Absolute Fear. Lisa Jackson
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“Just a little longer,” she promised, leaving him in the car and wending her way through the vehicles parked in front of the market. The convenience store was doing a banner business. Inside, there were people standing in line to buy their gas, sodas, nachos, cigarettes, and beer. At the restroom she waited for nearly five minutes before it was her turn. After using the facilities and washing, she eyed her reflection in the small mirror, scowled, but didn’t bother to repair the damage. Who cared that her hair was a mess and her lipstick had faded hours earlier? She walked out of the restroom and through the crowded little store, where she grabbed a pack of M&Ms, a small container of aspirin, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper.
As she waited in line, she noticed a mirror mounted high overhead. Convex, the reflective glass gave the cashier a distorted but panoramic view of the interior of the market. In the reflection she saw several customers searching through the shelves, eyeing products, selecting their purchases, but one man was standing alone, not shopping, just looking at the entrance of the store through dark wraparound sunglasses…or…was he looking at her?
Don’t be silly, she told herself and glanced over her shoulder. She couldn’t see past the products stacked on the highest shelf and told herself she was imagining things. No one was lurking, ogling her behind the rolls of paper towels and boxes of cold cereal, for God’s sake!
No—this was all in her head. She’d been edgy ever since she’d gotten that weird phone call.
“Get over it,” she muttered to herself. Then, when the girl behind the counter peered at her oddly, Eve offered an embarrassed smile and quickly paid for her purchases and tank of unleaded.
Outside, beyond the overhang covering the gas pumps, the clouds had lifted to a high, thin haze that was rapidly burning off. The sun hung low in the sky, promising darkness within the hour, but for now it was bright enough to be bothersome, reflecting harshly against glass and metal, creating tiny rainbows on the oil swimming on the surface of puddles caught in the uneven asphalt.
Eve rotated her neck, heard it crack, then slid into the driver’s seat, where she tore open the bag of candy and unscrewed her bottle of soda. After popping a couple of M&Ms and aspirin and washing them down with the Dr. Pepper, she set the bottle into one cup holder and the open bag of candy into the other.
As she turned the key and her car started, she noticed a dark pickup parked near the coffee hut. A ripple of fear slid through her. Was it the same truck that she’d thought was following her earlier?
There are thousands of trucks like that, she reminded herself. She couldn’t make out the smudged plates from this distance, but they were definitely from Louisiana. The bed of the truck wasn’t empty. A toolbox positioned near the back window had been bolted into the truck’s bed.
Probably a construction worker or handyman or farmer…no big deal. Right?
But as she pulled out of the lot, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw a tall man in wraparound shades slip through the glass door of the mini-mart to stand and stare at her. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered. She told herself she was overreacting, that the guy was probably just looking across the street at the drive-in lane at McDonald’s, where a vanload of kids were yelling at the speaker box.
BEEP!!
Eve gasped and stood on her brakes.
Her car rolled just short of the access road as a red, low-riding sports car, hip-hop music blaring, jetted by, just inches from her front bumper. The three teenaged boys inside yelled obscenities and flipped her off.
She sucked in a breath, her heart knocking wildly. She’d been so caught up in her own personal paranoia, she’d neither seen the car approaching nor heard it roaring down the road. Had there been an accident, it probably would have been her fault regardless of the other vehicle’s speed.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Glancing backward, she saw no one. The man in the doorway had moved. Probably to get into a car and go about his business. It had nothing to do with her. “Get a grip,” she growled to herself as she eased onto the narrow road and squinted against the lowering sun. At a red light near the ramp leading to the freeway, she leaned over the passenger seat and opened the glove box, where she’d stashed her dark glasses.
A manila envelope that had been crammed into the small compartment fell to the floor. Dozens of scraps of paper, that looked like jaggedly cut clippings and articles, spewed onto the floor mats and between the seats.
“What the devil?” she whispered as the light turned green.
The driver of the SUV behind her laid on the horn, and Eve stepped on it, somehow accelerating onto the entrance ramp and merging with southbound traffic.
But her heart was thudding, her eyes darting from the road ahead to the scattered pieces of paper. She grabbed one off the passenger seat. It had sharp, jagged edges, and Eve realized the article had been clipped with pinking shears. Her heart was thudding as she held the piece of paper against the steering wheel and scanned the headline:
TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY SOLVED.
WOMAN’S DEATH RULED A HOMICIDE.
“What?” Driving nearly sixty miles an hour, she didn’t dare read the article as she drove, but several phrases leapt out at her.
Faith Chastain, murder victim.
Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital.
Detective Reuben Montoya of the New Orleans Police Department.
Eve’s confusion and anxiety increased. “My God,” she whispered, dropping the clipping. Montoya was one of the cops who had been integral in Cole’s arrest, and the mental hospital was a place Eve knew all too well. Her father had worked there, been the chief psychiatrist, and she had played on the grounds as a child. Faith Chastain. Why did that poor woman’s name ring a distant bell in her head?
Her throat turned to sand. She glanced at another article. It, like the first, had been cut with pinking shears.
SUSPECT IN TWENTY-YEAR-OLD KILLING ACCUSED OF RECENT MURDERS
“Dear Lord, what…?” Eve eased off the gas as she skimmed the article about a recent serial killer in New Orleans, a sick man who had killed at least half a dozen people.
She didn’t bother reaching for another. She got the idea. Biting her lower lip, she tried to concentrate on the road stretching out before her.
Who had left the packet in her car?
Who would know that she’d grown up at the old mental hospital?
Why all the interest in Faith Chastain, a woman long dead?
Her heart was hammering, her lungs tight. If she let herself, she could easily slip into a full-blown anxiety attack. “Hang in there,” she told herself and began counting silently in her head once again. One…Two…Three…
Whoever had put these articles in her car had done it deliberately…to make a point.
Why? When?
WHO?
All the clippings were about the mystery shrouding Faith Chastain’s death, and they hadn’t been torn or cut carelessly. Whoever had taken the time to cut out the articles had indeed done so with pinking shears. It was as if each of the little printed stories was surrounded by razor-sharp, even teeth.
Eve’s skin crawled.
She’d heard about the scandal surrounding the old, abandoned hospital and the more recent murders. The story had been all over the news a few months earlier.
Before Roy’s death.
Before a bullet had grazed her skull.
Who had left the envelope in her locked car? She checked her mirrors, saw no dark, ominous truck trailing after her. How had someone put the envelope in the glove box? She always locked her car….
Except at the gas station.
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