Killing Bliss

by EC Sheedy

  He told himself he didn't owe Susan Moore squat, the debt was his mother's. But it didn't hold up. What was his mother's debt was his debt.

  And there was Addilene, aka the Wart, who was fast getting a hold in his brain.

  He never had developed skin tough enough to block out the damaged, lonely Addys in the world, which is why he made a better teacher than he did a cop, but it was the cop part of him that made one fact clear.

  Of all three kids, Wartenski was the only one with a reasonably documented life before DSHS scooped her off the streets, which gave him some chance of getting to know her and come up with a profile that might give him a place to start.

  Back in his apartment, Cade looked down at his cluttered desk, hit a key on his sleeping laptop, and woke up his screen.

  With a few clicks, and an ounce of patience, he located Addilene's aunt, Gloria Wartenski, her phone number, and her current address. He considered the quick find, and the fact she lived less than an hour's drive from his apartment, an omen. It helped that Gloria was an upstanding citizen. The Internet unearthed the innocent faster than those with something to hide.

  So Addilene Wartenski it was. If he were lucky, she'd lead him to the others—and to what happened to Josh Moore.

  * * *

  Addy sat bolt upright, her heart pounding.

  The phone. It rang again, striking the quiet of her room like a lightning bolt.

  She swallowed the shock that came with being roused at—she looked at the clock—three-fifteen in the morning and picked up the phone.

  "Hello?" She shoved her short hair out of her eyes, then pressed her hand to her chest.

  "Addy, it's Fallo—Beauty."

  Fully awake now, Addy said, "I thought you'd be here by now." And because she was late, Addy had operated in submerged panic mode all day. "Where are you?"

  "Bakersfield." She stopped.

  "Bakersfield?" Addy didn't get it. "You're driving south, not north."

  "Tell me something I don't know," she said dryly. She sounded tired. "I've been driving in circles since I left San Francisco. Trying to figure out what to do."

  "I don't understand. What's happening?" Addy clutched her throat to still the wild pulse at the base of it.

  Silence.

  "Beauty. Tell me."

  A labored sigh drifted down the telephone line. "That big bad wolf I mentioned?"

  "Yes." She held her breath.

  "It's Bliss, Addy. Frank Bliss."

  "Oh, God..." The hand she held to her throat fell away like a dead thing. She couldn't breathe. Her eyes went to her bedroom door as if expecting to see him lurking there... or to mark her way out, her escape.

  "He got out of prison a couple of weeks ago. He saw me on TV—"

  "You were on TV! Are you crazy?"

  "No, I'm not crazy," she snapped. "And quit with the exclamation points, would you? It was dumb. I didn't intend it to happen, but it fucking did. So here we are."

  "Oh, Beauty..."

  "Anyway, none of that matters now. The thing is he saw me. He found me—" She stopped. Addy could hear her drag on a cigarette. "And he's following me."

  "God." Addy's mind raced, hunting and pecking for a solution, as it always did when confronted with a problem. And Frank Bliss was definitely a problem.

  Frank Bliss was a catastrophe.

  "I'm scared, Addy," she said, her words a rush. "I haven't felt so damn scared in years."

  Strangely, Beauty's fear calmed her own. "I know. I'm scared, too."

  "He raped me," she whispered. "And the son-of-a-bitch says he's going to do it again." Fifteen cold years swept in on the smallness of her voice, the lost innocence of it.

  "I remember..."

  The past rested between them, sour and deadly, a tangle of terror, mindless flight, and horrifying—unforgivable—mistakes.

  "I hate him. You can't know how much I hate him. What he did to me..." Her voice, still low, firmed, laced with a rage only she could own.

  Addy's heart thumped heavily in her breast, a beat for a death march. But she wouldn't go there, wouldn't let Beauty go there. Not now. There wasn't time. "Don't think about it. Listen to me. You have to lose him. For the moment you're safe. My guess is he's following you because he thinks you're going to lead him to Gus." Saying that name, after all these years, chilled her to the bone, constricted her lungs.

  For a moment there was silence, another drag on the cigarette.

  "That's what I think," she said, sounding stronger. "If that wasn't his plan, he'd have grabbed me by now."

  "You have to keep moving, keep going around in those circles, until I figure something out."

  "Or he figures out what I'm doing. Which he will sooner or later."

  "Just lose him and get here, Beauty. You can do it." Addy scrambled to her feet, rummaged through her bedside table for a pen. "Have you got a cell with you?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Give me the number."

  "Four—Jesus. I've got to go. I'll call when I can." The click was loud and final, followed by a heavy, aching silence.

  She was gone.

  Chapter 6

  Gloria Wartenski was what was commonly referred to as a real piece of work. She was short, square-jawed, obese almost to the point of immobility, and nasty as a starved snake.

  She didn't want any part of Cade or his questions. But by overworking both what charm he possessed and his flattery factory, he eventually made it in the door.

  "You're wasting your time and mine looking for that useless, murdering girl," she said when she finally let him in.

  She gestured toward a door down the hall, turned her back to him, and headed toward it. "Kids. Trouble. Nothing but trouble. Which is exactly what I told Marylee, but of course she wouldn't listen. Then she had the nerve to die and drop the brat on me."

  She didn't seem to expect a response, so he didn't offer one.

  When she trundled through the door to what was her kitchen, he followed her in.

  The place was surgically clean, with stainless steel counters and appliances and an array of gleaming utensils hanging from a ceiling-mounted pot rack above the stove. The floor was white, as was—so far as Cade could see—anything else in the room that wasn't glinting metal. With a bright but chilly fall sun coming in the window, the place scorched the eyes.

  She went to a drawer, took out a dish towel, and draped it over the seat of one of the chairs arranged around a rectangular table. She pointed to it. "Sit," she instructed.

  Hygienically obsessive? More than a bit, he guessed, taking the seat he'd been instructed to take. Gloria Wartenski sat at the head of the table and eyed him as if she were considering hosing him down. "So, what is it—after all these years—you want to know?" she said, her face a crisscross of bad humor and what looked to be reluctant curiosity.

  "I want you to tell me about your sister, Miss Wartenski. And more specifically, Addilene."

  "Stupid sister, even dumber kid." She sat back in the chair.

  "Why stupid? Why dumb?" He hid his shock at her cold, blunt assessment.

  "Stupid sister because she got herself pregnant in the first place. She was diabetic, you know. Damn near died having that baby. All kinds of complications. It was diabetes that killed her in the end. Did you know that?"

  He nodded. "And Addilene."

  "Sassy, ungrateful, and sloth lazy. Which her mother encouraged, I should add. When Marylee was alive, most days you couldn't tell the difference between the adult and the child. All they did was play, play, play. The girl didn't go to school half the time, let alone do her chores."

  "Your sister never married. That must have... bothered you." He might not get a rapport with this woman, but he'd make his questions as open-ended as possible.

  She snorted. "Hell, that was the only smart thing she ever did. You think a kid's trouble, try having a man around."

  He ignored the slam against his sex. "Did you know Addilene's father?"

  She shook her head. "S
ome drifter, I guess. Marylee was always"—she made quote marks with her pudgy fingers, lifted a brow—"looking for love in all the wrong places." She gave him a direct look and what might have passed for a smile, had her upper lip not carried such a mean edge. "And she was pretty enough. Not that a man cares much. When the lights go out, he'd stick it in a rat hole if the mood's on him. Marylee? She could have screwed every male from here to Siberia for all I know."

  Cade gritted his teeth and pushed on. "I assume from what you're saying, you and your sister weren't close."

  "You assume right. Marylee Addilene Wartenski was the silliest creature on God's green earth. Kept a house like a pigsty and only came around when she needed something, which was too damned often after that girl was born." She shook her head. "Going on about how maybe her baby would make us closer." She snorted again. "All she did was moon over that kid." She said the last as if mother love was akin, to contracting the Ebola virus.

  But Cade had heard something he'd never heard before. "Your sister's name was Addilene, too?"

  "Our mother's name, our grandmother's name. From the second she was pregnant, she started rambling on about passing it on to her daughter. Said she knew right away she was having a girl. Ordained, she said." She looked away for a moment and her mouth pursed. "Name should have been mine. I was the oldest."

  "It must have been difficult, given your feelings about your sister"—or lack of them—"taking her child in after her mother died."

  "Didn't have much choice." She shrugged. "I've got bad legs. The girl was nine or so. I figured once she got over grieving for her mother, she'd be some help around the house. Floors, dishes, maybe some laundry... that kind of thing. It didn't happen. Only thing she was good at was crying."

  "A bit young for work that heavy, I'd think." Cade looked at the shining steel, gleaming pots, and thought of a grieving child thrust into this moonscape environment. Hell, he'd cry a few buckets himself.

  "Never too young to start earning your keep." She gave him a combative look as if she sensed his disapproval. "You done?"

  He was done all right. Who the hell in their right mind would spend more than five minutes in this bitter woman's company? But he did have one more question. He asked it as he stood to go. "I understand that before Addilene was taken in by DSHS, she ran away several times."

  She hefted herself to her feet "That's right. Her and me didn't get along. When I was finally rid of her for good, I hired a proper cleaning woman." Impatience shot through her features. "Hired a stream of the miserable creatures. Not one of them any damn good, but every one of them better than that shiftless, good-for-nothing girl."

  Cade nearly swallowed his tongue in his attempt to hold it. "When Addilene ran away, where did she usually go?"

  She half-laughed as she trudged back to the front door. "That's easy. She went to visit her 'mommy.' Graveyard's about twelve blocks from here. Found her there every time." She opened the door for him. "Like I said, a stupid girl."

  * * *

  Cade got in his truck, turned the motor on to activate the air-conditioning, and put his head on the headrest. He closed his eyes and let what he'd learned from Gloria Wartenski free-float in his mind. A powerful mother/daughter bond. A strong-willed, grieving child. A family name. Tears. More tears. A gravesite.

  He opened his eyes and reached for the pad he had ready on the seat beside him, jotted down his impressions.

  Wherever Addilene Wartenski is, it isn't far, he wrote. And he'd bet his last buck she'd kept her first name in some form or another. There was a chance—small, but there—that she'd visited her mother's grave in the last few years, when she started to feel safe. Maybe someone had seen her.

  Not enough. He needed another connection.

  No one to ask. No more family. No aunts, brothers, cousins... sisters.

  Dianna Lintz. Hadn't Grover said the girls were like sisters?

  He decided to take a shot in the murky and chaotic world of the street hooker, the world of Dianna's mother.

  Anything was better than a cemetery stakeout, stalking the dead and capitalizing on their grief.

  Cade drove away, trying to believe his own righteous thinking, and knowing damn well that he just didn't want to see smother graveyard.

  * * *

  Beauty looked in the rearview mirror and cursed. She took a hand off the wheel to rub her forehead and shove her hair behind her shoulder. A thin layer of perspiration coated her neck and shoulders.

  She'd been sure she'd lost him, but the sleek dark Chrysler had shown up again, a couple of cars behind her. Over an hour ago now, and it had stuck like a burr. Her gut, seldom wrong, told her it was Bliss.

  The I-5 was jammed, a chain of diamond lights behind and rubies ahead. It was getting late, she'd been driving for hours, and she desperately needed sleep. She spotted a sign for a town called Kenner thirty-six miles down the road. It had to have some kind of motel, and she had to risk staying there. The alternative was pulling over and sleeping in her locked car, but the thought of waking up to Bliss on the other side of the window made her stomach lurch.

  It had to be a motel. She hoped Addy was right, that he was following her to find the others. If he was, she was safe—for now. If he wasn't...

  She leaned to reach the glove box, opened it, and ran her hand toward the back.

  "Thank you, Burke," she whispered, and pulled the small ivory-handled revolver onto her lap. When she glanced down at it, her mouth went desert dry, and a slurry of fear and apprehension congealed in her chest. She didn't like guns.

  Beauty had fucked more than her share of men, but she'd never killed one—didn't know if she could. But one thing was certain, Frank Bliss was never going to touch her again, and if she had to kill anyone, he was a deserving candidate.

  Her breathing quickened, and she could smell the wet hay in the shed, feel the prickle of it against her naked back.

  The ropes... "If you don't spread them, baby, I'll do it myself." The screams... "Shut up, whore. You let Vanelleto in, you let me in. You got that?" The pain... "Now who'd have thought it, a fuckin' virgin. Looks like I beat Vanelleto to it after all." The laughter... "Might as well really break you in, have myself some real fun. Got all the time in the world to do it."

  The blood, the terror, the endless run...

  On some level, she'd been running ever since.

  Beauty dropped her hand from the wheel, stroked the short, sleek barrel of the gun that rested on her thigh, and experienced a sudden, acute surge of power—and conviction.

  If I'd had you back then, baby...

  Again, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The Chrysler was still there. Ignoring the shiver in her spine, she caressed the revolver and set it carefully on the empty passenger seat.

  Her new companion, her lethal new friend.

  "You're a dead man, Bliss, you just don't know it yet," she spoke the words into the rearview mirror, her mouth twisted into a cold smile. "And you're not getting within five hundred miles of Addy or Gus."

  Her heart settled into a steady, easy beat, and her fear lifted, leaving her feeling loose, eerily relaxed.

  She was no longer afraid, no longer the hunted.

  She'd become the hunter.

  She was going to kill Frank Bliss—commit a cold-blooded murder. But before doing that, she'd lead him as far away as possible. She'd choose her moment—like he'd done years ago when he'd lured her into that filthy shed—and she'd do it in her own time. Slowly.

  And she knew exactly where she'd fire the first bullet.

  * * *

  Roxanne Lintz was surprisingly easy to find.

  Mainly because she was dying.

  When Hep C had brought on a failing liver, she'd been taken in by a small charity-run hospice in Tacoma, a short drive south of Seattle.

  Cade found her in an upstairs room, sitting by the window in a clutter of books and magazines. A TV sat unused at the foot of her unmade bed. The furniture was old and battered, but the place wa
s clean, and a fistful of fresh flowers sat in a painted can on the windowsill. A magazine rested forgotten on her lap as she stared out the window.

  "Mrs. Lintz?"

  She looked up him, her expression mild and questioning. "Yes?"

  Even ill and well past fifty, her skin a sickly yellow, she was beautiful; her features were fine, her hair—well below her shoulders—still shadowed with the dark auburn of yesterday. It didn't take much imagination to visualize the younger, vibrant Roxanne Lintz. "I'm Cade Harding. I called."

  She set the magazine aside but didn't get up. "Yes. You said you wanted to talk about my girl." She gestured to the bed, the only other place to sit in the small room.

  When he'd taken a seat, she went on, "I have no idea where she is, you know." She smoothed her hair back behind her ears, her hands painfully frail and weak. "And if I did know, I wouldn't tell you."

  "Actually, I'm not looking for your daughter. I'm looking for a friend of hers, Addilene Wartenski."

  She shook her head. "Don't know her. But then I didn't know any of Dianna's friends—except that boy she ran off with." She frowned. "Can't remember his name. Lived down the hall for a time. Good-looking boy"—she grimaced and shook her head—"but then they always are, aren't they?"

  "Excuse me?"

  She looked away. "The ones who cause all the trouble. Tall, handsome, full of dreams. Their mouths dripping in sugar and promises. Like they say, 'every woman's dream, every mother's nightmare.'"

  Cade let her be, waited.

  "Add to that, Dianna didn't like my line of work."

  "You fought?"

  She shook her head. "Dianna didn't bother with the fighting part. She just came to me one night—when I was working—and said she was leaving." She looked away, then back. "Said she didn't want a whore for a mother. She was thirteen. I saw her once after that. Downtown... can't remember where. When she saw me she took off, and I let her go." She stroked her thigh with a too-thin, long-fingered hand. "A woman like me, in the trade? Never should have had a kid. But when she came, I thought—" She stopped abruptly. "It doesn't matter what I thought."