Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

Even with the blaring sirens, she could hear Jenna’s labored gasps, like a death rattle. Down the shadowy hallway, Jenna sat on the floor near the top of the stairs with her back against the railing. She appeared half dead.

“Mrs. Corson?” Chris said with uncertainty. “I’ve — I’ve wanted to tell you ever since Mr. Corson died that I’m sorry. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him and regret — what — what happened. I miss him, Mrs. Corson. I’m sorry I ever doubted him.”

Jenna gazed at him. Her head was tipped to one side as she struggled for a breath. Bloodstains covered the front of her poncho, but she still clutched the killer’s hunting knife in her hand.

“But you doubted him, too, Mrs. Corson,” Chris continued in a shaky voice. “You left him when things got bad. You were separated from him at the time he was killed. I think you feel as guilty as I do — maybe even worse. I think that’s why you killed so many people you felt had wronged him. You needed to prove something — that you weren’t like the rest of us. But you gave up on him, Mrs. Corson. And even with all the people you killed or hurt — including my parents — it doesn’t change that. You still doubted him, too.”

She raised her head slightly. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Ray — he liked you so much,” she murmured. “He — he used to say you were a very smart young man. And he was right.”

Then Jenna Corson started to cry.

Molly could hear the police at the front door. She moved to the top of the stairs. “We’re up here,” she called down to them. “We’re out of danger, but there’s a woman stabbed up here. She — she’s pregnant. She needs a doctor right away. . ”

She saw three policemen in the foyer, all with their guns ready. From the sound of it, there were more outside, too. She noticed one of them mumbling into a little microphone device on his shoulder.

She glanced over at Chris, standing over Jenna. His head down, he leaned the baseball bat against the wall. Molly couldn’t hear Jenna sobbing anymore. She wasn’t moving.

Molly set the gun on the post at the top of the stairs. “Is my little girl out there?” she called down to them. “Is she all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the cops said as he started up the stairs.

“Erin?” she called loudly.

Past all the noise outside — the engines purring, policemen muttering to each other, someone issuing instructions through a haze of static on a police radio — she heard Erin calling out. “Molly, are you okay? Is Chris okay?”

Chris glanced over his shoulder and gave her a sad, weary smile.

Molly sank down to the floor, and sat on the top step. “We’re all right, honey!” she called back. She felt her eyes tearing up as she smiled at Chris. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We’re going to be all right. . ”

EPILOGUE

Chris tried not to stare, but Courtney’s face was still a mess. Nearly a month had gone by since Mrs. Corson’s attempt at murder had left Courtney maimed and disfigured. Her blond hair — coming in brown now — was growing back, but it still didn’t cover the hole and red scars where her right ear had been. She hadn’t gotten her prosthetic ear yet. The patch was off her eye, but she had a painful-looking scar that ran from the outside corner of her eyelid down to the side of her cheek. She wore a bandage over her nose — to cover some recent work on the scar tissue there.

Chris strolled down the hospital corridor with her. Cheesy-looking Christmas decorations festooned the hallways. In some of the rooms, Chris noticed pint-sized trees with lights and ornaments. For this visit, he’d dressed up in khakis and a blue argyle sweater his mom had bought him last year.

With her mangled hand, Courtney pushed along the wheeled contraption that held her IV bag. She wore a beautiful pale pink silk robe over silvery-looking pajamas. It was odd to see her so elegantly dressed in nightclothes while her face was ravaged.

She’d transferred to a different hospital two weeks before. It was closer to the city — and a bit grimier. “My mother tells people we switched because they have the best plastic surgeons here,” Courtney said — over the squeaking wheels of her IV holder. “But the truth is, this hospital’s cheaper than the other place. Since my dad got the ax, his insurance won’t cover any of this. We’re majorly screwed. My mother’s putting the house on the market after the first of the year.”

They passed an old woman in a hospital gown, slumped over to one side in a wheelchair. “God, this place is so gross.” Courtney sighed. “Anyway, I don’t think my mother’s going to have many bidders on the house. I mean, after everything that’s happened on the block, who in their right mind would want to live there? God, talk about creepy. I can’t believe they found that crystal meth jogger woman all chopped up in the basement shower stall next door to you.”

“Actually, Mrs. Corson didn’t cut her up,” Chris said. “But I guess she thought about it. That’s what you probably read. It was part of her confession.”

“That’s so bizarre about her drug-addict daughter following you around.”

Chris just nodded.

“And then those dollhouses they found in her secret room down there,” Courtney went on. “I hear she had dolls of you and your stepmother — and of your mom and dad. Did you see any of them? Did the police show you?”

Frowning, Chris shook his head. “No, I really didn’t want to see them.”

She sighed. “I guess if I were you, I wouldn’t have wanted to see them, either.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. Chris thought of all the other discoveries the police were making. They’d arrested a twenty-seven-year-old hood named Mark “Wolf” Blanco, who had sold Mrs. Corson the drugs that had killed his dad. The cops said the same guy had wired Courtney’s cell phone to explode.

Mrs. Corson had given the police a full confession and named names of all her accomplices — from Wolf Blanco to some forgery expert, and from a computer hacker to a dead hit man named Aldo Mooney, who had killed Mr. Corson, Mrs. Garvey, Chris’s mom, Larry and Taylor, and apparently several others.

Of course, the most notorious discovery the police had made was the identity of the Cul-de-sac Killer, a thirty-two-year-old drifter, sometime seaman named Earl Richard Schreiber. In a special room he’d built in the garage of his Crown Hill rental home, the police found an assortment of knives, guns, and ropes; several costumes — from cop to courier; diagrams of the houses he’d struck; and DEAD END and NO OUTLET signs from the cul-de-sacs he’d visited. According to one article Chris read online, the police also uncovered in his secret room scores of S&M magazines, most of them dealing with bondage. Police in Portland, Sacramento, and St. Louis were now linking Schreiber to several unsolved murders in those cities.

He’d stabbed Mrs. Corson four times before Molly had stopped him.

Now, three weeks later, she was still in critical condition. They had her under police guard in a private room — in the same hospital where Courtney was staying. In fact, Mrs. Corson had been at this facility when Courtney transferred here.

“Couldn’t your mother have put you in another hospital?” Chris asked her, wincing a bit. He knew it was a tactless question, but he had to ask it. “I mean, I know Mrs. Corson is in a different wing — and she’s under armed guard and too weak to do anything. But I’d feel weird here under the same roof as her. I’d want to stay somewhere else— anywhere else.”

“Like I said, this is the cheapest place where my mother could still tell people that we moved here for the specialists.” Courtney gently touched the scar tissue where her ear used to be. “Mom has to keep up appearances. That’s why she still pretends to stand right alongside my stupid father and support him. It doesn’t make sense sometimes why my mother thinks she has to lie. She even lies to herself. She’s an expert at it.”