Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

The flashlight’s glow traveled along the row of senior lockers, then stopped on Mandy Kim’s. Soon this display would be complete. Item by item. Added with loving care. And with Mandy now dead, one more of the girls in Jake’s harem had joined him in hell.

She smiled, thinking of Jake burning in an eternal fire, tormented endlessly. The way he had tormented her. A frown replaced her smile as memories crept in around her, like dark shadows with treacherous tentacles reaching out to grab her. She shuddered.

“Go away,” she whispered. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to remember.”

But the frightening shadows grew darker and more sinister, quickly enveloping her, grasping her in their evil clutches.

“No, no, please don’t, Jake. It hurts when you do that.”

“Hush, baby, hush. We don’t want anyone hearing us, do we?”

She felt him push himself inside her, stretching her, hurting her. She whimpered loudly. “No, please. Don’t. Stop.”

He held his hand over her mouth to quiet her cries as he rammed into her again and again and again.

She couldn’t bear it. Stop! No! Go away! Leave me alone!

“I love you, baby. I love you best of all,” Jake said.

She fought the black shadows of memory, pushing them back, fighting them off as she had once tried to fight off Jake. Slowly, painfully, the shadows released her and settled around her, seemingly satisfied that she was now crying.

Jake used to wipe away her tears.

The tears he had caused.

The tears all the girls in his life had caused.

They thought he cared about them, maybe even loved them. But he hadn’t. He had loved only her. But why hadn’t he told them how much he loved her? Why hadn’t he made them include her in their elite little group? Why had he needed any of them when he’d had her?

Shoving Mandy’s small diaper bag under her arm, she swiped the tears from her eyes and her damp cheeks. It wasn’t fair that after all these years, he could still make her cry. But not for much longer. Once they were all dead and St. Elizabeth’s had been turned into a heap of rubble and buried with Jake and their past, she would be free.

But free for what?

Free from the past? Free from the memories? Free from the bitter hatred she felt?

With Mandy’s bag under her arm and the flashlight in one hand, she walked directly to the locker marked with Mandy’s name and number, just as it had been back in high school. She undid the snap on the diaper bag and rummaged around inside, searching for any personal items of Mandy’s. If she’d had time after strangling Mandy, she would have taken the items and left the bag in the stroller pouch. But with little Emily screaming her lungs out, she’d had to work quickly. She hated leaving the toddler alone in the park in the middle of a storm, but it couldn’t be helped. If Mandy hadn’t made it so difficult to get inside her house, the deed could have been done there.

She yanked a set of keys out of the bag. The shimmering metallic trophies jangled like bells as she shook them.

She placed the large, heavy-duty flashlight on the concrete floor, adjusting the attached stand so that the beam directly hit Mandy’s locker. She opened the door and placed Mandy’s keys inside on the upper shelf, then rummaged around in the diaper bag until she found a compact and lipstick. She added those two items to the locker.

So like Mandy to take a compact and lipstick with her on a short afternoon trip to the park with her child. The little bitch had always been preoccupied with her appearance. Every strand of her shiny black hair in place. Her make-up perfect, her perfume expensive, her fingernails and toenails manicured. Even in her St. Elizabeth’s uniform, she had managed somehow to look neater and cuter than the average student.

“Mandy’s a living doll,” Jake had said. “I’m thinking about making her my own little China doll.”

“Your China doll is on her way to hell to see you,” she said aloud, the sound of her voice echoing in the cavernous basement beneath the old school.

After removing all the personal items from the diaper bag, she tossed it aside. She closed Mandy’s locker, then reached down, picked up the flashlight, and shined it up and down the row on the other lockers.

Three down and four to go.

Maybe I should kill at least one of them before the reunion. But which one? Lindsay isn’t here in Portland and I don’t dare risk another trip to New York, even using the fake ID. And I have other plans for Rachel during the next couple of weeks. A little game of cat and mouse. Perhaps I should find a way to get to Kristen. No, damn it, that husband of hers is practically attached to her side twenty-four-seven.

No matter, I can take them all out the night of the reunion, if it comes to that. One by one. I simply have to devise a foolproof plan. And if I get lucky and the opportunity arises to eliminate any one of them before the reunion, all the better.

But until then, I’m going to make Rachel Alsace’s life miserable.

The heavy rainstorm had all but destroyed any possible evidence from the scene of the crime. Rachel stood under the huge black umbrella Dean held and watched as the Oregon State Crime Lab technician team packed up and headed for their vehicles. They had stayed out of the team’s way, but during the investigation, Dean had been unable to persuade Rachel to leave. She had tried to make him understand that she couldn’t leave, that she needed to do something-anything-even knowing that there was little she could do at this point.

“Come on, Rach,” Dean said. “Let me take you home. You need a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.”

She shook her head. “What I need is to find out who killed Mandy.”

“Then let’s go somewhere, get a cup of coffee or a stiff drink and talk.”

“All right. Coffee sounds fine to me.” Her senses numb, her mind focused on a single objective-to find the killer before someone else died-she let Dean lead her to his Thunderbird parked across the street.

Dean opened the car door, held the umbrella over her until she was seated, then closed the umbrella and locked her safety belt. When he got behind the wheel, Rachel turned to him. He ran a hand through his wet hair and flicked raindrops from his fingertips onto the floorboard.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Rachel said. “Why kill Mandy? I don’t think she ever had an enemy in the world. She was always so nice to everyone.” Rachel heaved a deep, sorrowful sigh. “Poor little Emily. That sweet child has now lost a second mother. And Jeff…”

“I know, honey. I know.” Dean reached over and took her hand in his. “This has turned into a nightmare for you…for us.”

When he squeezed her hand, she squeezed his and held on tightly for a full minute before pulling her hand free, leaning her head back, and closing her eyes.

“The killer warned me that she-or he-was going to strike again. If only I’d had more time to figure out who and why and-”

“You warned each of the reunion committee members and Lindsay, everyone who received a doctored invitation. What more could you have done?”

Dean started the car and pulled out into the late-night traffic. The windshield wipers swished back and forth, fighting the pelting rain. Rachel stared sightlessly out the window, her mind filled with a hundred and one what ifs and if onlys.

The one question foremost in her mind-Who had hated Jake Marcott enough to kill him?-was followed by other questions she couldn’t answer. Was the person who killed Mandy and possibly Aurora and Haylie the same person who killed Jake? If so, why wait twenty years to kill again? The whole thing was one giant jigsaw puzzle with several key pieces missing.