“What is it you need?” she called back.

“Can I come in? I—I can’t sleep. My father’s dead. I know it. He’s buried under the house. There was blood. Everywhere.”

“He’s buried where?” That part sounded a little too definite for comfort. What would make Jeremy say something like that?

“Right next to your mother. I’ll tell you where she is if you’ll let me in.”

No way could Jeremy know what he was talking about. It was pathetic how far he’d go to avoid being alone.

Claire rubbed her face while trying to decide what to do. She didn’t want him to disturb any of their neighbors by continuing to knock on her door. She was afraid the manager would come down to shoo him away. Then what would she do? She’d have to take him in because she was pretty sure Jeremy wouldn’t be able to handle that, and she felt responsible for him.

“Look, Jeremy, I’m tired. I understand you want to help me, and I want to help you, too. We’re friends. But you can’t tell me where my mother is because you don’t know.”

“Yes, I do. I swear. She’s in a suitcase under the house. My father killed her.”

If not for the mention of the suitcase, Claire might’ve passed this off as a fanciful invention. That a piece of luggage had gone missing from the house the same day as her mother wasn’t one of those details the police had kept under tight wraps, but Jeremy was talking about an incident that’d happened fifteen years ago. How come he remembered the suitcase?

A chill went through her as she envisioned what he’d told her. She didn’t like what he was doing to get her to open the door, but she couldn’t hold it against him, either. He was frightened and desperate and probably had no clue how hard it was for her to hear things like this, how gruesome imagining her mother’s body in a suitcase would be.

On second thought, it wasn’t all that surprising he’d remember the suitcase. He had an incredible memory for odd facts, unusual details, numbers. He never had to write down a phone number. He could rattle off any one he’d ever called, even if he’d only dialed it once. The kids at school used to jabber off a bunch of numbers just to see if they could stump him.

“Claire?” He knocked again. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.” She just didn’t know how to respond.

“Do you believe in zombies?” he asked.

“No, Jeremy. I don’t. There’s no such thing.” This confirmed it. He was completely out of touch with reality.

“I’m afraid my mom and your dad are going to come alive and—and hurt me if I don’t take care of you. I promised your mother I’d keep you safe. Did you know that?”

“No, but it’s…sweet.” In a revolting sort of way…

“So will you let me in?”

She rested her head against the door. “Jeremy, I was asleep…?.”

“Please? I don’t like it out here.”

“Can’t you just go back to your room?”

“No, there are zombies in my room!”

“Oh, God,” she muttered to herself, but she pulled on her jeans under the T-shirt she’d worn to bed and opened the door.

Jeremy stood in the puddle of blue light shed by the energy-conservation bulb in the fixture closest to her door, looking even more distraught than when he’d gone into his room fifteen or twenty minutes earlier. He’d really worked himself up.

Claire felt sorry for him, but with Isaac gone she might still have insisted he go back to bed. His babbling unnerved her, even if he didn’t know what he was saying. He unnerved her. But there were tears running down his cheeks, and the memory of how she’d felt in the days following her mother’s disappearance wouldn’t allow her to be that hard-hearted. At least she’d had her stepfather to rely on. If Jeremy’s dad was really gone, and he wasn’t coming back, Jeremy would have no one.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “Come on. You can sleep in the other bed while we wait for Isaac.”

He stepped forward as if he’d brush past her but grabbed hold of her instead. “Jeremy, don’t—”

Clamping a hand over her mouth, he pushed her to the ground.

Claire struggled, but he was freakishly strong. She’d just begun to realize he wasn’t joking, that he wouldn’t stop this unless she made him understand he had to let her go, when he leaned in close.

“Don’t scream,” he whispered in her ear. “Please, don’t scream. I don’t want to have to shoot you. I love you, Claire. I’ve always loved you.”

That was when she felt the hard muzzle of a gun between her shoulder blades.

29

The drive went by fast, probably because Isaac was no longer tired. He was too busy considering what might’ve happened to Don. Even though he was already expecting the worst, what he found when he arrived still surprised him.

The door was unlocked, and he didn’t have to step all the way across the threshold to smell the bleach. Jeremy had been right. A “cleaning smell” pervaded the whole house. And the couch and a big section of carpet were damp—again, just like Jeremy had said.

The odd thing was the bullet hole. It wasn’t anywhere near the place where the violence seemed to have occurred; it was on the opposite wall.

“What the hell happened here?” Isaac muttered.

Maybe Don had some dangerous company and attempted to defend himself. If so, he was either a terrible shot or he was drunk.

More likely he was drunk…?.

“Poor bastard.” Isaac felt as sorry for him as he did Jeremy. Don hadn’t had an easy life, either.

Myles checked the garage. Don’s Jeep was parked inside it. So where was he?

The evidence suggested he might be dead. Or hurt. It didn’t look good. Isaac needed to get out as soon as possible and call 9-1-1. But first he wanted to go through Don’s phone records to see who he’d been calling and if any of those calls corresponded to a number associated with Les Weaver. He also wanted to find Don’s bank statements. If Don had been hired to trash Claire’s place, maybe there’d be a corresponding deposit Isaac’s P.I. could trace back to the source.

It took nearly an hour for Isaac to come to terms with what he’d begun to suspect shortly after he started searching—he wasn’t going to find much in the way of documentation in Don Salter’s house, certainly not paid bills. The man didn’t have a filing cabinet, didn’t seem to keep any records at all. Isaac couldn’t find a single bank statement.

He did come across a big stack of outstanding bills shoved into a kitchen drawer, however. Most were overdue. And right there, near the bottom, he found Don’s most recent telephone bill, which showed several calls to Coeur d’Alene in Idaho. “That’s what I want.”

Feeling he was finally getting somewhere, Isaac grabbed a dish towel to pick up the phone, so he wouldn’t leave any prints. He wanted to see where the Idaho number went, see if Les Weaver answered. If Les was used to accepting calls from Don’s house, he’d recognize the number on caller ID and might pick up, despite—

But before Isaac could dial, he heard a noise that made him freeze.

Someone had just come through the front door.

Claire couldn’t feel her hands or her feet. Jeremy had ripped out the cords of the lamps in her motel room and used them to tie her up until he could get some rope from his car. Then he’d used that instead. He’d gagged her, too, with a strip of fabric he tore from the motel sheets. He said he couldn’t think with her begging him to let her go. He also said she’d be happy he’d done this in the end.