You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (36 page)

Maybe Damon didn't have a second partner in all this. Maybe she was indeed the only one. It would make sense that he'd have to isolate himself to plan for October 8. He wouldn't have been able to keep it secret from her had he not pulled away a bit.

His suicide webcast three weeks ago had taken Tanya totally by surprise. She was devastated—and quite hurt that he'd do something like that without first telling her.

Then three days later, she'd started getting hang-up calls from
UNKNOWN CALLER.
After the umpteenth call, Tanya finally clicked on the line, ready to give a tongue-lashing to what she assumed was a persistent telemarketer. She greeted the caller with a curt, “What the hell do you want?”

“I just want to talk to an old friend,” she heard Damon say on the other end.

At first, she thought it was some cruel joke, the type one of those a-holes from school might pull. Someone had figured out how to imitate his voice perfectly. But he kept insisting he was the genuine article.

“What's the last thing we watched on TV together?” she demanded to know.

“The
Glee
‘
Rocky Horror Picture Show
' episode,” he answered without hesitation. “You got the DVD at the library. And I kept telling you to shut up, because you talked during the whole thing.”

Tanya burst into tears. “I thought you were dead! How could you do this without telling me? What happened?”

What happened was he'd found out his mother had paid Reed Logan to pick on him—starting shortly after his parents had broken up. She'd manipulated much of the bullying in order to get his father's attention. It was one way to make sure she saw his dad—at the meetings with Principal Dunmore.

“So she's really dead?” Tanya said, nonplussed. “You killed her?”

“She deserved what she got,” he replied.

Damon explained he'd found the perfect stand-in for himself—a nineteen-year-old drug overdose case, who had been recently buried on Lopez Island. “I dug him up,” Damon said. “Can you believe it—me, a grave robber? Oh, Tanya, it was so disgusting. The whole time, it was all I could do to keep from calling you and telling you what I was doing . . .”

What he did was knock out all the corpse's teeth. He said it was good practice for knocking out three of his own teeth that Friday night, six days before the webcast. A pint of bourbon and some painkillers got him through it. But he was still sore and sick on Monday, which was the real reason he'd missed school that day. “One advantage to having had a mother that didn't give a shit about me is that she didn't question why I came back from Lopez Sunday night looking and feeling miserable,” Damon told her.

He said the cadaver went into the big freezer they had in the garage at the Lopez Island house. He drove back over to the island with his mother in the trunk on Wednesday night. He'd slipped her three Ambien to knock her out and then tied her up.

“I thawed out the toothless nineteen-year-old the night before the webcast,” he said.

“What?” Tanya asked, incredulous. “After he'd been in a deep freeze for a few days? That's a whole body you defrosted. It should have taken at least a couple of days to thaw out . . .”

“I guess he—well, yeah, he was still pretty stiff when I loaded him in the car,” Damon replied.

Tanya wondered if he was hiding something from her about this body he'd dug up to stand in for him. But before she could ask, he went on about how he'd fooled everyone during his webcast. He told her all it took was some trick camera angles and a little sleight of hand to load the body into the car at just the right time. Tanya asked if he'd had any help planning or carrying out this scheme. She couldn't believe he'd pulled off that webcast deceit all on his own. But Damon insisted he'd worked alone. He was counting on her to be his link to the outside world. They couldn't risk meeting in person for a while. He had a room in a cheap hotel just outside the city—and was spending some nights at the Lopez Island house.

Damon asked if his tormentors at school were sorry, now that he was gone.

Tanya had to tell him the truth—that Reed, Ron, and the others were actually joking about it.

That was when Damon suggested making their former daydreams of revenge a reality. “I'm dead,” he said. “It'll be easy for me to get away with murder.”

He never said anything about making Spencer Murray his live scapegoat. But she wasn't surprised when Damon instructed her to plant Reed's baseball cap in Spencer's locker. What surprised her was that she went along with it. She'd always kind of liked Spencer, but could tell he wasn't interested in her. Damon resented him for moving into his father's house. He'd told her early on about Spencer spending time in Virginia mental institutions and juvenile detention centers for killing his parents. Damon's mother had found that out from a private detective she'd hired to look into Spencer's aunt.

Tanya felt conflicted about what they were doing to Spencer—especially since, for the last three weeks, ever since the webcast, she'd stopped feeling close to Damon. He was just this voice on the phone. It got so he only talked to her about killing. At least Spencer was there. He was cuter than Damon, and hell, he'd even been following her around the last couple of nights. She'd lapped up the attention. It was almost like having a guardian angel.

But her loyalties stayed with her soul mate, her partner in crime. It was exciting to know Damon was alive, when everyone else was so utterly clueless. Tanya relished witnessing the panic that swept through the school after Reed's murder. All the while, she remained calm and above it all. It was a dizzy, powerful feeling. And in a way, they were making the school a better place. Each murder was a fantasy fulfilled. Damon called them “grand deeds.” The last time they'd actually spoken, he'd told her: “I'm making last-minute preparations for tonight's grand deed with our friend Ron . . .”

Despite all their scheming, they never really had a solid plan for their future—except disappearing after a while. Tanya imagined it would be like their lunch periods—the two of them slipping away someplace together where no one would bother them. They'd never planned what to do if someone found out Damon was alive and pulling off these murders. And, indeed, someone knew.

She figured they could discuss it tonight. Damon was taking a real chance, showing up at her house—if he did show up at all.

Tanya turned down the walkway to her front door. She kept a lookout for someone hiding in the shadows. Maybe Damon had arrived early. Or perhaps Spencer was spying on her again. She stopped and glanced over at the house under construction next door—a dark shell.

She hurried up to her front door, unlocked it, and stepped inside. As usual, the sound of the television set in the living room greeted her. But something was wrong. It wasn't the Game Show Network or one of her mother's other favorite channels. It sounded like the news.

“Mom?” she called.

Tanya stopped dead in the hallway. Ahead, she could see the flickering TV light in the otherwise dark living room. Had she heard it right? Damon was dead?

She remembered what he'd said in his text:
Don't believe anything you hear on the news about me. I'm okay . . .
This had to be what he meant.

But how did he do it?

On the TV, she heard them break for a commercial for some prescription antidepressant. She had only a partial view of the dim room. A shadow swept across the carpet.

“Mom?” she said again.

But there was no answer.

Tanya stepped beyond an archway into the living room. Her mother was on the couch, dressed in her homely, chartreuse bathrobe—as usual. The TV table was littered with dirty glasses and plates. The television's light flickered across her beleaguered face. Her eyes were open, but not quite looking at the TV set—or at her. She wasn't blinking either. Blood from the slash across her throat had spilled down the front of her ugly robe. It stained the white bed pillow behind her head.

Tanya gasped.

“Spencer hasn't gotten in touch with you, has he?” someone asked.

Tanya swiveled around and saw a stranger in the corner of the room. He wasn't much older than her.

“Do you know where Spencer's hiding?” he asked. “Come on, Tanya. Talk to me! Damon's always going on about what a chatterbox you are. Where the hell is Spencer?”

“I—I don't know,” she whimpered, backing away. She realized he was the one who had sent her those texts today.

The stranger took out a hunting knife from inside his jacket. “You'll have to cooperate with me, Tanya. I have a feeling the police will want to talk to Damon's best gal pal—now that he's really dead. They could be here at any minute. So I really need your help.”

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“I want you to die easily, Tanya,” he whispered.

She shook her head.

“Don't struggle. Damon said you talk all the time. You never shut up. So I think it's only fitting you go the same way your mother did . . .”

Her back against the wall, Tanya realized who this stranger was—this young man who was about to slit her throat.

He was Damon's secret friend.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

 

W
ith a start, Andrea woke up on the sofa in Luke's study.

She hadn't planned on sleeping. She'd just needed to close her eyes for a few minutes. So she'd grabbed an old cardigan Luke sometimes wore when he was writing, draped it over herself, and curled up on the couch. A sofa pillow with a palm tree on it had been perfect for resting her aching head.

From the antique clock on Luke's desk, it looked like four hours had passed. Andrea's right shoulder felt like it was on fire. It took her a moment to remember what had happened. They'd brought her back from the hospital in a patrol car last night. She'd been treated for a flesh wound. Troy's shooting rampage had put one cop on the critical list. Two more policemen, a reporter, and a woman bystander had also been wounded. A number of people had sustained minor injuries in the scuffle—one of them, a child. As Luke had said, “Why would someone bring their kid to a place where the press was covering a murder story?”

She'd visited with Luke after getting stitched up and bandaged in the hospital. He was still devastated about Damon. Not only was he dealing with his son's death all over again, but he also had to struggle with the very real possibility that Damon had planned and carried out all these brutal murders.

But he couldn't have done it alone. Andrea was pretty sure about that.

She'd been right about Troy. His fingerprints were all over the interior of the stolen Mazda CX-9 that had barreled into Luke. It was far from his first offense. He'd been arrested several times, including once for breaking and entering. And the police had found out from Troy's roommate that a while back Troy and a friend had killed a man in Miami while robbing him.

Damon and Troy, both dead, were now considered the leading suspects in the murders of Reed Logan and his parents, Ron Jarvis, and possibly Diane Leppert. The police were investigating Troy's actions on the nights of those murders.

Andrea had told the police that Tanya McCallum knew both suspects and seemed to be concealing inside knowledge about the killings. A pair of detectives went to Tanya's house to investigate, and found Tanya and her mother with their throats slashed. As of a few hours ago, the police still hadn't determined the exact time of death for the mother and daughter.

The murders may have happened some time before Troy Slattery had opened fire on her and the crowd just outside Luke's town house—or perhaps
after
Troy was already dead.

So Spencer wasn't completely off the hook yet. Despite all the new developments and her videotaped plea, she still hadn't heard from him. Her heart broke when she thought of him in hiding, feeling hunted, lonely, and scared.

Getting up from the sofa, she threw Luke's sweater over her shoulders. She could smell him on it. It gave her a bit of comfort, and for a few seconds she could forget that her shoulder hurt like hell. She shuffled to the window and glanced outside.

Only nine hours ago, it had been utter pandemonium in front of the house—what with the crowd, the ambulances, several squad cars, and even a fire truck. Now all Andrea could see was one police car.

She wandered into the kitchen and got herself a glass of ice water from the dispenser on the refrigerator door. After downing two Excedrin, she noticed her phone on the breakfast table. The message light was blinking.

She checked and found an email from Detective Talwar. It had been sent at 1:17 a.m., with the subject line
Update.

“Damn it,” Andrea muttered. That explained why the one police car was still parked outside. A part of her had always considered Damon and Troy an unlikely pair. Troy's grudge was against Luke and her—not some high school bullies.

That meant the person who had killed Damon—and killed
with
Damon—was still out there.

She moved into the family room, grabbed the remote, and switched on the TV. She found the local early morning news on channel 104.

Troy's shooting spree and Damon's “second death” were the top stories. A pretty, Asian anchor with bangs and a red blazer warned viewers,
“The following video contains some disturbing images. Viewer discretion is advised. Our KING-5 correspondent Deborah Neff is here with the story . . .”

Bleary-eyed, Andrea watched as the station reran snippets of the webcast “suicide” to show how Damon had indeed killed his mother, but didn't actually climb inside the car with the explosives in it.
“As you can see, the young man's mother, Evelyn Shuler, is clearly helpless here,”
the reporter said. They showed Evelyn bound and gagged in the backseat.
“Once again, as Lori warned, these images are disturbing . . .”

Andrea hadn't watched the webcast since seeing it live. It was somehow even more gruesome to look at it now, knowing what would soon happen to Evelyn.

With his camera, Damon had zoomed in for a close-up of his mother's hands, tied at the wrist, in back of her.

Andrea saw something she hadn't noticed before. The reporter didn't comment on it. Why would she? Andrea was the only person who would have noticed. She put down her water glass. Luke's cardigan slipped off her shoulders and fell to her feet. But she barely noticed.

The close-up had lasted only a moment or two. Andrea couldn't be sure of what she'd just seen. Grabbing the remote, she played back the live broadcast. She pressed the pause button and stared at Evelyn's hands.

Andrea recognized the cocktail ring on the third finger of Evelyn's right hand. The last time she'd seen that ring, it had been on her sister's finger. It was the “fruit salad” ring.

After checking so many pawnshops and junk stores in Virginia for so many years, Andrea had finally found her mother's old ring.

* * *

Every step on the back stairs seemed to creak as Bonnie made her way down to the first floor. The house was dark, but she didn't turn on any lights. She didn't want anyone knowing she was up. She was pretty certain her parents and brothers were asleep. In fact, she was counting on it.

She'd drifted off for a couple of hours last night, but mostly just tossed and turned. Every once in a while, she'd gotten up and padded downstairs to glance out the front window. She'd figured out the police had a patrol car checking the house every fifteen minutes. Sometimes, they even turned on the searchlight as they cruised along the street.

From the coatroom off the kitchen, Bonnie grabbed her jacket and threw it on. Then she tiptoed to the front of the house. She waited there for about five minutes and saw the squad car slowly drive by.

She grabbed her mother's car keys from the bowl on the table in the front hall, and then quietly slipped out the front door. She wondered who would be the first to notice the family SUV wasn't in the driveway—her parents or the police?

The headlights blinked as she unlocked the SUV with the remote device. After climbing behind the wheel, Bonnie switched off the headlights and carefully closed the door. She glanced up at the house and the windows on the second floor. No lights had gone on yet.

With her eyes on the side mirror, she backed into the street. There wasn't any traffic at this hour. She waited until she was half a block away from the house to switch the headlights on. She didn't see a cop car anywhere.

Bonnie figured she'd be at the marina on Lake Union in about fifteen minutes. The last communication she'd had with Spencer had been twelve hours ago, when he'd called her from the pay phone and hung up after one ring. That had been their signal to let her know he'd found the boat and he was okay.

There was a radio on the boat, but no TV. And if Spencer had thrown away his smart phone like she'd suggested, then he probably had no way of knowing about the shooting rampage in front of Luke Shuler's town house, or the murders of Tanya and her mother. Spencer probably didn't realize that his theory about Damon faking his death was spot on, and that the police now suspected Troy Slattery had been involved in the recent string of murders.

It was probably okay for him to give himself up now. She needed to let him know it was safe. She couldn't wait to tell her parents how wrong they were about him. Then again, they'd probably be furious that she'd harbored a fugitive. Maybe the less said about it, the better.

Bonnie pulled up to the marina, and parked the SUV in the car lot. In the distance, down the dock, she could see the lights on inside the
Bonnie Blue
.

She switched off the engine. In the sudden quiet, she heard something rustling in the backseat. She glanced in the rearview mirror.

Someone popped up behind her.

Bonnie let out a little shriek.

She saw his eyes staring back at her in the rearview mirror.

Then she felt the point of a knife at the side of her neck.

“I knew you'd lead me to him,” the man whispered.

* * *

Sitting at Luke's desk, Andrea stared down at the mug shots of Garrett's two friends from the Virginia Juvenile Correctional Institution in Richmond: the baby-faced Kirk Mowery and swarthy Richard Phelps.

For years, she'd been looking in pawnshops for her mother's cocktail ring. Many of the other pieces Garrett Beale had taken the night of the murders had been sold or hocked. But he must have kept the “fruit salad” ring—and hidden it well.

But not so well that his two pals didn't find it.

She remembered what Dana had told her, based on Hugh Badger Lyman's research:
About two months before Garrett was sprung, his parents' house was robbed while they were away on vacation. They never caught the thieves. But Hugh always wondered if Kirk and Richard had anything to do with it.

One of them had held on to that ring. Was it the dark-haired boy who had completely disappeared—or the angel-faced blond, who was the last person Hugh had interviewed before his mysterious death? One of the two must have made his way to Seattle and gotten friendly with Evelyn, at least friendly enough to give her the cocktail ring he'd stolen.

Luke had mentioned a while back that after Troy, his wife had started seeing an even younger man. Evelyn had joked with him about feeling like a cougar.

Richard or Kirk must have gotten friendly with Damon, too. Andrea couldn't quite see chic, smart Evelyn sporting that slightly garish ring—unless she was expecting a visit from the young man who had given it to her. Evelyn's sometime boyfriend must have helped her son in abducting her, tying her up, and killing her. Richard was a firebug. Did he know something about explosives? Andrea could imagine Evelyn finding the nineteen-year-old Richard sexy enough—despite the age difference.

Poor Evelyn had joked about being a cougar. But she'd had no idea who the real predator was.

Hugh Badger Lyman hadn't been able to locate Richard since the fire that killed Garrett and his parents in April. And Andrea didn't have a working number for Richard's older sister and guardian.

But yesterday, when she'd phoned Kirk's mother, Hannah Mowery-Jansen of Charlottesville, she'd gotten an answering machine and hung up. It was eight-twenty on the East Coast, kind of early to call on a Sunday. But Andrea picked up the cordless phone on the desk and dialed the number for Kirk Mowery's mother.

A woman answered after two ringtones. “Hello?”

With the phone to her ear, Andrea stared down at the mug shot of the blond boy. “Yes, hi, is Kirk there, please?”

“He isn't home,” the women answered. “Who is this?”

“Well, you don't know me. But my name's Andrea Boyle. Can you tell me how to get in touch with Kirk?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” the woman said. “I saw that two-oh-six area code and figured you must know him. You're calling from Seattle, I take it?”

“Yes . . .”

“Well, when did you last see him?” Kirk's mother asked.

“I haven't seen him at all, but I'm acquainted with some people who might know him,” Andrea said. “Did Kirk ever mention a Damon Shuler or an Evelyn Shuler?”

“Hmm, no, I don't think so,” the woman replied.

Andrea glanced at Hugh's Post-it:
Check on Doreen Carter—Girlfriend?
It had been attached to Richard Phelps's rap sheet, but she had stuck it on the list of
Doreen Carters
she'd been calling all yesterday morning.

“Did Kirk happen to have a girlfriend by the name of Doreen?” Andrea asked. “Doreen Carter?”

The woman laughed. “You must not know Kirk very well at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have any contact information for this Damon or Evelyn Shuler you just mentioned?” asked Kirk's mother. “I'd really like to get in touch with them.”

“Well, you can't,” Andrea said.

“Why not?”

“Because they're dead,” Andrea admitted. “I have—well, I have reason to believe that Kirk was involved with Evelyn Shuler.”

“That's ridiculous,” the woman replied. “And Kirk can't be involved with this Doreen Carter person either. My son's gay, Ms. Boyle. And he's never hidden it. That's what I meant when I said you couldn't know him very well. Now, what's this all about?”