The Fear Collector

by Gregg Olsen

  Grace leaned a little closer. “That means you know something.”

  Sylvia wrapped her arms around her chest, trying in a very real way, though unconsciously so, to hold it all inside.

  “Tell me,” Grace said.

  “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

  “No one is in trouble but Emma Rose,” Paul said.

  Grace looked over at her partner. “Look, he’s right. But Emma’s parents are very, very worried.”

  “Is there something going on with Emma and her parents?” Paul asked.

  Sylvia shook her head. “Oh no. Her parents were cool. They used to come in and sit over there.” She pointed to a pair of leather easy chairs. “You know, hang out before she got off and then they took her out for Thai.”

  “That’s nice. But something is bothering you,” Grace said. “What are you thinking? We’ve got to find her.”

  “I hate to bring it up.”

  “What? Sylvia, what are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to cause trouble. He’s a nice kid.”

  “Who? Who’s a nice kid?”

  “Oliver. Oliver Angstrom. He was always talking about how hot Emma is and, you know, how he wanted to ask her out.”

  “She’s a pretty girl,” Grace said. “I’m sure she got a lot of attention.”

  “Right. Customers liked her, too.”

  “We need you to focus now, okay? What about Oliver?”

  Sylvia looked down at the counter. “He was going to ask her out. Finally. I knew she wouldn’t say yes, because, well, she’s so pretty and he’s so geeky. Sweet, but geeky. But not geeky and scary.”

  Grace knew the difference. She’d once dated a geeky guy in high school. Smart, brainy, was sexy. Loving Star Wars too much, not so.

  “I don’t know if Oliver asked her out or not, but I do know that they were together. They cleaned and closed.”

  “Did you see Oliver today?”

  An uneasy look came over Sylvia’s face. She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. No one did. He called in and used one of his floating holidays.”

  “Was that unexpected?”

  “Totally. If I’d gotten the call directly I would have told him no, but he called in the store’s voice mail and left a message before opening.”

  Grace knew that approach. She’d done it a time or two herself. So had Paul. Always call in to the sergeant when you know he’s not at his desk.

  Just then, another Starbucks worker made his way through from the back room. He was a thin, gawky teenager, with a faint black moustache struggling to survive on his upper lip. The goatee he’d tried cultivating was even less successful. He was carrying a small black purse.

  “Talking about Emma?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Grace said, looking at the teen with the purse.

  “Lost and Found brought this over earlier today,” he said. “Emma’s purse. Said the maintenance crew turned it in and the guy at Lost and Found knew her name and picture ID so he brought it over here.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sylvia asked the young man, whose tag identified him as Tony G.

  Grace took the purse. “Did they say where they found it?”

  “Yeah. She must have dropped it by the bus stop. Found it over there,” he said, indicating a place outside the front of the coffee shop. “Want me to show you where it is?” He looked at Sylvia for permission and she reluctantly nodded.

  Sylvia let out a quivering sigh. She was, apparently, all business. “We’re very, very short-staffed, Tony.”

  “It’s all right. We’ll only keep him a minute. Then he can get back to his important work here.” Paul’s tone was condescending, more than it really needed to be. Sylvia had pretty thick skin, but she got the gist of what he was saying without words.

  “Fine,” she said. She turned her attention to Grace. “Emma’s a sweet girl. I hope you find her soon.”

  There was a slight chill in the air as the trio walked over to a section of the parking lot, in front of which sat a Plexiglas-enclosed bus shelter. With the exception of an elderly woman laden with shopping bags from several mall stores, the enclosure was empty.

  “Here’s where she caught the bus,” Tony said.

  “Thanks,” Paul said.

  Grace nodded as she scanned the area. The Starbucks was in full view, not more than thirty yards away.

  “You need anything else?” Tony asked. “Gotta get back.”

  Grace smiled and nodded, and the young man backed away, his green apron disappearing around a swarm of parked cars.

  “What are you so happy about?” Paul asked.

  “Not happy,” Grace said. “Just glad.”

  “Glad about what? And what’s the difference, by the way?”

  Grace’s eyes traveled up a parking lot light standard. “We might have a witness.”

  “Huh?” Paul squinted, but he needed his glasses to really see anything at any distance. “Some birds?”

  Grace resisted the desire to roll her eyes. He would notice that for sure. “The video camera,” she said, extending her index finger in the direction of a small surveillance camera pivoted toward the bus stop. “Let’s see who monitors the feed.”

  Where am I? Emma Rose looked around. She could barely move. Every inch of her body ached. She remembered that she’d been kidnapped, by some pervert no doubt. She tried to lift her head, but it was heavy like a bowling ball. Her eyes moved around the darkened room. In the corner she saw the shadowy figure of a man. He was just out of the beam of the reading lamp.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, almost editing her words to ask, What have you done to me?

  Emma waited for an answer. Instead, she saw him flip the switch that powered the gooseneck reading lamp. The room was now completely black. She felt the air move around her and the door open and shut. Next, the sound of the dead bolt as it fell into place.

  She reached down and touched herself. Her clothes were on. She wasn’t a virgin and she knew what it felt like after sex. She hadn’t been violated when she was unconscious.

  A moment later, she fell asleep.

  When she woke up, it was to the sound of the hatch and tray being opened. She went over to the tray. Lying on it were a brush and mirror. She went back to the light and looked at herself. Her hair had been washed and detangled. The bruising of her eyes had faded from a dark purple to an almost imperceptible yellow hue.

  Her long hair. Shiny. Clean.

  Her thoughts raced in a circle.

  What was he doing to her? Why was he holding her? Why didn’t he speak to her? Who was he? Was it a stranger or one of those Starbucks customer creeps? The ones who always winked at her when she handed over their drinks?

  CHAPTER 16

  Grace drove past the First Methodist Church every week on her way to visit her cousin, Vonnie Joanna, or Vo-Jo as the family called her, in that part of Tacoma. The church was a little out of her way, not enough to make her think that her obsession was out of control, but enough to make her dismiss the route if she was in a hurry to VJ’s little house. Nine times out of ten on those drive-bys, it would enter Grace’s mind that the church had likely been the starting point of all the hurt that was to come. It was the axis of the evil. It was there that Johnnie Bundy had met Ted’s mother, Louise, at a church gathering for singles, mostly older ones, some with kids.

  There were a lot of what-if games that Grace played when it came to her sister’s murder. This was one of the weaker ones. She wondered, if not for that meeting between Louise and Johnnie that day in 1951 would Louise have maybe left town? Ted would have gone with her. To California or Nevada. Somewhere far, far away. If Louise had not stayed in Tacoma, would things have been different enough in Ted’s life to stop him from doing all that he did? Or had any of the places or people that had made up the trajectory of his life mattered at all? Maybe he’d been evil at birth. Maybe there’d been no stopping him.

  Grace looked over at the pretty,
but plain, church as it filled the frame of her rearview mirror. She wondered almost out loud, If not for Louise meeting Johnnie Bundy, would I have ever been born at all?

  With his parents upstairs rearranging the furniture for what had to be the fiftieth time that year, Oliver Angstrom set aside his latest video game and channel surfed in the basement rec room of the family’s home just south of Lakewood. His interest perked up a little when he landed on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It wasn’t a comic or graphic novel come to life—those had been pretty lame lately anyway—but there were elements of the horror classic that stoked his imagination.

  Oliver had cracked open the little basement window and smoked a little pot. He was feeling something right then, but he wasn’t sure if it was anger or anxiety. He’d asked Emma out the evening before. Finally. He hadn’t asked a girl out for more than two years, though he’d nearly stalked a few as he tried to find a way to overcome his nerdy nervousness. He’d read self-help books. He role-played in front of a mirror. He worked out. He shaved his chest. He did whatever he thought he could do to make himself more attractive. The one thing he couldn’t fix, however, was his essential geekiness. Being a comic fanboy, a computer nerd, or anything along those lines was fine if a guy wanted to attract the female equivalent. But that’s not what Oliver was after. He’d wanted to date Emma Rose from the first day she walked into Starbucks looking for a job. She had only wanted part-time work because her mother had been sick and she didn’t want to be away from her very long. He’d overheard Emma tell Devon that her mom loved Starbucks and that she wanted her to work there as a way to get out of the house a few hours a day.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Emma said, “I love coffee, too. But I’d rather be home with her. She’s pretty strong about me needing to get out and be with people my own age. So here I am.”

  She’s so pretty, he’d thought. So sweet. She was also sexy in the way that some girls are when they don’t even know it. Oliver was hooked. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

  And then that night he’d finally asked her. Finally. After all the practice. After telling almost everyone who worked there that he was interested in Emma, he did it. And it was a big, fat flop.

  He balled up a fist and punched it into the cushion of the old sofa.

  Dammit. Damn her! Why hadn’t she seen that he was special, so very special? Why hadn’t she said yes? He was Spiderman! She was his Mary Jane! He was Superman! She was his Lois Lane. He couldn’t remember the Green Lantern’s love interest. Emma was right. It had been a terrible movie.

  She was always so right. Why hadn’t she seen that he was perfect for her?

  He looked down to the coffee table, where he’d set the photo he’d taken from the employee bulletin board when Emma was recognized as barista of the month. She was so beautiful in her crisp white blouse and perfectly pressed green apron. So sweet. She was always nice to him, listening with keen interest to whatever it was that he’d finally summoned the courage to tell her about.

  Boyfriend or not, Oliver Angstrom was utterly determined to make her fall in love with him. He’d do whatever it took. He would not, he told himself over and over, be denied. Batman needed his Catwoman. Oliver needed his Emma. He turned up the volume on the TV as his favorite part of the Texas Chainsaw reunion came onto the screen. The roar of the saw. The scream of the girl cowering in the basement of the abandoned house.

  Oliver stayed glued to the screen. Leatherface was in love. He was willing, ready and able to do whatever he needed to do go get the girl. Oliver wasn’t violent like that at all. Not really. Even so he admired the character central to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a tormented figure who was willing to do anything to get the girl.

  He wanted to think of himself just like that. Without the power saw, of course. Oliver Angstrom wanted nothing more than to possess Emma Rose. He wanted nothing more than to take her out on a date. Kiss her. Tell her that she understood him like no other. The only problem with all that he’d planned was that she’d said no. She’d said she already had a boyfriend.

  He doubted that and that hurt him as much as her answer. She didn’t even think that he’d be able to find out that there was no boyfriend. It was like he was nothing to her. Not even worthy of the truth. He’d never rejected anyone before, but if he did, he’d never lie. The only good thing about the fact that she’d lied was that there was no boyfriend. There was no one else in the way.

  The only thing about him that didn’t interest her seemed to be . . . him. But he could change. He could make her love him if only he knew just what in the world that was. He took another draw on the joint he was smoking, held it, and then blew the smoke out the open window. He took a seat on the sofa and plotted just how he’d make her fall in love with him.

  “What are you doing down there?” his mother called from the upstairs doorway.

  “Nothing! Leave me alone, Mom.”

  “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The police. That’s who!”

  Oliver jumped up from the ratty old sofa and prayed to God that he didn’t smell like a grow operation just then. The police? That can’t be good.

  CHAPTER 17

  Grace Alexander and Paul Bateman were standing in the Angstroms’ living room when Oliver emerged from his basement lair, rubbing his eyes a little and hoping against hope that the police didn’t think they were too red.

  Shana Angstrom, a large woman with room-filling hair and a rope of gold around her neck, introduced her son, while Clark Angstrom, a stump of a man with twitchy eyes, just stood mute.

  “Ollie,” she said, in her nails-on-chalkboard voice, “there might be some trouble and you can help out.”

  Oliver blinked hard. “I don’t know anything about Emma.”

  Grace nodded, a little surprised that the young man standing in front of her in a T-shirt and jeans and smelling of bong water had immediately invoked the missing girl’s name.

  “What do you know about her?” Paul asked.

  Clark Angstrom seemed to fade into the background while his wife directed the group to the living room, where they could talk “more comfortably.”

  “Clark,” she said, “be helpful, will you? Offer them a drink.”

  “No,” Paul said. “We’re fine. Thank you.”

  “Ollie,” Shanna Angstrom said, “sit up and answer their questions. These are busy people and they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t of some importance. Right, Detectives?”

  Oliver Angstrom, it seemed, didn’t have it easy.

  “Work called and told me Emma’s missing. That’s all I know.”

  “Really? You don’t know where she is?” Paul asked.

  He shook his head and slumped low in to the sofa next to his father. “I don’t know her that well,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I asked her out, but we just didn’t click that way.”

  “What way is that, Oliver?” Grace asked.

  Oliver glanced at his parents, his mother, now seated on his other side. “Hook up,” he said, sheepishly. “We didn’t hook up. She was cool and all, but we just didn’t, you know, hook up like . . .”

  “Like what?” Paul asked. “Like how you wanted to?”

  Oliver didn’t say anything.

  Shana got up and started for the kitchen. “Would you like a beer?”

  “No,” Paul said. “No thanks. We’re working.”

  “I’ll take a water,” Grace said, more to be polite than anything. “Let me help you.”

  She followed her into the kitchen and Shana fished a couple of glasses from the cupboard.

  “Your son seems like a nice boy,” Grace said.

  Oliver’s mother smiled nervously. “Oh, he is. I mean, I wish he’d get a real job. Trying to make video games all day and night.”

  “Really? That’s cool,” Grace said, almost choking on the word “cool.” She considered video games the scourge of a generation of young people. Sure
, they had stellar reflexes from working the controls with faster than lightning speed, but many were almost handicapped—incapable of dealing with humans. Oliver, she noted, almost never made direct eye contact.

  “Is he working on a new game now?”

  “I think so. He’s always hanging around in the basement. Maybe he’ll show you around. Probably a pigsty, but that’s the way kids are. No respect for what their parents do for them day in and day out.”

  Grace took the water and returned to the living room.

  “Oliver, your mom was telling me about the video games you’re producing. I’d love to see what you’re working on. I’ve always loved video games. I think of them as the art form of a generation.”

  Oliver brightened slightly. At least he seemed to.

  “Me, too.”

  Grace set down her glass. “Do you mind showing me where you work on your latest? I have a nephew who wants to be a game developer. He’s just a kid, but I think I’d earn some cred if I said I saw what someone with his same dreams was actually doing.”

  “Sure. Messy down there, but I’ll show you.”

  Grace followed Oliver down the stairs, while Paul remained with his parents.

  The basement was dark and smelly. The couch in front of the TV was a thrift market reject.

  “This is a great space. Really private,” she said.

  “Thanks.” Oliver looked over at the door to his grow room. Grace followed his gaze.

  “Mom’s doll collection’s in there. Off limits to all,” he said.

  Grace nodded and backed off. “When did you last see Emma?”

  “At work,” he said.

  “Right. Did you leave together? See where she went?”

  Oliver shook his head and fiddled with the controls next to his TV.

  “Not really. I had to clean up.”

  The TV went on and he started to demo his game, Babe Hunter.

  Grace watched for a moment, but something else caught her eye. On the coffee table in front of the TV was a picture of Emma.

  Oliver stopped what he was doing. “Oh, that? I found it. Just kept it. She could get another.”