“Who is CeeJay8115?” Mike asked.
She shook her head. “It’s the first time I’ve seen Adam IM with him.”
“Or her.”
“Right, or her.”
“ ‘See you Friday.’ So CeeJay8115 will be at the Huff party. Does that help us?”
“I don’t see how.”
“So do we ask him about it?”
Tia shook her head. “It’s too vague, don’t you think?”
“I do,” Mike agreed. “And it would mean letting him know we’re spying on him.”
They both stood there. Mike read it again. The words didn’t change.
“Mike?”
“Yeah.”
“What would Adam need to stay quiet about in order to be safe?”
NASH, the bushy mustache in his pocket, sat in the van’s passenger seat. Pietra, the straw-haired wig off, drove.
In his right hand, Nash held Marianne’s mobile device. It was a BlackBerry Pearl. You could e-mail, take pictures, watch videos, text, synch your calendar and address book with your home computer, and even make phone calls.
Nash touched the button. The screen lit up. A photograph of Mar- ianne’s daughter popped up. He stared at it for a moment. Pitiful, he thought. He hit the icon to get to her e-mail, found the e-mail addresses he wanted, began to compose:
Hi! I’m going to Los Angeles for a few weeks. I will be in touch when I get back.
He signed it “Marianne,” did the copy feature, and pasted the same message into two other e-mails. Then he hit SEND. Those who knew Marianne wouldn’t search too hard. This, from what Nash could figure, was her modus operandi-disappearing and then popping back up.
But this time… well, disappearing, yes.
Pietra had drugged Marianne’s drink while Nash kept her occupied with the Cain-ape theory. When they had her in the van, Nash had beaten her. He had beaten her badly and for a long time. He had beaten her at first to elicit pain. He wanted her to talk. When he was sure she had told him everything, he then beat her to death. He was patient. There are fourteen stationary bones in the face. He wanted to snap and cave in as many as possible.
Nash had punched Marianne’s face with almost surgical precision. Some shots were designed to neutralize an opponent-take the fight out of them. Some shots were designed to cause horrible pain. Some were designed to cause physical destruction. Nash knew them all. He knew how to keep his knuckles and hands protected while using maximum force, how to make the proper fist so you don’t hurt yourself, how to use the palm strike effectively.
Right before Marianne died, when the breathing was raspy from the blood lodged in her throat, Nash did what he always did in those situations. He stopped and made sure that she was still conscious. Then he had her look up at him, locked his gaze on hers, saw the terror in her eyes:
“Marianne?”
He wanted her attention. He got it. And then he whispered the last words she would ever hear:
“Please tell Cassandra I miss her.”
And then, finally, he allowed her to die.
The van was stolen. The license plates had been changed to confuse the issue. Nash slipped into the backseat. He jammed a bandana into Marianne’s hand and tightened her fingers around it. He used a razor to cut off Marianne’s clothing. When she was naked, he took fresh clothes out of a shopping bag. He struggled but he managed to get them on her. The pink top was too snug but that was the point. The leather skirt was ridiculously short.
Pietra had picked them out.
They had started off with Marianne in a bar in Teaneck, New Jersey. Now they were in Newark, the slums of the Fifth Ward, known for its streetwalkers and murders. That was what she’d be mistaken for-another beaten whore. Newark had a per capita murder rate three times nearby New York City ’s. So Nash had beaten her good and knocked out most of her teeth. Not all of them. Removing all her teeth would make it too obvious he wanted to hide her identity.
So he left some intact. But a dental match-assuming they found enough evidence to warrant looking for a match-would be hard and take a long time.
Nash slipped the mustache back on and Pietra put on the wig. It was an unnecessary precaution. No one was around. They unloaded the body in a Dumpster. Nash looked down at Marianne’s corpse.
He thought of Cassandra. His heart felt heavy, but it gave him strength too.
“Nash?” Pietra said.
He gave her a small smile and got back into the van. Pietra put the van in drive and they were gone.
MIKE stood by Adam’s door, braced himself, opened it.
Adam, dressed in black goth, swung around quickly. “Ever hear of knocking?”
“This is my house.”
“And this is my room.”
“Really? You paid for it?”
He hated the words as soon as they came out. Classic parental jus- tification. Kids scoff and tune it out. He would have when he was young. Why do we do that? Why-when we swear we won’t repeat the wrongs of the previous generation-do we always do exactly that?
Adam had already clicked on a button that blackened his screen. He didn’t want Dad knowing where he’d been surfing. If he only knew…
“I got good news,” Mike said.
Adam turned to him. He folded his arms across his chest and tried to look surly, but it wasn’t happening. The kid was big-bigger than his father already-and Mike knew that he could be tough. He’d been fearless in goal. He didn’t wait for his defensemen to protect him. If someone had gone into his crease, Adam had taken them out.
“What?” Adam said.
“Mo got us box seats to the Rangers against the Flyers.”
His expression didn’t change. “For when?”
“Tomorrow night. Mom’s going to Boston to take a deposition. Mo’s going to pick us up at six.”
“Take Jill.”
“She’s having a sleepover at Yasmin’s.”
“You’re letting her overnight at XY’s?”
“Don’t call her that. It’s mean.”
Adam shrugged. “Whatever.”
Whatever-always a great teenage comeback.
“So come home after school and I’ll pick you up.”
“I can’t go.”
Mike took in the room. It looked somehow different from when he’d sneaked in with the tattooed Brett, he of the dirty fingernails. That thought got to him again. Brett’s dirty fingernails had been on the keyboard. It was wrong. Spying was wrong. But then again, if they hadn’t, Adam would be heading to a party with drinking and maybe drugs. So spying had been a good thing. Then again Mike had gone to a party or two like that when he was underage. He had survived. Was he any worse for wear?
“What do you mean you can’t go?”
“I’m going to Olivia’s.”
“Your mother told me. You go to Olivia’s all the time. This is Rangers-Flyers.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Mo bought the tickets already.”
“Tell him to take someone else.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Yeah, no. I’m your father. You’re going to the game.”
“But-”
“No buts.”
Mike turned and left the room before Adam could say another word.
Wow, Mike thought. Did I really say
6
THE house was dead.
That was how Betsy Hill would describe it. Dead. It wasn’t merely quiet or still. The house was hollow, gone, deceased-its heart had stopped beating, the blood had stopped flowing, the innards had begun to decay.
Dead. Dead as a doornail, whatever the hell that meant.
Dead as her son, Spencer.
Betsy wanted to move out of this dead house, anywhere really. She did not want to stay in this rotting corpse. Ron, her husband, thought it was too soon. He was
