Just ahead of me, I see the beep beep of a car unlocking. It’s not one of the BMWs, so I search until my eyes find the vehicle in the darkness.
It’s a sedan of some kind parked under a tree, and a figure dressed in black is skulking toward it.
I glance from that car to my car, the rental, and realize that this person will likely see my car in only a few moments. Part of me wants to scream, but I have neither the strength nor the inclination to follow through. I just want to get the fuck out of there.
The shrubs are big enough for me to hide behind as I hurry toward the front door. I figure if I can get inside, I can lock it behind me and call the cops, find a space to hide until the cops arrive.
That is, until everything goes upside down.
When the car’s headlights turn on, I am caught right in the midst of their glow.
And I am not alone.
In that illumination, there stands the figure, his silhouette and nothing else visible to me. Of course, I can’t tell for sure, but it certainly appears to me that he is looking directly at me. He is not moving, and the blinding white bulbs on the front of his car remain fixed in my direction.
There can be no other explanation.
That’s when I panic, the fear a hollow ring in my guts.
I just have to run.
I can barely make myself go, but somehow I do. The light from the headlights flashes as I flee towards the front door.
He’s coming for me.
I can’t let that happen.
My eyes catch details in an order but without any real rhyme or reason: the stairs leading up to the front door. The dueling sconces on either side, like sentinels hiding from their duty. The sliver of black between the door and the jamb.
Then I’m inside, and I close and lock the deadbolt behind me. It’s imperative that I lean against the door, at least for a few seconds. I need to catch my breath, to get a sense of my surroundings. The wrong step could send me right into the grasp of my tormentor.
The door behind me rattles as he slams into it. I scream. I can’t help it. I can feel my muscles going watery, and this time it seems like it’ll be permanent.
And yet, the screams don’t accomplish anything. They only embolden him, for every time I let loose, the door shakes under his force that much more.
I need to find a hiding place, call the police. Then, maybe, he’ll be scared away.
The violence being wrought upon the door stops, but I do not. I shriek one last time and make my way into the kitchen, around the den, and into the main bedroom.
The smell almost knocks me down. It’s blood mixed with something else, something even worse and more visceral. I ignore it the best I can, because I know now there’s nothing preventing what will happen next.
Their closet is big enough to fit my Seattle apartment on one side of it. I’m scrambling, scrambling in that direction—
And suddenly, my feet are no longer beneath me.
I’m on the ground, my sternum burning from the force of my fall. It only takes me a moment to find the object that tripped me up.
Jenkins Finnell lay in a heap next to me, his body so eviscerated I can barely recognize anything from the neck up as human. It looks like one of those creepy Asian dolls that people live with and marry.
But I don’t have time to discern more detail of this horror show.
From below, I hear the sound of a closing door, the whoosh of shifting air pressure.
He has made it inside.
And he’s coming for me.
I’ve got to find a hiding spot.
My hands doing their own thing, they manage to drag me forward, and then I’m in the closet, closing the door and locking it behind me. I stumble into the far wall of dresses and press myself against it, praying desperately for some miracle.
It is silent and dark, and right about then—when I try to call 911—I realize something. My phone isn’t with me. It’s not in my pockets or my hand.
I must have dropped it.
The fear is real. I am stuck here with no phone, no plan, no hope.
And there is also no Audrey. Jenkins lies face-up in the bedroom, but there was, in that fleeting moment, no sign of Audrey.
Where could she be?
You know the answer to that, I think.
The garage. The garage. It’s all in the garage.
Suddenly, there is a presence near me. I can’t hear the footsteps or see their shadows under the closet door, but I know he’s nearby. He has to be. It wouldn’t feel this way, if not.
A slight shift of weight causes the floorboards to creak, proving definitively he—fuck it, it’s Timothy Allred—is standing not fifteen feet from where I’m curled up. There is no sense in delaying or denying the obvious. I’ve been found. Discovered. Cast into the same well as before.
I’ve just got to survive, I think. Just live long enough to make it out of this closet, and then daylight will come soon.
As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I am able to make out the sight of the doorknob. The seconds tick by, and I brace myself for the inevitable shock of the gold object rattling as my stalker breaks the door down.
My imagination sends me to a million different scenarios, each of them ending in death. It’s not like I haven’t thought these things before, but time and distance have not mellowed the worst of my nightmares.
But instead of the ax scene from The Shining, I get...nothing.
Just more darkness.
Of course, I do see something. Allred takes my phone. It must have landed camera side down, because its light intensifies in the space between the door and the carpet before spreading out and then disappearing.
He’s standing just on the other side of the closet door.
And he’s not moving.
I can’t see everything, but I see enough. I see the shadow of both his feet.
I hold my breath. I fight every urge to cry out. I manage to keep myself quiet.
Somehow.
After a few minutes, the light from my iPhone recedes, and I am left all alone in this room. I don’t want to ask myself why he would take my phone, but the question circles my mind as I wait and wait and wait, hoping for the cavalry to show any minute.
But they don’t, and so I am stranded there to account for the whereabouts of a deranged killer, whose sole mission appears to be wiping out the Suicide Blondes.
Halfway there. Two down, two to go.
All these years, I’ve thought myself to be the isolated one, having moved all the way across the country, but it’s really the other girls who are alone. They live these lives in the city where they grew up, and though they are surrounded by people, they are more cut off from the world than they think.
I actually feel a little sorry for them.
My train of thought is broken by the central heat clicking on.
Time to go, I think.
No matter how much I want to run, I force myself to step gingerly through the bedroom, avoiding Jenkins’s body with my eyes and my feet, and descend the stairs. I want to scream, want to make myself known, but that’s just the intrusive thoughts coming back. I used to fantasize about suicide. It wasn’t like I thought about it constantly, but if a situation presented itself, I was likely to choreograph a series of moves that would end in my death. While driving, I constantly surveyed the car’s proximity to the center line, thinking how easy it would be to jerk the wheel left into oncoming traffic. If I happened to be on a tall building, I contemplated leaping off, pondering what that first step into the void would be like.
I actively avoid those thoughts now, trying desperately to push them back into place. I do not want to give up, do not want to let go. Now that I have something to live for, to fight for, I don’t want anything bad to happen.
I must know what happened the night of Everett’s death.
My phone goes off as I reach the downstairs kitchen. At first, I hear it, but I can’t quite make out the sound’s location.
I track
it to where I feared it would be—the garage. The iPhone is leaning against the door, just beneath the chair wedged under the doorknob.
On the last ring before voicemail takes over, I kneel down and pick it up. “Hello?”
Nothing at first. Just an airy kind of breathing. Something straight out of a 70s horror movie.
A rage, which has been slowly building to a visceral crescendo, bubbles to the surface and spews into my phone’s receiver.
“You know they can trace this call right, asshole?” I say. “They’ll be able to locate the tower and the phone and every goddamned thing, and you won’t be able to hide. You hear that, you fucker?”
Click.
The blood rushes to my face, and I want to throw my phone, go run screaming into the yard. But I don’t. I can’t. This isn’t over. Because I haven’t seen what’s actually in the garage. Whoever was here is leading me toward that room, the room. Not that I need it. I already know this place is the end-all be-all of the Suicide Blondes saga.
So I grab the doorknob and turn. The chair topples over. Car exhaust billows from the opening in the door, and I advance into the room with no idea of what I’m going to see.
The tableau before me is clear, though: it’s vengeance served ice cold.
Audrey is seated against the driver’s side door of a Lexus that is currently running. That’s where all the exhaust is coming from, and it’s been going for a while, because the room is filled with the stuff.
I hurry over and see that the window is down and she’s been handcuffed to a door handle inside the car. It’s an elaborate message, but an effective one.
“Audrey?” I say, kneeling next to her.
She’s a sickly shade of green—not that green looks good on anybody—and she has slipped into a dangerous-looking unconsciousness.
I check her pulse and don’t feel anything. I’m no nurse, but I don’t get so much as a single beat. All the exhaust. It’s suffocating her. If she’s not in a coma, she’s probably already gone.
Standing up, I find the button for the garage door and punch it with the side of my fist. My other hand is already doing the work of calling 911.
Almost immediately, the sound of approaching sirens cuts through the panic inside my head. The higher the door travels, the louder the wailing becomes.
I return to my former spot and place one hand on my old friend’s cheek. Death has made its introduction to her, and she seems to be succumbing to it.
“Stay with me,” I say, repeating the only thing I can think of. Nothing could be more cliché, but then again, nothing could be more necessary. If she drifts too far from reality, she’s a goner. “We’ve got to survive this, find the guy who attacked you. Come on, now. Don’t go too far. Please stay with me. Please.”
“Hold it right there!”
The sound shocks me, and I yelp in response.
It’s Detective Ciccotelli, standing under the glow of the single bulb outside the garage, pointing his service pistol at my head.
19
The cops detain me in the back of a cruiser until Detective Ciccotelli can deal with me. When at last he does make it over to the cruiser, he leans against the side of the car.
“She’s alive,” he says. “Barely. She’s in a coma, and her vitals are pretty shitty.”
“And Jenkins?”
“The husband? He’s—no. He, uh, he didn’t make it.”
“Oh.”
He turns away from me, places his hands on his hips. In that silence, I am reminded of how kind Jenkins Finnell was to me, how absolutely welcoming he was, when I turned up at their place for the “little” party of theirs.
When the detective turns back to me, his face sags with a heavy professional weight.
“I almost don’t want to know how you ended up here at this exact moment,” he says.
“I could say the same thing to you,” I reply.
“This isn’t the time for fucking jokes, Hanneford,” he says.
“I’m not joking,” I reply. “I have a good reason for why I’m here, but—”
“What is it?” he cuts me off.
“You first,” I reply.
“I’m not the one in the back of a cop car.”
“Fine. I came to see Audrey to ask her some...questions.”
“What about? Interior design? Relationship advice? The state of the Titans season? Please, do tell.”
“It has to do with that night.”
“Oh, doesn’t it always,” he replies. “I’m gonna need more than that.”
“I don’t—”
“Unless you want to leave this crime scene in handcuffs, you’re gonna have to tell me everything.”
I glance from him to the house and back again. He’s not pleased, and the lights from the cop cars and ambulances are enough to make me dizzy.
Something tells me I’m not getting out of this unscathed, so I dive into a truncated summary of the last few days.
Not all of it, though.
He doesn’t need to know about the video, for example, but I don’t find it controversial to let him know that I dug through some stuff at my house and found it necessary to speak with Audrey.
During the whole of my shaky-voiced monologue, the detective does little more than listen, one hand cradling his chin. Occasionally, he nods, but for the most part he is an unreadable mask, an indifferent judge.
Once I’m done, the words swirling out into the ether and disappearing into the night air, Ciccotelli nods once and removes his hand from his face.
“This...motivation to come and see your friend—could you tell me more about it?”
“Like, how did I come to the conclusion to drive out here to Belle Meade?”
His smile is brittle and appears uncomfortably placed. “Indeed,” he says. “Was it something particular that drove this sudden burst of curiosity?”
“I don’t think I follow,” I respond.
Ciccotelli scratches his stubble, blinks. “It can be like a game of ping pong, these things,” he says, “but you don’t strike me too much as the duplicitous type, so I’m going to just come out and say it: Do you now or have you ever been in possession of the journals of one Madeline St. Clair?”
It has to show on my face, because he reacts in a way I’ve never seen before. He looks unrelentingly disappointed.
I just cannot help myself. “Here’s the thing—”
“Just the truth,” he replies. “No stories. Just the truth.”
Jesus, I think. I can’t tell him the truth. The truth sounds stupider than any lie I could make up on the spot.
I mean, what can I say? That Madeline St. Clair appeared on my doorstep in the middle of the night, and between downing drinks she dropped her personal diary in my toilet tank, protected only by a resealable Zip-Loc bag?
Or, more to the point, someone then broke into the house and stole this item from me, this thing that should have been turned into the police when Madeline St. Clair turned up dead in her home?
Is that the truth I should tell the good detective?
So, naturally, I try to stall. I hem and haw and give half-answers, but he’s not buying it. Ciccotelli stops one of my stammering replies by saying, “Whatever you come up with, it needs to end with her journal sitting under the seat of your rental car.”
I’ve heard of people talking about the color draining from their faces, but in this situation it’s no joke. I can actually feel my face turning an improbable shade of white right before his eyes.
“You don’t have the right—”
“I have probable cause,” he replies. “And besides, you left the driver’s side door open, so it wasn’t like I broke in. I mean, is that really the hill you’re going to die on?”
I shake my head. My mind does backflips to come up rational explanations, but nothing is readily available to me. Instead, I choke on a bad lie and end up sitting silently in front of the detective.
“Listen, I want to believe you, I really do. But these...coi
ncidences keep happening, and I’m afraid they’re not doing you any favors. So tell me: how did that notebook end up in your car?”
I adjust the blanket the EMTs gave me. “He did it. He put it there. I don’t see why that’s such a controversial statement.”
“Miss Hanneford, there is no—”
“He said he wanted to kill me,” I reply. “He’s maintained that since the day he was arrested. If he gamed the system, then that’s entirely on them. But he is here, and he did this. If you are unwilling to believe that, then...”
“Then what?”
“Then this is happening to me all over again.”
“What is happening?”
In the moment I’m having trouble saying it, but it’s the thing I’ve been thinking for twenty years. The reason I went away. The reason I did not graduate high school. The reason my whole life was ruined.
I was railroaded. I was sandbagged. I was made to be the scapegoat.
And it’s happening again.
“Miss Hanneford?”
“Someone put it there,” I say, at last.
“Someone took Madeline St. Clair’s journal and placed it in your car, under the seat,” he says, skepticism creeping into his voice.
“It’s true,” I say. “Someone’s—”
“Trying to frame you?”
It sounds ridiculous, but I’m too far gone to say anything else right now.
“Yeah,” I respond. “Must be.”
His eyes go from me to the ground, just a flicker of a gesture, but I know exactly what it portends, because I’ve seen it from police officers before.
“You ever heard of Occam’s Razor?” he asks, and despite his best intention, it ends up coming off as patronizing as it sounds.
“No,” I respond with an equal amount of petulance.
“It’s an old, I don’t know, saying. Shit. I’m not a philosopher. I don’t know what to call it. But it says that, in any given situation, the good money is on the thing that most likely happened being the truth.”
“So you’re saying you think I did it, then?”
He makes a face and sighs. “Let’s run through this thought experiment together,” he says. “On the one hand, there’s this idea that a woman—troubled, to say the least—returns to her hometown around the twentieth anniversary of this terrible event in her life. She feels scorned by her friends—maybe a little jealous and angry—and it’s been festering for all this time, so she decides to take them out, one by one.”
Suicide Blondes Page 18
