by Lis Wiehl
“I shouldn’t,” Nicole said, picking up her fork.
“Maybe just a couple of bites,” Allison said, cutting off a sliver.
“Delicious,” Cassidy mumbled through an already full mouth.
As she looked at her two friends, Allison could feel her heart expand in her chest. They had come so close to losing Cassidy. “I still don’t understand, Nicole, why you didn’t tell me you were going to use that, that . . .”
“Stun grenade,” Nicole said. “Otherwise known as a flashbang, for obvious reasons. The flash blinds you. The bang and the percussive wave mess with your ears and your balance. It buys you a little bit of time. In this case, just enough to disarm Willow and grab Cassidy.”
“And I thank you for that.” Cassidy lifted her glass of wine. “Although when Willow’s gun went off, I was sure I was dead. Thank God she didn’t hit anyone. But if you had let her drive me away, I would have been dead for sure.”
Nicole said, “And the reason we didn’t tell you, Allison, is that it’s standard operating procedure not to tell the negotiator if a rescue attempt is being planned. Willow was listening to you, watching you get out of your car. We couldn’t risk you giving things away through your words, your tone of voice, or even your body language.”
“But where did Willow get the fentanyl to kill Jim?” Cassidy asked.
“It wasn’t fentanyl,” Allison explained. “She had a friend who worked for a large animal vet, and he stole this drug called Carfentanil for her.”
Nicole said, “Carfentanil is an analog of fentanyl, which is why the lab thought it had turned up in Jim Fate’s blood, only somehow concentrated. It’s an animal tranquilizer that’s a hundred times stronger than fentanyl. It was used in the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the one where hundreds of people died when the Russian military pumped in gas.”
“Maybe it was really fast then,” Cassidy said. “I sure hope so.” She looked at each of them. “There’s something else I have to tell you guys. One of the last things Jim ever told me was that when you’re on the radio, you should pretend you’re talking to your best friend. He said you should imagine that they are right there in the studio with you. Well, when Willow forced me to help with her so-called manifesto, all I could think of was you two. All the time I was talking, I was thinking of you.”
A rare smile pulled at the corners of Nicole’s lips. “How are you doing, anyway? Are you sleeping worse now because of this? Are you keeping away from the Somulex?”
“Last night I slept for over six hours. Without drugs. It sounds crazy after everything that’s happened, but it’s true.”
“I’m so glad.” Allison leaned forward and patted Cassidy’s shoulder. “Good for you. How are you doing it?”
“It’s like they say in NA: one day at a time. It’s totally boring, but I’ve been going to bed at the same time every night. Even on the weekend. I’m committed to going to yoga three times a week and NA meetings five times a week.”
Nicole took a deep breath. “Since it’s true confession time, I have one for you guys. That man who broke into my house didn’t just pick us out randomly. About ten years ago, someone slipped something into my drink . . .” Her words came slower and slower. “And I was . . . was raped.”
Cassidy and Allison froze.
Allison did the math. “So Makayla?” she said after a long moment.
Nicole nodded.
Cassidy put down her fork. “Does she know?”
“She didn’t. Now she knows a little. But she knows the important thing. That I’m her mother and that I love her.”
“What happened to the guy?” Cassidy asked.
“He was on parole, but now he’s back in jail. He was supposed to be on electronic monitoring, but you can just cut those bracelets off with scissors. I guess it makes sense—you wouldn’t want someone to get caught on a piece of machinery or something. It does send an automatic alarm when it’s cut, so they knew he was loose. They notified the victims—but they didn’t think to notify me, since I wasn’t one of the people who had testified against him. Not very many people knew that I was carrying his baby, but he did.”
Allison shivered. “How did he find you?”
“He was slick. He called my little brother and pretended to be from a delivery service with a package for me. He said someone had spilled coffee on it and smeared the address. My brother thought he was doing me a favor by helping this guy. One good thing is that Miller’s willing to plead guilty. I don’t want Makayla to go through a trial. At least she didn’t really shoot him.” Nicole pressed her lips together, and her eyes got wide.
If Allison hadn’t known her better, she would have said that Nicole was fighting off tears. But Nic never cried.
“We found all these stuffed animals and dolls in his car. Actually things that were more suited for a younger girl. I think he really had some fantasy about being her father.”
“Everyone dreams about being a parent,” Cassidy said with what Allison thought might just be a wistful smile. She looked at Allison. “Has the doctor said whether you and Marshall can have another baby?”
Nicole lightly slapped her arm. “Girl—it is too soon to ask her that. Just let her be.”
“No, it’s okay,” Allison said. “She said we could start trying again in a few months. But part of me gets worried about going back to that place when we were trying to get pregnant and couldn’t, month after month. Everything that’s happened recently has brought Marshall and me closer. Even my finding that little girl on the day that Jim Fate died. Yesterday, I brought a few things over to Estella’s family. They’re barely scraping by.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that they’re illegal?” Cassidy asked.
“It would bother me more if I knew they were hungry and cold, especially a little child who didn’t have any say in where she was born. Jesus said, ‘I was hungry, and you fed me.’ He didn’t say, ‘I was illegal, and you deported me.’”
“Good point,” Nicole said, surprising Allison. Usually any God-talk was met with a skeptical silence.
“If Jim were here, I’d bet he could come up with a half-dozen arguments against what you just said,” Cassidy said. “But he’s not.” She sighed. “You know, I miss him more than I would have ever guessed.”
“To Jim,” Allison said, raising her glass of wine.
“To Jim,” the other two women echoed, leaning forward to clink their glasses together.
“And to the Triple Threat Club,” Nicole said.
“Long may it reign!” Cassidy said.
And the three friends drank their wine and smiled at each other.
HEART OF ICE
“The air around him seemed to buzz, and the eye contact he made with me was so direct and intense that I wondered if I had ever really looked anybody in the eye before.”
—ROBERT HARE
WITHOUT CONSCIENCE: THE DISTURBING WORLD
OF THE PSYCHOPATHS AMONG US
CHAPTER 1
Southwest Portland
The fuel sloshed inside the red metal gas can, splashing in rhythm with Joey Decicco’s steps. As soon as the house at the end of the long driveway came into view, he stopped and took stock. Sprawling. Lots of windows. Two-story. Wooden. On the porch, two Adirondack chairs and a blue bike with training wheels. And no lights on, no car parked in front. Nobody home.
Just like Sissy—or Elizabeth, as she called herself now—had said.
Because Joey didn’t want to kill anyone. He had already caused enough death.
The sun was setting, but the fading light was enough for what he needed to do. Joey walked to one corner, carefully tilted the can, and began to trace a line around the house, drawing an invisible noose. By the time he finished, it was almost fully dark. He trailed the last of the gasoline and diesel mixture back up along the driveway.
Pulling a silver Zippo from his overalls pocket, he flipped open the cover. The thin metallic clank gave him goose bumps, as it had every time since he was elev
en.
It was showtime.
Fire made Joey powerful. He could cause ordinary, boring people to wake in fright. He made the alarms sound. Made the fire trucks race down the road, sirens wailing. And right behind them stampeded the television cameras and reporters. All of them eager to look upon his handiwork.
Without fire, Joey was nothing. People made a point of not looking at him. At the patchwork skin on his face and his scarred left hand. But fire drew their eyes like iron filings to a magnet. They couldn’t not look at fire.
He flicked the lighter and then bent down, shielding the quivering blue flame with his free hand. With a whoosh, a line of fire raced away from him, advancing into the dark.
This was Joey’s favorite part. The beginning. He had surprised the night. What was supposed to be dark was suddenly filled with light and heat.
The flames circled the house like a lasso, then began to crawl up the sides. Joey’s hands were clenched, his eyes intent as he followed the spreading fire. But like a kid determined to spot the magician’s sleight of hand, sometimes even Joey was surprised by the fire’s next move. The blaze leapfrogged over the open porch and to the top story. A window shattered. With another whoosh, the curtains caught. For a second, Joey thought he saw a flicker of movement, but he told himself it was a trick of the shifting light. There was no one home. Sissy had promised.
Heat tightened his skin. He stood at the end of the driveway, ready to slip into the woods as soon as he heard the sirens. But with no nearby neighbors, they were slow in coming.
Then came a moment when Joey knew the fire would win. The sound had shifted, like an engine shifting to a higher gear. The flames must have found a new, more concentrated source of fuel. Cans of paint in the basement, a natural gas line—something. He sniffed but couldn’t smell anything except the sweet smell of burning wood. But still, the crackle and hiss became a roar, building and echoing until it was a wall of noise.
Finally he heard sirens in the distance. He moved farther back into the trees. As soon as he saw the first fire truck, he would slip away and make his way back to his El Camino. Like a man leaving his lover before a long journey, Joey feasted his eyes on the fire’s beauty—the undulating colors, the flickering flames licking the sky, and the great pillar of smoke visible only because it blocked out the evening’s first stars.
Tomorrow morning the house would be nothing but charred timbers and puddles, gray ash still drifting through the air. And the fire would be dead.
But for now, it was alive. And so was Joey.
“Believe me, she deserves it,” Elizabeth had told him through gritted teeth as she gave him a hand-drawn map and five hundred bucks. Joey had been desperate for cash. It wasn’t easy to get a job when you looked like he did. Not when a background check—even something as simple as typing his name into Google—turned up the truth of who he was. What he had done. So he needed the money.
But the thing was, Joey thought, his heart beating wildly in his chest as he watched the hungry flames, he would have done this for free.
CHAPTER 2
New Seasons Market
Elizabeth was pushing her cart down the aisles of New Seasons when she saw it. A beautiful royal-blue silk scarf tucked into the corner of another cart. The color, she thought, would complement her auburn hair and blue eyes. The cart also held a block of cheddar cheese, a half dozen cans, several boxes of pasta, and a gallon of milk. Not that much different from the contents of Elizabeth’s own cart.
She looked around. An observer might have thought she was scanning the shelves for the next item on her list. But Elizabeth never shopped with a list. And what she was looking for was the cart’s owner.
But she was all alone in aisle seven.
Without a second’s hesitation, Elizabeth walked away from her cart. She didn’t even think of it as her cart anymore. It was the cart. Or a cart. In a few more steps, in the time it took for her to begin pushing the second cart, to put her big black purse on top of the blue scarf, Elizabeth had completely forgotten the first cart. She could have just taken the scarf, but the idea of eating the other woman’s food made her feel powerful.
Having Joey burn down Sara’s house had awakened something in Elizabeth. Something strong. Something hungry. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time. She had built up a perfect life for herself, and she wasn’t going to let anyone spoil it. Sara had needed to be punished.
Feeling bubbly, almost buoyant, Elizabeth pushed her new cart toward the front of the store. The skin between her shoulder blades tingled as she imagined a woman, much like herself, looking in bewilderment for her cart. Her cart with the beautiful blue scarf.
As she pushed the cart toward the line of registers, Elizabeth added a half dozen more items, like a dog marking its territory. A golden-yellow beeswax candle, a clear plastic box of sixteen perfectly iced cookies, a log of goat cheese rolled in silver-gray ash. New Seasons had a reputation for carrying the best organically grown produce, the finest cuts of pasture-raised meat, and cheeses and pastas imported from all over the world.
It also wasn’t cheap.
But Elizabeth did not believe in treating herself cheaply.
At the register, she transferred her groceries to the black rubber conveyor belt with one hand. With the other, she bunched up the scarf and in one quick motion tucked it into her purse. When she lifted her head, she caught the clerk staring at her. His name tag said Clark S. His brows drew together as he saw her hand emerge from her purse.
Elizabeth realized he thought she was shoplifting.
He wasn’t her type—a grocery checker would never be her type— but Elizabeth gave him her very best smile, and his face smoothed out. Well, smoothed out as much as it could. Clark S. was about twenty, with horrible acne, red pustules alternating with old cratered scars. His eyes were striking—large, a deep greenish-blue—but who would ever look past those scars to see them? Or to see how he flinched every time someone looked directly at him?
Elizabeth bet she was the first woman who had smiled at Clark in a long time. She felt him falling into her smile. His shoulders straightened, his hands moving mechanically as he slid each item past the scanner. He only had eyes for her.
She signed the check with a flourish and handed it over. Technically, it belonged to her old roommate, but Elizabeth had taken a book of checks from the bottom of the box before Korena moved out. With any luck it would be weeks before she noticed. And New Seasons prided itself on its friendly neighborhood atmosphere. An atmosphere that included accepting customers’ checks and not asking to see any ID.
“Korena?” Clark asked, staring at the name on the check. “That’s pretty.”
Elizabeth let her eyes drop, as if in shyness. She was calculating what she could get from him. He was only a checker, but she had always had a sixth sense about people who might prove useful to her. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
“Why, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day.” She lifted her gaze and let her smile reach her eyes. Behind her she could hear a woman saying the words blue scarf, but Elizabeth didn’t turn, didn’t let her expression change even as a thrill raced down her spine. She didn’t know if Clark heard it, or understood what it meant, but he didn’t turn either.
As Clark placed her bags—half filled with items she hadn’t chosen—into her cart, Elizabeth let her hand trail over all the impulse buys hanging on the wall behind her. Her fingers closed on an imported chocolate bar with hazelnuts. She slid it into her pocket just as he turned back to her. Giving Clark one last long smile, she began pushing her cart out the door.
By the time she reached her car, Elizabeth was already sucking the last of the chocolate bar from her fingers.
When she pulled out of the lot, she left the grocery cart right where she had unloaded it. Twenty feet from the cart corral.
CHAPTER 3
¿Por Qué No? Taqueria
Spring could be a tease in Portland. Today, she was in f
ull flirt mode. Yellow daffodils edging a curb bobbed their heads in the light breeze. The sky was a pale blue, as if it had been washed clean and hung out to dry. Even here on North Mississippi Avenue, where telephone poles outnumbered trees, the birds were striving to outdo each other with trills and warbles.
Urban hipsters had turned this once-blighted area into a neighborhood filled with funky boutiques, tattoo parlors, and the city’s hottest new restaurants. Most weren’t special occasion places, but rather offered pizza, tapas, or breakfast all day. And even though the offerings were often modeled on Mexican or Filipino street food, they still used top-shelf ingredients like regional line-caught snapper or locally farmed organic greens.
Although the thermometer had barely broken sixty degrees, the open-air tables at ¿Por Qué No? Taqueria were crowded. Surrounded by colorful plates, sun-starved Portlanders people-watched, read newspapers and novels, pushed back sleeves to expose pale or tattooed arms, and in general sprawled like contented cats. Allison Pierce leaned back against the hot pink wall, but straightened up when she felt how it still held the chill of winter.
There were days when that was how Allison felt. Still a little cold inside.
“You okay, girl?” Nicole Hedges asked. She had an uncanny ability to read minds. “Too cold out here for you?”
“No, it feels good.” Allison tilted her face up to the sun, listening to the driving beat of an old Clash song coming from inside the restaurant.
The waiter, a tall guy with a shaved head and a half dozen earrings, walked up with their drinks. “One Coke.” He set the glass bottle, which the restaurant imported from Mexico, in front of Allison. “One iced tea”—this went to Nicole—“and one pomegranate martini.” The last was for Cassidy Shaw, who rewarded him with a smile Allison thought her dentist could use as an advertisement.
“Hey, haven’t I seen you on TV?” the waiter asked, prompting Cassidy to add a few more teeth.
