A Stranger at the Door (A Rachel Marin Thriller) Page 6

  Megan came downstairs. Rachel wanted to tell her daughter to stay put but didn’t want to let her know anything was out of the ordinary. “Evie is an old friend of Mommy’s. Evie, this is my daughter, Megan.”

  “I don’t remember you ever talking about an Evie,” Megan said, skeptically.

  Rachel took her daughter’s hand. “There are a lot of things I don’t talk about,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.”

  Evie held out her hand to Megan, very proper. Megan took it hesitantly. Evie gave it a firm up and down. Rachel watched the exchange like Megan was slipping her hand into a piranha tank.

  “Miss Megan Marin,” Evie said. “That sounds like a character from a book. Maybe a princess. Do you want to be a princess, Miss Megan Marin?”

  Megan shook her head. “I want to be a detective or an adventurer.”

  Evie smiled warmly. “I bet you’ll be great at both.”

  Megan beamed.

  Evie turned to Rachel. “You have a beautiful family.”

  Rachel stared at Evie, wanting to leap across the couch and sink her fingers into the woman’s neck. Instead, she said, “Thank you.”

  “Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time,” Evie said, standing up.

  “Really? Are you sure?” Rachel said with mock sorrow.

  “Thank you for your hospitality, Rachel. Maybe one of these days we’ll have that drink.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “I’ll show myself out,” Evie said. Rachel went to Megan, keeping herself between her daughter and the woman in her home. Evie opened the front door, then turned back.

  “Miss Megan Marin?”

  “Yes?” Megan replied, cheeks still red.

  “If you’re going to be a detective, be a good one. Everyone is afraid of the bad ones. And for good reason.”

  Then Evie Boggs closed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER 10

  Four and a half years ago

  The two women sat on the bleachers inside the musty gym. They were alone. Sweat dripped from their chins, their arms, collecting in small puddles on the benches beneath them. It was a crisp fall evening, the kind ideally spent sipping a drink at an outdoor café or walking hand in hand with a loved one down a colorful, tree-lined promenade. But time stood still inside that gym. It could have been any day of the year.

  The leaner woman wore yellow Lycra pants and a backless blue tank top. She was known simply as Blondie. The more muscular woman wearing black shorts and a white sports bra was Myra. Myra taught a self-defense class, which Blondie had learned about after moving to Torrington, Connecticut, with her two children. Blondie’s family had endured an unimaginable crime, but one that had spurred her into action, in the most literal of senses. She had been training with Myra for nearly two years, unearthing long-forgotten muscles, sharpening her mind, learning how to protect herself and her children.

  Since the death of her husband, Blondie had floated, aimless, unsure of how to piece her life back together. She felt unmoored. It was only in Myra’s class that she regained some sense of control. The feeling that maybe, just maybe, if she punished her body enough, she could piece the fragments of her life back together.

  Myra bit into a protein bar. Offered a bite to Blondie, who accepted it. The two women had been strangers at first. Myra maintained a distance from her students, both to protect them and herself. The “students” who took her class were broken men and women. No real names were allowed. No talking about personal lives once the gymnasium doors closed. Anyone who violated those rules was shown the door—quite literally. When it was learned that one student had found, and friended, another on Facebook, Myra put him in an ude gatame armlock, then tossed him across the parking lot like an empty coffee cup.

  Myra always stayed at the gym after class ended. That was her private workout time, and the students knew better than to hang around. Once class was over, you were out of Myra’s life and vice versa until the next class began.

  But that night, after gathering up the courage, Blondie had asked Myra if she could stay late. Work out alongside her. To her great surprise, Myra said yes. And so they sparred, pounded the heavy bag and speed bag as if it had insulted their mothers, did burpees until their legs begged for mercy. And when they couldn’t push any further, when every muscle felt like lead and even though their heads shouted more while their bodies pleaded stop, they called it a day.

  “Remember, when you hit the heavy bag, it’s not all about power,” Myra said. “Don’t punch through the bag. Snap your punches. And when the punch lands, don’t pull your fist back. Let the rebound do it for you.”

  “Gotcha. Rebound,” Blondie said. She looked around the empty gym. There were no clocks. No way to tell time other than dead limbs and pools of sweat. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot, Blondie.”

  “I know talking about ourselves is pretty much off limits. So you can tell me to shut up, and I won’t take it personally, and I’ll never ask you anything else not related to proper striking form.”

  Blondie waited. Myra said nothing.

  “I ain’t stopping you, kid,” Myra finally said.

  “Do you ever feel . . . trapped?”

  Myra looked at Blondie and offered a slim smile. “Only every damn day. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I don’t know how long we can stay here. My family, I mean.” Blondie took a pull from a sports bottle filled with an energy drink that tasted like sour grape juice mixed with formaldehyde. She didn’t know why she had suddenly decided to share details of her personal life with Myra. For so long, since her husband had died, she’d had nobody to talk to. The children were too young to understand, and her friends had abandoned her.

  “Thinking about moving? Or moving on?” Myra asked.

  “Both. This city, it’s too close to everything. I walk down the streets, and I swear I see ghosts. But I also don’t think I can keep moving my kids. We need somewhere to settle. For good. Somewhere away from the ghosts.”

  “I know it might be kind of hard to see it right now,” Myra said, “but the world is your oyster, Blondie.”

  “If you mean I’m stuck inside a small shell and can’t move and could be eaten at any moment, then yes.”

  Myra laughed and clapped a strong hand on Blondie’s thigh. Blondie winced. Tomorrow she would find a palm-size welt there.

  “I feel for you. I do. But look at it this way. You can go anywhere you want. Anywhere. I mean, what the hell is keeping you here? Nothing. Go to New York. LA. Phoenix. Hell, move to Paris. What’s stopping you?”

  “Money, for one thing,” Blondie said, droplets of sweat spattering onto the varnished wood. “We don’t have any. I mean, we might. There’s something in the works I can’t really talk about. But even if I had money, I’d never move to a big city. We need to be somewhere quiet. Somewhere the kids won’t feel crushed. We need a town, maybe a small city. Somewhere we can blend in and become a part of the surroundings without feeling like we’re going to get run over. I want to do right by them.”

  Myra nodded. There was something beneath her eyes, a remorse. In that instant, Myra seemed like a different person. One consumed by sadness.

  “You gotta do right by them,” she said. “I screwed up my chance to do that. And I’m still paying for it.”

  Then her face changed. The sadness disappeared, like a mask had slipped back on. She laughed.

  “Besides,” Myra said, “look at the trap muscles on you. I feel bad for anyone who tries to run you over.”

  “You ever think about leaving?” Blondie said.

  “All the damn time,” Myra said. “I don’t particularly like it here. But I have to stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Reasons, Blondie. I made mistakes. And I’m paying for them. That’s all you need to know.”

  “So if you did leave,” Blondie said, “any ideas on where you’d go?”

  “Ashby,” Myra said. “I’d move to Ashby.”


  “Never been there. Why Ashby?”

  “It’s right up your alley. Western Illinois, a couple hours outside Chicago. I have some family there. Some people I don’t see as often as I should. But it’s the kind of place you’d love. Quiet. Folks mind their own business for the most part. Good school system for the kids. You could get a job, keep your head down. It’s far enough from the bigger cities like Chicago and Springfield that real estate prices won’t kill you, but close enough that if you need to travel, you have options.”

  “How do you know all this? You work in real estate in Ashby or something?”

  “What did I say about asking so many questions?”

  Blondie nodded. “So Ashby, huh?”

  “If you do leave here, give it a look. It’s a good place to disappear.” Myra checked her cell phone. “It’s getting late. Walk with me.”

  The women gathered up their belongings and left the gym. The cool air felt invigorating on their damp skin. Darkness fell over the city, but Blondie, for the first time in a long, long time, began to believe she just might have a future. She let the name sit on her lips. Ashby. If her settlement money came through, she’d look into it. Maybe she’d found her family’s new home.

  Several blocks away, a man walked toward them. His name was Stanford Royce. At that moment they were unaware of each other’s existence. But their futures would soon be intertwined in blood.

  CHAPTER 11

  Today

  Ten minutes after Evie Boggs left her home, Rachel received a text message.

  Thanks for your hospitality. I’ll be in touch. See you soon. ~E

  She had never given Evie her cell number. And See you soon. The house could be under surveillance by Evie or someone else.

  Rachel stood by the front door for twenty minutes, unmoving, to be sure Evie was not coming back. She spent the rest of the evening waiting, patiently, for her children to go to sleep. She tucked Megan in, marveling at the collection of pages from her new Sadie Scout book. She knocked on Eric’s door, opened it after an irritated What? and told her son that she loved him. He nodded, and that was their final communication for the night. Then, when the house was quiet, she brewed a pot of french roast and went down to the basement.

  The door to the lower level of the Marin home was protected by a three-inch-thick metal-framed door guarded by a keypad. Most families designed their basements for play. Thick carpeting for roughhousing. Toys and games scattered everywhere. Perhaps a man cave for the husbands who occasionally needed to escape their families and responsibilities, overstuffed La-Z-Boys opposite a home-theater system the size of a Range Rover.

  Rachel had none of those amenities. Her basement was to work her mind and body. Her children were forbidden to use it. They had enough playthings.

  On one wall, Rachel had mounted a rack of free weights, jump ropes, and plyometric equipment. She used these daily. The floor was covered with a rubber mat so her sweat wouldn’t seep into a carpet or the floorboards. She cleaned it twice a week with water and mild detergent.

  On the other side of the basement was her workstation, which housed several computer monitors and half a dozen external hard drives. Before they’d moved in, Rachel had installed closed-circuit cameras throughout the interior and exterior of the home. She stored the camera recordings on the hard drives. Over the past year, the cameras had recorded an armed man breaking into her home and another man abducting and trying to murder her. If Evie came back, Rachel would know.

  Rachel booted up the computer. The first thing she did was look at the camera feeds around the outside of the house. She found nothing out of the ordinary. Then she ran a background check on Evelyn Boggs. She needed to know more about Evie. Damned if she would be frightened into silence.

  Rachel had met Evie Boggs while she was living in Torrington, Connecticut. She had left her longtime home in Darien following the horrific death of her husband. A lawsuit against the city of Darien and its police department had garnered a several-million-dollar payout but left her with nobody to trust or turn to. In Torrington, Rachel began attending a self-defense class taught by a strong, boisterous woman who introduced herself as Myra. Everyone in the class used aliases to ensure privacy and security. Myra was the name Evie Boggs had chosen.

  Myra’s lessons had saved Rachel’s life more than once. The woman she knew back in Torrington had dedicated her life to helping others. To helping women like Rachel. She would not turn on Rachel without a reason. She knew Evie was being used. Somebody was dangling a scythe over Evie’s neck. Rachel needed to find out who.

  According to her birth certificate, Evelyn Boggs was forty-two years old, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, adopted by Arnold and Estelle Boggs. There was no record of her birth parents. Serrano and Tally could potentially get that information unsealed, but not without a court order. Evie had graduated from Northeastern with a degree in communications and at twenty-two married a man named Charles Ford. They had one son, Benjamin, born at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. She and Ford divorced, and Evelyn got custody of the boy.

  She then married Javier Landau, and Landau officially adopted Evie’s son. But Evelyn Boggs and Javier Landau divorced soon after, and records showed that despite Landau not being Benjamin Ford’s biological father, the boy still spent a significant amount of time with his stepfather and had even attended school in San Luis Obispo, where Landau moved following the split. Strange, Rachel thought, that Evie’s son was partially schooled in his stepfather’s city.

  Evelyn still lived in Torrington. Benjamin Ford was currently a student at Conn College, where he resided in Hamilton House. Javier Landau worked as an admissions officer at California State University.

  Rachel could not find a connection between Evie Boggs and Matthew Linklater.

  Putting Evie aside for the moment, Rachel thought back to the manner in which Matthew Linklater was killed. You didn’t walk up to someone’s home and happen to have the perfect arson materials plus a hungry rodent like you were a pet-store owner who’d gone off the deep end, as well as a can with which to commit an act of torture fit for one of the epic fantasy novels her son and boyfriend devoured like M&M’S. No, that kind of act required a healthy dose of both sadism and practicality. And as Rachel had learned firsthand, the most sadistic people also tended to be the most patient.

  But planning that kind of crime took time. Meaning there had to be a trail.

  She pored over Hector Moreno’s autopsy notes, which he had sent via Dropbox. They had called in a local veterinarian, Dr. Walter Krecher, to analyze the rodent bones and teeth. Rachel’s downstairs printer was out of paper, so she printed them on the shared inkjet upstairs, retrieved them, grabbed fresh paper, then headed back to the basement.

  Per Krecher’s notes, there were four types of rodents commonly found in Illinois: the house mouse, deer mouse, white-footed mouse, and Norway rat. Based on the larger size of the remains, Krecher believed the bones inside Matthew Linklater belonged to a Norway rat.

  Rachel took a moment to reflect on the strange life journey that had led to her researching rat bones in a basement. From what she’d gathered, the Norway rat was the most common species, frequently used in lab experiments though even sold at pet stores. But this type of rat also tended to be most prevalent in places where there was an abundance of sewage or poor sanitation.

  They also lived in colonies. Thankfully pest-control companies stayed open late. Rachel called the three closest to Linklater’s home. None of them had a record of ever visiting the Linklater home, or any residence within a square mile, in the past several years. Which meant that whoever had done Linklater in had likely carried the rodent from somewhere else. Rachel wondered if there were laws against transporting filthy vermin across county lines but figured breaking those laws was the least of the killer’s concerns.

  She read the police reports. Serrano, Tally, and the forensics team had done a thorough job. They’d spoken to dozens of Linklater’s neighbors, friends, and
colleagues. He was not a loner, but he was not particularly outgoing either. He had friends but did not go out on a regular basis. He did not frequent local bars and only had two receipts from the nearby Loonie’s Liquors in the past year—both for a single bottle of Belvedere vodka. He didn’t seem particularly interested in other people, nor they him. He kept to himself but was not socially awkward or inept. He was just a man living an ordinary, contented life.

  Rachel went back over the crime scene photos. Not the photos of Linklater’s body. His charred, mutilated corpse would remain etched in her mind for a long, long time. She wanted to go back over photos of his house. Thankfully Montrose and the rest of his forensics team were professionals. There were dozens and dozens of photos of the Linklater home, taken from all conceivable angles. She tried to forget what she saw when she first arrived, in an effort to survey the scene through fresh eyes. What she saw in person may have been different than what the Ashby PD photographers captured. She was looking for discrepancies. Alterations. Clues. Clarity amid the rubble.

  She printed all the crime scene photos and spread them out on the basement floor. She downloaded a PDF of the house’s layout and photos used as previous sales material from a real estate brokerage site and printed them out as well. She then re-created the interior of Matthew Linklater’s house using the crime scene photos, matching the photos up with the interior layout. Like a broker’s listing after the apocalypse.

  She put together each room, every corner and tile and floorboard. The living room. Bathroom. Kitchen. Closet. All burnt wood, melted plastic, and scorched metal. She looked at every beam. Every pipe. For something. Anything.

  And then she saw it. At the very bottom of the grid. Ignored because it had been in plain sight.

  The front door.

  When Rachel, Serrano, and Tally were given access to the interior of the Linklater home, after it was declared structurally sound, they entered through the burnt frame of the front door.

  The open front door.

  But in the first responder photos, the door was closed. The PD had opened it when examining the structure. But after the crime itself, the door was closed.