by Steve Richer
He worried about her, alone at the hospital. He’d asked that nurse to check up on her, but still. Would she be safe there tonight, if he assumed the worst about Libbie? The cop had advised him to stay safe tonight, after all, so that must apply to Alice too.
With that notion in his head, he felt a hint of panic.
He was being paranoid, he knew.
But now that the thought had struck, he knew he’d have to make sure she was safe, too. He went back down, the bag over his shoulder. Outside, it was raining again. He dropped the bag in the trunk.
He had to make sure they were going to be safe. And the best way to do that was to know what they were up against.
And so he pulled his jacket tighter around himself again and went around the corner of the house.
Stepping carefully around the place where Walter had fallen, he came to stand before the basement apartment door.
Still no lights, no sounds from within.
He peered through a window, but saw nothing in the gloom.
He took his keys from his pocket and searched through them for the one for the apartment. He slid it home, turned, and before he had time to change his mind he stepped inside.
Cautiously, he moved from room to room, checking to make sure that the place really was as empty as it seemed.
Nobody was here.
Rather than flip any of the lights on, he used the flashlight on his phone to look around. He didn’t know what he hoped to find.
What had he expected? Some kind of psychopath’s wall planner with details of all her scheming and manipulations? This was stupid.
He should leave now, while he could. Do exactly as Detective Malwitz had said and find somewhere safe for the night. Leave it to the cops. And just in case, he should go to Jason Grande tomorrow with all the new information he had and get the eviction process in motion.
He still felt that guilt, that sense of responsibility, but right now, standing here and holding his breath, he just wanted resolution.
He moved to a cabinet, pulled a drawer and riffled through the contents. Tape, scissors, screwdrivers, and other household tools. The next door held papers and bills, letters. He checked through them but they were mundane, nothing obviously incriminating in any way.
That voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that he should go. In the bedroom, he just felt creepy. He shouldn’t be going through her clothes like this. It was wrong on so many levels.
He was about to leave the room, but then hesitated. He reached for one last drawer and pulled it open. Scrapbooks. Three of them. He put them on the bed, side by side, still convinced he was wasting his time.
The first he opened did nothing to convince him he was wrong. Pictures cut from magazines of shoes and purses and items of clothing on tall, angularly skinny models. Labels in neat handwriting accompanied the pictures, identifying the items’ designers. Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, Vera Wang, Stella McCartney, and lots more names he’d never heard of. It was like some teenager’s high school project.
He almost didn’t bother looking in the next scrapbook.
He was a completer-finisher, though. Alice always teased him about that, the way once he’d started something he had to see it through to the end. So he flipped the cover over, and when he saw the first picture he almost dropped his phone.
A wedding photograph. His wedding photograph.
One of the ones where he stood with his arms looped around Alice’s waist, and they gazed into each other’s eyes.
Except in this picture there were no eyes, just holes in the print, gouged by something sharp. And scrawled across the photograph in black marker pen were the words DIE TORTURER DIE!!
He had to force himself to turn the next page, then the next, and then it became an automatic thing, the flip, flip, flip of the pages.
Photographs. Newspaper cuttings from the rare occasions he or Alice had made the local press for something at work, or a charitable event they’d been involved with. Pages from old school yearbooks. Pictures printed from Facebook and other online sources.
Tom and Alice, together or individually.
Damn, there were even recent photos, ones Libbie must have taken herself.
Tom in the house upstairs, photographed through a window. Alice at Pierson Newport, or out and about in town.
And all of them disfigured. Vandalized. Eyes and faces gouged out. Words scrawled: BITCH… TRAITOR… DIE!
She was sick. Twisted. A sociopath with an obsessive personality disorder, just as the judge had said.
She’d gone to that secure hospital for treatment, but it clearly hadn’t worked.
He almost didn’t dare open the third scrapbook. But it couldn’t be any worse than this, could it?
The first page held a photo of a group of kids by a lake. It was similar to the one he’d found online from when he’d been at Long Valley Summer Camp—it must have been taken around the same time.
Even though the group of kids was larger in this picture, it was easy to spot Tom and the others.
Tom, Tony Capaldi, Simon Woodforde, Andy Krabbe.
They were the ones with their faces scraped away.
He flipped the page and saw a picture of Tony, a few years older, hair slicked down, sporting a neatly tailored tux and a doe-eyed girl on his arm. A page from his high school yearbook followed. Tony was a natural born leader, apparently, and heading off to college on a football scholarship. With his face scraped off.
Another flip of a page and the faceless Tony’s college career was over. Football injuries and arrests for barroom brawls and supplying drugs to minors, and his bright future had been shot down in tatters.
More flips of the page mapped his decline until Tom came to a short news story and a single paragraph obituary.
Tony Capaldi, a young man who had shown great promise, had died at the age of twenty-seven, clubbed to death in the street. Blood tests had shown that he’d indulged in a cocktail of alcohol and a variety of illegal substances before he’d met his end.
Tony had been the ringleader when Tom had known him, the one who always pushed them further. A fiery teenager with a troubled family background and a deeply-seated cruel streak.
He’d made Tom’s time at summer camp miserable for a time.
But still…
It was awful to see the story of a life gone so tragically wrong.
He flipped the page again. Simon Woodforde.
Simon had found more success in life. He’d married, had kids, done well professionally—as a dental surgeon, of all things. He seemed happy, as far as you could tell from the faceless photographs.
He’d died three years ago, according to the glowing obituaries included in the scrapbook.
Drugs. Alcohol. Bludgeoned with a blunt weapon, most probably a baseball bat.
The pattern was obvious. The similarities.
He couldn’t bring himself to believe it, though. Couldn’t imagine Libbie being responsible for the deaths of these two grown men.
Tony had been a football player, after all. He was big and strong. But his life had spiraled downward, and if he’d been incapacitated by booze and drugs first of all, he might have been unable to fight back…
And Libbie had been sent to a secure hospital after being arrested for bludgeoning a dog to death… with a baseball bat.
He turned the page again. Andy Krabbe.
Andy with his face scratched away and his successful career as an apparently popular high school teacher. Andy who tragically died in a mountain fall a few weeks before his first child was due. Found a day after the fall, his head caved in from impact.
Andy had died—been killed?—only this spring. A short time before Libbie had been sent away for the incident with the dog.
The conclusion was obvious.
Libbie had been involved in all three deaths. Either directly, or somehow tormenting the men until drink, drugs, and frustration had put them at risk.
And now she was here, living in the ba
sement of Tom’s own home.
It was obvious that he was next.
He gathered up the scrapbooks. He’d take them to Malwitz, lay them out before him and challenge the cop to actually do something this time.
He knew he shouldn’t be here, even though it was his property. Would that make the scrapbooks inadmissible as evidence? He didn’t know. But he couldn’t leave them here for Libbie to dispose of. He needed them if he was to convince Malwitz of the seriousness of all this.
“Did you enjoy reading those?”
He hadn’t heard her enter. Hadn’t heard her come to stand in the bedroom doorway.
How long had she been watching him?
She had a strange look on her face. Cold. Measuring. Was that the last look Tony, Simon, and Andy had seen?
“This has gone too far, Libbie,” he said, keeping his voice even.
The other three had been weak. Weak as teenagers, as most bullies were. Weak as men, he was sure.
Tom was made of different stuff. He wasn’t going to let her win.
“It hasn’t gone far enough.”
She was smiling. She was enjoying this.
And she was blocking the doorway.
“I’m taking these,” he told her, gesturing with the books. “You can do what you like. Get into that car of yours and run. But they’ll find you. They’ll track you down and find you.”
She stayed silent, still smiling.
“I felt sorry for you,” he said. “Truly sorry. Sorry for what happened back then. I always have been. That kind of guilt, it eats away at you. It really does. But this has to end here.”
“Sorry for me? You had a crush on me, Tom. You always did.”
She gave a little wiggle of the hips as she spoke, finishing with a sharp smack on her own ass.
“You want a piece of this now, Tom? You know you do.”
He moved to go past her, using the scrapbooks as a shield between them.
She moved quickly, reached for the books and grabbed them, ripping them from his grip so they fell to the floor.
He reacted fast, grabbing her by the wrists, stopping her clawed hands from scraping at his eyes. Her arms trembled in his grip, straining to get at him.
“You killed them, didn’t you? Tony, Simon, Andy.”
She managed a slight shrug. Said, “So what? They deserved it. They ruined me. Destroyed my life before it had even begun.” She gave a short laugh then. “And to think that all I got put away for was that damn dog!”
“It’ll catch up with you. It’s caught up with you. Detective Malwitz’s on your tail right now.”
As he held her, he struggled to work out his next move. How could he secure her? Keep her here until the cops arrived? It wasn’t physically possible. But he could hardly just step back and let her go.
“That dog was annoying. It kept barking. Yap, yap, yap! It had to be stopped. I did people a favor. They should’ve given me a medal.”
She was certifiably insane. He didn’t know how to deal with it.
“And talking of dogs…” She paused, that smile back on her face. “Now it’s time to take down the worst of them all.”
What did she mean? Did she mean him? He could see why she might: while Tony had been the ringleader, it was Tom who’d done all he could to redirect the bullies’ attentions away from himself and onto a softer target… onto Libbie. Had she somehow worked that out?
But how did she think she had the upper hand here?
What did she know that he didn’t?
He tried to be ready for whatever move she might try, but even so he wasn’t prepared for the move she did make.
She smiled even more widely, then said, “But before we resolve the issues between us, Tom, don’t you think you’d better go save your darling wife?”
He stared.
What…?
Then she winked, smiled again, and said, “Go on, Tom. Go save her, sweetie.”
Chapter 37
“You sure you want to be dropped off here, lady?”
The cab driver was reluctant to let Alice go. He leaned across his passenger seat now, eying his passenger up and down as she stood on the Whitetail Lane sidewalk.
She was only wearing those joggers and sweatshirt, and the night was blowing up a storm. She hugged herself as the wind and rain whipped around her, willing the cab to leave.
Eventually, the guy shook his head, still muttering, and pulled away.
Soon she was alone in the street, gazing into the darkness for Tom.
She was shivering with the cold. Already cursing her husband for dragging her out here to the income property. He must have his reasons, but still… Surely there was a better place than this. What was wrong with a nice, cozy room at the Holiday Inn?
The property was deserted. She picked her way along the path through the overgrown front yard, lighting the way with her phone. They’d need to get someone to clear this lot, if they could afford it. Maybe Rusty, now that he appeared to be back in favor with Tom.
That wind was sharp! The kind of Arctic wind that cut through your clothing and right on through to the bone.
She wished she had a coat. Gloves. Anything.
She wished she’d never left that noisy, uncomfortable—but warm!—hospital room.
Just then, as if to reinforce her sense that this was all wrong, she heard a terrible flapping sound coming from somewhere above. She looked up sharply. The light from her phone was inadequate, but there was nevertheless enough illumination for her to see a big, dark sheet lifting and flapping in the gale.
The temporary fix on the hole in the roof hadn’t even lasted a day in these conditions.
“Hello?”
She’d paused in the doorway.
It wasn’t the house that spooked her, but the possibility of what it might contain. Abandoned construction sites like this were an easy haven for junkies, drunks, kids. She didn’t know what she might be walking into.
Except Tom had told her to meet him here, she reminded herself.
“Hello? Tom?”
It was hard to hear anything. The flapping, roaring sounds of the torn roof covering echoed around inside the empty building, swamping any other sounds.
She pushed inside.
Franco Vialli and his crew had wasted no time clearing the site—the botched fix on the roof a clear indication of their haste to leave. All their tools were gone, and lots of the materials she remembered being stored here, too. Did they have the right to take all that? She’d have to check the invoices later, to see he hadn’t taken anything they’d already paid for.
The whole business was such a mess. She’d liked Franco Vialli. Trusted him. She felt so let down by his attitude.
She moved across the lobby, but then was brought up short by an impact on her foot, a sharp bolt of pain.
“Ah!”
She’d stubbed her toe on what the cellphone’s light revealed to be a brick, one of the few things Vialli hadn’t removed from the site.
The pain made her eyes water. She hoped she hadn’t broken a toe. How embarrassing would that be? A return trip to the hospital for a broken bone so soon after a narrow escape?
“Tom? Sweetheart?”
This was getting too much. She felt weak already. She knew a lot of that was psychological, but she’d been in the hospital for a reason. And here she was, without meds again and no idea how her blood sugar levels were. She clearly hadn’t learned a thing from recent events.
The inside lobby had several doors opening off it, as well a flight of stairs that led up to the next floor.
She swept the light of her phone around. There really was no sign Tom had been here at all. For a moment, she wondered if Rusty had been playing a cruel joke. Revenge for the way he’d been treated, perhaps. It made sense, right? It was plausible.
But no. She’d never doubted he was a good kid at heart. And far too straightforward a person to play games like this.
As she lowered her phone again, she spotted somethin
g. She’d almost missed it: a note, stuck to a nail protruding from the top of the post at the foot of the stairs.
Odd that there was a nail in the new woodwork, but maybe Vialli or one of his guys had done it for some reason.
The note consisted of an arrow pointing up the stairs, a winky face— ;-) —and one word: SWEETIE.
As far as she could see in this dim light, it looked like Tom’s writing. She couldn’t remember ever having seen him use emoticons in his messages, but she got it. The wink and smile, the sweetie… that was so Tom.
“Tom?” She called louder now, confident there was nobody malicious lurking in the shadows, trying to be heard over the roar and flap of the damaged roofing.
She shone her light up the stairs. The wood was new, put in early in the work to allow easy access for the workers fitting out upstairs. It was covered in sheets of plastic for protection, so that each footstep crunched.
“Tom, are you there?”
Halfway up, she paused. Surely, he’d have heard her by now if he was here? Maybe he was on his way. Maybe he’d been delayed.
She kept going. Another step. Another.
When she put her weight on the next step something was different. The wood shifted a little under her weight. There was a creak, a snapping sound, and then, as if in slow motion, the wood sagged and then buckled under her weight.
She lurched forward, arms flailing.
Her phone clattered off down the stairs, the light casting manic, tumbling shadows before cutting out altogether.
Briefly, she thought she’d managed to catch herself against the handrail. But then she heard a dull cracking sound that came simultaneously with a shaft of pain rushing up from her lower leg.
Blackness swept over her, then. Nothing.
Just black.
~ ~ ~ ~
Pain.
Her right leg, low down. Her back, just above the pelvis.
She was scared to move, even though her position, half-sprawled across the stairs, was both uncomfortable in itself and also made the pain worse.
She tried to calm herself. Tried to figure it out.
She tried to straighten herself, find a slightly less painful position. Moving, in itself, was reassuring: the pain in her back was not an indication of a serious injury. She wasn’t paralyzed.
