"Good detective work."
Avery lifted a shoulder. "Journalists notice things."
They climbed the steps, let themselves in. Avery retrieved her penlight, switched it on. Gwen did the same. No one had cleaned up the mess. In all likelihood, even when the police gave the okay, there would be no one to clean it up. She averted her gaze from the bloody smear on the back wall.
From her back pocket, she took the two pairs of gloves she had picked up at the paint store that afternoon. She handed a pair to Gwen. "This is still a crime scene. I don't want my prints all over the place."
Gwen slipped them on. "We get caught, we're in deep shit."
"We're already in deep shit. Let's start in the bedroom."
They made their way there, finding it in the same state of chaos as the front room: the bed was unmade, the dresser drawers hung open, clothes spilling out. Beer cans, an overflowing ashtray, newspapers and fashion magazines littered the dresser top and floor.
They exchanged glances. "Wasn't a neat freak, was she?" Gwen murmured.
Avery frowned. She moved her gaze over the room, taking in the mess. "You're right, Gwen. The killer didn't make this mess, Trudy Pruitt was simply a slob."
"Okay. So?"
"Last night I thought the place had been ransacked. Now I realize that wasn't the case. Why search the living room but not the bedroom?"
"What do you think it means?"
"Maybe nothing. Just an observation. Let's get started."
"What are we looking for?"
"I'll know it when I see it. I hope."
They began to search, carefully examining the contents of each drawer, then the closet, finally picking through items on the dresser top. Avery shifted her attention to the floor.
The Gazette, she saw. Strewn across the floor. Avery squatted beside it. Not a current issue, she realized. The issue reporting her father's death. Trudy Pruitt had drawn devil horns and a goatee on his picture.
"What?"
Avery indicated the newspaper. Gwen read the headline aloud. "'Beloved Physician Commits Suicide. Community Mourns.'" She met Avery's eyes. "I'm sor-" She stopped, frowning. "Look at this, Avery. Trudy made some sort of notations, here in the margin."
The woman had used a series of marks to count. Four perpendicular hatchet marks with another crosswise through them. Beside it she had written "All but two."
"Five," Gwen murmured. "What do you think she was counting?"
"Don't know for certai-" She swallowed, eyes widening. "My God, five plus two-"
"Equals seven. Holy shit."
"She was counting the dead. Dad was number five. There are, or were, two left."
"But who were they?"
"On the phone she said there weren't many of them left. That they were dropping like flies."
"People who knew the truth."
"Gotta be."
Avery carefully leafed through the remaining pages of the paper. Nothing jumped out at her. She carefully folded the page with her father's photo and Trudy Pruitt's notations, then slipped it into a plastic bag.
They searched the living room next, checking the undersides and linings of the chairs and sofa, behind the few framed photos, inside magazines. They found nothing.
"Kitchen's next," Avery murmured, voice thick.
"That's where…it's going to be bad." Gwen paled. "I've never-" They exchanged glances, and by unspoken agreement, Avery took the lead.
Using tape, the police had marked where Trudy had died. A pool of blood, dried now, circled the shape. Several bloody handprints stood out clearly on the dingy linoleum floor.
Her handprints.
Avery started to shake. She dragged her gaze away, took a deep, fortifying breath. "Let's get this over with."
Avery checked the freezer. It was empty save for a couple unopened Lean Cuisine frozen meals and a half-dozen empty ice trays. The cabinets and pantry also proved mostly bare. They found nothing taped to the underside of shelves, the dining table or trash barrel.
"Either she never had any proof or the killer already picked it up," Avery said, frustrated.
"Maybe her proof was in her head," Gwen offered. "In the form of an argument."
"Maybe."
Gwen frowned. "No answering machine."
Avery glanced at her. "What?"
"Everybody's got an answering machine these days." She pointed at the phone, hanging on the patch of wall beside the refrigerator. "I didn't see one in the bedroom, either. Did you?"
Avery shook her head and crossed to the phone, picked it up. Instead of a dial tone, a series of beeps greeted her. She frowned and handed the receiver to the other woman.
"Memory call," Gwen said. "It's an answering service offered through the phone company. I have it."
"How do you retrieve the messages?"
"You dial the service, then punch in a five-digit password. The beeps mean she has a message waiting."
"What's the number?"
"Mine's local. It'd be different here. Sorry."
Avery glanced around. "My guess is, Trudy wrote that number down, that it's here, near the phone. So she wouldn't have to remember it." She slid open the drawers nearest the phone, shuffled through the mix of papers, flyers and unopened mail.
"Look on the receiver itself," Gwen offered. "Until I learned mine, that's where I taped it."
Avery did. Nothing had been taped to either receiver or cradle. She made a sound of frustration and looked at Gwen. "No good."
"Tom had the service," she murmured. "He programmed it into his-"
"Speed dial," Avery finished for her, glancing at the phone. Sure enough, the phone offered that feature, for up to six numbers. She tried the first and was connected to the Hard Eight.
She gave Gwen a thumbs-up, then tried the second programmed number, awakening someone from a deep sleep. She hung up and tried again.
The third proved the winner. A recording welcomed her to "her memory call service."
"Got it," Avery said, excited. "Take a guess at a password."
"1-2-3-4-5." "
Avery punched it in and was politely informed that password was invalid. She tried the same combination, backward. She punched in several random combinations.
All with no luck. She hung up and looked at Gwen. "What now?"
"Most people choose passwords they can easily remember, their anniversary, birthday, kid's birthday. But we don't know any of those."
"Oh yes we do," Avery murmured. The date Trudy Pruitt had never forgotten. The one she might use as a painful, self-mocking reminder. "June 18,1988. The night Sallie Waguespack was murdered and her sons were killed in a shoot-out with the police."
Avery connected with the answering service again, then punched in 0-6-1-9-8-8. The automated operator announced that she had five new messages waiting and one saved message.
Avery gave Gwen another thumbs-up, then pressed the appropriate buttons to listen to each. The recording announced the day, date and time of call, then played the message. The woman's boss at the bar, pissed that she hadn't shown up for work. Several hangups. A woman, crying. Her soft sobs despairing, hopeless. Then Hunter. He said his name, gave his number and hung up.
Avery's knees went weak. She laid her hand on the counter for support. Hunter had called Trudy Pruitt the last afternoon of her life. Why?
"What's wrong?"
Avery looked at Gwen. She saw by the other woman's expression that her own must have registered shock. She worked to mask it. "Nothing. A…a woman crying. Just crying. It was weird."
"Replay it."
Avery did, holding the phone to both their ears, disconnecting the moment the call ended.
"The woman who called me sounded as if she had been crying," Gwen told her. "What if they were one and the same?"
"What time did she call you?"
Gwen screwed up her face in thought. "About five in the afternoon."
Avery dialed, called up the messages again. The woman had called Trudy Pruitt a
t four forty-five. Avery looked at Gwen. "A coincidence?"
"A weird one." Gwen frowned. "What do you think it means?"
"I don't know. I wonder if the police have listened to the messages."
"They could be retrieving them directly from the service. After all, the calls could be evidence."
"Or the police might have missed them, same way we almost did. Let's get out of here," Avery said.
They left the way they'd come, reaching the SUV without incident. Avery started the engine and they eased off the road's shoulder. She didn't flip on her headlights until they'd gone a couple hundred feet.
She couldn't stop thinking about Hunter having called Trudy Pruitt. Why? What business could he have had with the woman? And on the last day of her life? And why hadn't he mentioned it when they'd discussed the woman's death?
The answers to those questions were damning.
"Something's bothering you."
She glanced at Gwen. She should tell her. They were partners now, in this thing together. If Gwen had been one of her colleagues at the Post, she would.
But she couldn't. Not yet. She had to think it through.
"I'm wondering why people like Trudy Pruitt stayed in Cypress Springs? Why not leave?"
"I asked her that. She said some did leave. For others, for most, this was their home. Their friends were here. Their family. So they stayed."
"But to live in fear. To know you're being watched. Judged. It's just so wrong. So…un-American."
Avery realized in that moment how carelessly she took for granted her freedoms, the ones granted by the Bill of Rights. What if one day they were gone? If she woke up to discover she couldn't express her views, see the movies or read the books she chose to. Or if skipping worship Sunday morning or drinking one too many margaritas might land her on a Most Wanted list.
"It's not been until recently that things have gotten really weird," Gwen continued. "For a long time before that it was quiet."
"Recently? What do you mean?"
"In the last eight months to a year. About the time the accidents and suicides began. Trudy said that after Elaine disappeared she thought about going. But she couldn't afford to leave."
Avery hadn't considered that. It cost money to pick up and move. One couldn't simply carry a trailer on their back. Apartments required security deposits, first and last month's rent, utility deposits. Then there was the matter of securing a job.
Not like the moves she had made, ones where she'd lined up a job, and her new employer had covered her moving expenses. She'd had money in the bank to fall back on, a father she could have turned to if need be.
To a degree, people like Trudy Pruitt were trapped.
Now she was dead.
"According to what Trudy told me, most of the citizens fell in like sheep. They were frightened of what Cypress Springs was becoming, only too happy to head back to church, rein in their behavior or spy on their neighbors if it meant being able to leave their house unlocked at night."
"What about her? She didn't fall in line with the rest."
Gwen's expression became grim. "I don't think she knew how to be any different. And…I don't think she felt any motivation to change. She hated this town, the people. Because of her boys."
"But she didn't say anything about them? About their deaths, Sallie Waguespack's murder?"
"Nothing except that they didn't do it. That they were framed."
"How about Tom? Did she say anything about him?"
"I asked. She didn't know anything about him but what she'd read in the paper. She told me she didn't have a doubt The Seven killed him."
"He hadn't interviewed her?"
"Nope. She found me, actually."
Avery pulled to a stop at a red light. She looked at Gwen. "Did she say who The Seven were?"
"No. She said revealing that would get her dead."
She got dead anyway. The light changed; Avery eased forward.
The square came into view up ahead. "Drop me at that corner," Gwen said.
"You're sure? I could park around the corner, give you a hand cleaning up?"
"It's better this way. The less possibility of us being seen together, the better."
Avery agreed. She stopped at the next corner. "Call me tomorrow."
Gwen nodded, grabbed the door handle. "What's next?"
"I'm not sure. I need to think about it. Lay out the facts, decide which direction to go."
Gwen opened her car door and stepped out. Avery leaned across the seat.
"Gwen?" The other woman bent, met her eyes. "Be careful."
She said she would, shut the door and walked quickly off. Avery watched her go, a knot of fear settling in her chest. She glanced over her shoulder, feeling suddenly as if she was being watched, but seeing nothing but the dark, deserted street.
But they were out there. The Seven, their spies. A killer.
Being careful wasn't going to be enough to keep either of them safe, she thought. Not near enough.
CHAPTER 39
The Gavel stood alone in his dark bathroom. Naked. Trembling. He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. The man who stared back at him barely resembled the one he knew himself to be.
He was sweating, he realized. He pushed the hair off his forehead. He leaned closer to the mirror. Were those tears in his eyes?
He stiffened, furious. He wasn't a child. Not some weak-bellied girl who fell apart anytime the going got tough. He was the strong one. The one whose will, whose determination, carried them all.
Without him, Cypress Springs would have been lost. They all would have been lost.
He bent, splashed his face with cold water, then straightened. Rivulets of water ran over his shoulders, down his belly, beyond. He breathed deeply through his nose. His chest expanded; he felt the oxygen feed his blood, the blood his muscles. He swelled in size, stature.
He smiled. Then laughed. They didn't understand. His eyes were everywhere. While his generals scurried pathetically about, he saw everything, knew everything. Did they think he didn't hear them whispering to one another, exchanging furtive, knowing glances? Making their plans? His enemies, it seemed, were growing in number. Rage welled up in him. Those he trusted turning on him. Those he had turned to for support-indeed, for love-planning his demise. He had given his life for them. The things he had done, the chances he had taken-that he continued to take-to make their lives, their world, a better place. All he had done for them. Was absolute loyalty too much to ask for in return? He narrowed his eyes. Apparently so. And for that, they would pay dearly.
This was his town. He was their leader. Nothing and no one would change that.
Not Gwen Lancaster. Not Avery Chauvin. Tonight, he had stood in the shadows and watched as the two women formed an unholy alliance. One of Cypress Springs's favored daughters had proved herself an outsider. And traitor.
A spear of sadness pierced his armor, he fought it off. The urge to open his arms again, to forgive. Forget. Such emotions were for the weak. The self-indulgent. The unencumbered. None of those applied to him.
His every instinct told him to silence Gwen Lancaster, do it quickly, before she caused more damage. But there were rules to be followed, a proven system to be adhered to. To willfully ignore either would be a step toward anarchy.
It only took one, he thought grimly. One spoiled fruit. One self-indulgent individual on a misdirected campaign.
How was it that only he had great resolve? Why had he been cursed with this perfect vision? This absolute knowledge? He had been born to lead. To show others the way.
It was lonely. He longed to turn from his gift, his call, but how could he? He opened his eyes each day and saw the truth.
He didn't enjoy killing. He had hoped, prayed, that each of those found guilty would take his warning to heart. His lips twisted. But they had been stupid. Ignorant and small-minded.
Liar. Killing the last had been a blessing. A pleasure. The woman had left him no other option
. Meeting with outsiders, calling insiders. She had forced his hand. She should have been silenced years ago. He had allowed others to sway him.
A mistake. One of several recent mistakes his generals loved to discuss. That they used against him. Who did they plan to replace him with? Blue? Hawk?
Laughable. He would show them. Soon they would see.
They would all see.
CHAPTER 40
Hunter sat bolt upright in bed, the sound of children's screams echoing in his head. For a moment he couldn't think. Couldn't separate himself from the nightmare.
With his mind's eye he saw the car careening out of control. The fence going down. The children's terror. The one child standing frozen in the path of his two thousand pounds of steel and glass.
The woman, throwing herself at the child. Saving the boy. Sacrificing herself.
He became aware of the light streaming through the blinds. The soft hum of traffic, of the Monday-morning delivery trucks in the alley. Sarah's puppies whimpering, hungry.
Hunter leaned over the side of the bed and looked at her. It seemed to him she was doing her best to block out their cries. "You're being paged," he said to her.
She lifted her head, looked at him.
"I'll get up if you will."
She stared at him a moment, then thumped her tail once. "I'll take that as a yes," he said and climbed out of bed.
He pulled on a pair of shorts and headed to the bathroom. Teeth brushed, bladder emptied, he beelined for the kitchen. Sarah beat him there. She stood at the door, anxious but patient. He grabbed her lead off the hook, clipped it onto her collar and then together they stepped out into the bright, warm morning.
He and Sarah had their routine. A quick trip out to the nearest patch of grass to take care of her immediate needs, then back for her to feed her pups and him to guzzle coffee. Later, they would take a longer walk or a run.
Sarah did her business and they started back. They rounded the corner. His steps faltered. The dog whined.
Avery waited at his door.
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