The Meridians(52)

And something told him that danger was, in fact, very near.

He again reached for his gun automatically, as had when confronted by John Doe in his office, and once again his fingers touched only empty folds of cloth. He still owned a weapon, it was true, even had a concealed carry license. But that meant only that he could carry it in the glove compartment of his car, not on his person.

He dropped his hand and looked around, every muscle vibrating and alert for the quietest sound, the merest hint of peril.

Nothing. The room was empty. Empty and dark.

He flicked on the light switch, and the recessed light in the middle of the ceiling turned brightly on.

The room was empty.

So why was Scott still as jittery as he had been his first night as a rookie cop, feeling like there was danger around every corner, like every person he saw was a potential life-threatening menace.

He looked around the room again. Still nothing.

But there was the closet.

Normally closets did not worry Scott. In spite of the loss of his family, he had not turned into a paranoid lunatic who saw threats in every shadow, terror in the corner of every room. But this closet carried with it a definite air of death. As though a dark shadow had settled around the bright room only in the location of the closet.

As though someone might be hiding inside.

Scott thought momentarily about calling for Gil or Gil's brother, Brad, then decided against it. Though both men were famous for their big hearts and generous natures, neither was particularly famous for letting an opportunity to harangue a friend go by, and Scott was in no mood to be constantly joshed for having a case of the silly-willies in the event that the closet should turn out to be harmless and empty.

Besides, he didn't want Gil or Brad - or anyone else - getting hurt if the closet was in fact a source of some kind of threat.

So he went to the closet alone.

He sidled up to it and waved a hand in front of it, half expecting someone inside to see movement through the cracks in the French-style doors and start shooting.

But nothing happened.

He reached out a hand to grasp the doorhandle, again tensing as though ready to be shot, or to have a knife slice through the crack between the doors and attempt to cut him wide open.

Again, nothing happened.

His fingers curled around the handle.

He took a deep breath.

And threw open the door.

No one was inside.

But movement did catch his eye.

A piece of paper fluttered slowly to the floor of the closet, as though it had been sitting on the small shelf and the door opening had created a vacuum that sucked it off its resting spot.

Scott leaned over to pick up the paper, and as he did the hackles on his neck rose even further, if that were possible. He looked around as he bent down, half expecting some nameless assailant -

(Mr. Gray)

- to come rushing at him brandishing an axe or a crowbar or some equally threatening weapon.

But there was no one. He was still alone.

So why was his long-dormant cop sense tingling so loudly he felt like Gil would have to come at any moment and ask what that strange noise was?

Scott picked up the paper.

He looked at it. And his heart fell. Down, down, down, plummeting through his ribcage and seeming like it fell right out of him and continued its plunge until it came to rest well beneath the surface of the earth.

There was writing on the paper.

Thick, black scrawl. Childish, as though a kid had written it in the midst of a seizure...or a rage so severe that the pen could not even be properly held.

"I found you once, Kevin," said the paper, "and I'll find you again."

The paper, the lettering, everything but the words themselves were the exact mirror of the paper that Scott had found in his own apartment in L.A. so many years ago.

"I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin," that first note had said.

And now it had a brother.

Scott glanced around again, expecting now to see Mr. Gray in the room with him, knife in hand, ready to cut Scott's throat and then to find little Kevin in the cab of the van and do likewise to him.

There was no one.

Scott was alone, alone in a room with nothing but two boxes and a note that had been written by a madman determined to kill him, and to kill Kevin.

"I found you once, Kevin, and I'll find you again."

Mr. Gray had been here.





***





24.

***

Meridian was all that it had promised to be in those opening hours: warm and inviting and a place where Lynette instantly felt at home. True to Scott's prediction, after the men of the neighborhood moved her boxes in - they then helped her position all her furniture and were done and gone by three in the morning - she was awakened the next morning by the neighborhood "Welcoming Committee." The Welcoming Committee was a group of six women who showed up at her house with a breakfast of donuts and scones and who insisted on coming in to answer any and all questions that Lynette had about Meridian.

Lynette let them in with some sense of worry. Kevin did not tend to react well to strangers, and especially not to large groups of them. And more than that, she knew that most strangers did not react well to Kevin. So when he ambled out in the morning, looking at the floor and refusing to speak a word, then bolted back into his room when he realized that there were strangers in the house, Lynette was prepared to lose all of her new "friends."