Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

He nicked himself. Blood oozed from the cut along his left jaw. “Oh, crap, now look what you’ve made me do,” he grumbled. He plucked a Kleenex from the dispenser on the counter and dabbed it on the cut. “Here we go with that whack-job woman caller again. I told you that we’d get some crank calls—”

“Jeff, Angela was getting calls the week before she was killed — from a woman, telling her that she was going to pay for what she did .”

“Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jeff countered, dabbing the cut again. “What exactly did Angela do? Are you telling me this crazy woman caller is somehow working with the Cul-de-sac Killer?”

Molly hesitated. She didn’t know how to answer him.

“You told me yourself that Angela lied to you during that lunch. Didn’t she give you some song and dance about not telling anyone about your brother?”

“Well, maybe not everything she said was a lie,” Molly murmured.

He washed off his face, grabbed another Kleenex, tore off a piece, and applied it to his cut. “Listen, Molly.” He sighed, pat-drying his face. “Do me a favor and screen all your calls from now on. You’re letting this nutcase get to you, and I’m sorry, honey, but I don’t need this shit, not now.”

Molly stepped aside as he brushed past her in the bathroom doorway. He whipped off his towel and tossed it on the bed. After pulling a clean pair of boxer shorts from his dresser, he slammed the drawer shut. He stepped into the shorts and let the elastic banding go snap against his torso as he finished putting them on. “Yesterday, I buried the mother of my children, and now I have to schlep my ass to work. Can we cease and desist with all the questions? I wouldn’t have told the police I was at the Hilton in D.C. if I wasn’t really there. They seemed to believe me. Why the hell can’t you?”

Molly opened her mouth to speak but hesitated. She retrieved her robe from the foot of their bed and put it on. “I’ll go start the coffee and make sure the kids are up.” She sighed. Then she headed out of the bedroom.

It was strange to see Courtney behind the wheel of her Neon without an iPhone in her hand.

Chris had been surprised to hear her car horn honking this morning. He’d figured after her father’s arrest yesterday afternoon, she wouldn’t be showing her face at school today. But there she was, waiting in the driveway for him.

“I know everybody will be gossiping about me,” she muttered, pulling out of the cul-de-sac. “I was going to stay home for a day or two, but then I figured I might as well go to school and get it over with. Plus my mother’s driving me crazy. I’m ready to kill her.”

Courtney may have texted and Twittered up a storm at his mom’s funeral, but her family’s public humiliation had shut down all communications since yesterday afternoon. Courtney’s last Facebook update had been two nights ago. She was very subdued today. She wore a black pullover sweater and jeans, and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It looked like she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. Chris kind of liked her better without it.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” he said, slouching in the passenger seat. “Must have been a real shock for you. That’s a raw deal.”

“I wasn’t too shocked,” she said, eying the road ahead. “I mean, he never did anything weird with me, nothing I remember, at least. Still, I’ve always suspected my father had a — a thing for young girls. But it was just too creepy for me to even think about. I didn’t tell anybody — except Mr. Corson.” She glanced at him briefly. “Can I confess something to you? I was kind of jealous of what you and Mr. Corson had. I could have used a — a regular father figure. I was kind of hoping Mr. Corson would pay more attention to me if I dug deep and told him something really, really personal like that. Then again, I guess we all spilled our guts to him, didn’t we?”

“I wouldn’t mind having Mr. Corson to lean on right now,” Chris said — almost under his breath.

If Courtney heard him, she didn’t say anything.

They approached a stoplight. Courtney came to a stop, and she let out a long sigh. “Well, I guess between your mom getting murdered and my dad getting arrested, you and I are going to be the focus of attention at school today.”

Chris smiled sadly. “You usually like being the center of attention,” he remarked.

“Not this time, Chris,” she replied. “Not this time.”

“You can’t rush genius,” he said. “This is a very delicate operation.”

The arrogant punk was in his late twenties and went by the name Wolf. He had short, buzz-cut black hair — except for his long bangs, which fell over one side of his face. She’d given up counting how many piercings he had besides the big hole in his stretched-out right earlobe. There were rings in his lip, his eyebrow, his nostril — and probably a lot more below the neck. He wore a ratty gray jacket that had YOU SUCK stenciled on the back.

Even if they weren’t conspiring to commit murder right now, she wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with him. Driving together to James Monroe High School, she’d barely tolerated his wretched body odor and his blasting heavy-metal music on her car radio. She kept reminding herself that Wolf had come highly recommended.

She made him turn off the radio once she’d parked the car near the high school’s playfield. A bunch of boys in their school sweats were playing soccer. She could hear them grunting, yelling, and laughing. Every few minutes, the coach blew his whistle. Stepping out of the car, she instructed Wolf to stay put and leave the radio off. They didn’t want to call attention to themselves.

By now, she’d become very skilled at maintaining a low profile. She was pretty certain no one had noticed her in the girls’ locker room earlier. But she’d noticed Courtney Hahn — and the location of Courtney’s locker.

Almost two weeks before, she’d managed to cut the padlock off Chris Dennehy’s locker in about forty seconds. With the same pair of fourteen-inch bolt cutters, she’d had Courtney’s locker door open in twenty-five seconds.

But it seemed to take Wolf forever to fulfill his part of the plan. He sat in the passenger seat of her car with a tray in his lap, working on the iPhone, which she’d removed from Courtney’s purse. With the precision pliers and a tiny-head screwdriver from his tool kit, he manipulated some wires and charges, which he set inside Courtney’s cell phone. He seemed to know what he was doing. Every once in a while, he’d brush the bangs away from his face and pull out one of those jeweler monocles and check on the progress of his work.

Sitting behind the wheel of the parked car, she studied the little patch of black fabric she’d cut from the bottom of Courtney’s pullover. She figured Courtney wouldn’t notice. And if she did, there wouldn’t be much time or opportunity to tell anyone about it before she was dead — or at least, severely maimed.

She carefully folded up the cutting and slipped it inside a plastic bag. She’d already bought a little blond doll that resembled Courtney.

With a sigh, she glanced at her wristwatch. “I know I ‘can’t rush genius,’ ” she said. “But I need to return that phone to her locker in five minutes. If that doesn’t happen, you don’t get paid, genius .”

He had it finished in two minutes. “Done,” he said, handing her the cell phone.

She studied the phone, felt its weight in her hand. She’d seen how tiny the charges were, and couldn’t help wondering out loud. “Will there really be that much damage?”

Wolf started putting his instruments away in his little kit. He nodded distractedly. “When she presses the Talk button, I wouldn’t be surprised if she blows her hand off, maybe even part of her arm. And if she’s holding the phone anywhere near her head — well, let’s just say, it’s not going to be pretty. We’re talking closed casket here.”