Nine years ago, my father’s fourth wife snuck out at one o’clock in the morning, when he was working for the zillionth night in a row. I was nine years old. Before she bailed on us, she woke me up and drove me to my grandmother’s house. At least she didn’t leave me alone in the middle of the night.
She must’ve rented a moving van or something. By the time my dad got home from work the next morning, all her stuff was gone, along with the giant sectional couch from our living room and the big-screen TV. She used to sit on that couch for hours and binge-watch cooking shows, alone, every night, unless I put aside whatever I was reading to join her.
After Judie left, Dad gave up on marriage. He didn’t have time to keep shopping for new furniture.
My father found himself suddenly wifeless and unwilling to try again. So my grandmother took over most of the childcare responsibilities in the Flagg house. I love Grams, but I still wonder sometimes what life would’ve been like if the Bad Guy hadn’t come along when he did. I have no memories of my mother. Only a few pictures of us together. All of them were taken when I was too young to understand or appreciate my beautiful, photogenic life. But I still miss those days sometimes.
Shane finally breaks the awkward silence with another question. “What does your father have to say about the murder? Anything they aren’t reporting on the news?”
“You’ll get to find out soon. He’s due home any minute. C’mon, I’ll show you the information I’ve collected so far.”
I open the door to the basement, and Shane follows me down the steep stairs and into the weight room, then over to the corner where my father has set up a big divider made of corkboard framed with polished oak. The murder board.
“Dad built this for me when I was ten. Then he helped me find the first few articles to tack up.”
“You were only ten? There are some really gruesome pictures on here. This woman’s eyes are open, and even though the photo’s black and white, you can see the slice in her neck. It’s vicious.” Shane points to the dark slash on Marianne Stone’s stark, white flesh.
“Yes, well, I was pretty jaded for a fifth grader. That’s when I uncovered all the details surrounding my mother’s murder.”
“Harper, this picture is your mother.” It’s the least gory photograph, but she’s up there, all right, curled on her side, facing away from the camera, lying on a slit-open trash bag. You can tell it’s her, even without reading the caption, because she was the only blonde victim. His type doesn’t include hair color, like Bundy. Ted preferred brunettes. I need to explain how I stay objective about all this to Shane, without seeming like a totally heartless freak. I have to be subtle, and that’s not exactly one of my strengths.
“When I look at it I feel sad and upset, but not to the point where I can’t be objective.”
“Still, Harper, it’s your mother.”
“You can’t see her face, or her wound, and I was only two when it happened. I don’t even remember her.”
“I don’t remember my mom, either and my dad won’t talk about her. Ever. My parents have banned everything associated with the Bad Guy from our house. I can’t believe your father set this up for you when you were just a little kid.”
“I hacked into his computer and opened all the crime-scene files. I guess he figured he may as well satisfy my curiosity, seeing as I was satisfying it myself anyway.”
“But you were so young. How did you get into his files?”
“At that point, I’d been reading at a college level for two years, but Dad didn’t realize it because he worked a lot of nights and slept during the day. My grandmother came over every afternoon and stayed until he got home in the morning. I adored her, but I used to put one over on her now and then. I think I was a tough kid to keep up with.”
“Understatement.” Shane laughs.
“One afternoon when Dad had been called into work early, Grams was in the living room watching The Jerry Springer Show. I wasn’t allowed to watch it with her because the audience was always screaming stuff like ‘She’s a whore!’”
“Okay, so let me get this straight. They protected you from bad language but not from violent crime-scene photos.”
“Not really. No one actually showed me the photos. I found them myself and then looked at all of them. My father and my grandmother didn’t realize the extent of my curiosity and my technological skills. Everything I saw that day had been carefully password protected. And I wasn’t supposed to touch my father’s computer. But I did.”
“You broke the rules.”
“Times ten. I booted up Dad’s computer and figured out his password pretty quickly.”
It was rosemary100%Forever, all lowercase except a capital F in Forever. No spaces. Rosemary: my mom’s name, and how much he loved her, 100 percent. How much he will always love her. Forever. My dad isn’t super affectionate, but his special thing he always says to me is, “I love you, baby. One hundred percent. Forever.” I figured he must’ve said that to my mom, too, when she was alive. I’m not about to share this part of the story with Shane, though. Too private.
“I simply typed in a familiar phrase he often used, and I was in.”
“Sneaky.”
“It was kind of like that myth about Pandora’s box. Except the documents I opened and read that day didn’t horrify me. I felt only intense curiosity. I read the Bad Guy’s whole case file and a few others, too.”
“And you got caught.”
I nod. “Yep. The very next day. When my father came home from work at seven in the morning he booted up his PC and immediately knew I’d been snooping through his private files. He ran out to the corner, where I was waiting for the bus.”
“You must’ve been so scared.”
“My bony little knees started shaking when I saw him come flying down the street toward me. He just grabbed my hand and told me to come back inside. He wasn’t yelling or anything. His voice was pretty quiet. I thought maybe he was waiting until after we got inside to yell, but he didn’t. He told my grandmother to go home that he’d ‘handle it.’ I thought I was in so much trouble, but he wasn’t mad at all. Instead of punishing me, he let me skip school. We sat down together, and he answered all of my questions about my mother’s death. We talked for hours.”
“My dad would’ve been furious.”
“Not mine. He pulled a textbook about autopsies off his bookshelf, and we looked at it together. I read words like ‘postmortem lividity’ and ‘petechial hemorrhaging’ and ‘subdural hematoma’ out loud for my father. He actually seemed proud of me. He explained what everything meant while we turned the pages of his book and looked at the photographs and illustrations.”
“Pretty amazing. Your dad has an unusual parenting style.”
“Definitely. But we’ve had to deal with an unusual situation together. Look.” I run my fingertips over another photograph of Marianne Stone, naked on an autopsy table. “No marks anywhere on her body. He’s not a sadist. He only touches them to kill them, as swiftly and mercifully as possible. And they’re unconscious when he does it. There weren’t any defensive wounds on her hands or anywhere else. She was out cold the whole time. He doesn’t play with them or bite them or torture them, like most of the famous serial killers we’ve all heard of.”
Shane takes a step closer and bends down to examine the body on the slab from head to toe-tag. “What’s up with this guy? He’s like a sniper, but with a knife. You’re right. He’s unique. I wonder what makes him tick.”
“If we could figure that out, we’d be closer to catching him, and looking at these photos could help. That’s why Dad wants me to keep studying the board. He tacked up a few more pictures just yesterday, so it will be up-to-date.”
“He’s the total opposite of my father and stepmother. I’ve only begun to find out the details about the murders. And I’ve had to keep my mouth shut about any information I discovered. They refuse to discuss it.”
“It’s all here on this board. Everything you’d e
ver want to know and probably more. Dad and I created this together. We don’t keep any secrets from each other.”
“What about his computer files?”
I laugh. “Yeah. He drew the line there. Ever since that day he’s had a much less predictable password.”
“Let me guess. You tried.”
“Yup. And failed. Multiple times. But sometimes, now that I’m older, he calls or texts me from a crime scene to run something by me. He seems to value my opinion, too. Except for now. He’s closed me out of the one case that I most want to be a part of.”
“Maybe you and I can come up with a theory about why the killer came back.” Shane’s standing close to me, stooped down, scrutinizing the tons of articles, maps, diagrams, and photographs posted on my board. He zeroes in on a photo of the killer’s newest victim, Jessica Phelps.
“There she is, all curled up as if she were still inside the trash bag.”
He moves over a step and says, “Cute kid.” It’s Matthew Phelps, Jessica’s baby. His father’s holding him up against his shoulder and the little boy’s eyes are almost closed.
“He looks exhausted, but he’s safe. Same as us, sixteen years ago.”
“All the parking lots look the same, too,” Shane adds, as he examines the four almost identical photos of four parking lots with four abandoned cars in them. “Only the makes of the vehicles are different.”
“Those are the parking lots where they were taken. These are the ones where their bodies were found.” I arranged all the parking lot photos together, in the center of the board, with the abduction sites on one side and the dumpsites on the other.
Shane moves over, bends down close, and takes a long, slow look at a picture of his mother, but doesn’t say anything.
Then he straightens up a little, steps sideways, and examines the photographs of Brittany Stone’s car after the crash. The local paper displayed several different angles of the wreck wrapped around the tree, and I have them all, tacked up on the board.
Finally he says, “Poor Brittany.”
“If she hadn’t done that, maybe she’d be down here looking at all this with us right now.”
“Do you ever wonder about her?” He rises to his full height and looks down at me.
“All the time. Have you ever thought about doing something like that?”
“Never. Have you?”
“Never. He’s the one who deserves a brutal death. Not me. Not you. Not her. The poor kid. What made her do it?”
“We’ll never know. Just like if the killer died in a car crash tonight, we’d never uncover his identity.”
“We might if the vehicle is a dark commercial van with enough forensic evidence in the back.”
“Some hair or fibers from Jessica Phelps.”
“No blood splatter, though. Because he doesn’t kill them in the van.” I watch his face and he doesn’t react. Good. I don’t need a wingman that’s going to get squeamish easily. Maybe I don’t need a wingman at all. I haven’t decided yet. He seems okay, but there’s something about him that makes me nervous. I can’t quite figure out what it is, though.
“You’ve got a cool set up down here.”
“Do you mean the exercise equipment or my research?”
“Both. Does your dad work out on the heavy bag?”
“Yes, and so do I.” I think about doing a backward handspring and landing a kick on the bag at the end but decide against it.
“Let’s see one of your moves.”
I wonder what would happen if I humored his request by throwing my shoulder into his midsection and flipping him over onto his back. But I don’t, because that’s no way to make friends and I might decide I like him. I don’t want to scare him away. Yet.
“No, I don’t like to show off.”
“C’mon. Just take one punch at the heavy bag. That’s not showing off. I’ll hold it steady for you.”
“I don’t want to hurt my hand. You shouldn’t do it bare-handed. You have to be careful.”
“If the killer comes after you, are you going to stop and put on your boxing gloves?” Shane points to where they’re hanging from a hook, over on the wall.
No, I think. I know exactly what I’ll do if my mother’s killer comes after me. But I’m not ready to tell Shane. Instead, I review the steps quickly, in my mind. I’ll simply reach back, into the waistband of my jeans, and pull out the pepper spray in one swift, smooth motion. Then I’ll shoot a half-second burst of agony-inflicting chemicals straight into his face. I don’t feel like explaining the pepper spray to Shane right now, though. So I tell him, “No, of course not. I’ll hit him bare-handed. But I don’t want to risk hurting one of my hands just goofing around.”
My father’s deep voice seems to materialize out of nowhere. “Or you could just reach back into the waistband of your jeans and grab your pepper spray. Let him have it right between the eyes. Fire at him before he can even blink.” Shane and I spin around simultaneously. We have no idea how long Dad’s been standing behind us, because he moves silently and fast, like a ninja. Turning toward Shane, he bares his teeth, but it’s not really a smile. There’s no humor or warmth in those spotlight eyes. When he looks at you that way, he can see your thoughts, and those thoughts better be honest and pure or else.
Shane doesn’t know enough to be scared. He steps toward Dad and stretches out his hand like there’s nothing to fear. They’re both pretty tall, but Shane’s gangly and loose like a basketball player. Dad has about twenty pounds on him. He’s sturdy and muscular but sleek and graceful at the same time. His movements are tight with no wasted motion. He looks deadly and he is. Shane doesn’t wince when my father grabs his hand and shakes it, which means either my new friend has an unusually high pain threshold or Dad’s taking it easy on him.
“Shane MacGregor, sir. Pleased to meet you.”
“I know who you are. What I don’t know is what you’re doing here. In my home. With my daughter.”
“I invited him, Dad.”
“And how did you two meet?”
I look straight at Shane and send him a silent message. Please, Shane, don’t mention Facebook. Please, please, please.
But Shane has no clue why I’m staring at him and answers with the truth. “I looked Harper up on Facebook.”
My dad raises his eyebrows and flashes a lot of white, clenched teeth again. It’s his shark smile. I know it well. The last time I saw that smile, I wasn’t allowed to drive my car for a week. “Facebook, Harper?”
“Sorry, Dad. I promise to be more careful from now on.”
Shane comes to my defense. “It’s just that we feel like we already know each other, sir. Because of the past.”
“Because of a dangerous killer, you mean. Both of you need to be extra careful. Are you trained in self-defense, Shane? Do you carry pepper spray or mace?”
I step back to watch and listen as the conversation moves back and forth between Dad and Shane.
“No, sir. I don’t. And I’ve never taken any self-defense classes.”
“Perhaps you should learn.”
“My stepmother’s against any kind of fighting. So she and my dad never signed me up for anything like that when I was younger.”
“That’s their prerogative. You’re their son.”
“Yes, and I have to respect their rules, sir, even if I don’t agree with them.”
“Good for you.” I listen for traces of sarcasm in my father’s voice but hear none. He continues to question Shane in the same intense but polite manner.
“Excuse me for bringing it up, but it seems like you might’ve been in a fist fight at some point in time. Your nose looks like it’s been broken once or twice.”
“It has, but not in a fight; not exactly anyway.”
“How?”
“Basketball, sir. Took an elbow to the face in the second quarter of a high-school play-off game. Held an ice pack on my nose for a few minutes. As soon as it stopped bleeding I went back in and finished the game.” Sh
ane grins. “We won 98 to 96 and I sunk the final shot. After the game, my parents took me to the emergency room, and a doctor set my broken nose. Had to wear that stupid, awkward bandage for a week.”
My dad smiles a real smile and continues his interrogation. “You’re a couple of years older than Harper. Are you a college student?”
Shane answers him. “Yes, over at Rocky Hill, right here in Eastfield, sir. I’m almost finished with my second year.”
“Do you live on campus?”
“I could commute, because we live close enough. But I wanted to have the whole dormitory experience.”
“Are you driving back to the dorm tonight?”
“No, I’m staying with my parents in Raynwater for the weekend. I have some laundry to do. Wanted a home-cooked meal. You know. The usual.”
Something’s missing from this conversation, and I can’t quite figure out what it is. Then it dawns on me. My father hasn’t insisted on showing Shane his weapons collection. And Shane isn’t squirming. He seems reasonably comfortable and relaxed. Weird. I start to worry that my invincible father isn’t feeling well. Maybe he’s hungry. You can only subsist for so long on power bars and energy drinks. He’s over forty, too, and not getting any younger.
“Dad, do you want something to eat? Grams made meatloaf and there’s some left over.”
“Actually, yes, I think I’ll have some meatloaf, Harper. I’m starved.”
I start toward the stairs, but Dad rests a fatherly hand on my shoulder to stop me. “No, honey, you stay down here and hang out with Shane. I’ll heat it up myself. I want to turn on the TV and see what the media’s saying about the murder.” My jaw drops open, and before I can close it, he kisses the top of my head, then jogs up the stairs, leaving me alone in the basement with a boy.
When my Dad’s out of sight Shane asks, “You have pepper spray? Are you carrying it now?”
Hidden in the Dark (Harper Flagg Book 1) Page 5
