Left for Dead (9 page)

“Yeah, Mom,” Brian grunted, rolling his eyes. “It’s a
Whopper
of a good story.”

“You know, this will be my first date in seventeen years,” she said, exasperated. “I like him, and I’m a bit nervous about the whole thing. Would it kill you to be a little supportive?”

Brian was supportive, and even cordial to Harlan, whom he thought was
“okay, for someone who acts like he has a stick up his butt.”

To Claire, Harlan was godsend. He was rescuing her from loneliness, debt, and a life she hated.

He took her and Brian out of the city for a weekend, and they stayed at his house on the island. It was a beautiful home. She imagined the guest room becoming Brian’s bedroom, and her son starting fresh at a new high school. She could take him away from his seedy friends. Harlan helped coach a summer softball team for high school boys. She told herself that he’d be good for Brian.

Harlan’s daughter, Tiffany, developed an immediate crush on Brian. He in turn was charming toward her. They went sailing with the Castles and Harlan’s best friend, Walter Binns, on Walter’s boat. And there was a barbecue. Despite some initial misgivings about their minivacation on the island, Brian seemed to have fun. In fact, he fell in love with sailing.

After Harlan proposed, Claire checked with Brian. “Is it all right with you?” she asked him, on the ferry coming back from their third trip to Deception Island. “Be honest. Speak now, or forever put a lid on it, kid.”

“Well, he’s Joe Serious, kind of a tight-ass, y’know? I mean, I’d like to see him get drunk and silly. Maybe then, he’d lighten up a bit.”

“Sorry, but that’s not going to happen. Harlan told me he used to have a drinking problem—after his wife died. But he conquered it. Now, he allows himself just one beer a day—before dinner, that’s it. I think that’s commendable. I’d rather have Joe Serious than a guy who gets drunk every night. So—aside from his general lack of silliness, do you have any other objections to Harlan?”

Brian shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I think. I’ll only be around a couple of years before I head off to college, You’re the one who has to live with him, Mom. Do you love this guy?”

“Not the same way I loved your father,” she admitted. “But I like him. He’s a good man. I can see myself living with him and being very content. I can see
us
living with him—if you can behave yourself and stay out of trouble. Do you think you can do that, honey?”

Brian nodded. “I’ll try, Mom,” he said. “I really will.”

So the first friend he made on Deception Island was Derek Herrmann, the check-stealer. They were off to a bang-up start.

But Claire had thought she could keep her son from sliding back to his old ways. She’d hoped Harlan would be a good influence on him.

The phone still in her lap, Claire stared out the window of her hospital room. She remembered Brian running away on those two previous occasions. Both times, he’d come back, promising he’d try harder to stay out of trouble and get along with Harlan. What had happened this last time? Why hadn’t he returned yet?

It seemed too much of a coincidence that Brian had run away, she’d disappeared, and Brian’s best friend, Derek Herrmann, had suddenly taken off for parts unknown in Europe—all within a twenty-four-hour period.

Brian had other friends. Claire consulted the car pool list. She’d call every mother on that list. One of them had to know something of Brian’s whereabouts.

Claire pulled herself out of the chair, and took the phone over to the windowsill. She dialed Becka Goodwyn’s number. While counting the ring tones, she noticed it drizzling outside. She watched the rain drops hit against the glass.

Then she saw him. He was just a blur, moving through a bald patch in the forest—just beyond the parking lot. He wore a black windbreaker and a hunter’s cap with the ear flaps. He held something in his hands. Claire couldn’t tell what it was. He peered up toward her window for a fleeting moment, then he ducked behind a tree. She didn’t get a good look at his face. The brim of his hunter’s cap obscured it.

“Hi, you’ve reached the Goodwyns,”
she heard a recording on the other end of the line. Claire hung up.

Biting her lip, she stared out the rain-beaded window. The man was peeking around the tree. He held something up to his face, binoculars or a telescope of some kind. He was watching her.

“Oh, my God,” she murmured. She put down the car pool list. All the while, he was staring up at her with those binoculars. Or was it a camera? Claire stepped back from the window, and almost tripped over the phone cord. She made her way to the door and opened it.

The guard sprung up from his chair. “Are you okay, ma’am?”

She pointed toward the window. “I think someone’s spying on me. He’s down by the parking lot with binoculars or something…”

The guard grabbed his cellular from a clip on his belt, then he hurried to the window. “This is room three-eleven,” he was saying into the phone. “I’m with the victim. She spotted someone spying on her from the wooded area by the north parking lot…”

“I didn’t see his face,” Claire interjected. “But he was a white man, tall, medium build. He wore a black rain-slicker, and this strange hunter’s cap.”

Claire listened to the guard repeat the description to his associate. She was still unsteady on her feet. Moving to the window, she had to grab onto the nightstand, the edge of the bed, and then a chair.

“No, I can’t see anyone from here,” the guard was saying. Hunched over the sill, he peered out the window. Rain continued to slash against the glass. “Advise you patrol the area…”

Claire came up to his side. She braced a hand against the wall. She gazed down at the thick, wooded area. She expected to see him hiding behind a tree or some bushes.

But the man in the hunter’s cap had disappeared.

“Oh my God, are those Pepperidge Farm cookies on sale?” Sherita Williams asked her friend.

She was pushing a shopping cart down aisle nine at the Quality Food Center not far from where she lived. It was Sherita’s day off. She’d met her friend, a thin, black woman named Monica, for coffee and a trip to the store.

“If I get the cookies, I really ought to put back the Klondike bars,” Sherita told her friend. “I really shouldn’t have both. Otherwise, next time I come here I won’t fit through the aisle.”

She fished two boxes of ice cream bars from her cart. “I’m putting these back.” She retreated to the freezer section.

He didn’t follow her. He stayed in the cookie aisle—a few feet behind her friend. Neither one of them had noticed him so far. He knew when not to stick too close.

He’d gotten close enough to Sherita already; the other night in the hospital’s underground garage, he’d stood just a few feet away, watching her from the janitor’s closet. He’d planned to abduct her that night, and keep her for a few hours—until she told him what he needed to know about Jane Doe. Then he would have gotten rid of her. No makeup, no plastic bag, no shallow grave. It would have been a burial at sea—or in the most remote part of a forest. He wouldn’t have wanted this one found.

Sherita Williams would have been dead that night—had she not suddenly turned and run away. And she moved fast for a big girl.

There were other occasions he’d been close enough to touch her. He’d sat near her at lunch three times in the hospital cafeteria. One night, through her bedroom window, he’d watched her undress and go to sleep. This was his second time shopping with her.

She passed by him to rejoin her friend. She put a box of Klondike bars back in her cart, then loaded three bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies in there after it. “I’m keeping one of the Klondikes—and a bag of cookies for myself,” she announced. “I’ll give the other two bags of cookies to a couple of my patients. Jane Doe could use some cheering up, and she doesn’t have to worry about her weight, damn her.”

“Who’s the other patient?” he heard Monica ask. He followed them further down the aisle.

Pushing her cart, Sherita let out a sigh. “Oh, her name is Tess Campbell. She’s just down the hall from Jane Doe…”

There was an announcement for a cleanup on one of the aisles. For a moment, he couldn’t hear what Sherita was saying.

“…complications, and she lost the baby,” Sherita went on. “Hydrocephalus. Talk about sad. Oh, and she’s all alone. No husband, no family. Huh, I should get her and Jane Doe together. Jane Doe lost a baby too, a SIDS case. The two of them might help each other out.”

“Does she have any other kids?” Monica asked. They headed toward the check-out line.

“Who, Tess?”

“No, Jane Doe.”

From the next checkout line, he could see the hesitation on Sherita’s face. “I can’t say, hon,” she finally replied. “I shouldn’t really give out any details about her.”

The line moved, and Sherita pushed her cart forward. Her friend started flipping through one of the tabloids near the checkout stand.

Frustrating as it was, he had to admire Sherita’s self-control when it came to disclosing information about Jane Doe. In all the times he’d eavesdropped on her conversations, Sherita hadn’t given away anything he could really use—at least, not yet.

He’d never overheard Sherita say when the husband and friend were visiting. Subsequently, he always missed them. From either one, he could have learned Jane Doe’s true identity. And then he could track her down once she was out of the hospital.

Funny the way things worked out. She’d been a last minute substitute for a blonde he’d been trailing at the Westhill Towers. She’d been there for a convention, and unwittingly kept eluding him and joining up with friends. The blonde never knew how close she’d been to becoming his fifth victim. She and a girlfriend had just left the hotel gym when this attractive brunette walked in. And she had been alone.

She didn’t have a purse or wallet with her. In the hours that he held her captive, he never asked for her name. And she never told him. She’d just kept begging him not to hurt her.

So he would have to find out her full name from her nurse. He would get close to Sherita Williams again. He’d catch her alone, and she would tell him everything he wanted to know about her patient.

In the meantime, the clerk was ringing up his groceries. Sherita’s line wasn’t moving. Her friend found something in a tabloid called
The National Tattler.
“Is this really Jane Doe?” she asked.

Sherita’s mouth dropped as she glanced at the newspaper. “Oh, my God,” he heard her whisper. “Oh, no…”

“Feast your weary eyes on page two,” Linda Castle said, tossing the tabloid on Claire’s lap. “You’re practically
The National Tattler
’s cover girl.”

Claire was sitting in the easy chair by the window in her hospital room. Linda plopped down on the edge of the unmade bed. “I’m sure when Harlan sees that, some heads will roll on the hospital’s security staff.”

Hesitating, Claire opened the tabloid magazine. She stared at the blurry photo on page two—beneath a splashy banner:
“Tattler Exclusive! The First Look at ‘Jane Doe,’ the Amnesiac Mystery Woman ‘Made Over’ and Left for Dead by the ‘Rembrandt’ Serial Killer!”

Claire recognized herself in the murky picture. It had been taken from outside—with a telephoto lens. She was staring out the same hospital window now, and wearing the same robe she had on in the photo. Fortunately, the image was so grainy, she doubted even her closest friends could identify her in it. But that was little solace for having her privacy violated.

Claire read the caption below her photo:

“From her window in a Bellingham, WA., hospital, the patient known only as Jane Doe, is the sole survivor of the ‘Rembrandt’ serial killer, terrorizing women in Washington state.”

“Wouldn’t you know?” Linda said. “The one time they put your picture in the newspaper, you’re in your bathrobe and your hair’s a mess. The shutterbug must be that hunter-guy you said you saw in those woods the day before yesterday. Huh, I bet they stopped the presses for you, Claire.”

At the bottom of the page Claire read a teaser:
“For The Full, Horrifying Story on the Rembrandt Murders, Turn to Page 17!”

Linda’s cell phone rang. She dug it out of her purse. “Hello? Oh, hi, hon…Yeah, I’m with Claire now. What’s going on with you? Well, I was going to make a stew, and bring some of it over to Harlan and Tiffany.”

Claire glanced up from the newspaper, and cleared her throat. “Linda?” she whispered. “I hate to be a killjoy, but they don’t like you using cell phones in here.”

Linda distractedly nodded at her, but kept on talking into the cellular: “I have plenty of ground beef in the freezer, and that would stretch it out…”

She kept discussing dinner plans until a nurse poked her head in the doorway. “Excuse me, ma’am?” she called, an edge in her tone. “Use of cellular phones isn’t allowed in this hospital.”

Linda waved her away, and kept talking.

“Ma’am, did you hear me?” the nurse asked pointedly.

“Hon, I have to call you back,” Linda said into the phone. “I’m getting it in stereo now. Apparently, I’m committing this huge crime and they’ll shoot me at sunrise for talking on a cell phone here. Isn’t that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?”

Once Linda clicked off the phone, the nurse nodded at her, smiled curtly, then moved on. Turning toward Claire, Linda rolled her eyes and frowned. “Ye Gods, only a few days ago, you couldn’t remember a thing, and now you’re Miss Know It All, quoting hospital rules to me, no less.”

Speechless, Claire just shook her head.

“I’m kidding, silly!” Linda laughed. She climbed off the bed. “I’ll step outside so I can talk to my husband without getting yelled at. Ha! Be right back.”

Linda breezed out the doorway. Claire stared after her for a moment, then glanced down at the tabloid in her lap:
“For The Full, Horrifying Story on the Rembrandt Murders, Turn to Page 17!”

Until now, she hadn’t seen a single news article or TV report on the Rembrandt murders. Everyone had been protecting her: screening newspapers and magazines that came into the room, and otherwise occupying her during local TV news broadcasts. Before her own encounter with Rembrandt, she hadn’t been following the case. Living on Deception Island, she’d felt removed from so many things happening on the mainland. She’d had no interest in the Rembrandt murders.

Now, she was interested. Claire turned to page 17. She winced at all the headlines and photos crammed into the two-page spread.

“PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW,”
was emblazoned across the top of page 17. Portraits of Rembrandt’s five victims stretched beneath the bold headline. The first woman was a blonde with a pretty smile. She looked like someone with whom Claire might have been friends.
“Victim 1,”
said the caption.
“Nancy Hart, 23, had married her high school sweetheart only four months before her disappearance last November. She was shot in the chest.”

All the captions were like that with a bit of personal information to humanize these
“pretty maids.”
Barbara Tuttle, whose neck was broken, loved plants and had a greenhouse in her backyard. Karen Ferrigno, stabbed eleven times, was a cat-fancier, and volunteered at an animal shelter. Connie Shafer, shot in the chest, did numerology and astrology charts for her friends. All of the dead women had been attractive and reasonably young. The last portrait was just a silhouette, and carried the caption:
“Jane Doe, midthirties, shot in the chest, and found in a garbage dump in Bellingham, WA. She’s the only victim to have survived Rembrandt’s murder rampage. What can she tell us?”

Claire numbly stared at page 18. Under the headline,
TRAIL OF TERROR,
the tabloid featured a small map of Western Washington, with a circle marking the area where each victim lived, and an “X” where each one was found—after Rembrandt had finished with her. An arrow pointed to the location of the Bellingham dump where she had been discovered.
“Jane Doe found here,”
read the explanation in a little box beside the map.
“Like the second victim, Barbara Tuttle, she was also found in a garbage dump. But Jane Doe survived. Investigators are protecting her identity.”

Another column on the same page showed sketches of where Rembrandt might have hid his victims before killing them.
“REMBRANDT’S DUNGEON OF DEATH,”
said the headline.

The sketches employed a “woman” symbol most airport rest rooms use, showing how a victim may have been held in various confined quarters. That doll-like figure in a dress was shown lying on its side in an underground bunker; standing at the bottom of a well; and tilted against the wall of an attic crawl space.

The tabloid carried photos of other serial killers: Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, and Albert deSalvo.

Claire got chills as she stared at the composite sketch of “Rembrandt,” based on the description of
“a dark-haired caucasian man in his midthirties”
seen with the third victim, Karen Ferrigno, in the parking lot of Sea-Tac Mall, where she disappeared. It was an eerie half-photo, half-rendering of a man in a dark jacket, T-shirt, and black pants. In one hand he held a gun, in the other, a knife. The mouth, a plain line, was obviously drawn-in, as was his hair. But the eyes appeared real and menacing. They seemed to gaze at her from the page. Claire wondered if this was an accurate facsimile of the last human being those poor women had seen before they’d died. He seemed so creepy and unreal.

She didn’t recall meeting anyone who looked like that.

The telephone rang, and Claire jumped a bit. She closed the tabloid. She didn’t want to look at that half-real, half-cartoon face any more. Moving over to the nightstand, she grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Claire, it’s Sherita. How the hell are you?”

“I’m the hell fine,” she replied, sitting down in the bed. “How are you? Isn’t it your day off?”

“Sure is, thank God. I’m calling because I need a huge favor from you. I want you to drop in on a patient just down the hall in room 304. Her name’s Tess Campbell. She lost her baby a couple of days ago. Hydrocephalus. Very sad. And there were complications in the birth, so she’s laid up for a while. Anyway, Claire, she’s all alone. No husband, no family.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do?” Claire asked.

“Be a friend to her. You lost a baby too. Go talk to her.”

“About what? Our babies’ dying? I don’t think either one of us want to talk about that, and it’s the only thing we have in common.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, I’m not asking you to donate a kidney here, hon,” Sherita said on the other end of the line. “I told Tess you might drop by. All I’m asking is that you get off your ass, walk down the hall, and introduce yourself to her. Would it kill you?”

Claire hesitated before answering.

“Might even help you out, girl,” Sherita continued. “Take your mind off your own worries.”

Claire became aware of someone standing in the doorway. She glanced over her shoulder. Linda stared back at her, then cleared her throat.

“Okay, I’ll go talk to her,” Claire said into the phone. “I guess we have something else in common after all. We both have a nutcase for a nurse. Her name’s Tess?”

“That’s right, Tess in three-oh-four. She’s expecting you.”

“Swell,” Claire muttered. “Listen, I need to scoot. I have company. Was that all you were calling me about?”

“That’s it, hon.”

“Well, thanks for thinking of me on your day off, Sherita,” Claire whispered.

Linda closed the door. She swiped the tabloid off the chair, then sat down. “Guess who beeped in while I was talking to Ron,” she said.