CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When the phone rang, Molly
automatically looked at the digital clock on the microwave oven.
She wondered who would be calling at 7:04 A.M.
In her T-shirt, sweatpants, and thick
wool socks, she was at the stove, craving a verboten cup of coffee
and heating up some SpaghettiOs for Erin’s lunch thermos. Both
Chris and Erin were up and getting dressed. In about fifteen
minutes, they’d be eating their cereal at the breakfast table, and
the TV in the family room would be blaring. Molly had been
cherishing the quiet—until the damn phone rang.
She thought about screening the call,
but figured it might be Jeff. He was due back from D.C. late
tonight. Maybe he was getting an earlier flight.
Without looking at the caller ID, Molly
snatched up the phone on the third ring. “Yes, hello?”
“Is this Molly?” asked the woman on the
other end of the line.
“Yes. Who—”
“Molly, this is Trish, Angela’s
sister,” she explained hurriedly. “I need to speak with
Jeff.”
“I’m sorry, Trish,” she replied, a bit
mystified. She’d heard both Chris and Erin talk about their Aunt
Trish, but Molly had never spoken to her before. “Jeff’s out of
town. He’s in Washington, D.C. He’s due back tonight. Can I give
him a message?”
There was silence on the other
end.
“Trish?” Molly asked.
“Angela was killed last night,” she
said in a shaky voice. “She was murdered—along with Larry and his
daughter. The police say it’s one of those cul-de-sac
killings.”
“What?” Molly murmured. “Good Lord, no.
. . .”
She told herself it was a joke—or maybe
she hadn’t heard Trish right. But she listened to the quiet sobbing
on the other end of the line. Her legs suddenly felt wobbly, and
she put a hand on the kitchen counter to brace herself. “Trish,
I—I’m so sorry. . . .”
“Listen, could you track down Jeff and
let him know?” she asked. “You—you’ll have some police coming by
this morning. I’ll try to make it over there later in the afternoon
to see Chris and Erin. Tell them I love them. . . .”
“Oh, Trish, I’m so sorry,” she
repeated, a hand on her heart. “I just had lunch with Angela
yesterday. I can’t believe it.”
Angela’s sister was sobbing on the
other end of the line. “I have to go,” she said. Then she hung
up.
Dazed, Molly listened to the line go
dead. She finally clicked off, and then dialed Jeff’s cell number.
She started pacing back and forth in the kitchen. Angela’s children
were upstairs. How was she going to tell them their mother was
dead?
Jeff wasn’t picking up. It went to
voice mail. Molly impatiently waited for the beep. “Hi, honey, it’s
me,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry. “Can you call me as soon as
you get this? It—it’s very important, okay? Thanks.
Bye.”
Even though she’d worked there for
nearly two years, she couldn’t remember the number for the Capital
Hilton in Washington, D.C. So she retreated to Jeff’s study, got
online, and found the number off the Hilton website. From the
cordless phone in his study, she called the hotel and asked for
Jeff Dennehy’s room.
It took the operator a minute. “Could
you spell that for me, please?”
Molly spelled it out. “He’s there for a
pharmaceutical convention,” she said.
There was another silent lapse. “We
don’t show a Jeff Dennehy staying here. And we don’t have anything
on our schedule this week for any pharmaceutical or medical groups.
Are you sure you have the right Hilton? This is the Capital Hilton
on Sixteenth Street Northwest.”
“Yes, that’s the one I want.
I—”
Molly heard a beep on the line, the
call-waiting signal. “Just a second, please . . .” She glanced at
the caller ID screen and saw Jeff’s cell number. She put the
receiver back to her ear. “Never mind, I’ve got him on the other
line right now. Thank you.”
As she clicked on the call-waiting
button, she heard one of the kids coming down the stairs. “Jeff?”
she whispered into the phone.
“What’s going on? You sounded pretty
grim on that message. Are the kids okay?”
Molly hesitated. She could hear the TV
go on in the family room. “The kids are okay—for now,” she said
carefully. “It’s Angela, honey. Trish just called. Angela’s dead.
She and Larry and his daughter were murdered last night. The
police—they think it’s a cul-de-sac killing.”
She heard a sigh on the other end of
the line. “Oh, my God . . .”
“I think the police are supposed to be
over here pretty soon,” Molly continued. “I just got off the phone
with Trish about five minutes ago. I haven’t said anything to the
kids yet. . . .”
“Molly!” Erin yelled from the kitchen.
“My SpaghettiOs are burning! And I can’t reach the Cocoa
Puffs!”
She turned and saw Chris treading down
the front stairs with his backpack slung over his shoulder. He wore
a wrinkled blue shirt and jeans. He glanced at her. He must have
seen something was wrong from the expression on her face. “Is that
Dad?” he asked.
With the phone to her ear, she nodded.
“Chris, could you do me a favor? Could you turn off the stove in
the kitchen, and move the pan? And then could you get Erin her
cereal, please? I’ll be there in just a second.”
He frowned at her. “Is Dad
okay?”
She felt like such a coward, but she
just nodded. She waited until Chris headed toward the kitchen
before she got back on the line with Jeff. “Honey, are you still
there?”
She heard muffled crying on the other
end of the line. She swallowed hard. “Jeff, honey, what do you want
me to do?”
“There are Snap, Crackle, and Pop
pencil pals inside this unopened box of Rice Krispies,” Chris
announced as he sat down at the breakfast table with his little
sister. “I’ll trade you them for the remote.”
Erin thought about it for a moment.
He’d already poured her a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, and she was watching
some inane preteen situation-comedy on ABC Family or the Disney
Channel, he wasn’t sure. He just knew that all the kids looked like
catalog models and none of them could act worth shit.
“ ’Kay,” she said, at last. She set the
remote on the lazy Susan and gave it a gentle spin. Then she went
back to eating her Cocoa Puffs.
“Thanks,” Chris said, grabbing the
remote. He switched over to news for the latest
sports.
He was trying to feel normal again
after all the weirdness that went down the day before yesterday.
He’d already replaced the combination lock on his locker. He’d had
no desire to borrow Molly’s bike lock. The less he had to do with
Molly right now, the better. He just couldn’t get over the fact
that her brother had shot those people.
He really wished he’d been able to get
out of the house and away from her for an evening. Apparently Larry
and Taylor had canceled their field trip, so his mom hadn’t been
alone last night after all.
Right now Molly was in the study on the
phone with his dad, whispering and acting weird.
Chris poured himself some Rice
Krispies, and then fished the little packet of pencil pals out of
the box. “There you go, kitten, knock yourself out,” he said,
pushing the packet across the table at his little
sister.
“Thanks, Chris!” she replied. She
ripped the packet open with her teeth.
He was reaching for the milk to pour
over his cereal when he heard the newscaster on TV. “Breaking News this morning from a cul-de-sac in
Bellevue,” a pretty Latino reporter announced grimly.
Dressed in a red coat, she stood in front of a swarm of police cars
with their lights flashing. They partially blocked any view of the
house in the distance. “Three people are dead in
what police sources here say has all the earmarks of another
cul-de-sac killing. The identities of the three victims are being
withheld for now, but I can tell you that two of the victims are
adults—one male and one female. And the third victim is a teenage
girl. The last time the Cul-de-sac Killer struck, three teens were
slain in Federal Way. This is a quiet street in a family
neighborhood—”
Chris hit the mute button. He didn’t
want his little sister traumatized by this grisly news report. He
was about to switch channels when he glanced across the table at
Erin. She didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the news story.
Smiling, she scratched the top of her blond head, and then pointed
at the TV screen. “Look! Isn’t that Uncle Larry’s
house?”
Chris turned toward the TV. From the
roof and the location of the trees, the house behind that pretty
reporter might have indeed been Larry’s. But it couldn’t be. No, so
many of the houses in those Bellevue subdivisions looked
alike.
Yet Chris unsteadily got to his feet.
He looked at the TV, and that roof of that two-story Colonial—so
much like the one he’d slept under every other weekend for the last
few months. He kept thinking of the reporter’s description of the
Cul-de-sac Killer’s latest casualties: a teenage girl, and two
adults—one male, one female.
Chris told himself that they would have
heard from the police by now. But then, that was why the names were
being withheld. The families still didn’t know.
With the sound muted on the TV, he
could hear Molly down the hall in the study, whispering to his dad
on the phone. He couldn’t make out the words, but she sounded so
worried—even panicked, as if she might have just heard some
disturbing news.
Chris started toward the front of the
house. He saw Molly step out of his dad’s study. She held the
cordless phone to her ear. Biting her lip, she gazed at him with
pity. “Honey,” she whispered into the cordless. “I’m going to put
Chris on.”
He numbly stared at his stepmother. He
couldn’t move.
She handed him the phone. “Chris, your
dad needs to talk to you.”
For the next few hours, all Molly could
think about was holding on until Jeff came home. It was a grueling,
sad nightmare. When she and Chris had sat down with Erin to tell
her that her mother was dead, the six-year-old didn’t just cry, she
shrieked at the top of her voice—as if she were being attacked. It
seemed to take forever for Chris to calm her down. Every time Molly
even touched her, Erin went into a fit—maybe it was because Molly
had been the one who had actually told her that her mother had been
killed. Chris rocked her to sleep in the rocking chair in her room,
the same chair that had once been her mother’s.
Two plainclothes police detectives
arrived around ninethirty. Molly had barely enough time to run a
brush through her hair and throw on some jeans and a sweater. Chris
talked with them at the breakfast table. Meanwhile Molly made them
coffee and screened calls. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. One of
the calls was from her doctor’s office. She was being charged for
missing her appointment. She didn’t bother arguing with
them.
Another call was from Lynette.
Apparently Trish had her number, too. Lynette said she was coming
over with some lunch for them in a couple of hours, and she
wouldn’t take no for an answer. Molly didn’t argue with her,
either.
Chris told the police that he hadn’t
seen his mother in over a week. He hadn’t noticed anything unusual
the last time he’d stayed at Larry’s house. Once the detectives
were finished with their questions, Chris retreated to his room and
shut the door.
Molly was so frazzled by the time she
sat down with the two cops, her thinking was muddled. She told them
about her lunch with Angela the day before. She thought they’d want
to know about the strange, threatening calls Angela had gotten on
her cell—from that woman. But she didn’t know much beyond what
Angela had told her. To Molly, it seemed totally unrelated to the
cul-de-sac murders. She’d read all there was to read on those
killings, and at no time was it mentioned that any of the victims
had been threatened beforehand.
The police asked if Angela had
mentioned any other strange goings-on. Molly remembered the
attempted break-in at Larry’s house two weeks ago. “She said the
kitchen window screen had been removed,” Molly recalled. “But it
didn’t look like anything was missing.”
The police already knew about it.
Angela and Larry had reported the incident twelve days
before.
The two detectives said they wanted to
talk to Jeff as soon as he came home. His flight was due into
SeaTac at 3:55. “Where’s Mr. Dennehy flying in from?” one of the
cops asked.
“Washington, D.C.,” Molly replied.
“He’s been there since Monday.”
“Where was he staying?”
“The Capital Hilton,” Molly answered.
But then she remembered talking to the hotel operator earlier.
Molly watched the police detective writing it down, and decided not
to say anything.
The cops said they’d be back to talk
with Jeff.
As Molly showed them to the front door,
she glanced outside. Two TV news vans were parked in front of the
house. No one had rung the bell yet. But the vans had attracted a
few onlookers. Three strange cars were parked on the block, and
about a dozen people stood in the middle of the street, gawking at
the news vans and the house. An older couple had their bikes with
them. They must have been out for a ride when they spotted the TV
news trucks.
Half hiding behind the door, Molly
watched the reporters and cameramen rush out of their vans to
interview the two policemen.
Molly noticed yet another van crawling
down the cul-de-sac, but this one was a moving van.
The vehicle made an incessant beeping
noise over a chorus of hissing and grinding as it backed into Kay’s
old driveway next door. Molly couldn’t help thinking that the new
neighbor had picked one hell of a lousy day to move
in.
The police hadn’t been gone five
minutes when Lynette Hahn came by with Courtney, Carson, and Dakota
in tow. She’d pulled the kids out of school so they could help
Chris and Erin through this awful tragedy. Just in time for lunch,
she’d also brought along enough McDonald’s to feed a small army. It
was actually a good call. With a Happy Meal and Lynette’s bratty
kids to distract her, Erin seemed to perk up a little. She and the
little monsters parked themselves in front of some cartoons on the
Disney Channel.
Chris remained barricaded in his room.
He didn’t want to see anyone—including Courtney. So she spent most
of the time sitting at the breakfast table, sipping a milk shake
and texting friends on her iPhone.
Molly never thought she’d be grateful
for Lynette Hahn’s company, but she was. Lynette helped screen the
calls, and twice she chased away reporters who dared to ring the
doorbell. And having not had a scrap of food all morning—when she
was eating for two—Molly was glad for the cheeseburger and fries.
She devoured them.
She was able to steal a moment and
brought some of the food up to Chris’s room. She gently knocked on
his door.
“Could you go away, please?” Chris
called, in a voice hoarse from crying.
“I know you don’t want to see anybody,”
Molly said, leaning close to his door. “But you need to eat
something. There’s a double cheeseburger, large fries, and a Coke
for you. I’m leaving it outside the door here.”
He didn’t respond.
“Chris?” she said. “I just want you to
know, you were so good with Erin this morning. The way you took
care of her and got her to calm down, I think your mom would have
been very proud of you.”
“Thank you, Molly,” he said, still
raspy. “Can you leave me alone now?”
“Sure, Chris,” she said. Then she left
the McDonald’s bag and the Coke by his door.
In the upstairs hallway, she could hear
Lynette down in the family room, chiding one of her children: “If
you want to make yourself sick to your stomach with even more candy
and more soda pop, Dakota, you just go right ahead.”
Molly felt a little sick herself.
Either she’d eaten that burger too fast, or the baby was stirring
things up. She hurried into the master bathroom and stood over the
toilet for a few minutes, hoping the nausea would pass. As she
tentatively stood there, Molly began to weep. She wasn’t sure why.
She’d never liked Angela very much.
She remembered Angela telling her at
lunch yesterday how scared she was. She’d talked about calling a
truce. The person calling Angela must have been responsible for
hiring the investigator in Chicago, for the smashed pumpkins, and
for Chris’s broken locker.
Molly hadn’t told the policemen about
any of those things. They just didn’t seem to have anything to do
with the cul-de-sac killings.
But maybe they did.
Suddenly, she felt her stomach churn,
and she thought for certain she was going to throw up. But she held
back and took a few deep breaths. The awful sensation passed—for
now.
When she came back out to the hallway,
she smiled a little. The McDonald’s bag outside Chris’s door wasn’t
there anymore. At least he was eating something.
In Erin’s room, the bed covering was
askew. Molly stepped in to straighten the quilt on the bed. Leaning
beside Angela’s rocker, she glanced out the window—at the crowd in
front of the house. Now there were three TV news vans, a cop car,
and about thirty people just gaping at the house.
Next door, movers were unloading
furniture from the van and hauling it into Kay’s old
house.
Natalie, in her usual running attire,
jogged down the block, passing people on her way back to the
Nguyens’ house. Her dark blond hair, in a ponytail, slapped back
and forth between her shoulder blades. She barely slowed down to
see what everyone was gawking at.
Down the block at Hank and Frank’s old
place, Jill’s car was parked in the driveway. In a first-floor
window, Molly could see the flickering light of a big-screen
TV.
Stepping away from the window, she put
a hand on the back of Angela’s rocking chair. Molly remembered
something else the now-dead Mrs. Dennehy had said to her
yesterday.
“Do you think it’s
possible somebody is trying to pit us against each
other?”
She easily blended in with the rest of
the crowd loitering in front of the Dennehys’ house. Another patrol
car had come up the street and parked beside the TV news vehicles.
For a while, the only thing the crowd had to look at was the
furniture being unloaded from the moving van parked next door. But
now, Lynette Hahn was giving them a show.
Standing on the Dennehys’ front stoop
as if the place were hers, Lynette held her youngest child, Dakota,
in her arms while the TV news cameras rolled. “Angela was a
wonderful mother, a great neighbor, and my dear, dear friend,” she
announced with tears in her eyes. She patted Dakota on the back.
“It’s such a tragedy, and so senseless. Two of the nicest kids
you’d ever want to meet are now without a mother. We’re on a
cul-de-sac here. Angela moved from one cul-de-sac to another. You
never think anything like this will happen to someone you know,
someone you care about and love. But it just goes to show—until
this maniac is caught, none of us who live on a cul-de-sac in the
Seattle area is safe. . . .”
The crowd seemed pretty mesmerized. But
then, what did they know, a bunch of idiots who had nothing better
to do than follow TV news vans around?
They had no idea what Lynette Hahn was
really like.
Courtney Hahn’s former guidance
counselor at the high school had referred to Lynette as a
“royal pain in the ass.” She used to phone
Ray Corson constantly with complaints—and at his home, too. Why
wasn’t her daughter given the solo in the school concert? How could
the coach let Courtney sit on the bench for the entire first half
of the volleyball game? Why did she only get a C+ on that English
literature test?
Mr. Corson wrote in his notes after a
parent-teacher conference with Lynette Hahn, to which she’d brought
along Dakota:
For someone who
considers herself Supermom, she does very little to keep her kids
in line. Dakota was a terror throughout the whole session. Lynette
Hahn is one of those parents who suffers under the delusion that
everyone should think their children are cute. It’s as if the rest
of the world has to make concessions for her coddled, bratty kids.
No wonder Courtney’s so screwed up and selfish. Lynette Hahn’s
brand of motherhood is helping to turn out a generation of spoiled
snotty kids with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and no
accountability. . . .
Ray Corson wrote about the only time he
met Courtney’s dad. It was another parent–teacher
conference:
I don’t like Jeremy
Hahn at all. The guy is very arrogant. He had his BlackBerry on
throughout the entire parent-teacher session. He made one call and
took two—neither of which were related to his business or his
daughter. For one of those calls, he was talking about getting
tickets to a Mariners game. Courtney once told me that she thought
her father cared more about his fancy car, his clothes, and his
high-tech toys than he did for his family. I don’t think she was
exaggerating about him, and that’s very disturbing. It gives
credence to the more sordid things she has told me about her
father—like his fondness for teen porn (she claims he has a
collection of adult DVDs hidden in the back of a cabinet in his
study), and the way he sometimes looks at her girlfriends. Courtney
said her mother has totally blinded herself to it. I thought she
might be making it up to get my attention & sympathy. Now,
after meeting the SOB, I’m not so sure. . . .
She observed Lynette Hahn in front of
the Dennehys’ door, holding her daughter in her arms. “I’m just
stunned,” she told the TV newspeople, her voice choked with
emotion. “I’m overwhelmed with grief. . . .”
Watching Lynette in action, she
wondered how the self-delusional Supermom would handle the press
next time—when they’d be gathering outside her door.
Molly didn’t say anything.
She just slumped back in her chair and
smiled at Jeff, who sat beside her at the head of the kitchen
table. She held on to his hand.
On the countertop behind her was a
large Pagliacci Pizza box with one piece of discarded crust in it
and an emptiedout salad container. Chris and Erin had cleared their
plates away. Erin was now parked in front of the TV in the family
room. Chris was upstairs in his room with Elvis, who had stopped by
after dinner.
It almost seemed like a normal
night.
Jeff looked tired. He was finishing off
his second glass of merlot. As much as she could have used a nice,
big glass of wine, Molly had insisted she was in the mood for a
7UP. “I get the worst headache after drinking wine lately,” she’d
said. And Jeff had seemed to buy the excuse.
Apparently, Jeff had managed to catch
an earlier plane. There had been some confusion when the cops had
gone to meet him at the gate at SeaTac for his original 3:55
flight. But it all got straightened out, and the police detectives
interviewed Jeff in the living room for ninety
minutes.
While the police were still talking to
Jeff, Lynette and her tribe headed home. Molly thanked her for the
lunch, for talking to the TV reporters, and for being such a good
neighbor. She felt beholden to Lynette—until she caught her little
speech on the 5:30 news. It was tough not to take it personally
when Lynette said, “Two of the nicest kids you’d
ever want to meet are now without a mother.”
The TV news vans and the crowd of
onlookers had dispersed a while ago. It was quiet out there
now.
Molly didn’t want to talk. She just
wanted to sit and hold Jeff’s hand.
The doorbell rang.
Molly closed her eyes. “Oh, go away,”
she muttered.
Jeff sighed, and got to his feet. “I’ll
get it. You stay put.”
But Molly followed him into the front
hallway and watched him open the door.
Chet Blazevich stood on the front stoop
in jeans, a rumpled shirt, a jacket, and a tie. His short brown
hair was a bit messy. He had his wallet out with his police ID to
show Jeff. “Mr. Dennehy? I’m Detective Blazevich, Seattle
Police.”
Molly could tell from his stance that
Jeff was tensing up. “Oh, c’mon, give me a break,” he grumbled.
“It’s been a lousy day, and I’ve already spent two hours talking to
you guys.”
“My sympathies, Mr. Dennehy,” he said.
Then he glanced over Jeff’s shoulder, and shyly smiled at her.
“Actually, I was hoping to talk with you, Molly. It would just be a
few minutes.”
“Molly?” Jeff
repeated, obviously confused.
Molly stepped toward the door, and put
her hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Detective Blazevich and I are
veterans of two Neighborhood Watch potlucks at Lynette Hahn’s
house, which makes us like war buddies. Please, come in,
Detective.”
Jeff and the handsome cop awkwardly
shook hands. Molly led him into the living room and offered him
something to drink. All the while she wondered why he wanted to
talk with her.
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” Chet Blazevich
said. “I just had a cup of coffee at the Hahns’ house.” He sat down
in the easy chair while Molly and Jeff settled back on the sofa in
front of the picture window. She put her hand on Jeff’s knee and
watched the detective take a little notebook and pen from his
inside jacket pocket.
“Mrs. Hahn called me,” he continued.
“She wanted to tell me some things she thought might be relevant to
our investigation into the deaths of the first Mrs. Dennehy, her
companion, and his daughter.”
“Angela went back to using her maiden
name, which was Dwyer,” Jeff said coolly.
Chet Blazevich nodded. “Thank you. Mrs.
Hahn was telling me about some phone calls that Ms.
Dwyer had been getting.” He turned to Molly. “Apparently,
Angela thought you might have been the one calling
her.”
“Yes, I know,” Molly said. “I had lunch
with Angela yesterday, and we straightened that out. I didn’t make
those calls. But I know Angela was concerned, because the calls
were sort of threatening. I discussed this already with the two
policemen who were here earlier today.”
“Mrs. Hahn said that Angela had hired a
private detective to uncover some information on your family, your
brother in particular.” He glanced at his notes and winced a
little. “I haven’t verified this yet, but according to Mrs. Hahn,
Angela said your brother was responsible for shooting several
people in a college in Evanston, Illinois.”
“Oh, shit,” Molly muttered angrily. She
rubbed her forehead. She could still see Angela sitting across from
her at their booth in the restaurant, a hand on her heart, so
sincere: “You should know, I haven’t told anyone
about your brother.”
She didn’t want to think ill of the
dead, but what a goddamn liar.
“Mrs. Dennehy?” the handsome cop asked,
leaning forward.
“Nothing,” Molly muttered. “Yes, that’s
true about my brother. He was mentally ill. He shot seven people in
a cafeteria at a community college in Evanston. Two of those people
died. Angela led me to believe she hadn’t shared that information
with anyone else.”
“Mrs. Hahn said you accused Angela of
breaking into her son’s school locker and—”
“Yes, yes, I did, I accused her of
that,” Molly said, nodding emphatically. “And I accused her of
smashing some pumpkins on our front stoop. I’m sure Lynette told
you about that, too. During our lunch together, Angela claimed she
didn’t do any of it. And I believed her. Though now, I’m not so
sure.”
Beside her, Jeff restlessly shifted on
the sofa. “I don’t understand the purpose of these
questions.”
“I’m just trying to verify what Mrs.
Hahn told me,” Blazevich said.
“Well, I’m verifying it,” Molly said
edgily. “And if Mrs. Hahn told you that Angela and I really didn’t
like each other, I’ll verify that, too.”
“What is this anyway?” Jeff asked
hotly. “Is my wife a suspect or something? Do you think she’s in
cahoots with the Cul-de-sac Killer?”
Chet Blazevich shook his head. “No, Mr.
Dennehy. I’m just trying to cover all the bases here. I didn’t mean
to upset you folks, especially after what you’ve been through
today. I just have one more question, and then I’ll be out of your
hair.”
“Go ahead,” Molly said with a
sigh.
He looked at Jeff. “Where were you when
you got the news about your ex-wife?”
Jeff hesitated.
Molly impatiently chimed in: “He’s been
in Washington, D.C., since Monday. He was staying at the Capital
Hilton. I already told that to the two policemen I spoke with this
afternoon.”
Nodding, the handsome cop quickly got
to his feet. “Well, thank you, Mr. Dennehy . . . Mrs. Dennehy. Once
again, I’m sorry to have intruded on you during this difficult
time.” He stuffed his pen and notebook inside his jacket
pocket.
Molly walked him to the door. “It
sounds crazy, but should I be worried? Do the police really think I
had anything to do with—”
“No, not at all,” he assured her. “Like
I say, I’m just following up on things.”
Molly nodded, and opened the door for
him. “Well, I apologize if I got a little snippy. It’s been a long,
tough day, and I’m a bit on edge. You’re just doing your
job.”
“You shouldn’t apologize,” Blazevich
said with a kind smile.
“You’re damn right she shouldn’t
apologize,” Jeff said, standing behind her.
Chet Blazevich nodded at him
sheepishly. Then he turned and retreated down the
walkway.
The November night air was chilly, but
Molly remained in the doorway with her arms folded. Behind her,
Jeff put his hands on her shoulders. She reached up and took hold
of his hand. “You know, his last question reminded me of
something,” she said. “It’s weird, but this morning, when you
didn’t pick up on your cell right away, I phoned the Capital
Hilton. The operator said you weren’t registered
there.”
“Oh, I should have let you know, this
thing was at the other Hilton,” Jeff said.
“Well, I’ve told the police you were at
the Capital Hilton. You better let them know I had it wrong.” She
sighed. “That’s all we need, one more thing to make us look
suspicious.”
Jeff gave her shoulders a squeeze.
“Like Blazevich said, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. C’mon,
let’s get inside. You’ll catch your death standing
here.”
“In a minute,” Molly murmured. She
lingered in the doorway while Jeff headed toward the
kitchen.
A cool breeze whipped through her, and
she shuddered. Rubbing her arms, Molly watched the cop walk down
the darkened cul-de-sac to his Toyota Camry. It was parked in front
of Lynette’s house.
There was room for only one car in his
two-car garage. Every time he opened the big, automatic door, his
neighbors probably caught a glimpse of the storage unit he’d built
in there. One half of his garage had been boarded up from floor to
ceiling. The reinforced, unpainted thick sheets of wood created
another room—accessible through a thick door that had a padlock on
it.
He’d made the most of the small space,
creating a maze of closets and cabinets—most of them with padlocks
on the doors. In one closet, he had jumpsuits and uniforms of every
kind: janitor, paramedic, cable service, pest-control service, UPS
delivery, and mailman—to name a few. There was also a cabinet
exclusively dedicated to holding coils of rope, and duct
tape—though lately, he’d come to rely on torn-up bedsheets in lieu
of rope. Watching people rip apart the sheets from their linen
closets to make their own restraints had become an important part
of the ritual for him.
One door, which looked as if it led to
another closet, merely opened up to a wooden wall. On the wall he’d
displayed several NO OUTLET and
DEAD END signs. He’d hammered nails into
that wooden wall, carefully spacing them like brackets so they held
up the signs. He didn’t want any glue or tape compromising the
integrity of his trophies. Beneath each sign, he’d written in black
laundry marker the dead-end street from which he’d taken it, the
cul-de-sac where he’d cleaned a house, as he
liked to think of it. He knew it was risky to hold on to such hard
evidence, but he was sentimental.
Beneath the most recent NO OUTLET sign, he’d printed in block letters:
LAUREL LANE.
He didn’t have a dead-end sign from
Alder Court in Bellevue.
That was because he’d never set foot on
Alder Court in Bellevue. He didn’t kill those people. It was staged
to look like one of his killings. The person who had killed Angela
Dennehy, Larry Keegan, and his daughter Taylor may have slit their
throats, stuffed each body into a closet, left all the lights on,
and stolen the NO OUTLET sign at the end of
Alder Court. But it wasn’t a cul-de-sac killing. The murderer of
those three people had another agenda.
Could it be he’d had a personal or
professional grudge against one of his victims?
According to all the early news
stories, Larry Keegan had been divorced for four years, and his
ex-wife, who had since remarried, was devastated by the news. His
business associates spoke very highly of him, too.
That left Angela Dennehy. He couldn’t
help thinking that someone wanted her dead, and then made it look
like a cul-de-sac killing. Perhaps Larry and Taylor were just
collateral damage.
The hinges squeaked as he closed the
door to his makeshift trophy case.
As far as he could tell, the police
hadn’t yet figured out that the Alder Court murders were the work
of a copycat. Right now, he was the only one who knew—along with
the real murderer, of course.
Frowning, he put the padlock back on
the door to his trophy case. He wasn’t happy someone had decided to
imitate him.
He’d have to do something about
that.