08 - December Dread (26 page)

“Congratulations.”

She rotated the chair so we were facing each other, inches between us. I stepped back. “So really, what have you been up to?” she asked.

I reviewed the image of Paynesville that I’d been holding like a rotten black jewel for twelve years. “Living in the past, apparently.”

She smiled. “You get over that pretty quick when you don’t leave your hometown.”

“I suppose.” I glanced out the window. The yard light cast a dismal glow over unbroken snow drifts.

“Your mom still doing okay?”

“Yeah.” I looked back at Jules. Her expression was intense. “Your dad?”

“Sure, I suppose. He moved to Florida, got a new wife.” She blinked rapidly, breaking her concentrated stare. It was a relief. “What’d you want the computer for, anyways?”

To delete my online dating profile and remove the candy-cane colored target from my back
. “I want to find out if there’s any new information on the killer.”

She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Patsy mentioned you did detective work now. That must be exciting. I always knew you were going to break out of this place.”

We regarded each other, her sitting and me standing. Between us were our dead parents, the classmate we had recently and brutally lost, dreams ground into dust and then rebuilt, maybe to be kicked down again. I leaned through the years, impulsively, and hugged her. She hugged me back. I stuffed my slip of paper in her pocket. “Burn this for me tonight, will you? I need to go home and check on my mom.”

She nodded. We were both dry-eyed, two seasoned soldiers.

Forty-two

Tuesday, December 25

The heat poured out
of the Corolla’s vents, but it didn’t penetrate my crust. Inside, I felt as cold as the frozen winter moonscape hurtling past my windows. I had known the moment the too-young, too-blonde Agate City woman appeared on the news that it wasn’t the Candy Cane Killer who had targeted her and her town. She wasn’t his type. I hadn’t been able to or had not wanted to put a name on that niggling awareness when I’d first watched the interview, but there it was. The killer was still hunting. Suddenly, I couldn’t reach home fast enough. I pressed my gas pedal as low as I dared, racing like a fiend across the ice-glassed country roads.

When she’d put up outdoor decorations last week, my mom had twined berry-speckled garland around the mailbox. The bristled green caught my headlights, and the blood-red berries reflected it back. It was just an instant flash, and then I was in the driveway, pulling my car into the familiar spot in front and to the right of the garage. A half moon targeted the cloudless sky, turning the clawed edges of winter trees black. The night felt lonely. I remembered for some reason the week I took up jogging in high school. Determined to look as anemic as the batch of cocaine-thin models who saturated my generation in its formative years, I’d created an ambitious plan that involved setting my alarm for 5:30 AM to run three miles every morning and only eating saltines until supper time, when I’d shovel down whatever my mom served me so as not to raise her suspicions. I’d instituted this plan in October of my sophomore year, the air crisp but not cold. At 5:35 AM sharp, I’d jog down the dirt roads, the heartbeat of my Adidas tennies impossibly loud against the hard-packed gravel. I was the only person in the world, my ragged breath setting my pace, two breaths out, one in. Two breaths out, one in. It took three days to realize that I liked sleep better than jogging, but that peculiar sensation of being abandoned in a cold world resurfaced at times like this.

Luna met me at the door, which had been left unlocked. I’d need to speak to my mom and Mrs. Berns about that. The locks on my mom’s doors weren’t much, but they were better than nothing. “Hey, girl. How are you? Did you have a fun night? Do some scrapbooking?”

She wagged her tail vigorously but did not make a peep. She understood the hour. I scratched her ears and under her chin.

“I’m just checking to make sure Tiger Pop didn’t stick any ‘kick me’ signs on you,” I said, running my hands along her back. She pushed happily against my leg, asking for more.

I removed my boots on the front carpet. Mom had swapped out the worn rag rug for a welcome mat featuring Santa waving from atop his sleigh. I tip-toed to Mom’s room, smelling the delicious memory of recently baked cookies. My mom’s door was partially cracked. I peeked in. Her sleeping form was backlit by the moon trickling in the windows across the room. Her back was to me. I cocked an ear and caught the steady rhythm of her breath. She’d made it safely home from the nativity scene. I closed the door behind me and repeated the routine in Mrs. Berns’ room, though I needn’t have bothered. She snored like a liquor-soaked sailor. I was halfway up the stairs, walking lightly, when I turned back around. The Internet was probably still down, but I needed to check.

Tiger Pop found me while I was waiting for the computer to warm up and join the Internet. He jumped on my lap in a rare show of his aggressive style of affection. He nestled down and began purring immediately, preemptively, daring me to do a bad job petting him. I rubbed the spot just in front of his tail, and he turned sassy, spinning onto his back and grabbing my hand in his paws, sheathing his claws but holding tightly with the soft pads. “Oh, the tiger has me! Help!” I whispered, scratching his belly. He bit my hand, but gently. A development on the screen caught my eye. I was online.

“You’re my good luck cat,” I told Tiger Pop quietly. “It’s your four lucky kitty foots.” I grabbed one and shook it for effect. He bit me harder this time, then stretched nonchalantly. I took my freed hand and moved the mouse over the Mozilla icon and began scouring my brain for the name of the site Gina’d signed me up for. Cheap Love? Free Love? Love Gratis! That’s what it was. When she’d first told me about creating my profile on this site, after the outrage had worn off, it had occurred to me that the site builders were wrestling above their weight class with that name.

I’d never actually visited the Love Gratis home page and was surprised at how tacky it looked compared to the sleek graphics of E-adore. The layout was a stale business-style template, the colors various shades of DMV-brown, the font cheap and loud. It was all right. I didn’t intend to be here long. I clicked on “men looking for women” and was told to punch in the location as well as age and weight of a woman I was after.

“Very nice,” I muttered. “Age and weight as criteria for finding a life mate. Same thing you look for in an astronaut and cheese.” Tiger Pop stirred in my lap, kneading my thigh briefly before sinking back into a kitty coma.

The computer hummed, pulling up seven women’s photographs. One of them was me. I looked like I was auditioning for a witness relocation program, one that hid lonely ladies with big honkers. “My nose isn’t that big,” I swore to Tiger Pop as I clicked on the handle Gina had given me: Mirabelle.

My ad was short and sweet. I had an English degree, was working as a librarian, and was looking for a smart guy who didn’t hunt. I had to hand it to Gina; at least she hadn’t said I was easy. If she’d only known she was tagging me as killer bait when she’d posted this profile. Well, there it was, my worst fears confirmed. I was about to close out and e-mail her a request to remove the ad when a tiny blinking circle in the upper right of the screen caught my eye. I rolled my cursor over it, and a pop-up box asked me if I wanted to look at men who were interested in me.

That sounded like a slippery slope that led directly into a candy land of insecurity, shame, and regret. Unfortunately, I was only human, and a weak one at that, at least when it came to chocolate-covered nuts and curiosity. I clicked.

I was instantly punished.

The first “looker’s” profile included a photo of him in all his mulleted glory leaning against a deer corpse underneath the screen name DuckLover69. FreeMustacheRides must have been taken. “This, Tiger Pop,
this
is why I don’t date online.”

If not for the inquisitiveness that was the monkey on my back, I would have stopped there. Instead, I scrolled through all 27 of the men who had examined my profile in the last five months. However, my inbox was empty. This led to the realization that the only thing worse than being examined by a creep is to be found wanting by that same creep. I decided to believe that Gina had deleted all the incoming requests for the pleasure of my company, noted that none of the 27 used the phrase “two shakes of a sheep’s tail” or anything like it in their profiles, and e-mailed Gina a brief message requesting that she remove my profile ASAP. I shut down the computer, feeling draggin’-stones tired.

_____

The shrill complaint of a phone woke me. I shifted in bed without opening my eyes. My mouth tasted like feet smell, and the scratchy wool of a hangover cradled my brain, though I only remembered drinking one beer the previous night. I rubbed my scalp and stretched, which is when I realized I was in the far corner of the bed. I opened my eyes to find Luna sprawled across the hand-stitched quilt and the sun pouring in.

“I’m telling Mom,” I complained to her furry back.

She thumped her tail.

The phone stopped ringing. I nestled back under the cozy blanket and tried to recollect why I felt so logy. Not liquor. Was I sick? A systems check said no. That left only accumulated exhaustion from strange beds and late nights on top of stress. The killer was out there, which meant at least one more woman was going to die. I sensed Mrs. Berns and I had come close to him in our online search, but I had no idea what to do with that information.

“Honey? Are you awake?” my mom hollered.

“Yeah,” I yelled back. Jimmy Page gazed out of the poster on the far wall, all splendor and bombast in his velvet jumpsuit, a Gibson Les Paul slung low across his slender hips. It was proof I’d had some taste back in high school.

“Telephone.”

I was tempted to overthink all the ways my body was protesting being awake but knew that would be a long and fruitless route. Instead, I stood up so fast that I got dizzy and made my way downstairs.

“Morning, sleepyhead!” my mom warbled.

“You look like deep-fried shit,” Mrs. Berns informed me cheerfully.

I walked past both of them into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Mira? This is Adam. You called me?” His voice was crackly, and I thought I caught the echo of a sportscast in the background.

“Yeah, thanks for calling me back. Are you on the road?”

“On my way back from Agate City,” he confirmed. “There’s nothing here but a copy catter and some very pissed-off folks. You heard, right? The guy who sent the threatening notes wasn’t the Candy Cane Killer. He was your run-of-the-mill stalker, released from prison two days earlier and using the serial killer as cover to harass women. Anyhow, what can I do for you?”

Mom was bustling merrily in the kitchen, her face a study of quiet joy. She had company on Christmas Day. Mrs. Berns appeared to be knitting in the living room, a testament to the thickness of domestic bliss in this house. I didn’t want to interrupt it by filling Adam in on what had gone down in Orelock. Christmas was not the time to be talking online dating suspicions and murderers on the phone.

“I was hoping I could meet you for coffee this morning.” Mom’s eyes shot up in a moment of disappointment, but she covered smoothly. “Just for a quick cup,” I continued. “I know it’s Christmas, and you probably have someplace to be.”

“I’m Jewish,” he said. “I can be in Paynesville in an hour.”

Forty-three

Overhead, the sky was
a clear blue sheet of unbroken ice. The cold sun glinted off the unforgiving shards of snow that made up the arctic landscape of Minnesota in the winter. Despite the light, and the fact that it was Christmas Day, it felt like a dangerous time to be out. I took the turns carefully and kept the car below 45 miles per hour. I didn’t even want the radio on for fear that it would break my concentration.

Adam and I had agreed to meet at Carlisle’s gas station, the only business in Paynesville that would be open and serving coffee on Christmas Day. I intended to tell him about Greg/Craig and my conversation with Cindy Running. I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit that I was hoping he’d share the latest information on the killer.

He had sounded tired on the phone, but his voice hadn’t prepared me for his appearance. He had his profile to me as I walked into the gas station and toward the self-serve food and coffee bar in the rear. His skin had the gray pallor of ill health, and his cheeks sagged. When he turned at the sound of his name, his eyes were dull.

“Mira.” He waved at the industrial coffee brewer behind him. “Can I recommend the spiced pumpkin latte?”

I smiled politely at his attempt at humor. The coffee bar consisted of regular, decaf, creamer powder, and sugar. “No thank you. Are you feeling all right?”

His hand was leaning on the counter next to an opened sausage and biscuit container. He’d taken apart the whole sandwich but not eaten any of it. “I’ve been better.”

I wasn’t sure how far to push it. If he had the flu, it can be helpful to commiserate with someone, but I guessed this was more about being reminded of his sister’s death and the helplessness of his position. I opted for the neutral route. “Anything I can do?”