Brink of Death

by Brandilyn Collins

  Gerri nodded and rose. Chetterling moved behind the desk and turned on a computer.

  “You have a computerized Identi-KIT?” I asked.

  Surprise flicked across Chetterling’s face. “Yeah. You familiar with it?”

  “Enough to know what it is.” I hesitated, one hand rubbing Erin’s back. “You don’t have anyone who can draw composites?”

  “Used to.” Chetterling watched the computer screen.

  “Andy Garisinsky. Great guy. A deputy sheriff. He was killed a year ago in the line of duty.”

  My eyes closed. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  There was too much tragedy in the world.

  Gerri returned with another plainclothes detective, apparently in his thirties. One side of his brown hair stuck out, uncombed.

  “Erin, I’m Mike Haller. I would like you to help me figure out what the man you saw looked like. We have a computer we can use and it’s not hard. Would you sit beside me at the computer? I’ll show you what to do.”

  She stared at the floor.

  Chetterling leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

  I pointed to myself, seeking his permission. He gestured with his hand. “Go ahead.”

  “Erin.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s go over there and sit down, okay? I’ll go with you.”

  Zombie-like, Erin allowed herself to be helped from her chair to a different one at the computer. For the next fifteen minutes Haller tried his best to get Erin to choose from eyebrow shapes, noses, mouths. As different components were chosen, they could be put together to create a face, modifying and perfecting as the process went along. But Erin would point to nothing, even though she fixed her gaze upon the screen.

  Finally Haller leaned back with a sigh and shook his head.

  There was nothing left to do but let Erin get some rest.

  Haller shut down the computer, suggesting to Erin that maybe they could try again tomorrow. Then he left.

  “Erin—” Gerri knelt before the girl—”I’ll bet you could use a trip to the bathroom. I’ll show you where it is.”

  With no expression Erin trailed Gerri out the door.

  “Don’t you find it surprising,” I ventured when they were out of earshot, “that the killer let Erin live?”

  Chetterling inhaled. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to kill a young girl.

  It’s a question worth thinking about.” He opened his notepad to a new page and jotted in it. “Okay, I need to ask you some questions, too. As we’re doing with all the neighbors.”

  “I don’t know what good I’ll be.” I sighed. “I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  “Before we get to that, can you tell me anything about what Dave Willit does for a living? He apparently works out of his home.”

  “He owns commercial real estate. You know Shasta Station in south Redding, that strip mall with all the shops? He owns that, and another one on the north side, I think. Maybe some other places, too.”

  Chetterling wrote in his notebook. “Ever hear him or his wife mention trouble with a tenant?”

  “Nothing. They didn’t talk about his work. The only reason I know anything is because I noticed he worked from home and asked Lisa what he did.”

  Vividly the memory of that conversation jolted through me.

  Lisa leaning against the beige granite kitchen counter, the back of one hand resting upon her hip. Wearing a pink T-shirt that sets off her light skin and hair. Behind me the coffeemaker sputters, the aroma of the warm liquid seeping into the air. “So tell me about you,” Lisa says, smiling. To her right on the wall hangs a hand-painted plaque that reads, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I wonder about that. I can hear Erin’s voice filtering from her bedroom down the hall as she chats with Kelly…

  My throat tightened. “And one more thing. Lisa helped him do the secretarial stuff.”

  “Okay.” Chetterling nodded. “What about any unusual activity in the area the last few days? See anybody driving or walking around that you didn’t know?”

  “I don’t know too many people in the neighborhood yet, so I couldn’t say who belongs and who doesn’t.”

  “I see. How long have you lived at the house?”

  “About a month. It was my dad’s second home. He had a heart attack about four months ago and passed away. I live there now with my kids, Kelly and Stephen.”

  “You’re divorced?”

  “Yes. Two years ago.”

  “Where is the children’s father?”

  “Dallas. He…married the girl he took up with when we were still together.” Bitterness crept into my tone. “Then his company transferred him.”

  Chetterling wrote in his notepad, showing no reaction.

  “How about your sister that I talked to at the hospital. Jenna, right?”

  “Yes. She still lives and works in the Bay Area, but she flies up on weekends.” The Bay Area was about four hours’

  drive from Redding but less than an hour in the plane.

  “Are you a private pilot, too?”

  “No. My dad was. Jenna got her love of flying from him.”

  “And your mother?”

  I focused on the black night through the room’s single window. “She died when I was sixteen.”

  “I’m sorry.” Chetterling let the words hang in the air for a moment. “You said your sister comes up weekends. Why didn’t she return last night?”

  Oh, wouldn’t Jenna love that question. “Her work’s been cut to four days a week, Tuesday through Friday. She’s not happy about it but there’s nothing she can do. She works in Redwood Shores, on the northern border of Silicon Valley, for a software company. Jenna’s in their marketing department. But, well, you know how hard the tech industry’s been hit. She’s lucky to have a job at all.”

  Chetterling wrote down my answers. “All right. Back to the neighbors for a minute. Didn’t you visit your dad during the years he owned the house? Enough to get to know them?”

  I hesitated.”I only came up twice.We weren’t all that close.”

  The detective remained poker-faced. “Why did you move here?”

  “I was tired of the pace of the Bay Area. Just wanted a change.”

  He jotted in his notebook. “All right. Do you work?”

  “No, not since we moved.”

  “What did you do in the Bay Area?”

  A long sigh escaped me. Where were Gerri and Erin? “I was a courtroom artist for ten years. I covered a lot of trials.

  That’s why I know about the Identi-KIT. You hear lots of stuff over the years through testimony. Get to know things about police work.”

  He studied me. “You know faces.”

  Footsteps sounded outside the door. “Yes.” I tried to smile.

  “It goes with the territory, I guess—always studying features.”

  Chetterling smiled at Erin as she and Gerri stepped through the door. Erin’s eyes drooped. As horrific as the night had been, sheer exhaustion was taking its toll. I looked to the detective, pleading on my face. “Can I take her now?”

  “Just one more thing. Your father’s name?”

  I suppressed a cringe. Of all the questions to end on. I pushed to my feet, forcing myself to look the detective in the eye. “Trent Gerralon.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Gerralon? The defense attorney?”

  I crossed to Erin, feeling the detective’s gaze upon me. It was not just my imagination—distaste had seeped into his tone.

  “Yes.” I made no attempt to keep the defiance from my voice. “But don’t worry. I didn’t like him, either.”

  Twenty minutes later I sagged in the backseat of Gerri’s car, Erin already asleep on my shoulder. Detective Chetterling’s card was stuffed in my pocket. “Call me anytime if something comes up with Erin,” he’d told me. Gerri had also scribbled her cell phone number, apologizing that she’d run out of business cards in her wallet and had forgotten to repla
ce them.

  The digital clock on the dashboard read 3:58 a.m. We drove through the silent streets of Redding, the peacefulness surreal. Streetlamps washed against the car windows like spotlights over a prison yard. Did Lisa’s killer live in town?

  He could be out there somewhere, skulking by night, pounded into anonymity by day through the beat of traffic and thousands of feet.

  “I’ll be around tomorrow,” Gerri said quietly. “I’ll be checking in on the Willits, and I’d also like to see how you’re doing, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  We turned off Skypark Road and rolled up Barrister Court. Lights were still on in the Willits’ house, cars parked out front. I averted my eyes from the yellow crime-scene tape, my mind projecting another sequence of sadistic slides.

  Gerri made a U-turn in the cul-de-sac and drew up to the curb in front of my father’s rambling log house. Even on this horrendous night, it pulled at our eyes.

  “Your place is so beautiful,” Gerri said.

  Your place. I could not get used to that. “Thanks.”

  Gerri turned to gaze at Erin, no doubt wishing, as I did, that we didn’t have to wake her. “Let me help you get her out.” She turned off the engine.

  I summoned my energy to focus on one final task for the night: leading Erin inside without allowing her a glimpse of the violation that had befallen her home.

  Chapter 5

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  The man swayed through his expensive house, kicking designer furniture, punching a hole in the wall with his fist. He could smell his own stinking sweat. It dripped down his head, down his armpits in rivulets that reeked of his own stupid fate.

  “Aah!” He bashed the wall again, ignoring the pain to his knuckles, then swore in the dimly lit room. His frightened cat sprang from her hiding place to scramble across his shoes toward the kitchen. Furious, he lashed out a foot, catching the feline in its side. It let out a wail, tumbled over, then shot underneath the couch.

  That’s right, cat, you’d better hide. I find you, you’re dead.

  He prowled around the living room like a caged lion, then threw himself on the couch. The perfectly coiled springs underneath him whined in protest. He hoped he’d sat right on top of the cat. He hoped the couch bottom had sagged enough to kill the worthless beast.

  Stretching out his arms, he pummeled the back of the couch with both fists. How could he have been so clumsy in that house? Especially after his business and personal responsibilities had made him wait so long to get up there. He’d been smart enough to get in, oh yeah. Smart enough to find the house in the first place. Then he bangs around in there like some one-handed idiot. And the few things he gets a good look at don’t begin to fit his needs.

  So the snoopy woman shows up. And her kid. And he panics. He, who never panics about anything. Calm and cool, that’s how he’s known. Can handle anything. And watch out to those who cross him.

  So why’d he do it? He could have just run past the woman, slipped into the night.

  But not really. Chill out, man. How far would you have gotten while she was calling the cops? You needed time to get to the car, race like a demon out of there. You did what you had to do.

  He grimaced, narrowing his eyes at the plush weave of his carpet. He’d just had the whole house recarpeted last month.

  A few small stains here and there and he’d decided to replace it all. Pristine—that’s how he liked his surroundings.

  Now he’d have to fix the holes in the wall. Repaint the room. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.

  It was all that woman’s fault.

  Was she dead?

  He hadn’t meant to kill her, just slow her down for a while.

  He felt a chilling smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Well.

  Maybe he had. He held out his hands, fingers spread and curved, and stared at them. Remembering the power in those hands as they’d crushed neck cartilage. So easily done. So…

  satisfying.

  His hands returned to fists, sinking into the couch cushions.

  Well, good for him, but he hadn’t gotten what he wanted, and he needed it. Badly. He could count on only one small thing, one favor in this whole rotten universe that had turned against him since the day of his birth: they wouldn’t know it was there. He’d have to be oh so careful next time. No doubt trigger-happy cops were all over that area. But then, he’d eluded ‘em for years.

  And he always would.

  Always.

  Jail was not an option, not now, not ever. He’d kill anybody, he’d die himself before he spent time in a prison. Small. Dark.

  Claustrophobic. Like the closet his daddy had put him in every time he was bad. Every time he wet his pants or fell asleep watching cartoons or didn’t hold his head just right. Oh, and hadn’t his daddy shoved him in that closet, laughing. Cackling like a clown. And wouldn’t the guards at a jail do the same thing. Smirk at him, snicker and snort when he begged to get out, when he pleaded to feel the air.

  One night in a jail cell and he’d go stark raving mad, start tearing off his own skin.

  But there was another reason, even more important than himself. His little sister needed him. Stuck away in that nursing home, unable to move the paralyzed body their father had left her with. Couldn’t even feed herself. Could talk only with painstaking effort. And the pneumonia she’d suffered in the past two months. He’d been scared to death he’d lose her. But the way she smiled at him when he visited every day.

  Her pinched face would light up like the sun. She thought he was still in his old line of work, hobnobbing with the elite. It would kill her to hear it was all a lie. That he’d ended up in jail.

  And jail is what could happen to him if he didn’t get what he needed. If he didn’t retrieve what was never meant to exist in the first place.

  He cursed again into the night, swearing vengeance on the man who’d begun this cosmic fiasco. Oh, the guy was safe enough for now, but just wait. The fool’s day of reckoning would come.

  After he’d gotten what he needed from that house.

  And may the gods help anybody—anybody—who stood in his way.

  Chapter 6

  My eyes opened as if they were weighted. I aimed a slow look at the clock.

  Shortly before seven.

  Was it only six hours ago I’d awakened as sirens screamed in the night? Running a hand across my face, I turned to check on the girls. They lay beside me in the king-size bed, Kelly in the middle. Both still asleep.

  I could hardly believe Erin was here. My mind couldn’t quite catch up to all that had happened. How I wished the dreadful events were nothing more than a nightmare.

  From the great room I heard the dim chime of the grandfather clock as it struck the hour. I could imagine the sound of its pendulum as it swung. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Six hours. The minutes were passing—those critical minutes that, as Detective Chetterling had said, make up the critical seventy-two hours after a homicide. Maybe Dave’s return, as hard as it would be for him, was the key to finding Lisa’s killer. Dave, more than anyone else, would know who might want something in his office so badly.

  I had to get up but couldn’t find the energy. Instead I lay staring at the high wooden-beam ceiling of my bedroom. This was where I’d stayed the few times I’d visited my father since the house was built five years ago. That familiarity, and my desire to be close to Kelly, had prompted me to choose this largest guest room instead of the master suite on the main floor. Jenna had taken that for her own, thanking her lucky stars that she, the daughter who didn’t even live here full-time, ended up with the fanciest digs.

  Oh. A memory popped into my head. The telephone.

  Because this room had been for guests, it hadn’t come equipped with a phone. For some reason every time I went to town, I kept forgetting to buy another handset. I’d promised myself to do that today.

  Now it would just have to wait.

  I looked
at the clock again. Were Jenna and Stephen still asleep? Last night I’d checked to see where Stephen slept, and found him in one of the guest rooms on the other side of the upper floor, above the kitchen. I could imagine the fight it must have taken to get him there. But no way would feisty Jenna have given in. Stephen’s bedroom was on the basement level—the easiest place for an intruder to target. The six-thousand-square-foot house was built on a slope, two floors visible from the front, three floors visible in the back. The main level on this home wasn’t raised above a hangar and garage, those areas being built off the kitchen. All the rooms on the basement level had large windows facing the back lot, and the rec room had a sliding glass door that stepped out onto a deck.

  I pictured Lisa’s killer entering—and exiting—through the sliding glass door leading to their back deck. Down those stairs and into the forest, sluicing into the night like some pirate ship in dark seas.

  Would we ever again feel safe in this house?

  Vic told me I shouldn’t move here. As if he had the right to tell me anything.

  Vic.

  At the thought of him, my built-in projector clicked into action, playing the scene from another bedroom, another time, the film so worn that the picture fuzzed at the edges.

  He stands in the bedroom of our home in San Carlos, pulling off his tie with grim intensity at the end of a long workday. The April sun is beginning to set, trailing fingers of light across his profile.

  Vic’s face seems set in stone, his mouth tight and drawn. I sit on the edge of the bed, heart skipping, knowing with a wife’s sixth sense that some terrible pronouncement is about to fall from his lips. “It’s time I told you,” he says, the words matter-of-fact, clipped. Utterly cold. “I’m leaving the marriage.” He slips out of the tie and leaves it dangling from his fingers as he has done so many days, months, years, before. “And before you can ask the inevitable question, yes, there’s someone else. I’ll be moving in with her. I’ll see the kids often, of course…”

  The words go on but I don’t hear them, don’t see my husband, don’t even feel. I’ve turned wooden, hollowed, my thoughts the color of air.