Page 45 of Silent Ridge

I put all the printer sheets in a folder to take home with me. I want to find the tape on Megan Moriarty. Ronnie has an address for Mr. Moriarty, her father, but I hesitate to talk to him again. He’s a letch but he seemed genuinely broken over the loss of his daughter. This case has been nothing but pain for me. And for all the ones in the path of Hurricane Alex.

Dan hasn’t called. Not even to yell at me. On the way home, I drive by Dan’s shop downtown. The front of the building is all windows with stands displaying all of his carvings. No lights are on inside. His truck isn’t there unless it’s parked behind the building. I slow down and think of stopping. I don’t want these feelings. Just when I’m starting to get comfortable with the idea of dating, my past has to get in the way. He’s not from my past. Maybe not my future.

I make it home, park and watch the front of my house. I left the light on in the entryway and it was still lit. I make a mental note to buy lightbulbs and replace the whole damn bunch of them.

I look around before getting out and then look up and down the street. The usual cacophony of noise from people and a car down the street playing music.

I take my key out, draw my .45 from the shoulder holster and then try the door. It’s locked. I feel silly for having a gun in my hand to enter my own house. While I’ve got the gun out, I think of going down to the loud car and introducing myself. But I don’t. I don’t need to attract the attention.

Inside, I feel uneasy. The last couple of months have been hard on me. One murder after another, being shot, watching Ronnie get kidnapped, receiving emails from my stalker and now Monique brutalized by someone from my past. And there’s Hayden suddenly showing up and offering only a tiny hope of reconciliation. I don’t even know where he is or have a number to contact him. Maybe he’s safer staying away from me.

I’m almost one hundred percent sure my stalker and the killer are the same person: Michael Rader; but then, could it be someone else that Monique angered? I can’t count that out. And apparently she had mentioned Megan Moriarty and Shannon Blume to Mr. Bridges in the advocacy group. She talked about them enough for him to remember their names. There’s no telling what hornets’ nest she poked.

It’s still early. I hang my blazer in the closet. I shrug out of the shoulder holster and hang it on the back of the chair at my desk. I take all the research I brought home, spread it across the top of my bed and go back to the desk. The bottle of Scotch and a plastic tumbler are in a drawer with two packs of Cheetos. I have dinner.

I open another drawer and take out the tapes and player. I know which date I want. I slide it into the player and pour a generous amount of amber liquid in my cup and open both bags of Cheetos. It might be a two-bag tape, with a lot of amber waves of grain.

I stuff Cheetos in my mouth and go find a paper towel to wipe the orange stuff off. I hit the “play” button.

Dr. A: Tell me about Megan Moriarty. What did you find out?

The tape hisses as I pause. I’m thinking. Gathering the information.

Me: She’s another pretty blond. Sixteen.

Dr. A: The same age as Leanne and Shannon.

Me: Yes. Megan Moriarty was on the cheerleading squad at Kentridge High School

Megan lived in a suburb further south of Seattle. I don’t think I would have liked her. I know that it’s wrong. For some reason I never liked the girls on the cheerleading squad. They were so over-the-top in their self-indulgence that if you weren’t a mirror they’d never look at you. At least, they never looked at me. Caleb Hunter said I was way prettier than the six girls that considered South Kitsap their personal turf.

There’s a longer pause on the tape this time, but Dr. Albright doesn’t interrupt my train of thought. The Cheetos, however, do. I can’t stand to be messy. I shut the tape off and go to the bathroom. I wash my hands and face. When I look in the mirror, I think of my mom. Every year I look more like her. Every time I have that thought, I’m reminded of Hayden. I wonder if I can find him. I wonder if he’s in Port Townsend. I don’t know if tracking him down is a good idea, but tomorrow I’m going to try and find out where he lives. I need to know that he’s okay. But surely, if I didn’t know he was back in the country, much less in town, no one else will know. He’ll be safe. Probably. My mother might know, but there’s no way I’ll open that wound again.

Forty-Two

The gun is next to me on the nightstand. I close my eyes but I can’t get Michael Rader out of my mind. The picture Ronnie showed me reminds me too much of my bio-dad, too much of me, too much of the genes we share. I wonder if there’s a DNA strand specifically for killers. If gene splicing, like I saw on a Twitter video clip, can replace that malignant gene with a normal one.

My mom said to look in the past. If it was meant to be a clue maybe it meant Michael Rader’s past and not mine. I give up trying to sleep and take the gun back to my desk. I lay the gun down, get on the computer and skim through the news articles and blogs about the Moriarty case and Mock’s death in prison. I pause and stare at a picture of Mock. He looks bewildered, sitting next to his defense attorney.

In the picture’s background I see Dan Moriarty—younger but out of shape. Next to him is a woman with her hands pressed against her chest as if she’s holding her breaking heart inside. Megan’s mom. She has those same haunted eyes that I saw in Mrs. Blume. No mother ever gets over such a loss.

Next, I scroll down and read one of the articles. The headline is:

Mock Succumbs to Injuries

The article gives me a recap of his crime and a better sense of who Kim Mock was as a person. He was eighteen years old when he was convicted and given a life sentence. He was moved from the juvenile justice center in Seattle to the men’s correctional facility in Monroe. I remember Monroe as a sleepy prison towneast of Everett, Washington. As I read, it is as though I’m in a race to capture every detail I can in one giant gulp. He was considered a model prisoner there, teaching other inmates how to read and write. He even led a Bible study group.

The article reads:

On Tuesday Mock was in the prison chapel when an assailant stabbed him with a knife made from a flattened and sharpened spoon. Mock was taken to the infirmary, where he died after surgery. His attacker was never identified. The prison was on lockdown for twenty-four hours, but is operating normally today.

At the bottom of the piece, mention is made that therewasa pending investigation into Mock’s death.

I move further down the computer screen. The follow-up article is so brief that if I blinked at the moment it passed in front of me I would have missed it.

Review into Mock Death Complete

Once again, I see the name of the guard who found Kim Mock stabbed to death and alone.

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