Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

She sipped her merlot, and thought, Not just Chris, the whole world would be better off. .

She was careful not to spill any wine on the small square of cotton material she’d set by her place setting. The little patch had a pattern of tiny blue rosebuds on it. She couldn’t resist gently running her fingertips over the fabric as she focused on Angela Dennehy across the room. She imagined the material wrapped around a little doll with silver-brown hair.

Had Angela noticed yet that her nightgown had a small square cut from the hem? It had been that way for two weeks now.

She thought about what Ray Corson had written in his private journal, after Angela and her friends on Willow Tree Court had waged their campaign against him:

Molly Dennehy handled things rather quietly & it might have stayed under the radar. But the former Mrs. Dennehy has really gone on the warpath. I wonder how much of her animosity toward me is based on genuine concern for her son. Or is it a means for Angela Dennehy to reestablish her maternal turf & show up her successor as an ineffectual & incompetent mother? I used to feel sorry for Angela Dennehy, but not anymore. .

The woman carefully folded the small patch cut from Angela Dennehy’s nightgown. She slipped it inside a little plastic bag and stashed it into her purse. She gazed over at the two Mrs. Dennehys again.

She decided that Ray Corson was a better person than her. She never felt sorry for Angela Dennehy. In fact, it gave her great satisfaction telling Angela over the phone that she was going to pay for what she’d done.

The digital clock on her nightstand read 1:42 A.M. Molly was pretty certain both Chris and Erin were asleep. She was the only one hearing the sounds of the house settling and that one tree branch scraping against the bathroom window screen every time the wind kicked up. She pulled the sheets up around her neck and rolled over to face the bedroom door. The glow from Erin’s Cinderella night-light spilled beyond her room, bathing the hallway in dim blue shadows.

Molly thought about how she’d given away all of Charlie’s things to charity — except for a dozen of the two hundred elephant figurines he’d collected in his lifetime. Those were the only things from her past that she wanted to hold on to.

But now someone had dug everything up again. She’d thought Angela was behind it. She’d thought Jeff’s ex was responsible for all the recent strange occurrences. But it was someone else.

Molly had a feeling they were just getting started.

The last thing on her mind right now was the Cul-de-sac Killer.

In a split-level home on a Bellevue cul-de-sac called Alder Court, another woman, a year older than Molly, was also lying in bed alone. Her husband was out of town on business, too. The pretty redhead named Paulette LaBlanc had two children asleep down the hall from her, Matt, six, and Brendan, three. Brendan was getting over a cold.

After putting the kids to bed, Paulette had caught up on some editing she’d been contracted to do for Boeing. Then she’d made the mistake of watching the eleven o’clock news. They’d released one of those creepy composite sketches of a “person of interest” spotted Thursday night near Laurel Lane in Federal Way, where those three teenagers were slaughtered. The man they sought had been seen emerging from a silver Honda Civic. He was about six feet tall, approximately one hundred eighty pounds, between thirty and forty years old, and had thinning brown hair. He was wearing a tan jacket. The sketch showed a cold-eyed man with thin lips and a very high forehead. The news segment featured a brief clip of paramedics at night carrying one of the covered corpses from the house — amid swirling police lights and popping flashes.

Paulette was kicking herself for watching the news story. As she tried to sleep, she kept seeing the cold-eyed man in that police sketch again. She imagined getting out of bed and finding him in her hallway. Stop it , she told herself. She and the kids were safe. She’d locked up and double-checked all the windows downstairs. She even had a little canister of pepper-spray on her nightstand — within reach. Yet Paulette still felt on edge. She kept tossing and turning. She thought about taking a sleeping pill. But what if Brendan woke up coughing again — as he had last night? She’d given him two spoonfuls of children’s cough syrup, and took him into the bathroom, where she let the hot water go full blast until the place was like a steam room. She’d lowered the toilet seat lid and sat there with him in her lap, telling him a story until he’d stopped coughing and fallen asleep again.

If she took a pill, and he needed her again tonight, she wouldn’t be able to wake up — much less function.

She desperately needed her sleep, too. Matt would be up for school in less than five hours. Plus she still had eighty-seven pages to edit, and it was due in two days.

As she lay there in bed, Paulette tried to assure herself that the Cul-de-sac Killer couldn’t possibly come to her house tonight. After all, she’d just watched that story on the news. It would be way too much of a coincidence if he broke into their home tonight. Her being scared was her insurance that it wouldn’t really happen. It was like taking an umbrella outside with her to make sure it wouldn’t rain.

As Paulette drifted off to sleep, she realized that kind of logic made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

“Mom? Mom, wake up!” Matt whispered.

Paulette sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Her son was at her bedside in his Pirates of the Caribbean pajamas, doing a little dance like he had to go to the bathroom. She glanced over at the clock on her nightstand: 3:21 A.M. “Honey, what’s going on?” she asked, her head in a fog. “Is it Brendan?”

“There’s a man in our room,” he said in a scared, tiny voice.

Suddenly, Paulette was wide awake. “What?”

“I saw him sneak in, and now he’s hiding in there,” Matt said.

Paulette grabbed the pepper spray off her nightstand and climbed out of bed. She was wearing one of her husband’s Tshirts and a pair of panties. Matt clung on to the hem of her T-shirt as she walked across the room. “It’s okay, Matt,” she said, trying to act brave for him. Yet her heart was racing. “You probably just had a bad dream. And sometimes they seem so real, I know. . ”

Pausing in her doorway, Paulette reminded herself that Matt recently had monsters under the bed, clowns hiding in his closet, and a vampire outside his window. Still, she couldn’t help wondering, What if it’s real this time?

He hovered beside her, whimpering. She could feel him shaking.

“Is Brendan asleep?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Matt whined. “I couldn’t see him. The man was standing between our beds.”

The very notion sent a chill racing through her. Suddenly, Paulette couldn’t get her breath. She started shaking now, too. She thought about telling Matt to go lock himself in her bathroom. But that might just scare him even more.

“Brendan, honey?” she called nervously. She switched on the hallway light.

There was no response. Her hands trembling, Paulette took the cap off the pepper spray. She padded down the hall with Matt trailing after her. He still clutched the bottom of her oversized T-shirt. She stepped across the threshold to her sons’ room and flicked on the light switch.

She stared down at Brendan in his bed. He stirred and coughed a little, but he didn’t awaken.

Paulette let out a sigh, and put the cap back on the pepper spray. She glanced around the room — with the Mariners, Seahawks, and Sonics posters on the walls and the matching Transformers covers on the beds. The toys and books on their bookshelves were undisturbed, and the goldfish were peacefully swimming around their bowl on Matt’s desk.