He heard Meeker mutter something but couldn’t make out what he said.
Hovering over the counter, Leo nervously twisted open the sleeping capsules and dumped the powder into Jordan’s Vitaminwater. He shoved the empty capsules in his pants pocket. Putting the cap back on the bottle, he gently shook it until he couldn’t see the sediment anymore. Then he quickly shoved the bottle back in the refrigerator.
“For me, you left a little sailor doll,” Jordan was saying. “Remember? It was very appropriate. How did you know I was going to be in a boat when you took my mother away?”
Leo crept down the stairs, and every step creaked. Both Jordan and Meeker glanced at him for a moment. Jordan was standing directly in front of his prone captive.
Jordan sighed and gazed down at the man. “Answer me.”
Meeker closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to the tabletop. “I had a whole collection of old toys in the trunk of my car,” he murmured. “Some of them were mine, and some were from secondhand stores, like you say. Leaving the toy was my trademark. When I saw you in the boat, I remembered I had the sailor doll, so I snuck back to the car and grabbed it from the box of stuff.”
Leo froze at the bottom of the steps. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Meeker was admitting it now. He was even giving details.
“Were you following my mother and me around the day before you abducted her?” Jordan pressed.
“Yeah, I did that sometimes. If I could, I’d watch them for a few days before I made any kind of move.”
Jordan started breathing heavily. “How did you decide on my mother? Why her?”
“I don’t know. I guess because she was pretty.”
“How long were you watching her?”
The man sighed. “I don’t know, about a week.”
Suddenly, Jordan slapped him across the skull with the back of his hand. “Fucking liar!”
Meeker grimaced in pain.
“Jesus, Jordan, what are you doing?” Leo started toward him.
“He’s lying!” Jordan yelled. Some spit flew out of his mouth. “He’s just been saying what he thinks I want to hear! But he’s lying.” He swiveled around and glared at Meeker, who started to weep again. “You couldn’t have been following my mother around for only a week. It had to be a lot longer than that—or maybe she was just an impulse kill.”
Leo shook his head. “Jordan, you’re not making any sense—”
“The day my dad dropped me off at the house on Birch—the day before my mother was killed—I hadn’t seen her for three weeks. Don’t you understand? He wouldn’t have been following her around for a week just because she was pretty. He only went after women with sons. In my mother’s case, he couldn’t have known she had a son until the day before he killed her. Like I say, I hadn’t seen my mother in three weeks.”
He turned and swatted him on the back of the head again. “You think you’re being so clever. You’re purposely making mistakes like that so you can point out later that you were making it all up.”
“Oh, God, please, stop it!” the man cried.
“She was an impulse kill, wasn’t she?” Jordan hissed, raising his hand again.
Leo grabbed his arm. “No! Jordan, that’s enough….”
Jordan pulled away from him, then retreated to the stairs and sank down on one of the lower steps. He put his face in his hands. “There were a few boats out on the bay the day I arrived, even with the choppy water,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “I always figured Mama’s Boy must have been on one of them. With a set of binoculars, he could have seen my mom and me in the backyard. Maybe he saw me trying out the kayak. I think he started following us around that first afternoon.”
Standing over his friend, Leo said nothing. But he remembered Meeker mentioning that he was going to take his fiancee and her son sailing today. So Meeker was an experienced sailor. He remembered something else Meeker had said:
He reached under the banister, between the posts, and patted Jordan’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take a break?” he whispered. “Go upstairs, get something cool to drink. Let me ask him some questions for a while.”
Rubbing his eyes, Jordan nodded. “I’ll go up in a minute,” he murmured.
Leo glanced over at Meeker, half naked and shivering, stretched across the worktable. Leo moved over toward the washer and dryer, where he grabbed a plaid blanket from a laundry basket. He shook out the dust and brought it over to Meeker and laid it over his shoulders. Over the blanket, Leo rubbed Meeker’s taut, tense back and arms. The man shuddered and moaned gratefully. Leo returned to the laundry sink and refilled the measuring cup with cold water. He brought the cup to Meeker and then set it to his lips. Meeker quickly drank the water down. Leo rubbed his shoulders again.
“Why don’t you give him a goddamn manicure while you’re at it?” Jordan mumbled.
Leo shot his friend a look; then he went back to rubbing their prisoner’s aching shoulders and arms. With a sigh, Meeker seemed to melt against the table.
Leo didn’t know very much about the Mama’s Boy murders. He certainly didn’t have Jordan’s expertise. But Moira read like a fiend, and true crime was one her favorite subjects. She’d once told him that studies revealed serial killers and mass murderers were often the victims of violence and abuse in their own childhoods. A serial killer with the nickname Mama’s Boy certainly had a good shot of being among those childhood victims.
Jordan, the bad cop, had tried to get their Mama’s Boy suspect to talk about his crimes. But that hadn’t worked out. Leo figured it was now his turn to be the good cop and get Meeker to talk about the crimes committed against him when he was a kid—if there were any.
The notion that he was rubbing the shoulders of a possible serial killer—even with an old blanket between them—sickened Leo, and he stepped back. He wiped his hands on his shirt and then nervously stuck them in his pants pockets. “Okay, I—I’d like to ask you some questions now—ah, Allen,” he said, trying not to stammer. “Then we’ll wrap this up, I promise. But I—I really need to warn you, we can check all this out with your fiancee to find out if you’re telling the truth.”
“Go ahead,” Meeker murmured.
“Were you an only child?”
The man squinted at him. “What?”
“Were you an only child?” Leo repeated.
Meeker was scowling. “What the hell?”
“It isn’t a tough question,” Leo said. “Do you need time to think up an answer?”
“I—I—have a younger stepbrother. We were never very close.” Meeker closed his eyes. “If I hesitated, that’s why. I don’t really count him as a sibling.”
“So—you have a stepbrother. That means either your parents divorced or one of them died. What happened?” Meeker hesitated. “Why are you asking all this shit?”
“Why can’t you just answer?”
“I just don’t understand what this has to do with anything—”
“Answer the goddamn question!” Jordan bellowed, getting to his feet.
Leo furtively shook his head at him.
With a sigh, Jordan sank back down on the step. But his hand still gripped the banister, and he watched them intently.
“Was it a death or a divorce, Allen?” Leo asked him quietly.
Meeker turned his face away. “A death, my mother died. Okay?”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Eleven,” he muttered.
“How did she die?”
He hesitated again. “It was a car accident.”
Leo said nothing for a moment. He glanced at Jordan and then at Meeker. Finally, he sighed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you. It’s too vague. ‘Car accident’ is how Jordan said his mother died. And I know now, he wasn’t telling the truth. So—how did your mother
He didn’t respond.
“Keep in mind,” Leo said. “We can double-check with your fiancee. She’s only five minutes away by car.”
