’ve already served a year, that’s only three years left.” Borden’s smile was an attempt at reassurance. “It’ll pass in no time.”

  The arrogant sonofabitch. Anybody in here could tell you that jail time was not quick time. The year Abby had spent in here already felt like ten.

  “Actually, that’s why I’m here this morning.” The attorney folded his hands together. “There’s been an interesting development.”

  “Tell me already.” Abby worked at keeping her voice soft. “Or do you want me to beg?”

  Borden’s ruddy face turned a deeper shade of red. He adjusted his tie even though it didn’t need adjusting. “A dead body turned up this morning at the Sweet Chariot Inn in downtown Seattle. It’s an upscale boutique hotel, pricey but small. Adult female, twenties, Caucasian. The cops are coming to talk to you about it. My contacts at Seattle PD gave me the heads-up.”

  He’d thrown in that last line just so she’d know how well connected he was. As if she didn’t already know all about him. Abby knew more about her attorney than he’d ever realize. She knew that his kids were Jessica, Christian, and Hunter, ages seventeen, fifteen, and twelve respectively. She knew his wife was named Natasha, and that she was forty-six, and that she was fucking their Mercedes mechanic. Abby might be in prison, but she knew everything she needed to know about Bob Borden.

  “The police are coming to talk to me about a dead body? Which has what to do with me?” Abby raised an eyebrow and gestured to her prison attire. “Look where I am. They can’t possibly think I killed her.”

  “Of course not.” Borden glanced up at the ceiling, as if to reassure himself that there were no cameras in here. There weren’t, but his voice dropped, anyway. “But is there any chance you know who did?”

  Abby leaned back in her chair, appraising her attorney. “Interesting question. What was the victim’s name?”

  “Brenda Stich. College student. She had more than a passing physical resemblance to you.”

  Abby cocked her head. “And it grows curiouser and curiouser.”

  “The name ring any bells?”

  “Not remotely.” Abby drummed her fingers on the table impatiently. “Is this really what you came here to ask me, Bob? I live in a six-by-nine cell surrounded by guards all day. What could I possibly know about a murder?”

  “I do have a reason for asking.” Borden continued to watch her intently. “It seems your name was found at the scene, carved into the dead girl’s body. I’m told the exact words were ‘Free Abby Maddox.’” He paused for dramatic effect. “I’ll confirm once I receive photos.”

  She stared at him, tempted to ask him to repeat what he’d just said, even though she’d heard him perfectly. Keeping her face straight and her tone appropriately sombe
r, she said, “You know I have some disturbed fans, Bob.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Abby wasn’t being arrogant with her use of the word fans. She was well aware of her social media celebrity status. There was a fan website called FreeAbbyMaddox.com. Someone had set up a Facebook page and it currently had over a hundred thousand “Likes.” There were at least six fake Twitter accounts in her name. A bit twisted perhaps, but so what? After a year in here, she needed all the support she could get. Fans sent her all kinds of donations, which helped enormously in prison.

  “Any fan in particular stand out?” he asked.

  Abby allowed a small smile to play at the corners of her lips, never allowing it to fully materialize. “Nobody special comes to mind.”

  “They’re going to check your mail. See who’s been writing to you.”

  “That’s a ton of mail. They won’t find anything.”

  “That’s their problem.” Borden put his hand over hers.

  A shudder of repulsion passed through Abby. Not that she let it show, of course. She didn’t like to be touched unless she initiated it herself. But it was important to let him think she liked him. She needed him to work hard for her, especially since he was doing it for free. She allowed his hand to remain.

  “What’s happened here, Abby—as much as it’s a tragedy that a woman was found dead, of course—is not necessarily a terrible thing,” Borden said. “For you, I mean. There are indications that this murder wasn’t the first. Another woman, also resembling you, was killed a week ago, but I haven’t received definitive word from my sources yet as to whether the two murders are related. They likely are, though.”

  Abby sat up straighter. “They think it’s a serial killer?”

  “A serial killer who’s obsessed with you. Somebody desperately wants you out of prison. And whoever he is, he went to great lengths to send the police a message.”