Repressed Page 17

  Petrosky’s left eye twitched. Ashes and ink—in memoriam. Morrison grabbed the counter and held on as the room wavered and his breath hitched and stopped.

  “If I’m ever in the market, I’ll be back here,” Petrosky said, and Morrison straightened at the sudden gruffness in Petrosky’s voice. “Now … the fax?”

  The machine was modern and had more features than the one at the precinct. They faxed the photos to Decantor and used the email feature on the fax machine itself to send it to the contacts they had made when they’d scoured the neighborhood—those who had owned a place in the strip mall back when their suspect was getting his ink. But follow-up calls from Drake’s landline yielded a series of “Sorry” and “Nope, never seen him” and “Wish I could help.” Only one man was unaccounted for, Mr. Xu, the guy who had owned the nail shop across the road. And he’d already admitted seeing the guy—he’d just never gotten close enough to be more helpful.

  Petrosky drove back to the precinct while Morrison held onto the door handle like it was a life preserver in a stormy sea. They’d find their killer. They would. And he’d get Evie back. He’d get them both back.

  He took rapid breaths though his nose and stared at the ash trees, at the few leafy branches clawing the clouds—half barren even in the height of spring. Ash Park. Where everything went to die.

  Everything. Everyone.

  Petrosky pulled up at the precinct and opened his door. “You coming, California?” Voice tight. Strained. Morrison nodded. Petrosky appraised him for a moment, then slammed the door and headed across the lot, his back receding, then going fuzzy as he left Morrison’s line of focus.

  Disappearing. Where did one find a person who didn’t want to be found? If there’d been victims before Zachary Reynolds … maybe he’d done it to his own daughter. But his DNA wasn’t in the system; if he’d abused his daughter, it hadn’t been reported. Had they missed something at the school? Bell’s apartment building? Zachary Reynolds’s neighborhood? But they’d already taken the composite of Reynolds’s attacker to those places—nothing. Jenny’s drawing was better but not so much better that it’d get them a different answer from the same people, and they’d proven as much asking the neighbors around the tattoo shop. It’d be a waste of time—and Shannon and Evie didn’t have time to spare. So what else did he know? Decantor had already ruled out connections between Bell and the other victims, outside of the person who’d killed them. No common acquaintances, no similar hangouts, no foreseeable opportunities for them to have met the same person—not that he’d expect a twenty-nine-year-old woman to chill at the park with a bunch of ten-year-olds. In fact, Decantor hadn’t found any activities for Bell at all in the days before her death outside of her interview for the nanny position. Morrison’s house had been her last known outing.

  He’d been the last one to see her alive.

  Morrison sat straighter in the seat. Had their killer seen Bell at his house and followed her home? Thus far he’d assumed that someone was after Roger alone, that he and Shannon had become pawns in a game. But someone had to have known when Shannon left Ash Park. Someone had been watching his house. Watching Shannon. Was Bell dead because she’d been there? Were the other nanny candidates in danger? Then, suddenly, it clicked—the kid on the bike, the one he’d seen watching Bell the day she interviewed for the nanny position. Morrison had never seen the kid before in the neighborhood, and the teen could have matched the description of their thin, taller killer—the one in the boots. The guy had been wearing a hat that day, and he’d been too far away for Morrison to see clearly, but the bike … someone had reported a bike at Dylan Acosta’s school the day he died. They’d presumed an adult killer but teenagers were very similar in stature. They could be looking for a kid—an impulsive, murderous, psychopathic kid. And if he’d been watching Shannon, watching Bell … he might have been watching the other candidates too. Maybe one of them had seen him.

  Morrison got out and closed the gap between Petrosky’s car and his own. Maybe Alyson Kennedy could help him nail this fucker to the wall.

  If she was still alive.

  26

  Alyson Kennedy’s eyes widened when he introduced himself. “Mr. Morrison?” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to start this week was I? Oh my god, I thought—”

  “No, no, you’re fine. Next week.”

  “Well … um …” She peered behind him at the street where his car was parked half on half off the lawn at the curb.

  “I’m not here about the job. There was an”—our first choice nanny was brutally murdered and I thought he’d killed you too—“an incident. Near our home the day you interviewed. I thought I’d come by and ask you a few questions. Routine.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes remained tight, but she stepped aside so he could enter the apartment. The hallway smelled like coconut. She didn’t invite him inside farther. Did she think he was there for … what had the caller said? A little side action?

  He backed up a step and kept his voice brusque. “When you arrived for your interview, did you notice any other vehicles in the area? A bike?”

  Her brows knit together. “Uh … no, I don’t think so. Just your car in the driveway.”

  That had been Shannon’s car in the driveway—he hadn’t even been home yet, something Kennedy’d surely noticed. Either Kennedy was unobservant or lying. Probably the first. But … what had McCallum said? That female pedophiles are … Babysitters. Nannies. Maybe she’d purposefully come before Morrison arrived—then he wouldn’t have recognized her voice when she called pretending to be Bell. But there was something slightly nasal in her register that didn’t fit. Not her, of course it wasn’t her. Had he really expected her voice to match? That he’d walk in here and find Shannon tied up in the living room? What was wrong with him?

  He cleared his throat. “How about this guy?” He held out Jenny’s rendition of the tattooed man and Reynolds’s composite sketch.

  Kennedy shook her head, nostrils flaring as if the photos themselves were distasteful. “Nope. He looks kinda … dirty, so I feel like I might have noticed that. You live in a nice neighborhood.”

  A nice neighborhood. Where bad things didn’t happen—unless the bad weaseled its way in.

  Morrison watched her face, the set of her shoulders: uncomfortable, but she seemed confident that she didn’t know the suspect. He put the pictures back into the file and tucked it under his arm. He didn’t like the way she was clenching her jaw. Nervous? Maybe she was ready to toss him out along with his troubling questions before the wrong word shattered her illusion of safety.

  “What about anyone else outside?” he asked. “Someone walking a dog or looking out from a window?”

  “A window?”

  “A house window. A car. Anyone.” The kidnapper could have planned everything from a distance, but maybe the man who’d taken Shannon looked like he belonged there. “A kid in a ball cap?”

  She shook her head. “No. I was kinda nervous about the interview so I wasn’t really looking.” She shrugged one slender shoulder and Morrison narrowed his eyes. Pretty, lithe—Kennedy was Roger’s type. And they might have met when she worked at the hospital morgue. Unlikely but—she might know Roger enough to hate him.

  “Where were you on Monday night?”

  “Oh, uh …” Her face reddened and she crossed her arms. “I went dancing with friends. Stayed at my fiancé’s after with another girlfriend who didn’t want to drive home.” A little defensive maybe, yet Kennedy didn’t seem worried. Her alibi was easily verifiable. But had Kennedy mentioned that she was getting married?

  “I’ll need those names. From Monday night.”

  “No problem.” She gave him the information while her index finger tapped a steady rhythm on her elbow. No hesitation. She wasn’t a suspect. He was being an idiot. But the paralyzing waves of fear were washing his brain clean of all thought, rendering him ineffectual, useless against a kidnapper. Against a killer.

  “Do you
know Roger McFadden?” he blurted.

  “I know who he is. But we’ve never met.” It rang true. And he’d come here to get information and protect Kennedy, not accuse her … were they watching her the way they’d watched Bell, the way they’d watched Shannon? Had he just signed Kennedy’s death certificate by showing up here? Did I kill my wife?

  Her face had hardened. Was there really anything else to ask? “Thank you for your time, Ms. Kennedy.”

  “Oh sure. And um … I’ll see you next week?” Her arms stayed crossed. He knew by her posture that she wasn't coming next week or the week after.

  Not that it mattered. He might not have a child for her to watch.

  The hour after he left Kennedy’s passed by in a numb haze, the street signs approaching impossibly slow, road and cars in front of him wavering like a mirage, only blackness in his peripheral vision. Patricia Weeks wasn’t home. Morrison didn’t recognize what he was doing until he was pulling into his own driveway, the file with the drawings of their suspects held against his chest.

  He strode to Mr. Hensen’s porch on autopilot as if the nerves that tied the actions to his brain had been severed. He glanced back at his car, registering that he’d left the door open, but not able to manufacture a reaction. Even the cool breeze elicited no goose bumps. Morrison grabbed Hensen’s door knocker and let it drop. The first time he’d met Hensen, the man had said “Good work, son, you do good work” though he probably had no idea what Morrison’s job entailed.

  He’d find out today. At the very least he’d have something else to gossip about.

  The spider veins on Hensen’s nose glared at him, purple and red streaks that screamed the truth: bodies eventually give out and no one gets through it alive. When Hensen smiled, Morrison’s agitation spiked as sharp as the fine points on the man’s canines. “How are you today, son?”

  “Fine, Mr. Hensen.” If the dead could speak, they’d sound like Morrison: voices a mere shadow of what they once were, every utterance strange and flat and hollow. “Just wondering if you’d seen anything strange around lately. A car that didn’t belong. Maybe a teenage boy on a bicycle Monday morning?”

  Hensen cocked his head and the lines spiderwebbing their way across his nose went from horizontal to vertical. “No, but my days aren’t spent by the window. I been seeing that nice woman you set me up with from a block over. Ms.—”

  “Mayfield.”

  “That’s the one.” He furrowed his brows. “There some kind of trouble?”

  “No, no trouble. Just trying to find someone.”

  “Someone who was at your house?”

  “No, just …” This is a mistake. “How about him?” He opened the folder and showed Hensen the photos.

  Hensen shook his head. “No, can’t say I’ve seen him. I don't like his look though.”

  Me neither. “Okay, well, thanks for your time.”

  “Son?”

  Morrison turned back on the top stair.

  “Thank your wife for the soup the other day. She sure makes a mean chicken noodle.”

  He swallowed hard. “I will.”

  Eight more houses on that side yielded nothing better. He was considering heading for the precinct when he saw Kathryn Welks on the stoop across the street, blowing bubbles for her two-year-old son, Shane. Shane’s dark hair blew in the breeze as he giggled and leaped, the bubbles floating above his head and out of reach. Morrison dragged his eyes to his own vacant lawn, straining his ears as if he might catch Evie’s laugh on the breeze.

  Kathryn was waving when he turned back to them, using her hand as a visor to block out the afternoon sun. “Hey! How’s Shannon’s trip going?”

  He’d nearly forgotten Shannon was supposed to be gone. “Oh … good.” Something sharp stabbed at Morrison’s gut and he inhaled, inflating lungs that couldn’t seem to recall how to breathe. “Listen, question for you.”

  She smiled. “Shoot.”

  “You seen anyone strange around our place lately?”

  Her almond eyes widened and she glanced up and down the street. “Strange? Like how?”

  “Anyone you didn’t recognize? Maybe a teenager on a bike?”

  “I see people all the time while I’m out front with Shane. No one that looked suspicious or anything.” She shrugged. “Why, has there been another one of those car break-in things going on like last summer?”

  “Nothing like that.” He opened the folder for her and held the pictures in front of his chest.

  She bent closer, squinted, and when she straightened her easy smile had fallen. “Haven't seen him, but I know the cases you work. You’d tell me if I should be worried right?”

  “I’d tell you.”

  “Are you sure? Another neighbor was over here last week asking if it was a safe place to live. I feel like I’m missing something.”

  “Neighbor?”

  “I don’t think she’s bought the house yet. Just looking at the area. She asked …” Her mouth stopped moving as if she’d realized something critical. “She asked if there were any cops in the neighborhood, like patrols. And I … I said one lived right across the street, so we didn’t need patrols.” She looked back at the photos but shook her head.

  “What, Kathryn? What else did she say?”

  “She asked what the going rate was per square foot. If it was a good neighborhood for children. If there were bus stops.”

  That sounded like a homebuyer—not abnormal. But it wasn’t like their suspects would walk through the streets, sneering, waving around someone’s severed dick.

  “She did mention liking your place,” Kathryn said slowly. “Asked whether I thought you’d sell it.”

  That was strange. They’d had no sign in the yard, despite their conversations about moving. Yet someone had been asking about their house. Watching.

  “I said I didn’t think you were putting it on the market but that I knew a realtor if they needed one.” Her eyes were saucers. “They didn’t want the name. Said they had one.”

  They. “What’d they look like?”

  “She was our age, pale, thin. Reddish hair, kind of big eyes. Really pretty. Her husband was in the car, too but I couldn’t see him as well.”

  “You’re sure this isn’t him?”

  “Positive. He was bald, not like that guy. But he had on sunglasses, kept his eyes out the other window, so I didn’t really get a look at him.”

  So he wasn’t the pedophile who had raped Acosta and Reynolds. But they still had the booted man who had killed Acosta and Bell, and the woman who had called Morrison from Bell’s cell phone. Three killers. He’d considered the possibility before, but confirmation that there were three people wandering around stomping kids to death and stealing others for sport—it was unheard of. Ridiculous. What was this, some kind of fucking cult?

  His heart quickened. “Tell me more about him. Tall? Short?”

  “Just average. He was thin though.” She frowned. “I do remember being worried because of his neck. Looked like he had chicken pox or something, and I didn’t want Shane exposed, but it was probably just acne.”

  Thin. Acne. That did sound like a teenager. Maybe the same one he’d seen on a bike the morning of the nanny interviews.

  “What day was that, Kathryn?”

  “Last Thursday, maybe?”

  Thursday. Before he’d even gone back to work, they’d been watching.

  “I mentioned it to Shannon but she didn’t seem to think much of it. Just laughed about selling, what with the market like it is right now.”

  Of course she hadn’t thought much about it. Asking about housing prices wasn’t threatening—but it did give you an awful lot of information if you asked the right questions. Acting normal made you invisible. Unless … they really were just a couple looking for a house.

  “Any way you might come to the station, give me a sketch?”

  Her mouth dropped. “What’s all this—”

  “Missing persons case. Nothing to do with us, just though
t she might have been seen in the area. I’ll explain later. Promise.”

  She looked at her son who was spinning in circles in the yard, and back to Morrison. “Okay, I’ll head out in ten.”

  He glanced up and down the empty road. “I’ll follow you.”

  Kathryn bit her lip, grabbed Shane off the lawn and disappeared into the house, leaving Morrison staring down the street, waiting for a man with a bald head and covered eyes to appear with Shannon’s corpse.

  27

  At the precinct, Morrison led Kathryn into the conference room and used the main line to call Crystal Irving, local artist and their resident sketcher. He took Kathryn a drink of water, barely registering the worry lines on her forehead, her frown, and the way Shane was already rubbing his eyes. Does Evie need a nap too? But the thought belonged to another man entirely, a stranger concerned with sleep schedules and diaper changes instead of starvation and death. He closed the door on his way out with a shaking hand.

  Petrosky ambushed Morrison just outside the room, his breath fast, eyes blazing. “Where the fuck have you been all afternoon? I thought you went rogue or some shit. Not that I’d have blamed you but …” He swiped a hand across his beet-red face.

  Rogue. If only Morrison knew where to find these bastards, maybe he would have hunted them down himself. Morrison filled Petrosky in on interviewing Alyson Kennedy and the neighbors, realizing just how little he had to go on besides Kathryn’s memory. If only he’d been there to see the suspects in that car. “Most of the neighbors weren’t home,” he finished.

  “I’ll go back later.” Petrosky’s face had returned to its normal color. His fists unclenched. “Better if it’s someone else so they don't assume it has to do with you.”

  It’s too late for that. He’d already spooked Kathryn. Had he put his family in danger?

  “Heard back from forensics about the copper,” Petrosky was saying. “Too common to trace the weapon to a source.”