Fear Nothing (37 page)

I belted on a long silk robe, then plodded out to the kitchen. Went ahead with that giant glass of wine. Then I stared at my front door and realized I’d never be able to sleep like this. If the Rose Killer had picked the lock once, he or she could do it again. Or maybe it hadn’t even been that hard; maybe the killer already had a copy of my key. Why not? The killer already seemed to know everything about me.

I was too tired to call a locksmith, so I settled for wedging a chair beneath the handle. Then, feeling vindictive, I covered the floor with round glass Christmas ornaments, like the boy had done in that
Home Alone
movie. If it had worked for him, why not me?

Empowered, I took my glass of wine and retreated to the master bath, where I indulged in a temperate shower, the glowing red numbers of the thermostat’s digital display assuring me I wouldn’t burn.

Then, at long last, I finally confronted the biggest question of the day, the true cause behind my rage and restlessness.

Hurricane Shana.

My big sister. Who claimed she’d taken me out of the closet, so many years ago, and held me close.

Because if you don’t have family, you don’t have anything at all.

I wanted her to love me. It was terrible. Illogical. Weak. Frail sentiment from a woman who knew better.

And yet I did.

When she’d talked of that last moment we’d had together in our parents’ house . . . For a moment, I could almost remember it. The sound of shouting men, pounding against the door. My father’s voice in the bathroom, my mother’s hushed reply.

Then Shana. My big sister coming for me. My big sister picking me up in her arms. My big sister telling me she loved me and would always keep me safe.

I loved her, too.

The water seemed thicker on my cheeks. Was I crying? Would there be any point? The four-year-old child who’d existed forty years ago was not the same woman incarcerated now. Grown-up Shana used people. Destroyed Mr. and Mrs. Davies’s lives, let alone the Johnsons’ and the Sgarzis’. And what about the other children who’d been in the home? Mrs. Davies had been right. Chances were, little Trevor had gotten shipped out to some terrible place where he’d been beaten or raped or otherwise corrupted by the relentless hopelessness of foster life, while pretty AnaRose had been pimped out to earn money for her mother’s desperate habit.

And Shana never even mentioned their names. Entire families, vanquished by her actions. It was as if they no longer existed for her. Because they didn’t. She had needed. She had wanted. Then she was done.

I pulled myself together, shutting off the shower.

This morning, my sister had gotten to me, because that was what she did best. I showed up to break up with her, as she put it, and suddenly she had this story she’d never told me once in twenty years. Standing there, listening to her talk, I’d been swept up in her spell. Just as that first prison guard, Frankie, or maybe the second one, Rich.

She was manipulative. Not being able to feel sentiment herself, she suffered no blinders when it came to human nature. She could observe, analyze, collect. The perfect predator.

And Donnie Johnson, thirty years ago, trudging to the lilac bushes to deliver his older cousin’s message? Had he been scared that night? Nervous about Shana’s reaction? Or at twelve, had he been too young to fully comprehend the dangers of breaking a teenage girl’s heart?

Right until her face had changed into a snarl. And she’d turned on him, lashing out with a knife. Impulsive. Wild. She was angry, and so she acted enraged.

My sister, who weaved a story to make me stay. Who talked at least two, if not three, men into their own deaths.

I frowned, finding a towel, drying myself off.

Words. Those were my sister’s weapon as well. And no less dangerous. But, if you were into patterns—and psychiatrists loved patterns—my sister’s MO was to talk first. Engage. Seduce. Coerce the desired behavior.

If she could do that with trained guards, why would she not have tried that first on a twelve-year-old boy? Sold him some story devised to make him fetch Charlie for her right away. She was sick, she needed Charlie, she wasn’t mad at all; she just needed to give him something back.

She would. I knew it. She would’ve talked to Donnie first. Because my sister wouldn’t have wanted to waste her wrath on the twelve-year-old messenger. No, Charlie had rejected her, and her razor-sharp mind would’ve gone straight there, lasering in on target.

My sister hadn’t killed Donnie Johnson.

Someone else had. But had she seen it? Maybe arrived toward the end of it? A person . . . A girl, I thought, a girl bending over a boy with a blade in her hand, like my mother with my father all those years ago.

Instant psychotic episode.

My sister had never stood a chance.

But the ear in her pocket?

She could’ve taken it. Maybe even done the mutilation herself. At that point, she would’ve been on autopilot, the episode having triggered not only all of her deepest, darkest desires but also her deepest, darkest memories. Had my father ever removed some poor girl’s ear? I’m sure if I went through the files, I’d find at least one instance.

Someone else had killed Donnie. Maybe even looked up in shock when Shana appeared. Except my sister hadn’t responded with outrage. Instead, she’d stepped forward, already captivated by the smell of blood. . . .

That person had found his or her perfect patsy. One person to do the crime but another to serve the time. And my sister hadn’t been able to fight back, because she lacked all memory from that night. Not to mention, the murder looked exactly like something she knew, deep down inside, she would do.

She was the daughter of a serial killer, accused of murder, who went on to become a serial killer. Destiny, I think Shana would say. She simply got tired of fighting it.

So what did she want from me?

And what could I realistically offer her?

I stepped into my closet, seeking pajamas. I didn’t realize it until after I opened and then closed the top drawer of the bureau. Then it nagged at me. The closet wasn’t right. Something was off. Something . . .

The movable cherrywood bureau. It wasn’t where it should be, safely positioned over my hidey-hole. Instead, it was forward at least a couple of inches. As if someone had moved it and not gotten it back in place.

My heart, starting to accelerate.

I could’ve done it. Last night, removing vials, my frantic bid to dispose of evidence. Except I always returned it precisely to position, a paranoid habit developed from years of trying to hide the worst of myself.

He’d been here. In my closet. He’d . . .

Then I knew.

I moved the dresser myself, exposing the desired floorboards. On my hands and knees, prying up the first, then the second.

My recently emptied hiding place wasn’t empty anymore. Instead, it contained a shoe box. A perfectly ordinary shoe box, just like one I used to have. Or the one I’d seen in my father’s crime scene photos.

I knew. Even as I lifted it out. Even as I placed it on the floor.

I knew what I would find inside. The true horrors that could lurk in the most ordinary of boxes, tucked beneath a closet floor.

The Rose Killer inside my home. The Rose Killer bearing gifts. The Rose Killer bringing me the one thing he or she knew I would want most, hidden in a place no one, not even my sister, knew existed.

I removed the lid. Set it aside.

Then gazed down in horrified fascination at three brand-new mason jars filled with fresh ribbons of human skin, the replacement for my collection.

I screamed. But there was no one around to hear.

Chapter 31

W
E’RE BEING STUPID,
” D.D. said.

“
We
as in you and me, or
we
as in your case team?” Alex asked.

“All of the above.”

“Okay, what have we been stupid about?” They were sitting on the sofa in the living room. D.D. had returned home in time to put Jack to bed, a ritual she’d needed after all the intensity of her day. Now she had her feet on Alex’s lap and a large ice pack on her left shoulder.

“For starters, we don’t have a killer. I was hoping by now we would.”

“Well, you can’t just conjure up these things.”

“Oh, I was prepared to use deductive reasoning. No conjuring required.”

“Wanna catch me up?”

“Okay.” D.D. repositioned the ice pack on her shoulder while composing her thoughts. “First question we had: Could Shana be communicating with an outside friend/ally/killer, and if so, how?”

“Survey says?”

“Probably not. The biggest evidence that suggested she did have an outside ally was the fact she seemed to know things she shouldn’t. However, Adeline believes Shana is simply more observant than most. Basically, Shana doesn’t possess special knowledge, as much as she’s adept at using social engineering skills to manipulate others. Turns out, she may have talked three corrections officers into their own deaths. At least they weren’t very nice corrections officers.”

“Okay. But if she isn’t communicating with the Rose Killer, what is her relationship with the killer?”

“That one is harder to answer. More and more, we think this all has to do with Donnie Johnson’s murder thirty years ago. Adeline doesn’t believe anymore that her sister killed the boy. I’m not willing to go that far just yet, but there’s definitely more to that night than came out at trial. Charlie Sgarzi earned the title of biggest loser of the day by revealing he most likely sent his own cousin to his death.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Apparently, twelve-year-old Donnie served as the messenger between Charlie and Shana. Meaning when Charlie decided his girlfriend was too slutty or, possibly, too scary for him—I’m not sure which—he sent his younger cousin to deliver the news.”

“Nice.”

“Charlie agrees he is an asshole, but Shana is still the monster. Now, get this. Talking with the foster mom, we learned Shana was involved with two other boys. One was a twentysomething drug dealer called Shep, the other a seventeen-year-old kid who lived in the same house, named Samuel. Mrs. Davies apparently caught Shana and Sam together at least twice, and according to Charlie, Sam’s interest in Shana was intense. She might’ve been love ’em and leave ’em, but he considered her the real deal.”

“Ooh, a wounded teenage boy. But still sounds like Shana is the only one with motive to murder Donnie. Kill the messenger and all that.”

D.D. shrugged, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Melvin was currently quite annoyed. She’d tried speaking to him, but apparently her inner Exile was capable of having a snit. Maybe because she’d been a bad Self and pushed too hard today.

Wow, D.D. sounded loonier all the time.

“Adeline thinks Shana didn’t kill Donnie,” she continued, “but maybe saw what happened, which triggered a psychotic episode, erasing her memories from the evening and setting her up to take the blame.”

“But Donnie didn’t have any enemies, right? He was the good kid.”

“By all accounts. Only thing I can think, and it fits with your kill-the-messenger theory, is that this Sam was an even bigger dope than Charlie thought, and didn’t realize Shana was sleeping around. Then he’s passing through the shortcut with the lilac bushes, and he overhears Donnie breaking up for Charlie. But what Sam really hears is that Shana had another boyfriend in the first place. And that sends him into a frenzy.”

“Did anyone see him that night?” Alex asked reasonably. “Witnesses that spotted Sam returning home bloody, or maybe the foster mom found blood-soaked clothes?”

“Nada. Whereas, Shana wins on all those accounts. So again, I’m liking Shana for the murder of Donnie Johnson. However—”

“Excellent. I enjoy a good investigative
however
—”

“I think there’s something we still don’t know about thirty years ago. Hence, my problem, because I can’t know what I don’t know, right? But you raised an important question the other night.”

“Thank you.”

“Why now? What’s the inciting event? Shana’s been locked up thirty years, Harry Day’s been dead forty years. Why all this madness now?”

“And the answer is?”

“I think it’s Charlie Sgarzi. He decided to write this stupid book about his cousin’s murder, apparently to cleanse his own conscience, and as a result, he’s been dredging up old business. And that got someone’s juices flowing.”

“Someone who never even met you but decided to push you down a flight of stairs?”

“I can’t know what I don’t know,” D.D. assured him.

“Interesting alibi. Do you remember anything yet?”

“No.” She rubbed her forehead. “Just Jack’s favorite lullabye,
Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .
” She started humming it; she couldn’t help herself.
“I can hear it all the time, playing in the back of my mind. Like a radio song you get stuck in your head. Except I don’t think it came from the radio. I was humming it at the scene, and then . . . a sound. I heard something. Then I must’ve done . . . something? Maybe confronted the killer somehow. But my gun was out, right? I couldn’t have drawn after I started falling. The gun had to come first. Meaning I did see something that night, engaged in some kind of altercation. Rather than run away, however, the killer decided to give me a giant shove off instead.”

Alex smiled at her sympathetically, massaged her feet. “How’s Melvin?”

“Oh, we’re getting more used to each other. At least investigative work is distracting. I know they’d never clear me for duty yet, but I swear, Alex, if I didn’t have this case to occupy my mind . . .”

She was thinking of his earlier point, that faint whiff of blame that while being pushed down the stairs might not have been her fault, her actions since had basically drawn a murderer even closer into their lives.

Alex smiled at her now, blue eyes crinkling with understanding. “You are who you are, you do what you do. And you’re tougher than you think.”

“Isn’t that from
Winnie-the-Pooh
?” she asked him.

“Hey, I happen to like a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff. What do you think Jack and I do with our free afternoons?”