This felt like that, multiplied by a hundred. Sheila might very well be trapped inside Wolfe’s house, and Morris was so sick with worry he thought he might vomit right now.
He wondered what he must look like at this moment—a hulk of a man standing in front of a big black Cadillac, scoping out Wolfe’s house in the middle of the night. Morris had made it past the old security guard at the gate without any trouble—Henry thought he was a cop. But if anyone saw him, the Remington 700 hunting rifle tucked under his arm, surely they’d call the police.
Let ’em come. Anything to get their heads out of their asses and over here, where they belonged.
Morris approached the rambler at 3513 Maple Lane. He took the three steps up to the front door quickly, knees creaking in protest. Hesitating for only a second, he rang the doorbell and got his weapon ready. The rifle was loaded, though he didn’t want to have to use it. But he would, if it meant saving Sheila’s life. Or his own. In that order.
Like the last time he’d been here, he heard the bell ring clearly through the stained-glass window panels on either side of the door. And, like the last time, there was no movement from inside. The house was dark. He rang the bell once more, waited another moment, then gave it a good bang with his fist.
Still no motion he could detect. Either nobody was home or Morris had just alerted Wolfe that he had a visitor. Shit. He was at a loss as to what to do next. He’d honestly expected someone to answer the goddamned door.
What now? Should he shoot the lock with his rifle? Break the glass panels and reach through with his hand to unlock the door from the inside? Neither option sounded appealing. As it was, he was trespassing. If he got inside, it would be breaking and entering. And with a weapon—well, what would that mean? Home invasion? Attempted something-or-other?
And what if there was an alarm system? A house this size, there had to be. Would it scream silently or wail like a banshee? Would the neighbors come running with their guns to shoot him, the intruder? Or would Wolfe hear the alarm, panic, and hurt Sheila?
He hadn’t thought this through. For a split second he found himself wishing Jerry were here—the man was sensible and would know what to do.
Morris really did feel bad about punching the PI, but, goddamn it, Jerry had no balls. And, for an ex-cop, no instincts. Something about Ethan Wolfe stank to high heaven—how was it possible that Morris was the only one who could smell it?
He didn’t care whether it had been Wolfe on the security tape or not. Sheila was here. He could feel it.
Before he could overthink it, he slammed his body into the door with all the force he could muster. If this didn’t work, he’d blow the door open with the rifle, neighbors be damned. But under his weight, the bolt ripped from the casing and the door swung open. Surprised, he stood frozen, waiting for the alarm that was sure to sound.
But nothing happened. No beeping or screeching announced Morris’s entrance. No red or green lights flashed anywhere on the walls to acknowledge his body movements. On the contrary, the house was eerily quiet. He was breathing fast and he tried to calm down so he wouldn’t give himself away. A warm trickle of sweat ran down the nape of his neck to the curve of his spine.
It was too easy. What kind of guy would put such a flimsy lock on the front door with no alarm system? In an upscale neighborhood like this, burglary was a legitimate concern. Maybe Wolfe had a silent alarm, but the point was to scare intruders away, not let them ransack the house before they got caught.
Morris raised the Remington and entered the house, shutting the battered door behind him. A small amount of light filtered through the stained-glass panels from the streetlamps outside. Otherwise, it was dark. The shapes from the glass cast strange, dim patterns on the hardwood floors. He stopped again.
What if Wolfe was watching him this very moment? Crouched in a shadow, ready to pounce?
Feeling around on the wall perpendicular to the door, he found the light switch and flicked it on. A stretch of hallway that ran straight to the back of the house was instantly illuminated. Morris clutched the rifle, fully expecting to see Wolfe coming at him with a gun or a knife or some other awful instrument of death designed to kill him where he stood.
But there was nobody. Just the tasteful entryway of a big house.
“Sheila!” Morris stage-whispered. It sounded ridiculous somehow. “Sheila!”
He walked down the hallway, his finger hovering over the trigger. The Remington’s trigger pull was heavy. It minimized the possibility of unintentionally firing a shot. He was especially happy about this since his hands were shaking. He moved swiftly from room to room, continuing to whisper Sheila’s name. Nobody responded.
The door to the master bedroom was open, and he entered. Turning the light on, he let out a breath when he saw that nobody was waiting for him, ready to blow his head off. In actuality, the bed was neatly made, the furnishings surprisingly nice even though the large room was minimally decorated. He crossed to the bathroom ensuite, but nobody lay in wait there, either. The room was spotless and smelled faintly of disinfectant.
Three more bedrooms yielded nothing—two were empty, and one held a desk and nothing else. Another bathroom, also pristine. At the back of the house, the enormous kitchen displayed state-of-the-art appliances, gleaming as if they had never known the joy of cooking.
Something was off about this house, and Morris couldn’t put his finger on it. It came to him a moment later.
The entire space was completely devoid of personal items. No photos on the walls, no clothes in the closets, no dishes in the sink.
Did Wolfe even live here? Why buy a house like this and then rent a crappy one-bedroom apartment in Seattle? What was the point?
Back in the main hallway, he spied a connecting door to the garage. He opened it and poked his head inside, his eyes widening at the sight of Wolfe’s vintage Triumph motorcycle.
The kid was here somewhere. But where? Morris had checked the whole house. Frustrated, he shut the connecting door and stepped back into the main hallway.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye and he turned toward it. A little green light was blinking on a keypad that was mounted to the wall a few feet away. Beside the keypad was a door he must have passed earlier, but apparently hadn’t noticed. It looked out of place. Keypads belonged on the outside of the house, to keep folks out, but this one was inside. Frowning, he walked toward it and tried the handle. Locked.
His heart, already well into tachycardia, kicked into an even higher gear. No locked door had ever seemed so sinister. The goddamned front door had a crappy lock and no alarm system, but this one was bolted with a keypad? Why? What was behind it? Closet? Crawl space? It was impossible to know without either looking at the blueprints or looking inside. Morris wished he had the blueprints.
He rattled the handle again but it didn’t budge. There was only one way to find out what the door was concealing. Insanely, Monty Hall’s voice from that old game show Let’s Make a Deal echoed in his head. What’s behind door number one?
Damp with sweat, Morris stood back as far as he could before hitting the wall behind him. Aiming the Remington, he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
The sound was louder than anything he could have anticipated. Bits of wood flew everywhere, one fleck hitting Morris’s cheek just below his eye socket. The rifle’s crack was scary and exhilarating. Obviously, he’d never fired a rifle inside a house before; it was crazy to think he’d just done it in Wolfe’s house in the middle of the night. The neighbors had to have heard that. The old biddy next door was probably ripping out her curlers.
The door handle was gone. In its place was a huge, gaping hole. Morris kicked out his foot and the door swung open easily.
It was a basement. Morris was stunned. Nothing on the outside of the home indicated the house even had one. A set of stairs covered in gray industrial carpet led straight down to the bottom. His heart accelerated once again. Nothing good could be down there.
As if to answer his cry, he heard a whimper, a small sound, a pitiful sound, but it pierced his heart.
Sheila.
Turning the corner into the main room, not waiting to fully process what he was seeing, Morris aimed the rifle and fired.
CHAPTER : 43
Unrecognizable voices were speaking in hushed tones when Sheila awoke, but it was the strong smell of antiseptic that told her she was somewhere new.
“I’m telling you, Kim, it was the creepiest shit I ever saw,” the man said in a low voice. “All these masks, like real human faces, lined up neatly. A whole shelf of them. At first I thought they were actual heads with the eyes gouged out. I didn’t think they could make masks that looked so real. Sick motherfucker.”
“What about the wall?” The female was whispering, but there was no mistaking the horror in her voice. “Jesus, they think there could be a dozen women inside there. And those are the ones he kept. Who knows how many others there were?”
Sheila blinked, her eyes crusty with sleep. A pretty blonde was sitting at her bedside, wearing a fitted jacket, a small black notebook in hand. Her young face was expectant, and she was staring at Sheila with an intensity that was frightening.
“Stop looking at her like that.” The dry, male voice came from somewhere in the corner of the room. “You’re gonna scare the shit out of her.”
Too late. The panic of not knowing where she was had already begun to ball up inside her. What was this place? Was Ethan here? Where was Morris?
The blonde put her hand gently over Sheila’s fingers. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” A smile lit the younger woman’s pretty features. “Welcome back, Dr. Tao.”
Sheila turned her head and saw the medical equipment, the light-mint-colored walls, the large window with the blinds rolled all the way up. A snippet of sunshine streamed into the room through a hole in the clouds. Her hand was stinging and she looked down. An IV needle was burrowed into the back of her hand near her bruised wrists. The tears came then.
“I’ll give you a minute.” The blonde retreated into a shadow before Sheila could say anything.
A nurse clad in cheerful pink scrubs entered the room. She headed briskly toward Sheila, checking the monitors. “She’s awake? How wonderful. Hi, honey.” She dabbed gently at Sheila’s cheeks with a warm, moist cloth. Turning to the man and the woman in the corner, she said, “You two wait outside until the doctor’s had a chance to look her over.”
They didn’t move fast enough and the nurse jerked her thumb. “Out. Now.”
The story came out in a steady stream, though Sheila honestly didn’t feel there was much to tell. She was so, so tired, and she thought at one point she might have actually fallen asleep midsentence. If she had, the police detectives who had come to take her statement were polite enough not to say so. The young, kindly doctor—Sheila couldn’t remember his name—had explained that her crushing fatigue was normal after such a stressful experience, and he advised her to sleep as much as she needed to. They’d given her a mild sedative, which helped stave off the bouts of panic. There were no dreams.
The doctors had left, the detectives were gone, and the nurse had dimmed the lights in the room. Visiting hours were over and the hospital was quiet. The clock on the wall told Sheila it was 9:00 p.m., but time felt meaningless to her. She lay on her side, her back to the door, staring out the window at the moon. She wished to God the sun—which she hadn’t seen for three weeks until earlier today—would come back out. The darkness was awful.
It was coming back to her in bits and pieces. Ethan was dead. Morris had come for her. And Morris had killed him—he’d shot Ethan in the back with his hunting rifle. If he’d come a second later, it would be Sheila downstairs in the morgue.
It would be weeks before the bodies encased in cement at the Lake Stevens house could be removed and identified, assuming they could be identified. Sheila had told the detectives what she knew about Marie, the homeless woman, and also about Diana St. Clair. It turned out they already knew.
They also knew all about Ethan’s girlfriend, Abby Maddox. Abby had cut the throat of the private investigator Morris had hired, the man who’d been instrumental in helping to find her. Then she’d escaped the police station. Amazingly, Abby had missed Jerry’s carotid artery. The officer on duty at the precinct had found him only a few minutes later and was able to stop the bleeding before the paramedics arrived.
Why she had tried to kill him was anybody’s guess.
Thinking about the private investigator now, Sheila choked back a sob. Poor Jerry. He’d been her student a long time ago and she hadn’t seen him in years. A hard worker, juggling school with career. She and Marianne had been meaning to get their men together for a double date for a while now, but it had never happened. Careers got in the way, and there’d been no time for socializing beyond therapy sessions and cups of coffee. And now Marianne’s husband was in critical condition because of Sheila. The guilt was consuming.
She had done this. She had brought Ethan Wolfe into their lives.
The door to her room opened. Surprised, she rolled over to see who it was. A police officer was posted twenty-four hours outside her door, so it was probably just a nurse coming to check on her, but her palms were already sweating. Abby Maddox was still out there. While the police weren’t convinced that Ethan wasn’t equally or even totally responsible for the dead bodies in the basement of the Lake Stevens house, Sheila believed everything Ethan had told her. Abby had killed those women. There were many unanswered questions, but about this, she was certain.
But it wasn’t Abby in her room. It was Morris. In the dim light, he was just a shadow, but she would know the outline of his face and body anywhere.
It was the first time she’d seen him since that day at her house before his business trip, the day before she’d been kidnapped. A lifetime ago.
“I didn’t think you’d come.” Her breath caught in her throat, and she was ashamed at how pitiful and small she sounded. “I can’t say I’d blame you.”
She’d put him through hell. She’d put them both through hell. Morris had never asked for any of this. The only thing he had ever done was love her.
He stood at the foot of the bed, shadows and moonlight playing against the contours of his face. He looked exhausted. She wanted to cry.
“Been here all day,” he said. “You’ve been either asleep or with the cops or doctors. Busy woman, as always.” He managed a smile. “Did I wake you?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t sleeping. Though I guess visiting hours are technically over.”
Morris walked around the bed and took a seat in the chair near her pillow. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” The lightheartedness in his voice sounded forced, and she was disappointed when he folded his hands neatly in his lap.
She ached to touch him. Her heart broke at the sight of his face, clearly visible now that he was inches away. His eyes were bloodshot and framed with lines she hadn’t seen before, his complexion blotchy and covered in three-day stubble. His hair was tousled. The strong scent of Listerine on his breath told her he’d started drinking again. Yet another thing that was her fault.
Still, he was beautiful.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m good.” Another tired smile. “More important, how are you?”
She tried to match his smile but her lips wouldn’t turn up. “I’m fine. They said I’m dehydrated but otherwise okay.”
“I talked to the doctor. You can go home tomorrow morning. Sleep in your own bed.”
“Can’t wait.” Sheila felt no en
thusiasm whatsoever. Unable to restrain herself any longer, she reached for him. “Morris, I’m so sorry.”
“Shhh.” His voice was soft, and she was glad when he finally took her hand. “There’s time for all that later.”
“We need to talk about it.”
“We will. But not tonight. You need to rest.”
Was he angry with her? It was hard to tell. Before she could say anything else, a discreet cough came from the corner of the room near the doorway. They both looked up. Sheila could see the shape of a tall man but couldn’t make out his face. Instantly, her stomach tightened again.
“It’s okay, darlin’.” Morris squeezed her hand, careful not to touch the IV needle stuck there. He waved the stranger closer. “Were you able to get it?”
The man nodded and passed something to Morris that Sheila couldn’t see. Morris looked at it and grinned, and it was a typical Morris grin, ear to ear. It warmed her.
“Sheila, I’d like you to meet my son Randall. I believe the two of you have been in touch via e-mail?”
A younger version of Morris stepped closer to the bed. His hair was longer and straighter and there were fewer pounds on his tall frame, but there was no mistaking the resemblance, right down to the grin that lit the young man’s face. “Hey there, Sheila. It’s so nice to meet you finally, circumstances notwithstanding.”
Sheila stared up at Morris’s oldest son in surprise. “Randall!” Holding out her other hand, she grasped his wrist. “I can’t believe you’re really here. I’m so glad.”
“It’s because of you.” Randall bent down and kissed her cheek. Placing his free hand on his father’s shoulder, he said softly, “Thank you.”
Creep Page 30
