Kill Her Again (A Thriller) Read online

  He came up to the open passenger window. “Ronnie’s sticking around for a while. I’m thinking maybe I should, too.”

  “Can’t do that, Cuz. We’ve got someplace to be.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Something I found out before all the craziness started. Climb in and I’ll tell you on the way.”

  “What about Evan?”

  “Ronnie’ll do what needs to be done. Now, come on, get in.”

  Pope reluctantly opened the door and climbed in, pulling the seat belt across his chest. He turned, looking at Anna.

  “You feeling okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” she said, which was probably the under-statement of the last few centuries.

  “I don’t know what happened today, but you scared the shit out of me.”

  “Out of all of us,” Worthington said.

  Anna grinned. “Glad to be of service.”

  THEY WERE ON the I-15, headed toward the state line, when Pope said to Worthington, “You wanna tell me what you’re up to?”

  Even with the air conditioner on, the late-afternoon heat was oppressive, and Anna was slumped in back, struggling to stay awake. A month in a feather bed would be bliss, she thought. With a nice ocean breeze and an unlimited supply of ice-cold tea.

  Worthington glanced at Pope. “You look a little nervous, Cuz.”

  “That’s because you’re headed in exactly the opposite direction that I want to be traveling right now.”

  “Don’t worry, this doesn’t have a thing to do with those two goons we’ve got locked up. I couldn’t care less about them at the moment.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “To see Susan.”

  Anna could almost hear the scratch of the record. She sat up, fully awake. She couldn’t see his face, but she could tell by the sudden stiffness of Pope’s body that he wasn’t happy. And the heat radiating from him had little to do with the desert sun.

  “Are you trying to be funny?” he asked. “Because there’s not a fucking thing funny about what you just said.”

  “Just hear me out,” Worthington told him. “While you two were in the living room, I ran Jillian Carpenter’s name through the system and came up with a major hit. The girl was ten years old, murdered by an unknown assailant in Salcedo, California, back in 1981.”

  Pope looked surprised. “Salcedo?”

  “That’s what I said.” Worthington reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a folded sheet of paper. “I wasn’t able to get access to the full file, so the details are sketchy, but take a look at this.”

  Pope took it from him. “What is it?”

  “A list of witnesses who were interviewed by the Salcedo police.”

  “And?” Pope said.

  “Look at the first name on the list.”

  Pope unfolded the paper and read the name, his entire body going rigid. He seemed unable to speak.

  “What’s wrong?” Anna asked. “Who is it?”

  They flew past a highway sign that read:

  WOMEN’S CORRECTIONAL FACILITY—10 MILES.

  “Suzie,” Worthington said. “Aka Susan Leah Oliver.”

  Anna felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. The little girl in that alley with Jillian Carpenter was Pope’s ex-wife.

  30

  “TURN AROUND. Now.”

  Pope’s mind was reeling. How could this be? He’d been married to Susan for over eight years and had dated her for four prior to that. How could he not know that she’d once witnessed her best friend’s kidnapping?

  This was a mistake. It had to be. “You’re the one who opened this bag of pretzels,” Jake said. “We’ve got a perp out there who likes to kill little girls. And it looks as if he’s been doing it for nearly thirty years. If Susan can shed any light on—”

  “Turn this fucking car around.”

  “You want to run away from this? Fine. There’s the goddamn door. But don’t expect me to slow down.”

  “Then you talk to her. I don’t want to have anything to do with that bitch.”

  “Oh? Is that why you’ve got a room overlooking the goddamn prison?”

  “That’s as close as I ever want to get without a gun in my hand.”

  And he meant it, too. One of his biggest fantasies was to walk up to her in that prison yard and whisper, “This is for Ben,” right before he pulled the trigger.

  It made him sick to his stomach to think he’d ever touched that woman, or allowed her to touch him. Their entire history together had been tainted by her compulsive need for attention and the vicious acts it fueled.

  The damage she had done was irreversible. Unforgivable. And he wanted nothing to do with her.

  Twelve years’ worth of lies was more than enough.

  SUSAN HAD MOVED to Ludlow from Salcedo in her junior year of high school. The shy girl who sat in the back of class. Who quietly ate French apple pie in the corner booth at the Hungry Spoon.

  They didn’t become romantic until many years later, when they bumped into each other at the University of Nevada. Susan was working as a research assistant and Pope was guest lecturing.

  The shy girl had turned into an equally shy but beautiful woman, and Pope felt the testosterone kick in the moment he saw her. It took him a while to convince her to go out with him, but she finally relented. It wasn’t until that first date that he noticed a slight limp in her gait.

  He hadn’t mentioned it the first night, but when he finally did, several dates later, she told him she’d had an accident as a child, but didn’t elaborate.

  He asked her about it again, over the next several years, but she would never go into much detail and Pope hadn’t pressed her. He saw no reason to make her relive a painful experience she so obviously wanted to forget.

  But even as Anna told him of Jillian’s final moments, Pope never thought to equate little Suzie’s twisted leg with his ex-wife’s limp. Why would he?

  Yet there was no denying the name printed on the witness statement in his hand.

  And Susan was thirty-eight. Just the right age.

  During the trial, when her lawyers tried to blame her crimes on Munchausen by proxy, an expert witness had testified that the causes of the syndrome were largely unknown. But MBP was often considered a cry for help, fueled by anxiety and depression and feelings of inadequacy.

  Could Susan be as much a victim of this red-hatted son of a bitch as McBride was? Had that moment in the alley shaped her life forever? Warped her mind?

  Even if it had, Pope didn’t care.

  None of it brought Ben back.

  “Come on, Danny. You know we have to do this.”

  “We? You’re the cop. You deal with it.”

  “She won’t agree to see me. She never liked me much in the first place, and after Ronnie and I testified against her . . .”

  “Forget it, Jake. It’s not gonna happen. So you might as well turn this car around right—”

  “I’ll go with you,” McBride said.

  Pope swiveled his head, saw the intense look on her face.

  “If she knows something. If she can help us find this freak . . .”

  “I wouldn’t trust a thing she says.”

  “We have to try,” McBride insisted. She reached a hand between the seats, squeezed his arm. “You said yourself that you think he might be after me. That he might try again. If not me, then maybe someone else. Another Kimberly.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I think I do. I saw the way you looked out that window this morning. I’ve seen the pain in your eyes. And, believe me, I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was important.”

  Pope said nothing. Didn’t know what to say.

  She kept her fingers wrapped around his arm, and he welcomed it, but she was asking too much.

  Then he thought about little Evan shouting out her name in the car. He thought about her close call on that football field, and nearly losing her to a
somnambulistic trance. He thought about Evan’s little sister and what that fucker had done to her. And Jillian Carpenter.

  How many more of his victims were out there?

  McBride had asked him earlier if he believed in fate. Could this be fate giving him another opportunity to do what was right? To change his own destiny? To help change hers?

  He’d worked so hard at shutting himself off these last couple years. Pushing his friends away. His family. As if the only way he could avoid injury was to inflict a little damage himself.

  Maybe it was time to put an end to that. No matter how repulsive the thought of seeing Susan in the flesh might be.

  “Even if I agree,” he said, “there’s no guarantee she’ll talk to me.”

  “She will,” Jake told him.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because I remember the way she looked at you in that courtroom.” He paused. “She’s still in love with you, Danny.”

  BUT JAKE WAS wrong.

  After they arrived at the WCF reception desk, a string of phone calls were made and word came back that Susan Pope didn’t want to see anyone, including her ex-husband.

  Pope silently celebrated.

  Jake insisted that the guards try again, even threatened to call a friend in the governor’s office (although Pope wasn’t quite sure that such a friend really existed), and the deputy warden herself came out to explain that short of a court order, there was nothing she could do to compel a prisoner to see them.

  McBride flashed her credentials. “This is important,” she said. “Part of a federal investigation. Can you please try one more time?”

  “I doubt it’ll do any good. I’m told she hasn’t been herself lately. Been showing signs of severe mental distress.”

  “Tell her it’s about Jillian Carpenter.”

  The deputy warden sighed. “All right. One last time. But it’s my understanding that she was fairly adamant about this.”

  “Trust me,” McBride said. “She’ll change her mind.”

  31

  THEY WERE BUZZED through half a dozen security gates before they reached the visiting room. The facility was decades old, smelling faintly of disinfectant and vomit.

  This was Pope’s first visit to the place, and the long hallways and grated windows reminded him, oddly enough, of high school—although he doubted they had much of a senior prom.

  A prison trustee in an orange jumpsuit was dumping a trash bin when they entered. She regarded them warily, exchanged a look with the guard escorting them, then quickly finished her business and left the room.

  Jake stayed by the door with the guard. Pope and Anna took seats in front of a Plexiglas wall that was divided into visiting stations, each with an intercom.

  They waited ten full minutes before a door beyond the glass opened and Susan was escorted inside. She was also wearing a jumpsuit—this one red—her ankles and wrists shackled.

  Pope’s stomach clutched up the moment he saw her—a simple reflex, triggered by an intense, uncontrollable feeling of hate. This was the woman who had killed his boy. His Ben. That she was still walking the earth was a crime in itself.

  It took everything he had to keep his cool. He kept reminding himself that he was here for McBride, and for Evan and Kimberly and their dead mother and babysitter.

  He waited for Susan to make eye contact, but she was oblivious to him. She kept her gaze on the floor, her unkempt hair hiding her face as she shuffled over to a chair opposite them and sat.

  When she finally looked up, Pope was surprised.

  Prison had not been kind to her. The beauty he had once known was replaced by a haunted, disheveled wreck. He was reminded of photos he’d once seen in a magazine—before and after mug shots of methamphetamine addicts. She seemed to have aged twenty years.

  The hatred he felt immediately morphed into pity. Not sympathy, just pity. And it was laced with a contempt so strong he had trouble containing it.

  Susan’s brain finally registered who she was looking at. She blinked a couple of times, then—to Pope’s horror—broke into a smile.

  “Danny?” she said, her voice distorted by the intercom. “You came?”

  Pope forced himself to reply. “Hello, Susan.”

  “I thought they were lying to me. Is it really you?”

  “In the flesh,” he said.

  “They always lie to me, you know. My lawyers. Trying to get me to come out. But I don’t want to come out. I just want to stay in my room. I’ve got everything I need there.” Her smile widened. “Except you, of course.”

  Pope was ready to offer his own contribution to the smell beneath the disinfectant, but Susan spoke in a kind of singsong, faraway voice, and he was pretty sure the deputy warden had been right. She wasn’t all there.

  To prove it, she said, “Where’s Jillian? They told me Jillian was here. Was that another lie?”

  “Jillian’s dead,” Pope said. “She’s been dead for twenty-eight years.”

  “Yes, yes, but I asked Ben and he said I should check anyway. Just to make sure.”

  Pope felt his gut tighten again. “Ben?”

  “You remember Ben, don’t you? Our boy? He talks to me all the time. Mostly in my head, but he’s there. I know he is.” Another smile. “He forgave me, Danny. He forgave me for what I did.”

  All right. Enough of this. Choking back a curse, Pope started to rise, but McBride quickly put a hand on his knee and he sat back down.

  That was when Susan noticed her for the first time. She stared blankly at McBride, but then her expression began to change, recognition spreading across her face.

  “Oh, my god,” she said. “It wasn’t a lie. Jillian?”

  Pope and McBride exchanged a quick glance.

  “You look so different. All grown-up. But it’s you, isn’t it? I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.” She turned to Pope. “The eyes are the mirror of the soul, you know. They really are.”

  A chill ran through him. What had always been something of an innocuous saying suddenly took on new meaning. New weight.

  This was all too creepy for words.

  McBride, however, had the good sense to go with it. “How are you, Suzie? I’ve missed you.”

  Susan seemed startled by the sound of her voice. As if it were a slap to the face. Then she surprised them both by starting to cry.

  “Oh, god,” she said. “Oh, god . . .”

  Pope and McBride exchanged another look.

  “What’s wrong, Suzie?”

  “All these years,” she sobbed. “All these years I’ve wanted you to come back so I could tell you how sorry I am.”

  “For what?”

  “It was all my fault. I yelled at you that day, but if it hadn’t been for me, if you hadn’t been trying to help me, the bogeyman never would’ve gotten you. He would’ve gone away and left us alone.”

  “Bogeyman?”

  “That’s what he is, you know. They always tell you he hides in the closet and under the bed, but that’s not true. He’s everywhere. Always watching.” She paused and sniffed back her tears, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jumpsuit. Then her gaze drifted toward the ceiling. With a surreptitious gesture to a surveillance camera in a corner behind her, she looked at McBride and said, “You’d better be careful. He’s watching you right now.”

  This woman was completely unrecognizable to Pope. The Susan he’d once known was buried so deep, he doubted she’d ever come out again.

  And he knew that they were wasting their time here. She could babble on for hours and they’d get nothing of value from her. All he wanted to do was leave.

  But then she surprised him.

  “I used to watch him, too,” she said. “For a long, long time. Before I met Danny. Before Ben was born. I watched him for years and years and years. He’s left a trail, you know, and I kept very good track of him.”

  McBride leaned forward. “I don’t understand. What trail? How?”

  “All I had to do was look
for the sign. It wasn’t easy, but I always managed to find it.”

  “What sign?”

  Susan lowered her voice conspiratorially. “The wheel,” she said. “The gypsy wheel.”

  Pope and McBride exchanged yet another look.

  “I saw it when he took you. On his neck? I’ve seen it over and over again. It’s always there, but it changes.”

  “Changes?” McBride said.

  Susan nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. Eight spokes, twelve spokes, fourteen spokes. It’s all there in the book. Every single bit of it.”

  “What book?”

  “I tried to get them to bring it to me. But nobody would listen. They all think I’m crazy.” She paused, turning to Pope. “Do you think I’m crazy, Danny?”

  Crazier than a goddamn loon. But he was intrigued now. Maybe there was something to what she was saying after all.

  “Tell us about the book,” he said.

  “It’s all there. I kept it for years and years and years.”

  “A book about the bogeyman.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “After he took Jillian, I was always afraid he’d come after me. But I was too young to do anything about it. So I stayed in my room a lot. Kept a light on at night. But when I got older, I started tracking him. Through every victim I could find. And I kept tracking him until one day I realized he wasn’t interested in me at all.”

  “How did you know that?” McBride asked.

  “Because of the eyes. His victims all had your eyes.”

  McBride was suddenly silent and Pope could see that she was as creeped out by this as he was. And despite Susan’s obvious mental deterioration, they both knew that what she’d just said might not be crazy talk.

  “What exactly is in this book?” Pope asked.

  “I just told you. Everything. Everyone he hurt. It’s all there. I tracked him for years.”

  “And where can I find it?”

  “I tried to get them to bring it to me, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “Your lawyers? Do they have it?”