The House Next Door Read online

  I hurry in and there she is, innocently setting out a row of mugs along the counter. She looks both confused and embarrassed to have caused such alarm.

  “It was getting stuffy in there, so I opened a window. And I thought I—I’d make some fresh coffee for you all if anyone wants some.”

  Ellen, the school nurse. Behind her, I see Gina step into the opposite doorway and roll her eyes.

  “That’s not necessary, Mrs. Pierson,” I say, trying to control my irritation. “Why don’t you wait in the living room. Like I asked you to.”

  Over the next ninety minutes, our search goes down without incident. Me, Gina, and the officers turn every square inch of the house inside out, looking for any clues that might link Pierson to Claire’s, Samantha’s, Maria’s, or Patty’s disappearance—or even better, that might lead to finding them alive.

  We carefully bag and tag every possible piece of evidence, including Pierson’s iPhone and laptop. An old paper datebook that may help reveal his whereabouts at the time of the crimes. Some unmarked bottles of pills in the bathroom. A stack of old SLO High School yearbooks filled with signatures—including one signed by Maria Jeffries, the third victim—that might shed light on the vice principal’s relationships with the girls. One of the officers even finds a purple scarf that resembles the one Samantha Gonzalez, the second victim, was allegedly wearing the night she went missing.

  All are tantalizing clues. But none is conclusive.

  Then we do an additional search, a “structural sweep,” pulling up rugs and carpets, moving furniture, checking every crack and crevice to make sure we didn’t miss any hiding spots built into the house itself. Like a trick wall in the back of a closet. A secret nook under a staircase. A trapdoor that leads to a hidden soundproof room where four teenage girls have been locked away for two years.

  Nothing.

  I regroup with Gina in the attic, where it’s stiflingly hot and muggy. My partner has just finished inspecting the roof and rafters and has come up empty-handed.

  “I don’t know whether to be relieved or pissed off,” Gina says. “What a waste of time. We didn’t find a damn thing.”

  “We still have to search the backyard,” I say. “Could get lucky.”

  But Gina frowns. She pulls off her latex gloves with a snap and rolls them into little white pellets.

  “You’re really still convinced Pierson’s our guy?”

  I am. I can’t say why exactly. Call it a hunch. Call it an instinct. Call it years of hunting down bad guys.

  But I absolutely am.

  “What’s all that?” I ask, pointing to a little drafting table in the corner of the attic. On it are some wooden frames, glass panels, and a few small tools and tiny boxes.

  “Apparently,” Gina answers, “Mrs. Pierson is something of a lepidopterist.”

  “Huh?”

  “A butterfly expert. A collector. Have a look yourself.”

  I head over to the workstation and see that pinned inside many of the framed glass panels are various preserved, drying butterflies. There must be dozens at least, each a different shape and size, every color of the rainbow, beautiful and delicate.

  So Ellen Pierson collects butterflies.

  And her husband collects teenage girls.

  Chapter 8

  Ellen felt like she was living inside a terrible dream.

  Her husband was missing. A detective was at her front door, sturdy and good-looking, but polite at first.

  Yet his confidence grew as he explained the shocking reason he was there.

  Michael had been arrested—for drugging a female student and attempting to dump her lifeless body in the woods near Bishop’s Peak.

  As if that wasn’t hard enough to believe, the police also suspected he was behind the disappearance of those four other poor teenage girls who’d gone missing over the past two years, a crime spree that had set the entire town on edge.

  Michael, a dedicated educator, her loving husband. Could it really be?

  “He’s a good man,” Ellen insisted to the detective. “He’s innocent!”

  “We need your help finding the bodies, Mrs. Pierson,” the detective said.

  Ellen sent a hurried text to the principal of her elementary school saying she’d likely be coming in late, if at all, citing “personal reasons.” Now she’s gone numb from head to toe, watching the police tear her home apart, top to bottom.

  This can’t be happening…

  Part of her wishes she could transform into one of her beloved butterflies, then float right out the open window, unseen.

  Another part of her wants to scream and shout, flip over the sofa, hurl the coffee table clean across the room.

  Instead, Ellen just sits there on her overstuffed couch, a human statue, forbidden by the police from even making a pot of coffee, praying that this all really is just a nightmare and she’ll wake up any minute. That Michael will be snoring softly by her side, not sitting in a jail cell. That Brittany Herbert will be home, too, not lying in a hospital bed. That her husband’s laptop, his anxiety medications, the purple scarf he bought her for Christmas four years ago, will all be in their proper places, not in plastic evidence bags on their way to a forensic lab.

  The search finally ends, and the detectives and officers leave.

  At least, Ellen thought they were leaving.

  Instead, she sees they’ve simply relocated to outside, where they continue their invasive search in her backyard. Sifting through her rosebushes. Rooting through her vegetable garden. Poking holes in her lawn.

  With the police outside, Ellen begins to clean up—which will be a herculean task. Every room she walks through is an absolute mess. Every drawer and closet has been rifled through. Every single item she owns has been examined and moved out of place.

  As her numbness begins to wear off, she starts to feel angry. Confused. Violated.

  She knows what will calm her down: her butterflies.

  So Ellen heads up to the attic, to the old desk in the corner where she stores and works on her collection. Of course the police rifled through her tools and framed glass shadow boxes. But they seem to have been gentle enough. Ellen notices a few of her colorful winged specimens have come unpinned, but thankfully none looks damaged.

  Taking a deep breath, she selects a pair of tweezers and begins carefully restoring the butterflies to their proper places. She figures if she can reinstate some semblance of order to this tiny slice of her life, maybe the rest will follow.

  She’s wrong.

  Barely five minutes have passed when she hears some kind of commotion out in her front yard. She peers through a tiny window overlooking her lawn and sees the two detectives and other officers buzzing around like bees on honey.

  One of them is also yelling, barking orders. The words are faint and muffled, but Ellen can just barely make them out.

  And they fill her with dread.

  “We found something!”

  Chapter 9

  Bones.

  Loosely packed topsoil.

  The putrid smell of rotting flesh.

  I know right away we’ve just stumbled on a shallow grave—right in the middle of the killer’s backyard.

  As Gina and the other uniformed officers start cordoning off the Piersons’ backyard with yellow crime-scene tape, I’m already on my cell dialing Dr. Hyong.

  “Hello, Detective, we’re just wrapping up at Bishop’s Peak,” he says as soon as he picks up. “I’m afraid we didn’t find anything. So I’m officially ending the search. I was going to call you this afternoon to tell you, after I grabbed a few hours of sleep.”

  “Sorry, Doc,” I reply, “but no rest for the weary. I’m gonna need your team to pull a double shift. Because here at the Pierson place, we definitely just found something.”

  Within the hour, Hyong and a half dozen fellow white-suited crime-scene techs arrive and set to work. They carefully mark off the grave site, then begin to excavate, photograph, and catalog the brittle, buried
remains.

  Standing on the periphery of the property with Gina, I’m simmering with a mix of emotions. I’m glad my instincts were right. We finally have the proof we need to connect the other girls’ disappearances to Michael Pierson. We can nail the bastard!

  But seeing Hyong and his colleagues sift through the soil, I feel a well of deep empathy for the victims all over again. And fury that those poor young girls had their precious lives cut short.

  “We’re gonna have some new questions for Pierson after this,” Gina says.

  She offers me a pack of chewing gum, which I decline. She shrugs and folds a stick into her mouth, and the faint smell of hot cinnamon is soon tickling my nostrils.

  Anything to replace the smell of death.

  As we continue watching the forensic team, I get an odd sensation—like someone is watching me.

  I turn and look back at the house. And what do you know? Ellen is staring down at us from an attic window. Her expression is cold, blank, like a mannequin’s.

  “I’m going to have a few more questions for Mrs. Pierson, too,” I say.

  “Detectives?” Hyong suddenly calls to us. He’s heading our way, removing his face mask, and shaking his head.

  With concern, Gina and I hurry over to meet him.

  “John, what’s wrong?” I demand.

  “Those bones don’t belong to any of our victims.”

  “What? But how do you—so you’re saying—”

  “No,” he interjects. “They’re just the remains of a dog.”

  Chapter 10

  I’m back on the old beige couch again, sitting next to Ellen, who’s twirling a fresh Kleenex in her hands. A tiny mountain of them has accumulated beside her.

  “He told me…he told me Ruby ran away,” she whimpers.

  “And how long ago was that?” I ask.

  “Four months, two weeks, and five days. I remember it perfectly. I’d just spent the weekend in Fresno. It was my nephew’s third birthday. Michael had to stay here, catch up on some work. When I came home, he sat me down, right on this very couch, and broke the awful news.”

  I nod; her story checks out. Dr. Hyong isn’t a forensic veterinarian, but he estimated, given the state of the dog’s decayed corpse, that it was buried between four and six months ago.

  With a gentle sniffle, Ellen adds, “She…she was such a good girl.”

  I want to give this woman a moment to compose herself. Her pain and shock seem genuine to me. But Gina, perched on a love seat nearby, interjects. Harshly.

  “Wish you remembered the nights those real girls went missing half as well.”

  I know where my partner is going with this, so I shoot her a quick glance—Hey, back off. But she’s on a roll.

  “Chances are looking better and better that your husband killed them, too.”

  Ellen’s bicolored eyes grow wide with horror.

  “What do you mean, my husband killed them…too?”

  Great. This was the other piece of info Hyong gave us about the dog’s remains. I was planning on sharing it with Ellen later, when the time was right, or maybe not even telling her at all. But Gina just spilled the beans.

  “Our forensic expert, Mrs. Pierson,” I say delicately, “observed a prominent indentation on the left side of Ruby’s head. He believes it was caused by blunt-force trauma.”

  “Hard enough to crush Ruby’s little skull,” Gina says, not helping.

  “Her death was quick and painless,” I add, possibly fudging the truth a bit. “But intentional. And cruelty to animals is often associated with cruelty to people. I know this is all hard to hear. But now do you see why it’s so important you tell us everything you can about your husband?”

  Ellen blinks a few times, processing this latest chilling revelation, but stays quiet.

  Through the bay window facing the street, I see Hyong and his team stripping off their white jumpsuits, packing up their response vehicle, and getting ready to leave.

  It’s a harsh reminder that after all this, we’re still no closer to finding any evidence that links Pierson to the disappearance of Claire, Samantha, Maria, or Patty. And we’re no closer to finding those girls, dead or alive. Damn it!

  “Mrs. Pierson,” I snap, starting to succumb to my frustration, “we need your help. You’re married to that man. Think. Hard. Talk to us. Please.”

  Ellen stares right at me. Her lips part slightly, as if she’s going to speak, as if she’s finally going to give us something we can work with. I lean forward in anticipation.

  Then Ellen leans forward, too. And bursts into heaving, ugly sobs.

  Chapter 11

  Precisely twenty-three minutes ago, Ellen pulled her Camry into the Hawthorne Elementary School faculty parking lot. She’s been sitting in it ever since, willing herself to simply open the car door, get out, and head into the school that she loves so much, just as if it were any other day.

  Of course, it’s not any other day. Not even close. It’s her first day back since that handsome detective knocked on her door last week and turned her whole life upside down.

  Since then, Michael has been formally arraigned. But he is still refusing to speak to the police, to his court-appointed lawyer, or even to his own wife.

  Detective McGrath is the opposite; he can’t seem to talk to Ellen enough. He’s been calling her every other day to check in, hoping she might remember some new detail that could help his investigation. But so far, she hasn’t.

  Reporters, too, won’t leave Ellen alone. They’ve been knocking on her door at all hours, trailing her everywhere she goes, begging her to break her silence and give an interview, which she has steadfastly refused to do.

  But the damn press won’t give up! Just this morning, to get to school unseen, Ellen slipped out the back door before dawn, hopped the fence on the far side of the yard, then sped off in her car, which she had deliberately parked a few blocks away from her home. And yet, Ellen could have sworn she saw one of them following her today. No, I’m just being paranoid, she told herself. Or maybe all this stress is starting to play tricks on my mind.

  Ellen had wanted to come back to work to feel some semblance of normalcy in her life again. Just sitting around at home, helpless, was driving her nuts. But now she just feels foolish. And overwhelmed. She rubs her tired, bloodshot eyes. Maybe this was a mistake, she thinks. Maybe I came back too soon. Maybe—

  “Good morning, Nurse Pierson!” comes a chorus of children’s voices.

  Ellen sees a gaggle of kids walking past. They’re giggling and waving, tickled to see the school nurse outside the building and not wearing her trademark white coat.

  Their laughter and innocence tug on Ellen’s heart. Hard. It’s an adorable reminder of why she became a school nurse in the first place: to keep these precious kids healthy. They need you, Ellen tells herself. So quit wallowing and get moving!

  At last, Ellen does. She exits her car, approaches the building, and enters.

  Walking through the halls to her office, however, is an unsettling experience.

  Most of the students she passes greet her happily, like the ones outside. But the glares she gets from her fellow faculty members are fierce and unrelenting. Certainly they have all read the local papers and have been gossiping in the teachers’ lounge for days. They all know Ellen’s husband has been accused of some truly heinous crimes. But far from showing sympathy for their colleague, their expressions range from shock to judgment to horror.

  Ellen shifts her eyes to the ground until she finally reaches the nurse’s office. She hurriedly unlocks the door, then slams it shut.

  The school day begins, and gradually Ellen falls back into the familiar routines of the job she loves, tending to student ailments large and small. She gently cleans and bandages the scraped elbow of a whimpering first-grader named Mackenzie, who fell while playing basketball. She “treats” a third-grader named AJ—who Ellen knows has a history of pretending—for his sore throat by giving him a couple of pieces of candy
she’s stashed in a cabinet. And she reassures a nervous fifth-grader named Carlos that the pimple on his nose might be a little embarrassing, but it’s a perfectly normal part of starting puberty.

  Ellen is a few hours into her morning, reorganizing the first-aid closet, when her cell phone buzzes. She’s gotten a text. Pls see me asap.

  Ellen’s heart skips a beat. It’s an unusual request, especially at this time of day. She starts to text back but decides it’s better to simply do as she was asked.

  After another long, even more unpleasant walk through the halls, Ellen reaches her destination. James Warrick, a distinguished and still nice-looking man despite his thinning hair and middle-aged paunch, is sitting in his office behind a messy desk.

  “Ellen, hi,” he says when he sees her in the doorway. “That was fast. Come on in. And why don’t you shut the door, please?”

  Ellen does both and tries to smile.

  “I haven’t been called to the principal’s office since I was a little girl.”

  She waits for James to reply, but he doesn’t. Normally they have a friendly, even flirty rapport. But Ellen quickly realizes this is going to be a very different kind of conversation.

  “Look, this isn’t easy for me to say,” James begins. “I feel awful. And I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. But given what’s happened…on behalf of the school board…I’m asking you to take some additional time off. Indefinitely.”

  Ellen is too stunned for a few seconds to speak. Then she stammers: “You’re asking me? Or…you’re telling me?”

  “Parents have been calling me all week. Teachers are worried, too.”

  “Worried about what?” Ellen demands, struggling to tamp down her rising anger.

  “Ellen. Be serious. How would you feel if the nurse at your child’s school was married to a kidnapper and attempted murderer? How can I possibly—”

  “My husband is innocent until proven guilty!” Ellen snaps. “And so am I, Jim! Isn’t that how our system works?”