Blind Spot

by Nancy Bush

  A monster, Claire thought. That’s who.

  Chapter 6

  Rita Feather Hawkings thought of herself as a good person.

  She was good-looking, thirty-seven, voluptuous, and an LPN, licensed practical nurse. She had a good job and a boyfriend who loved her. Had loved her…although not now. Swallowing, Rita put that aside for the moment.

  She was currently driving up the long, tree-lined drive toward Ocean Park Hospital, her place of employment, her rusted Chevy Malibu buffeted by winds off the ocean, winds that screamed up the drive and hammered at the hospital’s front doors. Those trees were gnarled and stunted, their leaves hanging on by the grace of God. Ocean Park was an unassuming one-story building, but it was a general hospital that took care of the needs of the people who lived along a fifty-plus mile stretch of the Oregon coast and eastward toward the Willamette Valley.

  Rita barely noticed. She pulled into an empty spot in the employee lot to the south side and snarled at the sight of her sensible shoes. She wore three-inch heels off duty. Black heels. Like her hair. Rita was over half Native American, but there was no way of telling for sure because Rita’s mother was a mixture, a mutt, the product of a whoring father whose father was a whoremonger before him.

  Rita’s Aunt Angela was a whore as well. But she was dead now, and Rita’s mother was the only one of her family still alive. Rita’s father was in jail, or so she was told, but she’d never known him anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  Rita’s mother was a religious fanatic. A combination of Christianity mixed with Native American religious beliefs and folklore. Delores Feather Hawkings had warned Rita long and loud against the path that had led to Aunt Angela’s demise.

  “She whored her way to death. Men. Sex. That’s how she died. That’s why she burned! Don’t you become like her, Rita. Don’t you walk that path.”

  Rita ignored her mother as much as possible. She slept with lots of men, as often as possible. But she was no whore. There was no exchange of money, though there hadn’t been much love, either. Except for her boyfriend, but…no…she wouldn’t think of tragedy.

  Sighing, she plodded toward the hospital’s front doors. Thirty-seven-year-old Rita, who looked twenty-seven, had wanted a baby since she could remember how to think. When she was young, she played with dolls that looked like babies. Carried them with her everywhere. When she learned what it took to have a baby, she started sleeping around. Yes, she knew they said she was going the way of her aunt. Yes, she was playing with fire, hoping to get burned.

  But it was not to be. Rita never became pregnant. All these crippling teenage pregnancies tearing families apart, and nothing for her. Nothing! Oh, the gods were against her. It just wasn’t fair.

  Before her slide into fanaticism, her mother had insisted that her daughter find a career. Rita had dutifully taken courses in the health care field and had thrown herself into several heated affairs with older doctors. She lied about birth control. She made certain she had sex on the most fertile days of her cycle. She ritualistically laid out corn and rice and drew her own blood, making a kind of fertility stew that she’d learned from her mother’s folklore.

  But nothing worked.

  As she grew older, Rita became convinced her mistake was in choosing older, more financially established males. It had seemed the smart thing to do, but it had absolutely prevented her from becoming pregnant. Now she was the ultimate “cougar.” She needed younger men’s virility. She suspected older males were what had been the problem. It was not her. It was not.

  As she entered the hospital, the receptionist threw her a look. Rita knew it was because she purposely kept the top three buttons of her blouse undone and allowed a hearty view of cleavage. She lamented the fact that she would have to change into her uniform and went into the employee bathroom with a feeling of defeat. Changing into teal scrubs, she examined her body. Round, but not fat. Soft, but not doughy. Motherly, in a womanly way, without being matronly.

  Crossing her hands over her abdomen, she closed her eyes for a moment and prayed to God, to the Heavenly Spirit, to the Fertility Goddess.

  Hanging up her street clothes in a locker, she dropped her purse, then turned the combination lock. She walked directly to the lunchroom as she was twenty minutes early for her shift, sat down in one of the formed-plastic chairs at a Formica-topped table, and contemplated the babies that should have been hers.

  The first was beautiful Selene. She’d had her for only a matter of hours before that bitch of a so-called friend, Vonda, had snatched her away and looked at Rita as if she were some kind of monster. Vonda had left Deception Bay and never returned and Rita lost Selene before she really had a chance to be a mother.

  The second was Brian. He’d been abandoned in a stroller at the Big Ten strip mall and Rita had saved him. The police had been involved that time, and though Rita explained that she was saving Brian, there had been a terrible wrangle that had only gotten straightened out when Brian’s so-called mother, what was her name…oh, yeah, Linda, a drug and alcohol abuser, backed off and said she might have been mistaken on Rita’s intent.

  They were all so wrong about her!

  And then…and then…a real boyfriend…the perfect father!

  Her fingers trembled as she reached into the pocket of her uniform and felt the newspaper clipping within. She was about to pull it out when Jake Tontor strolled in. Rita removed her hand, feeling a little thrill in her center at his lean, dark good looks, skinny ponytail, and lion’s prowl.

  He walked past the vending machine and picked up one of the oatmeal raisin cookies from a paper plate. A gift from one of the staff do-gooders who occasionally brought doughnuts, muffins, or homemade cookies.

  Rita was about to tell him that the cookie was stale, at least four days old, but didn’t get a chance because Carlita Solano slipped inside the room as if she’d been following him and said, “It’s a small world, y’know? A really small world. Things happen and all of a sudden you think, ‘Wow, I know her!’”

  Jake actively ignored Carlita, which made Rita smile. She looked him over. He was around twenty-three with long, black hair tied at his nape. His skin was dark and reddish; he could have been a member of her mother’s tribe. Maybe he was. It was a small world.

  Carlita got herself a Coke from the vending machine and said, “That girl’s on the news again. The one in the coma.”

  “The blond good-looking one?” Jake asked, suddenly in the conversation.

  “Yeah, I think I know where she’s from. I mean, she looks like all the rest of them.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “The cult! Those women that live at that lodge. You hardly ever see them and I’ve never seen this one before, but she looks like the rest of ’em. And they found her at that rest stop. Maybe she was driving from Deception Bay and heading toward Portland, trying to get away or something.”

  Rita’s brain was rushing, fizzing, her ears buzzing. She hadn’t seen the news. She hadn’t seen her!

  “She was in a wheelchair and kind of looking down.”

  “Well, then how do you know?” Jake was skeptical, losing interest.

  “That’s why I know. Just the side of her head, y’know?”

  “Her profile.”

  “Yes! It reminded me of them. Especially that one that used to work at the market years ago. Did you ever see her?”

  “No. I thought you said they were in a cult.”

  “They let that one out. Jesus, what was her name? And she was at the Drift In Market for a while. I wanted to ask her what it was like living in a cult, but I was a kid and never did.”

  Rita wanted to clap her hands over her ears and scream.

  “But that’s not this coma girl,” Jake said.

  “No, no. This is another one.”

  “You should call the police. They want to know who she is.”

  “Yeah, but somebody killed the guy she was with. He could still be out there.”

  “Call anony
mously, then,” Jake said, sprawling into a chair at a table far away from Carlita. She didn’t take the hint and dropped into the seat across from him.

  “I don’t want to talk to the police. The sheriff’s department arrested my brother ’cause they thought he was in a gang! That bastard Clausen is out for him.”

  “I heard he was dealing dope.”

  “You heard wrong! I’m an RN. He did something like that, I’d kill him.”

  “Don’t let the patients hear you say that,” Jake drawled.

  Rita gulped long breaths and reached into her pocket for the clipping, spreading it on the table with trembling fingers. She couldn’t listen to them anymore. Couldn’t…listen…Her attention narrowed, tunneled, zeroed in on the well-creased newspaper clipping. She’d actually found the clipping in this very lunchroom. Wasn’t one to take the paper herself.

  She’d been debating what to do.

  UNIDENTIFIED MAN SLAIN. PREGNANT COMPANION ATTACKED WITH KNIFE.

  Rafe, she thought, her chest aching. Rafe!

  The article was old. She’d found it in the lunchroom and ripped it out. Had spent the last week wondering and worrying, sick at heart.

  Rafe. And that Tasha bitch. Pregnant. With Rafe’s baby! Oh, it should have been hers. Would have been if Tasha hadn’t come between them. Her baby.

  Hers and Rafe’s.

  Rafe…her lover…

  The emotions that ripped through Rita’s soul made her shiver all over and she had to tuck the clipping away before she shredded it by mistake. Climbing to her feet, she scooped up and crumpled the wrapper from the vending machine crackers someone had neglected to throw in the trash. Her fingers clenched hard enough to send a pain message along her nerves, but her brain simply wasn’t receiving.

  Her baby.

  Should have been hers.

  Hers and Rafe’s.

  Carlita threw Rita a look as she headed out of the lunchroom. Rita Feather Hawkings was weird. A licensed practical nurse, but not a very good one. On the other hand, Carlita was a very good RN. A great RN, she believed. And a warm person, where Rita was, well, kind of sexy in a dirty way, yet cold, sort of.

  But she was pretty, Carlita could grudgingly concede. In a freaky, cold, stalker kind of way. Or something. Hard to really determine.

  Having worn out her story about the cult girl, Carlita sought to regain Jake’s attention. “You ever notice Rita’s eyes? That woman has no soul.”

  “Everyone’s got a soul.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “Don’t tell my mama that. She’s very big on the soul.”

  “I don’t think she’s normal,” Carlita said. “She’s like a robot, but she can go all whup-ass on you so fast. One of Dr. Loman’s patients complained about her and she got in some serious trouble over it. And she made one of Dr. Harris’s patients cry, the other day.”

  “Harris is an oncologist. His patients have cancer. They probably cry all the time.”

  “Are you defending her?”

  Jake yawned and tossed an empty Gatorade bottle that had been idling on the counter for days into the trash. “Two points,” he said automatically. Then, “I think I’m related to her.”

  “To Rita? How?”

  “Some distant cousin, or something. Her aunt, I think, was like the town whore. Disgraced everybody. Y’know, the bones they found at that house that burned a few years ago? That was her, I think.”

  “Wow.”

  He shook his head. “They’re all whacked. I gotta get outta this town.”

  This was Jake’s mantra, and it used to bother Carlita, who had no intention of leaving this section of the coast. She lived in Deception Bay, a little town just south of the hospital, and she had visions of making a home there with someone special. She wanted to settle down. Have a few kids. Live on sex, wine, and love. Jake was definitely on her radar. He was too good-looking not to be.

  “Where would you go?” she asked him.

  “Alaska,” Jake said after a moment of thought, though Carlita suspected it was all an act. He liked saying he was leaving. Made him feel self-important. Her brother was like that, and he was still in Deception Bay working at a bar called Davey Jones’s Locker, which was a lowlife hole, all dusty fishing nets and tarnished copper diving bells and beer-soaked carpet. But Jake…he was doing so much better than Alonzo. Jake had a career path.

  Still, they both shared the need to bring the attention on themselves with macho bullshit. It was just one of those annoying things you had to put up with when you were dealing with men, and Carlita liked to think she was good at dealing with men.

  “Alaska, huh,” she said, sucking on the straw stuck in her Coke can. “Damn cold. Frigid. Like tundra or something.”

  “Yeah, well.” He shoved back his chair and got up to leave.

  Carlita tossed her drink in the trash and hurried after him, but Jake just strode on down the hall, his ponytail swinging in tandem with his hips. Rita Feather Hawkings was standing in the hall like she’d forgotten where she was going. She watched Jake cruise by, then turned her dead eyes on Carlita.

  “Jake looks like my boyfriend,” Rita said.

  “You have a boyfriend?” Carlita said in surprise. “Who looks like Jake? Tell me another one!”

  She laughed long and hard.

  Rita didn’t like Carlita Solano at all. Carlita was dark, like Rita, not like that blond bitch who’d stolen Rafe, but she was just as evil. She was just the same. Those women…those ones who always took the good ones. Always, always, always. “We’re getting married,” Rita stated flatly.

  Carlita barked out a laugh and smoothed her long, sleek hair. She was athletic-club slim to Rita’s curves. Rita had a sudden mental image of herself: a serious face above a good body that was maybe getting just a little heavier than it should. She would have to diet, and smile like a flirt, so that when she saw Rafe again he would notice how good she looked.

  A shiver fluttered under her skin. Rafe was dead, she remembered with a sob of pain. And that bitch had Rita’s baby inside her. She’d stolen Rafe from Rita, and Rita’s baby, too.

  “What’s your boyfriend do?” Carlita asked. Rita didn’t answer and Carlita pressed, “You got a picture of him?”

  Rita walked away, the newspaper clipping burning into her skin. “Rafe…Rafe…” she murmured brokenly. What was she going to do without him? Without his baby? Her thoughts were all jumbled. She couldn’t really sort through them. It was just so painful, and it was her fault. That blond bitch!

  What hospital was she at? What hospital? If only she’d seen that newscast, but she couldn’t bear to look at those vacant blue eyes and blond hair.

  She pulled out the clipping again. What did it say?…victim was taken to a nearby hospital…

  Nearby hospital. She thought about it hard and knew. Laurelton General. It was closest to the rest stop. That’s where the cold, evil man stealer was. That’s where Rita’s baby was.

  That’s where Rita needed to go to get her baby back.

  And Rita had two days off, starting tomorrow.

  Lang was driving south on 217, thinking about turning off onto Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and a fast-food lunch, when he got the call from Curtis.

  “Drano wants to see you,” he said without preamble.

  “When?”

  “As soon as you can get here.”

  “I’m getting lunch.”

  “Come after.”

  “Okay.”

  Lang flew past his off-ramp and kept north on I-5 into downtown Portland. He didn’t want to talk with Drano, to have to make plans. He wasn’t ready. This investigation, regardless of its threads to Halo Valley Security Hospital, was just what the doctor ordered.

  He’d met with Denny Ewell, the long-haul trucker who’d discovered the dying male victim and the unconscious female one. Ewell had been passing through Portland on one of his trips and had agreed to meet with Lang face-to-face. They’d met at a truck stop off Sunset Highway, just outside Laure
lton, and the trucker had given Lang a moment-by-moment account of what had happened after he’d come out of the restroom and discovered the two injured people.

  “The guy died right there, I think,” Ewell finished, running a hand through his short, receding gray hair. “He said, ‘The baby,’ and bent over the pregnant lady. She had these marks across her belly and then the guy just keeled over. I think I touched him. He was holding his chest and there was a lot of blood.”

  “The pregnant lady was unconscious.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did the male vic say anything else?”

  “No.”

  Lang asked a few more questions, but Ewell could offer nothing further. It was about as much as Lang already knew. They shook hands and Lang thanked him for his time.

  “It was bad, man,” Ewell said as they walked to their respective rigs. “About as bad a thing as I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.”

  Now Lang considered who this killer and potential baby stealer might be. Man, or woman? If it was a man, there had to be a woman involved in some way, he suspected. Cutting a baby from a woman’s womb wasn’t your everyday crime. It came from some twisted maternal kernel deep in the killer’s brain and that said: woman. Men just didn’t think the same way. The male vic had tried to stop the killer and been stabbed, murdered for his efforts. Could a woman have killed him? The height and angle of the man’s chest wounds said yes.

  He pulled into an underground parking structure near the Portland police station, took a ticket, and found a spot that he could back into. Old habits. He never wanted to waste time reversing in tight quarters.

  Drano was in his office behind a glass wall when Lang entered the squad room. He was greeted by other officers with both welcoming handshakes and careful smiles. Lang suspected they worried he might want his job back and a number of them, like Celek, would be demoted. Celek’s freckled face couldn’t hide his anxiety and Lang said, “Stop worrying so much,” as he cruised into Drano’s office.

  Drano was on the phone and he motioned Lang to a chair. Curtis, who’d also been on the phone when Lang arrived, appeared in the doorway and took another seat, shaking his ex-partner’s hand. Lang said, “I owe you a beer.”