Page 33 of M for Murder

Perhaps he’d recently moved to the area.

You know everyone in this neighbourhood. If he’d moved in, you’d know about it. And instead of being so rational, just remember things don’t always turn out okay.

Kylan pushed the thought from her mind and concentrated on making coffee. She reached into the cupboard and pulled out a mug with a quote written on the side in large black letters. It was one of a set of six that Tania had bought her and Lawrie when they first moved in, each bearing a different message.

To have a true sense of humour you have to laugh at yourself occasionally.

Kylan poured the coffee, still too shaken to realise the irony of the comment on the mug that she had selected.

The man had gone, Lawrie wasn’t here, and she shouldn’t worry the police. For the time being, if she could just stop shaking, everything was okay. Best to get through the day and maybe she could try and talk to Lawrie about what had happened later.

She remembered how the receptionist had told her that there was no one in the English Department. So where was he?

Stop being so suspicious. You have no need to worry, he had probably just gone for lunch.

Kylan guessed she was overreacting. It was nearly one thirty. Very likely that he’d popped out for a sandwich. Either that or he was so engrossed in his work he hadn’t heard the phone ringing. Lawrie was fine, she was fine, and tonight she would tell him about the guy from the grocery store, the same guy who had stood staring at her through the kitchen window.

He would probably laugh at her and tell her she was being paranoid, but at least she would have told him.

Lawrie knew her better than anyone. She had to share her problems with him. After all, who else was there?

She thought of Vic. Maybe she could mention the incident to him when she saw him later for dinner. He was a cop and, whilst he probably couldn’t do anything to the guy for staring through her window, he might be able to give her some advice or perhaps offer to monitor the situation. Feeling more relaxed, Kylan finished her coffee then spent her afternoon clearing through the junk in the spare bedroom. It had been piling up for a while and she had no idea what she might find, or where exactly she planned to put it. It was a job that needed doing, though, and it would help focus her thoughts. Pouring a second cup of coffee, she took a final glance out of the kitchen window before making her way upstairs, ready to conquer the task at hand.

By the middle of the afternoon she had almost forgotten about the man at her window and, when he did briefly re-enter her thoughts, she realised that she had probably overreacted.

Lawrie returned to the house just after five, and pale eyes watched him from the shadows as he locked the door of the Volkswagen and climbed the porch steps to the front door.

The shadows. That was where the man had remained for the rest of the afternoon, hoping that Kylan would leave the house and he would have the opportunity to follow her. She hadn’t, though, instead disappearing upstairs and out of his view for the rest of the afternoon.

He should have left then. There was other work to do and he wasn’t going to accomplish anything by hanging around the house. He was wasting time and not being professional, getting too attached to one subject, when there were others.

Already had been others.

And soon there would be more.

Tearing himself away, he headed down to his Buick, discreetly parked in the next street. He knew he had to push all thoughts of Kylan Parker from his mind and concentrate on the next victim.

Climbing into the Buick, he started the engine, shifted into drive, applied pressure to the gas and slid the car out of the parking spot. At the junction he signalled left and pulled out on the main road, heading in the direction of the college.

Time to look for the new victim.

When he was given the sign of who it was to be, it would be time to make his move.

12

A lthough it was Saturday night and since she had been in Juniper, Rebecca had been making an effort to go out and meet new people, this evening she wasn’t sure that she could be bothered to get dressed up.

She had noticed on her way home that the old theatre on the corner of her block was doing an all-night screening of the Friday the 13th movies and decided that, instead of hitting the bars, she would head over there later to watch a couple of them.

On her first weekend in the city she had tagged along to The Coven with Heather, one of the other female officers who worked her shift. The nightclub wasn’t really her scene though. Quite a few of the people in there appeared to be students and Rebecca would have preferred to have been somewhere with a slightly older crowd and a bar that didn’t serve watered-down beer and spirits.

That said, she did have fun, and she made a few new friends, including one guy called David who was a lawyer with a city firm and seemed worth getting to know better. At least that was what she thought, until Heather pulled her to one side and warned her that he was a well-known married flirt. Disgusted, Rebecca had torn up the telephone number he had given her and successfully managed to stay out of his way for the rest of the evening.

She somehow always managed to luck out in the love department in one way or another. Back in Swallow Falls she’d had several boyfriends, none of whom had lasted very long. Two she’d caught cheating on her; another had dumped her for the football team. Then there had been the baseball incident, where, following a huge row with boyfriend number four, a jock called Rick Shapiro, she had thrown the ball at him, smashing him in the face and breaking his nose. Needless to say, she had never seen him again.

While Uncle Lou thought she was doing great, her mother told her that she was too feisty.

‘You’ll never get married, Rebecca, if you keep scaring your suitors away.’