Thomas Prescott Superpack (19 page)

Chapter 38

I slept next to the walkie-talkie, half expecting it to crackle sometime throughout the night, but either Tristen hadn’t heard my message or he didn’t want to play my game. More likely the latter. This was his game. And we would play by his rules.

Lacy made breakfast for the three of us and I asked what her plans were for the day. She turned from the skillet and said, “I was going to finish a couple last minute things at the gallery, but Ashley’s funeral is at noon, after which I plan on getting extremely wasted. I recommend you do the same.”

I’d totally spaced Ashley’s funeral. Back-to-back Christmas parties are fun, back-to-back funerals, not so much. Well, if there was a silver lining it was that I hadn’t spilled anything on my suit at Jennifer’s wake.

Caleb, Lacy, and I walked up the path, through the Franklin Cemetery gates, and found a crowd of close to a hundred gathered around where Ashley was to be buried. I could make out the majority of the students in my class, in addition to Ashley’s family.

It wasn’t difficult to spot her mother, her resemblance to Ashley was uncanny. As the three of us joined the back of the group, the priest began his spiel, and I was glad I wouldn’t have to fumble through the oddities of funeral banter with any of my students.

The priest gave an angelic ceremony, and I felt Lacy squeeze my hand in its finality. I forgot a handkerchief and was forced to wipe my eyes with the cuff of my jacket. I don’t cry when I’m sad, I cry when I’m angry. Angry tears don’t dribble off your cheek, they’re absorbed, as if you can’t part with that anger,
you need that anger to go on, to live. I was so angry. Angry with Tristen Grayer for Ashley’s death. Angry with Ashley for letting herself become Tristen’s prey. But predominantly, I was angry with myself for letting her death happen. Ashley had been killed in the storming of my castle. She was a chambermaid within my walls and I hadn’t been able to protect her.

Ashley’s mother was walking up to the podium to render the eulogy and I was losing it exponentially. I could almost hear the dam splintering in my brain. I slid my hand from Lacy’s, retreated a couple steps backward through the grass, and walked away from the procession. I made it about a hundred or so yards over a small hill before the dam burst. A high school friend lost to a car accident, my parents’ funeral, every snapshot I’d taken as a homicide detective, the eight women’s mutilated corpses from a year ago, Jennifer, Ashley, Kellon; each of these memories poured from my tear ducts and played over my eyes before trickling to the ground.

I found a stick on the ground and broke it in half until it would no longer break. I’d only heard a neck break once, but it sounded almost identical with that of a twig snapping in half. Anyway, with your eyes closed, you get the idea. So after breaking Tristen Grayer’s neck six or seven times, I felt remarkably pacified.

I walked the grounds for about ten minutes. There were a couple old people visiting their
friends at the big buffet line in the sky, but apart from them, I didn’t encounter anyone else. I made my way back to the procession and noticed the group was forming a line in which to put a rose, or other tokens of expression, atop the casket. I noticed at the midpoint of the line, in a black pantsuit, was Alex Tooms.

What was she doing here? Did she know Ashley? Of course she didn’t. Was she here just to see me?

I fell in at the back of the line and mentally traded Alex for Ashley. This was her time. I concentrated on how much I’d enjoyed the short time I’d known her, how much she’d made me laugh, and how much she’d tempted me to break the time-honored code. I thought back to a night at a bar about a month ago when she’d said she’d do, “Anything for an A.
Anything
.”

I reached into my pocket and removed a small piece of paper about an inch wide and six inches long. It was the piece of paper I gave kids at the end of the semester with their final grade. I’d written a short passage on it and circled her grade, 89.1%, an “A” in my book.

I put the folded sheet in with all the flowers, gave my condolences to Ashley’s parents, and walked to where Caleb, Lacy, and most of my class were huddled. I scanned the grounds for Alex, but didn’t come across the jade-eyed jaded journalist. The conversation turned to which bar we should take the festivities to. Caleb made an executive decision, The Pale Norseman Pub, and the scrum slowly started to move toward the cemetery gates.

As we neared the entrance, I spied Alex in my peripherals. How could this woman be so selfish, first with the articles, then coming here? I knew goldfish who were less self-serving. She sidestepped me as I eclipsed the gate and said, “You haven’t returned any of my calls.”

I ignored her question and said, “What are you doing here? I thought you only wrote the Tristen Grayer High Praise column. I didn’t know you did obituaries too.”

She looked like I punched her in the stomach. I cut her off before she could reply, “Don’t call me anymore.”

I thought I saw a tear form in her eye, but turned before I could be sure.

Chapter 39

Here’s the million dollar question, make that plural, million dollar questions;
Who threw me down a flight of stairs? Why was I in the fetal position in a bathtub? And finally, and most consequential, why was I naked?

I pushed myself up and sent a blinding pain searing through my skull. It felt like my temples were playing Pong with my brain. I peeked over the brim of the bathtub basin and saw my pants atop a pile of puke drenched clothing. All right, so I’d found my clothes, now where was I? Caleb’s? One of my buddies from
The Maine Catch
?

I stood up, shakily, and surveyed the bathtub and shower, again shakily. I had a strange sense of déjà vu, but since I’d never woken up naked, in a bathtub, in the fetal position before, I didn’t know when, or where, to attribute the feeling.

There was a pink loofa hung around the shower spigot, and I crossed off the crew of The
Maine Catch
. I didn’t cross off Caleb, my sister had a pink loofa and may have relocated it. I picked up a bottle of liquid body soap and turned it over in my hand. A haunting memory filled the infinitesimal area of my brain functioning at the moment;
I was squeaky clean, a silver lining to Caitlin and my Lever 2000 enhanced copulation.

Blimey. I was at Caitlin’s.

How in the hell did I end up here? I could have slept on the beach, on a park bench, or in a jail cell, anywhere but the woman I’d just screwed under then screwed over.

My first priority was Tylenol. I couldn’t defuse this time bomb until I defused this hangover. I stepped out of the tub and walked to Caitlin’s medicine cabinet, extracting a bottle of Tylenol. After pouring the last of the capsules down my throat, somewhere between one and eleven, I tossed the bottle in the small wastebasket next to the toilet.

Back up,
beep, beep, beep
. Clear the etch-a-sketch,
shake, shake, shake.
We have a new million dollar question: What is worse than waking up naked in your ex’s bathtub, with a blinding hangover, and your new suit caked in throw up?

The answer of course is:
Finding the packaging box from a home pregnancy kit sitting atop your ex’s bathroom trashcan.

I picked up the tiny blue trashcan and rifled through the contents for the actual pregnancy test. I tried to get mentally prepared. Blue is good, Red is bad; - is good, + is bad; Da is good, Da-da is bad.

Luckily, the pregnancy test was MIA. I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d stumbled on it and it’d been positive. It isn’t that fatherhood scared me, because it didn’t. Marrying Caitlin, on the other hand, scared the little green dog turds out of me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a standup guy, if one of my regiment somehow infiltrated Fort Dodds, then I would stand by her. I mean, there was a ninety percent chance I would stand by her, and only a ten percent chance I’d send her a check once a month. No, it was more like a seventy percent chance Caitlin and I would get married, and only a thirty percent chance I would change my name and move to the depths of the Amazon.

The more I think about it, dime, we need a dime over here.

I put the trash back how I’d found it, placed the empty Tylenol bottle back in the cabinet, and picked my puke drenched suit off the bathroom floor. I opened the door to the bathroom and peeked out. No sign of Caitlin. Caitlin’s dresser was positioned against the far wall and after a minute I found a pair of my boxers, a shirt of mine, and an old pair of sweat pants.

I looked at the clock, saw it was almost ten, and dialed Lacy on my cell. I started with, “Mind telling me what happened last night?”

She laughed, “You said you were walking down to have a beer with your
Maine Catch
pals and disappeared.”

This jarred a vague recollection of taking a boilermaker with six bearded men, although this may have just been a recessed memory from Lumberjack Camp. After a bit of cajoling, I was able to persuade Lacy to call Caitlin and fish out her present location.

Lacy called back a minute later and said, “Caitlin said, quote, ‘I’m pulling up to my house right this second to check on your bastard of a brother.’”

I hung up on her and went to the bedroom window, corroborating Lacy’s statement, Caitlin was opening the door of her Pathfinder as we speak. I grabbed my damp suit and ran out of Caitlin’s bedroom and into the hall. Her key went into the lock as I skipped past the front door and slipped behind one of the large drapes in her living room. My only chance was if she went directly to her bedroom to check on me as I suspected she would. The door opened and Caitlin yelled at the top of her lungs, “Thomas. Are you alive you jerk?”

I let ten seconds pass, then slipped out Caitlin’s front door for the last time. After two blocks I stopped running, retrieving my ringing cell from my pant pocket. Let’s just say I wasn’t shocked when I saw Caitlin’s number on the caller ID. I clicked my voice mail on and saw I had four other missed calls. Two from Caitlin, two from Alex. Two from a woman who was a coin flip away from wearing my last name the rest of her life and two from a woman who pissed me off and turned me on more than
Chicago
had.

It was about a two mile jog from Caitlin’s cookie cutter to the High Tide Tavern, and when I opened the door to my car, I was feeling like a champ, well a champ who had been dethroned the night before, but a champ nevertheless.

Back on the road, I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Caleb. I told him to get the gang together and meet me at my house by six. I wasn’t taking any chances, the next two nights would be spent behind the castle walls, and nobody, Tristen Grayer, the Grim Reaper, or fucking William Wallace himself, would be able to storm the gates.

Chapter 40

Caleb and the gang showed up at six, each with their respective overnight and sleeping bags. Noticeably missing was Kim
Welding and I asked Caleb about her absence.

He said, “She has a midterm tomorrow. She said she was going to study in the library until like nine and then shoot over. I told her we’d call her every hour.”

If it’d been a day later and this had been the case, I would have called her teacher and had him postpone her midterm. But since the hot date was still more than thirty six hours away, I let it slide. Holly and Ali started preparing dinner at eight-thirty; Fat Tim, Tall Tim, and Blake retired to the living room to watch the Mariner’s playoff with Lacy; and Caleb and I busied ourselves putting the finishing touches on Lacy’s new room.

In the last forty-eight hours the room had been recarpeted and painted to fit Lacy’s specifications, which I regret to inform you were yellow, yellow, and more yellow. Actually the carpet was closer to Taupe, but the refraction off the Bright Canary walls gave it a yellow cast. The room smelled of fresh paint, but the walls were dry to the touch.

Caleb and I spent the next twenty minutes hanging Lacy’s many paintings, picture frames, posters, and wall mirror, identically to how she’d left it when her lights had gone out. The police had removed Lacy’s bed as evidence, and the Big Bird walls seemed miles from one another. Seeing as I was yet to sleep a night in my bedroom, Caleb assisted me in moving the queen-sized bed into Lacy’s room.

In the final stages of dressing the bed, I asked Caleb, “When’s the last time you talked to Kim?”

“Forty minutes ago.”

“What’s her ETA?”

“Nine, no later than ten. She has a midterm in Forensic Pysch tomorrow. The teacher, Jameson, is a crackpot. Hundred multiple and like ten short essay.”

The two of us congregated in the door frame and Caleb said, “You’d never suspect a woman was murdered in this room. Where again were Jennifer’s eyes?”

I showed him.

He walked over and brushed his hand over the textured groves as a blind man might brush the cover of a new book. He said, “And they were facing out, not against the wall?”

“Right. A nail was driven through each pupil.”

He turned around with his back against the wall and slid down. He looked like he was doing a wall sit in gym class. I looked at my watch and started counting. He went for thirty seven seconds. Good, but not great. Caleb continued to stare off in the distance as if Lacy’s wall was a mere hurdle.

Finally, he cocked his head up at me and stated, “The victim’s eyes see.”

“What do you mean?”

He said the words slowly, “Jennifer’s eyes saw where the next victim would be killed.”

To say I was confused would be an understatement. I was befuddled. What in the hell was Caleb talking about,
Jennifer’s eyes saw where the next victim would be killed?

He instructed me to sit how he’d been and I indulged him. As I slid down the wall, my bad quad screamed, but held. Caleb asked, “Now tell me what you see?”

I glanced around the room and Caleb said, “No, keep your head straight. Imagine your eyes are the eyes on the wall. What do you see?”

I followed his instructions and stared straight ahead. “I see the bed. I can see myself in the mirror.”

“What else do you see in the mirror?” He prodded.

“Nothing. It’s just me and Lacy’s painting.” The words hit my ear before they’d hit the air, like they’d come from someone else’s mouth. I repeated, “Lacy’s lighthouse painting.”

I pushed off the wall, “Holy shit. Jennifer’s eyes saw where the next victim would be killed. Jennifer’s eyes saw Ashley would be killed at a lighthouse.”

Caleb nodded. I detected in his eyes he knew more but wanted to let me reach my own conclusions. I thought about Ashley, the lighthouse, and her eyes.

“Ashley’s eyes were affixed to the lighthouse lens. They were watching over the water, watching the incoming boats. Ashley’s eyes saw the next victim would be killed on a boat.”

Caleb chimed in, “The eyes see where the next victim will be killed, but in relation to you. It’s Tristen versus you, remember that. Jennifer was killed in your house. Ashley in your lighthouse. Kellon in your boat.”

I recollected my encore visit to Lacy’s room when I’d been looking at myself in the mirror and the clue god had whapped me on the head. But it’d never clicked.

Caleb broke my muse, “Now we need to think about what Kellon’s eyes were seeing.”

I didn’t get an opportunity to give Kellon’s eyes any conviction. Holly ran through the door holding a walkie-talkie, the ensuing stampede on the stairway flexing Lacy’s walls like rumbling speaker boxes.

Holly panted, “This just went off. It was him. It was Tristen.”

I grabbed the walkie-talkie from her. It was silent. I pushed the talk button, “Hey coward boy. What’s your excuse? Your mommy make you breast-feed until you were sixteen? Or maybe daddy made you jack him off, that it? Your sister wanted to screw your brother over you? Am I getting warmer?” I tried a couple more taunts about his family’s incest but he didn’t bite.

Everyone was in the room now, steadying themselves for the second leg of the biathlon. Speed then accuracy.

I caught Holly’s eyes and asked, “Did he say anything?”

She nodded. “Yeah, he said, ‘Two-twenty.’ That’s it. I heard it three times, I’m sure of it, ‘Two-twenty.’”

What in the hell did two-twenty mean?

Lacy offered, “Maybe he’s going to kill the next woman at 2:20 A.M. tonight, or 2:20 P.M. tomorrow afternoon.”

I shook my head, “No the fourth woman wasn’t found until 5:30 P.M. last year.” Plus that wouldn’t help us. Tristen was trying to even the playing field. He was killing me, pun intended, and wanted a little competition. This was charity.

I looked at Caleb. He shrugged, “Got me.”

Two-twenty. Maybe they were initials. Tristen had spelled out Geoffrey’s name, and he’d rearranged his name to spell Gary Strinteer, he obviously wasn’t averse to wordplay. I didn’t know any woman with the initials BU and hit a dead end. Somewhere I knew there was a file marked
two-twenty
, a file I’d opened in the last couple days.

I walked out of the door and found myself staring at the door to the guest bedroom.
Whap
.

That was it. I’d skipped over the fourth murder in
Eight in October
. I’d earmarked the page so I could come back to it later. I’d earmarked page 220.

I ran out of Lacy’s room, vaulted down the stairs, and raced out to my car. I grabbed
Eight in October
off the backseat and slid into the front. I flipped on the reading light and found the earmarked page 220. I had an inkling why Tristen Grayer had me reading this particular passage and skipped to the final sentence on the page:

Task force member, Dr. Caitlin Dodds, said after the complete autopsy, “Ginny Farth had been dead for a substantial period of time before we found her. Time of death would be close to 10:00 P.M. on the evening of Oct. 9th
.

That was it. We’d marked the hot dates the women had been found. How could I have been so asinine? This was a death ritual; same time, same day, same modus operandi. Tristen Grayer wasn’t concerned with when the women were found, the hot dates were when the women were killed.