by Lis Wiehl
Allison asked, “What is it with bodies and Forest Park?”
Ten years earlier, a serial killer had dumped the bodies of prostitutes in the park. And only a few months before, the three women had all been involved in a missing person’s case that came to a sad ending at the park.
“It’s accessible and isolated,” Nic pointed out. “What more could you ask for? Five thousand acres, right in the middle of the city, with well-used trails and places only the deer go. It’s a great place to dump a body.”
“This guy wasn’t dumped,” Cassidy said. “I’m hearing he was shot at close range with a rifle. Once in the head.”
Nic winced. Sometimes she wished her mind wouldn’t insist on supplying her with pictures. “Can’t be too much left to look at.”
“Not of his face, no. And they couldn’t get prints off his left hand because it had been badly burned a long time ago. But I heard they got prints off his right hand and were running them through IAFIS.”
Sara’s words echoed in Nic’s memory. He has burn scars on his face, and his left hand . . . looked more like a claw. She straightened up. “Wait—this guy had been burned? Are you sure?”
Cassidy’s brows pulled together. “I didn’t see him myself. I just heard he had old scars on one hand and what was left of his face.”
“Just a second.” Nic grabbed her cell phone and went outside, as Allison and Cassidy watched her curiously. She called Leif. “I think I just found our would-be hit man. Only somebody hit the hit man.” She explained what Cassidy had learned.
“I’m actually still at the office,” Leif said. “How about if I call Portland police and get an ID for this guy? I’ll call you back.”
When Nicole came back to the booth, Cassidy said, “So what was that all about?” Allison was also looking at her expectantly.
Nic gave them a truncated version of the story of Sara and Noah and the guy with the gun, with no names or distinguishing information. “But you have to keep this on the QT. Whoever ordered the hit thinks this lady and her son are dead. And if it gets shared prematurely, then they might still end up that way.” She gave Cassidy a warning look.
“Just stop it, Nicole.” Cassidy crossed her arms. “I don’t understand what is wrong with you lately. It’s like you don’t—you don’t trust me anymore.”
Well, she didn’t. She didn’t trust anyone.
But then Allison surprised her by adding, “And you’ve been awfully distant lately. Nic, what’s wrong? And don’t tell us it’s nothing.”
The long silence was finally broken by the waitress bustling over with their pizza and three heavy white plates. But once she left, no one made a move to take a slice. Instead, Allison and Cassidy simply regarded her. Waiting patiently.
And Nic’s resolve began to crumble. “Okay. You want to know the truth? The truth is that I’ve . . . I’ve got breast cancer. They think it’s in the early stages, and there are a lot of treatments available, and they say they think they can get it all. But the truth is that I’m so . . .”—the words caught in her throat—“. . . so scared.”
“Oh, honey,” Cassidy murmured. And then Cassidy did something that Nic had never thought she would witness. She pressed a button on her cell phone until it chirped off. Then she fastened her big teal eyes on Nic.
Allison followed suit.
Her friends gave Nic what she needed. They listened more than they talked. Even Cassidy. And when Nic couldn’t find the right words or found herself overwhelmed with emotion, they didn’t rush to fill the silence. Instead they waited, patting her hand, their own eyes filling with tears. They listened to her vent and handed her their napkins when she started to cry.
“Let me tell you something.” Nic decided to lay it all out for them. What she wanted—and what she didn’t. “I don’t want to hear about juice fasts or acupuncture. Let me figure those things out on my own. And I don’t want to hear that I’m strong. I don’t want to hear that I’m a survivor. I don’t want to hear that God never gives you a burden you can’t carry.”
Allison surprised her by nodding in agreement. “I’ve learned that sometimes the only way out is through. And just because you get through, it doesn’t automatically mean you’re strong. You might look like you just went a dozen rounds in the ring and lost every one of them. Just because you’re still standing doesn’t mean you feel like a winner. It just means that you weren’t given any alternative.”
“Except dying,” Nic said, “and I’ll never choose that. Not while Makayla is still so young.” She looked at her friends. “Can you guys promise me something? Will you still treat me like I’m me? Will you guys still be you? Not change?”
Cassidy and Allison nodded. Somewhere along the way, the three of them had started tearing into the pizza, eating as if they were famished.
No one was perfect, Nic realized. Her friends cared. They were doing their best. And that was all anyone could ask for.
“You guys know me. I’m a private person,” she said. “If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s the look of pity you get when you tell someone you have cancer. And then that will be all anyone wants to talk about. Since cancer is the last thing I want to talk about, I’m going to keep this to myself as much as I can. Of course, I’m already losing a lot of my privacy whether I want to or not. In the last two weeks, I swear all I’ve done is show my boobs to strangers.”
“Too bad it’s not Mardi Gras.” Cassidy’s expression was deadpan. “You’d have a great collection of beads.”
First Nic started to laugh. Then Cassidy and Allison joined in. The three friends laughed harder than the joke warranted. Hard enough that Nic found herself blinking back more tears. Only these tears were healing.
“What about Leif?” Cassidy finally asked.
Nic wiped her eyes with her already sodden napkin. “I have too much on my plate right now. There’s no room for a man.”
“But we’re not talking about a man,” Cassidy protested. “We’re talking about Leif.”
Nic didn’t answer. Some things were too close, even for her friends. She was the only one who hadn’t turned off her phone. Now it buzzed on her hip. The display read Leif Larson, giving her a bit of a start. Speak of the devil. She took it out onto the front patio.
“They’ve identified the guy with the burn scars,” Leif told her. “It’s some guy named Joseph—Joey—Decicco. He has a history of setting fires that stretches back to when he was a teenager. He’s also got a string of psychiatric diagnoses behind him, plus stays in mental hospitals and the occasional prison. But no history other than arson.”
“Any links between him and McCloud?” Nic asked.
“None that show up in the computers. McCloud never defended him, which I thought might have been a possibility. I called Sara and ran his name past her, but she didn’t know it. I’m getting his photo to send to her cell phone, but I’m thinking it’s the right guy. They even found a handgun a few feet from his body, and I would bet it’s the gun he threatened her with. But all the pieces still don’t quite fit together.”
“One of the biggest pieces,” Nic told Leif, “is why.”
CHAPTER 49
Hopworks Urban Brewery
As soon as Nic went out on the patio with her cell, Cassidy grabbed Allison’s hand, her eyes wide.
“I can’t believe it! Cancer. Cancer. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Who would?” Allison rubbed the bridge of her nose with her free hand. “But I think we did okay.” She gave Cassidy’s hand another squeeze and then released it. “Right now, I think that all Nicole really needs from us is to listen to her. And how often does Nic really tell us what she’s feeling? How often does she even complain?”
“How often,” Cassidy added, “does she cry?”
The two women looked at each other, and Allison said what they both were thinking.
“Never. Nic never cries. Even when she told us about what those guys did to her ten years ago, she was dry-eyed.” She sighed,
and her breath shook a little. “Right now, let’s just try to give her space to talk, like she said. If she wants to complain, let’s just listen. I mean, if anyone deserves some self-pity, it’s Nicole. And later we can help her put herself back together again.”
Allison knew that some people needed you to be strong for their own reasons. And many wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give you room to be weak.
And that’s where she and Cassidy could come in. As true friends who offered compassion and understanding, and who were willing to acknowledge the moments when it seemed impossible to go on. Just as Cassidy and Nic had done for Allison when she lost the baby, or Nic and Allison had done for Cassidy when she got caught up with the wrong man—and then the wrong prescription.
Allison wanted to caution Cassidy against suggesting some funky healer or aura masseuse, but she couldn’t think of a tactful way to do it. Besides, Nicole had already told both of them that she wasn’t looking for that kind of advice. For herself, it would be all too easy to answer Nicole’s fears with platitudes, to say, “They have so many treatments now” or “Everything will be fine” or even “I’ll be praying for you.” But as the Bible said, faith without works was dead. She could and would pray for Nicole, but she would also prove the truth of her belief that God was in even this by the help she gave Nic, the ear she offered.
Nicole came back to the booth. “We’ve got an ID on the body,” she announced. “The fingers on his left hand were pretty useless as far as prints were concerned. But they managed to get a match off his right. So we know who he is. Joseph—Joey—Decicco. And Leif went over his records with me. They’re pretty interesting. How this guy got to be a hired killer is a puzzle. He’s got an arrest record dating to his teens— all for the same thing. And it’s not murder.”
Allison thought of the burn scars. “Arson.”
“Right. It’s true that he’s caused three deaths in the past. When he was fourteen, he was playing with a lighter in the basement of his house, and the resulting fire got out of control. That’s where he got those scars. The fire killed his family—his mother, stepfather, and a younger half brother. Decicco himself suffered severe burns. And guess where he ended up after he was discharged from the burn unit.”
Allison shrugged. “No idea.”
“The Spurling Institute. Didn’t you tell me once Lindsay was there?”
“Yeah, for nine months, when she was sixteen.”
Lindsay had been a chronic runaway. Before she was sentenced to Spurling, she had been shacked up with some fifty-year-old, boosting stuff to feed her drug habit. Really, Allison thought, maybe Lindsay had come a long way.
“Your sister’s three years younger than we are, right?” Nicole looked up, thinking. “That would put her there at the same time as Decicco. I’ll try to get my hands on his records, but as I’m sure you know, Spurling was closed a decade ago.”
Guilt washed over Allison, as it had so many times before. After two months at Spurling, Lindsay had managed to slip a letter out with a sympathetic staff member, begging Allison to help get her released, or at least transferred. She claimed that physical and mental abuse was rampant. But when Allison and her mother had talked to the director of Spurling, he had smoothly explained Lindsay’s claims away. They were lies, he said, lies meant to manipulate them into letting her out into the world where she could continue down her destructive path. They followed his advice and did nothing. Believed the director’s own manipulative lies.
Four years later the school was shut down by the state of Oregon. The allegations were hair-raising. And when Allison tried to stutter out an apology to her sister for not having listened, all Lindsay had said was, “Whatever.”
“So could you talk to your sister?” Nicole asked now. “See if she remembers him? See if there’s more about him than the records we can get?”
“Sure. You said it’s Joseph . . . what?”
“Joseph—Joey—Decicco.” Nicole spelled it, then shot Cassidy a narrow-eyed glance.
Cassidy gave her a lopsided smile. “Don’t worry. I know not to say anything until it’s public information. But Allison—ask Lindsay if she wouldn’t want to be on TV.”
Allison’s first impulse was to do no such thing. Lindsay loved reality TV. She didn’t see how it reduced everyone until they were small enough to fit inside a plastic and metal box. Allison couldn’t see how being on TV would benefit Lindsay at all. Then again, Allison had promised herself that she would start letting her sister make her own decisions. Let her figure out how to stand on her own two feet. Or how to fall.
“What we need to figure out is how a guy like that became a hired killer,” Nic said. “I mean, how many unsolved murders are there on the books? Maybe there’s more to this Decicco than we know about.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t kill this woman and her kid,” Cassidy said. “So you don’t know that he’s a killer.”
Nicole blew air out between pursed lips. “Maybe he just took a look at the child and decided he couldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been successfully killing adults for years. I’ve met killers who would make a point of stepping over an ant on the sidewalk and then gut someone’s grandma without even blinking.”
“Yeah, but a firebug?” Cassidy picked up a crust from Allison’s plate and began to nibble on it.
Allison didn’t even blink. Cassidy had few scruples when it came to food.
“People like that, it’s fire that turns them on. Not killing people.”
“But people who like to start fires also like to control things,” Nicole said, her face animated.
Allison wondered if she welcomed the chance to think about something other than her cancer.
“That’s one reason they like fire so much, because they can control it. And there’s nothing bigger than controlling life and death.”
“Maybe this Decicco guy tried to burn down her house.” Cassidy spoke around another mouthful of crust. “You know, Jenna covered that arson fire. Maybe she figured out this guy was behind it and contacted him. She was hoping it would be a story. Only he killed her. And then maybe Decicco snapped and decided to kill anyone who might know that he was behind the arson. It makes a lot of sense.”
It did and it didn’t, Allison thought. Pyromaniacs loved fire in and of itself. They weren’t criminals so much as mentally ill. Why would a guy with a history of arson suddenly switch to killing people—even if he was worried about going back to prison? That was a big step. But it was hard to argue with Jenna’s death or with Sara saying Joey had stuck a gun in her face.
“But didn’t you say Jenna called in sick?” Nicole asked. “Or at least a woman claiming to be Jenna?”
Cassidy nodded.
“Do you think it was really Jenna?”
“The weekend receptionist probably doesn’t know Jenna well enough to be able to tell her voice. But she didn’t seem to have any doubts that it was a woman.”
“This Decicco sounds like he didn’t have any friends,” Nicole said. “So one question is—who called in?”
Cassidy shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe he just pitched his voice higher. Or heck, my phone at home came with a button that lets you make your voice higher or lower.”
Allison added, “The other question is—if Joey killed Jenna, then who killed Joey?”
“Could he have killed himself?” Cassidy asked.
“No.” Nic grimaced. “Close-range shot to the head—but the bullet didn’t come from the gun they found at the scene. And no gunshot residue on his hands.”
The waitress came up. “Are you ladies going to want dessert?”
“Of course we are, right?” Cassidy looked around the table. Nothing ever dampened her appetite. “How about that brownie sundae I saw on the menu. Didn’t it say it was organic?”
The waitress smiled. “The brownie, the vanilla ice cream, the whipped cream, the chocolate and caramel sauces, and the walnuts.”
“Organic means no calories, right?” Cassidy winked at
the waitress. “And since we’ll be splitting it three ways, I think it will actually end up being negative calories. We’ll probably lose weight eating it.”
“Your math sounds pretty good to me.” The waitress grinned back as she tucked her order book back into her apron pocket and picked up their now empty plates.
On the drive home Allison had a lot on her mind, but not so much that she couldn’t spend the drive praying out loud for Nicole. She prayed for Nicole’s health and her healing, for her doctors, for her daughter and her family, and for her friendships. Prayed that she would know what to do to help her friend.
When she walked in the door, she smelled cookies baking. She went back into the kitchen.
“Lindsay, can I ask you something in confidence?”
“Of course.” With a smile, Lindsay slipped off the oven mitts.
Allison realized she rarely asked her sister anything—just told her. “When you were at Spurling, do you remember a guy there named Joseph Decicco?”
“Joey?” Lindsay look up and then to the left, her eyes unfocused. “Yeah. We called him Joey Cheeks. Because of his name, and because of what had happened to, well”—she touched her own relatively smooth skin—“his face. He had scars on his face from burns and skin grafts, and his left hand didn’t really work.”
It was definitely the same guy.
Lindsay tilted her head. “Why do you want to know?”
“This is the part you have to keep in confidence. Joey was found murdered yesterday in Forest Park.”
“Oh no.” Lindsay put her hand over her mouth.
“The thing is, it looks like he might also be connected to at least one murder.”
“Murder?” Lindsay’s eyes widened. “Joey Cheeks?”
“So that surprises you?”
Lindsay’s face softened. “Actually, it does. I mean, sure, he was in Spurling for killing his family. But he didn’t mean for it to happen. Did you know about that?”
