Paranoid

by Lisa Jackson

  “And how did he feel about that?” They were walking into the crowded living room again.

  “How do you think he felt? Pissed, that’s how. But he seemed to get over it. Like I said, he mellowed in the big house, came out a calmer man, not as likely to fly off the handle. Cut down on the booze, too. At least the hard stuff.” She fired up her e-cigarette again. “Oh, he’s a lazy ass, always was and always will be, but if you’re tryin’ to hang these latest murders on him? Let me tell ya, you’re barkin’ up the wrong damned tree.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The last person Rachel expected to find pounding on her front door at nine-thirty at night was Lila, but there she was, big as life, Rachel’s once-upon-a-time BFF and former step-mother-in-law. Lips compressed, shifting from one foot to the other, Lila, in a cream-colored sweater, matching slacks, and gold heels, looked fit to be tied. Lucas was dressed more casually in jeans and a T-shirt as he fidgeted, appearing sheepish beside her. Fortunately for the moment, there wasn’t a news van camped on the street, though Rachel half expected one to return as reporters had been calling all day, wanting interviews from her and Harper. The news had spread; Mercedes was no longer the only reporter on the story of the homicides.

  Rachel opened the door and before she could say a word, Lila, smelling of perfume and a recent cigarette, swept through the door, her son following.

  “Hi,” Rachel said. “What’s—?”

  “Is Dylan here?” Lila cut in, obviously upset. “He needs to be a part of this.”

  “A part of what?”

  “Get him!” she ordered, then let out a breath and yelled toward the bedrooms, “Dylan!” A pause. “Dylan? You get out here! Now.”

  Rachel had never seen her so demanding and obviously irritated.

  “Geez, Mom,” Lucas said, his temper flashing. “Chill out! I’ll get him,” Lucas said, and before his mother could stop him, took off to the hallway, the crime scene tape strapped across Dylan’s door not deterring him from entering without knocking.

  “‘Chill out’!” Lila repeated. “Oh, sure.”

  “What’s going on?” Rachel asked.

  “Just wait. You’ll find out,” Lila snapped.

  Within two minutes both boys had returned to the living room, where Lila was pacing and Rachel waited near the side chair. Harper, hearing the commotion, had emerged from her own room.

  “Sit!” Lila ordered, pointing to the couch. “You too.” She wagged a finger at Harper, who did as she was told and took a position between the two boys.

  “Mom—don’t,” Lucas pleaded, but beneath his worried tone there was something else, a simmering anger that, Rachel suspected, could match his mother’s. Once all three kids were settled onto the couch, Lila reached into her purse and pulled out some computer wires attached to what appeared to be a recorder or something.

  “Maybe you can explain this?” she said to Dylan.

  Dylan swallowed hard and looked down at his hands, clasped between his knees.

  “Okay, since the cat’s apparently got your tongue,” she said, “maybe Lucas would like to take over.”

  “Mom, please—” Lucas looked miserable, and if looks could kill, Lila would be six feet under at this very moment.

  “No, no. I will.” Dylan caught his mother’s eye. “I’ve been selling computer equipment.”

  “Spy equipment, you mean,” Lila clarified. “Don’t whitewash this.” To Rachel, she added, “Did you get that? Your son has been selling tiny cameras and microphones and recorders and God knows what else!”

  Dylan let his head fall into his hands.

  “And then what have they been doing?” Lila raved on, her color high, her anger visible in a vein throbbing near a neatly plucked brow. “They’ve been listening in. That’s what! Watching. Recording. I found a damned video of the last reunion meeting! Can you believe it? Like, why? Your son had threaded a tiny camera through the vents between the floors of our house. You know what I mean? Our house has a few areas where the floor above is connected to the one below, with grates in between. So our boys thought it would be a good idea to play James Bond or whatever.” She stalked dramatically across the room, past the coffee table, heels clicking on the hardwood, then handed the cords to Rachel, who recognized the devices for what they were.

  “Is this true?” Rachel asked Dylan, but she could tell by his body language that Lila had hit the nail on its head and suddenly she realized where all the small cardboard boxes in the recycling pile in the basement had come from. None had shown any mailing labels, all scratched off. She hadn’t really thought about it. Now she understood. “Dylan?”

  “Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  Oh, crap. “Why?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Just to make some money.”

  There it was again: the money thing. “And who do you sell this stuff to?”

  Another shrug. “Whoever wants it.”

  “Can you believe this?” Lila demanded, her voice high. “I mean, what’s it for? What high school kid wants to spy on their parents?”

  “Not their parents,” Rachel said quietly.

  “What’re you talking about? Lucas was keeping track of . . . Wait a sec,” Lila said, the wheels in her head obviously spinning. “You mean, like spying on other kids? Girlfriends or boyfriends . . . or, oh my God! Like hidden little cameras for taking private, nude pictures or videos or . . .” She visibly stiffened and stared up at the ceiling as if she could personally talk to God. “This is worse than I imagined!”

  “No!” Dylan’s head snapped up and he shook it vigorously. “Not for that! Nuh-uh. No way.”

  “Then for what?” Rachel asked, and she saw that he was thinking about what to say, probably forming quick lies to cover up, or possibly that he was actually considering, for the first time, all the damage that could be wrought from the stuff he’d sold. “You know, Dylan, if your friends or clients or whatever you call them wanted this kind of stuff”—she held up the cords Lila had thrust upon her—“and they were on the up-and-up, why didn’t they just buy it online?” She didn’t wait for a response, just said, “Oh, Dylan, this is not good.”

  He nodded.

  She thought about the bullies who had threatened to beat him up. Schmidt and his friend Parker.

  “It’s not illegal,” Dylan said. “To sell the stuff.”

  “No, but what about ethics?” she asked. “I’m going to need a list of the people you sold to.”

  “Uh-uh. No, Mom. My clients deserve their privacy.”

  “What?” Lila said and Rachel sent her a warning look telling her silently to back off. Lila didn’t. Instead she threw out, “We’re not talking about client-attorney or client-doctor privileges here! These kids you sold to? Underage? Their parents need to know.”

  “Why? Age has nothing to do with it,” Dylan said. “Anyone can own a camera or a microphone or a recorder—just ask anyone who has a cell phone, which has all of those capabilities.”

  “It’s different!” Lila insisted. “Those listening devices, they’re for spying, invading a person’s privacy.”

  “Then that’s the owner’s issue,” Dylan said, thinking aloud. “Not mine.”

  Lila stepped closer to the couch to glare at him. “You’re the supplier!”

  “No, no. He’s right,” Harper cut in, defending her brother for once. “It’s not like he’s over twenty-one and selling beer to kids, right? It’s not between him or you or even you”—she motioned from Lila to Rachel—“to try to police what his ‘clients’ are doing.”

  She had a point.

  “The parents need to know!” Lila insisted, though her outrage had begun to evaporate a little. To Rachel, she said, “Look, I wanted you to know what was going on.”

  Rachel forced a smile she didn’t feel. “And now I do.”

  “Can we go now?” Dylan asked.

  “Yeah, fine.” Lila made a little shooing motion with a hand and all three kids clambered off the sofa and hurried down th
e hallway, Reno tagging behind. They holed up in Dylan’s room.

  Lila, who had watched them disappear, sighed. Her slim shoulders drooped. “Oh, man, sometimes being a mother sucks. Lucas is driving me crazy with his moods. When Chuck banished Xander, you would have thought it was the end of the world.” She bit her lip, her eyebrows knitting as she stared down the hall. “He’s got his father’s temper.”

  “Or maybe his mother’s?” Rachel suggested. Luke had been a lot of things, but aside from a few shows of aggression on the football field hadn’t been volatile. Not that she remembered.

  “I guess,” she acquiesced. “Were we this deceptive and secretive?” she asked, then shook her head, thinking. “Don’t answer that. We were worse.” And there it was again, the past, their own teenaged years and more specifically the night that had changed their lives when they’d snuck out and Luke had died. “I could be overreacting.”

  “Ya think?”

  Lila sent her a look, then one side of her mouth lifted. “Okay, okay. I know I’ve been accused of sometimes being a bit of a drama queen and God knows I’ve been on edge ever since Violet was found. First her, then Annessa and now Nate . . . God, I hope he’s okay.” She threw up one hand. “I just can’t imagine what happened to him. Where the hell is he?”

  “He could turn up. Maybe he’s with a girlfriend.”

  “Annessa was his girlfriend.”

  “Maybe he had another.”

  “Then why isn’t he showing up? It’s all over the news that he’s missing.” She rubbed her arms as if experiencing a sudden chill. “It’s all so unnerving, you know? So damned scary.” Another thoughtful glance down the hall. “And it’s hard to believe that it’s been less than a week since all this started happening. I mean, what if it continues? By the time of the reunion, half of the class could be killed.”

  “Don’t even say it!”

  “I know, but it’s true! Just think what’s happened since last Friday!”

  Since the anniversary of Luke’s death, she thought, but didn’t say it, just silently agreed with Lila about how strange and eerie life in Edgewater had become.

  Lila glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to run. I just wanted to let you know in person what Dylan has been up to.” Then she walked down the hallway. “Lucas! Come on. We’ve got to roll!” She tapped lightly on Dylan’s door and reached for the handle just as the door opened, Lucas filling the doorway.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said and there was something in the tone of his voice that reminded her of someone . . . Luke? No, she didn’t think so, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, tried and failed to make the connection. But it was nothing. Just her mind playing tricks on her.

  Harper glanced at her cousin and said a quick, “Bye,” then went into her bedroom and shut the door. Lila and Lucas left in Lila’s new Mercedes. Rachel watched her drive away, then turned off the porch light and silently wished Cade would return. The house had always felt safer when he was around.

  As she closed the door and shoved the dead bolt into place, she remembered their last kiss, so light and tenuous.

  Her throat went dry for a second and she let herself recall deeper, more sensual kisses with open mouths, quick tongues, and anxious lips. Bodies hot and sweating. Hearts beating wildly, hands exploring, breath in short gasps.

  “Oh, wow,” she whispered, feeling a warmth course through her bloodstream and the tiniest of aches beginning to grow deep inside. An ache she hadn’t experienced for a while.

  It had been so long....

  Forget it! that nagging voice in her head insisted.

  It’s over.

  Deal with it.

  Disgusted with the turn of her thoughts, she set her jaw, double-checked that the doors were locked, and engaged the security system, such as it was. Then she told herself she was a fool for even thinking about her ex and wishing him here. He wasn’t her husband any longer and there was a good reason for that. Her sexual fantasies were just memories that would never be relived.

  For the time being, she and her kids were on their own.

  And she and Dylan were going to have a long-overdue talk.

  She sensed her son not only growing up, but slipping away from her and that couldn’t happen. Not yet. He was still too damned young.

  She knocked on his bedroom door and stepped inside the clutter.

  He was seated at one of his computers, staring at the screen. He didn’t look up, but said, “I know, I’m in trouble, probably grounded for life, and you’re going to tell Dad.”

  “For starters.”

  “Great. It’s not like I’m in trouble enough with what’s going on in school.” He glowered into the computer screen. “And you’re probably pissed because Lila and Lucas are involved. Right?”

  “Right.”

  She was standing at the foot of his bed, watching the play of emotions on his face in the light from the monitor. It seemed, for now, as if he got where she was coming from. “Okay, Dylan, that about covers it. Almost.”

  “But?”

  “You want to tell me why you were supplying kids with spy equipment?”

  “I already told you: for money, Mom. Duh.” His eyebrows slammed together as he reminded her, “You’re the one who’s always talking about how tight money is, and now that you’re looking for a job, it’s gonna be worse. Right? Harper can’t get a car until she saves up what, like half of the price of it or something. Well, I’m turning sixteen next year and I figure you’ll have the same deal with me. I thought I’d get a jump on it. That’s all. It’s not like you would ever let me get, like, a real job, not yet. Right? So this seemed like an easy way to make some cash. That’s all.”

  “That’s not all,” she said. “Because, Dylan, you did it behind my back.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He sighed through his nose. “But you wouldn’t have let me.”

  She didn’t argue, just studied him, this boy who would soon be a man. “So . . . is there anything else I need to know?” she asked and he looked up quickly. Guiltily.

  She saw a lie forming in his eyes, then, second-guessing himself, he said, “Nah. Nothin’.”

  “You’re sure about that.”

  “Yeah. Uh-huh.” He was nodding rapidly, as if trying to convince himself.

  “Okay. But if you think of something, you’ll let me know.”

  A pause. Silence stretching between them.

  “Dylan?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Right.” Then, “And you don’t have to say anything. I know I’ve got to tell Dad.”

  * * *

  With his phone connected to his favorite hard rock playlist, Ned touched up the final coat of paint on his bathroom, making certain he didn’t leave the tiniest line on the tile he’d so painstakingly laid himself, a subway-patterned backsplash that didn’t look half bad.

  Standing back surveying his work, he caught his reflection in the mirror, an aging man with a potbelly, once-blond hair now silver and thin, glasses perched on a nose that showed a road map of blood vessels just beneath the surface. Once a cop with a good reputation, a decent woman for his wife, and a daughter he adored, he was now doing security work, walking the mall in Astoria for the most part; divorced; and living with an ever-replaced half pack of Bud and the ghosts of his past.

  A major comedown in life.

  All because of a woman.

  God, he’d been a fool.

  He’d lied to himself and every damned person who meant anything in his life.

  Over the beat of Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun,” he heard a faint noise.

  The click of a doorknob being turned?

  Odd. Frowning, he cut the playlist and peered into the darkened hallway. “Hello?” he called, feeling like a fool. He was alone. Knew it. But he looked anyway, his cop senses alert. The house was still and he told himself he’d imagined the noise. How could he have heard anything over the haunting lyrics of the song? He hit the play button on his phone and Steven Tyler was singing again, r
ocking out in the small bathroom.

  Ned reached for his half-drunk can of Budweiser, which sat on the lid of the toilet tank next to his Glock, the one he’d gotten years before, taken and pocketed in a raid when Ned had been in his late twenties, an unregistered weapon he’d used only once.

  Until tonight.

  Possibly.

  The cat wandered into the bathroom and actually did figure eights between his legs. “Yeah, you’d better go home if you know what’s good for you.”

  But the skinny thing probably didn’t have a home other than this place. He liked the cat. Called him or her—who could tell?—Inky. Who would take care of the scrappy cat when he was gone?

  Didn’t matter; the animal was a survivor.

  He drained his beer in a long swallow, crushed the can, and let it fall to the floor, where he’d laid a drop cloth.

  Again he eyed his work in the bathroom and rubbed his jaw. If he actually had the guts to eat a bullet, could he work it so that the blood and brain spatter wouldn’t mar the job?

  Oh, hell, why would that matter? Someone’s gonna find your rotting body, with half your head blown off. Do you think they’ll really give a rat’s ass that your grout lines are perfect?

  Again he looked at the grizzled man in the mirror, a guy who looked far older than his age. And a goddamned fool to boot.

  Perhaps the gun was the coward’s way out.

  It could be that he should grow a pair of balls again. It was time to tell the truth. Long past.

  He should lay his soul bare.

  Deal with the fallout.

  Accept the consequences—every last miserable one of them.

  His daughter would hate him, and he wouldn’t blame her. She’d carried the burden of thinking she’d killed her own half brother when it was he, Detective Ned Gaston, who had followed his kids to the cannery, stepped inside to the hellish darkness, and drawn his weapon. He, hidden in the shadows and the chaos, had been standing next to Rachel unseen. He’d fired his gun simultaneously with hers. Real bullets and pellets had been fired. He had made certain his gun, the Glock that was now sitting on the tank of his toilet, was never found, while Rachel’s own weapon had been kicked into the chute leading to the river. It was he who had coerced Richard Moretti into signing the death certificate as DOA and letting Luke die. The kid would have given up the ghost anyway. Ned was certain of it then, even if he wasn’t now. But he’d let his daughter deal with that horrendous guilt of taking her brother’s life for all of her adult life. Jesus, God, maybe he should just end it.