The Perfect Stranger (17 page)

“You said you’re visiting a friend?”

“Yes.”

“So . . . doing some sightseeing?”

“Actually . . .” She takes a deep breath. “It’s a funeral for a friend. I’m going with other friends.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nods, uncomfortable.

“Was it sudden?”

Again she nods, and finds herself wanting to tell him the whole story. He is, after all, a former cop. Maybe he has some insight into how this could have happened to Meredith.

But that’s silly, isn’t it? It’s not as though he works in Cincinnati law enforcement anymore. And even if he did—or if he had a direct pipeline into the investigation—it’s not as if he’d share details of the case with a perfect stranger on a plane.

Anyway, she doesn’t necessarily want to get into how well she knows—or rather, doesn’t know—Meredith. Why complicate what should really remain pleasant small talk between two people who are never going to see each other again?

She changes the subject, asking him if there’s a magazine in his seat-back pocket.

He looks. “No magazine.”

“I was wondering if maybe I just didn’t have one, or if the airline doesn’t publish one.”

He shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

They both fall silent again as the plane gains altitude. Hint taken. He’s no longer asking for the details about Meredith’s death.

But maybe she wishes he would. Maybe she wants to tell him what happened. After all, he’s a private investigator. Maybe he can—

Her thoughts are interrupted by a bell signal.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the flight attendant announces, “the fasten seat-belt light is still on and we ask that you please remain seated. However, it’s now safe to turn on electronic devices . . .”

Landry bends over to take her electronic reader from the bag under the seat in front of her. When she straightens, she sees that Bruce Mangione is already opening his laptop.

The moment has passed.

It’s probably just as well.

“So what’s Jermaine doing today?” Frank asks, in the passenger seat beside Crystal as she pulls onto the interstate, heading toward the western suburbs.

“Same thing he does every Saturday, working. What’s Marcy doing?”

“Same thing she does every Saturday: taking the kids to activities. Swim lessons, ballet, Little League . . .”

Three kids. Three different directions. God bless Marcy.

Frank’s wife is a bubbly, energetic woman adored by everyone, including her husband. But that doesn’t stop him from straying.

“You’re missing it all,” Crystal observes, merging into traffic. “Their ball games, their dance recitals . . .”

“Yeah, well . . .” Frank shrugs. “Sometimes, that’s not such a bad thing. Have you ever sat through seven innings of T-ball in the rain?”

Crystal takes her eyes off the road long enough to send him a look that says,
You don’t want to miss a thing. Trust me.

Frank shifts uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

Of course he’s aware of her son’s death. They weren’t partners then, but he knows a lot about what unfolded in her life before they met. Knows everything, really. You work long, hard hours with a person, you become privy to their deepest, darkest secrets.

She’s no angel, but she’s got nothing to hide these days.

Unlike Frank.

She tries not to judge. She really does. What goes on in other people’s marriages is their business.

Still, whenever Frank talks, she doesn’t just listen . . . she offers advice. Unsolicited, of course, because no cheating man is going to ask a woman—especially one who knows and likes his wife—what she thinks about his extramarital affair.

Her advice to Frank is always the same: end it.

End the affair. Go home to your wife every night and be grateful for what you have. A loving spouse. Three beautiful healthy kids. A roof over your head and a job that will keep it there . . .

Sometimes, she thinks she’s getting through to Frank—but then he’ll slip and say something, or she’ll see something, and she’ll know he’s still involved with the other woman he’s been seeing for a while now.

A fellow cop.

Someone who understands . . .

Like Jermaine understands Crystal.

So, yeah. Who is she to judge?

She thinks about Hank Heywood. He’s still riding high on their short list of suspects, but they haven’t turned up a scrap of evidence against the guy. If he has anything to hide, it’s well-buried.

He did tell them about his wife’s secret—that her cancer had spread—but he asked them not to share that information with the rest of the family.

Unfortunately, Hank Heywood’s request was not as simple to honor as Keith Drover’s appeal that they not mention his affair to his wife. Drover’s illicit relationship has no direct impact on the investigation—not at this stage, anyway. His alibi seems to have checked out—unless, of course, his lover is an accomplice who’s covering for him.

Anything is possible. But—at this point, anyway—they have no reason to suspect Drover, and he has no apparent motive for wanting his mother-in-law dead.

The man’s lover, Jonathan Randall, is an adjunct at the University of Kentucky. He seemed a bit rattled to be questioned in connection with a homicide investigation, though he said he already knew about the murder. He confirmed that he and Keith were together at his apartment until the wee hours on Saturday night—and volunteered that they were together again on Tuesday night, while Rebecca Drover was in Cincinnati with her family.

Crystal wonders whether he’ll show up today for the memorial service. Probably not—but stranger things have happened.

She and Frank will be there partly to pay their respects, partly to observe the family, and partly to keep an eye out for anything—or anyone—unusual in the anticipated crowd of mourners.

Before leaving home this morning, she’d discussed the case again with Jermaine as they shared a bathroom mirror.

“I’m telling you, babe,” Crystal said, running a brush through her shower-damp hair, “the killer was someone close to Meredith Heywood—or someone who felt as if he knew her. It might have been someone who was acquainted with her only through her blog, but whoever it was still cared about her on some level.”

“And you’re basing that on . . .”

“Instinct, and the way the body was positioned.”

“That’s right. I remember.” Jermaine squirted a fat cloud of shaving cream into his hand. “You said that was one of the first things that struck you when you arrived at the scene.”

She nodded, closing her eyes and envisioning the way Meredith Heywood’s nightgown was arranged neatly and demurely down to her ankles, as if to preserve her dignity.

“It wouldn’t—couldn’t—have settled that way if she’d fallen dead in a scuffle,” she told Jermaine.

“So whoever killed her had some remorse.”

“Exactly.”

“You know there’s a thin line between love and hate,” her husband reminded her. “Remember that article I showed you, back when you were working on the case involving that mother who drowned her baby?”

“Diaphanous Jones. I do remember.”

The article was from one of the scientific journals Jermaine likes to read. It discussed a recent neurological study that had found that contrary to popular thinking, intense love and intense hate aren’t opposite emotions at all—they’re strikingly similar, biologically and behaviorally speaking. Both can arouse passionate behavior; both can trigger irrational action; both involve the same circuitry in the brain.

“Okay,” she’d said. “So did Meredith Heywood’s killer act because he loved her? Was it some kind of twisted angel of mercy scenario? Or was it because he hated her?”

“Maybe both,” Jermaine said with a shrug, and put his arms around her from behind. “But since you’re always saying I have a one-track mind, you can rest easy, because my brain circuits are only wired for one thing when I think of you.”

She’d laughed as he pressed up against her. “I don’t think we’re talking about your brain, here.”

That was a pleasant, if fleeting, distraction.

Now, her own mind is right back on track, constantly working, working, working the case from every angle.

As she and Frank near the exit for McGraw’s Funeral Home, she’s confident that if Meredith Heywood really was killed by someone who knew her well enough to love her or hate her—even just via the Internet—then there’s a good chance that person will be drawn to show up today.

They often are.

And if that happens . . . we’ll be watching.

Sheri Lorton has been on autopilot ever since her husband, Roger, was senselessly murdered while out walking their puppy early Thursday morning. It’s amazing, when you think about it—and she has scarcely allowed herself to think about it—that she’s managed to propel herself through forty-eight hours that have involved walking, talking, breathing . . .

Forget sleeping and eating. Even on autopilot, she’s incapable of accomplishing either of those.

But the rest of it—somehow, she’s still upright, functioning in the aftermath of the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

She had no inkling of the looming tragedy when she awakened Thursday morning to barking beneath the bedroom window. She tried to sleep through it at first, then finally peered out to see Maggie at the back door, dragging her leash from her collar. Roger was nowhere in sight.

At the time, unaware that the world can end in an instant, Sheri assumed the puppy must have gotten away from him and found her way home. They’d only had Maggie for a few weeks, and she was pretty feisty.

She let the dog into the house and set out a bowl of water, wondering if Maggie was too much of a handful after all. They’d decided against having children—Roger has three from his first marriage—and it had taken him almost a decade to agree with her notion that a dog might make their house feel more like a home. Maybe he’d been right about adopting a more mature dog, though.

“I think you might just have too much energy for us, huh, Mags?” she’d said, watching Maggie lap up the water eagerly, wondering how she could possibly bear swapping the puppy for a better-behaved dog.

She called her husband’s cell phone to tell him Maggie had found her way home, but heard it ring in the next room. He’d left it behind again, plugged into the charger—not unusual for the quintessential absent-minded professor.

She figured he must be out combing the streets for the dog. But when minutes turned into a half hour with no sign of him, Sheri began to get nervous.

Hearing sirens in the distance, she called the police station. By that time, runaway puppy or not, her conscientious husband should have been at home showering and getting ready to leave for work. He was teaching an early class this session on Advanced Abstract Algebra, and with summer construction between their neighborhood and campus, the commute had been longer than usual.

The police officer on the other end of the line seemed to take the call in stride, as if people went missing every morning around there. Sheri couldn’t imagine that was the case, though. The surrounding blocks had changed over the past decade since they moved in, but this was hardly a sketchy inner-city neighborhood.

The cop asked a few questions—including what Roger was wearing.

Sheri hadn’t seen him since she dozed off beside him the night before, but she knew him well enough to guess at the clothing he’d had on. Jeans, a T-shirt, and, because the morning was cool, a front-zip hooded sweatshirt jacket.

When a pair of uniformed officers turned up at her door an hour later, she assumed they were coming to gather more information, having convinced herself that the sirens she’d heard screaming through the neighborhood earlier were probably responding to a fire or something . . . something . . .

Something, anything, else.

Please, God, not Roger . . .

Oldest, most comforting rule ever: when you hear sirens and worry, they never turn out to be wailing for the person you’re worrying about.

Rules: made to be broken.

A body had been found matching her husband’s description.

Catapulted into grief and disbelief, Sheri remembers thinking, in the back of her mind, that he must have had a heart attack. He was fifteen years older, in his mid-fifties, a small man—short in stature with a slight build, though not as fit as he should have been. And he was a smoker.

Whenever the dreadful truth managed to hit her—
murder
—it trampolined away again.

Only now, two days later, has it really begun to sink in.

Now that her husband’s body has been released to the funeral director for burial, a somber detective is standing on the doorstep offering Sheri condolences and a small bag filled with the “final effects.”

In other words, the contents of Roger’s pockets and his gold wedding ring.

His wallet, of course, is missing. And the officer tells her they’re hanging onto the clothing he was wearing—jeans, a T-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt, just as she’d guessed. Evidence, he explains.

Of course. The case is unsolved.

All they know is that someone mugged Roger as he walked the dog Thursday morning, viciously stabbing him and leaving him to bleed to death on the street where a passerby found his body. Too late.

“Again, I’m so sorry for your loss,” the officer tells Sheri as she stands numbly clutching the bag.

“Thank you.”

Over the policeman’s shoulder, out on the sidewalk, a couple of neighborhood kids roll by on skateboards. Across the street, toddlers in bathing suits jump through a front yard sprinkler as their mothers keep a watchful eye from the porch steps. Out there in the world beyond Sheri’s doorstep, it’s a gloriously sunny Saturday morning: birds chirping, lawn mowers buzzing, kids playing . . .

Incredulous, Sheri tries to focus on what the officer is saying.

“We’re doing everything we can to find the person responsible, Mrs. Lorton.”

“Thank you.”

“Here’s my card. Call me if you need anything at all. I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you,” Sheri says yet again, pocketing the card.

She closes the door, tosses the bag aside, and collapses on the floor, sobbing.