“See, Auntie Ruth!” the niece calls out to her elderly aunt. “This is Brady’s friend and she’s fine! He’s not hurting anyone in there!”
But Mrs. Chelmsford is not having any of this. She stands on the porch, her skeletal hands balled into fists. “I know what I heard!”
I suck in a breath. “What?”
The niece snorts. “I’m so sorry. My aunt has this crazy idea in her head about Brady. She keeps insisting she hears screaming coming from his apartment. I think she’s hallucinating at night. That happens to elderly people.”
My jaw tightens. “Perhaps she shouldn’t be living alone anymore?”
“You may be right.” She shakes her head. “This is all kind of new. She never got worked up like this over the last tenant. I guess her dementia is getting worse.”
“All night I hear screaming!” Mrs. Chelmsford shouts from the porch. Her white hair has become wild. “He’storturing somebody in there! Some poor girl.”
All of a sudden, my knees feel wobbly. I don’t know why though. Mrs. Chelmsford is very impaired. I’ve had patients who had dementia before, and they come up with the wildest fantasies. Nothing she says can be trusted. And the niece doesn’t seem like she believes it either.
“Maybe she’s hearing Brady’s daughter,” I suggest.
The niece cocks her head to the side. “What?”
“I mean,” I say, “when Brady’s daughter is visiting, she probably makes a lot of noise and maybe your aunt thinks it’s screaming.”
She gives me a strange look. “Brady doesn’t have a daughter.”
He…what?
“Anyway,” the niece says, “I’m so sorry about the commotion. I’ll get my aunt inside, and I’ll stay with her until she calms down. Don’t worry yourself—she won’t bother you again.”
As I watch Mrs. Chelmsford’s niece go back up the stairs and persuade her aunt to go back into the house, I get a slow, sinking feeling in my stomach.Brady doesn’t have a daughter.
A few things suddenly occur to me.
Brady appeared in my life at exactly the time that the murders started. Coincidentally—or so I thought. He was working as a bartender, even though given his computer skills in college and his degree, it seems unlikely he wouldn’t be able to find work in Silicon Valley.
Bradydevouredhorror movies when we were in college. I remember the fascination on his face as hewatched those girls get bludgeoned to death. He loved it as much as I did. He admired my father so much, he had a mask in his closet with Aaron Nierling’s face on it.
That man who followed me after I left the bar—the one who got in the terrible accident. Brady must have known him and told him when I arrived. Told him to follow me and find out where I lived.
The cup with my fingerprints at Shelby’s apartment. How easy would it have been for Brady to get a glass with my fingerprints, after all the drinks he served me?
I was racking my brain to try to figure out how someone got into my car and left that decaying hand in my trunk. But it’s no mystery. I handed Brady the keys to my car. How easy would it have been for him to stash that severed hand in my trunk?
And his “daughter’s” room… Locked the first night I came over. Was that all a set up too? To make me think he’s a good guy with a child, when in reality that room is his dungeon? He very conveniently had a story about why there’s no car seat in his car. And I can see his car right now, whichstillhas no car seat.
Brady doesn’t have a daughter.
Oh my God, Brady played me. And here I am, walking right into his lap. Right where he wants me.
I’ve got to get out of here.
“Nora?”
My heart leaps at the sound of Brady’s voice. A frightened look comes over the landlady’s face and she scurries back into her house, followed closely by her niece, and the door slams behind them. Brady is coming aroundthe side of the house, his sockless feet shoved into a pair of sneakers, a jacket hanging open over his T-shirt.
And I’m all alone on this empty street.
“Hi.” I back up a step. “There you are.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Everything okay? I figured you’d ring my doorbell. I’m around back—you know that.”
