Heartstopper Read online

  He checked his watch, thinking he’d better start right away—the mayor had already phoned twice since Liana’s body had been unearthed, the first time stating his desire to be kept in the loop, the second time wondering whether they should call in the FBI. John had reminded the mayor that he knew more about the citizens of Torrance than any FBI agent could and urged him to be patient. “I’ll handle this,” he told him, deciding to go home and grab a shower. He couldn’t very well invite himself into people’s homes wearing the same sweat-and-dirt-stained uniform he’d been wearing when he pulled Liana out of the soggy ground.

  “You can’t wear that,” he could almost hear Pauline sneer, remembering that they were supposed to be having dinner tonight with Sarah and Frank Lawrence. But surely even Pauline would understand these were rather special circumstances. And anyway, he had no appetite. Even the thought of food made him queasy.

  John sat in silence for several minutes, trying not to think of the missing girl from neighboring Hendry County. Was it possible Candy Abbot was buried somewhere out there as well, that a madman was on the loose in south-central Florida, preying on young girls, and that this was only the beginning? John buried his head in his hands, refusing to speculate. He was too old for this, he thought, too old and too ill-equipped. True, he had a staff of smart and eager young deputies, and they would work their tails off trying to find Liana’s killer, but they had even less experience in this sort of thing than he did. He also had an ambitious young mayor staring over his shoulder and second-guessing his every move. Hell, it had barely been an hour and the man was already wondering what was taking so long.

  John knew that in real life, unlike on TV, despite how focused and intense the police effort, most crimes were solved by the perpetrator turning himself in or, more likely, by accident. John shook his head, intent on ridding his mind of all unwanted thoughts and images before heading for home.

  The first thing he intended to do when he got there was tell his daughter how much he loved her.

  The house was dark.

  John heard the television blasting as soon as he stepped inside the front door. This was nothing new. The television was always blasting. “Pauline?” he called out, flipping on the light switch by the door to illuminate the so-called great room—a living-dining-family room combined. Other than its size, there was nothing particularly “great” about it. It was a simple rectangle, and the furniture, while expensive enough, was altogether too floral for his taste. They rarely used the dining room. And John couldn’t remember the last time the three of them had sat on the awkward leather sectional in the arbitrarily designated family area to watch TV together.

  He glanced toward Amber’s bedroom at the front of the house, but her door was closed, and there was nothing—no sounds, no sliver of light—to indicate she was inside. “Amber?” he called, wondering if she’d heard the news about Liana, and hoping she hadn’t gone out. “Amber? Amber, are you there?”

  When she still didn’t answer, he proceeded to the kitchen, dropping the large bag from McDonald’s he’d picked up on his way home onto the gray granite countertop. The bag contained a Big Mac, several McChicken sandwiches, and three large orders of fries that he hoped would be enough to appease Pauline for having to cancel their dinner plans, and while he’d had the girl behind the counter double-bag the order and then place the whole thing in a larger plastic bag and knot it, not even that had been enough to keep the unmistakable odor from reaching his nose. Eau de McDonald’s, he thought, and might have smiled had the circumstances been different.

  “Pauline?” he called, louder this time, as he walked toward their bedroom at the back of the house. He doubted she could hear him over the noise of the TV, and wondered why he bothered. Pauline insisted that years of listening to loud music as a teenager had done significant damage to her eardrums, and she couldn’t hear the TV unless it was played at top volume. But since she had no trouble hearing anything else, John secretly believed she did it to annoy him.

  Sometimes, when he wanted to go to bed early and she was still watching one of her favorite programs—as far as he could determine, they were all her favorites—he’d have to sleep in the tiny guest bedroom at the front of the house. He didn’t mind doing this, despite the fact that the bed was only a double as opposed to a king, and it wasn’t as comfortable as the one in his own room. Still, he didn’t have to share it, and the guest room was one of the few rooms in the house that didn’t contain a TV. The other rooms all had television sets, including the kitchen and master bathroom. This wasn’t his idea. He’d never been much of a TV watcher. Pauline sometimes accused him of being a snob, but the truth was even simpler than that: he had a hard time following most of the programs. As a child, he’d suffered from a mild form of attention deficit disorder, and he still found it difficult to focus on any one thing for any length of time. Probably not the best attribute for a man in his position, he thought. Luckily, his attention span had never been severely tested.

  Until now.

  “Pauline?” He entered the bedroom, his eyes moving back and forth between the image of a beautiful young woman with long blond hair and large full breasts as she bounced provocatively across the giant-screen TV, and the empty, unmade bed across from it. That the bed was unmade didn’t surprise him. That Pauline wasn’t in it did. Was it possible that Pauline had heard the news about Liana and, knowing that he’d probably be tied up for most of the night, already canceled their plans for dinner and taken Amber out, simply forgetting to turn off the television? “Pauline?” he said again, grabbing the remote control from the midst of the green-and-yellow floral sheets and snapping the damn thing off.

  “What are you doing?” came the immediate response. “Don’t do that.”

  John’s head shot toward the hallway. “Pauline?”

  “I’m watching that.”

  Pauline emerged from the walk-in closet off the hall between the bedroom and the bathroom, securing a gold loop earring as she walked. Her shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair was pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she was wearing what appeared to be a new blue dress. At least John thought it was blue. He was color-blind, as well as having ADD, so it could have been black. And he assumed the dress was new because he couldn’t recall having seen it before. Pauline always claimed that, for a deputy sheriff, he was alarmingly unobservant. He hadn’t had the heart—or maybe it was the nerve—to tell her his professional faculties were actually highly astute, that despite his color blindness and ADD, his failure to notice things was largely confined to her.

  Not that she wasn’t an attractive woman—she was. At forty-three, she was tall and reasonably slender, with bright eyes and a smile that was as engaging as it was seldom seen.

  “You’re late,” she said, grabbing the remote from his hand and clicking the television back on. “You’d better get out of those dirty clothes and into the shower. I told Sarah we’d meet them at seven-thirty and it’s almost that now.”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “About Liana.”

  Pauline said nothing, her attention momentarily diverted by what was happening on the TV. “Would you just look at that face,” she directed, pointing at the screen. “She tries to tell people she hasn’t had any work done, but who’s she kidding? Any woman over fifty who doesn’t have lines has had a face-lift.”

  “Pauline,” John said, louder than he’d intended, causing Pauline’s shoulders to stiffen. “We found Liana’s body.”

  “Yes, I know.” Pauline lowered her eyes to the ivory-carpeted floor. “Mon Dieu, you didn’t take off your boots.”

  “My boots?”

  “You’re getting muck all over the carpet.”

  “You know about Liana?”

  Another stiffening of her shoulders. A slight straightening of her back. “Sarah called to tell me about it twenty minutes ago.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing?”

  “What
do you mean, what am I doing? I’m getting dressed to go out.” Her nose sniffed at the air. “Is that McDonald’s I smell?”

  John raised his voice higher to compete with the raised voices on the TV. “I brought you some McChicken sandwiches.” This whole conversation was becoming surreal, as if he were an unwitting participant in one of those ghastly reality series his wife loved so much.

  “Why would I want a McChicken sandwich when we’re meeting Sarah and Frank for dinner?”

  “Because we aren’t meeting Sarah and Frank for dinner,” he exploded, responding to the challenge in his wife’s voice. “Because a young girl has been brutally murdered—”

  “A young girl we barely knew—”

  “We knew her.”

  “Barely.”

  “We know her parents.”

  “Who have always looked down their noses at us. Don’t think they haven’t.”

  “Howard and Judy Martin are—”

  “—lovely people, I know. Spare me. They’re total snobs, and the only time they ever have anything to do with you is when they need something.”

  “Their daughter has been murdered.”

  “Brutally, yes, I know. Tell me, is there any other way?”

  “For God’s sake, Pauline. Do you ever listen to yourself?”

  “Don’t make me out to be the villain here,” she snapped. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry the poor girl is dead. I really am. But what can I do about it? Disappointing our friends by not going out to dinner isn’t going to bring her back.”

  “I can’t,” John said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What do you mean, you can’t? Why not? What can you possibly hope to accomplish tonight?”

  “I don’t know. But I have to try.”

  “So you’ll try after dinner. Don’t you have a staff for this sort of thing?”

  “They’re already out there. Think about it, Pauline. How would it look for me to be eating in a restaurant when everyone else is working round the clock?”

  “Since when have you cared about how things look?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “You raised it,” she reminded him.

  “Sean Wilson’s already on my back—”

  “Sean Wilson’s a little pipsqueak.”

  “He’s the mayor, Pauline.”

  “Yes, the tiny, perfect mayor. I know. Please. You could squash him with your bare hands.”

  “The point is that I can’t go out to dinner with Sarah and Frank,” John reiterated. “The point is that I don’t want to go out to dinner with Sarah and Frank, that I don’t want to delegate this to my deputies. A young girl has been murdered, and it’s my job to try to find out who did it.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Pauline scoffed. “Her boyfriend probably did it.”

  “Her boyfriend?” Had Pauline heard something he hadn’t? “Why do you say that?”

  Pauline waved toward the TV. “Because it’s always the boyfriend.” She paused, uncertainty crossing her face for the first time. “Isn’t it?”

  “Well, we’ll be looking into that possibility, of course, but…”

  “But?”

  John paused, weighing just how much to tell her. “I think we might have a lunatic on our hands.”

  “What?”

  “This is just conjecture at this point, so you can’t say anything to anyone. The last thing I want is to cause a panic.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean, a lunatic?”

  “There’s a second girl missing.”

  “What? Who?”

  “A girl from Hendry County. No one we know.”

  “So we don’t know her disappearance has anything to do with Liana,” Pauline said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Lots of girls disappear.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “She probably just ran away.”

  “Probably.”

  “Why would you even think there’s a connection?” Pauline asked, a hint of anger in her voice.

  “Instinct,” John answered honestly.

  “Have your instincts never been wrong?”

  “They’ve been wrong many times.”

  “But you don’t think they’re wrong this time,” Pauline said, reading the look in his eyes.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Merde.” Pauline sank to the bed, kicked off her open-toed shoes. “You think we’re dealing with a serial killer?” she asked after a pause.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it could be someone we know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know anything?”

  “I know that until we find Liana’s killer, we have to be extracautious, especially where Amber is concerned. Where is she anyway?”

  “What do you mean, where is she? Isn’t she here?”

  Immediately, John tore from the room, hurling himself through the kitchen and great room toward Amber’s bedroom at the front of the house. He pushed open the door to her room with his open palm.

  A thin figure bolted from the bed.

  “Amber! Thank God.” John crossed over to the bed in two quick strides and took the young girl in his arms. “—Didn’t you hear me call you?”

  “No,” Amber said, pulling out of his grasp and tucking her long brown hair behind her ears. “I lay down for a few minutes. I guess I fell asleep.” She glanced from her father to her mother. “What’s the matter?”

  “We thought you might have gone out,” John said.

  “So?”

  “We don’t want you going anywhere without telling us. At least for the time being. And definitely not alone.”

  Amber stared at her father through eyes that looked as if someone had colored in two round circles with an emerald-green crayon. “Because of what happened to Liana?”

  “You know?” Pauline asked from the doorway.

  “It was on the Internet.”

  John’s head snapped toward the computer on Amber’s desk. “What? Where?”

  “On my e-mail.”

  “Who sent you an e-mail about this?”

  “Who didn’t?” came Amber’s response.

  “Show me,” her father directed.

  Wordlessly, Amber approached the computer on the desk across from her bed. She was wearing a pair of baggy khaki pants and an oversize, checkered shirt. If she really thinks her body looks so damn good this skinny, why does she take such great pains to hide it? John wondered as Amber accessed her e-mails.

  There were thirteen of them, all saying essentially the same thing—Liana Martin was dead. She’d been shot through the head. It was gross, GROSS, GROSS. One email—unsigned—said she’d been raped and decapitated. Another, sent by Victor Drummond, said Liana’s body had been drained of blood.

  “That’s rubbish,” John told his daughter, who’d returned to her queen-size bed.

  “I thought so,” Amber said. “But she was shot, right? Shot through the head?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “And you don’t know who did it?”

  “Your father thinks it might be the work of a serial killer,” Pauline said.

  “Pauline, for God’s sake!” John exclaimed. “What did I say about…?”

  “A serial killer?” Amber’s green eyes grew even wider, accentuating the gauntness of her cheeks.

  “There’s another girl missing,” Pauline continued, ignoring her husband’s disapproval.

  “What?”

  “Okay, this stops right here and now,” John said firmly. “You aren’t to repeat this to anyone. Do you understand?” But even as he spoke the words, he knew it was hopeless. Already he could hear Pauline gossiping on the phone to her friends. Already he could read the e-mails Amber would soon be posting on the Web.

  “Of course,” Pauline and Amber replied in unison. “Oui. Okay.”

  “It’s just a
theory at this point. There’s nothing to be gained from getting people all riled up,” he said. “But until we catch this guy, I don’t want you going out anywhere alone. Is that clear?”

  “What if you don’t find him?” Amber asked.

  John shook his head. He didn’t have an answer for that one. “Just do me a favor and be extracareful, okay?”

  Amber nodded.

  “When you’re not in class, you’re at home. I’ll drive you to school in the morning and Mom will pick you up.”

  “What?” Pauline said.

  “There’s auditions for the school play on Monday,” Amber protested. “They’re doing Kiss Me, Kate, and Mr. Lipsman wants me to audition for the part of Kate’s sister, Bianca.”

  “All right,” John agreed, after a nod from his wife. “As long as you’re not alone. And call when the audition’s over and you’re ready to come home.”

  Amber shrugged her agreement.

  “And eat something,” John heard himself say. “You weigh two pounds, for God’s sake. If somebody grabbed you, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Huge green orbs rolled toward the ceiling.

  “Your father bought McDonald’s,” Pauline offered, and John felt strangely grateful for her support.

  Amber stared at her parents as if they’d both suddenly stripped themselves of all their clothing and were standing naked before her. She looked appropriately horrified.

  “There’s a Big Mac, some McChicken sandwiches, and fries,” John continued in spite of this.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “I don’t eat meat. You know that.”

  “Then have the fries.”