One Scream Away (4 page)

Where was the thrill in
that
?

The thrill was in the preparation, the process, the control. In capturing a woman’s first tiny quavers of surprise, coaching her through a steady rise of terror, and getting her to deliver the final screams of agony and surrender when the moment was right. He shouldn’t expect Jenny to understand, really. Even for him, there had been a learning curve. Three women before Anne Chaney, and the first, Gloria Michaels, hardly even counted. She’d been an impulse, a compulsion in a moment of rage when the singing was too much to endure. But he’d learned from her and done the others better, each a more fulfilling experience than the last.

Beth Denison would be the ultimate fulfillment. Her suffering would be the result of a master plan and an amusing irony: a set of antique dolls that she’d never had the privilege of seeing, but that had changed both their lives seven years earlier. The night Anne Chaney died.

He reached into the console between the two front seats and got the envelope of insurance forms. The top one, for the doll that was supposed to blink but didn’t, was already x-ed out. He went to the next page:
1864 Benoit. Bisque head and breastplate, kid body. Replaced cork pate with human hair. Missing from the Larousse collection until 1995. Appraisal: $20,000–$25,000.

He leaned over to show the picture to Jenny. “Look,” he said. “You always liked this doll, didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“I’m not going to mail this one. You and I are going to hide it. You can help me find a good place, okay? We won’t want anyone to find her for a long, long time.” Just like the cancer patient. No one would be finding her, either. “Do you want me to get the doll from the trunk for you?”

No response. Chevy put the insurance papers away and opened the atlas, knowing he might as well be talking to thin air. “Listen, tonight shouldn’t take too long. If we get back on the road, say, by midnight, then by morning we can get to about”—he did some quick calculations, following I-80 eastward—“
here
. Omaha. I’ve never been to Omaha,” he said, tapping the word on the map. “How does that sound?”

He held the map over in front of Jenny. Nothing.

“Jen?” He sighed and put the map away. She was gone again, to that dark, silent place where no one could touch her. Where no one could hurt her.

Chevy closed his eyes on the sadness and when he opened them again, the woman who was next to die pushed through the hospital doors. He straightened, a thrill slipping down his spine.

“Okay, okay,” he said, his fingers trembling with excitement. “Here we go.”

There was no answer at Denison’s front door, but an impressive-sounding dog began barking the minute they rang the bell.

“Bring any of those special Milk-Bones?” Neil asked and dropped off the porch. He wandered to a gate overlooking the backyard, the air smelling of freshly turned soil and flowers. A plastic wheelbarrow and munchkin-size rake, shovel, and gloves were stacked in the corner of a brick patio, with the adult-size gardening tools lounging in a pot nearby. Petunias and some tiny creeping flower Neil couldn’t name sprouted from flower beds, and two flats of red-and-white cocktail begonias—the tag was still in them—sat by the gate.

Elizabeth Denison was in the middle of planting her spring flowers, teaching her kid to garden. A daughter, Neil decided. Pink-and-purple wheelbarrow, pink flowers on the miniature gardening gloves.

His heart gave a tug.

“Think she bailed?” Rick asked, coming up behind him.

Neil flared his nostrils. “Doesn’t feel like it. The gardening’s not finished, but things are kinda put away, not like she dropped everything in a hurry.”

“Let’s go talk to the neighbors. Maybe they know her schedule. Deed says she’s owned this house three years.”

“No husband, right?”

“All in her name.”

Single woman with at least one child. Dog. Gingerbread house, complete with flower beds and ruffled curtains in the windows. Boyfriend who cuts up women? Neil had to admit that didn’t seem to fit.

“Whoa, there she is,” Rick said.

He nodded to the street where a dark green Suburban slowed. The driver paused, spoke to a kid in the backseat, then swung the rear of the SUV down to the garage door. She popped the locks and got out.

Things are never as pretty as they seem.

Rick walked toward her. “Ms. Denison? I’m Lieutenant Richard Sacowicz with the Arlington Police Department, and this is Neil Sheridan. We’d like to have a word with you.” He pulled out his badge, letting it suffice for both of them.

Her glance flitted to Neil and he crossed his arms, accustomed to the once-over a six-foot-three man with an ugly scar always got.

“You need to talk to me?” she asked, a little tension in her voice. “Why?”

“Mommy, who’s that?”

The kid, a little girl wearing a baseball cap with a ladybug embroidered on the front, had unbuckled and climbed out of the car.

“Abby,” Ms. Denison said, “why don’t you go let Heinz out? It sounds like he’s about to leap out a window.”

“Heinz is our dog.” The child glanced at Neil but spoke to Rick.
Scary and mean.

Rick bent to his haunches. “Is he friendly?” he asked.

“If you’re not a cat.” Abby snickered. “Hey, why did the cat cross the road?”

Rick didn’t miss a beat. “Because it was the chicken’s day off.”

“No,” she scolded, wagging a finger at him. “To prove he wasn’t chicken.”

“Oh, man, you got me. Hey, how does a chicken tell time?”

The little girl’s eyes danced with joy. “One o’cluck, two o’cluck, three o’cluck.”

Rick chucked her under the chin, and Neil had to admire the method. Rick could schmooze with anyone. Make them tell their deepest secrets.

“Abby,” Denison said, holding out a key to her daughter, “go let the dog out.”

Abby took the key but stood rooted in front of Rick. “Hey, what did the three-legged dog say when he walked into the saloon?” She jammed her fists against the sides of her waist, affecting her rendition of what was apparently John Wayne. “I’m lookin’ for the man who shot my paw.”

Rick laughed out loud. Neil wanted to. A surprise, that.

“Hey,” Ms. Denison interjected, “what happened to the girl who ignored her mother?”

“It’s okay,” Rick said, while Abby humphed and trotted to the side door. “I could use some new material. I have a nine-year-old who thinks he’s a comic.” Fellow dumb-joke-survivor, Mr. I’m-a-Parent-Too. Yeah, this was definitely what Rick was good at.

“Will this take long?” Denison asked. “I can’t leave this furniture out here for long.”

“It’s a Queen Anne highboy,” the little girl called out, heading for the side door. “Worth a
lot
if Mr. Waterford is right, but Mommy says he lies through his tee—”

“Abby.”

Waterford.
A mental list began forming in Neil’s mind. Names to check on, clues to follow. An instinct not quite dead after all. Another surprise.

Some unlikely combination of collie, husky, and who-knows-what charged out and Abby squealed. The dog flew from person to person, gathering scents, then circled Abby until she said the magic word “cookie” and they both trotted inside.

“Great watchdog,” Rick said, kissing ass a little more. And, “No, it shouldn’t take long.”

“Okay.” Denison reached into the backseat of the SUV, and Neil took her in. She was a small woman, wearing jeans, Nikes, and a white tee under one of those fuzzy sweaters that open down the front. Made you want to pet her. Her build was slender, tight like an athlete. Dark hair fell past her shoulders with a few windblown bangs herded over the top of her head as she slid her sunglasses up. She turned, T-ball paraphernalia in hand, and the sunlight struck her face.

Neil blinked. A scar—a wide, inch-and-a-half-long hyphen—marched high across her cheekbone. It didn’t lessen her attractiveness, wasn’t garish or twisted like his. But it gave her depth, character. A story.

She popped a button and the garage door lifted. It was an enormous, two-car affair enlarged into a spacious finished basement, and brightly lit. The whole thing was filled with… stuff. That was the only word Neil could think of for it. Furniture, dishes, baskets, toys, quilts, boxes. Books and magazines filled a counter and an inkjet printer sat beside a computer, filled with twenty or so pages of printouts. The top page was a picture of an old-fashioned doll, and beside it, a real version of the image in the picture lay in a partially open box, the UPS label dated yesterday. The doll itself, cushioned with tissue paper and Styrofoam peanuts, stared at the ceiling.

Neil picked it up. It was fourteen or fifteen inches tall, with silky hair and a penetrating, wide-eyed gaze. “Antiques,” he said. “You’re an antiques dealer?”

“I’m a researcher for Foster’s Antiques. Would you like to know what my research says about the value of that doll you’re holding?”

He arched a brow. “Six months of my salary?”

“I doubt you make that much.”

Neil bit back a smile, setting the doll down. Denison came over and tucked it deeper into its packaging, an oddly protective gesture, and his gut lurched at the sight of her hands.

He skimmed her throat, neck, face—any bare flesh that was visible. No injuries buried under makeup, no defensive bruises or scrapes. Just fresh abrasions on her knuckles. He thought of Abby, then dismissed that possibility as quickly as it surfaced. Little girls who take beatings from their mothers don’t play T-ball the next day, or roll around with big dogs and tell chicken jokes to total strangers. But something—or someone—had been at the other end of Denison’s fists recently.

“I need to get upstairs with Abby,” she said. “We can talk in the kitchen.”

They followed her up the stairs and into her family room, where Neil braced himself for priceless figurines and ancient rugs and Louis-the-Whatever furniture he’d be afraid to touch. He wasn’t even close. It was warm and homey, might have graced the cover of a home-and-garden magazine in the grocery checkout line. It was neat, but not compulsively so, with Barbie dolls and plastic horses frozen in action on the hearth, a watercolor of some four-legged creature drying on the coffee table, and the scent of chocolate chip cookies lingering in the air.

An unexpected attack of warm fuzzies dimmed Neil’s hopes: Rick was right. This woman lived a Beaver-Cleaver life, though Neil couldn’t recall wishing Mrs. Cleaver would take off her sweater to give him a better look. Elizabeth Denison wasn’t the type to know a murderer. The best he could hope for was that she actually knew Lila Beckenridge.

He nursed that hope and strode past Abby and Heinz on the sofa. Followed Rick into the eat-in area of the kitchen.

“What’s this about?” Denison asked.

Rick took over. “Do you know a woman named Lila Beckenridge?” he asked, showing her Beckenridge’s driver’s license photo.

Her brow wrinkled as she looked. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve never heard the name before,” she said, looking genuinely perplexed.

“What about Gloria Michaels?” Neil asked, and again, she shook her head.

“Just after midnight on Wednesday night,” Rick said, “you received a phone call from Seattle. Who was that caller?”

For a fraction of a second, she froze. Then her eyes darted down and left, and Neil ground his jaw at how classic it all was.

Damn her, anyway. Beaver’s mom was about to lie.

A
nd that was Rule Number One: Everyone lies, everyone. Criminals, witnesses, victims, sexy young mothers with cute little girls.

Wives.

“The call we’re wondering about came two nights ago at twelve-oh-nine,” Rick said. “Was it a friend of yours?”

“No.”

“Then who was it?”

“Look,” she said, “I got an obscene phone call late Wednesday night. That’s all.”

Neil cracked a smile. “That’s a good story; stick with that.”

She glared at him and Rick cut in. “The call lasted eighty-two seconds, Ms. Denison. That’s a long time to listen to an obscene phone caller.”

Her jaw closed. Neil could almost hear the
click
of it locking. He glanced at Rick:
Ten bucks, buddy.

“So, what did the caller say?” Rick asked.

“He said the normal things an obscene phone caller says. I didn’t take notes.”

He.

Rick frowned. “Are you afraid of this man?”

“Of course I’m afraid. I told you, it was an obscene phone call. It was creepy.”

“Then why didn’t you file a police report?” Neil asked.

She crossed her arms. “Last I heard, being creepy on the phone isn’t against the law.”

She was right. Reports of obscene phone calls came into police stations every day, and were generally blown off by the front line of desk cops before the complaint could consume any paper. But Denison’s attitude didn’t make sense. A single mother who had received frightening phone calls in the middle of the night should’ve been oozing cooperation. She should’ve been relieved to have a couple of heroes knocking at her door.

“How long have you worked for Foster’s?” Rick asked. Digging mode now.

“Six years, full-time. Before that I worked part-time in their Seattle gallery.”

“Seattle,” Neil mused.

She crossed her arms. “I haven’t been back there in years, Mr. Sheridan. I moved here right after I finished my degrees.”

“Degrees in what?”

“I have a BA in American History and an MFA in Art History.”

She was almost defiant when she said it, a little jut of her chin and solid eye contact, as if daring him to find something untrue. Good liars did that—told the truth wherever possible to minimize errors. She was good. And she had fascinating eyes, the kind a man could fall into if he wasn’t careful and not even realize he was drowning. Wide, the color of black coffee, with high, slashing brows and thick lashes. Exotic, but something else, too.

Exhausted. Neil would bet his good hand she hadn’t slept much lately.

“Do you travel in your work?” Rick asked.

“I sometimes attend antiques exhibitions, usually long weekends at holidays.” She paused. “Not Seattle.”