That had been nearly an hour and a half ago.
Susan glanced at her wristwatch: 6:45.
She’d waited all this time downstairs in the sunroom, sitting in the same chair where Allen had pulled guard duty with his revolver last night. She’d done the same thing, only with a different kind of gun. While Mattie had slept, she’d sat there, afraid she’d suddenly see that man in the army fatigues on the other side of the sliding door—his face against the glass.
Ten years ago, she and Walt had been so concerned because one of the Mama’s Boy victims had been abducted in a park five blocks away from their home.
And here she was now, in a house occupied by another Mama’s Boy victim.
As Susan zipped up her suitcase on the bed, she thought about Jordan Prewitt’s mother, spending the last night of her life in this very room.
“Okay, sweetie, we’re out of here,” she said, grabbing the overnight bag. She’d already packed Mattie’s suitcase—in less than three minutes. It was now by the front door, along with the bin full of his toys. She hadn’t packed Allen’s things. When he came back, he could do his own packing.
As she started down the stairs after Mattie, Susan half expected to hear a sudden pounding on the door—or perhaps a window shattering. She couldn’t get past the weird notion that Mattie and she were reliving Jordan Prewitt and his mother’s last night in this house—and they might not make it out alive.
Her purse was hanging on the newel post at the bottom of the banister. Susan realized she still had the flare gun in there. She took out the gun and the extra flares and set them on the half table in the front hallway. She thought about stashing the pellet gun in her bag, but decided to keep it in the deep pocket of her cardigan. That way, it was easier to reach—in case of an emergency.
“You don’t have to go potty, do you?” she asked Mattie, pausing by the door.
“Nope,” he said, tapping Woody’s head against the doorway frame.
“I want you to stay right here like a good boy while I load up the car.” She mussed his hair, then opened the door and took her suitcase outside.
The car was parked just a few feet from the burnt rain barrel—by the trees where that hunter had been lurking. Susan made three trips back and forth, loading up the car, and for each brief trek she glanced at those woods with trepidation. She kept waiting for someone to leap out of those bushes.
Finally, she strapped Mattie into his child’s seat, then hurried around and ducked behind the wheel. She quickly locked her door and then started up the car.
As she pulled out of the driveway, Susan glanced in the rearview mirror. She took one last look at the house—and hoped to never see it again.
“You only have a few more sips left,” Leo said, nodding at the near-empty bottle of citrus-flavored Vitaminwater. “Why don’t you polish it off?”
They sat at the kitchen table. Leo had half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a paper plate in front of him. He felt horrible as he watched his trusting best friend swill down the rest of the Vitaminwater he’d laced with sleeping pills.
If that wasn’t bad enough, a few minutes earlier when Jordan had mentioned he wanted to go back down to the basement again, Leo had lied, saying he felt another diabetic episode coming on. So Jordan had gotten all concerned and made him the PB and J.
“This isn’t exactly the birthday dinner I’d planned for you,” he’d said, setting the sandwich in front of him.
Leo had noticed Jordan slurring his words a bit. And the way he’d moved around, he’d seemed slightly drunk. That had been about ten minutes ago.
“We gotta go back down there, Leo,” he announced with a sigh. He rubbed his mouth as if it weren’t working right. “I know you hate it, and I hate it, too. But we’re so close to making this son of a bitch crack. We’re so close….”
Jordan got up from the kitchen table, but started to lose his balance. “Whoa, head rush,” he muttered. He went to grab his chair and tipped it over. It clattered against the tiled floor.
“Are you okay?” Leo asked, springing to his feet. He grabbed Jordan’s arm. He felt like such a weasel, pretending he didn’t know what the problem was. He wondered if he’d put too many pills in that drink.
Weaving slightly, Jordan numbly gazed down at the fallen dinette chair.
“Y’know, maybe you ought to lie down for a few minutes,” Leo suggested. He picked up the chair and set it by the breakfast table. “You’re tired. You’ve been through a hell of a lot today. It’s catching up with you….”
But Jordan was shaking his head. “No, no, we gotta go down there and get a confession out of him. We—we can’t give up now.”
Leo tried to take hold of his arm again, but Jordan pulled away and staggered toward the basement door. “That deputy is coming back in less than an hour,” he said sluggishly. “We don’t have much time. As soon as we get a real confession from this son of a bitch, we can—we can go look for Moira. Poor Moira, lost all alone in those woods…”
Leo hovered behind his friend as he teetered down the basement stairway. Halfway down, Jordan stumbled, but he grabbed for the banister and landed on his butt. He sat in a stupor on one of the lower steps. “Geez, what’s going on?” he murmured.
“Like I said, you’re tired,” Leo whispered. “Really, you ought to go upstairs and lie down—for just a few minutes. This can wait.”
As he helped Jordan get to his feet, Leo glanced down at Meeker, sprawled across the worktable. With a cold look in his eyes, he seemed to study their every move.
Leo ignored him. “C’mon, Jordan, let’s get you upstairs. You can catch a few Z’s. A fifteen-minute break, and you’ll be good as new.” He led Jordan up the cellar steps. All the while, he felt Meeker’s eyes on him.
He almost had to hold Jordan up as they staggered through the kitchen to the next set of stairs. They made their way up to the second floor, but at the landing, Jordan stumbled once again—almost falling down the staircase. Leo caught him and steered him toward Moira’s room.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with me?” Jordan mumbled. “All of the sudden…did you…” he shook his head. “No, no, you wouldn’t have…. You wouldn’t have done anything like that to me….”
Leo knew what he was talking about. But he pretended not to hear. He pulled back the quilt and sat Jordan down on the bed. Reaching back under his friend’s shirttail, he took away the gun and set it on the nightstand.
Jordan flopped to one side, then rolled over and laid his head on the pillow. “We got him, Leo,” he murmured sleepily. “We got Mama’s Boy.”
“Yeah, we got him,” Leo said. “Justice will be served, I promise.” His heart ached as he pulled off his friend’s shoes. He kept telling himself this was for the best—even if it meant betraying his best friend. Eventually, Jordan would forgive him.
He reached into the pocket of Jordan’s jeans and took out his car keys.
His friend squirmed. “I’m going to let all the others know,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m going to look them up, all the Mama’s Boy orphans like me. Maybe they—maybe they’ll finally be able to live with themselves and move on, y’know?”
Leo covered him with a blanket.
“Wake me in fifteen, okay?” Jordan asked.
Leo patted his shoulder. “I’ll make it twenty,” he said.
He figured that was how long it would take to drive to the store and back. Just one phone call and the state police would be on their way to resolve this whole mess—and no one had to die. He watched Jordan start to doze off. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hand lingering on his friend’s shoulder for a moment.
Then he took the revolver from the nightstand and headed downstairs. He hid the gun in the kitchen cabinet—behind the Cap’n Crunch. At the top of the basement stairs, he hesitated. He hadn’t been down there alone with that man—not without Jordan alert and close by.
Leo started down the creaky cellar steps.
Meeker was watching him. “You drugged him, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice raspy. “What, did you slip something in a drink of his?”
Leo said nothing. He wondered how the man could have figured it out. Perhaps he’d had several opportunities to observe someone who had been drugged. Maybe Mama’s Boy hadn’t always taken his victims by gunpoint. Maybe
