The Thriller Collection

by S W Vaughn

  He smirks and folds his hands in his lap. “Go for it.”

  “Okay.” There isn’t really a way to work up to it, so I just come right out and ask. “When you lived in Nashau, did you know someone named Hannah Byers?”

  I expect some kind of recognition, but I don’t expect the curtain of cold fury that drops over his face. His eyes flash fire, his hands clench together until his knuckles turn white, and he blows a long, thin breath through slightly parted lips, like a woman trying to control labor pains.

  “Why?” he finally grounds out. “What’s she done now?”

  I’m so taken aback that I almost can’t catch my breath. “I don’t know,” I squeak. “She just bought a house from me, and—”

  “Here? In Wolfsbrook?”

  He practically shouts the questions, and I flinch. My mouth won’t move enough to say yes, so I swallow hard and give a little nod.

  Brad deflates as suddenly as the anger came over him, and he bows his head. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I swear I’m not mad at you. It’s just that Hannah —” He breaks off and looks up with effort, and there are tears standing in his eyes. “She was my girlfriend in high school,” he says in a low, horrified tone. “And she’s the reason we moved here for my senior year. My parents wanted to get me away from her, because she was fucking psychotic.”

  “Psychotic how?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know, just crazy. She fucked with my head so much. And she did things …” He shakes his head. “For one thing, she was insanely jealous. She broke some girl’s nose with her binder, and then held her down and cut all her hair off, because she thought the girl was flirting with me when she’d asked to borrow a quarter for lunch. And that was in ninth grade.” His throat works, and a tear snakes down his cheek. “She only got worse from there.”

  Oh my God, it’s her. Hannah. She’s the one who’s been texting me.

  She killed Rosalie.

  “Brad, I’m so sorry.” I slide forward in the chair and reach for his hands, taking them in mine. They’re hot and trembling. My heart explodes with sympathy for him — I can’t imagine what he’s gone through with Hannah, but it was clearly hellish. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  He squeezes his eyes shut, but another tear still falls. “Jesus, I can’t believe she’s in Wolfsbrook,” he says. “I might have to get a restraining order or something. At least she hasn’t been here yet. Celine … you have to stay away from her.” His green eyes meet mine with desperation. “She’s absolutely nuts. She gets in your head. Promise me you’ll stay away.”

  “I promise.” I don’t tell him that she’s already managed to get a job where I work, or that she claims to have a daughter she can’t possibly have, with eerie similarities to mine. I’ve decided that I need to go to the police. Even if it means telling them about what happened with Joan. “And I’m sorry, but I have to go. There’s something I need to take care of,” I say. “I’ll come back tomorrow, okay?”

  He flashes me a wary look. “What is it? If it has something to do with Hannah …”

  “Not really,” I tell him, only half lying. It concerns Hannah, but I’m not going to deal with her directly. I’m just going to report her to the police. “It’s just work stuff. And I promise I’ll be back first thing tomorrow.”

  “I hope so.” He smiles, but there’s sadness in it. “Have I told you how much I missed you?”

  Not as much as I’ve missed you. I almost say it, but at the last moment I realize that’s in extremely poor taste. Brad might be trying to laugh about it, but I think it’s too early for coma jokes. So I simplify things, and say, “I missed you, too.”

  His smile grows a fraction as he turns my hands over slowly. “No wedding ring.”

  “No. I’m not married,” I say. “Or divorced, or engaged, or otherwise involved.”

  “You’re single? I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, it’s true.” I shrug it off. I’m aching to tell him that I’m single because the man I love has been in a coma for five years, but that’s too much, too soon. And I have to see how he feels about Alyssa first, before I throw my heart back at his feet.

  I’ll tell him tomorrow. After I do something about Hannah.

  Brad is still smiling, but exhaustion lurks in his expression. “I hope you won’t be insulted if I don’t get up to say goodbye,” he says. “I think I’ve had enough standing this morning.”

  “Of course not. I completely understand.” I get up instead, and lean down to hug him.

  He brushes his lips on my cheek. “You’ll come back tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  It’s harder than I expect to leave him, especially knowing what I have to do now. But at least I have something concrete to show the police. I’m hoping that, if nothing else, exposing Hannah will keep her away from Brad — and from me. And at best, if she really did kill Rosalie, she’ll be arrested.

  I think about poor Teryn as I walk past the nurses’ station and wonder again what happened. How she died. It must not have been violent, since no one knew she was dead. And if she’d been murdered, I would’ve heard something about it by now, even in passing. So maybe this really was just a coincidence.

  The elevator car I step into is empty, and I press the button for the parking garage level. I’m already trying to talk myself out of going to the police. But I have to, even though they’ll probably make me talk to the detectives who came to my house.

  Chambers and Garfield are on my mind, and not in a good way. So when the elevator doors open and the two of them are standing there outside the car, I’m so startled that I scream and stumble back.

  It turns out that’s the worst possible reaction I can have, because they came looking for me.

  Chapter 18

  The fact that I’m not in handcuffs isn’t much of a consolation, and it doesn’t keep me from crying out of pure fear as I sit alone in a locked room at the police station. I’m sure that bawling my eyes out isn’t helping my case either, but that’s the reason I can’t help it. There shouldn’t be a case at all.

  Now they think I had something to do with Teryn.

  At the hospital, the detectives told me that I wasn’t being charged with anything, but that I had to come to the station with them and answer some questions. If I didn’t go voluntarily, they said they’d get a warrant and arrest me. And they wouldn’t let me take my own car. They’d put me in the back of a police car, refused to answer my questions or listen to me about Hannah, and then taken me to this room with a table, two chairs, and clock on the wall, and a camera in a corner of the ceiling. A female officer came in and confirmed my name, my address, and that I’d known Teryn Holmes, and then she took my purse and cell phone and left me here alone, locked in.

  I’d been here for hours. The clock said it was almost one PM, and I was supposed to pick up Alyssa from school at quarter to three. What would happen if I wasn’t there? Would they have her stay there with the teacher? Put her on a bus and send her home to an empty, locked house? Call Social Services and take her away from her negligent mother?

  By the time the door to the room opens a little after 1:30 and the female officer who talked to me before walks in, I’m frantic with worry. I try to swipe my face clean and look at her. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, but I really need to pick my daughter up from school soon,” I tell her, my voice foggy and pathetic. “Will I be able to do that? She gets out at 2:45.”

  The officer glances at the clock and frowns. “Can she ride the bus home?”

  “No. She’s only four, she’s in kindergarten,” I say. “There’s just me and her. She can’t be home alone.”

  “It’s still going to be a few minutes before the detectives can talk to you, and I don’t know how long they’ll take,” the woman says. Her tone is businesslike, her stance rigid, but I hope I’m not imagining the slight warmth in her eyes. “Is there someone else you can call to pick her up?”

  I struggle to keep my shattered hopes from
showing. I don’t want to call someone, I want to get out of here, pick up my daughter, and put this nightmare behind me. But at least I don’t have to leave Alyssa stranded. “Yes, I can call someone,” I say in a small voice. “Can I use my phone?”

  “Here, you can use mine.” The officer takes a cell phone from her belt, swipes at the screen a few times, and hands it to me. The dial pad is pulled up.

  “Thank you,” I manage as I tap in Jill’s cell phone number. I only have two people on the list of adults allowed to get Alyssa from school in emergencies, and the other one is my mother. I don’t want her to find out where I am, and why. I’ll never hear the end of it.

  Jill answers after three rings. “What’s wrong, did you lose my desk number?” she says teasingly.

  “Jill. I need a huge favor.” A lump forms in my throat, and I turn my back and walk away from the officer, making my voice as quiet as possible. I’m sure she hears me anyway, but I don’t want her to. “I’m sorry, I know you’re at work … but can you pick Alyssa up from school and watch her for a while? She gets out at 2:45.”

  “What happened?” Jill says, immediately concerned. “Are you okay, Celine?”

  “No,” I whisper. Fresh tears form in my eyes, and I squeeze them shut, trying to make it stop. “I mean, I’m not hurt or anything. Oh, God, it’s a long story.” I draw in a shuddering breath. “I’m at the police station, and I … can’t leave yet.”

  “Oh, my God. Did those stupid bastards arrest you about Rosalie?” Jill nearly shouts. “This is ridiculous. Sweetie, you need to lawyer up, right now. I mean it. Don’t say a word to them. I’ll get Jeff to go down there, and —”

  “Jill, wait. Just a second.” Once again I’m grateful for her passion, but Jeff Lindstrom is a real estate lawyer. And if I do need a lawyer eventually, it’ll have to be a criminal defense lawyer. The thought of that makes me shudder. “I’m not under arrest,” I explain. “They want to ask me some questions. It’s just taking longer than it should, for some reason.”

  “That means they’re trying to find a reason to arrest you,” Jill says. “Trust me, I know all about this. It’s disgusting what they’re doing. Do not answer any questions.”

  I know she’s right, and I’m sickened that I don’t seem to have much of a choice. “I really don’t think Jeff can help,” I say under my breath, walking further away from the officer. “I mean, he’s in real estate.”

  “Yeah, but he still went to law school. He knows enough to get you out of there.”

  The idea of refusing to answer questions when the police ask them, of exercising my right to a lawyer, is so terrifying that it leaves me dizzy. But they are looking for a reason to arrest me, and I can’t let that happen. “All right. If he can get down here,” I finally say. “But please, just get Alyssa for me. She’s all I’m worried about.”

  “I will. That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about,” Jill says. “We’ll be waiting at your place for you, and I’ll make sure you get there soon.”

  “Thank you,” I say, my voice catching on the words.

  She promises again that everything’s going to be fine, and we hang up. As I turn to hand the phone back to the officer, I’m startled to see the detectives standing near the open door to the room. How long have they been here?

  “Are you all set with your daughter?” the woman says.

  I nod. “Yes, my friend’s picking her up. Thank you.”

  She doesn’t say that I’m welcome. She just returns her phone to her belt, walks past the detectives, and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

  I swallow and move toward the table on unsteady legs, and all but collapse in one of the chairs. Even though it’s proven pointless to talk to them so far, I give it another shot anyway. “I tried to tell you before that I was just coming down here to talk to you,” I say. “I think I might know who killed Rosalie.”

  “Really. Do you think this same person killed Teryn Holmes?” Chambers pulls the other chair away from the table, turns it around, and sits backwards to stare at me. “Because we think you did. She was poisoned, and someone attempted to make it look like a suicide. Again.”

  “Oh my God,” I whisper, not even trying to stop the tears. “She is crazy. She killed them both.”

  The detectives look at each other. Garfield opens his mouth, but I cut him off with a surge of desperate bravado. “My phone,” I blurt. “I’ve been getting threatening texts. Just look at it. Hannah Byers killed them, and she’s threatening me too, because of Brad.”

  “All right,” Garfield says slowly. “We’ll check it out.”

  He leaves the room, and I shudder beneath Chambers’ drilling glare. “Please. I didn’t kill anyone,” I say, wincing as I remember that I’m not supposed to talk to them until Jeff gets here. But I’m not answering any questions — I’m telling them what I planned to in the first place. “I’m sorry I screamed like that at the hospital. It’s just that I was already coming to talk to you, and … well, there you were. It scared me.”

  Chambers’ features seem to ease a little, but I can’t tell for sure. “If you were receiving threatening texts, why didn’t you report it?” he says. “Especially if you knew who was sending them.”

  “I didn’t know who it was. Not until this morning, when I talked to Brad,” I tell him. My heart is hammering like a drum, but I can’t freeze up this time. “Hannah … she’s his ex-girlfriend, from high school. He says she was crazy jealous. And she was just discharged from a psychiatric hospital a few weeks ago, before she came to Wolfsbrook. She was there for five years. Again, I didn’t know any of this when I was getting the texts. They’re from an anonymous number.”

  The detective’s eyebrows go up. “You’re sure about all this?”

  “Positive,” I say.

  Garfield comes back in with my phone and hands it to me. I unlock the screen, tap through to the message thread, and wince as I read the first one again. I know what you did. Murderer. “I’m not a murderer,” I say as I give the phone slowly to Chambers. “Like I said, she’s crazy. But … she’s not talking about Rosalie or Teryn.”

  Chambers looks at the screen while Garfield reads over his shoulder. After a long minute, Chambers glances at me. “Who is she talking about, then?”

  I sigh and bite my lip. “Joan Carpenter. We went to the same college, and she … well, she started this little group. The Brad Dowling Fan Club. And I found out about it.”

  The whole story comes out. How I’d stumbled across a tiny, private online forum in my freshman year of college — I’d bought used textbooks, and someone had scribbled the URL in the margin of my biology book — found out it was all about worshipping Brad, who I was already friends with at the time, and decided to join for a laugh. How gushy and silly and sad it had all seemed. There were only about a dozen users, and all of them were anonymous, with handles like IHeartBrad and Brad4Life. But I’d ‘befriended’ the forum owner and president, and she told me her real name.

  That was when I showed Brad the forum and told him who’d started it. And it turned out he had an elective with Joan — they were both sophomores at the time — and he’d confronted her about his ‘fan club’ in front of the whole class. I wasn’t there, of course, but people said she’d been completely humiliated and fled the classroom in tears.

  The next morning, Joan was found dead in her dorm room. She’d hung herself, after she wrote a long, miserable post on the forum about how ruined her life was now that everyone knew the pathetic truth, and she would never have a chance with Brad.

  “I didn’t kill her,” I say as the detectives look on, stone-faced. “But it’s my fault she’s dead. What I did was stupid and mean, and I was probably trying to impress Brad, even then. I’ll feel responsible for Joan’s death all my life … but I’m not a murderer.”

  Neither of them say anything for a moment, and I start to think maybe there’s a way they can arrest me for Joan’s death. But then Chambers leans forward and sighs. “So yo
u think this Hannah knows what happened, and now she’s targeting you,” he says. “What was her last name, again?”

  “Byers. Hannah Byers,” I tell him. “And yes, that’s what I think. I found a newspaper photo online of her and Joan together at an Oslow State game. They knew each other.”

  “What about the rest of these forum users, the fan club?” Garfield says. “Is the forum still active? We may have to look into all of them, and anyone who’s been involved with Brad Dowling. I hate to say it, but this does seem to be an ex-girlfriend out for revenge.”

  I actually laugh, surprising myself. “Well, Detective, good luck with that,” I say. “I’m sorry. I guess you don’t know that Brad dated about half the juniors and seniors in high school during the year he was there, and probably twice that many girls once he got to college. Most of them still live around here.”

  Chambers groans aloud. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?” he says, shaking his head. “All right, Ms. Bauman. It would be very helpful if you could point us to that forum and anything else you find online. And we’ll need to have the tech department go through your phone, to see if they can trace the source of these texts. Is that going to be a problem?”

  “No, it’s fine.” I can grab a pay-as-you-go phone and have my number temporarily transferred. And I’m happy to let them find out who’s doing this. “Does this mean I’m not a suspect anymore?”

  “You weren’t a suspect. You were a person of interest,” Garfield says.

  I don’t believe him, but I’ll let it go for now. “What about Hannah?”

  “I think we’d better question her right away,” Chambers says with a glance at his partner, who nods in agreement. “As in now. Do you have an address for her?”

  I nod and tell them the address of the Quintaine property. “I’m sure it’s her. It has to be,” I say. “Everything lines up.”

  “Are you a detective now, Ms. Bauman?” Chambers’ brows quirk into a sardonic lift.