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Authors: Kevin O'Brien

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His dad had married Molly less than a year ago, and it had seemed way too rushed for Chris. He’d still been adjusting to his mother moving out and his parents divorcing, and then
wham
, his dad got remarried. Suddenly, this pretty artist was taking his mother’s place. Nice as Molly was to him, Chris still couldn’t get used to her constant presence in the house.
He yelled upstairs to her that he wasn’t hungry; then he hurried out the front door.
“Did you hear about Corson?”
It was Courtney calling to him from the open window of her red Neon.
Chris was halfway up the driveway, but he could see the iPhone in her grasp. Courtney Hahn was always texting or Twittering. That damn iPhone was practically glued to her hand. It didn’t matter to her that it was against the law in Washington state to operate a handheld phone while driving. Courtney considered herself the exception. Her and her iPhone—it was one of several things about her that drove him crazy for the two months they dated last year. Still, she was blond, pretty, and popular—so for a while, he’d convinced himself that he was damn lucky to be her boyfriend. Well, maybe not
that
lucky. Except for feeling her breasts on a few occasions, and three intense make-out sessions during which he’d come in his jeans, they’d never gotten very far in the sex department. They’d had a pretty amicable breakup, probably because they hadn’t been all that crazy about each other in the first place. But Courtney was a good kisser—and a good sport. As part of her campaign that they remain friends, she still gave him a lift to school in the mornings.
“Did you hear the news about Corson?” she repeated, glancing up from her iPhone keypad for a moment. “Somebody shot him. . . .”
Chris nodded glumly, and then he opened the passenger door and scooted into the front seat.
“If you ask me, it just proves Corson was a major perv,” Courtney’s
best friend forever
, Madison Garvey, remarked from the backseat. “The guy probably went to the Arboretum last night to have sex in the bushes or something. Ha! He went there to get blown, and got
blown away
instead.”
Chris buckled his seat belt and sighed. “Gosh, Madison, think maybe you could wait until lunch—or at least third period—before you start making bad jokes about our guidance counselor getting murdered last night? I don’t think his body’s cold yet.”
“Yeah, Maddie, shut up,” Courtney said. With a tiny smirk, she glanced in the rearview mirror at her friend.
“Oh, kindly remove the sticks from your butts and get over yourselves,” Madison muttered, eyes on her cell phone. Like Courtney, Madison was blond, but almost albino-pale with a slightly goofy-looking face. She had her feet up on the back of Chris’s seat. She wore her bright orange Converse All Star high-tops today. She’d made that brand of gym shoe her trademark, sporting it in several different colors and patterns. Madison didn’t wear any other kind of shoes in public. She’d even worn Converse All Star high-tops—silver—to the prom last year.
Madison lived with her divorced mother in the three-bedroom house next door to Chris. Courtney’s family was across the street and two houses down. Along with two more families, they all lived on the same North Seattle cul-de-sac, which had been part of an ambitious development that started two years ago—and never got finished. A dozen beautiful, distinctive, modern houses were supposed to go up, but only five were completed. Construction halted when the recession hit. So several lots on the cul-de-sac were bare—or occupied by half-finished skeletons of houses. There still weren’t any sidewalks yet, and not quite enough streetlights. At night, it was always dark and slightly sinister, because the cul-de-sac lay in the shadow of a forest. The street was named Willow Tree Court, which Chris thought was pretty lame, since they never got around to planting the willow trees on the barren divider strip down the middle of the curved, dead-end roadway.
Chris glanced at the
NO OUTLET
sign as Courtney came to a stop at the end of the block. It amazed him that she managed to navigate the road with only one hand on the steering wheel and her eyes on her iPhone eighty percent of the time. Whenever he rode in the car with her, Chris figured they’d end up dead poster kids for the dangers of driving while texting. Then people at school would be making the bad jokes about them—rather than about Mr. Corson.
“Tiffany thinks one of Ian’s wacko parents shot Corson,” Courtney announced, glancing up from her phone for a few seconds while she turned left at the intersection.
“Shauna agrees with me,” Madison said, consulting her phone from the backseat.
“She thinks Corson was meeting another guy there at the park for some kinky sex thing. I mean, really, his car just happens to break down at a park at night—with a ton of bushes. Major perv alert! Corson was just asking for it.”
“C’mon, shut up,” Courtney said, slowing down to a stop at a traffic light. “You’re talking about Chris’s
hero
.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Chris used to think Corson peed perfume.”
Both girls laughed. But Chris remained silent. He kept his head turned away and stared out the window—at a dead gray cat on the side of the road.
C
HAPTER
T
WO
“Honey, I talked with him,” Jeff sighed. He was wheeling the tall recycle bin toward the end of the driveway. Molly walked alongside him with a Hefty bag full of cans. She’d put Erin on the school bus five minutes before, and now Jeff was about to leave for work.
“Obviously, Chris is shaken up,” Jeff went on, talking over the bin’s squeaky wheels. “But he’ll be okay. We just need to downplay this thing. If he sees you making a big deal out of it, he’ll start thinking it’s a big deal—”
Molly stopped in her tracks and set down the Hefty bag. The cans rattled. “Jeff, honey, it
is
a big deal. The man was murdered.”
“What I’m saying is, if you—if
we
make a big to-do about this and fuss over him, Chris will end up rehashing the entire episode from five months ago—and he’ll be blaming himself all over again.”
“He blamed me, too,” Molly murmured.
“You did the right thing,” Jeff said, setting the receptacle by the end of their driveway. He grabbed the Hefty bag from her and leaned it against the bin. “Personally, I’m not shedding any tears over the guy’s demise. I’m not as forgiving as my son is.” He rubbed his hands together to brush off some residue from the bin handle. “Anyway, for Chris, let’s just downplay this whole thing, okay?”
Nodding, Molly glanced down at a crack in the driveway. “Don’t forget to swing by the optical place today,” she murmured. “You wanted to get your glasses tightened for your trip.”
Jeff put his arm around her, and they headed back toward the garage. The automatic garage door was locked in the open position. Earlier, he’d tossed his briefcase into the front seat of his silver Lexus. “You know, I’m not so sure I should go off to Denver tomorrow, not when I think about that family in Renton last week.”
Molly shuddered. “God, don’t remind me.” She’d read all about the Renton killings online and in the
Seattle Times.
“Jesus, the whole family.” He sighed. “It’s enough to make you sick. The twin girls were Erin’s age.” He gave Molly’s shoulder a squeeze. “I don’t feel good leaving you and the kids alone for two nights—not while this maniac is on the loose.”
Molly shrugged. “You can’t go changing your work schedule because of some nutcase. It could be a while before the police catch him.” She tried to smile. “Besides, we’ll be okay, because I’m going to that Neighborhood Watch potluck today. I’ll know just what to do in case a serial killer comes knocking on our front door. . . .”
The lunch would be across the street at the Hahns’ house. A police detective had been invited to speak to the residents of the cul-de-sac. That included Jeff’s ex-wife’s two best friends, Lynette Hahn and Kay Garvey.
Angela would be attending, too. She was still chummy-chummy with her Willow Tree Court pals, even though she lived on another cul-de-sac—in Bellevue with her new boyfriend and his thirteen-year-old daughter. The new relationship didn’t keep Angela from meddling in Jeff’s life. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that she talked to her kids every day and asked them to convey messages to their dad. At least once a week, she was back in her old stomping grounds to visit Lynette or Kay. She even tried to make friends with Molly early on. But Molly quickly figured out this was just another way for Angela to have some kind of control over Jeff—albeit indirectly. It seemed pretty damn manipulative. So Molly did her best to avoid Jeff’s ex—and stayed distantly polite to her.
She wasn’t looking forward to this Neighborhood Watch potluck with Angela and her cronies. She’d almost just as soon take her chances with a serial killer.
“I thought that lunch wasn’t until tomorrow,” Jeff said, opening the car door. “And aren’t those neighborhood watch things held on weekends and evenings so it doesn’t interfere with people’s work schedules?”
“Not this one. Lynette pulled some strings. It’s in four hours, and I still have to make chocolate chip cookies for it. Do you want me to pass along any messages to the former Mrs. Dennehy?”
“Just that I’m blissfully happy,” he said, kissing her. Then he climbed into the car and buckled his seat belt. “Good luck with that crowd.”
Molly gave him a wry smile. “We who are about to die salute you.”
Shutting his door, he blew her a kiss, and then started up the car. He backed out of the garage. Molly waved at her husband.
The garage door started to descend. As the Lexus drove off, Molly caught a glimpse of a strange car parked in front of Dr. and Mrs. Nguyen’s house. She hadn’t noticed the metallic blue minivan earlier when she’d walked back from Erin’s bus stop. Then again, she hadn’t really been paying attention.
She ducked inside—through the garage entrance, then past the closed door to the basement, through the kitchen area, the dining room, and finally the living room in the front of the house. At the big picture window, she pushed aside the sheer curtain and glanced out at that minivan again. It was too far away for her to tell if someone was in the front seat.
This would probably be one of the first items the cop would address at the Neighborhood Watch potluck in a few hours:
Look out for unfamiliar cars parked on your cul-de-sac.
The Nguyens lived in Denver eight months out of the year, and sometimes, they had friends using the place. Molly had to remind herself that it wasn’t so unusual to see a strange car parked in front of their house.
Stepping away from the window, she wondered if—before last week—the mother of those twin girls had been on the lookout for strange cars in their cul-de-sac in Renton.
She remembered the front-page headlines in the
Seattle Times
last Tuesday. She remembered, because she’d looked up the article again online just last night. She’d become a bit fixated on the murders.
RENTON FAMILY SLAIN
4 dead in Another Cul-de-Sac Killing
P
ARENTS
AND
T
WIN
D
AUGHTERS
S
TABBING
V
ICTIMS
A photo of the murdered family ran under the headline. It showed the dark-haired, husky father and his pretty, somewhat mousy, blond wife. Grinning proudly, they posed behind their blond daughters in one of those family portraits from Sears or JCPenney. The twins looked darling. They were laughing in the picture. One of them was missing a front tooth.
SENSELESS MURDER,
read the caption.
Renton residents, Lyle Winters, 33, and wife, Terri Anne, 31, in a photo taken last October with their 6-year-old twin daughters, Claudia and Colette. The family was brutally slain in their Loretta Court home late Sunday night. This is the fourth in a series of bizarre cul-de-sac killings in the Seattle area since February.
The news article had been broken up with different subheadlines in boldface print:
Neighbors Heard Nothing, No Screams—Every Light Was On
and
Bodies in Closets, A Killer’s Calling Card.
Each time this Cul-de-sac Killer struck, he left nearly all of the lights on inside the house—and his victims shut inside closets.
Lyle Winters, his throat slashed, was found in the closet off their guest room. His wife, strangled and stabbed repeatedly, was discovered in the master bedroom closet, curled up amid some shoes and a pile of blouses that had fallen off their hangers. Both children were stabbed and left—one on top of the other—in their bedroom closet.
Like nearly everyone who lived on a cul-de-sac in the Seattle area, Molly was constantly on her guard now. That was why she walked Erin to the bus stop every morning and waited there with her. It was why she kept a lookout for strange cars on the block. They never used to turn on their house alarm at night, but they did now.
The newspapers didn’t mention if any of the Cul-de-sac Killer’s victims had home security systems.
Molly had read so much about the murders that she’d almost become an expert. She didn’t know why she’d become so preoccupied with the cul-de-sac killings—except perhaps to make sure it didn’t happen to her new family.
The first to die had been an elderly woman, Irene Haskel, who lived alone in a split-level house on a dead-end street in Ballard. A neighbor had noticed nearly all of Irene’s lights were on for three nights in a row. She stopped by to discover Irene’s front door ajar—and a foul odor permeating the seemingly empty house. Irene’s neighbor followed the pungent smell to a bedroom closet in the upper level. The
Seattle Times
reported that Irene had thirty-eight stab wounds.
The killer struck again a week later, stabbing three coeds who lived in a townhouse on a dead end near Seattle Pacific University. A fourth roommate, who had spent that night at a friend’s apartment, returned the following afternoon to find all the lights on inside the townhouse. She also found all her roommates’ bodies, stashed in closets on the second floor.
A month passed, and it happened again—this time, a married couple in their fifties, who lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Coming home from college for a weekend visit, their son discovered the blood—and then their bodies, stuffed in two upstairs closets.
And now this family of four was slaughtered just last week.
Nervously rubbing her arms, Molly returned to the kitchen. Going through the cabinets and the refrigerator, she started to pull out all the ingredients for Toll House cookies. She didn’t want to think about the cul-de-sac murders now, not while she was the only one home. She felt uncomfortable enough in Angela’s house.
The place still seemed to belong to Jeff’s ex-wife. Hell, half the spices in the kitchen cupboard had been bought by Angela. The glasses she drank from, the plates the family used—they were all Angela’s.
Molly started mixing up the white and brown sugar, eggs, and butter in a bowl. She kept glancing over at the sliding glass doors in the big family room off the kitchen area. The backyard was rather small—with just enough room for a gas grill, a patio, and a small strip of grass. The forest started only fifteen or twenty feet behind the house. Some evenings, raccoons came right up to the other side of the sliding glass door. When Molly was alone in the house at night, she occasionally got scared and imagined something else emerging from that dark forest to watch her through the glass, something on two legs instead of four.
She thought about closing the drapes, but they were so damn ugly—maroon with gold fleur-de-lis on a heavy, velvetlike material.
Hello, Angela, what were you thinking?
Given her druthers, Molly would have redecorated the entire first floor. She didn’t share Angela’s fondness for hunter green, maroon, and gold—and the charmless, dark, Mediterranean furniture that made the big family room look like the lobby of a small, cheesy Best Western. She also thought the tall grandfather clock that didn’t work was kind of ugly. But Molly told herself that Jeff’s kids were going through enough changes in their lives. They probably didn’t want to see their mother’s house transformed into something else entirely. Nevertheless, every other week, Molly would make a subtle alteration to Angela’s drab, almost impersonal design scheme. One week, she added jazzy throw pillows to the hunter-green sofa. Another week—and about time—she got rid of a tall, ugly standing vase with a dried flower arrangement in it.
Molly figured three dozen cookies were enough for Angela and her pals. They’d probably turn up their noses at dessert anyway. It was a competitively thin crowd.
She left the cookies out to cool and started washing the dishes. The phone rang. She grabbed the kitchen cordless on the third ring. “Yes, hello?”
“It’s above the heart now,”
whispered the woman on the other end. At least that was what it sounded like she said.
“Pardon me?” Molly said. She pulled the phone away from her ear for a moment so she could glance at the caller ID screen on the receiver.
CALLER UNKNOWN
, it said.
“Pardon me?” Molly repeated into the phone. “Hello?”
There was a click on the other end of the line.
Frowning, Molly hung up. She moved over to the glass doors and peered out at the backyard once more. The sky had grown dark, and the woods looked gray and a bit sinister. Trees and shrubs swayed in the wind. She wondered if the cul-de-sacs where the killer had struck were in wooded areas.
“Would you cut it out already, Molly?” she muttered to herself. She checked the lock on the sliding door.
She really wished Jeff hadn’t mentioned the cul-de-sac murders earlier. Of course, before Jeff brought up the serial killings, she’d been unnerved by the news of Ray Corson’s death—another senseless murder.
Molly heard the washing-machine buzzer go off downstairs in the basement. She’d put her coffee-spattered sweatpants and some other clothes in the quick cycle a half hour ago. With a sigh, she plodded to the basement door. Opening it, she switched on the stairwell light. It sputtered and went out.
“Oh, terrific,” she muttered. “I really need this now.”
She could see the overhead in the rec room still worked. The staircase was a bit dark, but Molly held on to the banister and quickly made her way down there. The rec room was the kids’ domain. In one corner sat a rowing machine belonging to Jeff, but in the ten months they’d been married, Molly had yet to see him use it. She guessed Jeff and Angela bought the maroon sectional sofa and black end tables at Ikea. The fat, clunky big-screen TV was from before the day of HD and plasma. Chris must have been in charge of the art on the walls—which included a Mariners poster, a lighted Hamm’s Beer clock, movie posters of
Zoolander
and
Avatar
, and four pictures of dogs playing poker. The Ping-Pong table had become a catchall for everything from Erin’s Barbie Dream House to a science-project volcano Chris had built with papier-mâché, paint, and some chemicals.

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