Tim couldn’t decide if he wanted to hear it. “What happened?” She’d tell him anyway.
“One guy died seven years ago, but I chatted with his daughter. A heart attack did him in, right around the time of Frost’s outburst. You could make the argument, I suppose, that something gave him the coronary. If you know what I’m saying.”
“Yeah. Something like heredity, poor diet and lack of exercise,” Tim grumped.
“Okay, but that’s not all. I also talked with a woman who proved to be something of a busybody. Lot of time on her hands. I didn’t tell her much except that I was a police officer closing the file on the Frost case, but that was more than enough to get her going. Nothing bad had happened to her personally, but it turns out she’d kept in touch with several former church members. One cancer death, two divorces, several job losses.”
Cancer. Family dysfunction. Unemployment. Demons of modern living, Tim thought. Nothing you could pin on the supernatural—if that’s what they were trying to do.
Melinda glanced at him. “Don’t look so glum. I saved the best for last.”
“I need it.”
“I almost didn’t get it from the busybody, a Mrs. Phelps.” Melinda played with the window and fidgeted with the airflow knob. Tim wondered if she was building up the suspense on purpose or merely too nervous to jump right in. “Just before hanging up the phone, Mrs. Phelps recalled an incident that had happened a couple months before Frost went off the deep end. Let’s see.”
Melinda raised the BlackBerry to her face, evidently the storage depot for her notes, while the Dodge shimmied about, more or less in its own lane. “Oh, that’s right,” she murmured. “The DA’s office took its time deciding whether to prosecute, and when they dropped the case the story just fizzled.”
“Just tell me,” said Tim, annoyed.
“Okay…it goes something like this. This couple’s married for like, I don’t know, fifteen years? Things seem to be going okay until they join the Church of Christian Whatever, different sect, same building on Utica Lane. Soon, the police start paying regular visits because of all the shouting, loud enough to scare the neighbors. There’s heavy drinking involved, but apparently no physical violence. So early one morning this guy calls the police, still sounding bleary and hungover, but quite troubled, according to the 911 tape. Almost there.”
The sudden transition threw Tim until he saw that they were almost on Broadview Road.
“Anyway,” she continued, “the couple’s car is in the garage, out of gas. Garage door’s down, ignition switch is on, the guy’s wife stiff in the passenger seat.”
Tim felt his stomach flop. “Go on,” he said as Melinda wound her way down one residential street, then another.
She shrugged. “He says they got home drunk the night before, so plastered that he doesn’t recall much. They’d been bickering and he supposed he might have stumbled out of the car without shutting off the engine. According to him, she was still alert and sulking at the time, so he went inside without her and almost immediately passed out.”
They pulled up to the curb in front of the Marberry bungalow on Natchez. The lawn was overgrown and the dandelions had taken over.
“Funny he remembered to shut the garage door, but not to turn off the engine,” Tim said.
“Lots of things funny. If we could have proven she was passed out when he left her sitting there, we might have pushed for at least negligent homicide. But even though her blood-alcohol content read high enough that blackout was possible, that cuts both ways. A good defense attorney would have used it to suggest it meant she was fully conscious but had the hindered judgment to stay in a garage rapidly filling with fumes. Besides, his blood alcohol reading would have more or less matched hers, proving they were both just alcohol stupid. I think most folks would have figured they both got punished enough.”
Tim listened to the car tick down as he scanned the curtained bungalow windows for signs of life. “This guy, the widower,” he said. “Have you talked with him?”
“Not yet, but I had a nice little chat with his wife.”
Tim watched her, stunned. “His what?”
Melinda chuckled. “No, not at a séance. His second wife. He remarried a couple years ago. She didn’t really open up to me at first, but once I won her trust she admitted that hubby walked out on her awhile ago and went back to his old house.”
“His old house?”
Melinda sighed. “Apparently he never sold the place after his first wife’s death. Probably tried, but look at the real estate market. Add to that the fact that the previous owner died under mysterious circumstances in the garage. That, or he just simply couldn’t let go. Probably a pretty tragic tale if I had the time for it, but the long and the short of it is that the current marriage isn’t going so well, so he moves back in with the memories of his dearly departed.”
Tim thought about it. “With this guy’s association with the Reverend Frost and the church way back when, I’d love to talk with him.”
“You already have.”
“You lost me.”
She smiled. “He’s not real memorable, but I believe you’ve already met him.” She tossed her phone behind her as she reached to the backseat to retrieve her briefcase. She buried her head in it, shuffling through file folders and loose pages. “I met him at the church memorial service for Travis Kendall, and I saw you exchanging a word or two with him too, at some point.”
“Who?” Tim demanded, the shock showing in his voice as his mind ran through combinations of church names and faces.
“I found his name on the slip of paper Frost gave me of his parishioners, but—ah, here we go.”
She came up for air, triumphantly waving a creased sheet of paper. “According to the second wife, they’ve been keeping up the appearance of staying together so the rest of the congregation doesn’t condemn them. Nice folks, these church people. Yes…Matthew Porter,” she said, reading. “If I remember right, I think he’s your mailman.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
It was only the mailman.
Patty was no fool. After her wild adventure of the previous afternoon, she took no chances when the knock came at the front door. She took a break from packing Tim’s things to use the peephole before unlocking the dead bolt and slipping off the chain.
It was only her mailman standing out there on the other side of her door.
She greeted him with a smile she didn’t feel, and asked how she could help him. She hoped Tim hadn’t done anything embarrassing like sending her flowers or a gift. The time for gifts was long past.
“Hi, Patty,” he said, returning a warmer version of her own halfhearted greeting. “Matthew Porter. Remember me?”
Now she recognized him, and dreaded the implications. He stood on her doorstep not as a representative of the U.S. Postal Service, but as a missionary of the Utica Lane Church of Redemption. Word of their breakup must have somehow filtered back to the church, and their single joint appearance had qualified the Brentwood-Kimmler couple as fellow members in need of support.
“If I could just…” Her mailman left the rest hanging, but let the petitioning look in his eyes finish the request for him.
Patty stepped reluctantly aside and allowed him into her living room. She was too polite to do anything else, but definitely didn’t need the intrusion at this point.
While her hands had been busy packing up Tim’s clothing, her mind had reeled. In addition to the severed relationship, she had Maggie Davenport to worry about. Her boss hadn’t sounded encouraging when she’d called wanting to know why Patty had left work early on Friday afternoon. Her alibi of having taken sick had only saved her from immediate dismissal. Give Maggie a little time to think about it—and throw in the bizarre impression Tim had made with the boss’s son, a story Patty didn’t even want to start thinking about—and a pink slip just might be awaiting her arrival Monday morning.
And now, this to contend with.
Matthew Porter was a
slight man, shoulders stooped as though by too many heavy mail pouches, and barely taller than her. His uniform shorts looked vaguely ridiculous, but his legs were tan and sleekly muscular. In addition to the pouch over one narrow shoulder, a pair of MP3 earbuds draped around his neck.
He started to say something, but seemed distracted by the mess behind her. Frowning, he said, “You’re not leaving us, are you?”
If he knew about the breakup and had been sent as an emissary of the church, why the confusion? Come to think of it, how likely was it that Tim had brought their personal problems to the attention of the church? Maybe Mrs. Lascic had heard enough while eavesdropping on them to go blabbing to the mailman.
And while she had all those questions racing through her mind, why was her mailman sweating like that?
He didn’t await a response to his question about the packing boxes. He turned and softly closed the front door behind him. He bolted the chain, keyed the dead bolt and slipped the key into his shirt pocket.
Patty backed up a step, thinking déjà vu all over again, her memories from yesterday seeping back.
“Still don’t want to do this,” he muttered.
He can’t hurt me, Patty reminded herself. Not really. Not any more than that specter-bitch vision of Melinda Dillon.
“All right, all right,” said the wraith dressed as her mailman. Said it as though to someone else in the room. Then, focusing his gentle eyes on Patty, the Matthew Porter thing said, “I regret this, if it makes any difference.”
He took another step forward.
“You can’t hurt me,” she said tonelessly. “I’m much stronger than before.”
Her resolve was like a physical force, shoving him back several steps. Again he seemed to discuss the matter with the invisible presence that, judging by his fixed gaze, now stood behind Patty and to her right. “It’d be best to just leave,” he said. “I don’t think we—”
He stopped. Stood frozen for several seconds, mouth gaping. ”Okay, okay,” he sighed. “You won’t leave me alone until I do it, will you?”
A chill ran up the back of Patty’s body as she fought off the urge to glance over her right shoulder.
The Matthew Porter phantom stuttered forward two or three steps. His—its—hand went to the ear bud wires slung across its shoulders. In one practiced movement, the Matthew-thing flipped the wires over its head and wrapped them around Patty’s neck.
The air coming out of her throat backed up in a sort of burping sound. Patty’s mind raced to what she’d picked up about the poor young neighborhood woman who’d been murdered by strangulation. Defeating demons with her superior willpower, well, that was one thing. Facing off against flesh-and-blood serial killers, that was quite another.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Tim waited impatiently on the Marberry stoop as the doorbell chimed for the third time, the sound echoing in the shabby bungalow.
Melinda tried the doorknob. “I can hear people moving around in there,” she said.
He could too. But if the strange family wasn’t going to let them in, so be it. “We’re wasting our time,” he grumbled. “We’d learn more by talking with Vincent and the mailman.”
“The Marberry women need us. I’ve tried for days to get someone in there from social services, but they’ve been put in the back of a very long line.”
They both heard the high-pitched scream.
“Shit, let’s get out of here,” Tim said, forgetting for a moment that he literally had the law on his side.
Melinda snatched a wooden planter from the stoop and shoved it through the diamond shape of the glass embedded in the front door, then daintily reached in and fiddled with unseen hardware.
“I can’t,” she grunted, pulling back. “My arm’s not long enough. Try it.”
Tim would have rather waited around for a legal opinion, but he stood high on his toes, reached past the jagged window frame, lowered his arm as low as it would go without severing his armpit and felt around for the inside doorknob. When he found it, he twisted the doohickey in its center. He hoped that’s all it would take. But before he could lift his arm free, he felt a needle stab of pain that shot up into his brain.
He gasped in pain and panic as he brought his arm out. Together, he and Melinda examined the puncture wounds on the back of his hand.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“It’s not so bad,” she assured him, a bit too flippantly for his taste. She held up her own hand and twisted aside a Band-Aid to reveal four deep channels of skin gouge already starting to heal over. “Forgot to tell you, they have cats. I think they’re hungry.”
As if to underscore this news flash, Tim heard a yowling from within. He stared at the door, at his open wound, and at the calm policewoman next to him. He watched her carefully as she turned the knob and pushed the door slightly ajar.
Tim wished the Marberrys had nailed the damn thing shut.
The scream he’d heard before, he heard again. Melinda flew into the house with Tim in halfhearted pursuit. His immediate reaction was a gag reflex, while his pores opened against the heat. There was also a persistent buzzing, humming sound that his mind had no time to process. Too much else going on at the moment.
His feet kept getting snarled in sticky newspapers. “Cat pee,” he gagged, scraping his shoes on the worn carpet.
The stench of cat waste and something else, something even stronger, nearly knocked him right back out the door, mission abandoned.
“Stay with me,” Melinda hissed, obviously sensing his wavering commitment.
Tim caught a quick blur of movement in the next room as two rail-thin felines launched themselves at a pair of huddled forms against one wall. One hunched figure was a somewhat chubby woman in shorts, her legs tracked by claw marks, and a slashed T-shirt. She swatted one cat and kicked feebly at another.
“Get away from her, Battle,” the woman screamed.
The other woman, her clothing and skin rent in a dozen places, lay in a fetal ball, her arms wrapped tightly around her head.
“Jesus,” said Tim.
“Outta here,” Melinda snarled, stomping her foot on the room’s wooden floor and lunging toward one of the animals whose skinny butt wiggled in preparation for another strike. The cat bared its fangs, but backed off.
“Watch my back,” she said as she crouched by the balled-up woman.
It was all too much like a war movie. Watch my back, my ass. He hadn’t volunteered for this.
“Call an ambulance,” she said.
Good idea, he thought. He tugged his cell phone out of his pocket and opened it and—
The cat came from nowhere, claws and teeth fully extended. It hissed, spat, snarled and growled, an explosion of sound and fury. Tim found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with ten sleek pounds of throat-ripping predator instinct.
He drew an arm up just soon enough that only his forearm, not his pretty face, got torn by teeth and claws. His scream turned to a roar of rage as he battered his arm and the still-clinging animal against the nearest wall.
Its grip loosened, it fell and loped off, swaying like a drunk.
Tim’s legs shook so hard that he had to sink to a sitting position against one wall.
“Are you all right?” Melinda asked. She crouched next to him. “Where’s your phone?”
He stared at his right hand as though the answer might be found there. It wasn’t. Neither could the mystery be solved by scanning the stained carpet upon which sat a dining room table and chairs and a high credenza. There wasn’t enough room under the credenza for his cell phone to have sailed in that direction, but the secondhand couch shoved to one wall looked promising. Tim shuddered at the thought of reaching his hand under it.
“Hurts like hell,” he croaked, staring at the pink, gouged flesh of his right arm. “But the bastard didn’t get an artery.”
He was jacked up on adrenaline and terror. He’d fought back and won. His tingling sense of bravado lasted all of five seconds, his next sc
ream being even louder than his first.
Chapter Fifty
The hardest part was knowing when to stop. The girl’s face had purpled, but little gasps of breath kept escaping whenever he loosened his grip on the cord of his MP3 player.
Was that normal? He had so little experience…
It confused him further by having to look into the contorted, eye-bulging face beneath him and try to recognize in it the young woman he’d met briefly in church a few evenings back. It was rather embarrassing, his having to stare at her, and her staring back and thinking such unforgiving thoughts about him—and who could blame her? The scene vividly reminded him of that other time, when he’d watched the Reese girl watch him throttle the life from her, knowing that she recognized him as her friendly letter carrier. That thunderstruck look in her glazing eyes had both shrunk and expanded the act into something unrecognizable.
How had it been with Laney? Sure, he’d been drunk that night, drunk like her, but he should have remembered such a thing.
“Concentrate on your work,” she barked as his attention wavered. Laney sat on the hardwood floor next to him and the other one, sat with her knees together and drawn up to her chest like a little girl at story time.
God, he used to love that woman.
But his most immediate problem was that he thought too much and got too easily distracted. That’s why he’d noticed nothing but the girl’s purple face, hadn’t seen her reaching for the lamp on the stand near her head.
Not that Laney had been any help. She’d been as engrossed as he in what he was doing with the headphone cord. Her shriek told Matthew that she’d been equally startled when the bitch brought the goddamn lamp down on his fucking skull.
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