A Stranger at the Door (A Rachel Marin Thriller) Read online

  “Rachel Marin,” Randall said.

  “Right. I know her. I mean I know her.”

  Raymond raised his eyebrows.

  “Not in that way, you stubby trouser stain. But we have a past.”

  “Is Mr. Brice aware of this?” Randall asked.

  Evie nodded. “Apparently she does some work with the police, but she’s not actually police.”

  “And why would she speak with you?” Randall said.

  “Let’s just say I have some leverage over her.”

  “Leverage?”

  “I know certain things she would prefer to keep quiet.”

  “This sounds like an ideal situation,” Randall said. “Leverage can be more powerful than an army.”

  “Yes, it can,” Raymond replied.

  “So you can squeeze this Marin woman.”

  “It’s not quite that simple. She’s not a cop, but she’s not just some regular civilian. She’s dangerous. And if I don’t play it careful, she could be even more dangerous than the cops.”

  “In what way?” Randall asked.

  “They’re sworn to uphold the law,” Evie said. “Rachel Marin is not.”

  “I see,” Randall said.

  “She sounds scary,” Raymond said, with an amused smile.

  Randall said, “We expect you to glean information from whatever sources are available to you, whether it is this Marin woman, Detectives Serrano and Tally, or any peripherals that might possess knowledge of Mr. Linklater’s death or our business with Mr. Brice. I expect you to then turn over any and all information you come across in a very timely manner.”

  “Very timely,” Raymond said.

  “Quite timely,” added Randall.

  “I’m going to stick sharpened pencils in my ears if you guys don’t stop that,” Evie said. “Trust me: whatever I find out, you’ll know.”

  “I’m sure your son will be happy to hear that,” Raymond said.

  Evie’s heart began to thud in her chest. She dug her nails deeper into her skin.

  “Speaking of which,” Randall added, “you should know that we are constantly monitoring your son to ensure his complete and total happiness. Nothing is more important to us than your son’s well-being.”

  “Stop talking about my son,” Evie said through gritted teeth.

  Raymond took a cell phone from his jacket pocket, tapped a few buttons, then turned the screen around for Evie to see. A video began to play. Evie watched it, her eyes widening in terror. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she bit down on her flesh to keep from screaming.

  “Is that . . . at his school?”

  “Yes. We have a close friend keeping an eye on your son at this very instant. He’s a good-looking kid. Smart, from what we hear. And with that kind of smile, he’ll make a lot of friends and break a lot of hearts. I promise you, Ms. Boggs, we would prefer not to hurt him. Blood only leads to more blood. But if blood can resolve a problem—or prevent one—we will not hesitate to remove your son’s lips with rusty scissors and mail his smile to you in a plastic bag.”

  Raymond took another sip from Evie’s glass and spat a stream of liquid into her face. She recoiled and wiped the saliva from her face with one hand, the other clenching into a fist. She had no doubt that she could beat either one of these two men to death. But she would be sentencing her son to death if she did.

  “If we feel for a moment that you are withholding information from us,” Randall continued, “we will open every vein in your son’s body and send every ounce of his blood to you in a nice container for posterity.”

  “We might need more than one container,” Raymond said. “Bodies contain a lot of blood.”

  “Enough, you goddamn psychopaths,” Evie said. “If you touch him, if it takes my whole life, I will kill both of you. And I’ll make it slow.”

  “I have no doubt you would try,” Randall said.

  Evie said, “What would Brice say if he knew you were threatening my family like this?”

  Randall said, “Mr. Brice knows that we are men of our word. We genuinely have no desire to see any further bloodshed. We are businessmen. If we feel that our business is safe to operate, we have no need or desire to upset the delicate ecosystem we have created. And neither does he.”

  “In other words,” Raymond said, his lips moist, “you make sure we’re well fed, your kid’s insides get to stay on the inside.”

  “You’ll get everything,” Evie said. “I swear.”

  “This Marin woman,” Randall said. “She seems like a combustible element. The fact that Mr. Linklater contacted her means he believed she could work outside the law if necessary. It concerns me. Does it you, brother?”

  “It does, brother,” Raymond said.

  “We need to know that you will deal with this element should it become truly combustible. Remove it, if necessary. Can we be assured you will do that?”

  Evie thought about her son. The video they had just shown her. She thought about all the mistakes she had made in her life. Mistakes she was still paying for. But she still had time to make things right. To make it up to her son. But none of it would matter if they were both dead.

  “If it becomes a problem,” Evie said, “if she becomes a problem, I will deal with it.”

  Randall and Raymond looked at each other and smiled.

  “Good,” Randall said. “Mr. Brice has a contingency plan just in case.”

  “Contingency plan?” Evie said.

  “Let’s just say you’re not the only mom with a messed-up son,” Raymond said.

  Evie felt the saliva in her mouth dry up. It was one thing for them to threaten Rachel, a grown, strong woman who could look out for herself. It was another to threaten people’s children.

  Randall slid out of the booth, leaving a dent in Evie’s leg where his kneecap had pressed into her.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” Raymond said. When he slid out, Evie could practically feel her lungs regain their shape. The two men left the diner side by side without looking back. The bell above the door jingled twice: once when they opened it and once again when it closed.

  Then Evie Boggs buried her face in a soiled napkin so the other customers wouldn’t see her cry.

  CHAPTER 15

  Thankfully for Rachel, Ashby High had begun digitizing yearbooks, class photos, sports rosters, and curricula fifteen years ago. It wasn’t hard for her to cull a complete catalog of Matthew Linklater’s students dating back to his first year at Ashby. Rachel figured that whoever was involved in Linklater’s death was someone he’d seen on a regular basis and interacted with, and he would’ve had at least a cursory knowledge of their day-to-day activities. Linklater also would have been much more likely to open his front door for a student he still taught. Which would also correlate to someone who currently had access to the biology lab for the snatch-and-grab job on Midge.

  She texted Serrano.

  May have a lead

  She watched three dots blink as he replied.

  Ditto

  You first

  Met with a woman named Gabrielle Vargas. On-and-off paramour of Matthew Linklater. Mother of a student, kept on the DL, which is why Principal Alvi wasn’t aware of it. Vargas said Linklater was concerned about a student named Benjamin Ruddock. May be nothing, but it’s a thread.

  Rachel opened her laptop and did a search for a Benjamin Ruddock in Ashby. She found various social media accounts belonging to Ruddock, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but they were all set to private. His avatar was curious, though. No photo. Simply the word Fratres in gold lettering against a black background. Brothers.

  Ruddock was eighteen, set to turn nineteen in the fall. He was old for a senior. He’d been held back. She wondered whether it had been educational or behavioral. Ruddock had been tagged in several public photos, which Rachel saved to a folder she created on her desktop. While most high school boys struggled to grow patchy beards and wispy mustaches, Ruddock had a five o’clock shadow. Most of his baby fat
had melted away, revealing high cheekbones and a sharp jawline. He had intelligent eyes and an easy, dimpled smile. He had the kind of slightly dangerous look that teenage girls swooned over. But the slightly malevolent look in his eyes warned Rachel it wasn’t just hearts he was capable of breaking.

  His mother, Danielle, had died seven years ago from ovarian cancer at just thirty-eight years of age. His father, Timothy, fifty-six, owned a two-bedroom home on Needlepoint Lane that he purchased seventeen years ago for $147,000. An image search for Timothy Ruddock produced only a photo from the website of a local bar, McSwiggan’s, holding up a glass of brown liquor in one hand and an empty beer in the other. He had his son’s sandy-blond hair and the same look in his eyes that said he’d just as soon hit you with a beer bottle as serve you one.

  Everything about Benjamin Ruddock screamed trouble. But trouble was one thing. Killing and torturing a man to death was a whole different universe.

  Rachel texted Serrano her suspicions that one of the people at Linklater’s door the night of his death was a current Ashby student. He wrote back:

  You think Ruddock killed him?

  I don’t know. I don’t like what I’m seeing about the kid. But that doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. What does Tally think?

  We both think that given what Vargas said, it’s at least worth talking to him.

  He’s 18. That’s over the age of parental consent for questioning. You can bring him in.

  We just might.

  What’s the holdup?

  The holdup is making sure that if/when we bring him in, we know what buttons to push and how much leverage we have (or don’t have) on him.

  Give me five minutes. I’ll find out what he knows.

  Don’t even go there, Rachel.

  Fine. But no reason you can’t bring him in for questioning.

  Remember which one of us is an actual member of the law enforcement community. You follow our lead. Not the other way around.

  And remember that if not for me, Constance Wright might have been chalked up by the Keystone Cops as a suicide.

  A minute passed. No dots to indicate that Serrano was typing. Finally she wrote:

  Too far. I’m sorry. Let’s not fight. Same team, right?

  No response.

  After what felt like eons, Rachel texted,

  See you tomorrow?

  Five minutes later, Serrano replied.

  Sure

  She hated that word. Sure. It conveyed no enthusiasm. Just a perfunctory statement of acceptance.

  Just then, Rachel saw a small light go on in the live stream of Eric’s room. She enlarged the video box to full screen. The light came from Eric’s cell phone, which was charging on his desk. It looked like an incoming text message. Eric paused his game, then picked up his phone and looked at the screen. His thumb hovered over the keypad, as though debating whether to respond. Then he put it back down and resumed his game.

  Rachel watched him, desperate to know what was inside his head. When she’d first had the cameras installed, she worried she would feel guilty for spying on her children without their knowledge. But she got over it. Some parents installed keyloggers on their kids’ computers or checked cell phone email and text logs regularly. Rachel knew that if her kids learned about the video surveillance, there would be hell to pay.

  But Eric didn’t know what it felt like, as a mother, to have a psychotic man with a gun just steps away from her children’s bedrooms. She would never forget the sight just a few months ago of the deranged man, loaded gun in hand, approaching the stairway leading to where her children slept. The cameras were an invasion of their privacy. Of that Rachel was acutely aware. But if there was even a small chance they might save them from harm, which she knew there was, they were worth any potential fallout.

  Rachel opened the feed to her son’s room and scrubbed back on the video until she saw the light appear on his cell phone. She watched it again. Eric clearly knew the texter—he simply chose not to respond. Why?

  Rachel scrubbed it again, zoomed in on the cell phone, then used imaging software to enhance the pixelated screen. When the light blinked on, Rachel paused the video. She could just make out the ID on the text message.

  Penny Wallace.

  Detective Tally’s stepdaughter. Rachel knew Penny and Eric were in the same class in school, and at family dinners they seemed friendly. Teenagers texting at odd hours was hardly uncommon. Not to mention that Penny was a straight A student, beautiful, and ambitious. If any girl was texting her son late at night, Rachel was OK with it being Penny Wallace.

  But then Rachel enlarged the text itself. She felt her heart rate speed up.

  Hey Eric, u ok? Worried about u. I’ve heard weird rumors about BR. Just be careful.

  BR. Benjamin Ruddock. It had to be. Why was Penny Wallace warning Eric about Benjamin Ruddock, the same kid who was a person of interest in Matthew Linklater’s death?

  Rachel felt dizzy. Like she had a blind spot for her son. She shut down her computer and went upstairs. She knocked on Eric’s door. There was no answer. She knocked again, this time harder. She was ready to knock again when a voice came from the other side:

  “I’m busy. Go. Away.”

  Rachel felt like a dagger had been placed against her heart, cold and sharp. She needed to find a way to reach her son. Because now it wasn’t just his nightmares that could harm him. There was something very, very real.

  CHAPTER 16

  Eric Marin knew that nobody had ever definitively escaped from Alcatraz. There was that movie where Sean Connery was an old dude who’d escaped, like, thirty years ago and managed to sneak back in. But the only real people to ever get out of Alcatraz itself—Frank Morris and the brothers John and Clarence Anglin—presumably died in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay.

  Eric had never been in prison. He hoped he would never know what it felt like to be behind actual bars. But living with his mother, Rachel, often didn’t seem all that different from being trapped in a prison. If Rachel Marin had been in charge of Alcatraz back in 1962 when Morris and the Anglins were there, they never would have made it out of their cells.

  Eric was tired of feeling like a prisoner in his own home, his own life. Ever since his father died, Eric had been a sidecar, pulled along by his nightmares, his mother. He never had a say in anything. Tonight that would change. He wasn’t sure if he could trust Benjamin Ruddock. But he also knew that if he didn’t do something, he would go through life a doormat. Maybe Ruddock was the key to finding out what he was truly capable of.

  Tonight, he would find out.

  Tonight, he would escape from Rachel Marin’s Alcatraz.

  From the day they’d moved to Ashby, Eric had known there was something different about the Marin home. But he hadn’t been able to put a finger on it until the night a deranged man broke into their home, armed with a loaded gun and a knife that would have made Rambo flinch. Until that night, Eric’s mother had forbidden her children from going downstairs. She’d made up some ludicrous story about asbestos. But that night, Eric’s mother had sent him and his sister down to the basement to hide from the crazed gunman in their home. And when Eric finally saw what was really downstairs, he’d understood why his mother had been so secretive.

  The entire Marin home was wired. Not the way most families wired their home, with outside-motion detectors, alarms, floodlights, and all that good stuff. No, the Marin home was wired the way the freaking Batcave was wired. The basement had surveillance equipment that would make James Bond jealous, with enough training equipment to open up her own gym. Given how much hardware his mother kept downstairs, Eric guessed there had to be cameras installed all over the house: inside and out. In a way, he understood his mother’s paranoia. If Rachel had been this paranoid when Eric’s father was alive . . . maybe he would still be alive.

  Sometimes all Eric could feel was anger. Like heat wrapped around his body. He wanted to scream, punch the walls, punch somebody. But there was nothing. Nobody.
Collected energy that never got released. Sometimes he hated his mother but then hated himself for hating her because he knew she didn’t deserve it. Still, he needed an outlet. Some way to release all that bubbling anger and energy, or one day he would just explode.

  Maybe Benjamin Ruddock was that outlet. He thought about the way Tony Vargas had looked at him after he’d spoken to Ruddock. Tony had nodded at him. Like he respected him. Tony Vargas had never given him the time of day before. But now, he seemed ready to befriend him. It felt good. It felt good to feel good—a cracked window in a room filled for so long with smoke and ash.

  And the money—$10,000. Many of Eric’s classmates earned coin on the side. A babysitting job, helping old folks set up their Wi-Fi networks. Eric’s mother had never permitted him to do any of it. Eric knew $10,000 wasn’t going to change his life. But it was a sign of respect. A sign that Ruddock wasn’t full of it. And that there could be more—a lot more—if he put his nose to the grindstone. He’d been waiting so long to prove his worth. And now, it was time.

  Eric turned off his bedroom light at nine forty-two. It was around the same time he went to bed every night. He did not say good night to his mother, because if he had, she would’ve known something was up.

  But when he climbed under the covers, Eric was still wearing the same clothes he’d worn that day. He tucked his blanket up tight around his neck to hide his collar. He was tired but could not let himself fall asleep. He didn’t want to play on his phone, because it might draw her attention. He simply lay there and waited. And waited.

  When he finally heard the telltale sound of his mother’s footsteps going down to the basement, Eric made his move.

  Making her think he was asleep was the easy part. Getting out of the house—and then back in—without being seen . . . that was the part that would have made Sean Connery jealous. But if she ever found out, she’d lock the house up so tight a mouse fart would be stuck inside forever.

  Whatever the hell Benjamin Ruddock is talking about, this “fratres” thing, it had better be worth it.

  Ruddock had approached him for a reason. Not Cory Stuber. Not Ronny Welch or Avery Johannson or Suresh Taneja. Ruddock went to him. Eric had never heard anyone at Ashby talking about whatever the hell “fratres” was. It was a secret, a low whisper. It was meaningful. Eric had to know why.