Child of Mine: a psychological thriller

by Chambers, V. J.

  “A serial killer,” she said.

  “It’s showing all the hallmarks,” said Isaac. “You remember that case we were given? The one we called the Psycho case?”

  “Where he was obsessed with his mother and dressed up all the victims in her clothes?”

  “Yeah, that one,” said Isaac. “I mean, I don’t know if this is the same kind of thing.”

  “It’s obviously not. They found all those bodies at once, and they were all in the poor woman’s house, propped up at the sink and the sewing machine and sitting on the couch with laundry all around them. Honestly, I don’t understand why the local police couldn’t solve that one. It was fairly obvious that it was her son.”

  “Because he was a pillar of the community, that’s why. He was a grade school principal, and everyone loved him. They had to bring us in to make the profile just to convince the public,” Isaac said.

  “Right,” said Lorelei. “It was a fascinating sort of case, though. I was convinced he’d probably killed his mother as well, but he’d had her cremated and so we couldn’t test her body to see if her heart attack had been induced by the same drug he gave the other victims.”

  “Yes, I remember,” said Isaac. “But I disagreed with you. I thought the mother’s sudden death had worked as a trigger, brought out his psychosis. Up until then, I think he’d been happy with his life. He had a good bit of power in that small community. I think he was satisfied with that. But the loss of the mother seemed to unsettle him. Maybe he was confronted with his own mortality and needed to find greater control over the world.”

  Lorelei raised her eyebrows. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Temperance came through the door.

  Lorelei hurried over to meet her, with Isaac right on her heels. “Should I go back in with him?”

  “If you want,” said Temperance. “But they’re releasing him. I didn’t have to do much leaning to get that in place. He told me that the man interrogating him is your ex-boyfriend?”

  Lorelei nodded.

  “Well, I said they’d better stop now, because anything he got, I’d make sure it was inadmissible. They seemed to see sense with that. You should have led with that, really, Lorelei. If I had known that coming in—”

  “Ex, huh?” said Isaac, eyeing her.

  She sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

  Isaac scratched the back of his neck. “I’m jealous, I think.” But his tone was light.

  “I suppose you’ve been a monk all these years,” Lorelei muttered.

  Isaac flushed, looking down at his shoes. “No, of course. I’ve… dated. Definitely. Lots of dates.”

  “Oh,” said Lorelei, feeling surprised and a little guilty. “Listen, Jeremy was the only one, Isaac. An-and it went badly.”

  Temperance cleared her throat. “Look, I’d really like it if the two of you got back together. Dexter and I have no good couple friends anymore. But I am standing right here, you know.”

  Now, Lorelei was blushing too, but she didn’t know why.

  “Anyway,” said Temperance, “I’ve gotten them to back off. I even managed to get the things they recovered in the warrant returned—his phone, his laptop, all that. But I don’t think this is the end of it. If you need me, if he gets arrested, you call right away. Isaac’s paid me a retainer, so I’m legally your son’s lawyer, all right?”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to pay her,” said Lorelei to Isaac.

  Isaac shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s just the retainer, Lor.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Isaac.

  She would pay him back. She’d find a way to do that. But Simon was the most important thing now. “I’m going to go back to Simon,” she said. “Just check on him.”

  But the door where Temperance had come out of opened, and Simon was there. He looked around, confused, and then he spotted her and ambled over.

  Next to her, Isaac went stiff. “Shit,” he muttered.

  She glanced at him.

  “He looks just like…” Isaac let out a noisy breath. “He really is his.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Evelyn Campbell was the last person standing at the diner. It was late—nearly midnight. The restaurant had closed down three hours ago, but she’d been working on cleaning the restrooms and it had taken so long that everyone had left, even the manager, Steve. She and Steve went way back. They’d both been working here for the past ten years. He trusted her, so he told her to lock the door behind her when she was done and headed out.

  Evelyn made her way between booths, heading for the back door. The front door had been locked a long time ago, considering there were always kids coming by, hoping to get in right before closing. Then they’d sit there and have cup after cup of coffee—maybe order a piece of pie—and take up space for hours on end. Evelyn sympathized with the kids. Even though it had been a long time since she’d been a teenager, she remembered what that was like. The feeling of being utterly alone in the world except for the small tribe of people your own age who were your close friends. And the way that your tribe had nowhere to call home.

  Evelyn had never had any children of her own. It was probably too late now. She heard sometimes about women her age getting pregnant, but she thought it was crazy. She barely had the energy to drag herself through a double shift at work, let alone chase around a little one.

  Still, she had always thought she might make a good mother, and she’d thought she’d be understanding during those desperately difficult teenage years.

  Teenagers were going through a violent change. They were transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and the mechanism by which this happened was the severing of ties with the family. It was necessary. Teenagers didn’t feel part of the family unit because they were getting ready to move out on their own in the world. They rebelled because they had to. A biological imperative, in fact.

  It wasn’t personal, Evelyn thought. Mothers never seemed to understand that. They were so hurt that their child seemed embarrassed to be seen with them or yelled out abuse in arguments. But the teenagers couldn’t help it. Evelyn understood that. She thought mothers should understand it too.

  Of course, she mused, pausing next to one of the booths, it was easy enough to think something, but it was a much harder thing to live it. Evelyn didn’t have any children. Maybe she simply didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand.

  She knew about that. Most people thought that they understood what a waitress did, but they didn’t have the first clue. They thought her job was easy, but it was damned hard to take care of everyone’s requests and run around the restaurant all day fetching things and turning in orders, and to do it all with a smile on her face. She was good at what she did, but she worked her ass off. And when she got home at night, her feet ached. She earned her living, and when she got stiffed on a tip, it made her feel murderous inside. People didn’t understand that unless they’d been wait staff too. Then they got it. You had to live it to know it.

  She figured it was probably the same thing with being a mom.

  She sighed. All the lights were still blazing in the restaurant. She needed to turn on the lights they used at night. They still illuminated the place to discourage theft and vandalism, but they weren’t bright and cheery. Rather, they were a blueish sort of color. They made the whole place look as if it were under water.

  The light switches were behind the counter.

  She headed in that direction.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye.

  She froze, her chest tightening. Then turned her head sharply. Something was outside the window. Was it an animal or a—

  No. A figure was going around the side of the building, out of sight.

  Her heart started to beat more quickly.

  She hesitated. What the hell? Who was out there?

  It could have been anyone. The diner was hardly isolated, even though it was the only p
lace of business on the road still open. Next door, there was an office building—insurance and real estate. No one was at work in there anymore. But she was only a five-minute walk from downtown, assuming one wanted to walk along the divided, four-lane highway.

  She still felt nervous.

  She didn’t want to turn off the lights. She didn’t want to go out there.

  So, she stayed where she was, looking out the window and twisting her hands together. The figure was gone. Outside the window, everything was still. The parking lot was empty. The diner’s sign jutted up into the air, tall enough to be seen from the highway. The sky was dark, and the stars glowed overhead.

  This was ridiculous. She couldn’t stay in the diner forever. She had to get home and get some sleep. She was due back at work tomorrow, and without rest, she wouldn’t be able to function.

  She took a deep breath and went behind the counter to find the light switches. Quickly, she let her fingers flit over them, flicking the night lights on and the day lights off.

  The room was bathed in blue light. She swallowed.

  For the first time, she found she didn’t much like the lights. Everything in the whole place seemed eerie now, and the shadows pooled in a blueness that made her think of cold and death.

  “This is stupid,” she said out loud. “Pull yourself together.” But her heart was beating so quickly now, and her palms were a little bit sweaty, and there was a sort of tickle at the back of her neck that made her feel as if there must be someone there… watching her.

  But she needed to get out of this place. Once she got into her car and out on the highway, with the classic rock station blaring, she was going to feel better. She’d see how silly this all was. She’d laugh about it, and she’d tell everyone at work tomorrow about it, and they’d laugh too.

  She still didn’t want to move, though.

  She did anyway. She took several small steps, moving out from behind the counter. The back door was through the kitchen, to her right. There was a swinging door there with a sign on it that read Employees Only. It looked muted in the blue light, and she had the odd sensation that she’d been transported into some kind of shadow world, where everything was blue and strange and—

  Stop it, she scolded herself.

  She pushed open the door to the kitchen.

  Everything in the room was perfectly still. The six-burner stove sat quiet against one wall, flanked by a sink with three deep basins for washing.

  She forced her feet to step over the black and white tile floor. The black looked purplish in the blue light, and she had a funny thought—that red wouldn’t look red under this light, and that if she was bleeding on this tile, it wouldn’t even look like blood.

  The tickling feeling at her neck became a tingle.

  She turned, her hand going to her neck.

  Nothing there except open shelves stacked with glassware and plates.

  But she couldn’t stand it anymore. Suddenly, she was running for the door as fast as she could. She couldn’t get out of this place fast enough.

  Next to the door, there was a rack for employees to leave their things. It was empty now except for her purse. She snatched it off the hook.

  Hurriedly, she threw the strap over her shoulder and searched inside the bag for her keys.

  Where were they?

  Her fingers brushed a pack of tissues, several tubes of lip balm, and the smooth leather of her wallet.

  No keys.

  Something jingled, but when she touched it, it was only some change that had fallen out of her wallet and gathered at the bottom of her purse.

  Dear God, was she going to have to dump the thing out on the floor? She was in a flurry now, and she just wanted to get out of there.

  But no, there were the keys.

  She pulled them out, triumphant.

  And came face to face with someone on the other side of the door. There was a window on the door, framed by blue-checked curtains that matched the tablecloths in the restaurant. Someone was staring at her.

  He was tall, broad shouldered, and wearing some kind of nondescript long-sleeved garment. It seemed to zip up to his chin. It was too dark to make out the color of his features, but she could see that he was Caucasian, and that he had a long, straight nose and a hefty chin.

  But it was his eyes that were chilling.

  They seemed to bore into her, empty and hungry all at once.

  She was caught by those eyes, spellbound. She couldn’t look away.

  She and the man on the other side of the door stared at each other for several eternal moments.

  He cocked his head, sized her up, as if she were a piece of merchandise he was considering buying. He was cold and detached and yet so, so interested in her.

  She screamed.

  He flinched. Put his hands up over his face, as if to ward her off.

  “Go away!” she yelled. “Go away!”

  And he turned and sprinted off into the night.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “No, I will, I’ll call you if I need anything,” Lorelei murmured into the phone. “Thank you, Mia. You’re wonderful, as always. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Not a problem,” said Mia. “You just take care of yourself, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “And take care of Simon too.”

  “Always.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow then. Pleasant dreams.”

  “Bye,” said Lorelei and hung up the phone. She set it down on the counter in her kitchen and turned to look at Isaac, who was sitting at the kitchen table. Despite everything, Isaac and Simon seemed to be getting along just fine. She wouldn’t have orchestrated a meeting between them under normal circumstances, but these circumstances were anything but normal.

  Simon had gone to bed an hour ago. At first, she’d heard the quiet chatter of the television in his room—he liked to go to sleep with something on, a bad habit she’d taught him herself—but then it had gone off, probably with the sleep timer, and Simon hadn’t turned it back on, which was a sure sign he was asleep. It was early for him to conk out, but he’d had a hard day.

  She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of white wine. “Want some?” she asked Isaac.

  Isaac folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t know. I probably should retain my ability to drive.”

  “You going home?”

  “Not tonight,” he said. “Too far. I guess I’d go find a Motel 6 or something.”

  “Stay here,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  She blushed. “Not here here. This apartment is too small. I meant stay at the resort. I have comp rooms I can give out, part of my employee benefits. I’ll call over to the front desk and get you set up.”

  He nodded. “All right, thanks. That sounds good. I guess I’ll have some wine. But are you sure that you should be—”

  “I drink every night, Isaac.”

  “Still?”

  “Still.” She got out two glasses and started to pour.

  “So, the nightmares—”

  “Have never stopped,” she said. “And I imagine I’m going to have some doozies tonight, even after a few glasses of wine. Everything that’s been churning up in my brain recently, it’s almost too much.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She handed him a glass of wine. “It’s not your fault.”

  He accepted the glass, but he didn’t take a drink. He peered down into the depths. “You should have told me.”

  She took a long, long drink of the wine. “Told you what?”

  “About… about Simon. When you were pregnant, you should have told me—or did you know then? Did you know whose he was when you were pregnant?”

  “I did,” she said. “The timing made it fairly obvious. You and I had been… drifting. But I didn’t want to talk about that then, and I don’t want to talk about it now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It would have explained a lot,�
�� he said. “No wonder you’re a drunk.”

  She drained the rest of her glass. “Gee, thanks.”

  He took a sip of his wine, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I guess that came out wrong.” He peered into his glass. “Listen, Lorelei, it doesn’t matter now. When you called me before, out of the blue, I was shocked by how intense the feeling was that came over me.” He looked up at her. “Do you feel it too?”

  She poured herself some more wine. “What are you talking about?”

  “You must feel it,” he said. “There was always something between us that was powerful. And—”

  “Simon says he has a friend,” she interrupted.

  Isaac caught her gaze with his own, and he looked hurt. “If you don’t want to talk about us, just say so.”

  “There is no us,” she said quietly. “So, there’s nothing to talk about.”

  He took another drink of wine. And then he nodded. “Fine.”

  She sucked in breath through her nose.

  He got up from the table and wandered over to her refrigerator. He began examining pictures of her and Simon, which were affixed with magnets, covering every square space of the fridge. “You want my help, though?”

  “I do,” she said, sitting down at the table. Maybe he wasn’t going to help if she wasn’t interested in rekindling whatever romantic thing had been between them. She honestly wasn’t in any kind of head space to think about such things, but if he wouldn’t help otherwise, then maybe she could sort of… fake it. “Will you help me?”

  He turned to her. “Of course.”

  She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  He sat back down at the table, opposite her. “Tell me about the friend.”

  “I don’t know anything about him. Simon says that I don’t know this person. But he says that the other boy was there with him when he was taking pictures of the girls, so I think there’s a strong likelihood that this friend might be the link between Simon and the murders. Whoever this boy is, he uses Simon to get to the girls, and then he’s killing them.”