by Nancy Bush
Barb caught Will on his cell phone as he was leaving the hospital. “Take you all day to do some interviews?” she asked.
“Smithson show up?”
“Yeah. Pissed at you.”
“What was his version of what happened?” he asked.
She lowered her voice, probably because she was at her desk. “You’re a fucking bastard with control issues and could get violent. Want my version?”
“Shoot.”
“He’s a whiney bitch with Momma issues and could wet the bed.”
Will actually laughed aloud, which pleased Barb and she chuckled quietly. “Are you on your way back?”
“Just got relieved of guard duty. Letton’s not long for this world. The doctors called the wife, Mandy.”
“Where are you?”
“Taking a late lunch.”
“Learn anything about our vic?”
“She was a party girl. I’m going to call Mac and tell him to check Portland clubs. I also have the name of a friend. I don’t suppose you’ve heard what they found at the scene?”
“Not yet. I thought McNally was on the verge of retirement.”
“Maybe he can’t give it up.” Will thought about telling Barb he was on his way to interview Gemma LaPorte, but thought better of it. “I’ve some things to take care of, so I’ll see you later.”
“Hurry back, big guy.”
Will hung up, glad things seemed to have warmed a little with Barb. She was a big girl. Maybe this would pass. Still, it hadn’t seemed prudent to tell her that he was on his way for a tête-à-tête with Gemma LaPorte. Smithson might be a whiney bitch, but he sure as hell saw someone who looked like her.
Will just hoped Ms. LaPorte was at home.
Gemma felt like her head was going to explode. As she picked up the plates in the booth after a party of four, she felt slightly dizzy. Carefully she laid the plates back on the table and took a moment, inhaling several long, deep breaths. She wasn’t well. This accident had set her back far more than she’d wanted to believe. The sights, smells, and noise of the diner were nearly overwhelming.
“You okay, miss?” a man at the next booth asked with concern.
Gemma nodded, carefully picked up the plates again, then headed for the kitchen. She dropped them on the counter near the sink, the top one skittering off and clattering atop an already growing pile. Milo, the cook with the Rasta braids, said, “What’s your problem, girl?”
“Milo.” Macie shot him a look as she entered behind Gemma.
Milo shrugged, unrepentant. “She don’t look so hot. That’s all I’m saying.”
Charlotte slammed her notebook shut and scrambled off her chair in the corner. Seeing the concerned look on her face, Gemma waved her away. “I’ve been away too long from the noise, I think. Or maybe it’s just my on-again/off-again brain.”
“Nuh-uh,” Macie said. “Not like this. You’re white as a sheet and look about to face-plant the linoleum. That’s not your brain. You’re sick, girl.”
“I don’t know how much is a result of the accident, and how much of it’s me.” Gemma sank down on the stool Charlotte had vacated.
“Y’all gonna get outta here?” Milo asked, hands on his hips. He wore a do-rag over his hair and his apron was bright red.
Gemma looked away from him and thought, He’s about to be a father and isn’t sure what to think about it. “Do you know the sex yet?” she asked.
He lifted his brows in an exaggerated, You’re nuts kind of way.
“Is it going to be a boy or a girl?”
Macie gave Milo a swift look. “Shirl’s having a baby?”
“Jesus, my Lord,” he muttered and slammed back to the grill, scraping at some nonexistent burned-on gunk as if his life depended on it.
Macie slid Gemma a look. “You go, girl,” she said. Then, “Lunch crowd’s over. I can finish up. You get yourself right.” She headed out to the dining room.
Charlotte was staring at Gemma with a kind of awe. “How do you do that? Can I learn?”
“I don’t think so.” She smiled wanly. “It’s kind of a curse.”
“Why can you do it?”
“Just lucky I guess.”
“Is your head really hurting?”
Gemma gently rotated her neck. “Better now.”
“You’re different since the accident.”
“Am I? How?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it,” she said seriously.
Gemma gave her a long look. Whether she knew it or not, Charlotte had information. “What do I do when my brain is ‘off’?”
“Stare off into space. Say some kind of spooky stuff, like you just did with Milo. Like you were thinking about something else, really hard, and then you return.”
“Do I generally remember what I was thinking about?”
“Yeah, I think so. Like when you came out of the restaurant the last time I saw you? You were just totally on him. You remember that?”
“Sort of.” Gemma felt her pulse start to escalate.
Charlotte sensed that Gemma wasn’t being entirely truthful, so she related, “I was outside and you just banged out of the door right after this dude. I don’t know who he was…he was sorta familiar but he looked at me weird. Creepy.”
“How, creepy?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” She thought about it, then shook her head. “But then I saw the one chasing you. He was creepy, too, but different.”
“In what way?”
“He was kind of hunched over, like his shoulders were heavy. He was staring at you, like with laser eyes.”
“Not the guy I was following?” Gemma clarified. “This was a guy following me?”
“Yeah, he had bushy hair.”
“And you’re certain he was following me?”
“Well…yeah…it sure seemed like it…” Now Charlotte didn’t sound so sure.
“Go back to the first guy. Can you remember why you thought he was creepy?” Gemma knew her questions were coming hard and fast, but she was desperate to learn what she had been doing that day. It didn’t sound like she had been following Letton, but maybe…?
“That guy? The first guy? His eyes were kind of—intense. He stared at me like he was stuck on me. Like he was caught in a tractor beam and couldn’t look away. He was a psycho for sure. But the second guy—he’s like a rock. He just had that look about him.”
“Did you see what they drove, either one of them?”
Charlotte screwed up her face, struggling hard. “I think the first guy had a truck. Or maybe it was the second one.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was heading inside. I didn’t say anything to you because you were like on a mission. Figured you wouldn’t recognize me anyway. You never do when you’re like that.”
She was so matter-of-fact Gemma hardly knew what to think.
Suddenly, Charlotte said, “I’ve got it! You’re more here now. That’s what’s different. Like you’re really back. I can talk to you. Like now.”
“You couldn’t before?”
“You really don’t remember much, do you?” Charlotte looked concerned.
“I’ve got big gaps,” Gemma admitted.
“Maybe that’s from the head trauma. People always forget stuff with head trauma. Takes awhile to get over that and you may never remember stuff that happened right before your car crashed,” she warned earnestly. “But maybe the accident put your head on straighter. You seem more…” She searched for the right words. “More…in the moment! That’s what they’re always saying. ‘Be more in the moment.’ You’re more in the moment.”
Macie returned with a huge plastic tub of dirty dishes. She dumped them beside the growing pile in the sink. “Where’s the damn busboy? First Denise, then Aaron. And the new girl’s waiting for a ride from her boyfriend.” Macie snorted in disgust.
“Don’t you think Gemma’s different since the accident?” Charlotte asked her mother. “More in the moment?”
Macie gave
her child the kind of scared look mothers sometimes can’t hide that says she doesn’t know quite what to think of this alien creature she gave birth to. She wrenched her gaze away to look at Gemma. After several tries, where she opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind, she said, “Maybe more focused. You don’t seem as scattered. How’s the headache?”
“Better. Really. It just felt like a wave of noise and confusion for a minute.”
“Good.”
“Macie…” Gemma followed her to the dining area. Charlotte tried to trot after them, but Macie said, “Give me and Gemma a minute.”
“Fine.” Charlotte clomped back to her stool.
“What is it, hon?”
“It feels like I’m missing pieces. Big pieces.”
“Mmmhmm. Did you call Dr. Rainfield?”
“I haven’t heard back from him yet. I left a message with his answering service.”
“Answering service? You are missing big pieces. That man’s old, honey. He sees people out of his home. Gave up his practice to his son, who moved it to Portland. You can just stop by. He’s over on Bellflower. The gray two-bedroom with the rose garden? It’s all sticks now but that’s that man’s pride and joy.”
“I remember,” Gemma said, with a flood of memory. She could see herself stepping up the sagging front porch steps to have a session with the doctor.
“Don’t know if he’s a quack or not. Most people think he’s okay, and I think he helped you. Got you to write that book.”
“Book?”
“Your diary, or whatever? To put down all the times you forgot things, or if you predicted something, like with Milo just there? I don’t know. You told me about it.”
“Did I?” Gemma asked faintly.
“You need to sit down?”
“No, no. It’s just—hard—getting these pieces of my past that are lost.”
“You don’t remember the book?”
Gemma thought hard, then slowly wagged her head no. She sensed the information was inside her somewhere, but the more she struggled to pull it out, the harder it became.
“You’d better go home and take care of yourself. See how you feel. I’d like you here next week, but if you can’t make it, just let me know.”
“I’ll be here. Count on it.”
“Well, go now. Shoo.” She snapped a towel at Gemma. Gemma glanced at the clock on the wall. Four o’clock. “Don’t even think about it,” Macie declared. “Get yourself well.”
“The day I chased that guy I was just having…breakfast?”
“You didn’t even get that far. Denise was showing off how she’d hemmed her uniform up, and you looked at her and then that guy…and you were gone. Like you made some kind of connection.”
Gemma said as if from a far distance, “I sort of remember.”
“Yeah?”
“The uniform was red.”
“That’s right. A prototype. But we kept with pastels. Do you remember why you went after that guy?” she asked curiously.
He was a pedophile.
The words ran across Gemma’s mind though she didn’t know where they came from. “What time was it?” she asked.
“Early. Seven a.m. Maybe even six.”
Letton was killed in the late morning. Tennish. It could have been him. She could have blasted after him, then made her plans to run him down at the soccer field.
Or, did you follow him to the diner first?
Shaken, Gemma left with a mumbled good-bye. She’d chased a pedophile out of LuLu’s on the morning Edward Letton was run down by someone who looked a lot like her. She couldn’t reconcile this other side of herself with her own view of who she was. Maybe this was how killers justified their actions? Maybe they just didn’t think of themselves as capable?
Suddenly she really wanted to find that book, that diary. Hurrying to her father’s truck, she slammed inside and headed for home.
Wolf dreamed of her.
She came to him with her hair down, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. Her scent was pine, a fresh mountain flavor. He opened his mouth to taste her and she opened hers, but it was a yawning cavern. He could see straight into her black soul.
His body was consumed with heat. Fire. Molten lava.
His arms reached for her. He held her and she started spitting and screaming. He threw her down.
“Burn. Burn.”
She howled and thrashed as he flung himself upon her. He was going to have her. She had no choice. No choice!
Br-r-r-ring.
His eyes flew open. The doorbell. Fury raged through his veins.
Four o’clock in the afternoon. Someone at his door. He hated anyone coming to his domain.
He jumped from the bed and strode to the front door. His dick was still stiff and he had to wait a moment before answering.
He opened the door and there she stood. Clipboard in hand.
“Hi. I just need a signature,” she said.
He glanced down at the box on the ground. A throbbing started in his temples.
“That’s not for me,” he said. He couldn’t recognize his own voice.
She tilted her head and examined the address. Her lips parted. “Your house number is 2702?”
“Over there.” He threw an arm toward the back of his house. To the fields beyond and to them. “Behind me. The farmhouse.”
A line formed between her brows. “I’m…I was sure…” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Never mind.”
He didn’t say anything and she gazed at him uncertainly as she walked away. He watched her tight butt in the brown shorts. Her calves were clean and strong.
But she smelled rotten. Evil.
Bile rose up his throat.
She was a witch. Another one he needed to burn the rot from, from the inside out. A gift to him from a higher power, the next one he needed to send back to hell.
He watched as she stepped into her truck and drove away. He opened his garage door and climbed into the truck which still smelled faintly of the other witch, along with the ammonia he’d used to scrub out the truck bed.
He could pick up this one’s trail after she left the farmhouse.
Chapter Ten
Will felt a slow anger building inside him as he headed toward Gemma’s. She’d lied to him. He didn’t completely believe her story about not remembering. Something was off. And he was pretty damn sure she’d showed up to finish Letton off but hadn’t been able to go through with it. Maybe she’d seen, as he had, that the man wasn’t going to make it. Maybe she’d had a change of heart.
Maybe he was hoping against hope that she was innocent, even with all evidence to the contrary.
Growling under his breath, he grabbed his cell phone and punched in the number he had for Sam McNally. In other states it was illegal to use a cell while driving unless you had an ear bud. Probably should be in Oregon, too, Will thought, but in the moment he was glad it wasn’t.
“McNally,” the detective answered.
“Hey, Mac, it’s Will Tanninger. Have you heard anything from the techs yet on Inga Selbourne, the body we found at the airstrip? They find anything at her place?”
“A helluva lot of blood,” Mac responded. “It’s been sent out for testing. Might be Inga’s or could be the doer’s. Somebody stabbed somebody with a piece of glass and I’m betting Inga nailed him. But if so, he’s not too worried about DNA. I’m going out to view the body this afternoon.”
“I didn’t notice any cuts, but the body was burned,” Will said.
“If it’s him that got cut, he’s got some marks on him. Got anything for me?”
Will told him about Inga’s affinity for the Portland bar scene. “She has a girlfriend named DeeAnna Brush who worked in administration at Laurelton General. DeeAnna quit and moved over to Good Samaritan.”
Mac grunted. “Good, I’ll check with her and see where their favorite spots were.”
“Keep me informed?”
“Same here.”
Will hung
up and checked the meter of his anger. Down to a low simmer. Good. He wasn’t known for losing his cool but he felt oddly out of balance over the Letton case.
He was practically to Quarry when his cell rang. He looked at Caller ID and read: Home. Puzzled, he answered, “Tanninger,” though the call had come from his own rented, ranch-style two-bedroom house.
“Will?” an older, female voice warbled.
“Mom?”
“I stopped by to see you, but you weren’t here.” She sounded scared and Will knew just how she felt.
“You’re at my house?” he repeated, his heart clutching. She suffered from dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s, and although it had been a slow decline to this point, the disease was definitely winning. It was infuriating, and frustrating, and there was nothing to do about it. “You remembered where the key was?” he asked, half-incredulously.
“Oh, yes. I knocked and knocked and finally had to let myself in,” she confirmed. “Where are you?”
Will’s urgency to talk with Gemma fueled his frustration. “I’m working, Mom. In the car.”
“Are you coming home?”
Wild horses wouldn’t be able to keep him away. “I’m on my way. Mom, how did you get there?”
“Uh…?”
“To my house. Did Noreen bring you?” he asked, referring to his mother’s caretaker.
“I don’t think so…maybe…”
“Did she drop you off?” he suggested. He’d been trying to take her vehicle away from her for the past six months, but had been singularly unsuccessful. He’d hidden the keys, which she’d found, and he’d disabled the ignition, which she’d called a mechanic to come and fix. The craftiness inside the fog of dementia was mind-boggling. But since Noreen had come to live with her full time, he’d thought the situation was taken care of.
“No…my car’s gone…” she said suddenly. “I think it’s in a ditch.”
“What ditch?”
“The one by the road,” she said, sounding amused, as if she thought he was just the silliest thing.
Alarm bells clanged inside Will’s head. He told her again that he was on his way and actually put the siren and lights on as he tore back in the direction of his own house.
