Page 96 of M for Murder

Her doctor told her she had made the right decision in staying. He said that she was still too traumatised by the incident and there were a lot of buried feelings that she had to learn to deal with. If she went back to Juniper it was possible she might have a nervous breakdown. She accepted the diagnosis and agreed to stay with her family, but then Lawrie came to visit her, and she knew that she couldn’t let him leave her again.

She told him how she felt and within three weeks they were married.

Jennifer Isaac had stopped existing the day she had decided to reinvent herself and start going by her middle name, Kylan. Now she had become Mrs Parker she was finally able to shake off the one piece of her past that still haunted her, her maiden name, Isaac.

Things had gone okay at first. It was scary returning to places that held such bad memories and she regularly suffered from nightmares in which Boone was coming to get her. She had Lawrie for support, though, and her records had been transferred to one of the therapy groups in the city. The sessions she attended helped and her new doctor gave her pills to help her sleep through the nightmares.

She convinced herself that she was safe. Eight years had passed. If the serial killer was still alive and looking for her, surely Juniper was the last place he would expect to find her.

Lawrie had his teaching job, back at the same college where she had been attacked. At first Kylan refused to go near the place, but with time she gradually grew more confident and eventually gave in to his wishes and went back to finish her college degree.

Living off campus made it easier. Stepping inside the dormitories was something she didn’t think she would ever be able to do again, but the day-to-day routine of attending her lectures helped and, if anything, made her learn to deal with what had happened. Of course, she was always more on guard than before. She avoided going places alone and often found herself glancing over her shoulder to check that she wasn’t being followed, but it helped knowing Lawrie was close by. If she ever needed someone to talk to he would be there for her.

Or so she thought.

It was the day in the grocery store when things had taken a turn for the worse, when she had first noticed the man watching her. Then, of course, she had seen him at her kitchen window. He had something to do with Rodney Boone. She knew it. Did he have spies out there looking for her? Keeping an eye on her, until he was ready to make his move?

She tried to ignore it, tell herself she was safe and that the whole situation had nothing to do with Boone. She needed Lawrie more than ever, but she didn’t dare talk to him. It was almost as though he was so preoccupied with his work that he no longer had time for her.

She had changed her name, her looks, her whole identity, but still she felt vulnerable. Now she wasn’t sure if she could even trust the man who had promised to look after her. Feeling desperately alone and scared of being attacked a second time, she wasn’t willing to take any chances. That was when she had packed her case and left.

Her sister, Tania, lived in Seattle; Kylan knew it was a place she could go and feel safe, to get away from the pressures that were building in her head. She needed to be alone for a while, to make some decisions about what was happening to her and to the people around her. Her plans to make things better were not working and she was terrified that if she wasn’t careful, Boone might be granted a second chance to kill her.

Figuring that if Lawrie really loved her, he would understand, she had caught a cab to the bus station and booked herself a ticket on the next Greyhound.

Now she was in Seattle, in Tania’s house. Her sister wasn’t home, so she had let herself in with the spare key kept in the barbecue, but she was feeling more alone than ever. In an attempt to obliterate her fears, she took the bottle of gin from the liquor cabinet and went upstairs, where she sat in her sister’s bedroom drinking it neat from the bottle, the curtains drawn shut to keep out the demons.

Eventually, too exhausted to think any more and too drunk to care she fell back on the bed and closed her eyes, hoping to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Instead she dreamt of a faceless man who held a playing card out to her and when she took the card from him and studied it close, she realised that the joker in the picture had the smiling face of Rodney Boone.

38

SAN PALIMO, CALIFORNIA. WEDNESDAY 7TH MAY 1997

T he old newspapers stacked high in the back room of the library showed Max that he and Boaz had a mammoth task on their hands.

Most libraries now had up-to-date computer equipment, but San Palimo was only a small town and not yet able to afford such luxuries. Agnes Barnes had explained that the library hadn’t been set up long and, due to a staff shortage, nobody had really had time to sort out any kind of filing system or date order for the papers. She had pointed a long finger towards the back of the room, telling them that was where they were likely to find most of the papers from the early sixties, and Max and Vic had gone to work.

They worked through the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening, then Max suggested they take a night shift each, so they could both get some sleep. He agreed to take the first shift and Boaz left at ten to book them a room at the motel across the street, arranging to come back at two to take over.

As Karen Harris had still been hanging around in the library after hours, Max suspected that Boaz wouldn’t actually use the room for sleep. He just hoped that the two of them wouldn’t leave the bed in too much of a mess and, of course, that Boaz wouldn’t forget to come and relieve him. Looking at his wristwatch, he saw that it wasn’t quite midnight and he cursed having over two hours to go. His eyes were sore, and his back ached from leaning over the papers. He stood up and stretched, trying to ease his aching muscles. What he wouldn’t give to be back home right now, his back rested against the plumped-up pillows, a large glass of scotch on the nightstand, and Rita in bed beside him.

When he was actually home, and that was seldom these days, the two of them liked to spend the evening in bed, either reading or watching re-runs of old TV shows on cable. He guessed the idea would seem boring to a lot of people, but to him it was heaven.

He knew he shouldn’t complain. Max loved his job and he would hate it if he ever got stuck behind a desk. Now the boys were grown-up, Rita had more spare time, and she sometimes flew out to meet him if he had a free weekend. But when he was stuck in a small-town library in the middle of the night, rummaging through old copies of newspapers, it was difficult to be appreciative of these things.

So far, he had gone through all the papers from April 1963 to mid-November. He hoped that Agnes Barnes was right about the year of Myron White’s death. It would be unlucky if they were wrong by one year. Glancing at the large pile of papers that he had already gone through, he hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be the case.

Max made himself as comfortable as possible on the floor and opened the yellow-stained front page of the San Palimo Press for the 21st November. The paper had closed its doors back in 1972 and was now a derelict building on the outskirts of town. Agnes Barnes had told him and Boaz that there had been plans for the last ten years to turn the old press building into an apartment block. As yet, nothing had been done.

He scanned the page before him and turned over, disturbing a thick film of dust on the page beneath. Sneezing loudly for about the twentieth time since he’d been in the room he swore at his dust allergy.

Well, look at you, old buddy. Twenty years with the Bureau and you find yourself shuffling papers in a dusty old library. Is life the pits or what?

He laughed to himself, thinking he should have cajoled Joel into coming down here instead. Had he known what the visit to San Palimo would entail, he would have given it his best shot.

Maybe he had been foolish in letting Boaz off so lightly. Instead of allowing the lazy officer the chance to go partying with some babe he’d picked up, he should have made him stay at the library all night and search through the papers while Max supervised.

Too late now, buddy. You’ve taken the job on, so you might as well get on with it.