by L. T. Vargus
She shook herself from the daze.
“No, I didn’t. Sorry.”
“We’re still on for the second shift, right?”
“That’s right.”
Before more could be said, the lights dimmed, and the crowd noise hushed along with it. The memorial was about to begin.
Chapter 74
Again, the wind assailed Sandy as she made her way from Starbucks to her car. It scraped her skin with its claws, flicked strands of hair into her eyes. The hot coffee was the only thing she had to fight the cold off, but it wasn’t much of a weapon. A trickle of steam coiled out of the mouth holes of the white cups in her hands.
Looking beyond the RAV4 into an adjacent lot, she saw a man struggling with a baby carrier, a diaper bag, and a few plastic bags of groceries. He wobbled and grunted, dropping a bag as he fumbled for the door. Then he dropped his keys as well.
He looked up at her through a pair of thick glasses, embarrassed, his eyes wide and innocent like a child’s.
“Need a hand?” she said, setting the drinks down on the roof of the RAV4.
“Oh, no, I’ve got it,” he said, his gaze falling to the ground. “Just, uh…”
As if on cue, he lost another bag, and the baby carrier swayed with great force. She was sure he was going to lose it, but he managed to regain control. A pair of lemons rolled away from the dumped bags, somehow heightening the sheer pathetic force of the scene.
The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she took the first step away from her vehicle. Was it fright or just the wind? She didn’t know. In any case, she ignored it and jogged over.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry to trouble you like this.”
She stooped and gathered the spilled groceries, half watching the man and the baby out of the corner of her eye. He had such a meek presence, unable to even look at her. She felt embarrassed on his behalf. Almost disturbed. The baby’s face was mostly covered with a blanket, a sliver of the forehead peeking out. Maybe he or she was sleeping.
She stood, the bags of groceries now heavy in her hands.
“It’s unlocked,” he said. “If you could lean in and put the groceries in the backseat, it’d be great.”
She hesitated. It was a two-door. She’d practically have to get into the car to unload the groceries. But then she saw the frame buckled into the passenger seat where the baby carrier would snap into place. That made the backseat drop-off make sense. She always thought baby seats were supposed to go in the back, but what did she know?
She popped the door open and crawled into the Prius, resting her knees on the passenger seat. As she leaned into the back, it occurred to her that aside from the lemons and a few candy bars, the bags were mostly full of magazines. Old, beat up magazines. And then she remembered the moment when he dropped the keys. She had a Toyota, and knew you didn’t need to be holding the keys to unlock the—
The clatter of the plastic baby carrier striking the asphalt made her jump, her shoulders hunching and freezing in that position, all of the flesh on her back tingling ice cold right away. That crawling skin spread over her shoulders, down onto the backs of her arms.
And then he was on her.
One of his arms looped around her shoulders, pulling her back into his chest. His body pressed into hers. The opposite hand shoved a rag over her nose and mouth. The chemical stench was suffocating and strange. It stung her eyes, and her head felt heavy right away.
She screamed a moment too late, the cloth muffling her sound. And she squirmed, but he was too strong. His body corded up tight. Stiff. Almost like he was made of wood.
He said nothing, and peering over her shoulder, she could read no expression on his face. Just a blank stare. Cold and distant.
And then things went wavy. A shimmer blurring everything like heat distortion. Like she could see the fume she’d inhaled hovering all around her.
The black opened up and swallowed her whole.
Chapter 75
“My Song in the Night” was the title of the song that opened the service, according to the program. It was an a cappella number, which Loshak felt suited the space. Something about the voices echoing in the large chamber sounded right.
Watching the members of the choir singing, Loshak couldn’t help but think of Shelly, his daughter. She’d always been a self-proclaimed “choir geek.” In fact, one of the last things she’d done outside of the hospital was a recital with their local community chorale.
Thinking of her, his next breath caught in his chest, and he felt the moistness of tears clinging to his eyelashes. He couldn’t let his emotions get in the way tonight, though. It was too important.
He looked over his shoulder, scanning all of those faces in the crowd, checking the exits for any sign of movement.
Was the scumbag here now, cowering in the crowd? He thought it possible.
A man took the stage and introduced himself as Reverend Curtis Smith.
“On behalf of the Worthington family, I would like to thank all of you for joining us here tonight to celebrate the life of Fiona. To see how many of you have come to honor Fiona fills my heart and the heart of her family, I know. Grief is a horrible thing to bear alone. For the family to know that they are supported by the entire community is going to be crucial for them in the coming months.”
He folded his hands before him on the podium.
“I’d like to begin with a moment of silence for Fiona, but also for the other three girls that will forever be tied to her: Cristal Monroe, Katie Seidel, and Sierra Peters.”
The reverend bowed his head and closed his eyes, and Loshak followed suit. The quiet was peppered with the small noises of a group: stifled coughs, throat clearing, the murmur of a small child.
After a minute or so, Reverend Smith gazed upon them once more.
“A number of Fiona’s friends and family members have been asked to speak before you tonight. To share a little of who Fiona was. I hope their stories will give all of us a chance to appreciate the unique individual her family will never forget: kind, generous, driven. A daughter, a sister, and a friend. A caretaker and a lover of animals.”
A screen was lowered from behind a black curtain. Images lit up the white rectangle: Fiona as an infant, sitting on a bathmat wrapped in a towel. Fiona, perhaps five years old, holding a hula hoop at her waist. Fiona wearing a cap and gown at her high school graduation.
While the slide show continued to play, several of Fiona’s friends and relatives went up to tell stories about the girl who had only ever been a series of photographs to Victor Loshak.
The last person to speak about Fiona’s life was her mother. Lois Worthington stepped to the microphone dressed in a long-sleeved black dress with sheer sleeves and pearls embroidered at the neck and cuffs. Two huge heart-shaped wreaths of pink and white flowers flanked her on either side.
“Wow, I’m just… overwhelmed,” Mrs. Worthington said, her voice breaking with emotion. “Fiona would be so touched to know that we are all here tonight sharing memories and stories of her life.”
She took a deep breath.
“As you’ve heard from some of the others, Fiona was never one to suffer from much indecision. She always seemed to know what she wanted, and once she had her heart set on it, that was it. There was no convincing her otherwise. For her fifth birthday, she asked for cherries on top of her cake. Now, Fiona’s birthday is in March, and I couldn’t find fresh cherries anywhere. So I bought a can of cherries. And when she marched into the kitchen and saw me putting those black wrinkled things on top of her perfect white cake, I knew I was in trouble.”
Scattered chuckles reverberated around the room.
“She said, ‘Momma, why are you putting olives on my cake?’ And I explained to her, ‘Honey, they didn’t have fresh cherries at the store. I had to get the kind that comes in a can.’ And she put her hands on her hips, and she looked up at me, and she said, ‘No, momma. Those aren’t going on my cake.’ And that was that.”
&
nbsp; The crowd laughed, and Lois paused before she continued.
“Another time, when she was a bit older, we were riding in the car. I had the radio on. And ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen came on. And she started to laugh. She said, ‘This sounds like that song ‘Another One Rides the Bus.’ And I said, ‘Well this is the original song. ‘Another One Rides the Bus’ is a parody that came out later.’ And she gave me that look. All you other moms out there know the look I’m talking about. And she said, ‘Mom, I’m pretty sure ‘Another One Rides the Bus’ came first.’ Even when she was wrong, she was right.”
This time, Lois Worthington joined in the laughter, but hers ended in a choked sob. She struggled for a moment to compose herself.
Loshak’s heart ached. He knew firsthand how the line between joyful reminiscence and painful recollection became a blur. How quickly the laughter could turn to tears.
With a sniff and a dab of tissue at the corners of her eyes, Lois reigned in her sorrow.
“I just have one more story to tell. When Fiona was about three years old, she was absolutely fascinated by the moon. She wanted to know everything about it. What was it made of? How far away was it? Why did it disappear sometimes? One night, we were driving home from I-don’t-know-where. It was a clear night, with a big full moon. And from her car seat in the back, I heard Fiona say, ‘Look, mom. The moon has a car, and he’s driving with us!’”
This time the group’s response was more reserved, and Fiona’s mother didn’t have to wait long to finish.
“I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but tonight is a full moon. And I can’t help but think that’s a sign from Fiona and from God. I feel her with us tonight. Her warmth. Her love.”
Chapter 76
The Prius moves without sound. An almost eerie quiet. Like the car is holding its breath.
He looks down on the crumpled figure in the passenger seat. She looks different this close up. Her skin dark and leathery. Not wholly unpleasant. But weathered.
He waits at a red light. Watches the eyes for a long moment. Looking for any motion. Any flutter of the lashes. Any sign of consciousness. There is none.
This is how it works when the fantasy is made real. He cannot lose this game. When the dream comes to life, they cannot fight back. It becomes impossible. Like a magical force rules over them. Renders them powerless. Bends them to his will.
The Peters girl escaped. But that was different. He’d done something wrong, maybe. Messed up the dream. Anyhow, he got her in the end.
The hybrid’s engine kicks on with a rumble as he pulls away from the intersection. And he remembers to breathe just then. Not realizing he’d been imitating the car’s held respiration until then.
Maybe if she’d parked on the other side of the Starbucks parking lot, none of this would have happened. He can’t stop thinking about it. Tumbling that bit of fortune over and over in his head. The idea that both of their lives had turned on that decision. Even if it had probably seemed mundane to her when she made it.
The drive-thru window would have stopped him from acting. He wouldn’t have the privacy he had. He wouldn’t have been able to draw her into the emptiness of the adjacent lot. Wouldn’t have been able to block things correctly so the blacktop stage they functioned on was screened from the view of any windows. Wouldn’t have been able to pull her that 200 feet or more from any living soul.
Maybe he would have moved on. This project discarded for another. This day of following forgotten like so many others.
Maybe he would have gone to that memorial tonight. Reveled in knowing that the police might suspect he was there and have no means of proving it. Or maybe he would have skipped that as well. Waited. Gone to the scene of the event late at night to steal the stuffed elephant. Undetected.
He gazes upon her again. This motionless creature he’s captured. This is the way the world works. None of it means anything. Life and death teeter on the fulcrum of random chance. Her parking spot sealing her fate.
But he also knows that it had to be this way. That it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Chapter 77
McAdoo huddled in the gas station bathroom stall. Again.
Damn burritos. Again.
The hand dryer hummed in the main chamber of the room, the sound echoing off of the tiles and mercifully drowning the heinous noises out. He thanked God for that with absolute sincerity, firing off silent prayer after silent prayer, offering up his gratitude to any deity who might be listening.
He sighed. He must really hate himself to keep doing this. It was self-abuse, wasn’t it? To submit his body to this kind of torture twice a month? He knew exactly what would happen, and he did it anyway. And the worst part was that the burritos weren’t even good. He could get something better at Taco Bell, for God’s sake. A couple of mexi-melts and a chalupa supreme. Hell yeah. At least then the insane diarrhea might be worth it.
The whir of the hand dryer cut out with a loud click, and the ensuing silence seemed strange. Intense.
He moved his feet just to hear the scuff of his shoes on the ceramic flooring. The heavy bulk of his gun shifted with the movement, holster and all leaning its weight against his ankle.
He never felt more vulnerable than when he sat here vacating his gut like this. Especially in public and when it was so damn spicy. Is that why he did it? To keep that fear sharp? To stoke the flames of those jitters that kept him focused, kept him vigilant?
Maybe. He could be over-thinking it, though. Maybe he was just a glutton — for both punishment and, apparently, microwave burritos smothered in the hottest salsa available.
Novotny sat in the cruiser, his thumbnail picking at a blistered spot in the rubbery enamel on the steering wheel. He traced his nail around the oval-shaped bubble and then peeled at the edges of the cracks running through it.
He didn’t need to wonder what was taking McAdoo so long. He knew full well what his partner was doing. He wished he’d hurry up.
The sun fled the sky, blushing along the horizon for the moment. The memorial service was tonight — going on this very moment, in fact — and he wanted to drive by the cemetery and see how things were shaping up. Maybe the killer would show. Maybe not. But it made him tense either way. Made his stomach muscles clench up just thinking about it. Juicy sounds sloshing about in his abdomen.
He watched the traffic trickle by. He had the radar gun out, but he wasn’t watching it closely. It was quiet, even for a Tuesday night. Everyone had taken to shutting themselves in as much as possible with this killer on the loose. The rumor was that gun sales had quadrupled countywide. But that made him think even more people would come out for the memorial, somehow. Some symbolic display of community; of toughness and a reclaiming of dignity in the face of this adversity.
He shook his leg, calf muscle twitching his knee up and down, pistoning the ball of his foot. It was an anxious habit. An old one. Something he didn’t think he’d done much at all since high school, those jacked up moments in the locker room before the football team sprinted onto the field.
Jesus. McAdoo spent more time in the bathroom than anyone he knew. The stereotype was that women took forever putting on makeup and what not? Novotny’s wife was like an Olympic gold medal bathroom sprinter compared to McAdoo. If he didn’t have a job, the guy would probably just shit for days at a time.
A Prius scooted toward him. It stuck out for some reason, maybe because it looked like it was moving pretty good. He checked the radar display. Yep. Eight over the limit.
He turned his gaze toward the gas station, peering through the window. The clerk read a magazine behind the counter. No sign of his partner inside. Still crapping, of course. Damned fool.
He watched the Prius jerk to a stop at the stop sign, and suddenly the story about Joel Rifkin popped into his head. The routine traffic stop that led to the arrest of a brutal serial killer, the dead body rotting in the bed of the truck. What had Loshak said during that conversation? That sometimes someth
ing as simple as a police officer trusting his gut saved lives in these cases. Something like that.
His chest tingled, the flesh atop his sternum throbbing and itching. It was, he realized, a very particular sensation. One he’d never experienced before this moment.
It felt like someone or something was trying to tell him something.
He started the car and wheeled out onto the road, gunning it, the tires thudding over the curb and jostling him around in his seat. Fuck it. He couldn’t wait for McAdoo. He had to obey this whim. Had to. He figured there was a 95% chance that it was nothing at all, only a weird feeling arising from an overactive imagination, but what if this really was the guy? He’d never forgive himself.
He flipped on the lights and gave the siren switch a couple of quick on and off flips as he tore after the Prius. He’d swing back and get McAdoo in a few minutes. It was probably nothing, of course.
Probably nothing at all.
McAdoo was grappling with the painful combination of the silence and the spicy sting when the siren interrupted. He flinched a little at that WHOOP WHOOP call. It sounded like it was right on top of him.
Goddamn. It was their siren. That close? It had to be. Novotny must need him for something. Hell, it must be an emergency, even. In all their years together, he’d never done anything like that before.
Christ. He’d have to pinch it off.
He struggled to his feet, that incredible vulnerability a roiling chasm in his gut. He held an emptiness inside of him somehow. He didn’t know any other way to describe it. A vacancy in his intestines that somehow made him feel exposed and powerless.
He fumbled to get his pants up and buttoned, the weight of the gun fighting him all the while. And the wrongness he felt at leaving this job half-finished was almost on a religious level. He was violating the laws of man, the laws of nature, some sacred code maintaining all that was good in the universe.
