The Love Killings (11 page)

CHAPTER 21

Matt spotted the Ford SUV as Brown rolled off the expressway in King of Prussia and brought the car back up to speed on Route 202, heading south toward West Chester. Lots of cars, if not most, were doing the same thing, yet something about the Ford SUV behind them stood out.

Matt checked the speedometer. Brown was doing seventy-five miles per hour in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone. He turned and took another look through the rear window. The SUV appeared to be doing exactly the same speed about ten car lengths back.

“Slow down,” he said. “Bring it to fifty and stay there.”

“Why? We’ll be late.”

“We won’t be late. Just do it.”

She looked at him with concern, then checked the rearview mirror. “What’s going on, Jones?”

“Maybe nothing.”

Matt watched her slow the car down and set the cruise control to maintain an even speed. When he gazed back at the SUV, he noticed that the driver had slowed down as well and was keeping his distance. No doubt about it, they had a shadow.

“It’s that black Ford,” Brown said, her eyes pinned to the rearview mirror.

Matt nodded. “Yeah, but I can’t see who’s behind the wheel. Bring the car back up to seventy-five. Let’s see how much time we’ve got when we get closer to West Chester.”

In spite of road construction along the 202 corridor, they made the drive from King of Prussia to the Paoli Pike exit in fifteen minutes. According to the navigation system on the dashboard, they were less than five minutes away from the hospital, and it was still only 9:20 a.m. The black SUV had just reached the exit and was starting down the hill toward the traffic light.

Matt watched the vehicle disappear in the trees and spotted a shopping center on the right. “Pull into the lot,” he said. “Hurry. Before he reaches the light and sees us.”

Brown made a hard right and floored it. Hiding behind a bank, she found an empty parking spot with a view of the street. The SUV was just passing the lot, but the identity of their follower remained hidden behind tinted glass. Matt watched as the driver suddenly hit the brakes and swerved into the lot. In all probability, the driver hadn’t seen them on the street and made a guess. He’d lost them and was idling by the stores, heading in the wrong direction. There were well over two hundred cars parked in long rows. There was a gym here, a grocery store, a liquor store, and a bookshop that looked more than inviting called Chester County Book Company.

Brown shifted into Drive and started easing the car forward. Matt looked back at their follower still searching for them and still heading in the wrong direction. When the SUV started down another aisle of parked cars, Brown used the bank for cover and pulled back onto the street. She brought the car up to speed in a quick thrust. After Brown made a right on Montgomery Avenue, Matt turned and gazed out the rear window.

The road behind them was completely empty. Brown had shaken their tail.

He gave her a look. She turned to him, her eyes bright and alive.

CHAPTER 22

Matt had never witnessed an autopsy before. While he and Brown got into their hazardous material suits, what one of the medical examiners called a hazmat suit, Brown admitted that she had attended only three and each one had been difficult to deal with. Matt’s expectations were bleak, particularly after learning that the autopsies for all five victims would be occurring simultaneously.

Matt followed Brown through the doorway into a large operating room. The entire Holloway family was already here. Five naked corpses on five stainless steel tables. Less than a day had passed since their deaths, yet time hadn’t been very kind to them. Matt noticed that the diamond had been removed from Holloway’s ear, the lobe stretched to the point of appearing deformed. But even worse, Holloway’s mouth was wide-open, his eyes glazed over and milky. The macho man didn’t seem so macho anymore.

Matt looked away. But even with a respirator, he couldn’t escape the smell of rotting flesh and human waste that permeated the entire room.

He turned and saw Brown standing over the twelve-year-old girl, Sophie Holloway. Somehow seeing a child in this state, this condition, brought everything into sharp focus.

Matt took a step back, his mind going.

Dr. Baylor was obviously a psychopath and a killer of four young women. He was a sick man—an insane man—and in spite of the things Matt had said, too far gone to be helped or brought back.

But the doctor didn’t do this. He didn’t kill this little girl, or her sister or her brother. He didn’t murder Mimi Holloway or her asshole husband. Matt felt sure of it now. Baylor couldn’t have murdered these people. The look on the doctor’s face when they switched on the lights and climbed the stairs had been one of fascination. Someone wrestling with a horrific situation and trying to understand it.

There had to be someone else out there. A monster who defied the imagination. Someone even more insane than Baylor.

The autopsies were underway—ten times more brutal than an operating room or any field hospital Matt had seen during the war. No matter how difficult the experience, he had learned something. He’d learned that he would have to trust the feeling in his gut. His thoughts were wild, and he’d still need to keep them to himself for a while. He had his family situation to deal with, his deadbeat father and his mother’s mysterious past. He would have to avoid Ryan Day. He would have to be careful. But he thought that he’d reached the point where he could move forward with confidence again. The truth was, he didn’t think he had much choice.

He felt someone touch him, and his mind surfaced. It was Kate Brown, standing before him, holding his gloved hands. And she was standing close. He could feel her legs brushing against his legs, her mask and respirator touching his own. She gave his hands a squeeze, her eyes burning with emotion.

“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t stay here, Matt. I can’t be in this room.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. I’m paid to be here. I’m supposed to be here, but I can’t handle it. They’ll be at it for hours, and I don’t want to see them cut up the kids.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll cover for you. Wait outside for me.”

She dropped one of his hands and touched his chest. It seemed intimate, but he didn’t take it that way. Brown was in distress, and it seemed like they’d known each other for more than a few days.

“Are you sure?” she said. “You’ll be on your own.”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine. Wait for me outside.”

“Thanks, Jones.”

He watched her cross the operating room. When she stepped out and closed the door, he turned back and saw the medical examiner working on Holloway pick up his skull saw. The view had turned even more harsh. He straightened his mask and exhaled through the respirator. No one could see him clench his teeth. No one could see him grimace.

CHAPTER 23

Andrew Penchant spotted Reggie Cook’s beat-up Chevy in the driveway and pulled to the curb, debating whether or not he should go inside. Cook was a big, hairy slob, an obvious piece of white Northeast Philly trash, whom his mother had started seeing again. Andrew hated the man more than anyone he had ever met, and for good reason. Somehow Cook had found out that his mother, Sarah Penchant, had been raped by her best friend’s father when she was fourteen years old. Some religious asshole dude who hung framed pictures of Jesus Christ on his walls and was wrapped too tight. Cook knew that his mother hadn’t aborted the pregnancy and that Andrew was a rape baby. He liked to tease Andrew when they were alone. He liked to call him a devil’s child, and often asked if he’d been born with horns and a tail.

Andrew had to eat it—for the sake of his mother, he had to deal with the bully—but the whole thing was wearing him out.

He opened the ashtray, searching for what was left of a joint he’d rolled before going to work this morning. It looked like there were two, maybe three hits left. Striking a lighter, he held the charred end over the flame and took a deep hit. As he exhaled and started coughing, he noticed their neighbor Mr. Andolini sweeping his front steps. He was an old man, a crackpot who thought he ran the neighborhood, and Andrew didn’t like him much either. Why would anyone sweep their steps on a day this cold? What fool wouldn’t wait for the wind to die down?

The only good thing about Mr. Andolini was that he grew Concord grapes and was a generous old fuck. Andrew had to give him that. It was Mr. Andolini who had taught him how to eat a Concord grape, how to squeeze the inside out with his tongue and swallow it whole, then spit the sour skin onto the lawn. Mr. Andolini’s Concord grapes were the best grapes that he had ever tasted.

Andrew turned and looked at the steel plant behind the rundown houses across the street. At the end of the block, he could see the Delaware River. There was a small park here that included two benches and a narrow dock. The city of Philadelphia was just ten miles downstream. Andrew liked to get high at night and gaze at the lights and tall buildings and dream about the way things could have been. The way things would never be, except in his mind, except when he was stoned.

In spite of the frigid air, he had sat there last night for the better part of an hour. He’d smoked an entire joint and tried to pull himself together. Tried to understand what happened during his field trip to the suburbs and another visit with the rich and famous. Tried to focus on who he’d been and what he was now becoming. Tried to stop the rage and the anger and the shaking and the dream walking. Tried to slow everything down.

He could still see them. Still see the terror in their eyes. Still hear them whimpering and begging. Still hear their faint moans and weak attempts to cry for help as they bled out.

A headline.

A living legend.

What he wanted, and what he was becoming.

Those stupid fucking animal heads. He could still see them on the wall watching him do what had to be done.

Andrew took a last hit on the joint, scorching his fingertips as he flicked it out the window. Then he turned back to Reggie Cook’s car and gazed at his mother’s cedar-shake house. It was more of a cottage than a real house. It was small, the walls too thin to give anyone any privacy.

He could feel his mind buzzing from the weed, his empty stomach growling. Only two hits and he was stoned and hungry.

He felt a draft from the window and shivered. He had to go inside, he decided finally. He might freeze to death out here.

He locked the car, hiked up the steps to the porch, and pushed the front door open. He found them in the kitchen. Cook was seated at the table with a shit-eating, I-just-fucked-your-mother kind of grin seared onto his stupid face. Andrew’s mother, Sarah, was standing beside the slob, wearing a completely transparent baby-doll top, a bare midriff, and a pair of low-riding, skintight jeans.

Andrew glanced at his mother’s full breasts, her puffy nipples and supersized areolas, then lifted his gaze to her face. She was only thirty-five, with golden-brown eyes and light-brown hair that she liked to have highlighted. She was only thirty-five and still hot in a trashy, Northeast Philly sort of way. Still dirty hot and messing with his head.

“What’s he doing here?” Andrew said.

His mother smiled at him. “He came over to visit, Andrew. Reggie was just leaving.”

“Good,” he said.

Andrew could smell his mother’s sex lingering over the table and guessed that Cook hadn’t washed his face. He could feel the man’s eyeballs on him. When he turned to give him a look, Cook slapped the table and howled.

“You’re weird, kid,” he said, his voice booming. “Goddamn it, you’re weird. You give new meaning to the phrase
odd man out
.”

Cook’s eyes got big and lit up as he roared with laughter. Andrew’s mother frowned.

“Stop it, Reggie. It’s time to go.”

He nodded and got up from the table with his fly undone. Zipping it up, he gave Andrew a wink and a hideous smile, and walked out still laughing. Andrew watched his mother follow the man into the living room. They were whispering, and he could hear them kissing. Then the front door opened and closed and his mother strolled into the kitchen with a warm smile on her face.

Andrew looked at her tits again. The transparent top. He could feel his dick getting hard. He couldn’t help it.

“Why do you dress this way in front of me?” he said in a quiet voice.

She moved closer and ran her hand through his braided hair. “I do it for you,” she said. “Everything I do is for you, Andrew.”

“For me? It’s not proper to dress this way in front of your son.”

She met his eyes and smiled again. “But you like it.”

“I don’t. I really don’t like it.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve liked it ever since you were a little boy. Since you were a baby. You like looking at them. You like looking at me. You like the time we spend together.”

The time we spend together.

Andrew gazed at her face, wondering if someone had slipped LSD into his weed. It felt like he was tripping. He knew from experience that it wasn’t safe to trip alone.

His mother brushed her nose over his cornrows and kissed him above the ear. “Did you bring anything home tonight, honey?”

Andrew nodded and pulled two partially frozen New York strip steaks out of his jacket pocket. Like the Gatorade he’d stolen from the Walmart Supercenter, dinner would be on the house tonight, just as it was most nights.

His mother looked at the steaks and seemed pleased. Andrew lifted the camera strapped to his shoulder over his head and set it on the table.

“You could do better than working at Walmart, Andrew. You were given a gift. A real talent. You should be making a living with that camera. Photography shouldn’t be something you do part-time.”

He didn’t say anything. He looked at her bare shoulders and back, her hips and ass as she turned on the stove. His dick was still hard, and he felt stupid. Mortified. He hated her, even though he loved her. He hated her.

CHAPTER 24

Andrew switched on the lights and TV, then sat down at his worktable by the window and woke up his laptop and printer. As he attached a cable to his camera, he glanced at the TV and then the clock radio by the bed. His favorite show, an animated comedy called
Olive Kills Her Neighbor’s Cat
, wouldn’t begin for another fifteen minutes. Until then, he’d have to endure this ignorant show that pandered to the weirdos who got off on gossip magazines.

Get Buzzed
with Ryan Day.

He had caught glimpses of the show many times in the past. It was a carbon copy of every other gossip show he’d seen on TV, and just as difficult to avoid. The segments almost always involved young celebrities, especially but not always young female celebrities who were in some sort of trouble. Picked up for drugs or drunk driving, failing to attend a court hearing, a return trip to rehab on a beach in paradise, weight loss and a new bikini, a young female climbing out of her car with her panties in her purse, or even the well-tested and overdone “wardrobe malfunction” at a public event that usually involved a young female celebrity showing off her tits accidently on purpose.

The one constant was that none of these people had anything else going on. Their careers, if they even had one, were short and sweet and over. They were washed up and circling the drain, and so desperate to be noticed that Andrew thought he could see it on their faces.

He turned back to his laptop and snickered. It didn’t make any difference. An appearance on a show like
Get Buzzed
worked like a signal, a warning beacon, a eulogy given at a funeral. It was like getting your ass kicked with millions of viewers laughing at you. The big good-bye.

Andrew let the thought go as he downloaded thirty-seven new images from his camera. When the photo library opened, he skimmed through the portraits he’d taken until he reached the photograph of Avery Cooper. Without protesting, Avery had let him take a handful of close-ups before leaving the arcade. He caught a whiff of his mother’s perfume on his skin as he examined each image, then clicked backward until he found the picture he thought might be his favorite. His stomach was stirring again—glowing—and this surprised him.

Avery Cooper was the first girl to ever come on to him. He wondered if he could trust her. If she wasn’t playing with him. Messing with him the same way his mother messed with him.

He thought about his mother, and after a few moments, managed to shake it off. Things happen for a reason, he reminded himself. There had to be a reason why he and Avery Cooper met this afternoon. A purpose. A meaning. He’d given her his cell phone number. Now he wondered why he hadn’t asked for hers.

He heard someone say something and glanced at the TV. It was Ryan Day poking his microphone into some guy’s face on the street outside the Holloways’ mansion on the Main Line.

Andrew rolled his desk chair closer, mesmerized. They were doing the story on a national TV show. Who cared if the show sucked?

What’s it like inside, Detective Jones? Five more murders by the infamous Dr. Baylor. Another entire family dead. What are you feeling right now?

Who were these people? What were they talking about?

Andrew got up and closed his bedroom door, then rushed back to his seat and watched the detective push his way past the camera and drive off. Then Day moved over to the driveway and finished his segment with the Holloways’ mansion just visible in the darkness behind him.

The image was haunting and creepy, and Andrew felt a chill crawl up his spine. It was almost as if he’d never been there. Almost as if he were hearing about the five murders, an entire family savagely killed, for the first time.

But even more, Day was recapping the story. He was introducing Andrew to a detective from Los Angeles named Matt Jones and a psychopath, someone Day kept calling the
real
killer, a Dr. George Baylor. What a great name for a mad scientist. Dr. Baylor. What a great name for the
real
killer.

The story ended with a photograph of Dr. Baylor and video of Matt Jones chasing someone down a street in Philadelphia with his pistol out. When the segment ended and they cut to a commercial, Andrew took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he grabbed his bong and a lighter and rolled his chair back to the computer. He wanted to see who he was dealing with. He wanted to have some more fun.

He clicked open the search engine and typed a name into the window as quickly as he could. The one he’d seen on TV. That detective who’d come all the way from Hollywood to investigate the mass killings here in the City of Brotherly Love.

Matt Jones.