Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

Yet right then as he stood in his son’s room overstuffed with the accoutrements of a father with a guilty conscience-a plasma screen that nearly covered one wall, and a computer workstation that would have made computer geeks Apple-green with envy.

“You little shit,” Palmer said, jabbing his fingers into Alex’s shoulder as the teenager sat up on his bed.

“Hey! That hurts!” Alex yelped.

“You ungrateful little shit. You made Calla cry!”

Alex shot his dad a lightning-fast cold look-so fast that he hoped his dad hadn’t seen it. “That’s what you’re mad at? You made Mom cry when she caught you screwing Calla at the beach house.”

Palmer jabbed at his son again, but Alex pulled back in time. This brought an even darker red hue to the older man’s face. His eyes were now bulging and the veins on his neck pulsed in time with his anger in a staccato fashion.

“Alex, that’s done,” he said, seething. “You mention that one more time and you’re going to go to a state school. Don’t ever make Calla cry again. Don’t ever threaten her again. Got that?”

Alex got up and not so skillfully hid a package of cigarettes from his father’s prying eyes. “Can we forget about her?” he asked, looking up. “I’m in trouble, Dad.”

Palmer shed his jacket. He was hot and angry. He knew he’d already blown up, but there was always the threat of an aftershock of anger.

“You are always in trouble,” Palmer said. “You seem to make a sport of trying to find ways to piss me off and make me wish I pushed harder for an abortion when I had the chance.”

Alex had heard that particularly hurtful regret before. His father claimed that his mother tricked him into marriage by getting pregnant. His dad had never wanted him.

“The cops came today,” he said, refusing to look into his father’s eyes.

As Alex predicted, Palmer exploded again. “Jesus! What did you do? Shoplift at Frye’s again? What an idiot!”

Alex pulled back and let his eyes look into his father’s only for a half-second. “No. No. I haven’t done that in a long time.”

Doesn’t he know the difference between shoplifting and real trouble?

“Good, because the next time you do I’m not going to bail you out by paying off the manager. He’s using me like a damn ATM. So what is it now?”

“The cops came today about Emma. She’s missing.”

“Is that the chick you were doing?” Palmer asked, a smirk now spreading over his face.

Alex glared at his father. “I didn’t do her, and yes, it was the girl I really liked.”

Palmer shook his head in utter disgust. “Liked? God! You’re nineteen, grow a pair and use ’em. Use ’em a lot. Forget liking any girl. There’s time for that later.”

Alex hated his father so much just then. More than he ever did. He knew that his dad had no real attachments to anyone. Not even Calla. Certainly not to him. Alex knew that there were things about him that were genetically linked to his father-his eyes, his build. Thankfully not his height. By his sixteenth birthday, Alex had been a good five inches taller than his dad-an achievement that made Palmer Morton bitter. As Alex watched his father, he often worried that his near sociopathic personality had transferred to him. His dad was an ass. He probably had some of that in him, too. When he’d told a friend about what he thought, she’d told him that he “absolutely” wasn’t like his dad at all.

“The fact that you recognize what kind of person he is and that you don’t want to be like him is proof enough that you’re not headed down that path.”

It was Emma Rose who had said those words. And when she had, he’d fallen for her. Hard. It was as if for the first time ever he’d found someone who wanted to believe that he had some good inside him. He wasn’t just the rich kid with the blowhard dad. He wasn’t a petty thief who shoplifted iPods and other stuff he didn’t need.

Palmer pressed on with the quasi interrogation of his son. “Why did the police come to talk to you about her?”

“She’s missing. I told you that.”

“Look, I can’t remember every detail of your social life, as puny as it is. But why did they come to you about Emma?”

“You know, because we went out a few times. That’s all. They were just looking for information.”

“What’s the big deal then?” Palmer asked.

Alex searched for the right words. Some things his dad could never understand. “I don’t know.”

Palmer unbuttoned his shirt collar. His anger still percolated, but it had subsided a little. “Alex, I can’t fix this if I don’t know what kind of problem we’re facing here.”

“Dad, I’m not sure. We had a big fight. Emma actually dumped me. I said some stuff about wanting to get her back. I didn’t want her to break up with me. Now, you know, she’s gone and it looks like, well, bad. Real bad.”

Palmer sighed. “What a pussy you are. Jesus! I never thought I’d have a dickless wonder for a son. But I’ll fix it. I always do.”

In the manner articles highlighting a mysterious crime always do, the latest G IRLS M ISSING article in the News Tribune prompted a series of calls to Grace Alexander. One tip after another that, in the interest of justice, had to be followed up in some way. Most went nowhere. Most had no real connection to the case. The call from an elderly woman was one of those. She spoke with the throaty deep voice of a smoker with a slight wheeze, suggesting that her lungs were ravaged by emphysema.

“You better find who killed those three girls,” she said.

“The department is doing its best,” Grace said.

“Your best wasn’t good enough. You never caught the SOB who killed my Susie.”

Grace instantly recalled the name, and the voice. Susie Sherman’s photo was on the wall of unsolved cases, like her sister. It was Susie’s mother, Anna, on the line.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sherman,” she said.

“I’m sure you are. I’d be sorry, too.”

Anna Sherman and Grace Alexander shared a bond. There was no doubt about it. Years after Susie’s disappearance in 1972, her body had been discovered in the woods off a remote stretch of Highway 401 under the shadow of Mt. Rainier. Anna’s voice still held the unmistakable sharp pain that came with each utterance.

Like my mother.

Like my father, too.

Grace knew that tragedy either bound family members tightly together or tore them completely apart. She’d seen her own parents’ marriage disintegrate over the years. Within the heavy walls of Anna Sherman’s throaty voice Grace could still hear echoes of her own mother’s grief. It was, she knew, a grief that never went away. While it was clear that Mrs. Sherman couldn’t exactly shed any light on the cases that were consuming every moment, there was no way she would ever refuse the invitation the still-grieving offered.

“Come and see me. I think I know something about serial killers who prey on young women,” Anna said.

“Are you a psychologist?” Grace asked, wishing a second later that she hadn’t.

“I’m a mother,” she said.

Grace felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Of course. I didn’t mean.. ”

“That’s all right. I corresponded with Ted Bundy.”

“You did?”

In that moment, Grace wondered who hadn’t corresponded with the serial killer. Authors, her mother, and now, Anna Sherman. It seemed Ted Bundy might have been in need of a social secretary.

“Don’t be so surprised,” Anna said. “If you thought someone killed your daughter you would have done the same thing. I thought I could get him to tell me something, you know, before he fried in the electric chair.”

“Did he tell you anything about what happened to your daughter?” Grace asked.