All Around the Town
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Acclaim for
#1 New York Times
Bestselling Author
MARY HIGGINS CLARK
ALL AROUND THE TOWN
“An admirable thriller. . . . The tightly woven plot . . . drives the story forward briskly.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Ms. Clark shows off her skills to perfection.”
—Atlanta JournaL-Constitution
“Clark has pulled out all stops.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Mesmerizing. . . . Go ahead and read ’til the wee hours of the morning—the explosive ending is worth staying up for.”
—Houston Chronicle
DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL
“Clark certainly has a few tricks left in her bag.”
—Boston Globe
“Her best in years . . . a tightly woven, emotionally potent tale of suspense and revenge. . . . With its textured plot, well-sketched secondary characters, strong pacing, and appealing heroine, this is Clark at her most winning.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Few stories of obsession will grab readers quite like this one.”
—Ottowa Citizen
“A fast and fascinating read.”
—Knoxville News-Sentinel (TN)
“Daddy’s Little Girl is the best book Clark has written in two years. Her work seems somehow more solid, the plotting more deft. The . . . ending is so unexpected and harrowing I just had to sit back and allow the story to run through my mind until I absorbed the depth of all I’d just read.”
—Tulsa World (OK)
ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE
“Is a reincarnated serial killer at work in a New Jersey resort town more than a century after he first drew blood? That’s the catchy premise that supports Clark’s 24th book. . . . This is a plot-driven novel, with Clark’s story mechanics at their peak of complexity, clever and tricky.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Like all of Clark’s novels, this one is a suspenseful page-turner that will delight her many fans.”
—Booklist
“The cleverly complex plot gallops along at a great clip, the little background details are au courant, and the identities of both murderers come as an enjoyable surprise. On the Street Where You Live just may be Clark’s best in years.”
—Amazon.com
BEFORE I SAY GOOD-BYE
“Mary Higgins Clark knows what she’s doing. . . . This savvy author always comes up with something unexpected. . . . A hold-your-breath ending.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Romantic suspense has no more reliable champion than Mary Higgins Clark. Her characters are . . . breezy and fun, and so is this confection of a book.”
—Publishers Weekly
“For someone who loves plot, Mary Higgins Clark’s Before I Say Good-Bye should be like manna from heaven. . . . [The] ‘Queen of Suspense’ clearly knows what her readers want. Here she provides it, in spades.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A smooth and easy read.”
—New York Post
“The storytelling skills of the newest grandmaster of mystery writing have never been better.”
—The Hartford Courant (CT)
“Clark holds the reins the whole way through this tale of mischief and secrets, allowing us to unwind her labyrinth of hidden clues only as she wants them to unfold.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
Contents
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Two
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part Three
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Part Four
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
FOR MY NEWEST GRANDSON,
JUSTIN LOUIS CLARK,
WITH LOVE AND JOY.
My sincere thanks and profound gratitude to Walter C. Young, M.D., Medical Director of the National Center for the treatment of Dissociative Disorders in Aurora, Colorado; Trish Keller Knode, A.T.R., L.P.C., art therapist; and Kay Adams, M.A., journal therapist, for the Center. Their guidance, assistance and encouragement have been infinitely invaluable in allowing me to tell this story.
Kudos and heartfelt thanks to my editor Michael V. Korda; his associate, senior editor Chuck Adams; my agent, Eugene H. Winick; Ina Winick, M.S.; and my publicist, Lisl Cade.
And of course my terrific family and friends.
Bless you, my dears, one and all.
Part
One
1
June 1974
Ridgewood, New Jersey
TEN MINUTES BEFORE it happened, four-year-old Laurie Kenyon was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the den rearranging the furniture in her dollhouse. She was tired of playing alone and wanted to go in the pool. From the dining room she could hear the voices of Mommy and the ladies who used to go to school with her in New York. They were talking and laughing while they ate lunch.
Mommy had told her that because Sarah, her big sister, was at a birthday party for other twelve-year-olds, Beth, who sometimes minded her at night, would come over to swim with Laurie. But the minute Beth arrived she started making phone calls.
Laurie pushed back the long blond hair that felt warm on her face. She had gone upstairs a long time ago and changed into her new pink bathing suit. Maybe if she reminded Beth again . . .
Beth was curled up on the couch, the phone stuck between her shoulder and ear. Laurie tugged on her arm. “I’m all ready.”
Beth looked mad. “In a minute, honey,” she said. “I’m having a very important discussion.” Laurie heard her sigh into the phone. “I hate baby-sitting.”
Laurie went to the window. A long car was slowly passing the house. Behind it was an open car filled with flowers, then a lot more cars with their lights on. Whenever she saw cars like that Laurie always used to say that a parade was coming, but Mommy said no, that they were funerals on the way to the cemetery. Even so, they made Laurie think of a parade, and she loved to run down the driveway and wave to the people in the cars. Sometimes they waved back.
Beth clicked down the receiver. Laurie was just about to ask her if they could go out and watch the rest of the cars go by when Beth picked up the phone again.
Beth was mean, Laurie told herself. She tiptoed out to the foyer and peeked into the dining room. Mommy and her friends were still talking and laughing. Mommy was saying, “Can you believe we graduated from the Villa thirty-two years ago?”
The lady next to her said, “Well, Marie, at least you can lie about it. You’ve got a four-year-old daughter. I’ve got a four-year-old granddaughter!”
“We still look pretty darn good,” somebody else said, and they all laughed again.
They didn’t even bother to look at Laurie. They were mean too. The pretty music box Mommy’s friend had brought her was on the table. Laurie picked it up. It was only a few steps to the screen door. She opened it noiselessly, hurried across the porch and ran down the driveway to the road. There were still cars passing the house. She waved.
She watched until they were out of sight, then sighed, hoping that the company would go home soon. She wound up the music box and heard the tinkling sound of a piano and voices singing, “ ‘Eastside, westside . . .’ ”
“Little girl.”
Laurie hadn’t noticed the car pull over and stop. A woman was driving. The man sitting next to her got out, picked Laurie up, and before she knew what was happening she was squeezed between them in the front seat. Laurie was too surprised to say anything. The man was smiling at her, but it wasn’t a nice smile. The woman’s hair was hanging around her face, and she didn’t wear lipstick. The man had a beard, and his arms had a lot of curly hair. Laurie was pressed against him so hard she could feel it.
The car began to move. Laurie clutched the music box. Now the voices were singing: “ ‘All around the town . . . Boys and girls together . . .’ ”
“Where are we going?” she asked. She remembered that she wasn’t supposed to go out to the road alone. Mommy would be mad at her. She could feel tears in her eyes.
The woman looked so angry. The man said, “All around the town, little girl. All around the town.”
2
SARAH HURRIED ALONG the side of the road, carefully carrying a piece of birthday cake on a paper plate. Laurie loved chocolate filling, and Sarah wanted to make it up to her for not playing with her while Mommy had company.
She was a bony long-legged twelve-year-old, with wide gray eyes, carrot red hair that frizzed in dampness, milk-white skin and a splash of freckles across her nose. She looked like neither of her parents—her mother was petite, blond and blue eyed; her father’s gray hair had originally been dark brown.
It worried Sarah that John and Marie Kenyon were so much older than the other kids’ parents. She was always afraid they might die before she grew up. Her mother had once explained to her, “We’d been married fifteen years and I’d given up hope of ever having a baby, but when I was thirty-seven I knew you were on the way. Like a gift. Then eight years later when Laurie was born—oh, Sarah, it was a miracle!”
When she was in the second grade, Sarah remembered asking Sister Catherine which was better, a gift or a miracle?
“A miracle is the greatest gift a human being can receive,” Sister Catherine had said. That afternoon, when Sarah suddenly began to cry in class, she fibbed and said it was because her stomach was sick.
Even though she knew Laurie was the favorite, Sarah still loved her parents fiercely. When she was ten she had made a bargain with God. If He wouldn’t let Daddy or Mommy die before she was grown, she would clean up the kitchen every night, help to take care of Laurie and never chew gum again. She was keeping her side of the bargain, and so far God was listening to her.
An unconscious smile touching her lips, she turned the corner of Twin Oaks Road and stared. Two police cars were in her driveway, their lights flashing. A lot of neighbors were clustered outside, even the brand-new people from two houses down, whom they hadn’t even really met. They all looked scared and sad, holding their kids tightly by the hand.
Sarah began to run. Maybe Mommy or Daddy was sick. Richie Johnson was standing on the lawn. He was in her class at Mount Carmel. Sarah asked Richie why everyone was there.
He looked sorry for her. Laurie was missing, he told her. Old Mrs. Whelan had seen a man take her into a car, but hadn’t realized Laurie was being kidnapped . . .
3
1974–1976
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
THEY WOULDN’T take her home.
They drove a long time and took her to a dirty house, way out in the woods somewhere. They slapped her if she cried. The man kept picking her up and hugging her. Then he would carry her upstairs. She tried to make him stop, but he laughed at her. They called her Lee. Their names were Bic and Opal. After a while she found ways to slip away from them, in her mind. Sometimes she just floated on the ceiling and watched what was happening to the little girl with the long blond hair. Sometimes she felt sorry for the little girl. Other times she made fun of her. Sometimes when they let her sleep alone she dreamt of other people, Mommy and Daddy and Sarah. But then she’d start to cry again and they’d hit her, so she made herself forget Mommy and Daddy and Sarah. That’s good, a voice in her head told her. Forget all about them.
4
AT FIRST the police were at the house every day, and Laurie’s picture was on the front page of the New Jersey and New York papers. Beyond tears, Sarah watched her mother and father on “Good Morning America,” pleading with whoever took Laurie to bring her back.
Dozens of people phoned saying they’d seen Laurie, but none of the leads was useful. The police had hoped there’d be a demand for ransom, but there was none.
The summer dragged on. Sarah watched as her mother’s face became haunted and bleak, as her father reached constantly for the nitroglycerin pills in his pocket. Every morning they went to the 7 A.M. mass and prayed for Laurie to be sent home. Frequently at night Sarah awoke to hear her mother’s sobbing, her father’s exhausted attempts to comfort her. “It was a miracle that Laurie was born. We’ll count on another miracle to bring her back to us,” she heard him say.
School started again. Sarah had always been a good student. Now she pored over the books, finding that she could blot out her own relentless sorrow by es aping
into study. A natural athlete, she began taking golf and tennis lessons. Still she missed her little sister, with aching pain. She wondered if God was punishing her for the times she’d resented all the attention paid to Laurie. She hated herself for going to the birthday party that day and pushed aside the thought that Laurie was strictly forbidden to go out front alone. She promised that if God would send Laurie back to them she would always, always take care of her.
5
THE SUMMER PASSED. The wind began to blow through the cracks in the walls. Laurie was always cold. One day Opal came back with long-sleeved shirts and overalls and a winter jacket. It wasn’t pretty like the one Laurie used to wear. When it got warm again they gave her some other clothes, shorts and shirts and sandals. Another winter went by. Laurie watched the leaves on the big old tree in front of the house begin to bud and open, and then all the branches were filled with them.
Bic had an old typewriter in the bedroom. It made a loud clatter that Laurie could hear when she was cleaning up the kitchen or watching television. The clatter was a good sound. It meant that Bic wouldn’t bother with her.
After a while, he’d come out of the bedroom holding a bunch of papers in his hand and start reading them aloud to Laurie and Opal. He always shouted and he always ended with the same words, “Hallelujah. Amen!” After he was finished, he and Opal would sing together. Practicing, they called it. Songs about God and going home.
Home. It was a word that her voices told Laurie not to think about anymore.
Laurie never saw anyone else. Only Bic and Opal. And when they went out, they locked her in the basement. It happened a lot. It was scary down there. The window was almost at the ceiling and had boards over it. The basement was filled with shadows, and sometimes they seemed to move around. Each time, Laurie tried to go to sleep right away on the mattress they left on the floor.
Bic and Opal almost never had company. If someone did come to the house, Laurie was put down in the basement with her leg chained to the pipe, so she couldn’t go up the stairs and knock on the door. “And don’t you dare call us,” Bic warned her. “You’d get in big trouble, and, anyhow, we couldn’t hear you.”
After they’d been out they usually brought money home. Sometimes not much. Sometimes a lot. Quarters and dollar bills, mostly.