Killing Fear Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ALSO BY ALLISON BRENNAN

  EXCERPT FOR TEMPTING EVIL

  KILLING FEAR FREE BOOK OFFER

  EXCERPT FOR KILLING FEAR

  PRAISE FOR ALLISON BRENNAN

  COPYRIGHT

  For my grandmother, Florence Riley Hoffman,

  who loved me unconditionally

  and always told me I could do anything.

  I miss you, Grandma.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, many people helped make this story as real as possible. If there are any factual errors, they are solely my responsibility.

  First and foremost, Joe Edwards, former California State corrections officer who worked on death row at San Quentin, was invaluable in providing information about the prison and answering questions as they arose. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, who not only served as a liaison but provided her own insight and experience. Thank you both!

  Forensic psychologist and author Mary Kennedy once again answered numerous questions about my villain to help keep him both real and chilling. Seth Unger with the California Department of Corrections helped with information about the prison system; Jabie Gray, general manager of Discount Gun Mart and Indoor Range, was instrumental in helping me understand the changing gun laws, gun safety, and how the range operates; and Marty Fink with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department promptly answered questions about criminalists.

  The fabulous writers in the Kiss of Death chapter of Romance Writers of America answered a myriad of questions, a huge help when I was on deadline.

  I often find myself writing outside of the house, so a special thanks to Elk Grove businesses who let me claim a table for hours at a time, including: Starbucks, BJ’s Restaurant, Chili’s, and the Elk Grove Brewery.

  To everyone at Ballantine, especially Charlotte and Dana: we make a great team. To everyone at Trident Media Group, especially Kim Whalen: thanks for believing in me from the start.

  Thanks, Mom, for your constant help and support. And to Dan and our kids: I really appreciate all of you tolerating my many writing eccentricities and deadlines. I love you all.

  PROLOGUE

  Seven years earlier

  Theodore Glenn sat at the defense table alone, hands loosely folded in front of him, watching the jury foreman hand the bailiff his fate written on a folded white card. The bailiff in turn handed the paper to the judge, who looked at it without comment or expression.

  Theodore wasn’t concerned, confident that he’d won the jury over. He was a lawyer, after all, and not just any lawyer: a rich, successful one. So of course there was no one better to represent Theodore Glenn than himself. The fact that it took them four full days to deliberate told him there were several jurors who had reasonable doubt. If the verdict didn’t come back not guilty, the jury would be hung.

  He looked at the jurors, keeping the contempt off his face.

  Pathetic people, all of them. Barely living, meandering through boring, mediocre lives, obeying authority, doing whatever Big Brother orders them to do. A jury of his peers? Hardly. The IQ of all twelve combined didn’t match his.

  The old blue-haired woman in the front stared at him. Didn’t they have an age requirement? If she was a day under eighty…but he was certain she didn’t think he was guilty. No woman would look at him if she believed he was a killer.

  The young chick in the back with pitiful little breasts; Juror Number Eight. She thought he did it. She kept her eyes firmly on the judge.

  I’ll kill you, bitch. You think you can cast judgment on me?

  The queer in the front, with his earrings and prim shirt and tight pants, stared at him. Theodore remembered him from jury selection. When asked by the prosecutor if he could be impartial knowing that the victims were exotic dancers—stripping off their clothes for money—he’d said in that nasal tone, “I will never judge anyone by their personal lifestyle choices.”

  Had he voted guilty or innocent? It wouldn’t matter. All it took was one dissenting juror, and he had Grandma up front.

  He’d been right all along. Only the innocent testify in their own defense, he reasoned. So to be seen as innocent, he had to take the stand.

  He’d lied, he’d told the truth—both with equal sincerity.

  He’d explained that he had previous relationships with three of the four victims. They had ended amicably. He harbored no ill will, nor did they. He’d brought witnesses forward to corroborate.

  The most exciting part of the entire trial was when he had gorgeous Robin McKenna on the stand, forced to answer his questions. She’d been a witness for the prosecution, and testified about how she identified him from a police sketch. The sketch however had been drawn from the recollections of a near-blind alleged eyewitness after Brandi’s murder. Robin also told the court who he slept with and when. Women were the biggest gossips on the planet. But he’d made her eat her lying words.

  “Any questions, Mr. Glenn?” the judge asked after the stunning prosecutor, a prickly bitch named Julia Chandler, finished questioning Robin. She’d used kid gloves. Theodore didn’t have to wonder why. Robin looked ready to bolt. Her dark red hair looked darker, her pale skin whiter, and her vivid hazel eyes greener against the bloodshot whites.

  As he approached, he watched her tense. Suppressing his grin, he did not take his eyes from her face. So beautiful, so perfectly exquisite in every physical detail—from her soft hair to her lush red lips to her perky breasts to her long legs.

  A perfect female for his perfect male. But the bitch thought she was better than him. That she was above him. Laughable, to be sure, but her attitude irritated him. She spoke ill of him. She looked at him as if she were smarter. No one was smarter than him.

  What he hadn’t said to Robin McKenna: Do you know they died because of you? I will fondly remember the sweet horror on your pretty face for the rest of my life, long after I kill you, too.

  “Robin—” he began.

  “Objection,” the D.D.A. snarled. “Please direct counsel to reference the witness as Ms. McKenna.”

  “Sustained. You know the rules, Mr. Glenn.”

  “I apologize, Your Honor.” Theodore chafed under the rebuke. How dare these inferior attorneys dictate how he should question a witness!

  “Ms. McKenna,” he said, noting that she had sl
id as far back in the chair as possible. As far from him as possible. She was terrified. She might suspect the truth about him, but she couldn’t possibly know what he was truly capable of. Someday she would, and then she would have something to be scared about.

  “You testified that I dated Bethany Coleman.”

  Robin nodded.

  The judge said, “Please state your answer out loud for the record.”

  “Yes.” Robin tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She’d attempted to make herself look wholesome by wearing minimal makeup and brushing her thick, curly red hair up into a loose bun. But Theodore knew she was anything but wholesome. She revealed her body to men for money. She danced with the grace of a prima ballerina, and the seduction of a call girl. She was the best dancer onstage at RJ’s, bar none, but the only one who wouldn’t give him the time of day.

  The bitch.

  “Mr. Glenn, question?” the judge asked.

  Theodore suppressed his frustration with Robin. It wasn’t anger. His policy was, “Don’t get mad, get even.” But the strange sensations he’d felt whenever he thought about Robin McKenna, whenever he’d watched her dance or shun him—they were new and made him uneasy.

  He’d spent his entire life searching for emotion. To have feelings—something internal he couldn’t define—whenever he thought about Robin McKenna seemed extraordinary and was surprisingly unwanted.

  Those feelings would disappear when he killed her.

  He asked, “Bethany and I broke up eight months before she was killed. Is that your recollection?”

  “Yes,” Robin said, jaw clenched.

  “Did she ever tell you that she was scared of me?”

  Robin didn’t answer.

  “Answer the question,” Theodore demanded.

  “No.”

  “And when Brandi and I broke up, did she tell you she was scared of me?”

  “No.”

  “And Jessica?”

  “No.”

  “So none of the women I dated were fearful for their lives?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “But none of them told you they were fearful for their lives.”

  She bit her lip. “No.”

  “Why did you tell the police that I was the person in the vague sketch that circulated after Brandi’s murder?”

  “Because you were.”

  Theodore crossed over to his desk and picked up a copy of the sketch. He glanced at the back of the chamber and caught Detective William Hooper staring. Theodore winked at him, taking pleasure in bringing rage to the cop’s face.

  I know all about you, Theodore thought.

  He held up the sketch for the jury. “Is this the sketch you identified me from?”

  “Yes.”

  “This could be any man between the ages of thirty and fifty in this room. Me, the district attorney, the two jurors in the front here.” He waved toward the jury box. “Even the detective who arrested me.”

  He watched as Robin looked directly at Will, then averted her eyes. Some emotion Theodore wasn’t familiar with flitted across her face. Had something happened between Romeo and Juliet? Had their torrid love affair gone south?

  This pleased him.

  “Ms. McKenna, do you like me?”

  She startled, glared at him, showing a taste of her inner passion. Passion that should have been directed toward him, not William Hooper.

  “No, I don’t like you. You killed my friends.”

  “We’ll leave that to the jury to decide, but you just made my point. You never liked me, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Objection!” The prosecutor jumped up.

  “Overruled.”

  Theodore repeated to Robin, “Why have you never liked me?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s like ice cream, right? Some people don’t like chocolate. They don’t know why, it just doesn’t taste good.”

  “I didn’t like the way you looked at me,” Robin said quietly.

  “You remove your clothes onstage in front of a hundred men every night and you don’t like the way they look at you?”

  “I don’t like the way you look at me when you think I can’t see you watching,” she said, her voice gathering strength.

  “Ms. McKenna, isn’t it true that you identified me off this vague sketch simply because you don’t like me? You wanted someone to blame for the murders of your friends, and I was convenient.”

  The prosecutor exclaimed, “Objection!” while Robin leaned forward and said, “I know you killed them. I saw you in the picture because it is you. I told the police exactly what they asked, that the only person I recognized that looks like the sketch is Theodore Glenn—”

  “Order!” The judge pounded his gavel.

  “You killed them and you gloated!” Robin shouted.

  “Order, Ms. McKenna,” the judge said.

  Theodore smiled. He looked right at William Hooper, the detective’s face tight with suppressed anger. Rage directed at him for bringing up the truth.

  The district attorney himself, pompous ass Bryce Descario, asked the judge for a ten-minute recess to confer with the witness. Right, Julia Chandler does all the work and Descario comes in for the glory.

  But Theodore had gotten what he wanted: a reaction from Robin McKenna. The best reaction yet, but he wasn’t done with her.

  Not by a long shot.

  While Theodore waited for the verdict to be read, he looked to the media section. That hot little reporter Trinity Lange was writing furiously in her notebook. Now there was one smart cookie. He’d watched her on the news every night, reporting on his case. She had picked up on some of his accusations and run with them. He didn’t care if she did it for the sensationalism or ratings, she brought up the hard questions. Like the one last night:

  “The key evidence in the Glenn trial is DNA found at the murder scene of Anna Louisa Clark, a twenty-three-year-old nursing student and exotic dancer who was discovered dead by her roommate early on the morning of April 10. Glenn admitted to having an affair with three of the four victims, but denied an affair with Ms. Clark.”

  The evidence against him was all circumstantial. He wasn’t stupid, he wouldn’t leave traces of himself behind. Luckily, the evidence from the first crime scene had been thrown out, thanks to the police screwing up. And he’d known immediately after killing Bethany that he’d made a mistake.

  Theodore Glenn never made the same mistake twice.

  Ergo, someone had framed him.

  The bailiff said, “Will the defendant please rise?”

  He rose. Julia Chandler and the asshole D.A. also stood.

  “Has the jury reached a verdict?” the judge asked.

  “We have, Your Honor,” the foreman replied.

  The judge handed the bailiff the findings, who in turn handed it over to the clerk. “The clerk will read the verdict.”

  The clerk began. “In count one of the indictment, willful murder in the first degree of Bethany Coleman on February 20, 2001, we the jury find the defendant, Theodore Alan Glenn, guilty. In count two of the indictment…”

  Theodore’s ears rang. The clerk’s voice came from a great distance, deeper, quieter, with each pronouncement of guilt booming in his head.

  They said he was guilty. The jury convicted him of murder. Four murders.

  Fools.

  “In count four of the indictment, willful murder in the first degree of Anna Louisa Clark on April 10, 2001, we the jury find the defendant guilty.”

  Theodore stood behind his table. Alone. His fury rose. He let the emotion fill him. Because he rarely had emotions, when anger rushed in, he seized it.

  He would not go to prison forever. He had the appeals court. He had the system itself! He would use it and twist it around and in the end he would be free once more. And he would kill everyone—every pathetic human being—who had crossed him.

  He
whirled around, stared at William Hooper. Cocky cop. A real ladies’ man. Hooper saw the truth on Theodore’s face—that Theodore knew his dirty secret and would make him pay. Hooper’s face tightened and he stared back, chin out.

  I know your secret, Theodore mouthed, the edges of his lips curving up.

  The gavel fell. “Mr. Glenn, please face the bench.”

  Theodore pivoted and faced Robin McKenna. During the entire trial, he had kept track of where she had been sitting. In the far corner. Trying to hide. Especially after his cross-examination. He gave her credit for returning to the courtroom after that grueling day.

  She couldn’t hide from him. Not now, not later.

  He raised his hand, pointed his index finger at her, and fired a mock gun.

  The gavel pounded again. “Bailiff!”

  William Hooper jumped to his feet and ran down the aisle. “You fucking bastard! Don’t you so much as look—”

  The gavel pounded again and again. “Detective! Meet me in my chambers immediately. Thirty-minute recess. Bailiff, take Mr. Glenn to holding.”

  Theodore put that thirty minutes to good use. He memorized the names of everyone who needed to die.

  ONE

  Present day

  Dear Robin:

  I think of you every day, dream of you every night. So clear are my visions of your perfect naked body dancing just for me that when I wake each morning I see you at the foot of my bed in this godforsaken prison you sent me to.

  I will come for you, but you won’t know the day or the hour. I long for the wonderful moment when I watch your face next to mine, the truth in your eyes as you surrender to me.

  Theodore folded the letter and stuffed it back down his pants as he leaned against the fence of San Quentin’s East Block exercise yard. Exercise? Most of the men stood in groups talking or arguing or hiding an illegal smoke, easier in the cold when smoke could be mistaken for breath.

  Defeated. That was the expression on most faces. Fated to spend the rest of their miserable lives in a crumbling, foul-smelling prison. Urine, fungi, and the stench Theodore could only describe as “wet dog”—but worse—permeated the interior. But here, in the pathetically small exercise yard, he tasted salt in the air, heard seagulls call, and remembered freedom.