The Prettiest One: A Thriller (33 page)

Though she’d had some idea what she was going to see when she looked at him, Caitlin was still unprepared to see someone in person, someone
right there
, who looked so much like the monster from her nightmares. She felt as though she were in a slasher film, when the psycho killer finally lies dead at the heroine’s feet after terrorizing her in the dark, from the shadows, for two hours . . . Only here, Caitlin had been terrorized almost every night for two decades. And now there he was on the floor in front of her. She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it was really him. That he was real.

She stopped herself. This wasn’t Darryl Bookerman, the man who had abducted her so long ago. No, this was that monster’s son. And he was dead. Caitlin probably had killed him.

“Two bullet wounds in him that we can see,” Bix said as he stood near the shirtless body. “One in the shoulder that looks like it wasn’t too bad, and one in the gut that was very, very bad.”

Caitlin looked at the man’s bloody stomach, then looked away.

“Unless there are other holes in him somewhere, I’d say the shot in his stomach is what killed him.”

Caitlin nodded. She was numb, she realized. She had no doubt that she had put that hole in his stomach. Bullets she had fired had made all of this blood pool onto the carpet. She was the reason his eyes were open and staring yet seeing nothing.

“Got a couple of bullet holes in the wall over there, too,” Bix said, pointing to a pair of holes in the far wall, spaced a few feet apart.

Caitlin looked at them blankly.

“By the way, guys,” Bix said, “I probably don’t have to tell you not to touch anything, but in case I do, don’t touch anything. And if you already have, wipe it down with your shirt. I’m sure we’re leaving all sorts of shit anyway, stuff from our shoes, flakes of skin, whatever, but why make things any easier for the cops whenever they finally get here?”

Caitlin nodded. She didn’t remember touching anything. Then again, she had certainly been here two nights ago, and for all she knew she had touched every surface in the place, either before or after she shot Bookerman Junior.

“There’s some mail on the table here,” Bix said. “Addressed to Michael Maggert.”

Caitlin looked over at Josh, who was a few feet away, leaning down close to the pullout sofa.

“What are you looking at?” Caitlin asked.

He stood too quickly, as though he’d been caught being sneaky, which made Caitlin walk over. She looked down. Secured to the metal frame of the pullout, next to the thin, stained mattress, was a pair of handcuffs. The dangling end was open, a key still in the keyhole. Caitlin took an involuntary step backward.

“We don’t know what those are for, Caitlin,” Josh said, “or why they’re here, or whether anyone had been . . .”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

“Katie,” Bix said, “is that your cell phone?” He pointed to a phone lying on the dirty carpet, not far from the body.

“Is it?” she asked.

“That doesn’t look like yours,” Josh said as he knelt close to it. “That’s not your brand. And your phone case was black.”

“That may not have been the phone she had when she was with you,” Bix said, “but she didn’t have a phone at all when I met her, and that looks just like the one we got her. Bet the back of the case has one of those Wild Things on it, just like her tattoo. I bought it for her. We used it for the tattoo guy to copy. Turn it over.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to touch anything,” Josh said.

“If it’s not hers, wipe it down after.”

Josh turned over the phone. Same Wild Thing as her tattoo. He stood and handed the phone to Caitlin. Without thinking, she tried to turn it on, but it was dead.

“I guess there’s no doubt now that I was here,” Caitlin said.

She looked around the room—at the body again, at the blood on the floor and on the mattress, at the handcuffs, at a small table that had been knocked askew, and at the lamp that had fallen over on top of it. A mostly empty bottle of Budweiser lay on its side on the floor beside the table. Caitlin wasn’t sure exactly what had transpired here, but the most important fact was clear to her.

“I killed him,” she said.

She looked over at Josh who, for the first time, didn’t object to her saying something like that. Finally, he said, “If you did, I’m sure you had a good reason.”

“Really, Josh? Isn’t it obvious what happened?”

Josh didn’t reply. Caitlin sensed Bix watching her.

“I saw this guy come into the pub and I decided to get revenge for what happened to me when I was a kid, and what happened to those other girls. Maybe I confused him with his father, or maybe I didn’t care that he wasn’t the same Bookerman who abducted me as long as I got my revenge. I don’t know. But I followed him home from the fight club the other night and I shot him to death.” She wasn’t sure how the handcuffs factored in, but she was sure about the rest of it. “But he wasn’t his father,” she added. “I shot an innocent man.”

No one said anything for a long moment.

“I’m not sure how innocent he was,” Bix said. “Look at the handcuffs.”

“So he deserved to die?” Caitlin asked.

Another moment passed in silence before Josh said, “I’m not sure it’s as simple as you make it sound, Caitlin. Remember, your car was at the warehouse. You didn’t follow this guy here, at least not in your car.”

Caitlin nodded. “That’s right, thanks for reminding me. I probably went to the warehouse first, shot someone else there—the light-haired guy in the papers—then came here and shot Bookerman Junior . . . Mike, I guess his name probably is.” He may have called himself Maggert, but he was a Bookerman, and that’s how Caitlin thought of him.

Josh didn’t reply. Caitlin knew there was little he could say.

“It’s time for me to turn myself in, guys.”

Josh protested, of course, and Bix shook his head. Caitlin knew that they didn’t agree with her decision, but it was
her
decision to make, not theirs.

“Before you run to the cops, Katie,” Bix said, “let’s take a minute to look around here.”

“Why?”

“Why not? You in a hurry to go to jail?”

Caitlin shrugged.

“Let’s check things out a little, just to see if there’s something useful we can learn here. Maybe it will help you with the cops. And remember, don’t touch anything.”

“I assume we’re not worried about the police showing up while we’re looking,” Josh said.

“Two days and no one’s found the body yet,” Bix replied. “Our boy here wasn’t exactly Mr. Popularity. I’d say we have a few minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll check out the kitchen,” Josh said.

Bix said, “And I’ll poke around a bit in here. Katie, why don’t you see what’s down that hall?”

He nodded to a hallway. Caitlin figured that Bix knew she wasn’t keen on hanging around her murder victim longer than necessary, so she started down the hall. She didn’t see much point in this exercise but, though she knew that turning herself in to the authorities was the right thing to do, she had to admit she wasn’t looking forward to doing it. Might as well look around a little, just in case there was something to find.

She passed a bedroom on the right. Its door was open. From the hallway she saw an unmade bed and an open closet with clothes spilling off hangers. With nothing that bore scrutiny jumping out at her, she decided to move down to the next door, see what was in there, and work her way back toward the living room. But when she reached the second door, which was also open, and looked into the room, her heart stopped beating. It just stopped. It took her a moment to find her voice, and when she did, she called to the others.

“Guys . . . ?”

She thought she sounded remarkably calm under the circumstances.

Either Jane Stillwood wasn’t home and hadn’t yet listened to Hunnsaker’s phone messages, which was certainly possible despite the late hour, or she was home and ignoring Hunnsaker’s calls and messages, which was equally possible. Hunnsaker knocked, then knocked more loudly, then added, “Open up, it’s the police.” When no one answered, Hunnsaker tried the same thing at the next-door neighbor’s door, which eventually opened to reveal a man wearing loose-fitting sweatpants and a Felix the Cat T-shirt and holding an open bag of Cheetos with orange-tinted fingers. Hunnsaker questioned him and he admitted to being marginally friendly with Jane Stillwood. She worked at Commando’s a lot of nights, he said, but also waited tables at a strip club on Thatcher Boulevard. Hunnsaker knew it had to be a place called the Sugar Factory, which was the only such club on Thatcher. And no, Cheetos Guy didn’t know the redhead in the sketch but thought she might have visited Janie a couple of times.

As Hunnsaker walked back to her car, her phone rang.

“Hey, Javy.”

“This is really weird, Charlotte.”

“What is?”

“Our redhead. Caitlin Dearborn.”

“So that’s her real name, then.”

“Not anymore. I dug for a while and finally got a hit. I think that was her maiden name.”

“And now?”

“Her name now is Caitlin Sommers.”

Hunnsaker slowed as she reached her car. She stood with her remote in her hand but didn’t press the unlock button. She just stood there.

“I recognize that name,” she said. “Help me out.”

Padilla paused—dramatically, Hunnsaker thought—and said, “There was a woman who disappeared in New Hampshire back in March. It was on the news for a while. They found her car in a shopping plaza parking lot or something, but she was gone without a trace.”

“Yeah . . . I remember that. Everyone figured the husband must have killed her, but there was no evidence, if I recall. They tried to say he was cheating on her and killed her to get her out of the way, but nothing came of that angle, right? I don’t think she was ever found.”

“Until now,” Padilla said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m texting you a picture of Caitlin Sommers. It’s the one they kept showing on the news back then.”

Hunnsaker’s phone vibrated in her hand. She put the call on speakerphone and checked her texts. She opened Padilla’s, then enlarged the attached picture.

“Holy shit,” Hunnsaker said. “Swap out her blonde hair for shorter red hair and that’s her.”

“I’m sending you another picture.”

“What is it?”

“I used Photoshop to swap out her blonde hair for shorter red hair.”

“You don’t know how to use Photoshop,” Hunnsaker said.

“All right, I had someone do it for me. But take a look.”

Hunnsaker’s phone vibrated again and she opened the picture. It was their mystery redhead. No doubt.

“You want me to call the husband in New Hampshire?” Padilla asked.

She thought about it. “Not yet. There’s still too much we don’t know. Maybe she’s running from something and he knew it all along, maybe even took the heat over her disappearance to help her.”

“If I remember right, that was a hell of a lot of heat.”

“Maybe he loves her. Anyway, if that’s the case, he could tip her off.”

“Okay. What are you doing now?”

“Heading to a strip club. Place called the Sugar Factory.”

“I’ve driven by there. Need backup?”

“No, I got it. Going to talk to Jane Stillwood.”

“Really sounds like you need backup.”

Now Hunnsaker understood. “I can handle it, Javy, but thanks for the offer.”

“No problem. You go to the strip club. I’ll just stay here at my desk and watch Fusillo clipping his toenails at his desk across the room. It’s lovely.”

Hunnsaker ended the call. She couldn’t remember the last time a case had taken such a hairpin turn on her. As she recalled from the news stories, Caitlin Sommers had been an unremarkable woman when she went missing. Married, suburban house, suburban friends, worked in some local small business. Joan Nobody. Could she disappear only to turn up in North Smithfield seven months later and kill a guy in a warehouse?

Josh peered over Caitlin’s shoulder into the bedroom beyond the doorway. Bix was looking over her other shoulder. It took Josh a second to see why Caitlin had called for them. At first glance, the room was nothing but a second bedroom converted to a small office. A clunky, outdated laptop computer sat on a cheap wooden desk. Above the desk on the wall hung a cork bulletin board. On the bulletin board was . . .