“All right, I’ll try calling when I get back, then. By the way, the latest on Stanley Jenkins is that the girl whose dorm he torched in college died in a car wreck in Colorado a couple of months ago.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Ann said, “That seems a little odd, doesn’t it?”
“Roger and I both thought so. But apparently there weren’t any signs of foul play according to the Colorado State Police. The car she was driving went over a cliff in the mountains while she was going around a curve that is notorious for causing fatalities so they ruled it an accident.”
“Sounds like it was just coincidence, then,” Ann said.
“Well, if you ask me, there’s been too many coincidences in this whole damn case. First Marsha, then Sara Hunt, and now this. There has to be a connection of some kind.”
“If anyone can figure it out it will be you and that alcoholic cop friend of yours,” she declared sarcastically.
“Sometimes, Ann…”
“I was just kidding, Sam! I like Roger and you know it.”
“I’m beginning to worry more about you than Roger.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Your attitude, Ann. I think your newfound independence is going to your head. The world isn’t by any means any safer than it used to be, but you seem to think it is.”
“What in the hell are you talking about, Sam?”
“Think about it. I’ve got to go now.”
“Fine, so do I.”
“Take care, Ann.”
Click.
Sam breathed a long hard sigh after replacing the receiver in an effort to compose himself. That same old familiar wave of alienation swept over him like a dark cloud and only served to fuel the anger he was feeling at the moment.
He never did like being this out of touch with his family even before the divorce. But it really wasn’t until this moment that he realized just how little influence, if any, he had over his ex-wife and the upbringing of his only child. Until now, it hadn’t seemed quite so significant.
Ann had always been a conservative, levelheaded woman-but she seemed different now. She appeared to be almost apathetic in regard to disciplining Amy-like she was willing to roll over and play dead while Amy did whatever she damn well pleased. And as for Ann’s new boyfriend-this Rankin creep-he sounded like the type of yuppie asshole he had always resented, and the type he had always thought Ann resented as well.
At least she wasn’t shacking up with him over the weekend, as he had feared. His little ploy to find out if Ann was planning on doing so had worked flawlessly-Ann hadn’t even suspected why he asked about Amy’s plans for the following night. He knew that Ann would never leave Amy alone at the house overnight if she’d intended on staying over with Rankin. At least she hadn’t gone that far off the rocker… not yet, anyway.
But what was bothering him the most in the back of his mind was the mere presence of this Jerry Rankin character in the overall picture. Sam already felt threatened by him for some reason and it went beyond petty jealousy. Something about him just didn’t seem right. He wasn’t sure if it was the way Ann had seemed to change practically overnight ever since she’d first mentioned that she was seeing him or if it was something else. At any rate, Sam was at least content in knowing that Amy didn’t like this guy-and had she indicated that she did like him, well, he wasn’t sure how he’d react to it. He wouldn’t have been thrilled, that’s for sure.
Shrugging his shoulders, Sam left the den and went into his bedroom to pack. He checked the time and realized that he was going to have to hurry if he was going to make it to Ironton in time for the big political bullshit debate he’d gotten roped into covering. Why hadn’t the candidates for the statehouse chosen Smithtown to bore the pants off of instead of Ironton? And who gave a flying fuck which one of these assholes won the election anyway-they were both a pair of hillbilly dimwits.
At least he had something to look forward to after the debate. Since Ashland, Kentucky was directly across the Ohio River from Ironton he couldn’t find any reason not to take Shelley up on her invitation to spend the night at her place as opposed to driving all the way back to Smithtown at night. In fact, the prospect of throwing back a few beers and devouring her sweet little body afterwards almost made the prospect of the debate worth suffering through.
In another five minutes, Sam was packed and out the door. As he pulled away from his house, he started wondering how Roger was doing in L.A. and whether or not he’d been able to find out anything on Stanley Jenkins. The detective had been there for two days now and Sam had only heard from him once-when he’d called yesterday to let him know that California girls were everything they were cracked up to be and more… Typical Roger Hagstrom banter.
It had become more and more apparent that apprehending Stanley Jenkins was not going to be easy. He had covered his tracks meticulously so far, which no doubt helped justify the Smithtown P.D. paying for Roger’s trip to L.A. to investigate further. Even with Stanley Jenkins’ mug shot plastered all over creation and after all of the media attention on the case, there hadn’t been one single confirmed sighting of the suspect yet. It was as though Stanley Jenkins had never existed. Since L.A. was believed to be the only confirmed place in the past twenty years that Stanley had lived for any length of time, Roger was hoping that there might be some kind of trail to pursue there.
Ironically, the long awaited interview with Tommy Bradley had turned up very little of anything new in the case but had lent insight into the absolute cold heartedness of his mother’s murderer. During the interrogation, the youngster had told Roger that a man had come into his bedroom with his mother the night she’d been murdered and had ordered Marsha to lock her son in the closet. The room was dark and the only description Tommy could give of the man was that he was tall and had dark hair. When Roger had shown the police composite to Tommy for identification the boy stated that he couldn’t be sure but he didn’t think the murderer looked like the composite of Jenkins, reiterating that it had been awfully dark in his room and it was hard to see clearly.
While locked in the closet, Tommy said that he had been unable to hear anything going on downstairs except for intermittent high-pitched beeping sounds that he heard about fifteen minutes after the murderer had forced his mother out of his bedroom. Sam had later offered his theory that the sounds were possibly the Polaroid camera in self-timer mode, which clicks off the seconds with a tone while the photographer is scrambling to become part of the scene being photographed.
Tommy told his interviewer that he had been in the closet for around a half hour or so before the murderer had returned to his room. He had stepped over to the closet door and asked Tommy if he was okay through the door. Then he had told the boy that his mother was dead and had gone to heaven. Tommy had started crying and asked the killer why his mother was dead. The killer had made no reply. Then Marsha Bradley’s murderer left the room and little Tommy had remained in the closet until Dave arrived home and found him there.
Sam felt a chill run down his spine every time he tried to imagine little Tommy Bradley locked in a closet all that time after being told by a total stranger that he had just murdered his mother. Was it any wonder why the kid had been so traumatized? And was it not more than obvious that Stanley Jenkins was not only a demented, perverse murderer but a sadistic son of a bitch as well?
Sam had opted to spare Ann the unsettling details of the Tommy Bradley interrogation as well as the tidbit of information one of Roger’s men had managed to gather after tracking down Stanley Jenkins’ former college roommate. The man who used to share a room with Stanley during his brief but illustrious college stint told the police that Stanley had made an interesting remark one night while he was drunk and tripping on acid. Stanley told his roomie that he had the hots for some chick back home and that one day he was going to “track her down and jump on her bones whether she is a willing participant or not.” The roommate hadn’t taken Stanley’s remark seriously at the time but he admitted that the incident was so bizarre that he hadn’t been able to forget it in all these years.