Dead Memories (Carol Ann Baker Crime Book 2)

by Lissa Pelzer

  But it didn’t. A moment later, she sang it out loud to herself again, ‘Lunatic Fringe!!!!... Oh. Seriously. No. Stop!’ she spat.

  She saw Rane again, reading that inlay. She saw him jump up with excitement. ‘Hey, Buttercup, this band... This is me!’

  She had been holding a sleeping baby at the time and had paid no attention, but one of the other women had darted over there and put herself in his lap.

  ‘Oh, wow. Red Rider. Like your red hair, you’re the Red Rider!’

  Now, Davis remembered the look on his face, contempt and arrogance.

  ‘Hey, Sunflower,’ he replied to the girl. ‘There are things you don’t know. And sometimes I am glad.’ He had winked at his first wife. ‘Buttercup,’ he said to Davis. ‘The band is called Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.’

  It had meant nothing to her at the time. She had looked down at Alice, her mouth making fishy movements in her sleep and not thought anything of it. But now, a bolt of electricity shot through her heart. She turned the car towards the sidewalk and slammed on her brakes at the green light.

  Surely, her mind was playing tricks on her. That band hadn’t shared the same name as her husband. She typed into her phone as fast as she could and before she’d even finished the second word the whole name came up.

  Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.

  And it all became clear. Either, her ex-husband and the trucker were both really into killing young women and a certain eighties Canadian rock band, or they were the same person.

  Lilly

  Registration really was in two days and the inquest was tomorrow. If she didn’t go now, she’d miss registration and if she stayed here any longer, Davis would find her. Every hour, every minute, every second was another beat when Davis might walk through her door.

  And Lauren was right, going to California with Red was a bad idea, she’d had bad feelings too, like why had he come back for her? There was no knowing. But she had no other choice, did she? She’d just have to ride with him as far as she could, ‘Play it by ear’, as Bobby would say.

  Lilly shook her head. There was literally, nothing else she could do.

  Lauren

  Janine had told her what to look out for, a red truck with an orange and red flame down the side and a girl on it, like a rodeo rider.

  ‘Don’t you want to wait until the inquest...’ she asked again, ‘until you’re totally cleared?’

  Because really, Carol Ann Baker was now Janine Kenny and she would be fine as long as the inquest came back okay. Why not just be Janine and get on with life? Why risk getting the scholarship too? She thought these questions, but didn’t ask them. Lauren just couldn’t bring herself to tell Janine that she knew who she was.

  ‘It’s just a formality,’ Janine said. ‘You know, I don’t even have to go to that. It’s just a bunch of professionals sitting around a table. They’ll reach their verdict, with or without me.’

  ‘But it won’t look good.’

  ‘I’ll tell them where I’ve gone. So they can come and find me down there if they need me, but right now, I just really need to get out of here.’

  Lauren agreed. She went out the front doors of the unit and got into her car. Just as she was about to turn the key, a car passed the entrance, cruised past at about 15 mph. Lauren’s hand hovered and froze over the key. She recognized the driver’s profile, the hard cheekbones and spiky hair. What was she doing scoping the unit out? Lauren had a pretty fair idea. But how was she meant to get Janine out, with Davis spying on the place?

  She’d have to think of something.

  Davis

  A memory skittered across her line of sight.

  ‘That’s my song, Buttercup. That boy’s got my name. I could have been him. He could have been me.’

  Tom Cochrane and Red Rider.

  At the height of their numbers, their family totaled twelve including Jade, but by this time, the number had dwindled to six with Alice there too. The crops had been failing and the women had started to disappear. Some of them must have worked out what was going on in this blessed family and packed in the night, but she was a new mother again and hardly noticed the difference between day and night.

  She remembered the reporter bouncing Jade on her knee, trying to tell her in hushed tones that she needed to leave too. She wondered how this woman could have spent two weeks with them, and still have been unconvinced of Rane’s divinity.

  Honey was an accident. They all knew that. The others, well they just left. She chose to think that until the day before the police arrived. Then Rane had told her what he had done.

  ‘Honey was a bad woman, diseased and pestilent, Buttercup. But don’t worry, it is all God’s work. I absolutely have the big guy on my side on this one.’

  She remembered the bitterness she felt towards the reporter who had turned them all in.

  And Davis remembered how she had lied to the police when they showed up at the farmstead, how she had said Rane was by the river, when she knew that he had driven off the other away.

  Davis’s stomach flexed, the muscles contracted. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick. Rane, her ex-husband, the cult leader, the murderer, the trucker Ralph Adams, the Red Rider, the man who had killed Carol Ann Baker. They were one and the same.

  Fifteen years ago, she had helped that man escape. Davis gripped the steering wheel. And she had chased Carol Ann into his arms. Her arms shook as she pulled back out into traffic. The only thing she could do now was to bring him in and find out where Carol Ann lay.

  That image of Carol Ann on the side of the road rose again in her mind and as her anger flared, both at herself and him, she pushed the vision away.

  Stay cool. Stay focused.

  How would she get that information out of him?

  Would she appeal to their shared past and offer him information on his own flesh and blood, her daughters? Davis took her foot off the gas. No, she wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t get to know it was her that found him. He wouldn’t get to know she was even alive. She would simply cause him some pain, lean on him so hard that he would crack. She would... She would... Davis imagined her fist red, sore and bloodied. She saw Valerie’s face. At least she could bring justice for one of them. The light turned red and she stopped and breathed like she had just finished running a timed mile.

  She was doing loops around the rehab facility now, figures of eight through the commercial and residential sides of town. Her eyes darted around the streets, looking for the trails of a Freightliner and the sight of flames, for a man with dark red curls and a lean torso. Her mind was spinning and nothing felt real.

  No.

  She stopped herself. She was looking for the man in the grainy photo, a man in an old cap, with a natty beard and probably graying temples, a man around fifty years old.

  She passed the facility again, was one block away, when she saw a yellow Subaru SUV drive off towards the highway and it grabbed her attention. Not ten minutes earlier, this car had been going in the other direction and before that she had passed it coming from the West. It looked like it was circling, looking for someone. Davis was doing something similar herself and as they say, it takes a con to know a con. Davis turned sharply and followed it down the street.

  The Subaru headed out of town now. It edged up to the light and she pulled up behind and stopped. It was a girl driving, a blonde. Her hair could be seen around the headrest. The girl’s eyes flickered up into the rear view mirror and looked away. When the light changed, the girl put her foot down and pulled off quickly giving her the impression she was trying to lose her. Davis kept her speed steady and was still behind her at the next light, but when the next one changed, the girl didn’t speed off. She pulled up slowly, almost waiting for it to go amber so she could brake.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Davis said out loud as they carried on.

  Now the blonde pulled into a gas station, and Davis pulled into a parking lot across the street. She fuelled up but seemed to sit there a good
long while before jumping out to pay by card and moving off at a sensible pace.

  Davis pulled out too, curious as to where she was leading her, but a moment later the car began to slow and Davis pulled back. The girl was drawing up behind a wide, middle-aged man walking on the side of the road, maybe someone she knew.

  ‘No,’ Davis muttered.

  That was him. That was Rane. In an instant, she recognized his gate and posture. Fifteen years had passed and he had put on weight, but the man underneath was still the same.

  When the Subaru stopped completely, Davis panicked and pulled into a closed gardening supplies center. But the girl only stopped for a moment. Rane had peered in, but got in quickly, as if he knew her and they were off again. They turned around in the street and Davis pulled out her phone, looked for Bryan’s number and fed the piece into her ear canal. This girl was taking Rane to the rehab unit. Somehow, she was in on his activities. As they passed the gardening center Davis ducked down and waited until they had reached the intersection before pulling out.

  Lauren

  She’d turned on the radio, pressed the buttons until a song she recognized and didn’t hate came on, and then pulled out. She’d started by driving up towards the highway. Sometimes trucks parked up on a patch of level ground by the overpass. She didn’t see any trucks there today and turned around again to check out the lot by the garage.

  But Lauren knew she wasn’t the only person out looking for him. She glanced out her passenger side window as she passed the rehab unit for the second time and saw the rental car that Susan Davis was driving, facing her head on. Susan Davis, Detective Davis, was looking for him too. Why? Because of what had happened to Valerie, obviously. But also, she knew as Lauren had worked out, this trucker was the one who drove Janine over from Ohio. She couldn’t know that Janine planned to take a ride with him again, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t have to know in order to intercept her when it happened.

  Lauren put her foot down and glanced back to see Susan Davis going off the other way. She turned down towards the other side of town and carried on her search.

  She must have put in fifty miles of driving by the time she pulled over to buy a bottle of water. She got out at the gas station and went inside, and it was while she was waiting to pay, she saw him.

  ‘What does he look like?’ she’d asked Janine.

  And she had described him well, from the strawberry blond fizz coming out the side of his cap, to the way his t-shirt stretched over his chest as if there had been plenty of muscle there, once.

  And there he was, directly opposite her, ordering something to eat at a window seat in the diner. Her back straightened. She wanted to go and talk to him and she wanted to hide, both at the same time. She glanced around, thinking Susan Davis would show up any moment now and jump on him, but then she remembered, aside from Valerie and Janine, she was the only person around here who really knew what he looked like. Then another thought came to her, how was Susan Davis going to find this guy if he wasn’t in his truck?

  Lauren got back in her car and drummed her fingers against the wheel.

  Susan Davis needed to spot this guy, she thought to herself, she needs to see him and she needs to stop him.

  It didn’t take her long to find Davis again and to hook her in. One more trip past the unit, some suspicious driving and Davis was all over her.

  Red Rider

  He’d been walking about two minutes when he felt the presence of a car pulling up at his ankles and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  When he glanced back, he saw a yellow 4WD with a blonde girl in the driver’s seat and she smiled. She’d pulled up alongside him and already had the window down.

  ‘You lost?’ Red asked her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Can I give you a ride?’

  Girls around here sure were friendly. He might have even taken the ride, but right now, he needed to stay unknown.

  ‘Thanks for asking, but I’m just fine,’ he said.

  And she said, ‘I’m a friend of Janine’s. I have a message from her. You want to hear it?’

  Red took the handle and popped the door. He slid into the seat and they drove off.

  ‘She wants to meet you tonight,’ the girl said.

  She had a way of looking at the road for a second and then back at him for maybe three or four seconds. Red didn’t like that system, but he could put up with it right now.

  ‘Janine said you two could meet at the corner by the facility at around eight-ish.’

  Red didn’t like that plan either. For a start, it was too close to the place they were keeping her. For another thing, this girl knew about it. But he nodded as if he was thinking it over.

  ‘It’s really good of you to want to help her,‘ the girl said.

  Red ran his hand across his chin. ‘Well now, she needs the help.’

  ‘But you don’t have to help her, do you?’ The girl looked at him again with big wide eyes.

  What was she saying? Did she know something?

  ‘Actually, I do,’ Red replied. ‘I really do need to help her. But hey, I have a better idea. How about you go and pick Janine up now and I’ll meet you guys someplace right away?’

  He saw a twitch in her eye and Red wondered if this girl had ever snuck around with friends before. It didn’t seem like she had. She looked straight.

  ‘I’ve parked my truck up behind the old corn-oil place,’ he said.

  ‘Oh right! I know where.’

  ‘So how about, you take me back up there now and then you go and get Janine?’

  ‘Okay!’

  Red paused. No. Something about that plan didn’t work, either. If this girl came back with Janine, she might just drop her off and drive away. And now she knew about him, he’d need to smash her pretty blonde head in with a rock too. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but those were the facts.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked as he dropped his head into his hand.

  ‘We just need to be really careful.’

  ‘I know, right!’

  ‘Look, how about you drop me back off here?’

  ‘Then I’ll go and get her and call you when we’re close.’

  ‘No...’ Kids these days had nothing between their ears. ‘You can just drop me off up here, right here, by these trees, okay? And then you go and get her, say you’re going out for a shake or something, and come by and pick me up again. Then we’ll all go off to the truck together.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘Then no one saw Janine get into my truck, see.’ He nodded, hoping this was enough to fool her.

  And she smiled back, big and dumb. It seemed to have worked.

  Davis

  ‘Come on. Pick up.’

  The phone rang and rang, but Bryan didn’t pick up. She dialed again. This time, the phone rang once and rang off. He must have rejected her call.

  ‘Damn it!’ she spat at the windscreen. ‘This is your guy too!’

  Davis ran through the possible scenarios that were about to happen.

  Rane was going to the rehab center to get the JK girl. The blonde was driving him there because she was in on his plan. Did she know JK? Would she lure the girl out for him?

  So now what? She was going to have to challenge him at the unit, the girl too. Two against one and he probably had a weapon. She’d have to call 911 like a regular citizen...but say what, exactly?

  The rehab unit was about three miles from here. But now the SUV took a right instead of a left. Davis slowed and rolled past the intersection they had turned off, and after they got a way down, she turned back and followed.

  More cars, that’s what this scene needed. They were heading out of town, into the farmland and the number of cars was getting fewer and fewer. Davis screwed her eyes shut and opened them again, just in time to see the yellow Subaru in front slowing up and pulling over at a deserted crossroads.

  ‘Damn it!’ Had they seen her? Were they pulling out guns right now? She had no choice
but to pass them and carry on. And she put her foot down and dropped her shoulders, half expecting a bullet to come tearing past her neck. But neither of them glanced her way. Looking back in the rearview mirror, she saw Rane getting out of the car. She saw him disappear into the bushes and within five seconds, the Subaru pulled away again.

  Davis took a left and carried on down the street. The landscape out here was flat and apart from the long summer grasses, there wasn’t much to break up the line of sight. She watched the Subaru pass down the road in her rear view mirror, heading back towards the city, and then Davis slowed, swung the rental around in the road and stopped.

  From here she could see the bushes where Rane was hiding. She took her foot off the brake and let the pull of the road take her back down to the turning. She was slowly crawling in her car as if she were crawling along on her body, with her head down, barely looking over the wheel.

  Them there was movement in the bushes and Davis braked.

  Lilly

  This time, when the soft tapping came on her door, Lilly was ready. She opened the door a crack and Lauren was standing there, her chest raising and lowering as if she was out of breath.

  ‘Did you find him?’ Lilly whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They came out into the hallway and walked casually along towards reception. At the swing door, Lilly stopped. She looked at Lauren and waited for her to open it. She didn’t want to ask her to open it, didn’t want to admit just how dependent she was for something so basic as her freedom. And she thought of the times they had gone out to the mall or for sodas at the diner in town, it had all been so casual. But Lauren was standing there now, looking at her like she’d had a change of heart.

  There was nothing to do but wait.