for a woman vacationing here by herself. Anyway, I knew Jordan Prewitt would be staying here this weekend, and I knew his old house on the bay was available. I thought it might liven things up if you were here the same time as him—and in the same house where you abducted his mother. Honest to Pete, I had no idea you’d actually run into him, and he’d remember you….”
“Listen, we don’t have much time,” Meeker interrupted. “The skinny one, Leo, he drugged his pal. I think he might have dumped him in the car. They’re headed off to the store to call the state police. They left about an hour ago. We can’t stay here.”
“Relax, we have plenty of time,” the cop said.
Jordan strained to hear as Meeker’s voice dropped to a whisper: “What the hell do you want from me?”
“Haven’t you figured it out by now?” the deputy said. “I want to work with you, Allen. I saw you kill her. I was living here when you helped put Cullen on the map. I was seventeen years old, perpetually horny, bored, and tired of just killing dogs and torturing cats for a cheap thrill.” He chuckled. “You know what I mean. You know what that’s like. I had a little crush on Stella. I used to sneak up to the house on Birch and watch her undress at night. Then one evening in August, while she was here with her kid, I realized I wasn’t alone outside. I was already a big fan of your work, Allen. But I had no idea I was in the company of the maestro. I still didn’t know the next day—when I watched you from the woods by the house. It was like I had a front-row seat to your performance. You showed up in the backyard, knocked her out, and carried her away. I can still hear little Jordan screaming and crying. It was beautiful. That’s when I knew who you were….”
His back against the bedroom wall, Jordan couldn’t stop shaking. A tear slid down his cheek.
“I thought for sure you might have noticed my old, beat-up Ford following you and Stella,” the deputy continued. “I followed you all the way to your dumpy little shack in North Seattle. It served you well for a while— isolated as it was. There was no one around to hear the women screaming. I saw you take Stella in there. And the next day, I saw you deposit her naked body in the woods by her house on Birch Way. I could have turned you in, but I didn’t. That’s when I became your number-one fan, Allen.”
“And that’s when the letters and e-mails started,” Meeker muttered.
Jordan could barely hear him. But it was the confirmation he needed. Meeker was admitting it. He was Mama’s Boy.
“Didn’t slow you down any, and I’m glad,” Shaffer said. “I’d like to think it kind of excited you to know someone else was in on it. I used to take weekend trips down to Seattle and sleep in my car. I’d check out your house at night. I missed a couple of murders. But seven months after Stella, I saw you take Rhoda Mundy out of the trunk of your car and then carry her into that house, Allen. She was a real step down from Stella, though. In fact, from her photo in the newspapers, I’d say she was kind of a skank. You must have thought so, too, because just six hours later, you were carrying her in a Hefty back to the trunk of your car. Something about her must have gotten under your skin, because one of the newspapers reported that you’d beaten her so badly, it looked like she’d been trampled by a horse. I don’t know how they figured it out, but they said it appeared as if she’d been strangled up to a point and revived several times—until you finished her off. I wish I’d seen that. But you were always so careful about closing the shades. Was that repeated-strangulation thing something you did with any of the others? I imagine it was like watching them die several times….”
Jordan heard Meeker mutter something, but he couldn’t make out the words. It tore him up inside to imagine that might have happened to his mother.
“Were my letters the reason you moved in 2000—after you killed that woman with the twins?” Shaffer asked. There was a hint of melancholy in the deputy’s tone.
“Partly,” Meeker replied.
“That wasn’t what I wanted,” Shaffer said. “I just wanted to be in on it, Allen, be a part of it. I didn’t mean for you to move away. Hell, you’re the reason I became a cop. I realized it gave me access to all sorts of things that helped me keep track of you. When those women were killed down in Oakland, I knew it was you. I knew exactly where you were living at the time. Then there were the murders in Fairfax and Alexandria in 2003. I’ve visited all the spots where you’ve abducted woman—and the places where you deposited their bodies when you were finished with them. I know you and your work better than anyone else. You may have tried to go straight and set up house with Susan and her kid. But I wasn’t buying that cover. Maybe you figured you’d lose me if you laid low for a while. But I never lost track of where you were, Allen…never.”
Jordan didn’t move for fear they’d hear the floorboards creaking. He kept his back to the bedroom wall. But he could see the clock on the nightstand: 8:09 PM. Leo had been gone for over an hour. It only took ten minutes to drive to Rosie’s from here. Why had Deputy Shaffer been so confident that they had plenty of time? Had he spotted Leo on his way to Rosie’s and pulled him over?
Jordan imagined his Honda Civic parked along a dirt trail off Carroll Creek Road, a birthday cake in the backseat, and behind the wheel, Leo with a bullet in his head. Jordan prayed it wasn’t true. He felt sick to his stomach again.
For the last several hours, he’d desperately wanted some kind of confirmation that Allen Meeker was indeed Mama’s Boy. Now he had it—thanks to Deputy Shaffer. But the person downstairs confronting Meeker wasn’t an accuser.
He was an admirer.
And it sounded like he planned on helping this mother-killer get away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hovering outside the living room window, Susan was in shock.
She couldn’t believe what they were saying. She kept waiting for Allen to tell the deputy that he was mistaken, that he had the wrong guy.
Allen wasn’t a murderer.
But he just stood there in that ill-fitting white T-shirt and those painter pants, leaning against the newel post—sometimes even nodding as Deputy Shaffer attributed these horrendous murders to him.
Susan thought of Allen abducting that poor little boy’s mother right in front of him, and the others he’d abducted and murdered. She thought of the motherless boys left behind. Allen was responsible for all of it.
She remembered when that woman had vanished in Volunteer Park ten years ago and how terrified she’d been. A police artist had made a sketch of Mama’s Boy, and she’d had nightmares that one night the man in that sketch would invade her home. She’d locked her doors and carried around a canister of pepper spray to protect her family and herself from that monster.
But he’d gotten in, despite all her precautions.
She’d let him into her life—and her son’s life. She was engaged to him. He’d been inside her.
Susan felt sick. Her legs were shaky, and she couldn’t get her breath. She leaned against the side of the house and clung to the window ledge.
“I’m sorry things got screwed up, Allen,” the deputy was saying. “I was going to get in touch with you while you were out on the boat today—between noon and four, like I told you. I thought you might agree to a little plan I had. I won’t go into the details just now, but it would have looked like a sailing accident. They’d have found the little brat washed up on the shore, but no sign of Susan. I was hoping you’d hand her over to me….”
Susan watched Allen shake his head over and over.
“Why not?” the deputy asked. He still held the gun in his hand, but it wasn’t pointed at Allen anymore. Instead, he casually caressed it. “I’m very good at making women disappear, Allen. They’re still looking for two ladies I had a little fun with.
“What the hell makes you think I’d have given her up to you?” Allen asked, frowning.
“Maybe the notion that if you didn’t cooperate, you’d find the state police waiting for you when you returned from your afternoon sailing excursion,” Shaffer replied. “I started to e-mail you on the boat. I thought you were avoiding me for a while. That’s when you must have run into Jordan. What those boys put you through, was it rough?”
“I’ve been through worse,” Allen muttered. He turned and walked into the living room.
