Текст книги "Never smile at strangers"

Автор книги: Jennifer Jaynes

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter 65

ERICA’S HAND JERKED opened and the fruit fell, splattering against the moist earth. The taste of decay rocked her taste buds, the not-so-subtle taste of the tomato’s slow death.

She spit twice to help rid her mouth of the rotten tomato taste, then quickly finished the page she’d been working on.

A few minutes later, she snapped the notebook shut and grinned at the cover. Never Smile at Strangers, by Erica Duvall. An account of what had transpired in Grand Trespass that summer. Of course it was far from finished, but with the information she’d gathered thus far, the discovery of the body and Guitreaux’s feeling that it would be the key for unveiling the murderer’s identity, she figured she was a good portion of the way through it.

Chris hadn’t shown up to open Luke’s that morning. No calls, no messages to anyone, he simply hadn’t shown up. It was a first for him in the three years she had worked for him. And the first time the diner had been closed for a full day.

Could he have been involved in the disappearances? Been the one to have hacked Sarah Greene up, then bury her body in the woods somewhere? Tiffany’s too? Beat the unidentified man’s head to a bloody pulp?

No, it was impossible to imagine he could hurt anyone. He wasn’t the type. But there wasn’t a specific “type” for killing was there? She was pretty sure that with the right reasons, most everyone was capable of it.

She spit again, hoping to get rid of the nasty remnants of the rotten tomato. And that’s when it happened. Fifty feet from the clearing, just a hundred yards from Whiskey Road, she heard movement. She fell into a crouch and scanned the woods.

She saw someone. A man wearing a black ski-mask. He was stumbling toward her. As he approached, he let out a blood-curdling scream that made her want to cry out herself.

Startled, she withdrew into the shadows, her back against a mature oak, the rotten taste in her mouth quickly forgotten. As he grew closer, she curled into herself, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Her heart beat so furiously she was afraid he could hear it.

There seemed to be something very wrong with him. Muttering to himself, he pulled off his mask and took in several labored breaths.

Although she could only see the side of his face, she knew exactly who he was. Haley’s words echoed in her mind:

These days it just doesn’t seem like people even really know each other. . . or what they’re capable of.

He stumbled forward again in her direction. He was closing in on her.

She sucked in a breath and prepared to run.

Suddenly, their eyes met. She could see the realization of who she was slowly creep into his beet-red face. His eyes widened and he froze.

She tried to run, but was horrified to find that she couldn’t move.

She was frozen, too.

Chapter 66

HALEY FINISHED WIPING down the kitchen counter. The house was quiet. Almost too quiet. She dropped the dish rag in the sink and walked to her sister’s room. She knocked and immediately heard whispers. “What?” an irritated voice cried from the other side.

“I’m putting dinner up. Sure you don’t want any?”

“I’m not hungry,” Becky called out.

There were more whispers. Then Haley heard hushed giggles.

Careful not to turn on any lights, Haley went to her own bedroom. Becky had pinned two blankets to the wood planks separating their rooms, but there were a few areas that were still exposed. Haley found one and peered through.

Seacrest was in the room with Becky, and so were two boys Haley hadn’t seen before. A half-emptied bottle of Southern Comfort and an empty two-liter of Coca Cola were on Becky’s dresser. Each kid had a juice glass.

 Seacrest was sitting topless.

“Truth or dare,” one of the boys said.

Becky’s voice was wobbly. “Uh, dare.”

“I dare you to take your shirt off, too.”

Seacrest laughed. “Are you serious? And see what? Fat rolls?”

“That’s a pretty shitty thing to say,” the boy said.

“It’s the truth,” she said, defiantly. “Why are you so interested in seeing Becky’s tits anyway? It’s not like she really has any yet.”

Seacrest turned toward the makeshift wall and it looked to Haley as if the girl were staring right into her eyes. “It still creeps me out that your sister could be in there, watching us,” she said. She’s the type of freak who would.”

Haley gasped and brought her hands to her mouth, staring at something on the girl’s chest.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

She jumped out of the bed and went to her sister’s door. She didn’t bother knocking before trying to twist Becky’s doorknob. But it was locked.

“Becky!” she shouted, her heart pounding in her throat. “Becky, let me in!”

“Haley, wait!” Becky cried.

When Becky finally opened the door, the window was open and the boys were gone. The room reeked of spilled liquor. Seacrest was standing at the end of Becky’s bed, adjusting her tank top.

“Show me what’s on your neck.” Haley demanded.

Her dark hair wild, Seacrest threw Haley a piercing glare. “Excuse me?”

“Show me. Show me what’s on your neck!” Haley shouted.

Becky gaped at her. “Haley? You okay?”

Seacrest brought her hand to her neck, then seeming almost surprised that it was there, she fingered the necklace. She pulled the heart-shaped pendant from beneath her tank top. “This?”

Haley ripped the necklace from the girl’s neck.

“Careful!” Seacrest protested. “What the fuck’s wrong with—”

Haley turned it over and saw the monogrammed TP. She held the necklace in front of the girl’s face. When she spoke, her voice came out as a hiss. “Where’d you get this?”

Seacrest took a step backward and fear crept into her emerald eyes. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Where’d you get it?!” Haley screamed, stepping toward the younger girl.

“I. . . I found it. So what?”

“Where?”

A loud, throaty moan rose from another part of the house. Wrigley was howling.

Seacrest’s lower lip trembled. “I. . . I just found it, okay?”

“That necklace is Tiffany’s! She was wearing it when—”

Feet padded on the hardwood. “What’s going on?” Mrs. Landry asked, walking in. Her eyes took in a bewildered Seacrest.

“Mama, Seacrest was wearing Tiffany’s necklace!” Haley exclaimed.

Mrs. Landry looked confused.

“She was wearing Tiffany’s necklace! The one you bought for her. Don’t you see? Tiffany was wearing it when she disappeared!”

Her mother seemed to be putting the pieces together slowly, too slowly, in her head.

Haley turned back to Seacrest just in time to see her climbing out the window. Losing her balance, her chin smacked against the pane and she let out a sharp cry.

Haley darted across the room to stop her.

But the girl was gone.

Chapter 67

THUNDER RIPPLED THROUGH the sky as he replayed the scene in his head. His angel had looked at his note for a split second before wilting in front of his eyes. Seeing her pain made the terror swell inside of him, but what hurt even more. . . and was almost too much to handle. . . was the realization that he’d never see her again.

On the way back to the house, he’d been seized by a panic attack, one so intense he thought he’d suffocate. In the midst of it, he’d seen Erica Duvall crouched down in the woods. She’d seen him, too, but that didn’t concern him much. There was nothing she could do to him now.

At the house, he went to his bedroom and grabbed a second note from between his mattresses. Then, in the kitchen he focused on steadying his hand. Five minutes later the more important note, the one he had worried over for a month but hoped he wouldn’t have to send, was completed. He slid it into an envelope and walked out to the mailbox that read ‘The Seacrests’ in bold, white letters. Sliding the letter into the box, he pulled up the red metal flag to let the postman know that there was outgoing mail.

Back inside the house, he went to his mother’s room, and into her tiny private bathroom. The bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet held a skinny tube of toothpaste covered in dust and two orange plastic vials half-filled with medication. Both haloperidol. The labels were faded and peeling away from the plastic, but he could still make out his mother’s name. Dariah S. Thibodeaux. The “S” stood for Seacrest, her precious maiden name.

He opened the first bottle and turned it upside down. Four small round pills with white crosses etched across their centers fell into his shaking hand. The second vial held nine. Gripping the thirteen pills in his sweaty palm, he shuffled out of his mother’s room and into his own.

Earlier that afternoon, he’d carried the television into his bedroom, then filled a bowl with a mixture of cat food and rat poison. He had set the bowl on the front porch for the evil Ian.

Now he flipped the television on and tuned into an old episode of Leave It to Beaver. He turned the volume down and grabbed his tape deck. He slid a Bob Dylan cassette in and set the volume to medium. He could no longer bear silence. He needed to feel as though someone were with him. He didn’t want to die alone.

He sat on his bed. It would only be a matter of hours before they found him now. This was the end. Finally. He hoped the world outside his head was the real one. He wasn’t sure if it was, but decided to be hopeful. It was all he had. He thought about Chris and felt even more frightened. Killing him had been a mortal sin.

He wondered if God would find a way to forgive him.

He closed his eyes. Darkness. Is this what death would look like? How would it feel? Peaceful? Safe? Would there be love? Families? A chance for a new, normal beginning?

Deciding anything was better than what he was living, he opened his eyes and twisted the cap off a bottle of Budweiser. He took three pills at a time until he’d swallowed them all.

He lay back in his bed and peered out the window, listening to Dylan croon Lay, Lady, Lay. The sky had darkened so much with the storm that he could no longer see outside his window. Ian had come and gone moments ago. His eyes had looked especially red and cruel against the stormy evening as he glared at him through the window. He’d mewed weakly and pressed his scrawny body against the dirty glass. Then the cat had left. Perhaps to retrieve the food from the porch.

He now lay in the small room, under the sheet, his body curled into a ball. The heavier his eyelids felt, the more frightened he became. He fought it. He fought going to sleep, dying and going to an unknown and possibly more terrifying place. But it was getting difficult to stay awake.

Dylan crooned to him as he drifted off.

Chapter 68

ERICA WAITED FOR what seemed an eternity to leave her hiding spot against the big oak, worried that he might be waiting in the shadows close by, ready to spring. But once she was somewhat certain he’d gone, she jumped up and ran.

It had begun to storm and the sky was now a purplish-black. It was difficult to navigate the woods through the darkness. Branches tore at the bare flesh of her arms and legs, and pine combs ripped at her feet. But she kept running, oblivious to the pain. All too obvious to her was the fact that she had a good idea as to who was responsible for the missing girls and the dead body she and Guitreaux had found.

A wall of Spanish moss whipped into her face temporarily blinding her, but she kept running. He wasn’t who they all thought he was and she had to let the detective know before someone was hurt. Headlights appeared as Erica cut through the tree line at the edge of the road. She reached the pavement and frantically waved her hands.

An SUV pulled onto the narrow shoulder and slowed to a stop. A bird shrieked from the near distance, then flew across Whiskey Road, its wings beating in the stormy night air. Running to the passenger side, Erica peered into the window.

“Mrs. Anderson!” she screamed. She opened the door and a bewildered, red-eyed Rachel stared back at her.

“I need your help,” she started, out of breath. “I know who he is.”

“Who who is? My God, are you okay?” Rachel exclaimed.

Erica looked down at her bloodied arms and legs.

“Yeah, I’m. . . I’m fine. I was just running through the woods because I saw—”

“It’s too dangerous for you to be standing out there. Come on, get in.”

She climbed in the truck and slammed the door.

“Okay, now slow down. Who are you talking about,” Rachel asked.

“I think I know who took Tiffany Perron and Sarah Greene! And who killed the guy in the woods!”

“In the woods? I don’t–”

“We found a body.”

“We–? Who found a body?”

“The man. Guitreaux and I—”

“Erica, you must slow down, Rachel said, talking slowly as though she were dealing with a crazy person. She put a hand on Erica’s shoulder. “Just take a second and gather your thoughts. Then tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay, okay,” Erica said, then took a few long breaths. Then she told Rachel what she had seen just minutes ago. Once she was done, she felt the need to clarify.

“Look, I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure,” she said, her voice a little calmer. “If he’s the guy, he lives a quarter of a mile from here by road. Please, just take me there so we can know for sure.”

Rachel pulled a cell phone from her visor, hit a number on the keypad, then put the phone to her ear.

The SUV slowly inched forward.

Chapter 69

THROWING THE STATION wagon into park, Haley jumped out of the car and ran to Erica’s front door.

The clouds in the sky were dark and menacing and seemed to loom too close to the ground. Fat rain drops pelted Haley so hard they felt like balls of hail.

There were vibrations coming from inside the house. Loud music. A surprised Pamela answered, a can of Miller Lite, its rim stained with red lipstick, in a well-manicured hand. Cajun music was blaring inside the house.

“What’s wrong, cher?” she asked, her eyes growing wide.

“I need to talk to Erica,” Haley said, out of breath. “Is she home?”

Her eyebrows arched. “She’s not here, darling. But yore gettin’ all wet. Come on inside.”

Haley shook her head. “Do you know where she is?”

“No tellin’, she goes off so often by herself. Probably in those woods even though we’ve warned her about them. When you find her please tell her she needs to be more careful. We worry about her gettin’ hurt.”

Haley ran back to the car. As she drove toward Whiskey Road, the windshield wipers protested, jerking and screeching as they stuck and unstuck from the windshield. There was a truck behind Haley, but through the clouds of rain and the sticking wipers she could barely make out its taillights.

Lightning leapt from the sky. Unable to catch her breath, Haley rolled down the window for some fresh air. Rainwater and the wet, sour scent of manure trickled in. To make things worse, the sharp odor of the bayou in the distance swirled into the station wagon and crawled up her nostrils.

Double yellow lines stretched on and on against the gray pavement and rain trailed down the windshield. Haley turned onto a dirt drive.

She wondered if she should have called the sheriff or Detective Guitreaux to tell one of them about Tiffany’s necklace? But it was too soon, right? Maybe her negative opinion of Seacrest was clouding her judgment. She wanted to think everything through before implicating the teenaged girl in the disappearances of Tiffany and Sarah. . . no matter how appalling the girl was.

Chapter 70

HE OPENED HIS eyes, but his vision was blurry, so blurry. Strands of hair tickled his back, and he felt fingernails trail across his neck.

He stiffened.

Was it a dream? Or had he passed already? What was—?

He blinked in the darkness. Slowly, his eyes adjusted and he saw his window. He was woozy. He wanted to close his eyes but he knew this was important. What was going on? Was he still alive?

“Don’t speak,” a voice next to him said, and a warm hand moved from his bicep to his chest, then down to his abdomen.

His heart jumped inside his chest. Big jumps, little jumps. He tried to pull himself up.

“Lay with me,” she whispered. “Please. I’ll give you what you look at in your magazines. . . but I’m the real thing.”

The cinnamon on her breath seared his neck. He felt her smooth skin against his. It was Allie. He was still alive. His skin turned to gooseflesh.

Beneath the cloud of cinnamon, he could smell her cosmetics and the tobacco on her breath. He could also smell something equally as foul. Vomit. He must’ve vomited in his sleep.

He stumbled out of his bed and pain sliced through his body. It was so sharp, he winced and doubled over. There was also something sticky beneath his feet.

Maybe God wasn’t ready for him, he thought. Maybe he was supposed to be on earth, in Grand Trespass. Maybe there was a reason for his existence after all and his work had yet to be finished.

Either that, or his mother had been right: He was pathetic. After all, how difficult was it to kill yourself? He carefully considered both conclusions.

Allie got up and stood in front of him. In a sliver of moonlight he could make out her naked body. “What’s wrong with you?” she wailed.

A memory droned inside his head. His mother’s long, cold fingers on his frightened skin. Invading, humiliating him. The memory was enough for a second wind. He staggered to his bedroom door and pushed it open. Then he stumbled toward the back door.

“Why’s the television in here anyway?” she snarled. “That’s all I really wanted. To watch the fucking TV. It wasn’t about you. It’s never about you!”

He pulled open the back door and heard her bare feet on the kitchen floor. When she spoke next, her voice was sinister. “Quit ignoring me, you hear me, you sonafabitch? Just stop because I know what you did!” she screamed. “You killed those girls, you fucking freak! I know it was you!”

***

THE CLOUDS HAD grown thicker since he’d fallen asleep, and the outside world had taken on a somber grayness not unlike the cramped space inside his mind. A heavy rain now pounded against his body in a mad frenzy, mingling with the electricity that blared in his head.

He stumbled from the shed, back to the house with the old Army issue .45 his father had left behind. Over the years he’d handled it sparingly, but knew that one day he’d be forced to use it.

He looked up to see Allie glaring at him through the back window. She was wearing one of his t-shirts, her bare legs dark against the blue-white fluorescent lights of the kitchen. Her eyes looked wild, just as his mother’s had been late that one night.

He rounded the house and arrived at the front porch. Ian had taken the bait. He was now curled up on the second-to-bottom step of the porch, asleep for good. For a second, he felt bad for the cat, but he knew that what he’d done had been the right thing. The cat had been miserable, and had wanted an end to its wicked existence. That’s why it had trailed him all summer. Animals could sense unkind people, and this one had sensed unkindness in him. He stepped over the animal and, feebly, kicked opened the screen door.

He found himself face-to-face with his sister.

Her face screwed up as though she were ready to shout. But then she saw the gun and shook her head. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she said. But her voice shook, betraying her.

His eyes drifted in and out of focus. There was one Allie. Two. . . Allies.

He wondered about the longing that swelled inside of him, the uncontrollable desire to kill his sister. Was it evil? Or would God see it as an acceptable means of justice? Would God understand him at all?

Lightning ripped through the sky and rain battered the windows. He took a step forward.

Allie took a step back.

The roof began to creak, and Allie’s full mouth pulled into the shape of a square. She was crying but there was no sound.

Now he was the one in control. He looked into his sister’s terrified eyes, appreciating that she felt it too. With his left hand, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the polished stone.

She stared at the gun. “I won’t do it again. I. . . I promise. It was just a joke,” she pleaded. “It all was. I’m so so sorry.” Her lips quivered, and he could see goose pimples on the bare flesh of her thighs. Her red fingernails flew in front of her face, and she wiped away tears.

Crocodile tears.

Lies.

“I said I’d tell them about what you did to the girls. But I wouldn’t,” she cried. “I couldn’t do that to you. I never would have. You’re my. . . my brother!”

He shook his head, and his vision blurred. When he spoke next, his voice boomed. “You made my life a living hell, Allie. Why the fuck would you want to do that? What have I ever done besides try to take care of you?”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Really!” she said, taking a timid step toward him, then thinking better of it, stepped back again.

Sheets of rain crashed against the living room windows and the screen door out back banged shut, opened, banged shut.

Now there were three Allies.