To Catch a Killer(18)

I know the contents of this box by heart but in order to be completely sure I go through each thing, one piece at a time.

Eight-inch chef’s knife. Police reports. Paperwork and my mom’s photo albums. Everything is here and intact. I save the plastic sleeve containing her shirt for last. I don’t even need to remove it from the plastic. Just laying the string that Journey threw at me on top tells me it’s a perfect match to the blue-and-white peasant print. What does this mean? Are there two shirts exactly the same? Is someone trying to re-create my mother’s murder with me as the victim this time?

It’s a chilling thought.

Rachel is expecting me downstairs but I have to fully check this out. I have to know what I’m dealing with.

Wearing rubber gloves and only touching a small spot on the neckline, I gingerly pull the shirt completely out of the plastic sleeve and open it up. The style has no collar but a deep, V-like split in the front that’s designed to have a long string or tie on each side of the split so it can be tied closed.

One tie is attached and caked with blood.

The other is missing.

I examine the wad of fabric Journey threw at me. Realization drips into me like acid. This strip of fabric is not from a top like my mother’s. It’s from her actual shirt.

A hot, nauseating chill rolls through me.

There’s only one person who could have kept this tie for all this time, and that is the person who killed her. Journey would have been a baby back then, like me.

So it couldn’t have been him.

Maybe the killer gave it to Journey … and sent him here to taunt me with it.

No. That makes no sense. No one knows I have this box. Without the box, the tie doesn’t match anything.

I slide the shirt back into the sleeve and place the extra tie on top. Then I return the box to the wooden cabinet and lock it up.

So much for Rachel’s assurances. I’m clearly more responsible for Miss Peters’s death than anyone knows.

I return to my room and throw myself into a cleaning frenzy.

While I’m at it, I track everything the police took. They left the printer, but took my laptop and my MP3 player. Sydney even made me hand over my cell phone. I’m basically banished to the ’70s that Rachel is so fond of carrying on about. She grew up just fine without all of this technology.

Spare me.

Once my room is back together, I head down to set the table for dinner. It’s some kind of stew, delicious and filling. Rachel’s not very talkative and neither am I. But we make it through. She cooked, so I handle the cleanup. While I work, she stays and reads. Normally, I’d hang out for a while, too. But since I don’t have my computer, it’s easy to say I’m going to bed early. Besides, after everything that’s gone down today, I’m exhausted.

Despite a headful of fitful thoughts, I actually do drift off to sleep.

*

Hours later, I bolt awake, caught between some crazy dream and thinking a strange noise woke me up. I fumble for the light on my nightstand. It blinks on, casting a reassuring glow. Something nags at me but I can’t seem to grasp it.

Then I spot the slash of white splayed across the carpet in front of the French doors that enter my bedroom from the balcony. It’s the English report I left on my nightstand. Except now it’s on the floor, and there’s a very large shoe print stamped onto the back of it.

A man’s shoe print.

Other black smudges stain the light gray carpet in several areas, but the print on the back of the paper is clear and distinct. I crouch low, my nose literally an inch away from the crisp outline of the heel of a shoe with rays that cut through a wavy circular tread at the top and a familiar logo stamped clearly in the middle.

I rock back on my heels. While I was sleeping, someone came in through my balcony doors and stamped the bottom of his shoe in black grime on the back of my report.

Someone was in my room.

Bold, terrifying images of Miss Peters, floating on her back in a pool of blood, and the police photos of my mother, in the same position, wearing that blue and white shirt.

Rachel!

I have to get to her.

I quietly make my way downstairs, jumping at the crazy tall shadows that suddenly dance along the wall before realizing it’s only me, sneaking past the night-light. I duck into the kitchen and collect a small knife from the drawer. Then I proceed slowly to Rachel’s bedroom at the back of the house. Where my balcony overlooks the street, Rachel’s overlooks the backyard.

Her door is closed, no light shining from under the crack. I press my ear to the wood. At first it’s silent, like a tomb. And then I hear rustling and creaking floorboards. The hinge on her balcony door howls.

I fling her door open wide in time to catch a tall shadow lurking on her balcony.

I scream, and the shadow clatters down the stairs.

Rachel leaps out of bed and grabs me.

“There’s a man on your balcony. Right there. Right there.” I’m pointing frantically.

Rachel barely glances outside. Instead she pulls me into the hall, even though I resist. “Rachel, you’re not listening to me.”

She takes me by the shoulders and steers me to the kitchen.

“Shhhh. Calm down.” She’s using her soothing voice. “There’s no one out there. It’s just a nightmare. Is that a knife? Give me that. Now sit down; I’ll make some hot chocolate.”