CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
She kept thinking if only she could
crawl out of bed, do a few household chores—and concentrate on that
for a while—then maybe she could get through the day. Maybe she’d
start to feel normal again.
For the last two days, she’d been
severely ill and bedridden. It had started on Friday night, while
she and Rachel had been waiting for Jeff to return home. “I think
you’re literally worrying yourself sick,” Rachel said, offering her
peppermints. Rachel swore by them, but they didn’t seem to
help.
They’d had a false alarm when a car had
come down the cul-de-sac at 10:45. But it had been another one of
Natalie’s gentlemen callers. By 11:30, Chris had become concerned
about his dad, too. They called the police—and the hospitals. The
three of them kept a vigil. But as the night wore on, Molly got
sicker and sicker. She threw up four times.
Exhausted and depleted, she finally
fell asleep under a blanket on the family room sofa at 3:45 that
night. Chris had nodded off in his dad’s easy chair while tuned in
to the Syfy Channel on TV. Molly couldn’t quite remember when
they’d sent Rachel home.
In the morning, Molly felt so horrible
she thought something might be wrong with the baby. Rachel came
over and drove her to the doctor’s office. Since it was Saturday,
Molly’s doctor wasn’t there, but one of his colleagues was. Molly
got in to see him, and threw up twice in his office. He ordered bed
rest and prescribed over-the-counter ginger capsules to combat the
morning sickness. Rachel picked up the pills for her.
She was so weak and dizzy by the time
they got home that Chris and Rachel had to help her upstairs to the
bedroom. When she finally got to bed, Molly didn’t so much fall
asleep as she passed out. She woke up to the sound of Erin
screaming—the same agonizing shrieks Erin had let out when she’d
learned her mother was dead.
Then Molly knew.
She was already weeping by the time
Chris came to her room and told her about the call from the police.
His eyes were red and his face looked blotchy from crying. When he
told her they found his father dead in a hotel room at the Marriott
by the airport, Molly tried to get up, but she was too frail. She
reached up to Chris, and he took her hand for a few moments. She
was hoping he would hug her, but he didn’t. At least he held her
hand.
Over the next two days, she kept
telling Rachel, “I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t
here.”
From her bed, Molly made the funeral
arrangements—in the same kind of dazed sleepwalker’s manner that
she’d set up Charlie’s service three years ago. But Rachel did most
of the legwork. Rachel also looked after the kids. And Rachel
backed her up when Molly tried to convince Chet Blazevich that Jeff
had been murdered.
She’d phoned him on Sunday, and Chet
said he’d drop by that afternoon. Rachel let him in and showed him
up to the bedroom. For a moment, Molly thought about how horrible
she looked and how the room must smell like vomit—and here this guy
had a crush on her, or at least, he used to. But she really didn’t
care.
Still. Chet looked handsome in a V-neck
sweater, a tie, and corduroys. He stood a few steps inside the
doorway. Rachel sat down at the end of the bed.
Jeff’s death wasn’t his case, but Chet
told her how much he knew. “Your husband checked into the hotel
alone,” he said somberly, looking more at the bedroom floor than at
her. “But it’s very possible he called someone later to join him.
Unfortunately, an ice bucket spilled on his cell phone, and shorted
it out. So we’re going through his service provider to see if we
can get a record of his calls that day. . . .”
Molly shook her head. “They’ll find
some number that’s no longer in service or it’s one of those phones
you can throw away.” She struggled to sit up in bed. “This woman
who’s doing all this, she’s very careful and clever. Every time
she’s called me, the number’s been blocked. I’m sure she was with
him yesterday. It’s probably the same woman he was seeing that time
in Vancouver. I—I know about Vancouver. I know he wasn’t in
Washington, D.C., when Angela was killed. This woman was with him
then. I can tell from the prices of the meals he paid for in
Vancouver. Those are meals for two people. She was with Jeff then,
and she was with him yesterday. She’s the one who murdered
him.”
Chet nervously cleared his throat. “We
talked to several employees at the Marriott, and nobody saw him
with anyone else. It appears your husband died from ingesting a
lethal combination of ecstasy-laced alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.
They didn’t see anything to indicate force was used in any
way—though the ecstasy in the alcohol raised a few eyebrows. Not
many people would take ecstasy that way, but it’s not totally
unheard of. And the hotel records show your husband logged in four
hours on the pay-TV’s adult channel.”
“He was set up,” Molly argued, tears in
her eyes. “She thought it all out ahead of time. I know that sounds
crazy and paranoid. But I also know Jeff. He didn’t take drugs.
This woman—she’s the same one who’s been causing all these
accidents to people on this block—she killed Jeff. And she killed
Angela, along with Larry and Taylor. I think she may have killed
Kay, too.”
“Mrs. Dennehy,” he said. “How could she
have killed those three people on Alder Court at the same time you
say she was with your husband in Vancouver?”
“She—she—must have an accomplice, or
someone working for her,” Molly said, feeling nauseous. “She
planned this all very carefully. . . .”
“You have to admit, Detective,” Rachel
chimed in. “In just two weeks there have been an unusual amount of
accidents and deaths associated with this block. I mean, really,
what are the odds? Two deaths, and a near-fatal car wreck, an
arrest, and a lot of little things, too—my toolshed was set on fire
last week, and three children on this block were badly cut playing
in a vacant lot that just happened to be sprinkled with broken
glass. I think Molly has every reason to question the notion that
Jeff’s death was an accidental overdose.”
“Jeff didn’t even smoke pot,” Molly
said, rubbing her forehead with a shaky hand. “So I don’t think
he’d be taking ecstasy and cocaine and heroin. . . .”
“Mrs. Dennehy . . . Molly,” Chet said.
“Please forgive me, but you say you know your husband didn’t take
drugs. Two weeks ago, did you know your husband was seeing other
women? I mean, how well did you really know him?”
Molly began to cry. Jeff wasn’t much
better than Jeremy Hahn. They were both discovered in a hotel room
after some illicit sexual assignation, surrounded by drugs and
porn. At least Jeremy was still alive.
Couldn’t the police see what was
happening? How could they tally everything up and still call it a
coincidence or just bad luck?
The TV news coverage of Jeff’s death
made him look like a sleazy character. How couldn’t it? In the same
broadcast, it was reported that police believed the murders of
Jeff’s ex-wife, her partner, and his daughter might not have been
the work of the cul-de-sac killer, but rather a copycat. Hearing
that, people certainly had to figure Jeff was somehow involved in
the slayings.
His only alibi was that he was screwing
some woman in Vancouver at the time.
Molly was sick in front of Chet
Blazevich. Fortunately, Rachel got the wastebasket to her in time.
While Rachel cleaned out the wastebasket, Molly drank a little
water, but she still didn’t feel any better. “I’m sorry,” she
muttered feebly to Chet. “It’s been—it’s been like an Exorcist marathon here lately.”
“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked
gently. “You look like you belong in the E.R.”
“I’m pregnant,” she admitted quietly.
“I saw a doctor yesterday morning. I’m not sure how much of this is
morning sickness, and how much of it is stress. Anyway, the kids
don’t know yet about the baby. Jeff didn’t know, either. I never
got a chance to tell him. . . .” She started to cry again. She
couldn’t help it. All her defenses were down, and she felt so
horrible.
Before leaving, Chet reminded her that
Jeff’s death was still under investigation. But Molly knew he’d
probably chalked up everything she’d said as the paranoid ramblings
of a sickly, hormonal, pregnant woman—just made a
widow.
She felt so frustrated and useless.
Poor Chris had to drive by himself to the coroner’s office and
identify his father’s remains. And Erin couldn’t take much comfort
in a stepmother who was bedridden, groggy, and throwing up every
few hours. For both of them, more than anything, she wanted to
climb out of bed and be strong again. Rachel and Trish were there
on and off, but Molly couldn’t help feeling she’d let down Chris
and Erin just when they’d needed her the most.
She wanted so much to call her mother.
She missed her. And it would have helped to know if this severe
morning sickness was something hereditary. Rachel was just about as
far along in her pregnancy, and she admitted to feeling nauseous a
lot of the time. But it didn’t seem to slow her down.
That Monday morning, the day before
Jeff’s funeral, Molly told herself she had to get up no matter how
awful she felt. The ginger capsules didn’t seem to do any good—in
fact, they only made her sicker and groggier. So Molly decided not
to take any. At 6:45, before anyone else woke up, she crawled out
of bed, opened the window, and took several, deep fortifying
breaths of the cold November air. Leaning on the banister, she
managed to get downstairs to the kitchen, where she found a Sprite
in the refrigerator and some deli ham. She made herself a cold ham
and Swiss sandwich and gobbled it up at the breakfast
table.
Outside, it was still dark. Inside, the
house was quiet. For a few minutes, she managed to convince herself
it was one of those mornings when Jeff was on a business trip, and
the kids weren’t awake yet—and she had a few quiet moments before
the morning rush to school.
To her amazement, she kept the food
down. She was still a bit frail and once again relied on the
banister for her slow ascent back up the stairs. She had every
intention of making her bed, but she crawled under the covers again
for a moment—and fell asleep.
The next thing she knew, her nightstand
digital clock read 11:23 A.M ., and she could hear the TV on in the
family room. Molly forced herself to get up. A shower was too much
of a commitment—even with her hair limp and greasy. She washed her
face, put on a sweater and jeans, and then made her
bed.
Down the hall, she checked Erin’s room
to see if the bed was made. It wasn’t, and clothes were strewn on
the floor. She’d do a load of wash. It wasn’t much, but she was
taking baby steps. She gathered up Erin’s clothes, then paused and
sat down in Angela’s rocker with Erin’s dirty clothes in her lap.
Molly noticed yellow paint on the long sleeve of Erin’s pink
pullover. There was a yellow smudge on her jeans, too.
Molly could see the shade of yellow
wasn’t from Erin’s limited watercolor collection. It was artists’
oil paint, probably Naples Light Yellow. A six-ounce tube cost
eighty-two dollars, plus tax.
She could see a few yellow stains on
Erin’s door, too. Molly shook her head. “Damn it,” she murmured.
Erin knew she wasn’t allowed up in the studio by herself, and using
Molly’s paints was strictly verboten.
Molly got to her feet, and Erin’s dirty
clothes fell from her lap to the floor. She stepped over them on
her way to the hall. She noticed a pale yellow paint smudge by the
knob of the attic door. Molly opened the door and told herself she
couldn’t be mad at Erin, not now. For all she knew, maybe Erin had
painted her a Get Well picture. She’d done that for her before,
when she’d had the flu last January. But Erin had used her own
paints then.
Molly climbed the stairs to her art
studio and felt a bit dizzy by the time she reached the top.
Catching her breath, she glanced around. Just past the easel and
the back of her latest project—the cola ad—she spotted the tube of
Naples Light Yellow. It was on the stool that usually held her
water glass, soda, or coffee while she worked. The cap was off, and
some of the paint had oozed out of the tube. She saw a thin
paintbrush on the floor.
“Oh, Erin, for God’s sake,” she said
under her breath. She moved toward the easel to clean up after her.
That was when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Molly
swiveled around and stared at her painting of the twenty partygoers
through the ages drinking cola—and the yellow X slashed across
it.
“Oh, no!” she cried, a hand over her
mouth. She automatically turned away—toward the bookcase. Then she
realized her painting wasn’t the only thing that had been destroyed
up here. On one shelf, blotches of yellow paint haphazardly ran
across several of the elephant figurines. A few of the glass and
china ones had been smashed with a putty knife that lay on the
floor among the broken shards.
“No, no, no,” Molly sobbed. “God, how
could she?” Some of those elephants had belonged to
Charlie.
She staggered down the two flights of
stairs to the family room, where Erin was in her pajamas, sprawled
on the sofa, snacking on a Fruit Roll-Up and watching a cartoon on
TV. “My God, Erin, why?” she asked, out of breath and half crying.
“Why in the world would you do that?”
“Do what?” Erin sat up. “I didn’t do
anything!”
“You ruined my painting!” Molly cried.
“You know how hard I’ve worked on that. I’ve spent hours and hours
on it—”
“I did not!” Erin screamed. “I didn’t
do anything to your dumb old painting!”
“And you destroyed a whole shelf full
of my elephants! Are you going to deny that, too? Why would you do
something so hurtful? Are you mad at me? Is that it? You know
you’re not allowed up in my studio, and yet you went up there
and—”
“I didn’t go up there! I didn’t do
anything!” Tears in her eyes, Erin glared up at her.
Molly felt a wave of nausea, and she
took a deep breath. She plopped down in the cushioned chair beside
her. “Okay, I—I understand you’re very upset,” she said in a shaky
voice. “And I realize you might be angry at me because I’ve been so
sick lately—or maybe you somehow blame me for what happened to your
dad. Whatever it is, we can talk about it. But first, you need to
own up to what you did. Now, don’t lie to me, Erin. You went up to
my studio. You broke some elephants, then you took a tube of yellow
paint and you painted a big X—”
“I did not!” Erin shrieked, jumping up
from the sofa. She threw down her Fruit Roll-Up. “You’re the liar!
I didn’t do anything to your stupid painting! I hate you, I hate
you!” Crying, she ran out of the room and charged up the
stairs.
“What the hell was that all
about?”
Molly turned and saw Chris had come up
from the basement. She heard Erin’s bedroom door upstairs slam
shut. She rubbed her eyes. “Your sister decided to touch up the
painting I’ve been working on for the last two weeks,” she said. “I
guess she has some unresolved anger toward me—though I guess she
figured out a way to resolve it. Go on up and take a look. My
painting’s ruined. She also destroyed about a dozen of my
elephants. Some of those I’ve had since I was her age.” Molly found
a Kleenex in the pocket of her jeans, and she blew her nose. “I’m
sorry I’ve been so ill the last two days. I can’t help that. I know
how you and Erin must feel. This is a time when you’ve really
needed me to step up to the plate. And I’ve let you down. I
understand if you’re angry and confused. . . .”
Half a room away, Chris shoved his
hands in his pockets and leaned against the kitchen counter. “It’s
okay,” he said, frowning.
She shook her head. “No, it’s not okay.
You’re upset with me, too. I can tell, just by looking at you. You
don’t even want to come near me. Talk about unresolved anger. . .
.” She blew her nose again. The tissue started to fall apart in her
hands. “You know, I have some anger issues, too,” she admitted.
“I’m so mad at your father right now. He was a good man, and he
loved you and Erin very much. But he—he made some foolish decisions
as far as women were concerned. I guess you heard enough about that
from your mother. But I can’t help being mad at him for letting
this woman—whoever she is—set him up that way. I don’t care what
the police say, or what you hear on the news, he was not in that
hotel room alone.”
Chris nodded. “Yeah, I heard you
talking to that cop yesterday, the one you seem to know so
well.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she
asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing, forget it.” He
started to turn toward the basement again.
“No, I won’t forget it,” Molly
retorted, unsteadily getting to her feet. “And you can’t just say
something like that, and then leave the room. . . .”
Stopping, Chris turned around and
frowned at her.
“If you’re insinuating that anything at
all has gone on between Detective Blazevich and me, you’re way off.
And if you’re trying to blame me—or—or justify why your father . .
.”
Molly couldn’t finish. She felt sick to
her stomach. She shook her head and retreated for the stairs. She
made it up to the master bathroom, where she sat on the floor by
the toilet until the nausea passed. Then she staggered back to bed
and climbed under the covers.
She wished she’d never gotten
up.
Chris stared at the big yellow X
scrawled across Molly’s unfinished painting. The X had finished
it—for good. It was just as Molly had described it to him hours
ago. Too bad, because what Molly had created so far was pretty
cool, like something out of Mad Men with all
these different characters through the century. Chris could tell
she’d used a photo of him as a model for the 1940s sailor who was
drinking a cola with this sexy blond woman with a peekaboo bang
over one eye. She’d made him look handsome.
He glanced over at the elephants that
were broken and splattered with yellow paint. It was the third
shelf up—just at Erin’s eye level. He’d seen the yellow splotches
on Erin’s door—and on her clothes. He’d talked to his kid sister
after dinner tonight, and she’d denied any wrongdoing. She’d
insisted she never came up here to “Molly’s stupid old studio.” But
it reminded him of when Erin was a toddler and not totally
potty-trained. She’d occasionally wet her pants and then insist
that a lion had come along and splashed her with a glass of water.
Why a lion, he wasn’t sure. But she’d tell the lie and stick to her
guns—even when the evidence was stacked up against
her.
He knew she was upset, confused, and
angry. He felt exactly the same way. He gazed at Molly’s ruined
painting and those elephants she’d had since she was a child—and
his heart broke for her. Yet he kept thinking back to what Mrs.
Hahn had said a few nights back, about how when Molly moved in,
that was the start of all their troubles.
Every person he’d come to depend on had
died within the last few months—starting with Mr. Corson, then his
mom, and then his dad.
Molly had told him earlier today that
she was mad at his father for getting himself killed. Chris was
angry at him, too, but he also missed him. He had to remind himself
this wasn’t one of his dad’s business trips. He wasn’t coming
back.
He plodded down the attic steps to the
second floor. He glanced toward what was once his mom and dad’s
bedroom. Now it was Molly’s room. The door was closed. She was
probably sleeping. He knew why she was so sick and run-down lately.
He’d heard her tell that cop that she was pregnant. So he was going
to have another kid sister or a kid brother. He couldn’t get all
that excited about it, at least not right now.
Down the hall, Erin was asleep with her
door open and her night-light on.
He went downstairs, where his Aunt
Trish had some new age music playing on the iPod station while she
prepared food for a brunch tomorrow. A medley of vegetables,
bottles of olive oil and cooking wine, and packages of tofu were
spread over the counter. His mother’s younger sister had long, wavy
gray hair, glasses, and a buxom figure she covered with loose,
billowy, earth-tone clothes that always looked
secondhand.
Heading toward the refrigerator, Chris
worked up a smile. “Hey, Aunt Trish, what are you
cooking?”
She was doing something with grape
leaves. “We’re making vegetable kabobs, tofu wraps, and meatless
meatballs.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her
that most of his parents’ friends probably wouldn’t touch that
vegan stuff. He took a Coke out of the refrigerator.
“Chris, I need to talk to you about
something,” she said, glancing up at him for a moment.
Sipping his Coke, he leaned against the
counter. “What’s up?”
His aunt started cutting the tofu in
cubes. She looked down at her work while talking to him. Or maybe
she just couldn’t look him in the eye, he wasn’t sure. “I need to
make it clear to you—and Erin—that this is just for the next day or
so,” she said. “I can’t stay here permanently—and I won’t be able
to look after you two. I don’t know if you were thinking that or
not. But I have my own life in Tacoma. I’m still planning to go to
India for three months starting in February. I don’t know exactly
how well you and Erin get along with your stepmother. I suppose it
doesn’t matter much to you, because you’ll be going off to college
next year. But—there’s Erin to consider. Have you—have you talked
to Molly about her plans?”
“Not really,” he murmured. He was
stumped. For some reason, he’d imagined his aunt moving into the
house—and Molly leaving. Part of him thought whatever bad luck
Molly had brought to this house and this block might disappear
along with her. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t
want to get close to her. Hell, she had a brother who was mentally
ill—and a murderer. Was it something hereditary that could be
passed on to his half sibling? And that night they’d waited up for
his dad, he’d watched her smuggle a steak knife into the bedroom.
What was that about?
Now, with a baby on the way, Molly
would probably stay on with them. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t
want to stay on.
“What are you thinking?” his Aunt Trish
asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing, I hadn’t really
considered anything past tomorrow and the funeral and
all.”
“Well, you need to talk to Molly,
Chris,” she said, blotting the tofu cubes with a paper
towel.
He nodded, sipped his Coke, and
wandered toward the front of the house. He stepped into his
father’s study. For the last few days, he couldn’t set foot in this
room without crying. But for the moment, his eyes were
dry.
He glanced out the window and noticed a
man walking his dog past the house. Chris could only see his
silhouette.
He was thinking about Molly and the bad
luck that followed her around. He wondered how many days would go
by before someone else was hurt or killed.
He studied the Dennehy house—from the
street this time, rather than from the woods in back. He had a dog
on a leash, a mixed-breed stray he’d picked up yesterday. He’d let
it go fend for itself again after this slow walk up and down Willow
Tree Court.
He had used the dog-walking routine
before to scope out different homes. It was
a good ruse. People didn’t worry about someone lurking in front of
their home at night if the stranger had a dog on a leash. All they
worried about was the dog crapping on their lawn. That older couple
with the boy in college, he’d cased their Queen Anne home for six
nights while walking some dog, a corgi, if he remembered right. No
one ever noticed him.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the
Dennehy place. He already knew the entrances: front, through the
garage, and a sliding glass door into the family room. A window by
their breakfast table looked like the best way in. But he might end
up just knocking on the front door, too. That was why he had all
the different costumes in his secret room at home. Those
outfits—deliveryman, cable man, paramedic—they opened doors for
him. That had been how he’d gotten inside two of his
homes.
The Dennehy house was perfect. There
was a widow, an older boy in high school, and a little girl. Their
house was a bit different from the one on Rochelle Lane—the one
belonging to his widowed aunt. But it was on a cul-de-sac, and the
ages of the Dennehy children were close to those of his
cousins.
When he was eight, he had to stay with
them at their house on Rochelle Lane in Ballard. His mother, who
never married, used to dump him there for weeks at a time while she
went to chase after some guy. He became the whipping boy for the
family. His older cousin used to make him strip naked, and then
he’d beat him up. The bratty kid sister told lies about him that
would send his monster of an aunt into a tirade. As punishment,
she’d lock him in a small, dark closet on the second
floor—sometimes for as long as six or eight hours. He was always so
grateful for the light. But that was one of the old bitch’s
bugaboos—when someone left a light on in a room. His cousins always
blamed him whenever it happened, and he’d be locked in that
upstairs closet again.
Every time his mother picked him up,
he’d beg her not to send him back to live with his cousins. She
told him that if he behaved better, he wouldn’t get punished. She
always drove him back there whenever some new man came into her
life. He remembered dreading the sight of that NO
OUTLET sign at the end of their block.
Funny thing about time; it seemed those
visits to his cousins went on for weeks at a time over a period of
two or three years. But it was all within a year. He remembered
having his ninth birthday with Warren, the stoner guy who
eventually moved in with his mother. He wasn’t sent to stay with
his cousins again after Warren came into the picture.
In fact, he didn’t set foot inside the
Rochelle Lane house again—not until ten months ago, when he
returned to Seattle after some jail time in St. Louis. He’d moved
around a lot with his mother, and later with his mother and Warren.
And he’d lived many places after he went out on his own at age
seventeen. But the place that most seemed like his home had been
his cousins’ split-level at the end of that cul-de-sac. As much as
he’d hated that place, he felt as if he’d grown up
there.
Last February, he wanted to see it
again. From the outside, the place hadn’t changed much in twenty
years. But other things were different. His bitch of an aunt had
died of cancer in 2004. His older cousin, the sexual bully, had
been killed in a car accident at age nineteen. He never found out
what happened to his bratty younger cousin.
He stopped by the house on a Wednesday
afternoon, when the winter sun was just starting to set. He had his
switchblade with him. He carried it all the time. He really hadn’t
planned on using it that afternoon. He knocked on the door, and
someone called out from the other side: “Who is it?”
“You don’t know me, but I grew up in
this house,” he answered. “I lived here for three years with my
aunt and my two cousins.”
The door opened a crack—as far as the
chain lock allowed. Through the chink, a handsome woman in her late
sixties stared out at him. She had close-cropped silver hair with
bangs and wore a lavender tracksuit.
“Sorry if I scared you,” he said with a
smile. “I’ve been away from Seattle for several years, and thought
I’d take a sentimental journey. My cousins were the Coulters. I
don’t suppose you bought the house from them.”
Eying him warily, she shook her
head.
“Does the bathroom in the lower level
still have those pink hexagon tiles?” he asked. “And is there still
an old hand-crank pencil sharpener mounted on the wall as you walk
into the furnace room? I always thought that was a strange place
for a pencil sharpener.”
She broke into a grin. “The tiles and
the pencil sharpener are both still there.”
He chuckled. “That’s good to know.
Well, thanks for your time . . .” He turned as if he were going to
leave. He heard the chain lock rattling.
“Listen,” she said. “Would you like to
come in?”
He swiveled around and smiled at her.
She had the door open now. “You sure it’s not too much trouble?” he
asked sheepishly.
“No trouble at all,” she replied,
opening the door wider. “You’ll have to excuse the way the place
looks. I wasn’t expecting company. . . .”
The newspaper said her name was Irene
Haskel, and she was seventy-four, a widow with two children and
five grandchildren. He’d thought she was younger than that. In
fact, he’d figured her to be about sixty-five, the same as his aunt
would have been—had she lived.
She let him look at the upper level,
and he stood outside that closet beside the bathroom. There had
been a laundry hamper in there, and shelves full of sheets and
towels that kept him from standing up all the way. His aunt had had
another shelf with medicines, ointments, enema bottles, and a
smelly old heating pad. The whole closet had smelled like that
heating pad.
He noticed the bolt lock still on the
outside of that door. He hadn’t realized how flimsy it was until
that moment.
Standing beside that woman who could
have been his late aunt and stepping inside that house again
brought back so much rage. He kept telling himself that she was a
nice enough lady. He was still telling himself that as he grabbed
her by the hair.
The Seattle
Times reported that Irene Haskel had received thirty-eight
stab wounds. Funny, he counted a lot—usually the seconds in order
to time people and determine how long they took to do things. But
he hadn’t counted how many times he’d stabbed that woman with his
switchblade. In fact, he barely remembered shoving her inside that
tiny closet.
What he remembered most was how
powerful he felt afterward. He turned on practically every light in
her house, and as he drove away, he stole the NO
OUTLET sign from the end of the block.
The sense of vindication from the
experience was so intoxicating that he had to do it again and
again. He’d made it into a ritual now, refining every step a little
more each time. The killing had almost become secondary now. The
best rush was watching his victims tying each other up while he
promised no one would get hurt. It gave him all the power and
control. He was in charge.
Some ignorant shrink speculated in the
newspaper about how conflicted he was. The
analyst said he wanted to be discovered, so he turned on all the
lights in the house. At the same time, he was ashamed, so he hid
the bodies in closets. Stupid.
There was no conflict. He knew exactly
what he was doing and how it made him feel. It made him feel
exhilarated.
He slowed down as he walked past the
Dennehy house again. He could see someone in one of the front
windows. It was the teenage boy.
When the time came, he would save him
for last.