The urge to look inside that stack of boxes was impossibly strong but I just thought about how I’d feel about him pawing through my underwear drawer back home. I decided with nothing else to do I’d clean the apartment because it really needed it.
Under the kitchen sink I found one bottle of cleaner and roll of paper towels. I started in the kitchen, wiping down all the cupboards, refrigerator and stove and then I moved on to the living room, where I dusted everything. I found a vacuum in a hall closet and dragged it around the carpet and laminate flooring but there was no mop so I hand washed the floor. Lastly I did my bathroom, which didn’t look like it had ever been used before I came along. I stood outside Pierce’s bedroom and paused. Finally I made a deal with myself that I would not touch his bedroom but if the ensuite bathroom needed cleaning I would give it a quick scrub. Opening the door to the bedroom, I tried to quickstep through it but stopped in my tracks at the picture frame on the nightstand. The three of them, Pierce together with his wife and young son, all sitting in autumn leaves somewhere looking impossibly perfect and happy. She had a bright smile and long dark hair. The son looked so much like Pierce it made my heart squeeze in my chest.
Feeling horrible even for looking, I gave my head a shake and marched straight into the bathroom off the bedroom. It was a complete disgusting disaster.
“Oh. My. God.”
I just stood there blinking in surprise and attempting only to mouth breathe. I’d cleaned Gramps’s bathroom often enough to know what happened when men gave up on even pretending to clean up after themselves. With determination and a strong gag reflex in check, I started with the toilet. Next I tackled the sink and countertop that was spackled with gobs of toothpaste and beard hairs. Finally I moved to the standalone shower. For a second I could smell Pierce. The scent of his body wash or soap was very intense in that area but it was also going to take an atomic bomb to get the soap scum off his shower doors.
“The man is a friggin’ pig. Who would’ve guessed?”
Cleaner and roll of paper towels in hand, I took off my socks, rolled up the legs of my jeans and stepped into the shower stall. I sprayed and scrubbed and scrubbed and sprayed and, even with the exhaust fan running, could feel myself getting lightheaded from the fumes of the cleaner. I opened his bedroom window wide, kept the bathroom door open, then stepped back into the shower because, even though I’d given it a thorough cleaning, it would need another. I turned and coated the grimy tile with cleaner and lifted my hand to scrub.
“What the hell?”
I whirled around to find Pierce staring at me from the other side of his shower door.
“Um.” I opened the door. “Hi.”
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning.”
“I can see that.” He grabbed me by a hand and pulled me out. “You don’t need to be doing this.”
“I’m sorry but someone should because it’s gross.”
He threw back his head and howled with laughter, and I felt my face go cherry with embarrassment. With the cleaner in one hand and what was left of the paper towels in the other, I sped out of the bathroom and went to the kitchen to stow away the cleaning supplies.
“You’re not my maid, Julie,” he said, all serious now. “I don’t expect you to clean up after me.”
“I was bored, okay?” I stuffed my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. “I’m basically a prisoner here.”
“Oh, come on.” He rolled his eyes in what was becoming a common and annoying look. “You are not a prisoner. You’re just in protective custody to keep you safe and, yes, to help with the case if you can but—”
“But I can’t leave. I can’t call anyone besides Gramps.” I felt suddenly a bit teary. “And I like to keep busy because keeping busy stops me from thinking about shit that makes me want to drink.”
I hugged my arms across my chest and stormed past him toward the living room. He followed.
“I’m sorry,” he spoke to my back. “You’re right. I should’ve thought about that. Of course being alone with nothing to do is horrible. I should’ve thought about that and given you a task or...something.”
He touched my back and then his fingers recoiled as if burned. I wished he’d never seen those scars.
“Okay, well...” He cleared his throat. “I had things to do this morning but we’ll get you the hell out of this prison now and go to lunch.”
He walked over to the coffee table and picked up my long string with the faucet bit on the end and he held it out to me.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing.”
I snatched it out of his hand and brought it to my room, then changed my clothes to what I wore yesterday. There were few options because I didn’t own a lot of clothing. I washed up but was still pretty sure I smelled like lemony household cleanser because that scent had burrowed inside my sinuses.
Pierce said we’d walk to a place for lunch and then head out. He didn’t say where. I was just thrilled with the idea of getting out of the apartment. We took the elevator thirty floors down and walked for two blocks not saying a word. I saw a woman walking a Rottweiler and had to look away.
“Wookie is fine with your grandfather,” Pierce remarked.
“Sure. He’s feeding him table scraps and they’re chasing rabbits.” I tried to sound happy and upbeat but it came out deadpan. “Wookie used to be Katie’s dog, you know. She got him as a pup and loved him to death until he became work and then she started leaving him with her mom when she’d skip town. Except her mom hated having Wookie around so one day she dropped him at my trailer for two weeks that turned into five years. Since then he’s been my pal.”
“Guess it was meant to be. He’s lucky to have you.”
I was the lucky one. Having Wookie had saved me from reaching for a bottle on many occasions.
Pierce held the door to the coffee shop open for me. It was cafeteria style and I grabbed a packaged sandwich and a coffee while he did the same.
“Gramps said Katie came back for Wookie while I was at work,” I continued once we sat down. “She wanted to take him back to live with her but he wouldn’t let her.”
“That’s crazy. She abandoned the dog and doesn’t deserve to have him back. Besides, you love that dog and he loves you. Anyone can see that.”
“She’s just pissed I won’t forgive her over the situation with Denny. She doesn’t think she did anything wrong and she isn’t used to anyone holding her accountable. She isn’t as bad as this looks. She was always a good friend.” That may have been stretching things a bit. “She was my only friend, really,” I amended. “So she’s pissed and wants to hurt me.” I took a bite of my sandwich. “The next morning all the reporters were there. I’m pretty sure that was Katie’s way of getting back at me.”
“What a bitch.”
My head was down as I ate my sandwich. Yes, she was a bitch but I’d been able to claim her as a friend before, and now I had nobody unless you counted Jonas, who might turn out to be a friend once all this was over.
“That string with the metal cylinder on it,” Pierce began, interrupting my thoughts. “Was that for pendulum dowsing?”
When I looked up at him in surprise, he smiled.
“I told you I did my homework before I came to talk to you that first day.”
“It didn’t work,” I told him. “I guess I’m not cut out...”
My words drifted and I thought about Grandma’s face twisted with rage over a string with a fake crystal on the end. Quicksand. I shuddered.
“I hate it when you get that look.”
“What?” I nonchalantly sipped my coffee.
“That look on your face that says there’s only bad in the world because of what your grandmother did.”
I flinched. Then I let what he said simmer a while until I
replied with my voice lowered to a whisper.
“There isn’t only bad in the world? How can you, with everything you do for a living...and what happened to your own wife and kid...how can you think anything else?”
He’d drawn first blood bringing up Grandma, and I’d cut him deeper with the mention of his family. He ate the rest of his sandwich with one hand while he looked through his phone with the other. I shouldn’t have brought it up. His wife and son. That was mean and, just because mention of Grandma made me want to throw daggers, that didn’t mean those knives had to go in Pierce’s direction. We finished eating and walked back his apartment in complete silence.
He curtly told me to grab my L-rods and I did. Then we took another awkwardly silent ride in the elevator down to the parking garage. I wanted to claw the words back but what was done was done. He was driving out of the city and I just kept my gaze out the window.
“Nowhere specific today,” he mentioned suddenly, breaking the silence and forming a truce. “I thought we could drive to the area of each abduction and bounce ideas off each other.”
“Okay.” I nodded and felt good he wanted my ideas and felt better he wasn’t going to be in a sulky silence all day.
“I’ve got our guys going through lists of every casino employee and delivery company that brings stuff to the casino. They’re putting together a list of names that appear at all the locations near the abduction sites.”
“That sounds like a lot of work.”
“Ninety-nine percent of police work is sifting through details like that but, if we find something, it’s like winning the jackpot.”
We were on the I-5 heading north toward Arlington, Luna Quinn’s hometown and where she was abducted. When we drove under the overpass where his wife and son had been killed by a drunk driver, I stole a sideways glance at Pierce. His hands tightened a little on the wheel but otherwise you’d never know.
“So have you done the pendulum dowsing thing before?”
Pendulum dowsing held nothing but bad memories.
I will not stand by and let you bring Satan into my house!
“I don’t think it’s my thing. I could get a yes and no out of the pendulum but no matter how many different questions I asked about the missing girls, I came up empty. Sorry.”
“Jesus, don’t be sorry. You’ve helped us locate three girls.”
“Dead, though,” I said quietly. “It would be better if we could get them alive.”
“You won’t hear an argument from me about that.”
The area where Luna Quinn was picked up was a stretch of road between a church and an office building. It had been after dinner but the exact time was vague because she wasn’t reported missing for hours. Her parents thought she’d decided to go out with friends for coffee after work because that was an occasional routine.
Pierce pulled to the curb along that block of road directly in front of the makeshift memorial people had set up for her. Flower bouquets were piled three feet deep surrounded by votive candles. Someone had written RIP Luna in pastel-colored chalk on the sidewalk, and sad teddy bears stared back at us with shiny dead eyes.
“The office building at the corner does have security cameras. She was seen walking past the building at about seven-thirty. If she was continuing her walk home, she would’ve gone right by a convenience store up the road and would’ve been caught on their cameras. She wasn’t.”
It was an innocuous stretch of land in a small city of less than twenty thousand. Arlington was an hour north of Seattle so many people chose to live here and commute. Luna Quinn’s parents probably thought it was a nice safe place to raise a family. Usually it was.
“All that stranger danger shit they teach in school. Do you think she knew him?”
“It’s a possibility,” Pierce admitted. “But if he was strong enough he could’ve overpowered her or held a gun on her.”
After a moment he drove from the abduction site to the closest casino. The drive was two or three minutes. A smattering of cars clustered around the entrance in the midafternoon sun.
“Your boyfriend, Denny, works at a casino, right?” Pierce asked.
“Yeah.” I gave him a wary look.
“Did he work at just one or others as well?”
“The one up by me, he’d been there for months but he’d also worked at others. Just not at the same time.”
It made me relieved to say that as if I’d just cleared Denny of suspicion. Yes, he’d screwed Katie and that hurt like hell, but he’d been good to me until things went to hellfire in a demonic handbasket.
“That makes sense but I hope to get the list later today of any and all people working at more than one casino. If there’s a hundred people we’ll have our work cut out for us the next while but what if it’s only one guy?” He started up the car and began to drive away. His voice took on a faraway wishful tone. “What if there’s just one crazy asshole who works at all the casinos near the abduction sites and he’s our man?”
That would be good, I thought. I hoped it was that easy.
The drive to Maple Falls where Iris Bell went missing was almost ninety minutes. Pierce tuned the radio to a classic rock station and hummed along to a lot of the songs.
“You probably haven’t even heard of any of this music,” he said to me.
“What? The oldies but goodies?” I laughed. “Yeah, this is what we mostly played at the fill-up station.”
“Really? Was that your choice or was the manager an old fart like me?”
I just laughed and looked out the window. Margie did set the station but I’d become used to the songs and tunes from the seventies and eighties and didn’t mind most of them.
“You’re probably missing your phone so that you could be listening to your self-help book.”
“I don’t mind listening to music.”
But, even more, I liked hearing him talk to me.
“Did you find out anything from the DNA evidence off the girls, or are you not allowed to talk about that?”
“I think I’m past the point of trying to keep information from you about this case.” He flashed me a crooked half-smile. “But, no, we don’t have anything back on the DNA yet. Even with a big push it takes a while. In the meantime we can’t hold our breath because it only helps if that evidence is a match to someone already in the system. This guy may never have been incarcerated.”
I thought about that for a minute.
“How does someone just start killing people at random like that?” Then I laughed. “Yes, I know serial killers are more fucked up than the average person, but once upon a time this person was a baby and somebody changed his diapers and then he just evolved into a monster.”
“I don’t know the answer. Why some people can go through hell and become psychotic maniacs while others can be burned but not broken and...”
His voice faded toward the end and he cleared his throat. He was thinking of me. That I was burned but not broken. Or maybe he thought I was a closet psychotic maniac just because my grandmother was easy with her fists and whatever weapon she could get her hands on? He was probably right. At the very least I should come with a warning label.
Warning: Crazed dowser searching divine bones and the bottom of a wine bottle. May explode. Stand clear.
We were almost in Maple Falls when Pierce pulled into a station for gas. I waited in the car and happened to glance over at the fill-up store and my mouth dropped.
“I’ll be damned.”
Grabbing my purse I climbed out of the car.
“Do you want anything from inside?” I asked Pierce over my shoulder. He shook his head.
I hurried to the store and burst in through the doors with a big smile.
“Hey, there,” I called out.
“Oh my God! Julie? What the hell ar
e you doing here?”
“I should ask the same,” I walked to the counter and asked Jonas. “Since when do you work at this location?’
He burst out laughing.
“Holy shit, Julie, I almost didn’t recognize you with the blonde hair. It looks good.” He came around the counter and gave me a quick awkward hug and then went back to his cash register. “Margie asked me to help out at this station for a couple days when I told her I needed more hours.”
He opened his mouth in a wide grin to expose the gap.
“I’m still planning on fixing my tooth but it’ll cost a few hundred more.”
“That sucks,” I said, walking to the cooler and grabbing a Coke. “But you need to get it fixed. You’re not going to catch yourself a pretty girl looking like a hockey player.”
He snorted and as I paid for the Coke I looked over and saw Pierce leaning against the car watching me.
“Well, gotta run.”
“That your dad or something?”
“An uncle,” I said over my shoulder as I left the store.
Once back inside the car I buckled up and we drove out of the lot.
“Friend of yours?” Pierce asked.
“Actually, yeah, and a coworker. He worked with me at the station.”
“I thought you were going into the store to buy something. From now on, you check with me before you just run off to say hi to someone. We’re trying to keep you safe. There were threats made against your life and—”
“You know what? I don’t need protecting. Not from Jonas. You know how many friends I have left?” I made an O shape with my fingers. “I have zero friends besides this lame-assed kind-of friendship with him. That’s it. I’m sure you have a gazillion friends but I don’t so you just concentrate on protecting all those girls who could get snatched by the killer,” I huffed.
He opened his mouth to reply and then seemed to think better of it. He started the car and we just drove away without a word between us and only the music from the radio filling the car. We drove about ten miles farther down the road before we got to Maple Falls.
When a bunch of dumb commercials came over the radio, Pierce turned off the station.
A Grave Calling Page 15
