CHAPTER NINETEEN
Molly wasn’t thinking when she answered
her cell phone.
Since Angela’s murder, she’d been
screening nearly all incoming calls on the house line. But this
call had come in at eight-thirty that night, and she was dead
tired. With some help from Jeff, Chris, and Elvis, she’d cleaned up
most of the mess from the party.
She was trying to pay bills online in
Jeff’s study but kept nodding off in front of the monitor. She had
her cell phone on his desk, so when it rang, it startled her. She
grabbed it and switched it on: “Yes, hello?”
“Mrs. Dennehy?” It was a woman on the
other end of the line. Her voice sounded raspy, almost demented in
the singsong way she talked.
Molly quickly took the cell phone away
from her ear and glanced at the caller ID box. The number was
blocked.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Mrs. Dennehy, ask your husband where
he was when his ex-wife was murdered.”
Then there was a click.
Molly stared at the phone in her hand.
She knew it was the same woman who had called last week.
“Ask him where he really was,” had been the
message. This time, the woman was less cryptic.
Chances were pretty good the same woman
had phoned Angela and threatened her. Maybe she’d also tipped off
the police regarding Jeremy Hahn’s clandestine activities,
too.
The scary thing about it was this woman
had known something about Lynette’s husband that even Lynette
didn’t know. What did she have on Jeff?
Molly got to her feet and wandered into
the family room. Jeff was asleep in his easy chair in front of a
reality show on TV. It had been a long, grueling day for everyone,
and she didn’t want to wake him and grill him about where he’d been
on the night of Angela’s murder.
Molly remembered the mixup about which
Washington, D.C., Hilton Jeff had stayed at that week. He said he
hadn’t been at the Capital Hilton that trip, but at another Hilton
hotel.
Retreating back to Jeff’s study, she
went on the Internet to refresh her memory about the three other
Hilton hotels in Washington, D.C. She called the Washington Hilton
in Dupont Circle and got the operator.
“Hi, I’m not sure if I have the right
Washington Hilton,” Molly said. “But my husband was staying at a
Hilton last week. He checked out Wednesday morning. He thinks he
left his iPod in his room. I’m trying to track it down. Could you
check if I have the right Hilton? His name is Dennehy, Jeffrey.”
She spelled it, and waited.
She knew the business, and hotel clerks
sometimes got calls like this from wives, trying to get the goods
on cheating husbands. If the clerks were smart and discreet enough,
they often came back with, “We’re sorry, we can’t give out that
kind of information.” But most of the time, the hotel clerk really
didn’t give a damn if they were getting some cheating spouse in
trouble.
“Mrs. Dennehy?” the clerk said after a
minute. “I’m sorry, but we have no record of Jeffrey Dennehy
staying here last week. You might try the Capital Hilton on
Sixteenth.”
“I will,” Molly said. “Thank you.” Then
she clicked off.
The Capital Hilton wasn’t where Jeff
had been staying. She knew that much. So Molly called the Hilton
Washington Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue, and the Hilton
Garden Inn on Fourteenth Street Northwest. She gave them the same
story and got the same answer.
Jeff wasn’t staying at any of the
Hilton Hotels in Washington, D.C., on the night of Angela’s
death.
Molly kept thinking about that woman
with the raspy voice.
Ask him where he really
was.
She waited until morning to ask
him.
Jeff had finished with his shower, and
he was shaving in front of the mirror with a towel around his
waist. Her arms folded, Molly stood in the bathroom doorway in her
nightgown. She studied his reflection in the steamy mirror. He kept
wiping it with his hand every few moments. He still had shaving
cream on one side of his jaw and on his neck.
“I was at the Hilton on Dupont Circle,”
he said, eying her in the mirror for a moment. He worked the safety
razor under his chin. “They just don’t give out information like
that. Jesus, Molly, I can’t believe you called all the Hiltons in
D.C. Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Because I think you’re covering
something up—something really horrible,” she admitted.
His reflection gazed back at her with a
raised eyebrow. “Like what? Don’t tell me you think I killed
Angela. . . .”
“No, but the police might think that,”
she replied steadily, “especially if they realize you’re lying
about where you were that night. Jeff, what’s to keep this woman
from calling the police and saying to them what she said to
me?”
He nicked himself. Blood oozed from the
cut along his left jaw. “Oh, crap, now look what you’ve made me
do,” he grumbled. He plucked a Kleenex from the dispenser on the
counter and dabbed it on the cut. “Here we go with that whack-job
woman caller again. I told you that we’d get some crank
calls—”
“Jeff, Angela was getting calls the
week before she was killed—from a woman, telling her that she was
going to pay for what she did.”
“Well, what the hell is that supposed
to mean?” Jeff countered, dabbing the cut again. “What exactly did
Angela do? Are you telling me this crazy woman caller is somehow
working with the Cul-de-sac Killer?”
Molly hesitated. She didn’t know how to
answer him.
“You told me yourself that Angela lied
to you during that lunch. Didn’t she give you some song and dance
about not telling anyone about your brother?”
“Well, maybe not everything she said
was a lie,” Molly murmured.
He washed off his face, grabbed another
Kleenex, tore off a piece, and applied it to his cut. “Listen,
Molly.” He sighed, pat-drying his face. “Do me a favor and screen
all your calls from now on. You’re letting this nutcase get to you,
and I’m sorry, honey, but I don’t need this shit, not
now.”
Molly stepped aside as he brushed past
her in the bathroom doorway. He whipped off his towel and tossed it
on the bed. After pulling a clean pair of boxer shorts from his
dresser, he slammed the drawer shut. He stepped into the shorts and
let the elastic banding go snap against his torso as he finished
putting them on. “Yesterday, I buried the mother of my children,
and now I have to schlep my ass to work. Can we cease and desist
with all the questions? I wouldn’t have told the police I was at
the Hilton in D.C. if I wasn’t really there. They seemed to believe
me. Why the hell can’t you?”
Molly opened her mouth to speak but
hesitated. She retrieved her robe from the foot of their bed and
put it on. “I’ll go start the coffee and make sure the kids are
up.” She sighed. Then she headed out of the bedroom.
It was strange to see Courtney behind
the wheel of her Neon without an iPhone in her hand.
Chris had been surprised to hear her
car horn honking this morning. He’d figured after her father’s
arrest yesterday afternoon, she wouldn’t be showing her face at
school today. But there she was, waiting in the driveway for
him.
“I know everybody will be gossiping
about me,” she muttered, pulling out of the cul-de-sac. “I was
going to stay home for a day or two, but then I figured I might as
well go to school and get it over with. Plus my mother’s driving me
crazy. I’m ready to kill her.”
Courtney may have texted and Twittered
up a storm at his mom’s funeral, but her family’s public
humiliation had shut down all communications since yesterday
afternoon. Courtney’s last Facebook update had been two nights ago.
She was very subdued today. She wore a black pullover sweater and
jeans, and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It looked
like she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. Chris kind of liked her
better without it.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” he said,
slouching in the passenger seat. “Must have been a real shock for
you. That’s a raw deal.”
“I wasn’t too shocked,” she said, eying
the road ahead. “I mean, he never did anything weird with me,
nothing I remember, at least. Still, I’ve always suspected my
father had a—a thing for young girls. But it was just too creepy
for me to even think about. I didn’t tell anybody—except Mr.
Corson.” She glanced at him briefly. “Can I confess something to
you? I was kind of jealous of what you and Mr. Corson had. I could
have used a—a regular father figure. I was kind of hoping Mr.
Corson would pay more attention to me if I dug deep and told him
something really, really personal like that. Then again, I guess we
all spilled our guts to him, didn’t we?”
“I wouldn’t mind having Mr. Corson to
lean on right now,” Chris said—almost under his
breath.
If Courtney heard him, she didn’t say
anything.
They approached a stoplight. Courtney
came to a stop, and she let out a long sigh. “Well, I guess between
your mom getting murdered and my dad getting arrested, you and I
are going to be the focus of attention at school
today.”
Chris smiled sadly. “You usually like
being the center of attention,” he remarked.
“Not this time, Chris,” she replied.
“Not this time.”
“You can’t rush genius,” he said. “This
is a very delicate operation.”
The arrogant punk was in his late
twenties and went by the name Wolf. He had short, buzz-cut black
hair—except for his long bangs, which fell over one side of his
face. She’d given up counting how many piercings he had besides the
big hole in his stretched-out right earlobe. There were rings in
his lip, his eyebrow, his nostril—and probably a lot more below the
neck. He wore a ratty gray jacket that had YOU
SUCK stenciled on the back.
Even if they weren’t conspiring to
commit murder right now, she wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with
him. Driving together to James Monroe High School, she’d barely
tolerated his wretched body odor and his blasting heavy-metal music
on her car radio. She kept reminding herself that Wolf had come
highly recommended.
She made him turn off the radio once
she’d parked the car near the high school’s playfield. A bunch of
boys in their school sweats were playing soccer. She could hear
them grunting, yelling, and laughing. Every few minutes, the coach
blew his whistle. Stepping out of the car, she instructed Wolf to
stay put and leave the radio off. They didn’t want to call
attention to themselves.
By now, she’d become very skilled at
maintaining a low profile. She was pretty certain no one had
noticed her in the girls’ locker room earlier. But she’d noticed
Courtney Hahn—and the location of Courtney’s locker.
Almost two weeks before, she’d managed
to cut the padlock off Chris Dennehy’s locker in about forty
seconds. With the same pair of fourteen-inch bolt cutters, she’d
had Courtney’s locker door open in twenty-five
seconds.
But it seemed to take Wolf forever to
fulfill his part of the plan. He sat in the passenger seat of her
car with a tray in his lap, working on the iPhone, which she’d
removed from Courtney’s purse. With the precision pliers and a
tiny-head screwdriver from his tool kit, he manipulated some wires
and charges, which he set inside Courtney’s cell phone. He seemed
to know what he was doing. Every once in a while, he’d brush the
bangs away from his face and pull out one of those jeweler monocles
and check on the progress of his work.
Sitting behind the wheel of the parked
car, she studied the little patch of black fabric she’d cut from
the bottom of Courtney’s pullover. She figured Courtney wouldn’t
notice. And if she did, there wouldn’t be much time or opportunity
to tell anyone about it before she was dead—or at least, severely
maimed.
She carefully folded up the cutting and
slipped it inside a plastic bag. She’d already bought a little
blond doll that resembled Courtney.
With a sigh, she glanced at her
wristwatch. “I know I ‘can’t rush genius,’ ” she said. “But I need
to return that phone to her locker in five minutes. If that doesn’t
happen, you don’t get paid, genius.”
He had it finished in two minutes.
“Done,” he said, handing her the cell phone.
She studied the phone, felt its weight
in her hand. She’d seen how tiny the charges were, and couldn’t
help wondering out loud. “Will there really be that much
damage?”
Wolf started putting his instruments
away in his little kit. He nodded distractedly. “When she presses
the Talk button, I wouldn’t be surprised if she blows her hand off,
maybe even part of her arm. And if she’s holding the phone anywhere
near her head—well, let’s just say, it’s not going to be pretty.
We’re talking closed casket here.”
Leaving him behind in the car, she
stashed Courtney’s cell in her coat pocket and started back into
the sports wing of James Monroe High School. She paused at the
double doors to the smaller gym, where Courtney was playing
volleyball. She peeked through the windows—with criss-crossed
chicken wire—in the doors.
Her blond hair pulled back in a
ponytail, Courtney was looking pretty, bored, and a bit forlorn as
she sat on the sidelines in her pale blue gym uniform. About a
dozen other girls shared the bench with her while the two teams
scrimmaged on the court. One of the girls near the net kept
yelling: “Set it up! Set it
up!”
The woman moved on, heading toward the
girls’ locker room. She thought about how much damage Courtney had
done to her former guidance counselor with all the talking, texting
and Twittering she’d done on her iPhone.
She couldn’t help thinking,
Live by the sword, die by the
sword.
Courtney had only played the last five
minutes of gym period, but for that brief interlude, she’d
forgotten all about her father’s arrest. She’d forgotten about the
kids at school today, looking at her and whispering to each
other.
She’d spiked two balls over the net,
and her team had won.
She was still on a high about it as she
headed into the locker room with the other girls. Their laughter
and chatter echoed off the tiled walls. Rounding the corner to her
locker row, she started to unbutton her gym uniform.
Then Courtney saw her locker and
stopped dead.
Considering the day she’d had so far,
she should have been expecting something like this. She should have
figured some asshole might want to rip her off or just screw around
with her head—now that she was feeling so vulnerable.
“Damn it,” Courtney hissed, taking the
broken padlock off the locker handle.
She quickly opened her locker,
wondering what had been stolen. But all her clothes were there,
along with her shoes and her purse. She reached inside the purse
and found her iPhone—and her wallet. The money was still in the
wallet.
She wondered if some narc in school
administration had decided to search her locker for drugs—now that
her dad was a known cocaine user. Maybe that was what had
happened.
Courtney quickly shoved her wallet back
in her purse. But she held on to her cell phone. She wanted to call
her friend, Cindy, and tell her what happened. Maybe Cindy already
knew something about this. After all, no one could keep a secret
around this crummy school.
The phone suddenly vibrated in her
hand, giving her a start.
The caller ID lit up: Incoming Call:
Blocked Number. Courtney decided to answer it anyway. Maybe it was
the asshole who had broken into her locker.
“No cell phone use in the locker room,
Courtney!” chided one of her classmates. “Can’t you see all the
signs, stupid?”
It was that tall, obnoxious Monica
Beller, thinking she was so cool with her long black hair and her
big tits. Courtney couldn’t stand her. Naked, Monica sauntered by
on her way to the showers. Monica’s friend, brown-haired and skinny
Doreen Rustin, walked alongside her, wrapped in a
towel.
Courtney hesitated, then threw her
vibrating phone into her purse. She flipped Monica and Doreen the
bird, but they didn’t notice. “She’s probably going to use the
phone to take our pictures so she can give them to her father the
pedophile,” Monica was saying.
Doreen giggled.
Courtney decided not to take a shower.
She’d barely broken a sweat for the few minutes she’d played
volleyball. So she just applied some deodorant and got dressed. As
she pulled her black sweater over her head, she noticed a small
square patch cut out along the bottom. She hadn’t noticed it
earlier. Had her pullover come back from the cleaners like
that?
“Oh, screw it,” Courtney muttered. She
finished dressing. Maybe she shouldn’t have come to school today,
after all.
In the hallway, she took out her phone
again but then decided she didn’t want to talk to anyone right now.
She didn’t even want to check if that caller with the blocked
number had left a message. Shoving her phone back into her purse,
she stuffed her knapsack full of gym clothes in her regular locker
and then headed to Mr. Florian’s world history class.
But walking down the hallway and then
sitting there in that boring class, Courtney couldn’t ignore so
many of her classmates who stared at her, whispered to each other,
and giggled. She tried to hold her head up and act above it all.
But she just wanted to go home and lock herself in her room. The
only good part of today had been driving to school with
Chris.
He understood what it was like to be
the unwilling subject of everyone’s gossip. He was going through it
now, the week after his mother’s murder; and he’d been through it
last year, after the scandal with Corson.
She remembered her mother talking last
week about someone breaking into Chris’s locker. She hadn’t paid
much attention to what her mother was saying. She hadn’t been very
interested at the time. But now she was.
She heard her phone vibrating against
something in her purse. She involuntarily went to reach for it to
see who was calling. But Mr. Florian looked over the rims of his
glasses at her, and she froze. She’d let it go to
message.
She really didn’t want to talk to
anybody right now anyway—except for maybe Chris.
Courtney waited for class to end. As
soon as she stepped out to the hallway, she reached inside her
purse and took out her cell. Someone in the crowded hallway bumped
into her, and she almost dropped the phone. “Hey, watch it,” she
muttered, looking up.
She noticed Chris. He was on the other
side of the busy corridor, walking away. Courtney quickly zigzagged
through the crowd. “Hey, Chris!” she called.
He turned and gave her a dazed half
smile. “Hey . . .”
She still had her cell phone in her
hand. “I was just going to call you,” she said—over all the banter
and banging locker doors. “Listen, I can’t stand to be here another
minute. Let’s get out of here. Let’s ditch the rest of our classes
and just go someplace where we can be alone.”
Chris looked stumped for a moment.
“Courtney, I’d love to, but really, I can’t. I missed so many
classes last week, because of my mom. I can’t just take off. Plus I
told Elvis I’d get together with him after school.”
She pouted. “But I really need to talk
to you. It’s important.” She handed him her cell phone. “Here, call
Elvis and tell him you can’t make it. He’ll
understand.”
Chris looked at the phone in his hand
and hesitated.
“C’mon,” she insisted, stroking his
arm. “You’re the only person I want to be with right now. I
absolutely hate everybody else. I really need you, Chris. . .
.”
Chris’s thumb hovered over the Talk
button.
“Plus you owe me,” she continued. “I
was there for you after your Mom got killed. Remember, I came
over?” She tugged at his arm. “Just call him. You can see him later
tonight.”
Chris glanced at the phone again. But
then he shook his head and gave the phone back to her. “Tell you
what,” he said. “I’ll meet you after school, and we can hang out.
I’m seeing Elvis next period anyway. I’ll tell him we can get
together another time.”
The phone vibrated in her hand.
Courtney checked the caller ID. The blocked number again. She
tossed the phone in her purse and then smiled at Chris. “Okay, then
I’ll just drive around until school’s out, and I’ll pick you up in
front of the music building.” It was where they used to meet after
school while they’d been dating those few weeks.
She got on her tiptoes and gave him a
kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Chris.”
Blushing, he gave her a shy smile and
said good-bye.
After that, it was easy to ignore the
people in the hallways talking behind her back. She no longer felt
like a freak. Chris made her feel important again. He’d had the
same effect on her last year after she’d been dumped by Shane
White. Chris was so good for her ego.
She decided to kill the next two hours
at Northgate Mall. According to her mom, they’d have to start
pinching pennies, because her father would certainly lose his job.
So—this might be her last chance to go on a shopping
bender.
In her car, when she hit the first
traffic light, Courtney came to a stop and fished her iPhone out of
her purse. She switched the phone back to the ring setting. Then
the light changed. She noticed a cop car parked on the other side
of the street—near the intersection. She put the iPhone down on the
passenger seat. She didn’t want to get a fine for using her cell
phone while driving.
For the time being, Courtney focused
her attention on the road ahead. She was still in a residential
area near the school—with tree-lined parkways on either side of the
road. She had about five more stoplights to go until the on-ramp to
Interstate 5. She picked up a little speed—and sailed through one
of those lights.
Her cell phone rang.
Blindly, she reached over and grabbed
it. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she didn’t see any police
cars. She checked the caller ID. That stupid blocked number again.
“Goddamn it, leave me alone, asshole,” she muttered over the
ringing.
Courtney decided she’d tell them just
that.
The speedometer on her dashboard read
37 MPH.
She brought the cell up toward her face
and pressed the Talk button.
All at once, the phone exploded in her
hand. All at once, her face was on fire.
Courtney shrieked. But she couldn’t
even hear her own screams. The deafening blast incinerated her
right ear. In the ear that remained, she heard only a high-pitched
ringing—almost like the phone.
She choked on the smoke—and the smell
of her own burning flesh. Blinded, Courtney couldn’t see that she
was careening toward a large maple tree. The pain was so
excruciating, she just wanted to die.
When the Neon slammed into the tree,
Courtney didn’t hear the glass shattering and metal twisting. She
didn’t hear the car horn blare from the impact. All she heard was
that constant ringing.
The air bag deployed and hit her in the
face—like a hard punch with a big pillow.
It was the last thing she felt before
she lost consciousness.
In her last thought, Courtney hoped to
God she would never wake up.