Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)
Lisa Gardner
Prologue
A YEAR LATER, WHAT SARAH remembered most was waking up to the sound of giggling.
“Shhh. Not so loud! My roommates hate it when I bring boys home. Killjoys need their beauty sleep.”
“So, no making noises? Like this?” A wolf howl from outside Sarah’s bedroom door.
Fresh giggling. Then loud thumps as someone, probably Heidi, ran into the coffee table, the couch, the standing lamp.
“Oh well,” Heidi announced happily. “Quiet was never gonna happen. I’m a screamer and proud of it.”
A man’s voice: “Knew I picked the right girl at the bar. I like screamers. Always have.”
More giggling, more thumps.
Sarah groaned, rolled facedown on her tiny mattress, and pulled her pillow over her head. On the opposite side of the wall, no doubt Christy and Kelly were doing the same. Heidi Raepuro had been a last-minute addition to their apartment. A friend of a friend of a friend, qualified mostly by the fact Heidi was willing to pay extra for her own bedroom, and Sarah, Christy, and Kelly, who’d known one another since freshman year, had really wanted the three-bedroom unit. Walking distance to Boston College, bay windows, hardwood floors, crown molding. When Sarah had first walked into the space, she’d felt like a grown-up. No more minifridge, no more standing-room-only dorm room. No more bare mattress shared with two younger siblings in an overcrowded slumlord’s paradise.
The long nights studying when the rest of her friends had been out partying or repeating their parents’ drug-fueled mistakes had finally paid off.
Which was the other reason she’d fallen in love with the brightly lit apartment. Because after spending her entire childhood sharing, sharing, sharing, this place offered her the greatest luxury imaginable: her own room. Granted, it was barely the size of a twin mattress, more a closet than a bedroom, most likely converted by an enterprising landlord looking to charge a three-bedroom price for what was originally a two-bedroom unit, but Sarah didn’t care. Tiny fit her budget. And with Christy and Kelly able to split the largest room, and silly, vapid Heidi cashing out the other main sleeping space, everyone was happy. Especially Sarah, ensconced in her minuscule slice of paradise.
Except for nights like tonight.
More crashing—then moaning. Good God, didn’t Heidi ever get enough?
A curious scrape.
“Hey now.” Heidi’s voice, hiccupping slightly as she panted from exertion.
Sarah rolled her eyes, pulled the pillow tighter around her ears.
“Wait . . . I don’t want . . . No!”
Sarah sat up just as Heidi screamed. Loud, piercing, and . . .
Do screams have a taste? Fire? Ash? Red-hot cinnamon candies, which as a little girl Sarah liked to let melt on the tip of her tongue?
Or is it more that screams have a color? Green and gold giggles, purple and blue cackles, or this? Molten white. Melt-your-eyeballs, singe-the-hair-on-your-arms, bright, bright white? A color too brilliant for nature, searing straight to the core.
That’s what Heidi screamed. Molten white.
It pierced the thin walls, threatened to blow out the windows. It jolted Sarah, making her sit bolt upright.
And completely, totally, unable to move.
? ? ?
THIS WAS THE PART SHE still didn’t remember well. Not even a year later. The police asked her about the details, of course. Detectives, a forensic nurse, later more investigators, crime scene specialists.
All she could tell them was that the night started with green and gold giggles and ended with molten-white screams. Heidi’s the whitest and brightest but also blessedly short.
Christy and Kelly. Two girls in one room. Best friends, members of the lacrosse team. Forewarned, forearmed, they fought. They hurled trophies. Was the sound of crashing metal a taste or a color? No, just a crash. Followed by screams, all kinds of colors and flavors. Fear, rage, anguish. Determination as one nailed him with a lacrosse stick. Horror as he came back with his blade.
He got Kelly right in the gut (Sarah read the report later), but Kelly got him by the ankles. She rolled herself into him, around him, a human armadillo. And he slashed and he slashed, glancing blows off her ribs, which allowed Christy time to grab the comforter from the lower bunk bed and to throw it at him, tangle up his arms.
“Sarah!” they were screaming. “Help, Sarah! Nine-one-one, nine-one-one!”
Sarah called. Another one of those things she didn’t remember, but later she listened to it at her own request. A recording of her voice, trembling, barely a whisper, as she reached the dispatch center: “Help us, please help us, he’s killing them. He’s going to kill us all.”
She left her room. It had to be done. In her tiny room, she’d be trapped, the proverbial fish in a barrel. She had to get out to open ground.
To protect herself?
To save her roommates?
She didn’t know. A question to ask herself during all the sleepless nights to come.
She left her room.
She went toward her roommates’ bedroom. She saw an open hand through the doorway, Kelly’s splayed fingers, and without thinking Sarah grabbed it. Was she going to pull her roommate to safety? Man up and carry each and every one of them out to the hall? No time to think. Just do. So she grabbed Kelly’s hand and pulled hard.
And found herself holding an arm. Just . . . an arm.
Because, apparently, when a girl armadilloed herself around a madman’s ankles, sooner or later he got tired of slashing his victim and simply dismantled her instead.
Screams ahead of her, Christy, still fighting. Followed by a plea behind her.
“Sarah . . .”
She didn’t know which way to turn. These sounds, these sights, this night, it didn’t register for her. Couldn’t.
Slowly she twisted toward the voice behind her, holding Kelly’s warm, wet arm tight against her chest. She found herself face-to-face with Heidi. The girl had crawled from her bedroom. The skin of her naked shoulders appeared silver in the glow of lights through the windows. Unmarred, untouched. But the blonde was hunched forward awkwardly, cradling her stomach, and already Sarah could pick up the whiff of perforated bowels.
More screaming from the bedroom. Not molten white. Lava red. Pure rage from a star athlete refusing to be cut down in the prime of her life.
And Sarah knew then what she had to do. She turned away from beautiful, stupid, gutted Heidi. She tightened her grip on poor Kelly’s arm, and she joined the fray.
Christy, backed into a corner against the bunk bed, armed with her lacrosse stick. Madman, freed from the comforter, dancing around the body splayed at his feet, enjoying himself, taking his time.
“Excuse me,” Sarah said.
He darted toward Christy. She swung her stick down. Last minute, he twirled left, jabbed the blade into the soft spot beneath her ribs. A wet, squishing sound, followed by Christy’s hollow grunt. She jerked the stick back, tapped him on the side of his head. Not hard, but he retreated.
No screaming now. Just the sound of exertion. Everyone breathing hard.
“Excuse me,” Sarah said again.
For the first time, the blade man stilled. He turned slightly, a frown on his blood-flecked face. Sarah stared at him. She felt as if she needed to see him. Needed to register him. Or none of this could be real. Especially not this moment, when she held out her hands and offered her friend’s severed arm to the man who’d murdered her.
Dark hair. High cheekbones. Sculpted face. Exactly the kind of guy Heidi would bring home from a bar. Exactly the kind of guy who would forever be out of Sarah’s league.
“You forgot this,” she said, still holding out the arm.
(“What?” the first officer had interrupted. “You said what?”