Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [93]
A Glen Rock detective walked into the kitchen. “We're ninety-nine percent sure Lanning is the guy,” he said, trying to control the excitement in his voice. “I watched that program the other night. One of the clues they talked about is that Charley Muir loved to plant yellow mums. We just found three big garbage bags filled with them in the garage. We figure he watched that program, too, and got nervous about them.”
Through the window, they could see Emily crossing the drive?way. She joined them in the kitchen. “Ted Wesley called me and said you're checking out this guy. He filled me in on some of the details. You were talking about the mums in the garage? Zach planted them a little over a week ago on a Saturday and dug them up and planted new flowers twenty-four hours later. I thought it was very odd, but on the other hand he was always very strange.”
“Emily,” Jake said, softly, “we're pretty certain now that Zach Lanning is the serial killer Charley Muir. There's something else we have to tell you and I know it's going to be very upsetting.”
Emily froze. “It can't be worse than what I'm realizing. Back in June, he offered to walk Bess for me in the afternoons. I keep Bess on the enclosed porch during the day and I gave him a key to that area only, not to the door that opens into the kitchen. But one night when I came home late he was sitting inside the porch and it scared me. I stopped the dog walking immediately. I made up some excuse for ending it, but I could tell that he didn't buy it and he was upset.”
Her eyes widened and her face paled. “I'm sure now that he was in my house last week. One night when I came home I noticed that the bottom drawer in one of the dressers in my bedroom had a small piece of a nightgown sticking out of it. I was certain I hadn't left it like that.”
She stopped. “Oh, my God. Now I know what was bothering me yesterday when I packed those nightgowns to give away. One of them was missing! Jake, tell me what you have to say.”
Jake pointed to the window. “Emily, he's got a listening device planted in your house. We could hear you talking to your dog just now.”
The enormity of Zach's invasion into her life made Emily physi?cally ill. She immediately had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and her legs felt wobbly.
At that moment a Glen Rock detective rushed in. “Looks like we've got a burglary across the street. There's a screen cut out of a back window and the old lady who lives there isn't answering the door. We're going in.”
Tryon, Rosen, and Emily hurried across the street with the po?lice. An officer kicked in the front door. Within a few minutes they knew that Madeline Kirk was not in the house. “Check the ga?rage,” Tryon ordered. “There's a car key in a dish by the kitchen door.”
Following a few steps behind the officers, Emily observed that Madeline Kirk's afghan was crumpled on the floor in the den. She gasped when she saw the pad on the table next to the chair. The words Fugitive Hunt were written on the pad. A pen was lying across it. Now certain that something bad had happened to her neighbor, she followed the detectives into the garage. They were searching the interior of Madeline Kirk's car.
“Open the trunk,” Billy Tryon directed.
As the trunk was raised, the odor of death was overpowering. Tryon carefully untied the twine holding the garbage bags together and lifted one of them. The rigor mortis that had set in had pre?served the look of terror on the elderly woman's face.
“Oh, my God,” Emily moaned. “That poor helpless soul. This man is a monster.”
“Emily,” Jake said gently. “You're lucky you didn't end up like her.”
Just Take My Heart
63
Mike Gordon went directly to