Spitting Devil Read Online Free PDF

Do you think I don’t know what’s going on?”
    Alison ran into the bathroom and locked herself inside. He followed, pounding at the door. She felt the angry vibrations on the wood pulsing through her body. He shouted at her, and she shut her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear his voice. She wouldn’t be weak anymore. She wouldn’t let herself be dazzled by his lies.
    She finally faced the truth. He was a monster.
    Monsters had to be destroyed.
*
     
    Alison parked exactly where she had the night before, near a convenience store in the industrial section of the harbor, close enough to the water to hear the great boats loading and offloading iron ore. She stared at the pay phone on the graffiti-covered wall near the broken door of the men’s toilet. Whoever had used it last had left the phone off the hook, and the receiver dangled on the end of its metal coil, swaying as the wind blew. The phone was ground zero for addicts looking to score drugs and hookers collecting hotel room numbers for tourists.
    She didn’t want to use a phone anywhere near her downtown office where she might be seen. She wanted no way for the police to trace the call back to her. If she was going to betray her husband, she would do it anonymously. Sooner or later, the truth would come out, but not now. All she wanted was to hand them the name and retreat back into the shadows.
    Michael Malville.
    She studied the people haunting the parking lot, and her anxiety soared. Three twenty-something boys clustered by the neon lights of the store window, smoking and swearing as they shoved each other. A dockworker with his belly over his belt sauntered out of the open door of the toilet. He was unzipped, flashing his white underwear. An Asian hooker in a pink mini-skirt and faux fur coat cased the men at the gas pumps.
    Alison didn’t belong here. Her perfect home, her perfect life, was miles away, up on the hill, in the woods, by the lake.
    She took a ragged breath as she got out of the car and lit a cigarette to calm her nerves. She felt leering eyes on her. She straightened her back and walked deliberately toward the phone, ignoring the loud whispers of the boys sizing up her body. The hooker winked at her and chewed gum and listened to her cell phone. Alison took the pay phone receiver in her hand; the plastic was sticky and crusted with dirt. She squirted disinfectant on a tissue and wiped it down, and she did the same with the keypad.
    She wondered: could she do this?
    Alison dialed.
    “This is Stride,” he answered immediately, as if he was expecting his phone to ring.
    She hesitated again, feeling her courage flinch at the reality of what it meant to make this call. She didn’t know if she could speak.
    “I know it’s you,” Stride said into the silence. “Are you ready to tell me who you are?”
    “You have to understand how hard this is for me,” she said.
    “Three women are dead. It was hard for them.”
    Alison felt as if he had slapped her, but he was right. She also knew there could be no anonymity for her. She couldn’t hide from what she was doing or keep her identity secret. She had to tell him everything. “The blouses you found on the victims,” she said.
    “Yes?”
    “They’re mine.”
    “What makes you think so?”
    “I had those same tops. All of them. Now they’re missing from my closet.”
    “Who could have taken them? Who has access to your closet?”
    Alison put her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t say it.
    “Are you there?” he went on. “Who could have taken them?”
    “Only one man,” she said.
    “Who is he?”
    She closed her eyes. “My husband.”
    There was silence on the other end of the line. It was as if, hearing those words, Stride understood what it meant for her to say them. He recognized the terrible line she had crossed.
    “You think your husband is guilty of these murders?” he asked.
    Alison realized she was silently crying. Her breath could barely form the word.