Death Notice (35 page)

“I think it’s happening,” she said.

Henry remained calm. They had prepared for this. It was a different scenario than the one they expected, but there was no need to lose their cool. They would simply drive to the nearest hospital. But Henry had no idea where that was. They were a half hour from home, with rain blotting out all useful highway signs.

When the first contraction hit, Henry was driving thirty-five miles an hour. By the time the second one arrived, he was going forty. He applied pressure on the gas pedal every time Gia gripped the dashboard and grunted in pain.

“I don’t think it wants to stay in,” she said, gritting her teeth as another wave of contractions took over.

By then, Henry was pushing fifty and not letting up on the gas. The rain was like a wall in front of them, but he couldn’t
slow down. The woman he loved was in pain and his first child was about to be born. Slowing down was not an option.

The car was sailing at seventy when a contraction caused Gia so much agony she screamed. Henry took his eyes off the road to see if she was okay. Gia had removed her seat belt to give herself more room. Clutching her stomach with one hand and grabbing the edge of her seat with the other, she stared straight out the windshield.

Her eyes widened in horror.

“Christ, Henry, look out!”

That’s when Henry saw the truck. Within seconds, the driver was sprinting into the road. Before he knew it, their car was sliding toward both truck and driver, unstoppable.

The last thing Henry remembered was the airbag deploying an instant before impact. It exploded, like a parachute opening, and engulfed him.

Then, nothing.

Amazingly, Henry didn’t shed a tear during his recounting of the accident. He had never spoken about it before. Never intended to. But he always assumed that if he did, it would be through sobs of grief.

They were still present, only not from him. Kat was the one crying, and she continued to weep as Henry resumed the story at the point where he had regained consciousness.

“I woke up three weeks later in the burn unit at Mercy Hospital. They had put me into an induced coma, knowing it was the only way my body would be able to heal itself.”

He had emerged from the coma surrounded by a horde of doctors, all gray-faced and serious. They told him about the car catching on fire and burning part of his face. They told him about the chunk of glass that sliced him from ear to lip.

“Then they told me about Gia,” Henry said numbly. “She
died upon impact. The baby died with her. The funeral was held a few days after the crash, while I was still unconscious. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, twenty-one days had passed. My wife was two weeks in the ground, my child was dead before it was even born, and my entire life was gone.”

Although Gia’s death was the worst of it, there was more trauma to come, playing out while Henry remained a prisoner in the cold, sterile burn unit.

“The truck driver survived,” he said. “While I was under, he told police I had been speeding and driving out of control. When I was healthy enough to answer their questions, the police asked me for details of the crash. I told them everything. Mostly.”

In his fear and confusion, he had left out the part about the beer. But the police already knew about that. They had talked to the restaurant’s owners, who showed them a copy of the bill.

“I thought they would arrest me,” he said. “I wanted them to. I deserved it.”

But there was no evidence he actually drank all four beers. No proof he had been drunk while driving. The arrest never happened and he eventually healed.

But the scars remained.

In the five years since the accident, Henry had never considered plastic surgery to correct his deformity. He wanted the scars. He needed them. Every time he looked in a mirror, he wanted to be reminded of what he had done and all that he had lost.

In the morning, Kat returned to the hospital bearing flowers and two cards handmade by James. The one for Amber boasted flowers scrawled in every conceivable Crayola color. Nick’s featured a Magic Marker puppy. Both had glitter.

Amber, surrounded by her bleary-eyed parents, oohed and aahed over both the card and the bouquet. Her mother and father were less touched. They gave Kat the stink-eye as soon as she walked through the door.

It was a look she had grown accustomed to since the previous night. She noticed it everywhere—walking down the street, buying bread at the Shop and Save. Everyone at Awesome Blossoms was so cold to her that she was surprised the store didn’t freeze over.

She knew everyone blamed her. Not for the actual crimes, of course, but for failing to stop them.

Amber, on the other hand, didn’t seem to blame anyone for what happened to her. It didn’t matter that her right eye was swollen shut, her left arm was broken, and two of her ribs were fractured. She knew she was lucky to be alive.

When the requisite small talk about itchy casts and bad hospital food was over, Kat got down to business.

“You know I need to ask you about last night,” she said. “Is there anything you remember that might help us identify who tried to kill you?”

“You mean, did I see him?”

Yep. That would do the trick. Just a hint of description
about Amber’s attacker would be more than what they presently had.

“Anything,” Kat said. “Height. Hair color. Anything you might have seen.”

“He came at me from behind. So I didn’t get a look at him. The lights were out, so his clothes looked black, but they could have been any color.”

“Did he say anything? Make any sort of sound?”

Amber shook her head. “It all happened so fast. And then I passed out.”

That was because of the handkerchief doused with chloroform, which was found in the wrecked van. Also inside were a wheeled handcart, which the killer likely used to transport the coffins, and a shattered fax machine with a missing serial number. No doubt used to send Amber’s premature death notice.

What they didn’t find in the van was the gun that Jasper Fox had kept in the glove compartment. Nor were there any fingerprints, fibers, or blood. That last one amazed Kat. The killer was able to run away from a van wreck and not even bleed. It was the only time in her career that she wished the airbags had failed.

Kat was about to ask if Amber was conscious during the crash, but she was interrupted by Gloria Ambrose, who entered the room with three state troopers. Dressed in matching uniforms, they formed a silent wall behind her.

“I hate to bust in on you like this,” she said in the quick, efficient tones of a schoolmarm. “But we can take over from here.”

“Why?” Kat asked.

The way Gloria Ambrose explained it, the state police investigators were more accomplished at coaxing accurate information out of traumatized witnesses. But Kat knew the score. After two murders and one near miss, they were taking control of the case.

Kat didn’t argue. She didn’t even put up a fight. Turf wars weren’t her style. If the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation wanted to take over, she’d let them. Just as long as they caught the Grim Reaper and dragged his ass out of her town and into jail.

Before leaving, she hugged Amber and got more cold looks from her parents. Then it was up to the third floor, where Nick was located.

It was quieter there. Also more empty. The only person Kat saw was a burly man posted at the nurse’s station. He sported a buzz cut and a tattooed band around his left bicep.

“Are you family?” he asked Kat when she started to enter Nick’s room.

Kat halted, her hand on the door handle. “No. I’m a friend.”

“Then you can’t go in there.”

“Why not?”

“ICU,” the man said. “No visitors except for family.”

“He doesn’t have any family.”

The nurse shrugged. “That’s not my problem.”

Kat stepped closer, hoping her uniform and badge would intimidate him. They didn’t.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Gary.”

“Well, Gary. I just wanted to give Lieutenant Donnelly a card my son made for him. Please see that he gets it.”

The nurse, who definitely needed to work on his bedside manner, took the card and immediately opened it to read the message James had written inside.

“I’ll try,” he said. “No guarantees.”

On her way out of the hospital, Kat was stopped by Martin Swan, who was on his way in. He carried his ever-present pen
and notebook, which were at the ready before Kat had a chance to make a quick escape.

“Just a few questions, Chief,” Martin said, already scribbling. Since she hadn’t said a word, Kat assumed he was describing the way she looked as detail for his article. She imagined him writing that she looked haggard. Also tired, defeated, and not allowed to investigate murders that took place in her own town. Or maybe she was just projecting.

“About what?”

“Were you here to see Amber Lefferts?” he asked.

“I was.”

“How’d she look?”

“Like she almost died.”

Not catching her sarcasm, Martin jotted down the response.

“In light of last night’s events, do you know if the Halloween Festival is still on?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask the mayor.”

“I did. He said it is.”

Kat already knew that. She had met with the mayor and the town council late in the night to discuss the pros and cons of continuing the Halloween Festival. The main pro, espoused by the town officials, was that businesses needed the event if they wanted to break even for the year. Also, many visitors had already arrived, and most of the vendors had their booths set up downtown.

The officials had listened politely as Kat shared the only con—there was a killer on the loose. But, as usual, commerce won out over safety, and the festival would go on as planned.

“Are you worried about the residents during such a large event?” Martin asked.

Kat was, but it was out of her hands. She and Carl and a few sheriff’s officers were scheduled to be there for crowd control.
But she had a feeling it would turn into crowd surveillance. If someone started to act suspicious, she wouldn’t hesitate to arrest him.

“There’s safety in numbers,” she said, pushing out the door as Martin scribbled every single word.

From the hospital, it was off to Oak Knoll Cemetery. Although Kat no longer had a role in the investigation, she didn’t see the harm in poking around a little. And she knew exactly which person she was going to poke.

Pulling into the cemetery parking lot, Kat saw she wasn’t the only person visiting that morning. There were a half-dozen other cars there, all with out-of-state plates. About twenty visitors roamed the graveyard itself. Most of them were in their late teens or early twenties, and many were draped in black. Trudging through the cemetery, Kat saw three girls with pancake makeup and blue streaks in their hair pause at Troy Gunzelman’s grave. Two of them smiled in front of it as the third took a picture with her cell phone.

Vultures,
Kat thought. That’s what Perry Hollow had become since the murders began—a perch for vultures. She expected to see more of them later that night, when the festival kicked into high gear. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

Lucas Hatcher stood away from the tourists, raking leaves between the graves. He wore his usual uniform—dirt-smeared jeans, dirt-smeared jacket, dirt-smeared gloves. The only new addition to his ensemble was a pair of sunglasses that obscured his eyes.

“What’s with the specs, Lucas?” Kat asked as she approached.

The grave digger dropped the rake and leaned on the nearest tombstone. “Just keeping the sun out of my eyes.”

Kat lifted her eyes to the sky. It was chilly and overcast, with the sun nowhere to be found.

“I can see just fine,” she said. “What’s the real reason?”

“Haven’t you harassed me enough?” he asked. “I’ve been keeping my nose clean, just like I told that state police asshole I would.”

Lucas was being honest in that regard. The hole he had used to bury people alive had been covered up in July, and the coffin Bob McNeil sold him was destroyed. Every week, Kat sent Carl to the cemetery to make sure he wasn’t reopened for business. So far, he wasn’t.