No trace of any of his known victims had been discovered. What little detritus had been found — a few hairs and traces of lint — had never been matched to anyone. Richard Kraven had either been very lucky or an absolute perfectionist.
Or innocent?
“Did the police ever question Kraven about your son?”
Sheila’s lips tightened into a hard, resentful line. “I don’t think so. They said Danny ran away.”
“Tell me about him,” Anne said.
For most of the afternoon, Sheila talked. Anne listened. What she heard was the story of an ambitious boy, determined to get ahead in the world, determined to right the wrongs that he perceived had been done to his people.
And then one morning he’d gotten up early, taken his fishing pole, and gone to wait for Richard Kraven at a corner near the university where Kraven taught and Danny went to school.
Sheila had never seen him again.
Richard Kraven, when she’d called him, had told her that he knew Danny, that he had indeed had a date to go fishing with Danny, but that when he arrived at the corner to pick Danny up, Danny wasn’t there.
Kraven told her he’d waited a few minutes, but when Danny didn’t show up, he decided the boy must have slept in, and he’d gone on to fish by himself. Sheila Harrar hadn’t believed him then, and when the stories about him — Anne’s stories — started appearing in the Herald, she’d been sure that Kraven had killed Danny. But no one ever listened to her. Not until today, anyway.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Anne said when Sheila Harrar finally fell silent. “It’s been how long since Danny disappeared? Four years?” Sheila nodded miserably. “Do you remember what he was wearing that day?”
Sheila nodded. “What he always wore. Blue jeans. A plaid shirt. Tennis shoes — not the fancy kind. Danny wouldn’t waste money on those. Just Keds, like when we were kids, you know?”
Anne smiled. “Twenty dollars, ten if they were on sale?”
“Like that, yeah. And he had his fishing rod with him, and his knife.”
“His knife?” Anne echoed.
“A pocketknife, with a turquoise handle,” Sheila told her. “It was something his daddy gave him, before he left. Danny always had it in his pocket.”
Anne glanced around the shabby room that was all Sheila Harrar had left in life. “I wish I could tell you I think you’re wrong about Danny,” she said finally, deciding the one thing Sheila Harrar didn’t need right now was false hope. “But I suspect you’re probably right. The thing about Kraven that no one ever understood was how he picked his victims. There was never a pattern, never a common denominator. Mostly, it just seemed random. And I suppose it really was random, and if he had a chance, there’s no reason why Kraven wouldn’t have killed someone he knew once or twice. In fact, it might even fit with the lack of a pattern.” She reached out and laid her hand on Sheila’s. “But that doesn’t help, does it?”
Sheila shook her head and sighed, but then a faint, rueful smile curved her lips. “You listened,” she said. “That helps. No one else listened — they didn’t even care. It’s better, just knowing someone else knows what happened to Danny, too.”
Wishing there were something she could do for Sheila Harrar, but knowing there wasn’t, Anne went back to her office and continued with the odds and ends of the day.
She called Mark Blakemoor and got the answer to the question she hadn’t asked at lunch.
“Why would there be any progress on Shawnelle Davis?” he asked, his tone clearly implying that he expected better of Anne. “She was a hooker. You know how it is around here when hookers get killed — nobody cares. If nobody cares, I can’t get very far. No time, no cooperation, hardly even any interest. I don’t like it, but I can’t change it.”
And though Anne didn’t like it, either, she understood it. It was just the way of the city, and it wasn’t Mark Blakemoor’s fault.
Still, the killing of Shawnelle Davis bothered her. Though it lacked some of the distinctive features of what Kraven had done, the similarities were still there, whether anyone in the police department wanted to admit it or not. Maybe she should write another follow-up story. If the department wouldn’t pressure itself, maybe she could pressure them.
She was just beginning the outlines of the story when the phone on her desk jangled. Picking it up, she was surprised to hear Joyce Cottrell’s voice.
Joyce was her slightly over-the-hill — and perhaps not completely sane, as far as Anne was concerned — next door neighbor.
“I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon,” Joyce told her. “And I didn’t want to leave a message because — well, you’ll understand when I tell you.”
Anne listened in silence, barely able to believe what she was hearing, as Joyce Cottrell described what she’d seen in the backyard that morning.
“I only saw him for a split second, and he hardly even looked like Glen at all! But who else could it have been? And it wasn’t just that he was naked,” Joyce finished. “It was the way he looked at me. Anne, I can’t tell you how strange it was. It was — well, I don’t know — I’ve always liked Glen, you know that. But the way he looked at me just scared me.” She was silent for a second, then her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Anne, it was just a heart attack, wasn’t it? I mean — well, Glen’s all right, isn’t he?”
Though she assured Joyce that Glen had suffered only a heart attack and hadn’t secretly been in the psycho ward at Harborview, when Anne hung up the phone, she felt a lot more frightened than she’d let Joyce know.
CHAPTER 29
The house no longer felt the same. Yet as she let herself in the front door late that afternoon, Anne Jeffers couldn’t have said exactly how it felt different. All her journalistic training told her that the sudden frisson she felt as she turned the key, the surge of anxiety that chilled her as she stepped into the hallway’s silence, was ridiculous: it wasn’t the house that felt different at all — it was she who felt different. It had started yesterday, when Glen made love to her and she’d felt as if a stranger had been touching her.
An exciting stranger, granted, but still a stranger. It had disturbed her, although by this afternoon she had all but assured herself that if anything truly strange had occurred, it had been mostly in her own mind. She had been worried about Glen, uncertain whether they should be making love, despite what Gordy Farber told them, and so the sheer energy Glen had shown struck her as being — well, disturbing.
Even more disturbing had been the phone call from Joyce Cottrell. From the moment she’d hung up the phone, Anne was telling herself that whatever Joyce might think she’d seen, she must be mistaken.
Assuming she’d seen anything. After all, hadn’t she and Glen been speculating for years that Joyce was a secret drinker, sitting alone in the big old house next door where both her parents had died, tippling gin in the false and empty comfort of a darkened room? It had only been speculation, of course, but if it turned out they were right, it would certainly explain the peculiar phone call Joyce had made to her. Probably nothing had happened at all. Or maybe, taking advantage of Glen’s presence at home in the middle of the day, Joyce made a pass at him, was rebuffed, and had been trying to extract some kind of warped revenge.
Now, though, all Anne’s rationales were crumbling around her in the too-silent foyer. Something had changed in this house. “Hello?” she called out. “Anyone home?”