forearmed.
She found the motel easily enough. One of those late-seventies nondescript places, built in a double-decker horseshoe pattern around a central parking lot. Bit more snooping, and she’d identified Nancy Grant’s vehicle, then a room up on the second story.
Three minutes later, D.D. stood in the open doorway of the room, frowning. The office clerk, who’d let her in, appeared equally unsettled.
“Maybe she left,” the little bald Asian man said.
“Maybe.”
D.D. walked around the room, not touching anything. Sure enough, no luggage, no toiletries, not even a wrinkle on the bed. If Aunt Nancy had slept at all, then she’d cleaned up her own motel room after herself.
Which, in the next instant, gave D.D. a long, snaking chill up her spine.
Abigail. Had to be. The world’s most obsessive-compulsive killer. Strangled her victims, then fluffed their sofa pillows.
Except no body lay in the middle of the room. Meaning that instead of killing Nancy Grant, she’d taken her instead. Why? It wasn’t like a murderer with such a highly ritualized approach to deviate from pattern this late in the game.
Abigail had needed something else.
Someone else.
Like D.D., she was trying to find Charlene Grant.
Except she’d found Nancy Grant first, to use as bait.
D.D. got on her phone and arranged for a crime scene team to process the hotel.
Then she was back in her car, pulling out of the parking lot, the gears of her mind churning as fast as the wheels of her Crown Vic.
Abigail wanted her sister. Abigail wanted revenge. Where to next?
Only one place that made sense to D.D. The Cambridge rental. Had to be. Except, of course, the patrol officers had checked it out. Driven by. Knocked on the door. Not seen any signs of life.
Maybe because there were only signs of death.
She’d just turned onto Charlene’s street, when she caught sight of a flash of movement on the sidewalk.
D.D. hit the brakes hard, the car behind her just swerving around. The driver made an obscene gesture. D.D. didn’t even notice. She was already out of her car, holding out her hand.
“Tulip,” she called out. “Here girl. Come on. It’s okay. That’s a good doggy. Remember me? You came to my office. I’m a friend of Charlie’s.”
The white-and-tan dog wagged her tail uncertainly, then finally advanced, giving D.D.’s hand an experimental sniff.
In return, D.D. stroked the shivering dog’s smooth head, patted her ears.
“Where’s Charlie, Tulip? Do you know? Because I’m pretty worried about her. Want to help? Show me, Tulip. Where’s Charlie?”
And much to D.D.’s surprise, Tulip turned around and headed back up the street. She looked behind her once, as if making sure D.D. was following. Then both dog and detective broke into a run.
Chapter 43
SO MANY DEFENSIVE MANEUVERS I’d practiced in the past year. How to duck and weave and dodge and deliver blows. How to stand steady and level my arms and squeeze a trigger. How to run and run and even when I stumbled with exhaustion, how to run some more.
Now it was January 21.
I lay in the dark, half-collapsed against the hardwood floors. I heard screaming. I smelled gunfire.
And I did the most logical thing I could do.
I raised a spray can of frosting to my lips and took a hit.
Another gunshot, then three and four. I staggered forward on my hands and knees, heading into the melee.
Moaning now. I discovered my landlady, Frances, on the floor beside me. She was clutching her shoulder, curled into a ball. I could feel blood, though it was hard to see in the dark.
“Help me,” she moaned again. “Charlie, Charlie, help me…”
“I will, I will. Shhhh, easy.”
More dark shadows, moving around me. One, towering up. Abigail, still holding the gun, but no longer looking steady.
“Where are you?” she cried out. She was leading with her weapon, taking aim at all shadows. I froze, holding very still next to Frances, as I wasn’t sure anymore that my own sister wouldn’t shoot me.
“Are you okay?” I spoke up as steadily as I could. “Abby?”
“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up! I know you’re in it with her. Dumped me and mom for her. Well, if that’s the way you want to play it!”
Suddenly, she turned toward me, trigger finger moving.
I had a split second of shock, then rolled reflexively, away from Frances, toward the now empty wingback chair. I was still moving as Abigail started firing, desperately seeking cover while my aunt cried out from across the room, behind the trio of chairs closest to the bay windows.
“It’s not her fault!” my aunt exclaimed shakily. “She didn’t know. I never told her.”
“Told me what?” I called back, though I had the sinking feeling I knew.
Abigail stopped shooting long enough to hear my aunt’s answer. I used the opportunity to peer out from behind the wingback chair and assess my options.
Frances was seriously hurt and needed immediate medical attention. Abigail was still armed and dangerous. My aunt…I had no idea. But I needed to do something fast.
“I found your mother in Colorado,” my aunt replied. Her voice seemed to be moving, probably as she sought better cover. “I’d hired a private investigator who finally managed to track her down. I made the trip out to see her in person when you were ten.”
“Why?” I was dumbfounded enough to stop watching Abigail and turn toward the sound of my aunt’s voice. I must have popped up slightly, because Abigail squeezed off another round and I quickly dropped as the arm of the wingback chair exploded beside me. I inhaled more frosting.
“I wanted to talk to her, sister to sister,” my aunt said. “She’d hurt you, not to mention what she’d done to the babies…I don’t know what I was thinking. I was angry. I wanted to talk to her, have my say, before calling the police.”
Abigail was moving. Not toward me, but toward the sound of my aunt’s voice. I went back to hastily debating my options. Phone? Too far to safely reach. Weapons? She had taken my sock stuffed with batteries, which had been in my coat pocket, but I still had a small knife taped to my ankle, not to mention the ballpoint pen. I wasn’t sure I could stomach drawing down a blade on my baby sister, no matter how deranged. The ballpoint pen would have to do.
“You came to our apartment,” Abigail said now, her voice sounding almost little girlish as she stalked our aunt in the dark.
“I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t know you existed.” Aunt Nancy’s voice softer, more distant. “The police report…There was no sign of a second child.”
“Everything I owned I kept in a backpack…” Abigail said the words, just as they appeared in my head. I mouthed the rest of the sentence, so that we finished in silent unison, “like a good soldier.”
“When I saw you,” my aunt continued, “I didn’t know what to do. I’d had a plan. I was going to yell at my sister, give her a piece of my mind, then call the police, who would cart her away to be locked up for the rest of her life. The least she deserved! But she knew. Chrissy actually knew what I was going to do and she was already ahead of me.”
Moaning. From behind me. Frances again, gasping with the pain. The sound goaded me. We couldn’t stay here,
