A Stranger at the Door (A Rachel Marin Thriller) Page 17

  “So it’s just a coincidence that I get a gun pulled on me while following his YourLife flunkies?”

  “Right there. Think about what you just said. You were following two children. Children. Do you know how that’s going to look if you take this any further?”

  “One of those children was my son.”

  “So you rented a car to follow him. Yeah. That sounds sane.”

  “How did you know I rented—”

  “I talked to your cop friends. They said you were found near a brown Camry. I’ve been to your house. Didn’t see a brown Camry. If the media gets word of this insanity, they’re going to dig.”

  “Bennett Brice threatened to sic the media on me too,” Rachel said. “You’re not very original. If he doesn’t cut my son loose, this is going to end badly for him.”

  “Are you threatening Bennett Brice?” Evie said. “Because that’s not the first time.”

  Rachel said nothing.

  “Mr. Brice gives at-risk children incredible opportunities. They can earn money—a lot of money—working for him. He helps troubled teens. What he’s doing is noble.”

  “I don’t see anything noble about it,” Rachel said. “I see him exploiting vulnerable kids.”

  “You are wrong,” Evie said.

  “Rarely,” Rachel replied. “Why are you defending him? How much is he paying you?”

  “See,” Evie said, “even your guesses are so far off the mark they’re in the woods. Look at what you’ve become, Rachel. Didn’t you come to Ashby to get away from violence? But since you came here, you’ve found violence at every turn.”

  “I help bring criminals to justice,” Rachel said. “Criminals can be violent.”

  “Didn’t you shoot a man inside your own home not too long ago?” Evie said. “That sounds to me like a criminal bringing violence to you. Into your home, where your children sleep. Don’t bring any more violence into your life, Rachel.”

  “Is that a threat?” Rachel said.

  “Not in the least. Bennett Brice did you a favor. He told our friend Benjamin Ruddock to bring Eric to me to bring to you as an olive branch. To let you know that he’s not the bad guy. That we care about your family.”

  Rachel thought for a moment. “Tell me about Raymond Spivak. Why did you try to kill him?”

  Evie’s eyes widened.

  “How do you—”

  “Like I said. I investigate criminals. And you have a criminal record. What did Raymond Spivak do to you that made you go to his home with a knife? And why were the charges dropped?”

  Evie leaped out of her chair. She looked at Rachel with a mixture of anger and pity.

  “That was a long time ago and has nothing to do with Bennett Brice or why I’m here. Besides, Raymond isn’t the Spivak brother to worry about.”

  “You’re referring to his brother. Randall Spivak, right? Talk to me. Tell me what this is all about, Evie. Because even though I’m the one who just had a gun pulled on me, you’re the one who looks scared.”

  Evie stood there for a moment, as though measuring whether to say something to Rachel, then turned around and left the room.

  CHAPTER 27

  Megan slept in a chair beside Rachel’s bed. Eric sat in another chair, but from what Rachel could tell, he didn’t sleep. Rachel tried to talk to him, but she had a hard time focusing, and Eric refused to give more than one-word answers. A constant faint glow from his cell phone illuminated his face. His thumbs tapped away incessantly. Rachel couldn’t tell if he was playing a game or sending a text. What if he’s texting Ruddock? Or Brice? Or Evie Boggs? She prayed it was something as simple as him texting Penny Wallace. If only things were as simple as a teenage crush.

  She wanted so desperately to look inside his head, to see the wiring, to understand how to relieve him of his anger and sadness. She missed the carefree young boy she once knew. It destroyed her to think he might be gone. There were some pains that never subsided. There were some fractures not even a mother could mend.

  Rachel flitted in and out of semiconsciousness. Doctors came in and out to check on her. Eric stayed in the room, next to Megan. She did not know if he slept.

  At one point, Rachel looked at Eric, only to find that he was staring at her. His face was a mask. Emotionless. She smiled at him, drowsily.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Eric did not respond.

  In the morning, John Serrano took the children to school. Megan gave Rachel a hug and said, “Mommy, come home.” It took everything she had not to cry.

  “I should be able to get out of here today, dear,” she said.

  Eric went over to the bed. His face gave no evidence of what he was thinking.

  “I’ll see you later today,” she said. “I love you, Eric. No matter what.”

  Eric simply nodded. He leaned down and placed his arms around his mother, but there was no weight or emotion behind the gesture. He may as well have been fastening a seat belt. Then they left Rachel alone.

  By late morning, the wooziness had begun to subside. Her head still felt like she’d been kicked by a mule, but physical pain she could handle as long as her equilibrium returned. At ten o’clock, she was discharged with acetaminophen, with clear instructions not to take ibuprofen due to the increased risk of cranial bleeding.

  She threw the pain meds in the garbage before she got to the parking lot.

  She hailed a ride share from her app and went home. Rachel took a long, hot shower, turning the temperature down slightly when she began to feel dizzy. She traced the swollen wound beneath her shower cap. When she got out, she texted Serrano:

  Kids get to school ok?

  Yup. Megan told me the plot of her next Sadie Scout novel.

  Tell me it doesn’t involve Sadie getting bonked in the head.

  Ha, no. I told her they’ll make a great movie one day. She almost asked me to adopt her.

  Thank you John. For everything.

  No worries. Just glad Eric is ok, at least on the outside. Even if Brice is denying involvement, I’m going to keep an eye on things just to be sure.

  Rachel almost wrote back I will too but decided against it.

  I appreciate it.

  When you’re ready, let’s all reconvene on the Linklater murder.

  You got it. One more thing: Evie mentioned Raymond Spivak’s brother. Randall. She seems scared of him. Does he have a file?

  I’ll pull up whatever we have

  She responded with a thumbs-up emoji, then put on a fresh pair of jeans and a dark-green tank top, put her hair up, and collected her thoughts.

  It had all started with Matthew Linklater’s death. His murder had led to the emergence of Evie Boggs, the recruitment of her son, and her head being nearly cleaved in two. She did not think Evie had killed Linklater herself—it just seemed too much of a stretch for the killer to literally knock on Rachel’s door herself—but she had been wrong before. Rachel felt in her bones that Benjamin Ruddock was one of the people at Linklater’s house the night he died. It would make sense: Linklater would have opened the door for one of his students, obviously unaware he was facilitating his own death. Even if he was wary of Ruddock, he couldn’t possibly have known just how dangerous the boy was. She needed to know if Linklater had ever met Bennett Brice or Evie Boggs. And there was only one person who might know more about Matthew Linklater.

  Gabrielle Vargas.

  CHAPTER 28

  Gabrielle Vargas seemed unsurprised when Rachel Marin knocked on her door.

  “Ms. Vargas,” Rachel said. “My name is Rachel Marin. I’m working with the APD on Matthew Linklater’s murder. I know you’ve had a hell of a week, and I hate to impose even more, but I was hoping I might ask you a few questions about Matthew. Can I come in?”

  Gabrielle sighed and said, “You know, I’ve seen enough movies to know that if you date a murder victim, cops are going to come in and out of your apartment like you’re handing out free coffee.” She held the door open to allow Rachel
inside.

  “I’m not a cop,” Rachel said. “More like cop-adjacent.”

  “I know you’re not a cop. You actually asked if you could come in. So far none of the cops I’ve spoken with have had the decency to ask.”

  “For once, I’m not the one who needs to work on their manners.”

  Vargas smiled and led Rachel to the living room. She walked around her apartment with her arms folded in front of her, uneasy, like she was protecting herself from something unseen.

  “I understand you already spoke with Detectives Serrano and Tally,” Rachel said.

  “That’s right, among others,” she said. “I haven’t had this much company in years. They were mostly pleasant enough. In my experience, that hasn’t always been the case with cops.”

  “In your experience?”

  “My ex . . . I had to file a restraining order against him. After I threw him out, he kept showing up at the apartment. He tried to kick in the door. And when I called the cops, the responding officer asked why I was being so mean to him. Why hadn’t I just tried to patch things up? Talk it through? I showed him the bruises on my arm in the shape of his fingers, and he shut up pretty quick. The next day, I get a call from the landlord saying if I can’t keep the noise down, he’ll evict me. Funny how that works. Men cause trouble, and women take the blame.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rachel said. “I hope your ex is far, far out of the picture.”

  “He’s in Pinckneyville,” Vargas replied. “Doing eight years for felony distribution of narcotics and armed robbery.”

  “Well, then,” Rachel said. “Here’s to assholes ending up where they belong.”

  “He gave me my son,” Vargas said. “Antonio is the only good thing that came out of that bad decision. He has his father’s smile but thankfully not his heart.”

  Rachel’s eyes went to a large photo album on the glass coffee table.

  “May I?” she asked.

  Gabrielle smiled. “Of course. Nowadays everything is digital, but I still like to be able to hold an actual album. Feels more permanent than the cloud.”

  “You’re absolutely right. I haven’t filled out an actual album in, I don’t know . . . years? Maybe it’s time to start again.”

  “There’s always time,” Gabrielle said.

  Rachel picked up the thick leather-bound album and opened it. Each page held four photos inside plastic sleeves. The photos on the first page looked several decades old. She recognized a younger Gabrielle Vargas as a toddler, three or four, sitting in an inflatable kiddie pool filled with plastic toys: a water pitcher, a shovel, a garden hoe, a seahorse. She had a sunburn and a toothy grin and appeared to be the happiest kid in the world.

  “Where were these taken?” Rachel asked.

  “Maricopa County, Arizona,” Gabrielle said. “I grew up in Mesa.”

  “How did you end up in Ashby?”

  She laughed.

  “A boy. I know. Such a cliché, right? But I was a kid and didn’t know any better. How did you end up in Ashby?”

  Rachel thought for a moment, then said, “A boy too. In a very roundabout way.”

  “Mine lived in Phoenix. We met at Moonlight State Beach, in Encinitas. I had taken a spring break road trip there with some girlfriends. He was playing volleyball, and he gave me this look that just made me shiver in the heat. He was twenty-nine and I was eighteen, and I should have been wary of a guy almost thirty hitting on a teenager. But that’s the kind of thing I only know with hindsight. I had just graduated high school, and he was mature in a way that all the boys I grew up with weren’t. He knew things. I was young and stupid and didn’t realize what I considered maturity was actually the opposite. They don’t know anything, so they go after girls who don’t know any better.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said.

  Gabrielle nodded solemnly and continued.

  “I wanted to start a family right away. He didn’t. Which I’m thankful for now, because if I’d become a mom by twenty and then had to deal with everything he put us through, I don’t know how we would have survived. So we waited ten years. He got a job as a foreman in a construction crew in Ashby, and neither of us had obligations keeping us in Mesa. So we came here. I got my CPA and a decent-paying job as a comptroller at a local car dealership. So at least when he got sent away, I had an income. I could pay our bills, and we could say good riddance without being destitute. We didn’t need him.”

  “I’m a mom too,” Rachel said. “Two kids. I have a son around Antonio’s age at Ashby High. It sounds like you’ve set up a pretty good life for you and your boy. Against the odds.”

  Gabrielle smiled. “I’d do anything for Antonio. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “I do,” Rachel said. “But sometimes anything doesn’t feel like enough.”

  “No,” Gabrielle said, with an underlying sadness in her voice that Rachel picked up on. “It never feels like enough.”

  Rachel continued flipping through the album. She watched as Gabrielle Vargas grew older, a flip-book showing her journey into womanhood. Grade school. High school. Her quinceañera. High school graduation. Then a man came into the picture.

  He was tall and tanned, with shoulder-length dark hair, blue eyes that looked like sapphire, a mustache, and the faintest hint of muscle definition. He wrapped around her like a blanket, enveloping her, obscuring her. When she was around him, her shoulders always appeared to cave inward, like she was waiting for the next bad thing.

  Gabrielle had had that same look when Rachel entered her home. Gabrielle was usually smiling, but there was something hidden beneath the smile. Her eyes were just a little too wide, her teeth just a little too visible. Like she was putting on a show for the camera. For the man she feared.

  The deeper into the album Rachel got, the more Gabrielle Vargas’s smile faded. It came out occasionally, a star in a dark sky, but only in photos alone with Antonio.

  “What’s he drawing?” Rachel said.

  Gabrielle came over. She looked at the photo Rachel was pointing at. She smiled, wistful yet sad.

  “That was Antonio’s first comic book,” she said. “‘Mr. Mutant and Octopus Boy.’ He wanted to write comic books. He was—is—so talented. He could create these stories out of thin air. I don’t know how he does it, how his brain can just work like that. He wrote so many stories. He had piles and piles of comics and—what do you call them—graphic novels. Posters and artwork covering his room like a museum.”

  Rachel said, “My daughter wants to be a writer. She’s only seven, but she has this series she’s been writing about a girl named Sadie Scout who goes on adventures. I don’t know how to judge those things or what it will lead to, but sometimes I wish I could just climb inside her head for a little while. I bet I’d be overwhelmed with pride.”

  “That’s how I always felt. Antonio had boxes and boxes of stories. He created so many characters. He wanted to put together a portfolio to send to the companies that publish comics.”

  “What happened with them?” Rachel said.

  Gabrielle took a step back. Sipped her drink. “He stopped writing them,” she said. “I guess he outgrew them. You know how kids are. Always moving on to the next thing.”

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed. Gabrielle wasn’t telling the truth.

  “I don’t look at this album very often, to be honest,” Gabrielle said. “Hidden in plain sight, I suppose. I have all the happy memories I need stored up here in my own cloud. I keep this mainly for Antonio. Even if I’ve pushed his father from my mind, it’s not my place to do it for him as well. He’s old enough to know the truth.”

  “I’m trying to figure all that out myself,” Rachel said, solemnly. “If we only share half the truth with our kids, they’ll learn to never trust us.”

  Gabrielle breathed out and uttered a nervous laugh. “This is getting serious. I could use a refreshment. Do you drink bourbon?”

  “Any other day I’d take you up on that in a heartbeat. But I got clonked
in the noggin, and my doctor made me promise to take it easy until they know how many brain cells I lost.”

  Gabrielle laughed and went to a china cabinet. She took a bottle of Bulleit from a shelf and poured herself a finger. She raised the glass. “To your brain cells.”

  Rachel raised an imaginary glass and pretended to clink. “To our sons.”

  “Our sons.” Gabrielle raised her glass again and took a sip.

  Rachel returned to the album. She watched Antonio grow up before her eyes. He was tall like his father and had inherited the man’s deep-blue eyes and dark hair. But his nose and chin were his mother’s. And she recognized his smile. It was the same one Gabrielle had when she’d toasted to him just now. In every photo he was wearing the costume of a different superhero. Batman. Superman. Captain America. Wolverine. Daredevil.

  But then, as she kept turning pages, Rachel noticed something odd.

  Antonio disappeared. Not from the earth, but from the album. At least for a while.

  After he was born, there were photos of Antonio on every single page. He was the focal point of the album. But suddenly, he vanished. There were pictures of Gabrielle, pictures of Gabrielle with her friends, but strangely none of Antonio. It was as if he’d ceased to exist.

  Until he reappeared. Many pages later and a gap of what looked like at least a year. He no longer wore superhero shirts, opting instead for monochromes. Black. White. Gray. As though the color had been drained from his life. Rachel studied the photos. It wasn’t just his fashion sense that had changed.

  “Ms. Vargas?” Rachel said. “What happened to Antonio’s neck?”

  There was the briefest hesitation from Gabrielle, a sharp intake of breath that would have gone unnoticed by most. But not by Rachel. To her, the millisecond-long passing of air over Gabrielle Vargas’s front teeth might as well have been a fusillade of cannon fire.

  “What do you mean?” Gabrielle asked. She was a terrible liar.

  I guess we’re going to play this game, Rachel thought.

  Rachel held up the album. “In this photo, there’s a scar on Antonio’s neck. Right here. The scar is not present in any photos before this page.”