by Robert Ellis
Four decades ago Matt’s grandfather, Howard Stewart, had run a Ponzi scheme on Wall Street that burned down and caused a recession. Investigators estimated the size of the fraud to be in the neighborhood of thirty-two billion dollars. World markets before China’s rise, particularly in New York, London, Berlin, and Tokyo, crashed. Nearly five thousand investors in Howard Stewart Investment Securities LLC lost everything they had, including their homes and cars, their futures, their retirement accounts, their pensions, their savings. All of it gone in a single day, their lives ruined.
Yet Stewart and his business partner and many of the top executives at their investment firm had lost nothing.
The target of the investigation had always been centered on Matt’s grandfather. But after a few weeks, his business partner’s frequent claims that he was innocent and had no knowledge of the financial scheme began to fall on deaf ears. The two men had begun to argue as the net tightened. And one night, as Matt’s grandparents slept in their home in Maplewood, New Jersey, they were shot dead.
Matt’s heart skipped a beat. All he could think about was his aunt and his mother and what they’d gone through. According to the article, the four children had heard someone break into the house and sought refuge in the attic. When they heard gunshots, they waited until dawn, then the boy snuck downstairs and called for help.
In spite of the darkness, one of the children caught a glimpse of the killer and thought that he looked a lot like their father’s business partner, Robert Kay. Kay had been over that night, and there had been another argument—this one so loud that the neighbors noticed. When questioned by local detectives, Kay admitted that he and Stewart fought, but claimed once again that he was innocent. Unfortunately for Kay, he had no alibi and couldn’t prove where he was at the time of the murders.
Kay was found guilty on two counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to 150 years with no possibility of parole. After one week in prison, he tried to hang himself in his cell. Ten days after that his body was found in the showers with a bar of soap stuffed down his throat.
Matt stopped reading so quickly. He could guess what happened next. The four children would have been carted off to parts unknown and raised by a family member. Once the four siblings came of age, the umbilical cords to their pasts would need to be severed once and for all. That would have been when their names were changed from Stewart to Clemens.
Julie and Abby Clemens, Matt’s mother and aunt.
Somehow Ryan Day had found this. Somehow the gossip reporter had unearthed a huge chunk of Matt’s family history. No wonder the special agent at the FBI’s office in Westwood hit a black hole when he ran his mother and aunt through the system.
Matt needed a cigarette and looked up when he heard someone slap their hand on his desk. It was Special Agent in Charge Wes Rogers, glancing at Matt and then Brown, who’d just hung up the phone.
“Listen up, you two,” he said quickly. “The Holloway autopsies have been moved up to 10:00 a.m. this morning.”
“Where?” Brown asked.
Rogers handed her a three-by-five card with an address jotted down on its face. “Chester County Hospital,” he said. “It will probably take you guys an hour to get there. You better head out.”
Rogers started to walk off, then seemed to remember something and turned back. “Oh, and Jones,” he said. “I spoke with your supervisor in Hollywood last night, Lieutenant Howard McKensie.”
Matt met Rogers’s gaze but didn’t say anything. For some unknown reason, the special agent had shed his anger and smiled at him.
“It’s your lucky day, Jones. McKensie wanted you to know that the fire’s been contained. Your house survived. It’s still standing.”
CHAPTER 20
Andrew Penchant sat at a table in the arcade, sipping from a bottle of mango-extremo-flavored Gatorade that he’d stolen while on the job at the Walmart Supercenter. He was skimming through the newspaper, shaking his head, and trying to ward off that weird feeling again. That odd sensation that seemed to have inhabited his body and mind over the past several years, and controlled his entire being now.
He didn’t know if his condition had a name, but after the past few weeks, he’d started to call it dream walking.
It was like he’d stepped out of his skin and couldn’t find his way back in. It was like he was standing on the other side of that idiotic pinball machine, watching himself read this lousy newspaper.
He could see his lean body, his long blond hair braided into cornrows, his light-brown eyes the color of wheat, his angular face, and clear complexion. But with his summer tan erased by an early winter, he thought he looked pale, and despite his strength, even a bit unhealthy.
His mind surfaced. Some asshole kid playing the pinball machine was staring at him.
He tried to shake it off, glanced at the last page in the city section, then flipped the paper over in disgust. The people he’d been reading about today were so fucking boring that he had to fight off a yawn. Half of them were so stupid that they ate three meals a day with their hands. The other half were so full of themselves that they had to be handfed on silver spoons or they’d die of starvation.
What the fuck happened to normal? Where did all those people go?
Andrew felt a blast of cold air and looked up just as a blonde entered the arcade. He figured she was somewhere in her late teens and could tell that she had a hot body going on underneath her parka. With girls like her, the untouchable ones, he could always tell without really seeing. He dug her gray eyes, her soft and gentle face. She looked naive and shy, and he liked that, too. He picked up his Canon digital SLR, zoomed in on her face, then focused the lens and snapped the shot.
The camera flashed, and those bright-gray eyes turned his way like a pair of headlights. He read her lips as she made a goofy smile and mouthed the words What are you doing?
She walked over. Girls like her never walked over. She was gazing at him, staring at him, taking in everything on the table. He didn’t like the feeling of being measured. She really was naive.
“You just took my picture,” she said.
“So what?”
“It’s my picture. I want it back.”
He liked her. He could tell that she liked him, too, but he didn’t know why. He flashed a lazy smile at her and shook his head.
“You can’t have it back,” he said. “It’s mine.”
“Ha—”
She laughed and unzipped her parka. He’d guessed right. She had a killer body. Lots of curves and a better-than-decent, even perky, set of tits. He liked perky, even though he knew they never lasted long. Gravity and time always won when it came down to tits. Not that the result was necessarily bad. It was just an observation he’d made over time.
His eyes rose up to the girl’s face. She was gazing at the newspaper on the table, then giving him a suspicious look, her eyes shimmering.
“No offense,” she said, “but you don’t look like someone who spends a lot of time reading newspapers.”
He laughed. “I like headlines,” he said. “I’m on my way to becoming a headline. A living legend. Right now I’m only a man of mystery.”
“A man of mystery—oh my God. At least you’ve got nice hair. Who ties your braids for you?”
Andrew thought it over. He didn’t want to tell her that his mother braided his hair.
“A friend,” he said in a quieter voice. “How come I haven’t seen you here before? What’s your name?”
“Avery Cooper.’
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. What’s your name?”
“Andrew Penchant, and I just turned twenty-one.”
She thrust her hand out. He gazed at her for a moment. She reminded him of someone, but he wasn’t sure who. Then he stood up, took her hand, and gave it a soft squeeze.
“Glad to meet you,” he said. “Want to have some fun?”
“What kind of fun?”
He flashed another smile and glanced at the storage cl
oset door. The padlock was hanging open from the clasp, the arcade manager outside emptying the trash.
“Let’s go in there for a little while,” Andrew said.
She still had that suspicious smile going on. Maybe it was even a naughty smile because those big gray eyes of hers were starting to burn a little. All Penchant knew was that she started marching toward the storage closet without being pushed or even dragged. Once she stepped inside, he slammed the door on her and jammed the open lock shackle through the clasp.
She was locked inside the closet. Locked in complete darkness. Locked in a small and incredibly disgusting place, and he couldn’t stop laughing. He could hear her fists banging on the door. She was making the climb to panic mode, and doing it quickly, and he loved everything about it.
“Is this a joke?” she was saying through the door. “What are you doing? Let me out, you asshole. Let me out right now.”
He pulled the lock out of the clasp and swung the door open. As the light struck her face, he saw the fear showing in her eyes, but still couldn’t stop laughing.
“Very funny,” she said. “You’re already a legend, Andrew.”
“I had you, though. Didn’t I?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Ah, come on. It was just a joke. Why can’t you take a joke?”
“Let’s go back to the table,” she said finally.
“You want something to drink?”
She grabbed his bottle of Gatorade as she sat down. “I like mangos. I’m drinking yours. If you want something, go buy it yourself.”
She was still stewing. Still pissed off. He tried to pull himself together and sat down.
“Tell me about your family,” he said.
She sipped from the bottle. “What do you want to know?”
“You look like you come from money. You’ve got that refined look goin’ on.”
“Nobody who lives in Northeast Philadelphia is refined, Andrew.”
He shrugged as he thought it over. She might be right.
“Guess not,” he said. “Is your mother pretty?”
“What?”
“Is she pretty?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“How many brothers and sisters have you got?”
“Two brothers.”
“Do they make you have sex with them?”
She gave him a look, but remained quiet. The fear and anger had faded away, but he’d struck a nerve.
“No,” she said finally.
“What about your father?”
She was eyeing him carefully, and then a wicked smile flashed across her face. “Andrew Penchant, you are the single most disgusting person I have ever met in my life.”
He nodded and smiled back at her.
“What about your family?” she said.
He shrugged. “I don’t really have one.”
She seemed delighted and laughed. “Oh, that’s right. You’re a man of mystery. An international man of mystery.”
“Not yet, but I like the way you say the word international. It’s got a ring to it.”
She leaned across the table and lowered her throaty voice. “You look like trouble, Andrew Penchant. You look like a real project. My dad would never let me go out with you. He’d look you up and down and call you a loser boy.”
He sat back in his seat and took it all in. He could feel his stomach stirring. He could feel joy coming to a boil inside his body. He’d just met a hot-looking bitch named Avery Cooper, and she wasn’t running away. This girl was falling for him. He didn’t know what to make of it. It had never happened before.
CHAPTER 21
Matt spotted the Ford SUV as Brown rolled off the expressway in King of Prussia and brought the car back up to speed on Route 202, heading south toward West Chester. Lots of cars, if not most, were doing the same thing, yet something about the Ford SUV behind them stood out.
Matt checked the speedometer. Brown was doing seventy-five miles per hour in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone. He turned and took another look through the rear window. The SUV appeared to be doing exactly the same speed about ten car lengths back.
“Slow down,” he said. “Bring it to fifty and stay there.”
“Why? We’ll be late.”
“We won’t be late. Just do it.”
She looked at him with concern, then checked the rearview mirror. “What’s going on, Jones?”
“Maybe nothing.”
Matt watched her slow the car down and set the cruise control to maintain an even speed. When he gazed back at the SUV, he noticed that the driver had slowed down as well and was keeping his distance. No doubt about it, they had a shadow.
“It’s that black Ford,” Brown said, her eyes pinned to the rearview mirror.
Matt nodded. “Yeah, but I can’t see who’s behind the wheel. Bring the car back up to seventy-five. Let’s see how much time we’ve got when we get closer to West Chester.”
In spite of road construction along the 202 corridor, they made the drive from King of Prussia to the Paoli Pike exit in fifteen minutes. According to the navigation system on the dashboard, they were less than five minutes away from the hospital, and it was still only 9:20 a.m. The black SUV had just reached the exit and was starting down the hill toward the traffic light.
Matt watched the vehicle disappear in the trees and spotted a shopping center on the right. “Pull into the lot,” he said. “Hurry. Before he reaches the light and sees us.”
Brown made a hard right and floored it. Hiding behind a bank, she found an empty parking spot with a view of the street. The SUV was just passing the lot, but the identity of their follower remained hidden behind tinted glass. Matt watched as the driver suddenly hit the brakes and swerved into the lot. In all probability, the driver hadn’t seen them on the street and made a guess. He’d lost them and was idling by the stores, heading in the wrong direction. There were well over two hundred cars parked in long rows. There was a gym here, a grocery store, a liquor store, and a bookshop that looked more than inviting called Chester County Book Company.
Brown shifted into Drive and started easing the car forward. Matt looked back at their follower still searching for them and still heading in the wrong direction. When the SUV started down another aisle of parked cars, Brown used the bank for cover and pulled back onto the street. She brought the car up to speed in a quick thrust. After Brown made a right on Montgomery Avenue, Matt turned and gazed out the rear window.
The road behind them was completely empty. Brown had shaken their tail.
He gave her a look. She turned to him, her eyes bright and alive.
CHAPTER 22
Matt had never witnessed an autopsy before. While he and Brown got into their hazardous material suits, what one of the medical examiners called a hazmat suit, Brown admitted that she had attended only three and each one had been difficult to deal with. Matt’s expectations were bleak, particularly after learning that the autopsies for all five victims would be occurring simultaneously.
Matt followed Brown through the doorway into a large operating room. The entire Holloway family was already here. Five naked corpses on five stainless steel tables. Less than a day had passed since their deaths, yet time hadn’t been very kind to them. Matt noticed that the diamond had been removed from Holloway’s ear, the lobe stretched to the point of appearing deformed. But even worse, Holloway’s mouth was wide-open, his eyes glazed over and milky. The macho man didn’t seem so macho anymore.
Matt looked away. But even with a respirator, he couldn’t escape the smell of rotting flesh and human waste that permeated the entire room.
He turned and saw Brown standing over the twelve-year-old girl, Sophie Holloway. Somehow seeing a child in this state, this condition, brought everything into sharp focus.
Matt took a step back, his mind going.
Dr. Baylor was obviously a psychopath and a killer of four young women. He was a sick man—an insane man—and in spite of the things Matt had said,
too far gone to be helped or brought back.
But the doctor didn’t do this. He didn’t kill this little girl, or her sister or her brother. He didn’t murder Mimi Holloway or her asshole husband. Matt felt sure of it now. Baylor couldn’t have murdered these people. The look on the doctor’s face when they switched on the lights and climbed the stairs had been one of fascination. Someone wrestling with a horrific situation and trying to understand it.
There had to be someone else out there. A monster who defied the imagination. Someone even more insane than Baylor.
The autopsies were underway—ten times more brutal than an operating room or any field hospital Matt had seen during the war. No matter how difficult the experience, he had learned something. He’d learned that he would have to trust the feeling in his gut. His thoughts were wild, and he’d still need to keep them to himself for a while. He had his family situation to deal with, his deadbeat father and his mother’s mysterious past. He would have to avoid Ryan Day. He would have to be careful. But he thought that he’d reached the point where he could move forward with confidence again. The truth was, he didn’t think he had much choice.
He felt someone touch him, and his mind surfaced. It was Kate Brown, standing before him, holding his gloved hands. And she was standing close. He could feel her legs brushing against his legs, her mask and respirator touching his own. She gave his hands a squeeze, her eyes burning with emotion.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t stay here, Matt. I can’t be in this room.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. I’m paid to be here. I’m supposed to be here, but I can’t handle it. They’ll be at it for hours, and I don’t want to see them cut up the kids.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll cover for you. Wait outside for me.”
She dropped one of his hands and touched his chest. It seemed intimate, but he didn’t take it that way. Brown was in distress, and it seemed like they’d known each other for more than a few days.
