The Stranger You Seek

EPILOGUE





It was the second time I had spent my days with the excellent nursing staff at Piedmont Hospital, courtesy of Margaret Haze. Yes, I blamed her for this and for what had happened to Diane. I knew Haze had manipulated and changed my sweet friend. I felt in my heart that Diane had been a victim too, though I would never have the facts. I’d killed my childhood friend. This wasn’t fully sinking in. It’s no accident you’re alive, Margaret had told me that day in her office. Indeed. I’d fought to live. And why? There were moments now that the emptiness just seemed to sweep me downstream. Diane was dead. Charlie was gone. Rauser was in some terrible purgatory.

I don’t remember that second emergency trip to the hospital, nor do I remember much about my first days here. I’d lost a lot of blood, they tell me. I slept. The great escape.

The scar on my right wrist would be with me forever. There would be no escaping the constant reminder that a killer had come to me in the night with a serrated knife blade and in one merciless, furious movement sliced me open.

Do you feel her power? Yes, I feel it still. But I didn’t think Margaret had ever wanted me dead. She told me in her office that day that she had protected me. She warned me too when I mentioned Diane, but I didn’t get it. You never really know anyone below the surface, Keye. I would have thought you of all people had learned that lesson. I’ve learned it now, Margaret, and learned it well.

The doctors said I had another bad concussion, lots of bruising on my face, some teeth jarred loose that would need attention as soon as I was released. I would be spending some time with chiropractors and osteopaths and oral surgeons. My doctors advised that I should stay for a few days. They wanted to make sure all the wounds were healing properly. But we all have wounds, don’t we? We are all scarred. Wasn’t that Margaret’s real message?

Mother had been to the loft to feed White Trash and had taken her home, something she had been plotting anyway. She was probably calling her Snowflake by now, carefully reprogramming her. I fully intended to take my cat back when I was well, but being well seemed far away right now.

Neil was taking care of the business. Rauser was still in a coma, and I didn’t care if I ever left the hospital. I didn’t know how to go back home. I was so close to him here.

None of this had worked out the way we’d hoped. I suppose the good news was that Chief Connor had finally acknowledged the mounting evidence. He’d authorized a full investigation into Haze. They had located the gun that was used on Rauser, a nine-millimeter that had originally belonged to Cohen Haze, Margaret’s father. She had done a thorough job of cleaning out her home, but the Mercedes she’d left at the dealership tested positive for trace amounts of human blood. The blood matched that of Elicia Richardson, Lei Koto, and William LaBrecque. Haze’s prints were all over Diane’s place. So was Jacob Dobbs’s blood—saturation amounts on Diane’s clothing. The carpet in Diane’s vehicle was also consistent with the fiber found on Dobbs’s body. Diane’s Toyota had Dobbs’s blood and lots of it. APD reasoned that Diane had murdered Dobbs in it. How many other murders she’d participated in or committed herself, no one knew. CSI believed they could figure this out with time.

Personal items belonging to Diane were found at Haze’s Tudor in Buckhead. The affair had been going on long enough for sleepovers. So this was Diane’s new person and the real reason her voice trembled when I warned her that day about Margaret.

Soon after I had regained consciousness, Williams stood next to my hospital bed with a grim expression. “Haze disappeared,” he told me.

Margaret Haze was the FBI’s problem now, and Interpol’s. They would monitor the globe for her signature characteristics. Others would die, I knew.

“She’d been preparing for this for years, siphoning money out of the country every month. Amounts less than ten thousand don’t raise an eyebrow, Keye, and the shit’s been moved so many times now, well, it’s just gone, essentially untraceable,” Williams told me glumly. “She must have had escape passports and identification ready.”

I sat with Rauser every day, reading to him the way Mother and I read to each other when I was a kid. Each day, he got the morning paper with a massive dose of my own personal op-ed. I insisted on keeping him connected to life, to me, to my voice, to news about the city he’d sworn to protect. I’d gotten into the habit of creeping back into Rauser’s room late at night when it felt like everything was crashing in on me—the terrible memories of Rauser’s shooting, of Diane’s voice as she tried to kill me. Because you f*cking won’t stop … I’d snuggle up to him and my mind would race back to a million small moments with him. I should have been nicer, I thought. I’d teased him so ruthlessly sometimes. Did I ever even tell him how smart I thought he was or how handsome or how funny or how extraordinarily hot he looked in those stupid wife beaters? Why hadn’t I admitted I was jealous of Jo Phillips? And that Jodie Foster thing, him just going on and on, drove me a little nuts. God, what I would give to have just one of his irritating little quirks back.

I thought about that night at the playground, about Rauser touching his chest, looking so utterly surprised when he realized he’d been shot. Anger and grief knotted my stomach. I should have known. I was the expert, wasn’t I? I could have stopped her.

I slipped out of bed and reached for my sweatpants. I absolutely refused to walk hospital corridors in my pajamas. It was pathetic enough that I had to look like this, bandaged and bruised.

My phone went off. I sighed. My mother had only today unraveled text messaging and unfortunately she was getting quite good at it.

I looked at my phone. Caller ID was showing an unavailable number. It felt like a fist slammed into my heart. Part of me had been expecting this since I learned that Margaret Haze had gotten away.

Shame about Diane. So unstable. How did it feel to watch the life drain from her? Sorry I had to leave so abruptly. New life beginning. But don’t worry about me. They always open the door. M.

I forwarded the message to Williams. The wheels on tracing the text would start turning at once, but I knew she wouldn’t have done it if she wasn’t very sure it was safe.

How does it feel? Like being torn apart, Margaret, that’s how it feels.

I pushed open the door to Rauser’s room and squeezed in next to him. I lay there for a moment, mourning him, and then I whispered, “Nothing makes sense without you.” My heart ached, but I had no tears left.

I missed him so much, laughing with him, talking to him. We had told each other the stories of our lives, our real lives, the things that marked and changed and elevated us, the stories you save for that one person fate hands you like truth serum. And when that person’s gone, grief wells up without a channel, like a river jumping its banks.

“Rauser, you son of a bitch,” I told him, “if you don’t wake up, I’m going to dedicate my life to making disparaging remarks about Jodie Foster.” I kissed his cheek and brought his arm up around me. Then I closed my eyes.

It was still dark when I woke. Fingers were clutching my shoulder. Strong fingers. This wasn’t the limp arm I’d put around me every night before sleep in the hospital.

I was frozen for a moment, my heart trip-hammering, and then I realized that Rauser was holding me. His chest was rising and falling.

I lifted my head slowly.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake up,” he said.





For Anna Scott Williams, my inspiration.

And Donny Kyle Quinn, who helped plant this seed.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





Thanks to my friend and consultant, Special Agent Dawn Diedrich, and to everyone at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for your awe-inspiring dedication and compassion for the victims of crime and their families. Thanks to Brent Turvey, MS Forensic Science, for answering all those emails and to Forensic Solutions, pathologist Lisa Lyons, and Special Agent Steve Watson.

Kari Bolin, Deb Calabria, Greg Luetscher, Michal Ashton, Pam Wright, Scott Williams, Adair Connor, Jayne Rauser, Susan Culpepper, Betsy Kidd, Kim Paille, Meredith Anton, Elizabeth Jensen, Fred Kyle and Betty Williams, Diane Paulaskas, Graham Street, Chuck Bosserman, Heather Rouse, and Susan Balasco: Each one of you lent me something for this book. Special thanks to Mary Silverstein for the laptop that set me free. Roy, Jani Faye, Tricia Watson, I hope you’re watching.

Victoria Sanders, you might as well be wearing a red cape. You are my superhero. Benee Knauer, I owe you a great debt. Thank you, Chandler Crawford, Kelly Chian, and Deb Dwyer. A huge thank-you to the amazing team at Random House for your faith and hard work: Susan Corcoran, Sharon Propson, Theresa Zoro, Kim Hovey, Katie O’Callaghan, and Denise Cronin. Thank you, Libby McGuire.

To my stunningly brilliant editor Kate Miciak, what you did is too big for this space. Thank you.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


AMANDA KYLE WILLIAMS worked as a freelance writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and owned a small business. She is active in the humane community and one of the founding directors at LifeLine Animal Project, a nonprofit, no-kill animal welfare organization based in Avondale Estates, Georgia.

The Stranger You Seek is Williams’s first mainstream crime novel and the first in the Keye Street series. Williams currently lives in Decatur, Georgia, which produces unending fodder for her fiction.