The Wreck (15 page)

He smiled. “Okay. You pick.”

She came back with a slice of Molly’s
famous chocolate cake.

He groaned. “Mary Ann’s going to flip
when she gets home next week and sees how fat I’ve gotten.”

Carly crinkled up her face and shook her
head in disagreement.

“Don’t let me interrupt your work. I can
wait until you’re done.”

She held up both hands to tell him she
needed ten more minutes.

“Take your time. I’ll enjoy this sinful
cake you forced on me.”

Leaving him with a smile, she went to
finish refilling the creamers and sugar bowls in preparation for the next
morning. By the time she joined him in the booth, the rest of the staff had
left. Molly flipped the open sign on the locked door, came over to say hello to
Michael, and then went to her office in the back of the building to do some
paperwork.

Carly tugged out a pad and pen. “Tough
day for you,” she wrote.

“Tough month.”

“You look tired.”

“I’m not sleeping very well these days.”

“You really think it’s someone who lives
here?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” He put down his fork
and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Carly … I don’t want to frighten you,
but…” He looked around to make sure they were still alone. “It’s possible, but
not definite, that there’s a connection to the accident.”

Carly stared at him for a long moment
before she wrote, “The guy in the road?”

“Yes. Brian told you what happened to
him?”

She nodded. “After the accident. After he
remembered it.”

“I hate to dredge up your memories of
that night, but you never did give us a statement about what you saw, so I need
to ask…”

Her nod gave him permission to continue.

“Was anyone else there besides you,
Brian, and the driver who stopped to help you? Did you see anyone else before
the police and firefighters arrived?”

Michael watched as Carly let her mind
wander back to that fateful night. She trembled, so he reached for her hand.
“Take your time, honey. I know it’s hard to think about.”

“I can almost still smell the fire,” she
wrote and then shook off the memory so she could tell him what he needed to
know. “But no one else was there, at least not that I can recall. I kind of
lost it when I saw…” She looked up at him, her eyes bright with tears.

“What did you see?” Michael’s stomach
twisted with anxiety as he waited for details he didn’t really want to know.

“I saw them burning. I started to scream
and couldn’t stop, like I was outside of myself watching someone else. It was
surreal.”

He squeezed her hand, his heart hurting
for her, for both of them. “There’s more I need to tell you, facts about the
case we haven’t made public. I know I don’t need say it, but they’re things we
don’t want anyone to know.”

Her smile was rich with the absurdity of
him asking her, of all people, to keep a secret.

Because he was concerned about her safety
and knew he could trust her—and would’ve been able to trust her even if she
could speak—he shared his theory about the five-year pattern. “We think it
began with the accident, which means it’s most likely someone you, Brian, and
the others went to school with.” Pausing to let that settle, he continued. “Do
you still have your yearbooks from high school?”

Seeming shocked by what he had said, she
nodded.

“Can you flip through them tonight? We’re
looking for someone who might’ve had issues with you, Brian, or one of the
others in the car. Someone who had a beef over what he saw as your easy success
in school, in sports, in social situations, where he might not have had it so
good. If you think of anyone who meets those criteria, write down his name for
me. Think also about boys you and the other girls might’ve dated before Brian,
Sam, Pete, and Toby.”

He hated the overwhelmed expression on
her face but pressed on anyway, knowing he had to do this. “I talked to Brian
about the case last night. He made an interesting point.”

Carly brightened at the mention of his
son, which pleased Michael for reasons he couldn’t take the time to process
just then. “He suggested the person our perp was hoping to kill that night on
Tucker Road might not have been in the car.”

She sucked in a deep breath.

“You could be in danger, Carly,” he said
gently. “It’s possible the notes you found were intentionally put in places you
were likely to find them.”

“Why me?” she wrote, her hand shaking
ever so slightly.

“I don’t know. That’s what I need you to
think about. Go back in time to before you started dating Brian. Who might’ve
been put out by you getting a new boyfriend?”

“It was twenty years ago,” she wrote.

“That’s why I want you to take some time
to think about it. In the meantime, let’s talk about your schedule.”

Her face twisted with confusion. “My
schedule?”

“Your routine.” He didn’t want to mention
yet that his officers would be keeping a close eye on her. “What days do you
work here?”

Tentatively, she wrote, “Sunday through
Thursday, six to two.”

“Do you have certain things you do after
work on various days?”

She nodded. “Mondays in the spring and
summer I go to the accident site, Tuesdays I watch my niece and nephew for a
few hours so Caren can do some errands. On Wednesdays, I volunteer at the animal
shelter. Walk the dogs, etc.”

“Busy girl,” Michael said with a smile.

Shrugging, she continued. “Thursday
afternoons in the summer, I go to my niece Zoë’s baseball games at Columbia
Park. Fridays I chill out and do laundry and stuff at home. Saturdays I spend
at whatever games my other nieces and nephews have—soccer, baseball, lacrosse.”

“Sundays you go to five o’clock mass at
St. Mary’s, right?”

She nodded. “And then dinner at my
parents’ when they’re in town. That’s pretty much it.”

Knowing what could have been, Michael was
saddened by the lack of friends and a man in such a beautiful woman’s life. It
was a small life by some people’s standards, but it would’ve been even smaller
had her father not forced her back into the world.

“You guys are going to be stalking me,
aren’t you?” she wrote, the resignation showing in her eyes.

“I promised my son I’d keep you safe,”
Michael said with a wry smile.

Carly’s eyes flew up to meet his.

“He’s worried about you,” Michael said,
aware he was picking at something that might be better left alone.

“Maybe I should be worried about him. He
wasn’t in the car, either.”

Michael shook his head. “This guy likes
girls.”

“But if your theory is true, the guy
you’re looking for might be jealous of Brian. Maybe he was after both of us.”

“Possibly,” Michael conceded. “However,
because you’re here and Brian isn’t, I’m more worried about you.” He reached
into his pocket and withdrew a small can, putting it on the table in front of
her.

With the lift of her chin, she asked what
it was.

“Pepper spray. I want you to carry it
with you everywhere you go. If you step outside your door, I want you to have
it with you. Use it if you feel even the slightest bit threatened, and even if
it’s someone you know and think you can trust.” He leaned in, his forearms
resting on the table, and took her hands. “It’s going to be someone you know,
Carly, someone we all know. Hesitating, even for a second, could make all the
difference. Trust your gut. If it’s telling you you’re in danger, you probably
are.”

Carly freed one hand from his hold and
ran her fingers over the can.

Michael showed her how to use it. “Aim
for the face, the eyes preferably.”

She shuddered and stared at the can for a
long moment.

“What are you thinking?”

Picking up the pen, she wrote, “I’m
scared.”

“I’ll do everything I can to keep you
safe. All right?”

Her face pale and pinched with anxiety,
she looked him in the eye and nodded.

M
ay faded into June, and the tension in Granville
was as thick as the humidity that settled like a wet blanket on the small town,
making its annual announcement of summer’s return to northwestern Rhode Island.
Over picket fences, at the post office, in the shops along Main Street, at the
counter at Miss Molly’s, and at the car dealership on the outskirts of town,
people speculated nervously about who among them was the monster.

A collective sigh of relief went through
a town full of brittle nerves when Granville High School graduated the Class of
2010 without further incident. Recovered physically from her injuries, Tanya
Lewis received a warm welcome from her classmates at commencement. As summer
vacation began, petrified parents monitored their daughters’ comings and
goings. The girls, accustomed to the freedom that came with high school, chafed
against the restraints.

That chafing kept Michael Westbury awake
at night, waiting to hear that one of the kids in his town had reached her
limit, had gone out alone, and had been attacked by a predator who was waiting
for the chafe to become unbearable. With the investigation stalled, his
officers, with backup from the state police and FBI, could only watch. And
wait.

A court order had compelled Gleason’s to
turn over its list of men who special-ordered larger-sized shoes. The list had
yielded four possible suspects, but each had been ruled out. One was in his
sixties and didn’t fit the profile. Another had been out of the country when
two of the rapes occurred. The other two men had solid alibis. The few names
Brian and Carly had given him from their yearbooks hadn’t panned out, either.
Most of them lived out of state, one had died, and another was crippled with
multiple sclerosis.

Michael had officers patrolling
everywhere kids gathered in the summertime—Columbia Park, the town common, the
beach at the lake, the movie theater, and the bowling alley. If they saw a girl
walking alone on a town road, they’d been instructed to offer her a ride home.

As the weeks passed, Michael noticed
people losing the initial burst of interest that came with big news in a small
town. They’d talked a blue streak about it and had finally run out of steam on
the subject. He was concerned that the first wave of panic had abated, and
folks had relaxed a bit. He didn’t want them relaxed. He wanted them worried
and afraid so they’d be vigilant.

If they were in fact dealing with an
anniversary perp, he had six more months left in 2010. He was probably high on
the success of the first half of the year and enjoying the goose chase he was
leading law enforcement on. The task force believed he would strike again
before the year was out. So while others in his town relaxed, Michael didn’t.

The heat was stifling, the tension
debilitating, the watching tedious. But the waiting… The waiting was hell.

Carly
loved to clap. Joining in a round of applause gave her the feeling, even for
the briefest of moments, that she was just like the other people in the
bleachers expressing their approval of her niece Zoë’s strikeout. Zoë’s
ponytail of auburn curls—the same curls all the Holbrook women had—was pulled
through the back of her ball cap, and her long legs looked even longer in white
baseball pants as she prowled around the pitcher’s mound.

“I keep hoping she’ll start acting like a
girl one of these days,” Carly’s sister Cate muttered as they watched Zoë
strike out the side.

With a delighted wave to her family in
the stands, Zoë pranced into the dugout full of boys.

“She’s
all
girl, and the boys love
her,” Carly’s mother Carol said, defending her granddaughter.

“They love her fastball,” Cate said.

Carly smiled at the old debate. Zoë had
insisted on joining Little League as a six-year-old and had played every year
since without any regard for the fact that she was the only girl in the league.
Now, at fourteen, she was a star in the summer Sandlot League.

With a huge smile on his face, Cate’s
husband, Tom Murphy, climbed the bleachers to where they were sitting. “Did you
see
that? Struck out the side! That’s my girl.”

Embarrassed by his effusiveness, Cate
tugged him down next to her and told him to hush. “Everyone’s looking at you,”
she whispered.

“So what?”

Their exchange amused Carly. Tom was a
big teddy bear of a man who loved his wife and kids passionately and didn’t
care who knew it. Carly was struck with a familiar pang of envy over her
sister’s happy marriage and beautiful family.

“Dad, can we go to the concession stand?”
asked ten-year-old Steve.

“Sure, let’s go,” Tom said.

“No more soda,” Cate called after them.
“And bring something for Lilly.”

Tom raised a hand to let his wife know he
had heard her.