Vicious (35 page)

Jordan held Leo in his arms. He started to list toward one side, and his head tipped back against the door. The gun he’d used to shoot Mama’s Boy fell out of his hand.

Susan couldn’t tell whether or not he was alive.

But she could see he was smiling.

After the death of Corey Shaffer, the people of Cullen started telling stories about him—stories they’d suppressed while he’d been their deputy. It was a small wonder Corey had never been arrested, considering all the trouble he’d gotten into. At least a quarter of the townspeople had heard about his, at age twelve, running over a cat with a lawn mower. And now folks began to wonder what had really happened to the two dogs young Corey had owned that he claimed had “just run away.” Former classmates recalled he’d been an obnoxious bully, a not-so-practical joker, and an anything-for-kicks daredevil.

Far more disturbing were recent stories now emerging about the town’s deputy. Several women came forward to say that while driving alone, they had been pulled over by him for no apparent reason. Often he did this at night. According to twenty-seven-year-old Cullen resident Rachel Porter, he’d acted rather peculiar after stopping her one night along Carroll Creek Drive for a broken taillight. And after she returned home to her husband, she discovered nothing wrong with the light. Rachel was convinced that if a motorcyclist hadn’t passed by and waved at her and the deputy during their brief exchange, she would have ended up like Wendy Matusik.

Investigators combed through Corey’s ranch house, located in a residential area near the center of town. The place was a mess, with plates of moldy, half-eaten food everywhere. The Ikea furnishings were tattered and dirty, and dust covered the two mounted deer heads on his wall. But he had a state-of-the-art computer and sound system.

In his basement was an entertainment room with a big-screen TV. In front of the black leather sofa, an old locked trunk doubled as a coffee table. They found more than 200 pornographic DVDs in the trunk, most of them advertising S & M and bondage on the cases. The detectives also discovered sexual paraphernalia such as handcuffs, leather masks, and mouth gags.

Next door, in Corey’s exercise room, they uncovered what they were looking for in another locked trunk: a scrapbook full of clippings about the Mama’s Boy murders. Beside the grisly headlines, Corey had pasted gold and blue stars.

In the same trunk were Corey’s journals—with photos of Wendy Matusik, of Bellingham, and Monica Fitch, of Vancouver. In some shots, they were still alive—half-dressed, looking scared and disoriented in a darkened little cell. They were curled up on that same moldy, stained mattress on which Moira Dancey would later find herself. The other pictures were taken after he’d finished with them. His journals described in detail abducting both women. Wendy with her flat tire, and Monica, trapped in a narrow pit, had been so happy to be rescued at first. For Wendy, he’d even been in uniform, driving in his squad car. Corey buried both of them within ten feet of each other, very close to the spot where the police had found the eighth known Mama’s Boy victim, Stella Syms.

For the families and friends of Corey’s victims, the waiting, wondering, and dreading were over. The bodies were excavated, autopsied, and transferred to their loved ones. Monica and Wendy, who had planned on merely passing through Cullen months and months before, finally returned home.

Allen Meeker’s various residences were tracked through his tax records. He had indeed been living in Chicago when the first-known Mama’s Boy victim, Patricia Nagel, was abducted in front of her toddler son in their apartment—not far from the El station where Allen had first spotted them. He’d been in Oakland, California, and in Annandale, Virginia, when the Mama’s Boy murders occurred in those areas as well. But it was at his residence on Camden Mills Road in North Seattle where he’d done most of his killing. The remote, two-bedroom, dark red cedar-shingle rambler was slightly run-down. It had a small, hidden room he’d created in the basement—behind a built-in bookcase in the storage closet. The current owner of the house, a sixty-seven-year-old retired art teacher, Eileen Miller-Johnson, had no idea the room existed. In the seemingly empty little cell, investigators found blood and hair samples matching nine of the eleven murdered women from the Seattle area.

The vacated house on Camden Mills Road was still a boarded-up crime scene when Eileen Miller-Johnson contacted a real estate agent about eventually selling the property. The house remained unoccupied for weeks and weeks after that. Several times a day, people drove by to gawk at Allen Meeker’s former home. Many of the license plates were from out of state. Some of those people took photos with their cell phones, or they got out and walked up to the windows of the empty house. A few of them even broke off pieces from the cedar shingles for souvenirs.

Apparently, Corey Shaffer wasn’t the only fan of Mama’s Boy.

There was a three-year gap, from the 2004 murder of Samantha Gilbert in Alexandria, Virginia, to the disappearance of Rebecca Lyden from a rest stop near Wilsonville, Oregon, in 2007. Meeker’s tax records showed he lived in Jacksonville, Florida, in the interim.

Two months after Meeker’s death, FBI and local police were still trying to connect him with the disappearances of three Florida women, all young mothers, between 2004 and 2007.

The morbid tourists who made pilgrimages to the house on Camden Mills Road weren’t very interested in Allen Meeker’s residence for the last two years—a one-bedroom unit in a modern condominium in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood. From what investigators could discern, Meeker hadn’t committed any murders while living there—and while he knew Susan.

That didn’t keep Susan from feeling hurt—and violated and incredibly stupid for letting herself be taken in by him.

She and Mattie became reluctant celebrities. The tabloids, TV, newspapers, and Internet always identified her as
the fiancée of Mama’s Boy.
Despite the fact that she’d saved the life of a teenage girl and helped bring Allen Meeker down, Susan seemed suspect to a lot of people who didn’t know her. After all, she’d been engaged to a serial killer. If she hadn’t shared his secrets, she’d certainly shared his bed—and that made her guilty by association.

Though Allen was dead, Susan still couldn’t completely expunge him from her and Mattie’s lives. She went through her photo collection and tossed all the pictures that had Allen in them; even if just his hand or half his face was in the shot, out it went. She donated to the Salvation Army every gift he’d given her and Mattie. Though she’d been living in the same duplex on Prospect Avenue since her first son, Michael, was born, Allen had spent so much time there, Susan felt compelled to move.

In December, the two-year lawsuit over the deck collapse was finally settled out of court, and Susan put some of that money down on a small two-bedroom house in West Seattle. News about the lawsuit settlement made Internet headlines on AOL:
SERIAL KILLER’S FIANCEE AWARDED
$1.5
MILLION
. Even though the article pointed out that Susan had won the money in a lawsuit in a negligence case involving the deaths of her husband and older son, the “user comments” below the story showed that 90 percent of the readers hated her:

“I can’t believe you actually read that crap, Susan,” Tom Collins told her on the telephone. He’d called her on a Saturday night in early December, two days after that story with all the comments had been featured online. He’d caught her cleaning out kitchen drawers in preparation for the move.

Two months before, it had been Tom’s call to the Skagit County police—followed minutes later by two radio transmissions from Deputy Shaffer’s squad car about a shooting—that prompted the police and medical response to Cedar Crest Way. Tom’s red MINI Cooper had arrived on the scene right after the police and ambulances. He’d parked on Carroll Creek Road, just far enough away from all the chaos and carnage so that one of his passengers couldn’t see what was going on. Rosie had ridden shotgun with Mattie in her lap. One of the cops on the scene had written him a $124 ticket for violating the state’s child-restraint laws. But Tom still claimed that it had been well worth it to see the ecstatic look on Susan’s face when she’d spotted Rosie at the end of the driveway with Mattie in her arms.

She and Tom hadn’t seen each other since. But that hadn’t been Tom’s fault. He’d called several times, asking to get together, but Susan kept putting him off. It just wasn’t the right time to start seeing him—or any man for that matter. Still, she looked forward to his calls.

“Listen, you have to scroll down to read those user comments, right?” he said on the other end of the line. “Do yourself a favor and don’t scroll down. I feel sorry for the intelligent people who get on there and try to talk some sense into the idiots making those comments. I mean, that one guy who really hated your guts, he was borderline illiterate. Do you really give a crap what he thinks of you?”

“I give a crap when people are saying on the Internet that I’m a terrible mother,” she admitted, standing in a kitchen full of boxes.

“You’re a good mother and a good person,” he replied. “Just ask anyone who actually
knows
you, Susan. Hell, that’s how Rosie and I figured out Shaffer was lying that night. He sent word that everything was okay and you were at the rental house—and he or Allen would pick up Mattie at the store. I saw the house was empty, yeah. But that could have been a mistake. I knew he was lying, because that story didn’t sound like you at all, Susan. You’re way too kind and considerate to have left your son with Rosie that long and not come back to explain or apologize in person. And you’re too good a mother to have sent some cop or your boyfriend to pick up your child. In the short time I spent with you that day, I figured out that much about you. It’s why I want to see you again. I think you’re pretty wonderful.”

“Well, that’s sweet of you, Tom, but—”

“I’m not being sweet, I’m being honest,” he interrupted. “Listen, do you need any help moving next week?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I’ve hired some movers.”

“Well, I’d like to check out your new digs in West Seattle,” he said. “Let me pick you up and take you and Mattie out to dinner, maybe Jak’s Grill or Buddha Ruska for Thai. You said the new place is on Forty-sixth and Alaska, right? They’re both pretty close by.”

“Now just isn’t the right time, Tom,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I—I hear Mattie crying. He must be up from his nap. I really should go—”

“You like me, don’t you?” he interrupted.

“Yes, of course I like you, but—”

“Well, if you keep shooting me down, I’m going to give up. And that would be a real shame—for all parties involved. What’s going on, Susan? I mean, do you really believe those idiots on the Internet? Do you really think you don’t deserve to be happy? Is that it?”

“Tom, I don’t have time for this right now, I really don’t. Mattie’s crying—”

“All right, fine. Take care, Susan.” Then he hung up.

Frowning, Susan clicked off the line and then wandered down the corridor. Stacked boxes, a big mirror, and some framed pictures were on the floor against the wall. She caught her reflection in the mirror. Dressed in old jeans and a frayed black sweater, and her brown hair in a ponytail, she didn’t look very much like a millionaire. She just looked tired and sad.

She continued down the hallway and poked her head into Mattie’s room. Nestled under a throw, he slept soundly on his bed, holding his Woody doll under his chin.

She’d explained everything the best she could to him the day after Allen was killed. Mattie seemed to understand, but still asked about Allen from time to time. Just yesterday, he’d asked while she’d been emptying out his closet: “If Allen wasn’t a nice person, why did you want to marry him?”

Sometimes, he sounded so much older than his age. And this had been one of those times. Susan had put some toys in a packing box, and then she’d sat down on his bed with him. “Well, sweetie,” she’d said. “There are bad people out there, and sometimes they can fool you into believing in them. That’s what happened with Allen. He fooled me into thinking he was a nice man. But I know better now. I’ve learned to be more careful. Sometimes, it’s hard to admit when you’ve made a mistake. But that’s the only way you can move on and make sure you don’t repeat the same mistake. Do you understand?”

Mattie had nodded pensively, and then he’d squinted up at her. “Do you think my dad could beat up Allen?”

Sometimes, too, he sounded just like a four-and-a-half-year-old.

Now, Susan watched Mattie sleep for a few moments. She heard the dryer bell go off. Weaving around stacks of boxes, she shuffled into the laundry room off the kitchen. She started to unload the dryer and fold clothes. Susan came across a sage-and-black striped pullover she’d bought about a year ago. She remembered how Allen really liked the way it looked on her.