The Forgotten Girl, page 27
It could also be that they got it wrong and it wasn’t Alicia after all.
Or it was only Jake who helped her. That would make sense, since him cheating with Shanna was the root cause of the violence.
Lynn was currently once again at the Unicorn Lounge, sitting in a window seat, her seventh coffee of the day-a cappuccino this time—growing cold on the table in front of her. She had a good view of the entrance to Jake and Alicia’s building and Jake had to come home eventually. She hoped it would be within the next hour or sooner.
It was just after five PM, too early for nightfall, but the sky outside was already a very dark blue. Another sign that a storm was coming.
“Why do you think this place is at the center of your whole case?” the bartender Steele asked, drawing her attention from looking out the window.
“We don’t,” Lynn said, at a loss for what else to say.
“No?” he asked. His tone and the expression on his face could only be described as belligerent. “Because it’s starting to look like you’re watching me and people are starting to notice. I’ve been told it’d be better if I took a couple of days off. Despite having a solid alibi.”
Lynn picked up her cup of coffee, but didn’t drink. “I’m sorry about that. But this is a murder investigation.”
“And then there’s that weird guy with the shaved head, the one you talked to this morning, the victim’s body guard or whatever,” Steele said. “He keeps coming in here and staring at me. It’s unnerving.”
“I have no power over what he does,” Lynn said. “I told him to go home this morning and he’s not here now. He’s processing things in his own way. But if he makes you uncomfortable, you should call the police.”
Lynn meant it to sound comforting and friendly, but it came out cold and toneless, so it was no wonder Steele scoffed.
“That’s the last thing I need,” he said.
Lynn’s phone buzzed with yet another text. She was sure it was TJ again, telling her about the trouble he was having tracking down the film crew members. She turned the phone over anyway, mostly to get from under Steele’s angry look.
It wasn’t a text from TJ. It was from Ryan. And it simply said: I’m at the cabin, waiting for you. We need to talk.
He even signed it, as though he wasn’t sure she had his number saved.
What about? she texted back.
Things, came the reply.
By then she was already putting on her coat and taking her wallet out to pay for her coffee.
She’d call him once she got to her car.
A part of her was sure that once she heard his voice, she’d instantly stop thinking about how shady the text sounded.
And another part was urging her to call Chief Millhouse and let him know about this development.
But she wouldn’t do that. Not yet. Not before hearing Ryan out.
That’s the least she could do for her old friend
Ryan couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, his skin was burning. In the distance he could hear helicopters flying and explosion blasts going off. He tasted sand in the back of his throat, his lips and mouth parched. Sweat was running down his back, his face, his neck. His arms were just two heavy blocks, stretched out behind him, the rope around his wrists tight, making his fingers tingle and pulse.
Decapitation or torture or a shot in the head would be coming next.
Anything but torture.
His heart was thumping so fast he felt it could beat right out of his chest at any moment.
A stream of cool air was blowing in from somewhere, just a sliver of it, but colder and unlike anything that blows in the desert. Even at night. Carrying moisture and the scent of rotting leaves and forest earth. The scents of his childhood that he had all but forgotten in his years in the desert.
I’m not in the desert.
There were no helicopters around, no explosions. No enemy readying to cut his head off. Or any other part of him to make him talk.
It was all in his mind. The sounds and panic as real as anything, but ultimately all just in his head.
The last thing he could remember was walking into his grandfather’s cabin. And the first tendril of sharp pain as something heavy and hard landed against the back of his head, making him stumble forward and pass out before he hit the ground. Which he must’ve done face first because his nose and forehead were aching and he tasted blood in his mouth.
Lynn.
But she didn’t do this. That he was sure of. And the rest was slowly starting to grow clearer in his mind too.
A black, knit mask covered his face, making it almost impossible to see and hard to breathe. But that wasn’t the only reason he couldn’t see much.
The room he was in was dark, he could see a sliver of faint orange light near the floor in front of him. The floor beneath him was cold, but definitely wood. He was still in the cabin. In the bedroom, most likely. The smell of rot and rust confirmed it.
Not just his wrists, his ankles were bound too. His arms were stretched back, tied to a pillar of some sort, thin and cold—the bed frame? Most likely.
The more he concentrated on deciphering his actual surroundings the more the PTSD flashback faded.
Not that reality was much better.
He had no idea who hit him on the head and tied him up.
No idea why.
No idea how long he had yet to live.
But he had his training. And twenty years of combat experience.
It should be enough. It always had been until now.
First he had to free his hands.
Now that his heart wasn’t thumping hard anymore and the auditory hallucinations of explosions and helicopters faded, he could hear someone moving around in the living room, the creaking of the floorboards faint, but unmistakable.
He expected the door to open any second and whatever was coming to come.
Instead, he heard Lynn’s voice calling out his name.
He called out too, told her to run, that this was a trap, which it had to be.
The next thing he heard was Lynn’s hoarse voice full of fear, ask, “Who are you?”
A male voice he’d never heard before replied, “You came alone. Good. I figured you would.”
“Stay back,” Lynn demanded. But the sound of thudding footsteps told him the guy didn’t obey.
A shot rang out. And then everything was just echoing thunder and the thumping of his heart again. This time it was accompanied by the crashing of the metal bed against the floor, as he did his best to break free of his bonds. The damn bed was rusted bad enough. He should be able to break it.
39
Lynn drove fast on her way upstate. Maybe out of anxiety, maybe to escape the gathering storm, the real and imagined one. The latter was caused by the fact that Ryan’s text was weird and she hadn’t gotten a reply to any of the calls or follow up texts she’d sent. Or maybe it was the choice of meeting place—a secluded cabin where she had lost her innocence in more ways than one twenty years ago.
The cabin actually wasn’t all that secluded anymore. Newly-built homes lined the long, straight road out of Green Haven that led to it, and she made a couple of wrong turns off this road into the forest before she found the path she was looking for. The one that led to a brook spanned by a wooden bridge leading to the cabin made of river rock and wood, and enclosed by pines.
Ryan’s blue pickup stood by the bridge and she parked right behind it. A decision that was only half-conscious, but definitely aimed at making it difficult for him to run away from this place.
And acknowledging that brought her right smack into the reality of the situation, and the source of her building anxiety.
She might be here to speak to a suspect. He might even confess.
She didn’t want to believe it, but she couldn’t deny it. Ryan could be the killer they were looking for.
So after she took her gun out of the glove box, she sent TJ a text, telling him where she was and why.
She didn’t wait for a reply.
Then she slipped out of the car and waited a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The moon’s light was faint and dispersed as it rose somewhere behind the thick forest. The light in the main room of the cabin was on, creating a pool of faint orange around it.
Her footsteps creaked and crunched as she walked the short distance to the cabin and knocked on the door, then opened it, calling out Ryan’s name.
The first thing she noticed was the smell of rot, and beneath it, the unmistakable smell of blood. Old blood.
He didn’t reply. There was no sound in the cold cabin apart from her footsteps on the creaking floorboards. The source of the smell of blood had to be a t-shirt covered in it hanging off the back of the armchair by the fireplace. A woman’s t-shirt, tailored and tight. White with a golden star on the chest. Originally white. Now it was maroon with old, dried blood.
On the mantlepiece was a small glass container, filled with clear liquid and topped with a red lid. And inside it, floated a finger. Shanna’s middle finger. Lynn’s chest and throat filled with burning bile.
A black garbage bag lay open on the seat of the arm chair. It contained yet more bloody clothing, including Shanna’s bra, and a second vial. All the trophies Shanna’s killer collected.
What was happening here? Did she interrupt him putting this shrine together? But where was he?
She reached into her pocket, disengaged the safety lock on her gun and took it out, turning slowly to take in the rest of the room.
She called out his name again.
And this time, creaking footsteps from the direction of the kitchen answered her. But the man who appeared, silhouetted by the strong light over the kitchen table, wearing a bulky black parka with the hood pulled so low over his forehead his face was just a black shadow, wasn’t Ryan. She knew that much. The guy was shorter and slighter and moved like a younger man.
“Who are you?” she asked, pointing the gun at his chest.
She should probably shoot first and ask her questions after. That’s what her gut was telling her anyway.
He pulled back his hood and her heart seemed to flip over in her chest.
“You came alone,” Kevin said. “Good. I figured you would.”
Then he advanced, one slow, measured step at a time, his crazy, feverish eyes the brightest thing in the room.
He lunged at her, moving with the speed of a panther leaping. She got a shot off before he slammed into her, cracking her head against the solid wood mantlepiece. The room went fuzzy and black at the edges as she slid to the floor. Her shot went wide, missing Kevin completely.
She held onto the gun as hard as she tried to hold onto consciousness. But it took no effort at all for him to take the gun from her hand.
Noise was coming from the bedroom, a thumping and creaking accompanied by Ryan calling—no, screaming—her name. A muffled sound.
Her eyes wouldn’t stay open, her body wouldn’t move, her head was throbbing as though something was broken. Through the slits of her eyes, she could just about make out Kevin peering at her, but also looking over his shoulder in the direction of the bedroom every so often.
She decided to feign full unconsciousness. Play dead. Which she might very well become in the next few minutes.
The noise from the bedroom was getting louder. Then the sound of metal cracking was followed by near deafening silence.
Kevin cursed, leapt to his feet and ran in the direction of the bedroom.
Lynn yelled for Ryan to be careful, but wasn’t sure if any sound came out of her mouth or if the scream was just in her head.
But her mind was clearing, the fuzzy blackness at the edges of her vision receding. She tried and failed to stand up, and on her second attempt her sliding hand, which she used to try and prop herself up bumped against something cool and thin yet wonderfully solid. The fireplace poker. The old kind. Heavy and solid and made to last.
She couldn’t quite lift it yet, but it felt good to have it in her hand, hidden behind her back as she sat there panting, sweat and possibly blood running down her neck.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Cursing and thumping could still be heard from the back as she reached for it and opened TJ’s text. Without reading it, she typed Kevin cabin come.
Then she called up the voice memos app and hit record. She only had enough time to conceal the phone under the flap of her coat before thudding footsteps accompanied by cursing and panting led to Kevin dragging Ryan into the living room.
Ryan’s head was covered by a black bag of some kind and his hands and feet were tied. Kevin seemed to have a lot of trouble dragging him into the room.
“You should untie his feet,” Lynn said sarcastically. “It’ll make it easier.”
“Wouldn’t you like that?” Kevin said and heaved one last time, pulling Ryan forward with a groan and tossing him against the armchair that held the trophies. They were now facing each other, with Kevin between them.
Then he pulled Ryan’s hood off and pressed the gun to his temple. Ryan’s eyes were alert, full of a cold, steel kind of purpose, which only softened a little bit as he saw her. There was a bump on his forehead the size of a golf ball, red lines snaking across it from where Kevin must’ve hit him with the butt of her gun, which he was still clutching in his hand.
“What I’d like is to know why we’re here,” Lynn said. “Or did you not get that far in your planning yet?”
She kept her voice and tone on that border between friendly and condescendingly mocking, which was a good combo when you wanted to get a rise out of someone. She could’ve gone for the clueless damsel in distress act too, stroking the guy’s ego and getting him to spill his secrets that way, but she hated him too much to do that.
“Oh, I have a plan,” he said, still breathing heavily. “It’s brilliant and it ties all the loose ends together nicely. You’ll see.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Lynn said.
Whatever else happened here tonight, she would get answers. And from experience, she knew that the one surefire way to get psychopaths to talk was to enrage them. Rage was the psychopath’s kryptonite.
Only when they were raging did they lose control. And Kevin, playing Shanna’s dutiful friend for over a year, clearly had a lot of self-control. Luckily his rage seemed to be seething just below the surface too, ready to erupt over even the slightest jab or insult.
Ryan’s eyes seemed to be asking her, what the hell are you doing? But he’d caught on well enough not to say anything.
She had a plan too. It was simple and might not work. But ideally, she would try to keep Kevin talking until the calvary TJ must’ve sent by now arrived. Or failing that, long enough so they’d get here before Kevin was done staging everything.
His confession would also be recorded by her phone, and the recording was going straight to the cloud, if she understood TJ who set it up that way correctly.
“Why did Shanna have to die, Kevin?” Lynn asked, deciding to get to the heart of the matter quickly.
“Short answer?” Kevin said and grinned nastily. “Because you failed to protect her.”
That stung. Hard. She understood now what he was trying to tell her this morning. If only she’d paid more attention to his words when she ran into him at the Unicorn Lounge. But she was too focused on Alicia.
“You persuaded her not to say anything to me about her stalker,” she said. “But that’s because the stalker was actually you, right?”
“Look at you figuring everything out at the eleventh hour,” he said mockingly. “That ruse was pure genius on my part. It allowed me to get close to her.”
The growing familiarity in his texts and letters to Shanna made sense now too. He had, in fact, been getting to know her better the whole time.
“If you’d been a part of her life, you’d have known about the stalker,” he said. “But you had no time for her.”
That stung even worse. Hurt deep in her chest. So badly it made even the pain in her head pale in comparison. But if there was one thing Lynn was good at was denying and bottling up her emotions.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” she asked, ignoring the rest. “How could you kill her so brutally if you loved her? How could you torture her? How could you destroy her beauty?”
“She had it coming,” he muttered darkly, sounding like the words forced themselves from his mouth, like he didn’t want to speak them.
“Because she kissed Jake? Or because you realized she’d never see you as anything but her weird yet useful friend?”
That made his eyes widen and his breathing to deepen.
“I mean, I’ve met you, what, three times and I know you’re a freak,” Lynn said. “She must’ve figured it out too. She was just using you.”
“Shanna was a spoiled and shallow upper-class princess desperately trying to fit in with her new bohemian friends,” Kevin blurted out, suppressed anger thick in his voice. “She wanted to be a writer, but she’d never amount to anything. She lacked the depth. All she cared about was shopping, gossip and guys.”
“Sounds to me like maybe you were just aiming a little too high with her,” Ryan said. There was something strict yet condescending in his tone, which made Kevin snap his head back to glare at him.
“Should’ve stuck with the simple girls,” Ryan added. “Then you might not be a killer today. Soldier.”
“Marine,” Kevin corrected him venomously.
“You don’t have the right to call yourself either anymore,” Ryan said contemptuously.
Ryan had clearly caught on to what she was trying to do and was attempting to help. Or maybe he was disgusted over hearing how Kevin’s twisted mind worked and couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Lynn had made a career out of getting psychos like Kevin to talk and even she was getting sick of listening to him. And sick of looking at him.
“You’re a nobody, Kevin,” she said. “A high school dropout and a Marine Corps drop out. Of course she wouldn’t give you the time of day. What intelligent girl would? You’re not even attractive.”
For a moment she thought he was going to just attack her without even responding. His nostrils flared, his face went red and his eyes went totally black and dead. She gripped the poker tighter, ready to bring it forward, hoping she had enough strength in her arm to do it. She felt very weak and it wasn’t getting better.
