by Nancy Bush
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said flatly, thinking now—as she had many other times, she realized—that she was extremely lucky Peter and Jean LaPorte had adopted her. They’d taken care of her, loved her the best way they knew how. Peter had been a tad removed, but it was more because he didn’t know how to show affection rather than any aversion to Gemma in particular. Jean had loved her fiercely. Had wanted Gemma to be just like her. Had fashioned her in a way that spoke more of what Jean was made of than anything to do with Gemma herself. Jean bullied, pushed and fought her way through life.
And she’d lied…about…something…
“This turn,” Gemma said, surfacing with difficulty. Will eased onto the rutted lane and they drove down an oak-lined drive and then across an open grassy area. Ahead, the two-story, white house with the wraparound porch looked like a prototype for “Early Twentieth Century American Farmhouse.” Gemma recalled her father working constantly on the house’s upkeep. Now, several years after his death, the neglect was starting to show in the dry rot on the edges of the siding, the missing shingles on the roof, the streak of rust at the edge of the gate latch.
“You having trouble remembering?” Will asked as he pulled to a stop.
Gemma realized he saw much more than was comfortable for her. Her first instinct was to lie. Just like her mother did. That thought caused her to hold her tongue, and she simply said, “It’s not likely I’m going to forget my whole life for long.”
He walked her to the front door, both of their heads bent against the stiff breeze. She hesitated a moment. “I can get in through the back,” she said. They walked across the porch, down a few steps and along a dirt track. The rear porch was basically a couple of long, wide steps, the paint chipped away from use. Gemma reached around the sill of the door but found nothing. She hesitated a moment, willing her brain to think while Tanninger looked on. He shifted position and she heard the rustle of his uniform, the squeak of his shoes. It sounded vaguely sexual to her and for a moment she wondered who the hell she was. Why did she think these thoughts? What of her own history was she not recalling?
And then another memory surfaced. “We moved the key to under the bench,” she said, and reached beneath the seat of the back-porch bench, finding the key wedged in a niche between thin slats of wood.
Threading the key in the lock, she murmured, “So this is what Alzheimer’s people must feel.”
“Memory coming and going?” Tanninger did not follow her inside and Gemma turned back to him.
“Pretty much.”
“It’s only been a few days since your accident.”
“Yeah.”
Gemma nodded and worried there was something else, something more, at work here. She wondered whether she was obligated to ask him in, but he took the decision away from her by pressing a card in her hand and telling her to call him if she remembered anything. He glanced at the battered white truck parked near the outbuilding, then said good-bye and headed back around the front of the house to his car.
She hurried through the house to the windows, looking out past the front porch to see him climb into the vehicle, turn it nose-out, and then leave splattered mud as he drove up the gravel drive.
Alone, Gemma slowly turned around and exhaled. She was glad Detective Tanninger was gone so she could think. Absorb. Plan.
She examined the decor in the living room/parlor. Her mother’s. Lots of quilts and florals and stuff. She felt suddenly claustrophobic. Jean had been a hoarder. Keeping items way past their pull date, in Gemma’s opinion.
“How long ago did you die?” Gemma asked her, her voice hanging in the empty room. It felt to Gemma like eons, and yet she sensed it was within the last few years, like her father. She could remember Peter’s death clearly. Could see the casket at Murch’s Funeral Home and the smattering of people, small groups that moved through the viewing room and on to the gravesite. Could remember her own sadness and a sense of apprehension that filled her. The apprehension, she realized, was because she’d been left to take care of her mother, who had always had a strong opinion on what Gemma should do with her life: stay in Quarry and help in her mother’s business as a psychic.
Her mother the psychic.
Gemma sat down hard on a needlepoint-upholstered foot-stool.
Charlatan. Flim-flam artist. Crook. Liar. That’s what her mother had been. Gemma had left home at eighteen, following after an army man who’d been stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington State. He’d moved all around and she’d followed, but their relationship had dwindled as her headaches and memory loss increased when she’d scornfully thrown away her medication, believing the drugs to be the work of her parents, whom she’d deemed at the time to be self-serving and harmful to her health.
Not completely true. Her boyfriend…his name escaped her now. So frustrating! Her boyfriend had been the pernicious one. Eroding her self-esteem. Overpowering her and claiming her sexually. Enjoying a sadistic streak that manifested itself in a myriad of ways that Gemma, too young and inexperienced, had chosen to either ignore or absolve.
But she’d always had an incredibly accurate ability to predict the future. Something her mother had seen early and grasped onto and found a way to make a buck from. Of course, Jean’s clientele believed her to be the psychic, but it was Gemma who could suddenly pop up with some future scenario or path the seeker should take. Gemma the under-appreciated, and unseen.
The boyfriend…was…dead…She couldn’t recall how, but she was pretty sure he was gone. Maybe as a result of the war in Iraq? Somehow that didn’t feel right but she felt she was on the right track.
After his death, and a period of bumming around, working at diners and restaurants, Gemma had returned home, and that’s when Jean’s Psychic Readings had really taken off. Jean had opened shop in this very house, using the first floor bedroom as a kind of office.
Now, Gemma walked to that office and realized someone—herself, she suspected—had completely redone the space. There was no couch, no beaded shades, no knickknacks of moons, stars and other astral images. Instead there was a simple, hand-hewn fir desk—courtesy of Peter LaPorte—and two rather modern club chairs. Beside the desk stood a file cabinet, a lamp with a caramel-colored glass shade, and bookshelves filled with hardbacks. Gemma went directly to the file cabinet, which was locked. Her attention was momentarily drawn to the lamp, which was plugged into a floor socket embedded in the fir planks. Spying the cord, she tugged on it gently, thinking there was a reason it seemed out of place. Maybe she should move the lamp to the other side of the desk.
Before that, though, she wanted to see what was inside the file cabinet, and spent a fruitless twenty minutes searching every drawer and cubbyhole in the office looking for a key. Foiled, Gemma sank into the wooden, swivel desk chair. She was certain the file cabinet held the information she sought: bills, identification papers, bank accounts, all the accoutrements needed to prove one’s existence in this day and age.
If she sat still and let her mind go blank, perhaps more memories would come. She’d made it this far.
With that thought, she then considered her medication. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried as fast as she could up the stairs to the second floor and the bedroom at the far end of the hall. Her bedroom. She’d not moved into her parents’ room after their deaths, though it was closest to the only upstairs bathroom. She couldn’t make herself.
Entering her bedroom she stopped short. The walls were a soft, rose red with white paneled wainscoting. The bed was white. All white. The books stacked neatly in a pile on the white nightstand had to do with tapping into unused parts of the brain. Gemma picked one up carefully and leafed through it. Passages were underlined and she suddenly, sharply remembered placing the pen to the page and making those marks.
There was another book on psychological abnormalities. She picked it up and scanned the bold headings inside: Borderline personalities. Multiple personalities. Sociopaths. Pedophiles…
/> The book slipped from her fingers and fell with a clunk on the fir planks. She picked it up immediately and leafed through it some more. In this one she’d made no notes, apparently, but this is what she’d been reading about. This and accessing inaccessible parts of the brain.
She was becoming more and more convinced that she’d been chasing Edward Letton. Her pulse started a slow, hard, deliberate pounding. She’d run him down, known he was going to hurt someone. A young girl.
And then she heard her own voice inside her head:
Red’s your color. It helps you learn things, know things. The medication keeps you from having the headaches but it interferes with your ability. Red helps you access the inaccessible…
Gemma gazed wild-eyed around the room. She could almost feel her mind expand and she forcefully shut it down, terrified of what might enter into it. Hurriedly, she raced to the bathroom, found the pills, shook some into her palm and swallowed them dry.
The rain had ruined his plans.
His head pounded. Rage beat at his temples. He’d meant to burn the witch at her home but couldn’t and now the other one was gone. Gone from the hospital.
But he knew where she haunted. He knew he would find her scent again.
Now he looked over the fields behind his house. Far across, in the dying light, he could see the fir trees sway. He stepped outside and stood in the feel of the wind. There was no moon tonight. It was hidden by the clouds.
He needed the rain to stop. He needed dry weather to feed the flames.
Across the field, lights switched on in the main house. Fury licked through him. They were spying on him, feeding information about his family to everyone who would listen.
Quickly, he stepped around the side of the house to the carport where his brother’s truck stood. The carport roof sagged in the middle, nearly touching the GemTop which sat over the truck’s bed.
He could smell her.
Over the evil scent of the witch was the putrid odor of death.
His hand automatically clapped to his neck and the bandage he’d laid over the vicious wounds she’d inflicted. He’d had hell to pay at work over that one. “Hey, retard, you cut yerself shavin’?” Rich Lachey had said when he’d stopped in at work.
Wolf had been in a hurry. The body was under his GemTop so he’d parked the truck at the end of the lot. He hadn’t had time to do more than change clothes and slap a bandage over the jagged wounds on his neck before he showed up to tell Seth it was gonna be awhile before he could get to that engine.
But he’d run into Rich instead. He’d wanted to smack the grin from his face. His hands clenched in preparation. He wasn’t slow, he was careful. But everyone, especially the witch-mother, had underestimated him.
“The name is Wolf, not retard.”
Rich threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Okay, Wolf. Where ya been? Seth wants to know.”
“I’ll be back next week.”
“Next week? Seth ain’t gonna like that.”
Seth can suck my dick.
Wolf knew his value. He didn’t ask for much pay. He didn’t ask for anything except the freedom to choose when he was available. His brother had paved the way for him.
Now, opening the GemTop, he looked in at the body. A blanket was tossed over her body, one arm hanging out. He could see his own blood on her fingers and rage filled him anew.
She had to burn.
He wanted to set up a pyre in his own backyard but he knew better…he knew better…
But the other witch. The one he’d chased. The one who’d escaped the hospital.
He knew where she haunted.
And it was the perfect place to take this one.
He would burn them both.
First this one, then the other.
On her own evil hunting ground, he would find the site for his pyre.
They all had to burn.
Every last witch.
Chapter Five
The Winslow County Sheriff’s Department was a one-level, cinder-block structure that wasn’t going to win any architectural awards but was more than adequate for the twenty or so personnel who worked there. Sheriff Herbert Nunce occupied a corner office that was filled with untidy, stacked files and fishing paraphernalia. Detective Barbara Gillette shared an office with Will, her desk butted up to his. Her side was obsessively neat while Will’s was genially messy. He wasn’t a slob, but he couldn’t bring himself to have a desk whose surface was uncluttered. His “in” pile always held a couple of pages, and envelopes and notes were tucked to one side of a leather desk pad that was occupied by his coffee mug, some pens and pencils, and a framed picture of himself and Dylan a couple of summers after high school graduation.
Will rarely wore a hat, and as he entered the building he ran his hands through his dark hair, pulling out rainwater. Indian summer had departed as if it were in a hurry to get somewhere else, and they were facing slanting rain, the kind normally reserved for late November and into winter.
The reception desk was behind a wall of glass. Bulletproof glass, ever since one of the crazy meth-heads had come in and threatened with a gun. No more relaxed Mayberry offices after that.
Will waved to Dot, the receptionist, who buzzed open a metal door. Behind it was a utilitarian hallway that led to the offices whose windows were not bulletproof, which only proved that governmental disposition of funds made no real sense and everything was management by crisis only.
The shoulders of Will’s uniform were dark with rain and his shoes were soaked through so that he could feel a clamminess in his toes. Barb was seated at her desk, so her back was to the door; Will’s desk faced the entry. She swiveled when she heard him enter and her dark eyes gave him the once over.
“Umbrellas not manly enough for you, Tanninger?”
“Didn’t have one.”
“Wouldn’t use it anyway,” she observed. “Or a hat.”
“Rain’s gonna stop today,” Jimbo said as he walked by. James Sanchez, lean, mean, and full of swagger, worked Narcotics. His near-black hair was long and scruffy and his uniform was a pair of dirty jeans and a plaid flannel shirt over a black T-shirt. He’d come from Portland on a task force and he’d stayed on. He played by big-city rules. The sheriff didn’t quite know what to do with him, but Jimbo could get the job done that others couldn’t. No one believed he was attached to the sheriff’s department. No one.
Barb ignored him. “You’d rather just get rain running down the back of your neck,” she said to Will.
The slant of her look as he rounded his desk was decidedly sexy. Will inwardly sighed. They’d worked together over a year before they’d gone out on their first of two dates, and it had been pleasant and uneventful. Barb was a flirt, but Will hadn’t really been interested. Then one night she’d walked into a pub where he sometimes stopped after work to grab a beer and a sandwich, and they’d ended up spending several hours together. He’d gotten the impression she wanted them both to head to her house afterward, and as a means to sidestep the problem, he’d invited her out to dinner the next Friday evening. That had been a mistake. From the frying pan to the fire. Barb had dressed for the occasion in a silky dress that showed off every bump and scoop of her trim body, and she’d swayed in her seat at the restaurant to the soft jazz. She’d wanted to dance but there thankfully was no dance floor. Will had extricated himself from the evening somewhat awkwardly. He’d taken her back to her condo and excused himself after one nightcap. She’d wanted him to kiss her and when it was clear he was uncomfortable with that, she’d gotten mad and snarky. He’d left in a hurry and she’d been pissed at him the whole next month. She had only softened up—at least sort of—after he’d told her he just couldn’t go there right now. He hadn’t given her a specific reason; there was none, really. He just wasn’t all that attracted to her. But he’d treated her fairly, and slowly her fury had turned to a low simmer. Now she teased and verbally jabbed him, a play for attention, but it was better than the anger. Some o
f the other guys shot him looks of amusement or fake sympathy, but so far there hadn’t been any remarks that would have resulted in Barb getting all furious with him again.
“Hey, Burl knows your hit-and-run friend from Quarry,” Barb said. “He lives around that area. Gave us a whole rundown on the LaPorte family. Colorful. Very colorful.”
Will grunted. His interest was piqued but he didn’t want to share that with Barb. She was always fishing, where he was concerned, inordinately interested in how he reacted to any information. And Burlington “Burl” Jernstadt was about the biggest horse’s ass Will had run across in law enforcement. He made Ralph Smithson look like a piker. The fact that Burl was retired and had given up his job reluctantly—which translated loosely to leave or be let go—and that Will had been promoted into Burl’s job, didn’t mean that Burl had given up haunting the department offices. It didn’t matter that he’d been a loud, ineffectual, socially inept buffoon who’d screwed up more cases than he’d aided in, and that he’d been lucky to be eased out of the department rather than fired. Burl couldn’t stay away. That he resented Will for taking his job went without saying. To date no one had had the gumption to tell him to get out and stay out. Will sensed that day was coming. He half-dreaded, half-welcomed it.
Whatever the case. He really didn’t want to talk to Burl. Except that the man knew something about Gemma LaPorte, and Gemma LaPorte was still his number-one guess for the avenger who’d run down Edward Letton.
“Anything on Jean LaPorte’s car?” he asked.
“Still no sign of it.”
As soon as Will had learned Gemma’s name and situation, he’d done a background check on every member of her family. He’d learned a number of things about them, but what had snagged his attention first was that the LaPortes had owned two vehicles: Peter’s white Chevy truck—which he’d seen at the house—and Jean’s silver Camry, which was apparently MIA. Maybe the guy who’d dropped Gemma off at the hospital had it, or maybe Gemma had crashed it into Edward Letton, or maybe it was parked somewhere on the LaPorte property. Whatever the case, to date it hadn’t been found, and Gemma hadn’t called to say differently. There was no vehicle in Gemma’s own name.
