It’s a Saturday night, and Jon and Tonja are sitting together on her couch, flipping through channels. They’ve decided that until things with Andrew cool off, it’s best for them to lay low. That means not going out together and not spending any time at Jon’s house, which is only a few feet from Andrew’s.
Normally when they’re in her apartment, they keep all the windows shut and all the blinds and curtains drawn tight. But it’s the middle of August. A heat wave is pushing temperatures to ninety, and Tonja’s place doesn’t have air-conditioning. Reluctantly, she agreed to open some of her windows just a crack to let in the evening breeze.
She goes to the kitchen during a commercial to get some water, and Jon hears her scream, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
He leaps to his feet and races into the kitchen. To his horror, he sees Andrew standing right outside the open window, staring in.
Each man is completely shocked to see the other there.
“Jon?” Andrew exclaims.
“You son of a bitch!” Jon yells back. Instinctively, he grabs a knife from the block on the counter, then runs outside.
Is he going to hurt Andrew, Tonja wonders, or just scare him off?
Thankfully, he’s long gone when Jon gets outside—no violence necessary. And they don’t see Andrew at Tonja’s apartment again.
But two weeks later, he does something even more heinous.
Jon is sitting in his office when he gets a frantic call from Tonja, who is sobbing. She can barely get the words out, but Jon pieces together that Andrew has left some kind of note under the windshield wiper of Tonja’s car.
When Jon sees it later that day, he’s horrified.
It’s a long, rambling screed written in Andrew’s childish chicken scratch. In it, Andrew professes his undying love for Tonja over and over. He doesn’t apologize for anything he’s done. Instead, he says he wants to flee the country with her so they can be together again—right after he murders Jon and burns down his house.
For Tonja and Jon, this literal death threat is the final straw. Tonja insists they go to the police again, and they do. They meet with a detective, give their statements, file a report.
But Jon isn’t holding his breath. He has another idea.
He and Tonja have been dating for a while now, and they recently began talking about moving in together. Now seems like the perfect time to take that plunge. To make a fresh start.
Tonja had been hesitant to get so serious with another new partner so soon after Andrew. But she loves Jon deeply. She feels safe around him. And she wants desperately to rebuild her life, this time with him. So she runs the idea by her sister, and Lisa gives her little sister her enthusiastic blessing.
Just a few weeks later, Tonja, Jon, and Lisa are lugging cardboard boxes yet again—into Tonja and Jon’s new hillside cottage. It’s located in the city of Ventura, about fourteen miles from Mussel Shoals. But it feels like a world apart.
Tonja and Jon couldn’t be happier with their decision to move and get away from Andrew Luster—before it was too late.
CHAPTER 14
July 14, 2000. Four Years Later
ANDREW LUSTER STANDS BUCK-NAKED in front of his open closet. He’s thumbing through his vast collection of clothes, whispering, “What to wear, what to wear?”
Andrew likes to look his best when he goes out, but he isn’t a particularly stylish or daring dresser. He mostly chooses his outfits based on how they make him feel—and the vivid memories each article stirs in him.
There’s the checkered button-down he wore the evening he took home Stacey, a bubbly, redheaded Berkeley coed who was in town visiting friends at UCSB. The beige cardigan he was in when a casting session with Charlotte, a starving actress from Atlanta with peroxide-blond hair, ended up back at her apartment. The gray henley he had on when he met Nadine, a French au pair working for a wealthy family in Montecito, and made love to her in the back of his SUV. The navy polo he was wearing the night he met Tonja.
Tonja.
Andrew rubs the fine fabric between his fingers, recalling their magical first encounter and the passionate, turbulent months that followed.
He had actually kind of cared about that girl, at least before she’d turned all paranoid-controlling-psycho on him. Whining whenever he went out. Pestering him for every last detail of what he’d been doing. Messing with his stuff. And then, despite everything he’d given her, she had the gall to leave him—after cheating on him with his former friend. And then she’d totally shut him out of her life, wouldn’t take his calls, even went to the goddamn police after he wrote her a heartfelt letter saying he forgave her and still loved her and would do anything to have her back.
“Stupid bitch,” Andrew growls.
He pushes the blue polo aside and almost instantly his rage begins to fade. That was all a long time ago. Three years? Four? Water under the bridge. Whatever Tonja’s doing now—and whoever she’s doing now—Andrew hopes she’s happy.
Yeah, right. He hopes she’s miserable as shit.
Andrew continues sifting through his wardrobe until he finally finds the perfect shirt. It’s white linen, soft and flowy, ideal for a hot July evening like this one. He bought it just a few weeks ago and hasn’t worn it out yet.
Perfect, he thinks. Let’s go make some memories.
About forty minutes later, Andrew has parked his green SUV and is strolling down State Street. He’s scoping out the bar scene, making a mental plan of attack.
When Andrew passes O’Malley’s, he hears peals of laughter coming from inside. He usually stays clear of this noisy, trashy Irish-pub wannabe, but for some reason, tonight he feels drawn to it. Seeing a long line of summer-semester UCSB girls waiting to get in doesn’t hurt.
Andrew confidently strolls up to the bouncer at the front door. Before this beefy gentleman in a too-tight green T-shirt even has the chance to turn him away, Andrew slips a hundred-dollar bill into his massive paw. Works like a charm.
Once inside, Andrew posts up at the bar and scans the room like a lion hiding in the grass surveying a herd of gazelles, searching out the weakest one. He eyes the bevy of beautiful, tipsy college girls partying all around him.
He’s been doing this long enough to know exactly what he’s looking for.
And it doesn’t take long to spot her.
Grooving with some girlfriends on the dance floor is a pretty girl with fair skin and long, honey-colored hair. She’s wearing a black tube top that shows off her toned tummy, and a denim miniskirt that shows off almost everything else.
But it’s her dancing that gives her away as an easy mark. It’s confident but slightly awkward. Sexy but girlish. Andrew senses she’s a young woman who isn’t quite sure of herself yet and might respond well to the charms of an older man.
“Bartender?” he calls. He slides him a twenty. “One glass of ice water.”
As Andrew waits for his beverage, he subtly reaches into the left pocket of his shorts.
He palms a glass vial filled with a clear liquid and carefully unscrews the cap.
CHAPTER 15
Three Days Later
CAREY EXPECTED THE OUTSIDE of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office to be grim. Intimidating. Instead, it’s blandly pleasant, with red roof tiles and a manicured lawn. Its entrance is an automatic sliding glass door, the same as at the 7-Eleven attached to the campus student center.