Born To Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “Turn here,” Alvarez ordered.

  Pescoli cranked on the wheel, slid just slightly, then her tires caught and the Jeep whined up a final bend where the road emptied into a circular drive belonging to Gerald Johnson.

  “Showtime,” Pescoli said as she parked in front of a garage large enough to house a fleet of vehicles. Gaslights flickered near each of the carriage-style doors mounted on the stone facade. Snow blanketed the walkways, but Pescoli followed Alvarez to the front door. As Alvarez poked a gloved finger at the bell, the door suddenly opened and Gerald Johnson, appearing more forceful and athletic than he had in any of the pictures Pescoli had seen, greeted them.

  “Officers,” he said, “Floyd at the gatehouse called and said you were on your way.” He stepped back from the door. “Come in. Ever since Acacia left my office this afternoon, I’ve been expecting you.”

  Pescoli and Alvarez were allowed into the Johnson home, and just as they were asking Johnson about the clinic where he’d been a sperm donor, Gerald’s wife appeared on the upper landing and then quickly descended the wide staircase.

  “Don’t, Gerald! I don’t know what these people want, but don’t tell them anything!”

  “We’re here because of several recent homicides of women,” Alvarez said. “Their deaths, which we originally thought were accidents, have been on the news.” She pulled a plastic envelope with the pictures from her pocket. “Elle Alexander whose van was forced off the road, Jocelyn Wallis who, we believe, was pushed over the side of Boxer Bluff, possibly Shelly Bonaventure—”

  “The actress in that god-awful vampire series?” Noreen Johnson asked, disbelieving.

  Pescoli nodded. “And now, most recently, a local woman named Karalee Rierson.”

  “Karalee,” Noreen squeaked, a hand flying to her lips.

  “You know her?” Alvarez asked.

  “I know of her.”

  Alvarez handed Noreen the pictures and she took one look at the photo of Karalee Rierson and almost retched. “Oh, God. She was the nurse at a clinic where Gerald . . .” She turned to him, examining his grim expression.

  “We believe they’re homicides made to look like accidents,” Alvarez said.

  “Homicides?” she repeated. “Murder? But what do we have to do with any of this? I . . . I don’t know the others. Just Karalee.”

  Pescoli said, “We have reason to believe they may have all been fathered by Mr. Johnson.”

  “What? Fathered them?” Noreen flapped a hand at them. “That’s insane! Gerald, do not talk to these people!”

  Alvarez watched the woman’s features, where a gauntlet of emotions, everything from despair, to denial, to rage, played across her face. Dressed in designer jeans and a silvery knit sweater that covered her hips, she was rail thin, nearly bony, the expensive diamonds at her throat, wrist, and fingers accentuating the bones and sinews that were visible beneath her tanned skin. Her near-white hair was cut boyishly, the skin of her face stretched taut as a drum, her makeup excessive.

  “We don’t know these women! Barely even spoke to that Kara girl. Gerald, seriously!” She shook her head vehemently and said to the detectives, “We’re not talking to you without an attorney present. I know my rights.” She slid a slim phone from the pocket of her jeans and punched a single number. “I’m calling Judd.” To Gerald she lifted a pointer finger and admonished, “Not another word.”

  He spread his hands. “They’re not accusing me of a crime.”

  “I don’t care. They’re tricky. I’ve seen Law and Order!” She had the phone to her ear. “Oh, damn.” Meeting her husband’s gaze she said, “Judd’s not picking up!” Then, looking at the ceiling, she left a message: “Judd? It’s Mother. Call me ASAP. It’s an emergency!”

  “For the love of Saint Peter, Noreen, he’ll think I’m in the hospital,” Gerald protested.

  “Fine!” She hit another speed-dial number, waited, then rolled her eyes in frustration. “I can’t get Clarissa, either! Where the hell is she?”

  “Noreen, you need to calm down,” Gerald said.

  “And you need to not tell me what to do!”

  Gerald suggested to Alvarez and Pescoli, “Let’s go into the den.” He motioned them toward double doors to the right of the staircase where a gas fire hissed, flames reflecting on the windows and the black sheen of a baby grand piano. A huge framed flat screen over the mantel was tuned to a sports network, a half-drunk glass of scotch on a table near a leather recliner. Cut flowers on a coffee table were starting to die, their blooms fading slightly, their scents nearly gone.

  “It’s Mother. Call me! Emergency!” Noreen yelled into the phone again, as if by raising her voice, whomever she had phoned would pick up. The high heels of her boots clicked angrily as she marched stiffly into the den. “I can’t rouse anyone! Where the hell are they?”

  “Honey, it would be best if you just chill out a little,” he husband suggested. He waved the detectives into side chairs as he settled into the recliner and clicked off the television. The latest sports scores disappeared and the screen briefly went black to be replaced, automatically, by a family portrait.

  “I will not ‘chill out!’” She rotated the slim phone in one hand while she glared at her husband. “Why does it seem like my children are avoiding me? Screening their damned calls?” Her scorching gaze landed full force on Alvarez. “Why are you here?”

  “Noreen, please—” Her husband held out his hand, fingers splayed, beseeching her to shut up. “Let me handle this.” To Alvarez and Pescoli, he said, “I told you I was expecting you because Acacia Lambert came to my office today. She had the same information you just told me about.”

  “Who came to the office?” Noreen cut in, pacing back and forth in front of the fire. “Acacia who?” she was shaking her head, obviously not understanding. “What are you talking about, Gerald? But there was something more than curiosity in her imperious gaze; there was a hint of trepidation. Of fear.

  “My daughter,” he said softly.

  His wife’s expression froze. “What the hell are you talking about?” She whispered the question, her gaze darting to the officers for the briefest of seconds. “Clarissa is our daughter.”

  “Not ours, Noreen. Mine,” he clarified and Alvarez could almost see him sweat. “With Maribelle,” he admitted.

  “Maribelle?” Noreen stopped short. “That nurse who used to work for you?” She was nearly shivering with rage.

  “Acacia’s nearly thirty-five now,” Gerald said softly.

  Something deep inside Noreen broke. Her shoulders slumped and tears welled in her big eyes. “I knew you two were ... intimate. Of course I knew, but . . .” Noreen’s voice quivered. “And I’ve stayed your wife. Through that other debacle, when you claimed him, hired him, paraded him out like some precious puppy. And I suffered through that excruciating embarrassment.” Her nostrils flared and her lips curled back over white-capped teeth. “I’ve even had your bastard’s whore of a mother here, in my house.” She pointed a finger at the thick carpet covering the hardwood. “I’ve suffered through that humiliation as well!” Jabbing her finger at the floor, she started to sob. “But this ... another one?” Tears slid down the severe slope of her cheeks, “Don’t do this ... don’t you tell them ... I can’t believe, not after that pathetic Lindley woman and her boy . . .”

  “My son’s name is Robert and he’s a man.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Why have you done this? And with whores! You swore to me, do you remember, swore on our children’s lives, that you’d broken it off with that wretched Collins woman!”

  “I did.”

  She shuddered and looked as if she might throw up. “But you had a child with her. And she was married, then, too. Probably pawned that kid off as her husband’s.” When Gerald didn’t respond, she said, “What is it with you? You didn’t father just one bastard child. That wasn’t enough. Now there’s another! Do our kids know?” She seemed to shrink from the inside out. “Oh, God, they were t
here at the office when she showed up, right?” When he didn’t answer, she said more loudly, “Right?”

  “That’s probably why they’re not answering their phones,” Gerald said. “I told them I was going to tell you tonight.” He glanced down at his half-drunk glass of scotch. “I just hadn’t worked up the nerve yet.”

  “Funny how easy it is to father an army of children, but you don’t even have the spine to talk to your wife!” Noreen said under her breath.

  “Just listen, okay,” he suggested, and let out a heavy sigh.

  Noreen crossed her arms under her small breasts and jutted out her jaw defiantly, but held her tongue as he explained what he knew of Acacia and how he’d stayed out of her life, but when asked, acknowledged being a sperm donor.

  “So you knew that he’d been involved with the fertility clinic?” Pescoli asked Noreen.

  “That was so long ago,” she said. “But yes. I knew that Gerald . . .” She waved one bony hand. “That was different. Clinical. Nothing intimate. Not like having an affair and fathering children with whores!” The tears began again. She found a tissue and dabbed at mascara-stained tears drizzling down her cheeks. “I don’t understand. That really doesn’t explain why you’re here. Even if, even if he did ... well, sire these women for lack of a better word. How do you even know that?”

  “It’s the one thing that connects the victims,” Pescoli said.

  “Victims?” Noreen was torn between horror and disbelief. “Oh God! Why these women? Why now? And what does it have to do with him?”

  Alvarez said, “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Calm down, Kacey told herself. Eli has to be here. He has to. “Eli!” she yelled, more loudly. “Eli, honey, where are you?”

  Frantic, her heart racing with fear, Kacey searched the house top to bottom once more. Her flashlight was losing power, its beam weak as she moved slowly, room by room, calling out Trace’s son’s name. Her pulse was pounding erratically in her ears, dread propelling her as she swept the pale light under beds, into closets even, dear God, down the laundry chute to the basement.

  Still no sign of him.

  “Come on, Eli. Where are you?”

  The house was getting colder by the second. Through the upstairs she went another time and there, in the third bedroom, she saw a crack, heard the whistle of air seeping through a window that wasn’t quite latched. She tried to slam it shut, but it wouldn’t catch.

  Throwing her weight into it, she heard ... what? The skin on her scalp crinkled as she caught her breath and listened.

  Another noise. From the floor below! Footsteps?

  “Eli!” She slammed her knee against and old cedar chest as she raced to the hallway, then flew frantically down the stairs. The flashlight’s faint beam bobbed and wobbled, casting shadows.

  Around the corner and into the living area she ran, where the fire crackled and hissed and the corners were cloaked in darkness.

  “Eli?” she said, her voice sounding loud, even echoing as the wind battered the house. “Honey?”

  But she saw no one on the main floor.

  Not Eli.

  Not Trace.

  Not the dogs.

  But she felt a presence ... Something different, like the scent of fresh, night air clinging to the darkness.

  Don’t do this. Don’t freak yourself out.

  In a flash, the night she was attacked in the parking garage, sizzled through her mind. Brutal images of pain and fear.

  Pull yourself together! Keep searching!

  Where the hell is Trace’s son?

  Bracing herself, nearly wincing as she passed gloomy corners, she pushed herself through the kitchen and into the stairwell. The steps to the cellar squeaked and her nostrils filled with the dry smell of dust that had collected from years of neglect. Whispery fingers tickled her cheek. “Oh!” She nearly stumbled down the remaining steps as the cobweb brushed against her face and clung to her hair.

  Quieting her racing heart, she scraped the barest of light from her flashlight over stacked firewood, the scent of raw cedar faint in the cold space where more old furniture and tools had been left to gather dust.

  The flashlight was fading but she forced its thin stream of light under the stairs, and across shelves where old canning glassware and boxes of insecticides hid.

  Scccrrratttch!

  She nearly dropped the flashlight as a mouse, its eye catching the fading light scurried quickly into a crack in the concrete wall.

  “Oh . . God . . . damn! Eli!” she called again, but heard nothing other than the pounding of her heart and somewhere far off, the sound of chains rattling in the wind and that nerve-stretching thunk, thunk, thunk of a branch pummeling the house.

  She hated dark spaces, had all of her life. No, that wasn’t true. Her real fear of the dark had come after the attack, when her assailant had sprung from the shadows.

  Again, a horrid memory flashed through her mind and in that instant her knees nearly buckled. She grabbed hold of a post bolstering the stairs for support and in so doing dropped her flashlight. It rolled away, the light drunkenly spinning across forgotten chairs, exposed beams overhead and a wall of ancient, dirty cement.

  Don’t think about him. Push the attack out of your mind! It’s over.

  But now that the image was planted, she couldn’t forget her assailant, how his hard, angry body had been as it pressed her to the concrete, how he’d smelled of some faint aftershave mingled with sweat and a trace of cigarette smoke. He’d been so big and strong ... built like ... the men she’d met today, her brothers! Some of them had that same strong, athletic build. Hadn’t she thought of Judd as a football player, and even Lance, Clarissa’s husband, had that same primal, nearly jungle cat–like quality?

  The others?

  What about Robert or Thane or the twins?

  And they all had those cold blue eyes.

  Heart pounding, breathing in shallow gasps, feeling the taste of fear in the back of her throat, she slid down the post, then crawled to the flashlight, scooped it up and after giving herself a quick mental shake, struggled to her feet.

  You have to find Eli!

  Shaken, she pulled herself together. Up the stairs she climbed.

  Maybe he’d gotten out of bed and followed Trace to the barns. Perhaps he’d been disoriented . . . hadn’t he called her “Mommy”? There was a chance the medication had caused him to sneak downstairs and outside ...

  How?

  Wouldn’t you have seen him? Heard him?

  This was ridiculous!

  She needed help!

  She threw on her coat, gloves, and boots, took the time to light the one candle she’d seen in the living room with an ember from the fire, then, with her phone clutched in her hand, she walked to the door and punched out Detective Alvarez’s number.

  What would she say? She’d lost the kid? Trace hadn’t come back from the barns?

  That was foolish.

  She didn’t care.

  “Better safe than sorry,” she said, looking through the windows, feeling the seconds ticking by as the snow continued to pile and drift. When the detective didn’t answer, Kacey hung up, didn’t leave a message.

  Not yet.

  She’d find Trace first, she thought, pocketing her phone and opening the door to the cold, dark night.

  As she stepped outside a wall of cold air hit her so hard it seemed to strip any warmth from her body. Her skin chilled immediately and she wished she’d taken the time to grab a scarf and hat. Over the keen of the wind, she thought, again, she heard chains rattling, like those on an empty flagpole, or the clinking sound of shackled prisoners walking.

  All in your imagination. Keep moving.

  Swallowing back her fear, she followed the trail of footprints she’d seen earlier that were nearly covered now, but she kept after them, not toward the barns, but around the corner of the house, past a snow-covered rhododendron bush to the side of Trace’s home where more footprints had clus
tered.

  It was impossible to confirm, of course, to make out anything definitive with the snow blowing over the area. Over the wind she heard the branch still battering the house. Looking up, forcing the dying flashlight beam skyward, she not only saw the pine slapping at the siding, she noticed one of those fire-escape ladders hanging from the window of the extra bedroom.

  The ladder moved with the wind, its chains rattling like the bones of the dead.

  Her heart plummeted.

  She knew in a heartbeat that Eli, with his broken arm, had somehow slithered down this ladder and disappeared into the frigid, unforgiving night.

  CHAPTER 35

  Noreen Johnson had sunk onto the piano bench, her shoulders hunched together, but, Alvarez observed, hadn’t yet given up the fight. “For the love of God, Gerald, why couldn’t you keep your pants up! First Robert, with that awful Lindley woman ... and of course you had to hire him so that I could be reminded every single day of your betrayal and now ... now another one? How could you?” Her cheeks flamed red.

  “What’s done is done,” Gerald said wearily. “We can talk about this later. For now, I think the detectives have some questions they want answered.”

  “It’s over!” she whispered. “Our life, the one we knew is over.”

  Gerald cleared his throat and kept his tense gaze toward Pescoli and Alvarez. “What can I do for you, detectives?” he asked, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees.

  Alvarez took the lead, asking him a series of questions. Gerald Johnson swore he’d never met the victims, hadn’t known they could be sired by him, hadn’t even guessed it until Acacia had shown up earlier in the day. He had no idea if any of them had any enemies, but he was certain from his children’s reaction earlier that they were as surprised as he.

  Pescoli was keeping to herself, observing, though more than once, Alvarez caught her partner studying the screen that had appeared when the television clicked off. Maybe it was her way of calming her aggression, but just listening, not interacting was certainly out of character for her.