Family Murders: A Thriller Read online

  After he'd packed his things in the trunk, Angela and Julie stood next to the driveway and waved as Ted pulled out. He stopped on the street and called back through the open window.

  "Save me some cake!"

  Angela and Julie watched him head west, into the sunset. "Remember, Mommy, it's bad luck to watch someone out of sight."

  "Yes," Angela said, "it is." They waited until Ted's sedan was a distant speck nearing the bend in the road, then turned and walked inside.

  ***

  Two hours later Angela found herself shuttled between the darkness of sleep and the darkness of the world around her. One too many celebratory pieces of cake had induced an idea into her head, the idea that she should rest her eyes—just for a second. Angela got up at dawn every morning for a jog; late hours and cake were a dangerous combination. A jerking back and forth on her arm made her suddenly awake.

  "Mommy. Mommy!" Julie was pulling on her, shaking her awake, but Angela couldn't see her. Her eyes were open, but the house was completely black. Angela's skin went cold. This was all wrong. At the very least, the photosensitive floodlights should be on at this time of night. She held tight to Julie's hand and pulled her into an embrace, her mouth close to her daughter's ear.

  "Julie," she whispered, "why did you turn out the lights?"

  "They just went out."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I was playing here on the floor, and there was a bang. A loud bang. The lights…they went out."

  Rain lashed the windows, underscored by what sounded like thunder. But it was too consistent, too omnipresent, to be thunder. A flash of lightning lit the room, then another, revealing Rocky at the sliding glass door leading to the deck at the back of the house. He was crouched low to the ground, tail pointed down. Angela had never seen him like that, knew nothing about dogs, but understood instinctively that he was lowering his center of mass in a kind of preparation. His lips were pulled back, and the lighting flashed off his canines. The rumble Angela had heard was coming from his throat and seemed emanate in all directions. It was a visceral thing, a deep bass, that had the power to reach out and slide a finger across your internal organs. Instantly, she knew that something was out there.

  She felt the tingle of adrenaline as it flooded her heart, then the tremble of cardiac acceleration. Without thinking she was up, off the couch, and backpedaling across the living room carpet, one hand still locked around Julie's wrist. Whatever was outside the door, Angela didn't want to know about it—was prepared to forget about it—assuming it would just go away.

  "You're hurting me."

  Angela gasped, then shot her other hand out to cover her daughter's mouth.

  "Quiet. You've got to be quiet. If you need to talk, whisper." Julie nodded. Angela dropped her and and knelt to put her mouth close to her daughter's ear again.

  "Mommy, Rocky's acting weird. He's been acting weird since you went to sleep."

  "Do you remember when we talked about emergencies?"

  Julie's eyebrows went up and her eyes widened. Her upper lip started to tremble. She grabbed onto Angela's arm and held on tight.

  "Is this an emergency, Mommy?"

  "I don't know, sweetie, but I think we should be careful, don't you?"

  Julie nodded slowly, old enough to to follow the logic behind better safe than sorry.

  "What do we do in an emergency like this, sweetie? When Daddy's not home and something bad happens?"

  "We go to our rooms and hide, and wait for Mommy to come get us."

  "That's right, Julie. Go to your room. Wait for me there. Don't make a sound." Angela pushed Julie towards the stairs. Silent as a ghost she was up them, and gone.

  Sending her daughter to wait alone in the dark raised the bile in Angela's throat. She'd spent too many nights like that during her childhood, waiting for her father to come home. Of course, sometimes she didn't hide. That was worse.

  Thinking about her father transformed Angela's distress into outrage, and then into a kind of maternal fury. Her daughter was curled up under her bed, or buried in her closet, and whoever or whatever was at their door had caused it. Her hands clenched into fists. She stood up, faced the door, started forward.

  "Easy boy. Easy Rocky." Angela ran her hand up through the short, stiff hairs on the back of his neck. Usually, when Rocky was riled up, she would grab him by his collar. Now her hand ran over it, past it, and came to rest on the top of his head. Her face was close to the glass in the sliding door.

  It was dark out there. If there had been any lights in the house at all, Angela would have been staring eye-to-eye with her own reflection, totally unable to see anything else. Suddenly the darkness in the house seemed an advantage: she might not be able to see out, but at least no one could see in.

  A bolt of lightning cracked across the sky and lit up the back yard. It was about an acre square, flat and lined on all three sides by stands of trees that reached back far from the house. The terrain seemed unusual to Angela, the yard somehow rougher than she had ever seen it. Out at the edge of the yard, something was moving.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. It didn't seem like the movements of a person, but she couldn't see much. The edge of their deck was in the way, and Hurricane Klaus continued to spend itself against the glass. Some of the rain drops were moving sideways, some down, making a lattice that obscured her view of the yard.

  Despite everything, Angela realized she was curious. Her hand went to the door handle. The other one got a firm grip on Rocky's collar, and then she pulled the glass open and stepped outside.

  It was a shock. The rain hitting her in the face felt like hail, more solid than liquid. Rocky started pulling on her firmly. He didn't run; rather, he moved forward fluidly, purposefully, like a lion stalking his prey. Angela's hold on him was nothing more than a distraction, and in a few seconds he had pulled them to the edge of the deck. They were standing there, looking out, when lightning punched its thousand watt glow down into the yard.

  Holes. Holes everywhere. The yard was covered with holes. In the darkness they had been impossible to pick out, nothing more than shadows, but for a second she could see that each one had a small mound next to it, a small pile of black earth. Rocky picked that moment to make his move. With one smooth movement he wrenched free of Angela's grip, leapt over the wooden bench surrounding the edge of the deck, and was traveling across the lawn like a shot, bad leg and all. He threaded his way between the holes, heading for a spot near the yard's rear corner. Angela stiffened in alarm and started down the deck's steps.

  "Rocky!"

  Rocky was barking, then snarling, then growling. Suddenly there was a yelp, but it was distinctly human.

  Lighting flashed again. A figure, tall enough that Angela felt sure it was a man, stood dressed all in black. He was holding Rocky off with some kind of stick. Her worst fear was realized; someone was out here after all. Without thinking, her throat tightened into a shout.

  "Rocky!" This time her scream found some momentary pause in the storm.

  Man and dog both looked back at her. For a moment, everything was frozen. The dark figure dropped the stick, turned, and ran. There was a peal of thunder, and then the only evidence he was ever there at all were two swinging branches. Rocky stayed exactly where he was, triumphant. The threat was away from the house, so he stood still and continued to guard his territory.

  Angela walked the last thirty feet to Rocky, to where the man had been standing. On the ground, at the edge of the woods, was a shovel. In the ground at her feet was a hole. Already, it was filling with rain.

  She watched the water level rise. A plastic bag, lifted from below by trapped air, bobbed to the surface. She reached in, picked it up, turned it over. Though the mud and the water there was a glint of silver metal. It looked like a necklace, but she couldn't say for sure. It was dark and hard to see.

  It may have been dark, it may have been hard to see, but just for a second—just before he turned and ran—Angela would have sworn the man ha
d been wearing sunglasses.

  Pink ones.

  Wednesday, October 10th, 1990

  4

  "He was right there."

  Angela had one arm and one finger extended, pointing toward the back of the yard. Her other arm was wrapped tight around her chest, the first two fingers clutching a cigarette. She had quit smoking two years earlier.

  "Mrs. Gray, I can understand why you would insist someone come out here. You're freaked out. Hearing that story, I'd be a little freaked out too. But look at it from my perspective—what exactly am I supposed to write down here?"

  Frank Cooper looked at her from the other side of the deck, resting his pen and notebook on the knee of his brown flannel pants. His blazer was mismatched; his tie had the telltale signs of being slipped on each morning and off each night without ever being re-knotted. His hair was the same color as the overcast sky, unusual for a man who only seemed to be in his late forties. Most unusual of all, the eyebrows on his craggy face were still a dark brown. The mismatch was jarring.

  "You're a detective, right?" Angela asked.

  "I know that's what you asked for on the phone, Mrs. Gray," he said. "I suppose I could be considered a detective. Technically I'm the Assistant Chief, but that's just the title they made up to go with my position." He reached up and scratched his nose. "In a town this small, it used to be just guys in uniform and then the Chief, but a few years ago the population finally got to be big enough for there to be more substantial crimes."

  "Substantial crimes. Like what?"

  "Oh, nothing you'd consider serious after watching a little TV. We're talking small time robberies, check kiting, the occasional bit of insurance fraud. There's just enough of that sort of thing for it to be a good idea to have someone in charge of keeping an eye on it."

  "So supposing you were a detective, you'd be the only detective in town."

  "I'd say that's about right, Mrs. Gray."

  "Call me Angela."

  "Angela. Angela, you understand my problem, right?"

  "No, I don't. He was right there." She pointed again. "He was digging holes all over the lawn. He was trespassing."

  "Right, trespassing." Cooper raised his eyebrows. "This is a small town, Mrs. Gray."

  "Angela."

  "Right, Angela. But it's not that small. Do you really think they're going to detail me or anyone else to investigate a case of trespassing?"

  "He threatened me in public, in a grocery store. He followed me home. Now he's coming onto my lawn and burying things. Wouldn't you call that something? Harassment?"

  Cooper looked thoughtful. "I'd call it bizarre. Say for a second we find this guy and get his side of the story. Say he admits to it all. So what? Yes, sir, I talked to her in the grocery store. Then I drove home, happened to be going the same direction. No, sir, I've never been to the Gray residence. See where I'm going with this?"

  "But he did dig up my lawn. He was here, I saw him."

  Cooper started ticking things off on his fingers. "Firstly, it'd just be your word against his, even if we can find him. I'm not saying you're lying or even mistaken. But if I'm going to do anything at all, I need evidence." Angela glowered at him for a second, then turned to look out over the punctured lawn.

  "Secondly, you said yourself that what you saw was a dark figure wearing similar sunglasses. No face, nothing definite. Is it a coincidence? I agree that it's probably not, but I can't do anything at all without evidence."

  "What about cutting the power to the house? That's a hell of lot more than trespassing," she said.

  "I had a couple uniforms check that out. It was a tree branch, took out the line. One of 'em even climbed the tree to take a look and the limb snapped right off, it wasn't cut through. It was a hurricane," he said, "or the last bit of one at least."

  "What about the thing he buried?"

  On the rough wooden table between them was the contents of the plastic bag, the contents of the hole. It was a short silver chain with a small locket attached to it .

  "You don't recognize it?" Cooper asked, then picked it up and offered it to her.

  "Should I touch it? Should you be touching it?"

  Cooper grinned and kept holding the locket out. "Like I said, this is a small town. There's no one here with fingerprinting expertise, and expertise is what it would take to get something off this after the mud and the rain. That sort of thing is harder than it looks." Angela hesitated another second, then took it from him. Her fingers ran up and down the chain.

  "No, I've never seen it before. It's for a child about Julie's age, but she doesn't have anything like it."

  "Excuse me?" Cooper looked at her strangely.

  "My daughter doesn't have anything like it," she repeated.

  "May I ask how you know it belonged to a child?"

  "I don't know if it belonged to a child, but it was made for one. Do you wear many necklaces, Detective Cooper?"

  "Call me Frank. No, I don't."

  Angela took the chain from Cooper's outstretched hand. "The chain is too short. Too short by far for an adult. I'd strangle myself just putting it on."

  "Have you opened it yet?"

  "No. I was waiting for it to dry, but I guess it's dry now," she said.

  Angela tried to be as gentle as possible. The locket had a small hasp that she moved to the side, and a locking mechanism underneath that she pressed. The tiny container sprung open. Inside were two pictures, one on each side. The first was a young girl, about Julie's age. The second was a young man, maybe high school age, sitting on the top rail of a rough wooden fence and smiling at the camera. The picture quality and the clothes they wore seemed about ten years out of date.

  Angela showed the locket to Cooper. He looked at the pictures. "Anyone you recognize?" he asked.

  "No. The boy looks a little familiar, but he's also a little generic. It makes me feel old old to say this, but all teenagers look a bit alike to me now."

  Cooper grinned again. "Wait until you're my age."

  "So what happens now?"

  "Nothing. I'll write a report. But there's no one to arrest, and there's not going to be an investigation into a report of trespassing. If you find more evidence, or…" he trailed off.

  "Or if something else happens, right? Basically I have to wait for this guy to come back to get you to do anything."

  "I'm sorry, Angela, but my hands are tied here. I wish there was more I could do."

  "Look, I have to pick up my daughter from soccer practice. Where can I reach you?" she asked. He pulled a card out of his other blazer pocket. The card and the coat were about equally creased, like he didn't give out cards often and this one had been sitting on deck for a while.

  "If anything comes up, here's my number. Call." He shook her hand and walked down the steps of the deck and around the side of the house to the front, avoiding holes where he found them.

  Angela looked out over the expanse of the yard and considered her position, considered all the questions she had thought this meeting would resolve, now still swirling in her head. She was no closer to finding out who Gabe was, she was no closer to to figuring out why he was interested in her or her family, and she had no idea why someone would dig over a dozen holes just to bury a locket. Beyond simple craziness, of course.

  She felt a shiver—whether it was the wind or something in her head she couldn't say—and dragged hard on her cigarette. That was what worried her the most, that he was just crazy. Then there would be no expectations, no way to predict what would happen next. No way to prepare for it.

  She tried to remind herself that he hadn't seemed crazy. Real craziness was being terrified for your family, being terrified for your family with no one able to help. Angela had worked long and hard to build the life she wanted. If she had no help protecting it, fine. She would protect it herself.

  She wasn't religious, and she didn't read the Bible. She didn't think often about the cosmic mysteries of the universe. But if there was a God, Angela felt sure of o
ne thing: God helps those who help themselves.

  5

  Even the sky seemed threatening, desperate to unleash violence on the world below. Gray clouds bulged downward, pregnant with the possibility of storms to come. Having been through one hurricane already, Angela had to admit that living in anticipation was worse than living in the rain.

  She had listened to the radio while driving to Julie's soccer field, and continued to listen to it while she waited in the parking lot. News of the next hurricane was on every station. Hurricane Klaus one day, now Hurricane Marco due just three days later. It was shaping up to be one of the most active hurricane seasons in recent memory.

  Angela shook her head, shook off memories of the most recent storm, shook off the realization she'd had in the car: Ted wouldn't be home before this one was over. She'd called him at the hotel, but he was no longer staying there. It was a common occurrence. His law firm had contracts with lots of hotels in lots of different cities, and Ted would upgrade whenever he got the chance. She probably wouldn't hear from him until he got home. She did some mental math. No husband. No police. One stalker, one incoming hurricane, and only her to deal with the both of them.

  As soon as Julie got in the car, that was it—she would be dropped off at school, picked up at school, and at home the rest of the time where Angela could keep an eye on her. Girls in cleats and shin guards began to pour around the edge of the bushes separating the soccer field from the parking lot. After a few minutes, the flow slowed to a trickle. By ones and twos and threes they climbed into the cars and vans surrounding her.

  She had parked in her usual spot, right where Julie always found her, but after five or ten minutes it didn't matter. The other cars were all gone. Angela was lost in thought, but her head snapped up when she realized she was the only one left in the parking lot.

  One moment she was mentally securing her daughter, already visualizing their reunion; in the next she had a feeling it was already too late. Panic was instantaneous and complete. Without realizing it, she was out the door and sprinting around the corner onto the field itself. The clouds were starting to open up again, dropping rain in her eyes. What would normally take only a fraction of a second dragged on forever. Angela was sure she was gone.