Harper rings the doorbell and waits. She is about to ring it again when a woman in her fifties, hair going to gray, answers the door. “Yes?”
“Hello, I’m Detective Jane Harper. I’d like to speak to George Armistad? Is he home?”
The woman swallows. “I’m afraid not.”
“Is he out? Any idea how long he’ll be, or when he’ll be back?”
“No,” the woman says, shaking her head. It’s now that Harper notices the bags under her eyes, the pale complexion of her skin. Her short nails that look bitten rather than clipped. “I’m afraid George is no longer with us.”
Harper feels the wind rush out of her. “What?” she says softly, voice barely a whisper.
Tears come to the woman. “He passed away in his sleep not two nights ago. I’m really very sorry, Detective.”
“Right,” Harper says, looking down at her notebook, just to be able to look away from the woman in her grief.
“I’m really not in the right frame for questions right now, Detective. So . . .”
She starts to close the door. Harper nods, steps back, and the door shuts. She turns and heads back to the car. There’s a distinct difference between dealing with a dead body and the family of the dead. The survivors who have to bear the pain and anguish.
Back in the car, Ida has found a station playing “Wicked Game” and is sitting in the passenger seat, singing along to it. Harper gets behind the wheel, but before she starts the engine, the realization hits her—the man Stu is going to meet may very well be the killer.
“What’re we doing now?” Ida asks.
Harper calls Stu on the hands-free. It goes straight to voice mail. She turns the key, handing Ida her cell. “Keep trying him, Ida.”
Stu parks away from Lester Simmons’s house. Much like Ida, he lives apart from the rest of town. His home lies down a dirt road, a couple of minutes’ drive from suburbia. The houses out here are big and old and come with plenty of land. Stu leaves his car door open, and gets closer on foot, careful to stay out of sight. He can hear his phone ringing, and he knows who it will be and why. Harper will tell him this last name on the list is very likely their killer. She’ll tell him to wait for her, to get backup. But suppose they’re wrong—suppose he calls all that in, and the man is innocent. Or doesn’t even live here. The hospital records can be only so accurate . . .
He returns to the car, grabs his phone, and switches it to silent but keeps the vibration on so that he can feel it ringing in his pocket. Stu locks the car, then pulls his sidearm out, checking the clip before sliding the gun back into the holster. He looks up at the house, and the sight of it sends a cold shiver down the back of his neck.
Well, here we go.
“Where does this guy live?” Ida asks.
“I don’t know,” Harper says. “Do me a favor, Ida. Open that file there. The printouts are in the back.”
Ida pulls several loose pages out. “These?”
“That’s it. You’re looking for Lester Simmons,” Harper tells her, checking her mirrors and changing lanes. “I know I’m headed in the right direction, but I need the actual address.”
“Okay, sugar,” Ida says. “Ah, it’s here. Got it.”
“D’you know how to use Google Maps?”
Ida just looks at her. “Google what?”
“Never mind. I’ll have to pull over for a second.”
More time wasted, she thinks. I know what he’ll be doing. He’ll be knocking on the door, confronting the guy. He won’t wait.
She finds a place to stop and asks Ida for the phone. The map takes a moment to load, and now she knows where she’s going. Still, she clips the phone back into its holder so that she can follow the map if she gets lost.
Her palms are sweaty on the steering wheel as she weaves through the traffic.
All she can think is, He won’t wait.
Lester strokes Ceeli’s hair. He is naked but for his head. The torn hood is on; the belt is pulled tight, held in place with the buckle.
He pulls Ceeli’s head back and strokes his cock in her puffy face, rolling his eyes with the thrill of it, the tingle in every fiber of his being at performing such an act.
Lester pleasures himself, reveling in the moment, knowing it will come to an end. Ceeli will have to be moved. He’ll have to burn her body the way he burned Mack’s. But for now, it is glorious.
I feel like a new man.
He once watched a program on television that showed a pupa sealing itself in a cocoon, emerging some time later as a beautiful butterfly. A different beast altogether. After all these years, Lester knows it is his turn.
The man Mama wanted me to be.
Lester’s grip tightens on Ceeli’s hair, and his head jerks back, groaning, as wave after wave of euphoria washes over him . . .
Stu rings the doorbell and waits. When nothing happens he presses it again, tries to see through a dirty, dusty window if there is movement in the house.
None that he can see.
He takes out his gun and walks around the side. There’s a gate there and he has to reach over the top to unlatch it. It squeaks on its rusted hinges, and Stu’s hand flexes on the gun. The backyard is trashy, overgrown in places. There’s a rusted swing. Old trash cans. Stu looks at the house. The door is open a shade, swinging back and forth on the frame as the breeze nudges it.
Someone’s home.
There is a shed in the yard, but he dismisses it. Lester Simmons has to live here and, chances are, he’s in the house.
He moves toward the door.
Lester hears the squeak of the gate and watches from one of the shed windows as a lawman stalks across his yard, heading straight for the house.
His mother’s voice tickles like hairy spider legs inside his ear.
We don’t have no truck with people invadin’ our property lester baby you go get him you teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget . . .
“Yes, Mama.”
When the man’s slipped inside the house, Lester bounds across the lawn and goes after him.
15
As she drives, Harper’s head is foggy, awash with trepidation and a hundred different emotions.
“You alright, sugar?” Ida asks her. “You look ill.”
“I’m okay,” Harper lies. She feels sick to her stomach with worry. She wishes Stu were different, that he’d wait. But she knows he won’t. It just feels right that the last name on that list is the name of the killer.
Ida looks at the phone on the dash. “Don’t look like we’ve got much longer to go.”
“Say, Ida, do you think things will change for you when this guy is caught?” Harper asks her, just to get her mind off what they’re driving toward.
“Perhaps,” Ida says mysteriously. “I think that maybe they might.”
“Would you ever sell your house? Move closer to the town?”
Ida looks out the window, her face unreadable. “I don’t know. That’s a lot.”
“I know it is.”
When Harper thinks that Ida won’t say anything more, she does. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”