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The memory of his mother’s laughter as she pushed him on the park swings dissolved into the dull creak of the library stairs beneath his feet. His stomach grumbled, and he lifted his gaze to the large clock above the check-out desk on the first floor. He’d been here for nearly three hours. He hadn’t planned on staying so long, but seeing Holly so engrossed in an archival search had piqued his curiosity.
The library was unusually quiet, and when he neared the bottom of the stairs, he could hear the click of the microfilm reader’s knob beneath Holly’s fingers. Holly faced away from him at the shared computer desk and stretched her neck to the side, keeping her attention focused on the screen.
He could go over and say hello, except Holly might ask how he got here. He didn’t need her telling his dad that he’d been driving without a license. Plus, she might turn off the screen or wait to continue her archival search until after he’d gone. From the way she flipped through the archival pages with focused intensity, she hadn’t yet found what she was looking for. And he needed to see what was driving her search.
Beside John, a young boy holding a stack of books followed his mother toward the check-out desk. The boy tripped over his own rain boots, sending all but one of his books to the floor with a dense, echoing thud.
Holly turned toward the sound. John spun so she wouldn’t see his face and pretended to thumb through a shelf of nonfiction. He traced a finger over a row of Martha Stewart cookbooks and paused when he reached Donald Trump’sThe Art of the Deal.John withdrew the hardcover from the shelf and leafed through the pages of deal-making advice from the real estate mogul.
When he dared look over his shoulder, Holly was refocused on her computer. She’d taken her hand off the mouse and leaned toward the screen. Her jaw flexed as she chewed a piece of gum.
John returned the book to the shelf and moved down a row of magazines behind Holly’s computer. Halfway down the row, he stared through an empty space in the shelf. The photo that Holly was staring at made his heart leap into his throat.
It was an image of his house.
It had to be an article about his mom’s suicide. John’s face seared with anger, thinking of the phone call he’d listened in on last night. That bitch Laurie needed to stop yapping to Holly about what happened to his mother, even though she hadn’t gotten it right. It had obviously spurred Holly on a mission to learn more.
Plus, his father had no doubt made it worse by making Holly think he was interested in her. He should never have gone over to her house last night.I need to put a stop to this before she ruins our lives.His father clearly did not have a handle on the situation.
Maybe his dad was losing his edge. He was getting older. He was forty-six now. His father’s killings had slowed during the last several years. He was being more careful, which was good; it had kept him out of prison.
Had his dad turned soft? A terrifying thought imploded in his mind like a grenade. What if he actuallylikedthis woman?
He’d heard his dad humming to himself this morning before he’d left for work. And he hadn’t even killed anyone recently. In a couple of years, as far as John knew.
Good thing he has me,John thought as he watched Holly pop a gum bubble with her lips and scribble in her notebook.One of us has to keep our head on straight.
Fortunately, John knew exactly what to do.
Chapter 35
HOLLY
Holly sat forward in her chair, leaning closer to the microfilm reader. Finally. She’d found what she was looking for.TACOMA MOTHER DEAD AFTER LEAPING FROM BALCONY.
Holly was only partly conscious of folding a stick of gum into her mouth as she zoomed in on the article. The house pictured at the top was a different color, but there was no mistaking it—same faux rock on the base of the siding, same picture window above the garage, and same emerald hedges lining the driveway that Clint kept immaculately pruned.
She’d just read the article’s first line when a clatter cut through the quiet library. Holly whirled toward the noise. Her shoulders relaxed when she spotted a young mother bending down to help her small boy pick up the array of children’s books scattered across the tile floor.
Holly returned her attention to the microfilm reader and twisted the knob beneath the screen to enlargeThe Tacoma Timesarticle. Holly read it as quickly as her eyes allowed, herfocus intent on the screen as she absent-mindedly chewed her gum.
The body of a twenty-nine-year-old wife and mother was discovered in the early hours of January 18 by her husband on their concrete patio after she presumably leapt from their third-story balcony above. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
A suicide note was found at the home, and police are treating her death as a suicide. According to her husband, she had never gotten over her ‘baby blues’. He’d been encouraging her to seek help for her depression and reported that she’d been drinking heavily in the months leading up to her death.
Her husband told police that he’d heard her opening a bottle of wine before he went to bed and believes she jumped from the third-story balcony at some point during the night.
Behind her, Holly heard the squeak of sneakers on the tile floor. She spun around, envisioning Jared creeping up behind her before wrapping his hands around her throat, squeezing it shut before she could make a sound.
But there was no one there, at least not that she could see through the rows of bookshelves behind where she sat. Holly exhaled.It’s just someone looking at books.
Holly turned around and finished reading the article.An investigation into her death is still ongoing.
Holly blew a bubble with her gum as she stared at the article. There wasn’t as much information as she’d hoped. If there had been an investigation into Diana’s death, there had to have been an autopsy. Holly ejected the microfilm from the reading machine and returned it to the index aisle before retrieving another stack of microfilm from later issues ofThe Tacoma Timesin 1982.
Holly stifled a yawn when she finally found a second article about Diana’s death, published five weeks later.
TACOMA WOMAN’S DEATH RULED A SUICIDE AFTER JUMP FROM BALCONY.