by Pamela Cowan
When Tom entered the room to tell her the popcorn was ready, he found her tying the laces of her running shoes. She’d already changed into shorts and a T-shirt.
Handing him the letter, she said, “I have to go for a run.”
She ran and ran and ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NICKY SAT BACK against her seat. Sunlight glinted from her sunglasses, and Storm wished she’d take them off. She wanted to be able to read her emotions.
It was unusually warm for the season, and the sun was a bright white presence. They’d decided to sit outside. The place they chose for a quick coffee break—a cozy wine bar and restaurant with the curious name Primrose and Tumbleweeds—provided wrought-iron chairs and tables under their wide green awning.
“You have got to be kidding me?” Nicky said, and she did remove her sunglasses, sweeping them aside and staring at Storm with wide unblinking eyes. “This is so . . . well, so much to take in. I mean, I kind of figured your parents were dead. You never talk about them. I had no idea your dad was in prison or your mom a suspected homicide victim. That’s terrible.”
Storm didn’t know how to respond, but the concern in her friend’s eyes told her she’d been right to trust her with her well-guarded childhood secret. “I know you think trying to find her when she hasn’t done a thing to contact me is crazy. Tom thinks I’m setting myself up to be hurt, and he’s upset that I’m going without him. He doesn’t understand why I can’t wait until he’s able to go, but he’s tied up with his job, and I don’t want to wait. Finding out my mom’s alive changes so much—it changes everything.”
Nicky shook her head, jeweled beads sparkling from thin braided sections of her spiked pink hair. “You have to go. Of course you do. Maybe I should go with you.”
“You just told me you are out of vacation time, remember?”
“Oh yeah, that. I’ve got to hurry up and get married to my rich man so I can quit this stinking nine to five.”
“You’ll go insane.”
“I know. That’s why I’ve talked to Dorothy about doing a job share. She’s big as a house, and I know once the kid’s here, she’d like to work half-time.”
“You mean it?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, that’s great news. I was already starting to think about missing you, missing this.”
“You won’t get a chance to miss me. Sounds like I made a good choice in deciding to stay. I mean, I’m getting married and settling down, ho hum, but your life is turning into a great big soap opera.”
“Is this a good thing?” Storm asked, with a wry smile.
“Good? I don’t know. Entertaining? Oh yeah. So when are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’ll have to tie up some things at the office. Get someone to cover for me. I’m out of vacation time too, so I’m requesting a week of unpaid.”
“HR isn’t going to like that.”
“HR can bite me,” said Storm, crossing her arms defiantly and almost knocking over her coffee. She grabbed it just in time.
“Hey, you can’t steal my expressions,” said Nicky.
Storm just smiled. “Bite me.”
Nicky laughed. “Okay, maybe you can.” Her watch beeped. “Damn it. I guess we’d better get back.” She drained the last of her coffee and tossed the cup into a nearby can. “Two points,” she said. “I’m glad you suggested this restaurant. The coffee’s better here.”
“It sure is.” The image of the suspicious woman she’d first met in the parking lot of The Cooler, and later in line at her former favorite coffee place, filled Storm’s thoughts. It replaced some of her good mood and darkened the day. She didn’t tell Nicky it was the dread of another encounter with the woman and not the difference in coffee that had affected her choice of coffee options. Some of Storm’s secrets connected too closely to other secrets that could never be told.
Storm returned to work believing the rest of the day would drag by. That knowing she was driving to California and wanted to get home and pack would make each minute crawl. Luckily, there was enough to do to distract her and the day sped by faster than expected. It was 4:30 before she knew it, and she had only one thing left to do.
It had become Storm’s habit to run her father’s name through the law enforcement database at the end of the day. She was certain he’d turn up eventually.
Of course, now there were other things to worry about. Her mother was alive. She could barely hold onto the thought. When she did, it brought such a surge of emotion, such light and happiness, that it threatened to spill into tears.
Such unrestrained joy was alien to Storm’s nature. It left her shaken and nervous, and yet . . .there it was: that glint of light. It was as if a door had been opened in a dark room allowing a thin sliver of light to stream in. Storm could only stand a glimpse of such a vision. The thought of throwing the door open wide made her mouth go dry.
Storm clicked her way into the system and typed in her father’s name. While she waited, she slid open the bottom drawer of her desk, took out her purse, and set it on her desk. There was a small beep. Looking up she saw that an icon was blinking on her screen. She opened it.
She read every word. It came down to one thing. Joseph Donald Dean had been taken into custody in Brookings, Oregon, and cited for driving while suspended. He had been held for about twelve hours, probably to give him time to sober up was Storm’s guess, and was released at 11:00 a.m. the following day.
“Got you,” she said, her response to the information like that of a hunter hearing a well-placed trap spring shut. Then she caught the date. She read it again and again. March 15th, the day Howard said he’d followed her father to her home. The day he’d gone inside and spoken to her husband, met her children.
An icy chill ran down Storm’s back, a visceral response to learning that the monster under the bed, the face in the dark window, the footsteps following you across a parking lot late at night, were real.
Fear filled her, sank its claws into her chest, and closed her throat. But this wasn’t fear for herself. The monster was not after her. It was after her family.
As she sat staring blindly at her computer screen, the sense of panic that filled her began to transform. Her anger was growing, pushing away the fear, the sense of helplessness. She was no child cowering in a corner. She was a grown woman, strong enough to seek justice, to make others pay, to take lives.
Righteousness rang through her. Rage grew and served as an accelerant burning away the last vestiges of fear and leaving nothing but the coiled black hatred that she kept buried deep inside. It was a dark, ugly, and evil thing that only rose to the surface occasionally, to laugh in glee behind clasped hands and downcast eyes as the whip tore flesh, or a scream was muffled by a length of duct tape, or she pressed the button on the oxidizer.
Storm checked her purse. The gun was there, tucked inside its holster. She removed the slender belt around her slacks, threaded it through the holster and put it back on. The gun now rested at the small of her back, a bit to the left so that she could draw it easily with her right hand.
Digging into her purse again, she pulled out one of the two throwaway phones she’d purchased during her lunch break. She’d planned to give one to Howard, a sign of trust and appreciation.
“How did it all get so fucked up?” she asked the empty room.
There would be no trip to find her mother. She had cancelled her request for unpaid leave. She had also called Howard, and he’d agreed to meet her at the Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve after she got off work the next day.
There were more people at the park than the previous time. As she waited, one large group was leaving and walked by on their way to the parking lot and, she guessed, the bus that was waiting there.
Several of them had binoculars for spotting birds and other animals. Storm was certain they’d had good sightings. While waiting for Howard at the picnic table, she saw a red-tailed hawk soaring above, a family of ducks in the creek, dipping the
ir beaks into the water as they slowly paddled by, and the usual robins and starlings flitting through the trees.
The park seemed like the very nexus of life, with its numerous animals and plants. There were so many varieties of trees, shrubs, and grasses, so many shades of green, that it made her eyes ache. What a strange place to choose for a killing ground.
A runner pounded by, his face red, sweat dampening the neck of his white shirt. A group of elementary school kids went by with a harried-looking woman. Then a family of three, with a mom and dad who held hands while a red-haired boy ran from flower to pinecone to rock wall touching them all with equal delight. It was as if he were discovering the world for the first time, thought Storm, and maybe he was.
The next person she saw was Howard. He walked briskly down the path, his shoes throwing up puffs of tan dust with each step. He smiled when he saw her, his head back, his expression without guile.
If there hadn’t been so many people around, Storm might have taken the gun out and shot him right then and there. Only her impulse wasn’t to aim center mass as she’d been trained, but to aim right at his smiling face.
“Hey, got here as fast as I could,” said Howard, taking a quick look at his watch. Sorry you had to wait.”
Without preamble, Storm said in a soft, conversational tone of voice, “You lied to me. You didn’t follow my father to my house. My father wasn’t even in town that day. You went to my house to mess with my family. To what? Prove that you could? Maybe to threaten me later?”
Howard’s smile vanished, his stride faltered as her words, so at odds with her tone, got through to him. Storm continued to lean against the end of the picnic table, her hands resting on the table’s surface, close to her gun that was hidden under her windbreaker.
He took a few more steps, stopping in front of her. “You figured it out, huh?” he said. “Didn’t expect that.”
“I bet. So what was it? What did you have in mind going there?”
“Nothing bad,” Howard said, his shoulders dropping, hanging his head in a submissive posture she didn’t believe. “Just curious. Wanted to see how my partner lived.”
“Wanted to find some bargaining chips is more like it,” said Storm, surprising herself by her poise. A couple on bikes pedaled past. The woman studiously ignored them. The man raised a hand and gave them a friendly smile and wave. Storm waited until they had gone by. “Well, it turns out I’ve got some bargaining chips of my own,” she said.
“What do you mean?
“Remember the four rules, Howard? No body, no weapons, no trophies, no connections. Remember that?”
“Sure, and between us we broke most of them, didn’t we?”
He seemed to be trying to establish some sort of camaraderie, but Storm was having none of it.
“The one I want you to concentrate on is the no-trophies part. You see, I’ve been collecting trophies right along, right from the first. I’ve got a nice little collection. Gloves from the Malino killing. Remember how he bit you and you got your blood on the gloves? His blood and your blood all there, all together on the gloves that I’ve kept in a nice, tidy, plastic sandwich bag.
“Of course, there was also poor Mr. Everett. That whip you invented and built for him was pretty horrific. Even the twine you wove it from was rough, prickly. I bet it tore a few epithelial cells off your hands when you worked with it. Your blood, his blood, a few inches cut off, wound up in a freezer bag and tucked away somewhere nice and safe.
“I didn’t get to keep a trophy from dear Helena Smith, but that’s all right. Remember that woman you brought in from the street? You’re so predictable. How hard was it for me to find a used condom in the cart? DNA is pretty easy to extract from semen, or so I’ve heard. I wrote the rules for a reason you know. Trophies are very, very bad things.”
Howard’s face revealed a range of emotion as she spoke, going from anger to surprise, to something like fear. Maybe, thought Storm, he isn’t such a sociopath after all. Of course, last she’d heard, there really weren’t any sociopaths, just people with severe personality disorders. One had to laugh at how the mental health profession loved to name things and rename them.
Howard finally seemed to settle on one response—threats. “If you turn me in, I’ll drag you down with me. I know too much. Things I couldn’t know if you hadn’t been involved.
Storm laughed. “You think I care? You really think I won’t go to prison to protect my family?”
Howard stared hard into Storm’s eyes. She stared back, unflinching and still and strangely calm.
Finally, he nodded. “Okay, you win. What do I have to do to get those trophies back, huh?”
“Oh, you don’t get them back, not ever. Those are my insurance. We all need insurance. As long as you stay out of my life and far, far away from my family, those items will stay well hidden. Someday they might even find their way to you, when you’re old and gray and harmless. For now you’ll just have to trust me.”
“Trust you,” scoffed Howard. “You’re a murdering bitch. How am I supposed to trust you?”
“Not my problem,” said Storm.
A young couple, seeing them and sensing that all was not well took a shortcut through the brush to avoid passing near them on the trail. Storm barely noticed. Her focus was locked on Howard.
“I guess I got nothing to say,” said Howard. “I think you’re wrong. I never wanted anything but for us to keep doing what we started. We were doing something good, something big.”
“I know,” said Storm, softening for a moment. “But it has to end, Howard. It’s not for us to make those decisions. Life is hard, it’s unfair, and no matter what we do, there’s always going to be someone else who gets away with it. We can’t change that.”
“You used to think we could,”
“I know, but putting my family in jeopardy or risking them hating me if they ever found out, it’s just not worth it.”
“That’s your final word? We’re through.”
“Final word,” said Storm.
Howard nodded, put his hands up, and rubbed at his neck. Storm almost reached for the gun but realized he was only stretching. He rolled his shoulders as if trying to shrug off tension and dropped his arms to his sides. “I guess there’s nothing more to say.” He shrugged again, shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark gray hoodie, and without another word, turned and walked away.
Storm stood away from the table and realized her arms were shaking. She watched Howard until he disappeared behind the trees. The confrontation had gone so much better than she expected. Still, it had left her wrung out, completely exhausted, and emotionally drained. She wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and sleep for three days.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ON HER SATURDAY morning run, with the air just cool enough to be pleasant and a cloudless sky promising an afternoon of grilling on the back deck, Storm felt content. Peace. That was the new theme of Storm’s life. Or so she’d decided.
It would only be another two weeks before Tom would be free to go with her to find her long-lost mother. She had hated postponing, but given her recent poor decisions, maybe he was right. Maybe waiting until he could go with her was a good idea. She wasn’t sure what the reconciliation would be like, but she hoped it would give her some sort of closure.
Once in a while, she caught her mind wandering down some fantastic daydream, where she and her mother saw each other and then, as if in some weepy, made-for-television movie, ran to each other with hugs and tears.
When those thoughts filled her mind, she immediately shut them down, chided herself for her ridiculously high expectations, and reminded herself of the pain she was setting herself up for.
When Tom asked for her thoughts about seeing her mother again, she told him she was very excited about the idea and wondered if this was how adopted children must have felt on finding their biological parents.
What she had not shared with him was the unfamiliar sense of glee which she could not s
eem to talk herself out of. It was frightening to fly so high, especially when she knew—not suspected or was afraid of—but knew, with every cell in her body, that the experience was going to toss her to the ground so hard, she might never get up again.
As for her past with Howard and the justice killings, she was doing all she could to get beyond it and to look at that period of time as a strange aberration. All she had to do was make sure she wasn’t drawn back into someone’s story, some sad victim who made her so angry and vengeful that she’d . . .
But no, she wasn’t going to think about it. She had resolved to stop reading the paper and stay away from the local news. Stories she heard at work she would pretend were fiction or, at the very least, sad things she could do nothing about.
It was time to become a normal person and a good wife, mother, and friend. There was a list of things waiting for her to do. One of the things on the list was to shop for a few new blouses. She’d worn the cuffs on most of hers to a frazzle. Stress made that old habit get worse. Maybe she’d try hypnosis. She’d heard hypnosis could help break bad habits.
Without missing a stride, she dropped from the sidewalk to the street to avoid a low hanging branch and did a sort of sideways hop back on. Traffic that early was almost nonexistent. The air smelled good, full of damp green things, and the scent of flowers.
Her next thought was even more mundane. She had to start thinking about paint colors for the outside of the house. They’d agreed it needed a new coat this year, but did they want to keep the same color of go with something different?
There were library books to be returned. Thinking of things needing to be returned, she needed to get that casserole dish from Grace. She kept meaning to go over; maybe she would stop on the way back from her run.
A pair of Pomeranians sprang against their wire enclosure at the side of a house, yapping their disapproval. She sped up.
There was also the little matter of Nicky’s wedding. So much to deal with there. She’d have to think about a wedding shower. Then, there was the wedding gift. She thought she should find something classy and traditional, maybe, but with a twist.
