by Joy Fielding
“No, you just had to stop her.”
“I sure as hell didn’t shoot her,” Cal said.
“You own a gun, don’t you?”
“Yeah. So what? It’s my right under the Constitution to bear arms.”
“Is it registered?”
“’Course it’s registered. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
“What kind is it?”
“Forty-four Magnum.”
“Pretty powerful weapon.”
“Powerful enough to blow a man’s head clear off,” Cal said, paraphrasing Clint Eastwood’s line from Dirty Harry and looking directly into John’s eyes. “Trust me, Sheriff, if a .44 had been used on Fiona, there wouldn’t have been anything left of her face at all.”
“That’s pretty cold for a man who just lost his wife.”
“You expecting tears?”
“Where do you keep the gun, Cal?”
“Nightstand beside my bed.”
“You won’t mind if we take a look at it?”
“I’m sure you’re waiting on the search warrant as we speak,” Cal said with a shrug. “You know we’re just wasting time here. You know you’re dealing with a serial killer.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a serial killer?”
“Well, it certainly doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. He’s killed two women already. Maybe more.”
John leaned forward in his chair, dug his elbows into the table, intertwined the fingers of his left hand with those of his right. “What makes you think there are more?”
“I said there may be more. You’re dealing with a nut bar, Sheriff. You really think he’s gonna stop at two?”
“What makes you think the same man killed both Liana Martin and your wife?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Two women disappear; they turn up a few days later with half their faces blown away. Call me crazy, but it doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me.”
“Me neither. Could be we have a copycat on our hands.”
“Could be.”
“I’ve always found copycats kind of pathetic,” John said, hoping to provoke the man across the table. “I mean, it speaks of a certain lack of imagination, don’t you think?”
“Cut the crap, Sheriff. We both know you think I killed my wife. So the real question is, Did I try to make it look like it was the work of the same guy who offed the Martin girl, or did I kill Liana Martin too?”
“Which is it?”
“It’s neither, you moron.”
John felt his body tense. He lowered his arms to his sides, made fists with both his hands. Instinctively he felt that Richard Stahl was doing the same thing on the other side of the glass.
“Shit. I’ve been raising holy hell ever since Fiona disappeared,” Cal continued, “trying to find out what happened to her. I got myself arrested, for Christ’s sake. I’d have to be pretty stupid—”
“Or pretty smart,” John interrupted.
“You’re giving me a lot of credit, Sheriff. You’re saying I staged the whole thing?”
“It’s possible.”
“So I’m either lacking in imagination or swimming in it,” Cal said with a laugh. “Better make up your mind.”
“It’d be a lot easier if you’d just tell me what went down.”
“You want me to do your job for you?”
“I want you to start telling the truth.”
“Yeah? Well, the truth is my wife is dead. The truth is if you hadn’t been so damned convinced she’d run away and started searching the area yesterday, like I wanted to do, instead of harassing me and throwing my ass in jail, we might have been able to find her before she ended up in a field with half her face blown away. That’s the truth, Sheriff. Now either arrest me or let me go home.”
John rose from his seat, turned to face the two-way mirror, and stared into the faces he knew were watching on the other side. Were they wondering the same things? he thought. “Arrest him,” he said.
They found the gun in the night table beside the bed, exactly where Cal had said it would be.
“Doesn’t appear to have been fired recently,” Deputy Trent said, raising the weapon to his long, crooked nose.
“A .44 didn’t kill Fiona Hamilton,” John said, glancing around the room. Or Liana Martin, he added silently, noting the pale blue of the bare walls and the surprisingly small brass bed. The size of the bed was surprising because he would have thought a man like Cal Hamilton needed more room to stretch out. Then he pictured the dark blue tattoo on Fiona’s ankle. Property of Cal Hamilton. A double bed would certainly have enforced physical intimacy, kept Fiona closer to his side. The bed was unmade, its dull white sheets pushed to the foot of the bed in a heap, its blue cotton blanket draped carelessly toward the floor. Cal was right about one thing: a .44 would have done significantly greater damage. “Keep looking. Who’s to say we might not find another gun?”
Across from the bed was a tall wicker dresser, its top drawers filled with literally dozens of sexy push-up bras and skimpy thongs, crotchless panties, silk teddies, and velvet corsets, as well as a variety of sex toys. John found a ballpoint pen he realized too late was actually a tiny vibrator, and he dropped it back into the drawer as if it had suddenly caught fire. Talk about multitasking, he thought to himself, opening the drawer directly below. It was filled with white cotton panties and plain cotton bras. John checked the sizes, discovered they were the same size as the more risqué underwear. One set for day, and one for night, John assumed, trying not to imagine Fiona Hamilton in either.
“Hey, get a load of this,” Deputy Trent said, holding up a set of handcuffs before placing them in a plastic bag.
John pulled open the closet door, rifled through the clothes on the white plastic hangers, finding nothing of interest. They’d been in the house for over an hour and the search had yielded little of significance. Yes, they’d found a gun, exactly where Cal had said it would be, but it was almost certainly not the murder weapon. And, yes, they had handcuffs and a variety of sex toys, but all of them could actually be bought at Wal-Mart, he’d discovered on a recent foray. And even if Fiona had hardly seemed the type to go in for vibrating pens and crotchless panties, what did he know? Especially about women. How well do we really know anyone?
“Hey, John,” another deputy called from the hall. “I think we may have something.” The young man appeared in the doorway, his round cheeks flushed with excitement, a glint of anticipation in his chocolate brown eyes.
“What have you got?”
“I found these buried at the back of a kitchen drawer. Looks like somebody’s been collecting trophies.” A charm bracelet dangled from his left hand. “It’s just a cheap little thing. Looks like all the charms are pieces of candy. Don’t know if it means anything.”
John felt his entire body start to tingle. Candy Abbot, he was thinking as he pushed the next words out of his mouth. “What else have you got?”
The deputy raised his right hand, displaying a delicate gold necklace curled inside his gloved palm. “Now I know this one means something.”
John stared at the necklace. In the center of it was a name, written in gold: LIANA.
TWENTY-SEVEN
KILLER’S JOURNAL
I’ve been trying to come up with some clever names for stores.
You know, something that would draw people in, get them to open their wallets, and, by so doing, stimulate the economy. At the very least, give people a chuckle, a laugh to brighten their otherwise dreary days. You know, like if you’re on your way to work and you see something that makes you smile, a cute puppy or some guy tripping over a bump in the sidewalk, and you know how just thinking about that later on will make you smile, well, that’s the sort of thing I had in mind. Putting a smile on people’s faces. I was in the mall the other day, checking things out, and not only was there nothing in any of the stores that caught my eye, but I realized that even the names of the stores are boring and uninteresting. And I thought, Why can’t we be more imaginative? And more i
ntelligent. I mean, take William Shakespeare, for example. He was a big fan of wordplay. He’d have come up with something smart and amusing.
So how about calling a store that sells tennis equipment, The Merchant of Tennis? Or you could call a jewelry store, Romeo and Jewelry; a savings and loan, All’s Well That Lends Well; a store that hawks hiking shoes, As You Hike It. You could rename Big Macs, Big Macbeths. You could call an optician, King Leer. Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch. But you get the idea.
It doesn’t even have to be Shakespeare, as long as it’s clever, as long as the Bard would approve. So, along those lines, I offer Bow WOW, as a dog-grooming salon; SpecialTee Shops, for stores selling T-shirts; and Love’s Labour Lost, for offices where people go to collect unemployment insurance. Of course, that last one’s Shakespeare again. Funny how in the end, everything comes back to sweet William. What would he do with The Taming of the Shrew, I wonder.
Oh, I know. How about Kiss Me, Kate?
Okay, so setting up Cal Hamilton was fun.
Kind of makes up for what happened earlier, which, trust me, was not nearly as much fun as I was anticipating. Isn’t it interesting how nothing ever goes exactly the way you plan? I mean, you have this picture in your head. You think you have everything organized. You think you have every last detail worked out. You can almost taste how it’s gonna go down—I mean, it’s not like I haven’t done this before, you’d think I’d be used to it by now—but life always throws you a curve.
Maybe I should say death always throws you a curve.
Anyway, I guess I should start at the top, as they say. They, again. They’re always saying something. Can’t keep their mouths shut, which you might say was Fiona Hamilton’s problem. God, who’d have thought that little gal would have so much to say? She always seemed like such a quiet, timid little thing. But once she opened up, wow! It was like she’d been waiting years to tell her story, like she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. There was no stopping her. Well, no, that’s not exactly true.
I stopped her.
Okay, so first things first: Fiona Hamilton wasn’t originally part of my plan. She wasn’t even on my radar. No interest in the woman at all. I had my list. Trust me, she wasn’t on it.
Why do people say “trust me”? Don’t you find that the people who say “trust me” are the very people you shouldn’t trust at all? And why should you trust anyone anyway? Don’t they say trust is something that has to be earned? Of course, they also say things like “Trust your instincts” and “In God we trust.” I have a better one—“Trust no one.” Trust me, that’s the one to remember.
Hey, I just realized that both Liana and Fiona are names that have five letters, the last two being n and a. Not only that, but each name has three syllables—Fi-o-na, Li-ana—plus the second letter of each name is an i, only with an e sound. How do you like that? Not that I’m saying that’s why I chose Fiona, although I confess that now that I’ve thought of it, I do appreciate the symmetry. No, Fiona was what I believe they call a red herring. She was there to throw everyone off the scent, although the idea of any kind of herring being used to throw people off a scent is pretty funny when you think about it. Yes, sad little Fiona Hamilton was a means to an end, really, a way to bide my time and have a little fun in the process. I mean, who amongst us doesn’t think Cal Hamilton was due for a little comeuppance? And I just thought it would be fun to get everyone in Torrance to relax a little. I mean, once people think a killer is safely behind bars, they tend to ease up, let down their guard. They’re so relieved, they get careless, even stupid. And stupid people make for easy targets.
Did I mention I have my next target all picked out?
But back to Fiona.
Fiona, much as I expected, wasn’t a barrel of laughs. Nor was she much of a challenge. Frankly, I was disappointed. She was almost too easy. She wasn’t what you’d call a fighter, even when it came to fighting for her life. I guess all those years of abuse had worn her down.
“Cal sent me to get you,” I told her. She didn’t look especially surprised to see me. She just stood there with this blank look on her face, like she wasn’t quite sure who I was. Or maybe she’d learned a long time ago not to ask too many questions. I don’t know. I just know I was only in that house a few minutes before I had her unconscious and out the kitchen door. Nobody saw me. That’s the good thing about carports.
(I wonder how long it’ll be before the science department of Torrance High realizes its supply of chloroform has been, as they say, compromised? Probably not until next year when they start gathering up those stupid frogs for dissection, by which time I won’t be needing it anymore.)
Anyway, I had everything ready for her when we arrived at the house. Of course, she was still asleep, so the full impact of my efforts was lost on her, but I can’t begrudge her that. And I have to say she looked very pretty when she was unconscious. Quite peaceful. Her face was smooth and unlined, and her hair had been freshly washed and it smelled good, like a medley of peaches and apricots. She was wearing this flimsy little blue nightgown—a nightgown in the middle of the day, for God’s sake—and if you looked hard, you could see her nipples. Her breasts were real, and bigger than I expected.
I put her down on the cot, even threw a blanket over her shoulders, because I remember reading that it’s always a good idea to cover yourself with a blanket when you take a nap, or you’ll get a bad chill. Couldn’t have that. Wouldn’t want pathetic, sweet-smelling Fiona catching her death.
So, I covered her up, then made sure the plastic bucket beside the cot was clean. I even left a roll of toilet paper beside it, so there’d be no question as to what the bucket was for. Plus I put several bottles of water—plastic, again—at the foot of the cot, in case she was thirsty when she woke up. Then I retreated to my room upstairs to wait and watch for her awakening. Boy, what a letdown that was! I mean, there was no reaction at all. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. It was amazing. She just opened her eyes and sat up, like she’d been waking up in that room all her life. Didn’t even bother looking around. Just sat there, kind of slumped forward, her bare toes not quite touching the floor, as if she were sitting at the end of a dock, dangling her feet over the side. And then after about twenty minutes—twenty minutes!—she finally raised her eyes and started to examine her surroundings. Really slow, like she had all the time in the world, her head turning this way and that, to the right, then the left, her eyes moving up toward the ceiling, then back down to her feet. She saw the bucket, the bottles of water. She didn’t react. She just sat there, her eyes absorbing her predicament. Then, instead of jumping to her feet, instead of screaming, instead of running around in circles like the trapped little mouse she was, what did she do? She lay back down and closed her eyes again! She actually went to sleep. Can you believe that?
At first I thought it was some kind of trick, that she was being cagey, that she was smarter than I’d realized. I mean, who wakes up in a strange place and doesn’t panic, doesn’t at least get up and walk around, try the door, call out for help? Who just closes her eyes and blindly accepts her fate? I’ll tell you who—Fiona Hamilton, that’s who.
So there I was, up in my hiding place watching, and let me tell you, when I realized she’d actually gone back to sleep, I was the one who almost screamed out loud. I mean, how long was this going to take? But what could I do? So I just sat there, waiting for her to wake up again. After a while, I started to get worried. Had I miscalculated, given her too much chloroform? Was she dead? Dead before her time?
And then, after another thirty minutes—half an hour, for Pete’s sake!—her eyes fluttered open and she sat back up. And this time, she actually managed to push herself to her feet. She walked to the door—I actually got quite excited—and then, guess what? She just stood there. She didn’t even try to open it. She just stared at it for a while, then went back to the cot and sat back down. It was really weird. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I still have trouble believing it.
Eventually she opened one of the water bottles at her feet and took a couple of long sips, then she used the bucket. And the toilet paper. Then she looked around for something to discard the paper in, and when she couldn’t find it—note to self: buy a small, plastic wastepaper basket—she tossed it into the corner. Then she sat back down again and waited. Did she know what she was waiting for?
As it turns out, she actually thought she was waiting for her loving husband. She thought this was all his doing, if you can believe that. As if Cal Hamilton has the imagination to come up with any of this. But that’s what she told me. She said she assumed she’d done something to displease him, and that this was his new way of punishing her.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
When it became painfully obvious she wasn’t going to do anything to move the game forward, well, I have to admit, I almost panicked. I’m on a pretty tight schedule and I have to be careful not to arouse suspicion. I’ve tempted fate more than a few times lately, taken chances that were quite unnecessary, and I didn’t want to get too cocky. I knew that even if Fiona had all the patience in the world, her crazy turd of a husband didn’t. I knew he’d be out scouring the town as soon as he realized she was missing. Of course, I didn’t realize he’d actually go breaking into houses and assaulting people. That was kind of a bonus.
So I decided I might as well go home, give Fiona a few hours to get hungry and, hopefully, desperate. I know I was getting pretty hungry. And I had other things to do. So I left, came back later. And surprise! Fiona was sleeping. Can you beat that? This woman was really starting to freak me out. I mean, what was the matter with her?
Obviously I had to alter the plan. There was no point in blindly following a course of action that was doomed to failure. So, I skipped the next part—the part where I really get to shine—and went right to the last phase. I went downstairs and unlocked the door.
Then I went inside.
If she heard me come in, she didn’t acknowledge it. Even after I sat down on the cot, right next to her feet, she didn’t budge. No, she just lay there sleeping. I watched her breathe, wondering if she was dreaming, and if so, what about?
