Vicious

Mattie in his booster seat. Her hands shook as she fumbled with his seat belt. All the while, she listened for a telltale click of the door handle of the car behind her. Any minute now, she expected to see a shadow creeping up on her and Mattie.

“Okay, sweetie, fingers and toes,” Susan said, a bit out of breath. She shut his door, then glanced back at the red sports car. She could see the man, still at the wheel, his head slightly tilted in her direction. Part of her just wanted to scream at him to leave her and her son alone. But instead, Susan hurried around to the driver’s side of her car. Tossing the bag on the passenger seat, she scooted behind the wheel, then shut her door and locked it. Her hands were still trembling as she turned the key in the ignition and shifted into reverse. Then she backed out of the space, turned the car around, and headed out of the lot.

Speeding down Carroll Creek Road, Susan checked her rearview mirror several times. The MINI Cooper hadn’t moved. Finally she took a curve in the tree-lined road, and she couldn’t see the store anymore.

Susan started to wonder if she’d overreacted back there. The man really hadn’t done anything—except come on as overly friendly and solicitous at the Arby’s earlier. Yes, he’d shown up at the store, but fifteen minutes after her. Was he really following her? Maybe he was a local.

Something buckled under the car. Susan glanced in her rearview mirror to see if she’d hit a piece of metal on the road—or had lost some part of the car. But the road was clear behind her.

The car suddenly rocked and wobbled as if it were going over a series of potholes. Biting her lip, Susan clutched the steering wheel. It vibrated from the rough ride. She nervously glanced at the driver’s side mirror— shaking so much the reflection was just a blur.

Mattie was jostled in his booster seat. “Gimme up! Gimme up!”

Easing up on the gas, Susan steered over to the side of the road. The car seemed to be limping. It felt like she had a flat tire. “Oh, I really don’t need this now,” she muttered to herself, a pang of dread in her stomach.

She switched on the emergency blinkers, cut the ignition, and then glanced back at Mattie. “Well, that was pretty exciting, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Wide-eyed, he nodded and put his thumb in his mouth.

“I’m just going to take a look at the damage, okay, sweetheart?” she said. “I’ll be right outside where you can see me.” Climbing out of the car, Susan checked around the back. The rear tire on the driver’s side was flat; the hubcap pressed against the gravel roadside.

“Oh, swell,” she murmured. She remembered that article again: Local police discovered Matusik’s abandoned car on Timberlake Drive in Cullen. One of the rear tires was flat….

Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, Susan took out her cell phone and tried dialing Allen. Her hands were shaking. No signal available came up on the tiny screen.

With a nervous sigh, she popped open the trunk and started to unload their suitcases so she could get the spare tire, jack, and other equipment. She glanced over her shoulder at the empty road behind her.

The narrow highway curved around a wall of tall evergreens, but there was a gap between some of the trees, and she saw another little stretch of road—and a car. Susan was too far away to see the color or the make of the car.

But it was coming her way.

He watched her unload the jack, wrench, and spare tire from the trunk of her old Toyota. All the while, Susan Blanchette kept looking over her shoulder.

He stood behind a tree in the woods, about thirty feet away, snacking on a Three Musketeers bar.

He’d given her the flat tire, his way of welcoming her to Cullen—and an ominous start to this weekend he’d planned for her. Susan had no idea he was calling all the shots. He knew Susan would be coming to Cullen before she did.

And he knew she would die.

He’d been waiting for Susan and had kept a lookout for her red Toyota—license plate: MLF901. While she’d been in Rosie’s Roadside Sundries, he’d set a small device under her rear left tire. It was a foot-long spiked metal strip—a section cut from a long grid that rental car companies used at their lot exits and entrances to prevent theft. Those spiked strips instantly punctured tires and disabled cars. His smaller, portable version perforated only one tire, but it got the same job done. It just took a bit longer for the tire to deflate.

In fact, last year, Wendy Matusik had driven at least two miles from the grocery store before all the air left her back tire. He hadn’t gone to any great lengths to hide the perforating device afterward. He’d merely tossed it on the ground by the cellar storage doors on the shady side of Rosie’s. And there it remained for days—much to his amusement—while state police combed the area for clues to Wendy’s disappearance.

The Wendy episode had been unplanned, a mere impulse. He kept her alive for a few days until he got bored with her. It was the same with that hiker, Monica, who was a bit too mannish for his tastes. After the initial capture, the thrill had worn off pretty quickly. As a kid, when he’d grown tired of a toy, he would smash it with a hammer, and there was always a bit of regret afterward. Except with Wendy and Monica, there were no regrets after he’d slit their throats. Those were departures from the Mama’s Boy killings. All of them had been strangled. And neither Wendy nor Monica had been mothers—not to his knowledge anyway.

He finished up his candy bar and watched Susan struggle to loosen the tire’s lug nuts. He shoved the Three Musketeers wrapper in his jacket pocket.

He couldn’t imagine growing tired of Susan. He’d been watching her for weeks now, and she continued to fascinate him. He’d seen her coming and going—sometimes wearing her white nurse’s lab coat—at Dr. Chang’s office. He often parked across the street when she picked up Matthew at Yellowbrick Road Day Care. And sometimes he watched from outside her bedroom window as she climbed into bed alone. She wore a man’s T-shirt to bed. She only wore a nightgown when her fiance spent the night.

Of course, he knew her fiance’s whereabouts most of the time, too.

But he had become far more interested in studying Susan. He knew the whole layout of her first-floor duplex on Prospect Avenue in Capitol Hill. He’d even broken in once. He’d gotten so close to her, but in her home, he could actually touch her clothes, her shoes, and her panties. He smelled her hair on her pillow—and thought about how he could touch her and smell her as she was tied up. He could do whatever he wanted to her. And maybe after he killed her, he would even taste her blood.

He’d been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time. He had to be patient. He couldn’t rush it.

When he’d spotted that teenage girl outside Rosie’s a few minutes ago, he’d thought about going after her, too—just something to tide him over until he had Susan. He’d heard of some guys who masturbated before a big date—to take the edge off. Killing that cute teenage girl before starting in on Susan might serve the same purpose. It was something to think about.

On the shoulder of Carroll Creek Road, Susan took her young son out of his car seat in the back. “All right, sweetie,” she told him, handing him a wrench. “I need your help with these thingamajigs! I can’t get them unstuck!” Hovering over him, she showed him how to unscrew the lug nuts she’d already loosened. The kid seemed to get a real kick out of helping.

Watching them, he had to admit, it was pretty damn cute.

Thirty feet away, Susan stood bent over her son by the rear bumper of the old Toyota. Her brown hair was blowing in the wind. Soon he would be close enough to touch it.

And soon, before the end of this weekend, her little boy would be an orphan.

CHAPTER THREE

“Well, what did this joker look like?” Allen asked. He stood at the gas barbecue on the rental house’s back porch. Moths fluttered around the porch light. Over his navy blue fisherman’s sweater and khakis Allen wore a Hail to the Chef apron they found hanging on a hook in the pantry. He was a tall, ruggedly handsome thirty-eight-year-old. Susan had fallen in love with his thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair and pale green eyes. He had a scar on his left cheek that looked like a dimple, so it appeared as if Allen were smiling even when he wasn’t. With a pair of tongs, he set four marinated chicken breasts on the grill. That barbecue smell mixed with the crisp, cool night air.