Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  Only insane people asked questions like that before they went to bed, she told herself. Or people trying to make themselves insane. Cursing herself, she poured an inch of scotch in a tumbler and carried it up the stairs to her bedroom. She was going to sleep tonight. And then she was going to get up and go to Cate’s soccer game and cheer like mad. And then, when Cate was at her slumber party and Bill was still en route, then she would think about killers. Not before, and not after. She hoped Bill wasn’t on an afternoon flight.

  As she fell asleep she wondered how you were supposed to plan your dream wedding, when all your dreams were about dead people.

  CHAPTER 49

  Strange shapes hunkered in the darkness of the demolition yard, shadows lit only by the light over the doorway outside. Every inch of Eve’s body ached, but she reveled in it—dead people did not ache. The pain meant she was alive.

  Her lips were chapped and her throat itched with dryness. In the half light she could see that she’d bled through the sweatshirt, and her legs were covered in dark gashes, some of them still glittering with pieces of glass. She did not know how long she had been there, but it had to be hours.

  She had been jolted out of unconsciousness earlier by the sound of glass being smashed. Without thinking, she’d used all her strength to push down the backseat of the car from the trunk with her bound hands and crawl out the window opening. Jagged shards of glass had ripped at her skin and when she was almost out, her taped ankles had caught on them. Dangling there, she had looked up and seen the press coming down on top of her. No! she had wanted to scream. Not like this. I am not dying like this.

  Only the reinforced roof of the car had kept her from being impaled right there. When the press lifted again, the tape on her ankles ripped and she fell to the ground. She had managed to stumble away and hide behind the front end of an old Ford before the steel plate crunched down and the roof supports of her car gave way. She lay there on the ground, trying to catch her breath, make sense of what she was seeing. When the noise stopped and the footsteps came closer, she had been sure they had seen her, that Harry was coming to get her, and she had no more strength.

  But he hadn’t. He just looked at the car, said something about the blood trail, then got on the phone. What had he said? Eve told herself to remember, but it was gone. God, she was so thirsty.

  She had floated between consciousness and unconsciousness then, half aware of Harry talking with someone far away.

  “I was hoping you could give me a ride home,” he said. “It’s worth two hundred dollars to me.”

  Another man’s voice replied, “For that, I’ll drive you anywhere.” Then footsteps, a clanging noise, and silence again.

  She had slid into it, only to awake now. It had been light then but it was dark now, deep night. She willed herself to move. Her mind was hazy and her legs wobbled under her, but she knew she had to get out. She had to do something. Warn someone. Yes, that was it. But who? She could not remember.

  She rubbed her bound wrists against the edge of the old Ford until the tape gave way, then clutched the side of the car and pulled herself to her feet. She had to bite back a moan at the stinging in her legs and head, forcing herself to look around. She was in a huge building, like an airplane hangar completely enclosed, filled with pieces of cars, ghoulish half-mangled silhouettes. She could see walls but no doors, no way out. Then she realized that one of the walls was a door, a pull-down door big enough to drive a car through. Of course. She stumbled toward it, trying to run, sighing at the pain, her dry tongue huge in her mouth, and looked for a way to open it. A button, a winch, something. She had to get out of here. She had to—

  She found a lever and pushed it upward. Somewhere a motor started to rumble, and she saw the door begin to lift. It climbed one centimeter, two, then stopped abruptly. The motor squealed and fell silent. The door was locked from the outside.

  Lying down on the floor she peered as well as she could through the thin opening. She was looking into a street or alley. It was completely deserted. She was trapped. She had escaped being crushed only to die like this, on the floor of a garage.

  She tried to scream but the only sound that came out was a dry rattle. She felt the coldness of the concrete floor against her, felt her strength drain away, and then felt nothing.

  CHAPTER 50

  “Mommy,” Cate’s voice said. “These have crust on them. I hate the crusts.”

  Over the sound of running water Windy answered, “You liked them last week.”

  Silverware clanged on the floor as Cate shouted, “I HATE THEM! I CAN’T STAND TO LOOK AT THEM.”

  The water got shut off and Windy’s footsteps rushed across the room to comfort her daughter. Her voice was soothing as she said, “Shhh, honey. We’ll cut them off. Okay? You’re nervous about the game and that’s normal, but you don’t want to take it out on your toast. Hardly seems fair. It can’t fight back.”

  Cate laughed and Windy laughed with her, crisis averted. Harry could almost hear her sigh with relief, he thought, as he rewound the tape and listened to it again. It had been a snap to install the audio surveillance equipment in the kitchen. She’d never even noticed the microphone in the oatmeal.

  He listened to the tape from that morning as he drove to the park where Cate’s soccer game was taking place.

  “Don’t forget the present for Lutece,” Cate was saying on the tape now. It sounded like her mouth was full. Little girls were disgusting.

  “I’ve already got it by the front door,” Windy assured her. “Listen, this is your first slumber party. I remember the first time I went to a slumber party I got scar—I had trouble sleeping. If you have any problem falling asleep, or you want anything, just call me and I’ll come get you.”

  A slumber party, Harry thought. That was very interesting. An entire house full of little girls. It would be a challenge for him. And it would certainly interest Windy. He’d need to get more tape, though.

  Cate said, “I’m not scared, Mom.”

  “I didn’t say you were. I just wanted you to know you could call me.”

  “We’re going to have pizza.”

  Harry wondered how that made Windy feel, knowing that pizza could replace her love. He had waited for Cate and Windy to leave the house before picking up the tape so he was ten minutes behind them arriving at the soccer field. He saw Windy finding her seat in the stands, Cate, talking to her, then running off to join the other little girls.

  Look at Windy, playing the good mother. She did it well, but she did not make it look easy, not the way the other mothers did. They would give their whole lives up for their kids. Windy was trying to do both.

  She was distracted.

  It was fun to watch her here, Harry thought as the game got underway. She got so into it, completely forgetting where she was, that it wasn’t mature to scream so loud. Cheering like mad, jumping up and down when Cate just kicked the ball, didn’t even get a goal. The other mothers looked at her from the corners of their eyes like they were thinking, didn’t she know her daughter hadn’t scored? But Windy was happy simply to see Cate out there trying. She was so proud of her. She couldn’t think of anything else.

  Harry knew the power of her complete attention. He knew the way it felt to have her focused on you, her eyes seeing what your eyes left, her footsteps tracing yours, mimicking your movements, like a talented dancer performing a choreographed piece. To hold Windy’s attention meant to control her. All it took, he knew, was to give her something interesting to look at.

  And he knew he could be far more fascinating than some six-year-old’s soccer game. As he took the tape of Windy and Cate out of his player and put in the other one, he weighed the pros and cons of the slumber party. It would definitely make an impression on Windy. But it might be overkill.

  Plus, he knew Cate would come in handy later on.

  CHAPTER 51

  “Did you see, did you see? I kicked the ball! Hard!”

  “I know!” Windy and C
ate were both jumping up and down at the edge of the soccer field after the game. “You did great, honey. I’m so proud of you.”

  “I didn’t make a goal.”

  “That’s okay, maybe next time. I am just so impressed by how much your kicking has improved.”

  Cate smiled huge and Windy felt a sharp pang of sadness. She wished Evan were here to see this. His daughter, his wonderful daughter. She pulled Cate into her arms and smothered her.

  “Mommmmy!” Cate squirmed and giggled until Windy let go. “You’re weird.”

  “You bet. Now let’s go get your other clothes and your bag out of the car so you can go to Lutece’s.”

  “And the you-know-what.”

  “And the present.”

  Lutece’s parents had rented a limo to take the girls from the soccer game to the pizza restaurant where the party would start, and Windy watched Cate pile into it, then re-emerge with her head out the sun roof, waving like a beauty pageant contestant. She was joined by four other girls as they pulled away, Windy resisting the urge to tell her to sit down and fasten her seat belt, resisting the urge to run after them and bring her home with her and keep her there forever.

  Cate’s first ever slumber party. She was growing up so fast, Windy thought, and realized that unfamiliar sensation was the prick of tears in her eyes. The last time she had felt this close to crying was on Cate’s first day of pre-kindergarten. That day, watching Cate take her new teacher’s hand and join a play circle without ever looking back, she had felt a kind of hollow aloneness she’d never imagined. She was feeling it again now.

  Which was absurd, because she wasn’t alone. There were tons of moms around, and she was engaged to a great man and had a great life. And still some immature part of her wished Cate hadn’t wanted to go to the slumber party, had wanted to spend the day with her mom buying plants for the backyard or carving pumpkins or making lasagna. Even though she didn’t know how to make lasagna.

  She’d turned her work phone off during the game—Bill would be so proud of her—and when she turned it back on now the call log showed one message from a Vegas number she didn’t recognize. Leaning against the side of her car, eyes closed, face in the sun, she pushed buttons, and listened.

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice said. “My name is Kelly O’Connell. I am here with the Home Wrecker. I am going to die because I’ve been a bad girl. Thank you. And tell my husband Kurt that I wish—”

  Silence.

  CHAPTER 52

  “I’m pretty sure it is scripted,” Ash said, listening to the message for the fourth time as Jonah drove the task force SUV from the soccer field toward the address that matched the phone number the call had originated from. The patrol cars that arrived first had radioed in a 420, homicide, female. Their reaction left no question that it was the work of the Home Wrecker. The criminalistics van was meeting them there.

  “If I hadn’t turned my phone off, we might have gotten to her sooner. In time,” Windy said from the backseat. It was noon now. The call had come through at ten thirty A.M.

  “We don’t know that,” Ash said. “With the level of control Eve wields, I doubt she would have let that happen. And you are allowed to have your phone off. It’s Saturday, Windy.”

  “I should have had it on.”

  Ash twisted around in his seat and stared at her until she met his eyes. “You’re wrong, and later on I’ll argue with you about it. Right now you need to let it go. This is probably exactly what she wants to do, debilitate you. You’ve got to move past it and pay attention to what the call can tell us.”

  “You’re right.” Windy was grateful for his support, and his reminder to refocus. There was no way she could do her job right if she let her personal feelings intrude. “Tell me why you think it’s scripted.”

  “Did you hear that rustling in the background? Like Kelly was reading from something.”

  “That would be a sign of escalation. Increased domination to get her victims to say what she wants them to, even to the police. Of course, it could be Eve herself speaking, just pretending to be Kelly.”

  “I’m having Pete in audio compare the voice to the voice on the answering machine at her house and her café. So far he doesn’t think so.” He paused before adding, “This kind of escalation, along with the message for Kurt, seems to suggest that Eve is not just trying to emulate the men in the family, but to get their attention.”

  Windy’s mind flipped to the sentence Kelly left unfinished, what she wanted to tell Kurt, the words she would have wanted to leave him with for all time. God, she knew how that felt, to have your relationship cut off in the middle of something. “This isn’t just about attention. It’s about punishment. Kurt is going to spend months filling in the blanks at the end of Kelly’s last sentence, wondering what she would have said to him if she’d had the chance, writing and rewriting the history of their whole relationship through that one unfinished act.” Some silences, Windy knew, were far worse than being yelled at.

  She turned to stare out the window as the scenery raced by, normal people going about their normal Saturdays, none of them responsible for the death of a woman just because they’d turned their cell phones off.

  God, she could not wait to get to the crime scene.

  CHAPTER 53

  The first thing Windy noticed about the O’Connell house was how perfect it was. The O’Connells had only moved in two months earlier but Kelly, six months pregnant with their first child, had already almost finished organizing the nursery. Kurt O’Connell’s sister Marie told Windy about that, after an officer had failed to stop Kurt on the front walkway of his house and he’d burst in, demanding what the hell right the cops had to—

  Stopping dead at the sight of his wife’s body.

  An EMT had to empty an almost lethal quantity of tranquilizers into him before he would calm down.

  Kurt worked for one of the larger casinos, the assistant to a man who brought in the big money gamblers. He had been away on a business trip in Taiwan for a week and just gotten in that afternoon. None of the daytime receptionists at his office remembered anyone calling to ask about his schedule, and Metro was still hunting down the other shifts.

  Based on the evidence, there was no question that Kelly had been killed in her bedroom while kneeling by the side of the bed, her head severed by a butcher knife, just like the others, her killer wearing Kurt’s shoes and shirt. There was an octagonal void in the blood spatter on the bureau, same dimensions as the ones at the Waterses’ and the Johnsons’. Toast crumbs visible on her gums and under one fingernail showed that she had also eaten breakfast. The house was filled with the smell of Lysol. Kelly’s wedding ring was missing.

  Kelly O’Connell had dedicated herself to making a home that looked like an upscale catalogue shoot, a style Brandon called “PTA chic.” The sofa covered in a quietly patterned beige, the armchairs in a complementary brown and green stripe, one of them with a tiny needlepointed pillow telling everyone “This Is Not a Dress Rehearsal.” In case the dead woman sprawled over the fake tiger rug on the floor wasn’t enough of a reminder, Windy thought.

  Black and white photos of Paris, not taken by either of the O’Connells Windy would bet, hung over the couch, fake ferns stood in distressed white iron plant holders in the corners of the room, the coffee table had what designers called “antique bronze-finish-style” legs. Brandon had banned the introduction of any antique-style objects into Windy’s home. “Make it real or make it modern, honey,” was his motto.

  Kelly and Kurt couldn’t have afforded real if they had wanted to on Kurt’s single salary, but Kelly had done the best to make what she pictured as a grown-up home, her sister-in-law told detectives, doing all the decorating herself, taking meticulous care of everything. Vacuum lines on the rug in the hallway showed how Kelly had spent her last free moments, a final memorial to housekeeping.

  “Wife, homemaker, future mother. She was like an indictment of everything Eve wasn’t,” Windy said to Ash.
r />   “Maybe that is why Eve went a little nuts on her.”

  They had gotten a shock when they rolled Kelly’s body over. Unlike the other victims, Kelly had been brutally stabbed, hit, and cut. There was a spot of blood on her big toe, otherwise clean. That looked like an accidental drip mark but the other marks were deliberate. Windy kneeled and rubbed her fingers over Kelly’s eyelashes.

  She said, “She’s not wearing mascara,” like she was talking to herself.

  “Is that important?” Ash asked.

  “It is just more confirmation that the shopping list we found yesterday was Eve’s. There were traces of black mascara on the phone. If it wasn’t from Kelly, it must have been from Eve.”

  “You sound unconvinced.”

  “No. I’m convinced. There is no way not to be, the evidence all links together. I guess I am just confused. And in the absence of children, people to use as leverage, I can’t figure out how Eve would have made Kelly have breakfast with her while she was alive.”

  Windy stayed on her knees and moved to look at the lacerations on Kelly’s arms, then carefully slid aside the robe the woman was wearing. A small knife—a butter knife, Windy discovered later—had been driven into her heart. Toothpicks had been driven into her eyes and her nose was missing. Windy shook her head. “All of these injuries to the body are postmortem.”

  “Kelly O’Connell was a bit younger, but of all the victims, she is the only one that looks anything like—” Ash’s eyes went to Windy. “Like you. And Eve.”

  “What do you mean?” Windy asked. “That Eve is playing at killing herself?”

  “Her ideal self. It’s been there all along, violence against the women, the woman she couldn’t be.”

  “So you are suggesting that her female victims could be her surrogates.”

  “Exactly. We’ve been focused on how the killings affect the man of the house, but maybe it does both. Maybe with each murder, she is directing more rage against herself.”