Unseen

by Nancy Bush

  Sheriff Nunce’s office was packed with personnel. Will and Barb were there, as was the noxious Burl Jernstadt, naturally. Nunce’s forehead was a series of furrows, like a child’s depiction of ocean waves.

  “I’m not saying I’m forgetting about the woman who killed Letton, Burl,” Nunce said with weary patience. “I’m saying we’ve got another case that’s in the forefront.”

  “Laurelton PD’s jurisdiction,” Burl argued.

  “We’re working it together,” Nunce reminded.

  Burl waved a hand, as if swatting a fly. “But that psycho LaPorte woman killed him, that’s what I’m saying. She’s batty and unpredictable. She’ll go after somebody else.”

  “I heard someone leaked her name to the press,” Nunce said.

  Will turned toward Burl. Barb, smiling faintly, followed suit. Jimbo stopped in the office doorway and snorted. “The LaPorte woman should get a medal.”

  “She’s a killer,” Burl retorted. “Don’t care how much you and Tanninger want to get in her pants.”

  “Shut up, Burl,” Will said.

  “Shut up, yourself.” He was offended.

  Jimbo moved off, the tail of his plaid shirt billowing behind him. It wasn’t a closed meeting; that wasn’t Nunce’s style. But Will would have given a lot to get Burl ousted once and for all.

  Nunce raised a finger, as if schooling two errant boys. “Burl, you’re here because I’m letting you be. Will, bring us up-to-date on the Selbourne case.”

  “I talked to McNally. They’re tracing Selbourne’s movements on the last few days of her life, canvassing Portland bars. I got the name of a friend of hers from the hospital, someone she partied with, DeeAnna Brush. Maybe we’ll get some answers soon.

  “This morning we got a call from Don Enders at the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Department. Another woman’s body was found, strangled and burned with cigarettes. A lot like the Selbourne case but she wasn’t taken to a separate site after he killed her. Jamie Markum’s body was left in her apartment.”

  “Think it’s the same killer?” Nunce asked.

  “Could be,” Barb answered before Will could respond. “Clatsop County is sending over pictures. Apparently, there was a man with her when she was attacked.”

  “A man? What do you mean?” Burl frowned hard at Barb as if he thought she was lying.

  “Enders says the guy was her date,” Will said. “Went back to her apartment with her. They had sex. Seems to have been an ongoing thing between them. She goes to a certain bar in Seaside. He’s already there. She pretends she’s a hooker even though she’s a delivery person for To You Today. He acts like a big wheel, though by day he’s a grocery clerk.”

  “Role playing,” Barb said.

  “The two of them pass out on the bed, but when he wakes up he’s on the floor with a killer headache and a goose-egg on the side of his head the size of a baseball. She’s lying on the bed naked. Dead. Burned with a cigarette.”

  Barb said, “Like Inga Selbourne.”

  “A serial killer over several counties. The feds’ll get involved,” Nunce said.

  “We’re not just giving up on this,” Will said.

  “Hell, no,” Barb said. “Let’s check the pictures.” She hooked a thumb back to the main room. “Probably on Will’s computer by now.”

  They all walked together toward Will’s desk and he accessed the photos Clatsop County had e-mailed him. Jamie Markum’s body had been photographed, the lens close to sections of skin. There was a cluster of burn marks just below the belly button.

  “Just like Selbourne,” Nunce observed.

  “So, it is a serial murderer,” Burl said, sounding oddly pleased.

  “And rapist,” Barb said coldly.

  “More cigarette burns,” Will said. “Inga had two. This looks like three.”

  Nunce frowned. “What’s the significance?”

  Will shrugged. “Third kill?”

  “If so, that means we’ve missed one,” Barb said.

  “Well, he killed in Laurelton. Which is Washington County. Left the body in Winslow.”

  “Because he was trying to burn it, and chose the airstrip,” Barb said.

  Will nodded. “Now, he’s in Clatsop, Seaside. Maybe there’s another one in another county?”

  “Different MO. He didn’t take this body and try to burn it,” Nunce observed.

  “He accessed through the window.” Will punched a few buttons and called up pictures of the crime scene. “The front of the building is open to view but the bedroom window is on the side. Maybe it was just too difficult to haul out a dead body.”

  “Then why’d he choose her?” Nunce posed.

  “Why did he choose either one of them?” Will responded. “There’s gotta be some reason. Maybe the length of their hair. Who knows.”

  “Jamie’s hair was cut short. Kinda boyish, actually.” Barb flicked back to the pictures of her body. “See.”

  “Maybe he likes boys,” Burl leered.

  “Then he’d probably be targeting them instead of girls.” Will’s patience was razor thin.

  “Send out this information with Selbourne’s and see if there’s another death that could be related,” Nunce said, turning away.

  “You want to take that, Burl?” Will asked. “You can use my desk, computer, phone…have at it.”

  But Burl hurriedly followed after Nunce. Real work was anathema.

  “Jackass,” Barb said. “Why in God’s name does the sheriff put up with him?”

  Will shrugged. Nunce was heading for retirement and Jernstadt, pain in the butt that he was, enjoyed holding a fishing rod. Any one of them in the sheriff’s office could kick up a fuss about Burl’s involvement, but nobody was inclined to do it.

  As soon as Charlotte got out of English class she made a beeline for the outside door. She almost ran into Robbie Bereth, who was sporting a big black eye and also trying to leave school early, as he was unlocking his bike and gazing around cautiously to see if anyone was looking.

  Charlotte was the only one around. She stared at his black eye and said, “I thought your dad was gone.”

  “Nope,” he bit out.

  “You get in the way again? I thought he just hit your mom,” she said, which earned her a really mean look from Robbie as he jumped on his bike and tore away. Charlotte was envious. He could up and leave and on a bike, while she had to walk.

  She stomped down the road, kicking up dirt on the side of the asphalt every couple of steps. She would walk right by the Bereth house and she had a vague idea about heading up toward the door and telling off old man Bereth, though she wasn’t sure exactly what he looked like. There were a bunch of the logging-truck dads around Quarry, and Charlotte hadn’t paid much attention to just who belonged to who. Her own dad was a mystery and her mom always groaned when Charlotte asked about him. “He just drank every dime, hon,” she said as the answer to everything. “He did one good thing in his life. He gave you to me.”

  Almost to the Bereth property, Charlotte saw Gemma drive by in her dad’s truck. She raised a hand, her heart leaping as she saw she might get a ride. But Gemma just waved and kept right on going. Charlotte looked back and Gemma did, too, but the truck never turned around.

  It was enough to nearly send Charlotte into tears, which shocked her to the soles of her feet. She never cried. Never. That was for babies! But sometimes it seemed like she didn’t have a friend in the world and that’s how it felt when Gemma just drove on by. She could feel her eyeballs burn and with all her strength she set her jaw and headed up the driveway toward the Bereth house. Robbie’s bike was tossed on its side, which pissed Charlotte off. She would never treat her bike that way.

  She headed up the rickety front-porch stairs, her steps slowing as she neared the top. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to approach Robbie’s dad all by herself. She was only a girl. One tough, super-bad girl, sure. But…

  Robbie suddenly burst through the door, nearly barreling Charlotte over. He stopp
ed short in dismay. “What’re you doin’ here?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. I thought we could maybe play, or something.”

  “With a girl?” he sneered.

  She felt like popping Robbie one herself. “Afraid your dad’ll see you with a girl?” she sneered right back.

  “My dad’s at work. You’d know that, if you had a dad.”

  As soon as the words were out, Robbie looked like he knew he’d gone too far. Charlotte turned around and stomped back down the stairs. She didn’t know exactly why she did it. Mainly because he’d really pissed her off. But she grabbed up his bike and jumped on it as he screeched and screamed behind her. He lunged for the back of her but she was gone, riding like the wind.

  The phone was ringing somewhere far, far away. Gemma swam upward out of sleep, but it was a long way to the surface. It took another few rings before she even recognized that it was her telephone.

  She was lying on the living room couch, just where she’d plopped herself after returning from work. But now it was early evening.

  And she was completely naked.

  Covering herself with her hands, she searched for her clothes. She found her yellow uniform in the hamper in the laundry room. She looked out the back door and saw the truck, parked in its same spot.

  Hurriedly Gemma headed up to her bedroom, grabbed some underclothes and slipped into a pair of jeans and a blue denim shirt. She buttoned it up the front and rolled up the sleeves. She grabbed a pair of socks and her sneakers and was sitting on the bottom step, putting them on, when the phone began ringing again.

  How many times had it rung before?

  Who was calling her?

  Dropping her shoes, she lunged for the kitchen phone, hoping to catch it before it went to voice mail. “Hello?” she said a bit breathlessly. “Hello?”

  “Is Mizz Gemma LaPorte there?” a gravelly male voice asked.

  “Speaking,” she responded cautiously.

  “Ma’am, you don’t know me, but your car’s here, on my property?”

  Gemma’s eyes opened wide. “Oh. Yes. I’m sorry, who are you?”

  There was a strained pause. “My name’s Patrick Johnson. People call me Johnny. I have a farm off Highway 26, past Woodbine, close to Elsie. You ran your car into a ditch near here. You remember?”

  Gemma’s hand felt sweaty on the receiver. “Umm…I’m sorry. I don’t remember much. Do you know where my car is now?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s still here.”

  “In the ditch?”

  “No, ma’am. We winched it to the truck and dragged it to our barn.”

  “Did you drive me to the hospital?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Thank you,” Gemma said, hardly knowing how to react. “You saw the accident?”

  “No, ma’am. We found you and took care of things.”

  “Do you mean you and your wife?”

  He hesitated. She had the feeling he was holding something back but she scarcely cared what it was. She was elated she’d found her car before Detective Tanninger. “I mean my grandson,” he finally admitted.

  “Could you give me directions? I’d like to come see the car and figure out what to do. Doesn’t sound like I could drive it, right?”

  “No, ma’am.” He gave her the address, then slowly related how she could find his place, finishing with, “There’s a coupla big rhodies at the end of the gravel drive, and a sign, kinda hidden by ’em, for Johnny’s Farm.”

  “I guess you found me by my address.”

  “No, ma’am, I used your cell phone directory and called the number you had labeled ‘Home.’ Was hoping you were outta the hospital and I’d get you. Shoulda called earlier, mebbe.” He didn’t say why he hadn’t and Gemma didn’t care.

  “You have my cell phone, and my purse, then?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Hallelujah,” she breathed. She was just overjoyed. “Well, that’s great. Really great. I—um—can I come by now?”

  “Surely.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour, or so. Could you give me your phone number, too, in case I have trouble?”

  He did and Gemma was thanking him and hanging up while the last digit still hung in the air.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The dying rays of the sun illuminated the rhododendrons that flanked Johnny’s Farm’s driveway as Gemma sped right on by. Out of the corner of her eye she spied the wooden sign, so she turned around in the next available place, a private road nearly a quarter mile west, then she worked her way back. As she approached, she realized the sign had all but been swallowed by the rhododendrons, which were a good eight-feet high with impressive trunks the size of a lumberjack’s arms. Their thick, evergreen leaves left JOHNNY’S FARM looking like JOHNNY’S FA and the wood had grayed, the paint faded. Beyond the rhodies was a long, gravel track. As Gemma turned in she could see the roof of a barn over a small rise and a chimney that was probably connected to the farmhouse. A stand of firs stood to the west side of the property, and behind, atop another rise, she could just make out the line of a fence, also out of grayed wood.

  She drove up the lane cautiously, her truck rattling through trough-like potholes, making her sway in the driver’s seat. Pulling up in front of the farmhouse, which looked similar in age and style to her own, she yanked on the brake and stepped out. A stack of pumpkins sat on the sagging steps of the front porch, ready for carving, and a sharp breeze grabbed her hair, bringing with it a slap of rain. She moved quickly up the porch steps and pressed the bell. Hearing nothing, she made a fist and rapped her knuckles on the front door panel. Eventually she heard someone making their way to the door.

  It opened slowly and Gemma guessed this was Patrick Johnson. He hovered somewhere in his late seventies or early eighties, nodding as he opened the door. “You look good, girl. I was worried about you. C’mon in.”

  Gemma smiled faintly as she entered the house. She could smell the remnants of bacon and fried onions.

  “Would you like somethin’ to drink?” he asked politely.

  “I’d better not. I’m kind of—confused, I guess. You have my cell phone?”

  “Yessum.” He gestured limply toward the couch in the front room and headed toward the back of the house. Gemma perched uncomfortably and looked around. The cabbage rose wallpaper appeared to be original. Whereas her own home had faced numerous facelifts of one kind or another—paint, carpeting, reroofing, repaving—the Johnson farmhouse felt as if it were sinking under the weight of deferred maintenance.

  She inhaled a breath when he returned with her purse and cell phone, each in one hand. She was so grateful she hardly knew what to do. “Can I pay you, a reward? It sounds like if you hadn’t gotten me to the hospital, that I might have been far worse off.”

  “Ah, no.” He rubbed his jaw slowly, then looked over his shoulder. “You want to see the car?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  He led the way through the kitchen and out the back toward the barn, moving slowly and deliberately. There was just something about it that stirred a memory inside her brain. This was not the man who’d driven her to the hospital. That person had been much younger.

  All thoughts were knocked from her head when she spied her mother’s car. If it was her mother’s car. Mostly it looked like silver tin foil crumpled from every angle. Gemma was speechless and humbled that the worst she’d gotten from the wreck was her bruised and battered head.

  “Wow.”

  “Lot of damage,” Johnson agreed.

  “How did you get me out?”

  “My grand—” He cut himself off and cleared his throat. “Door just opened up and freed you. Damnedest thing.”

  “Your grandson helped you,” Gemma finished for him. “He’s the one who drove me to the hospital.”

  The old man eyed her as if she’d abused him, head down, eyes turned up, waiting for another blow.

  “Why don’t you want me to know?”

  He sighed and rubbed
his face with a gnarled hand. “’Cause my grandson had been drinking some when he found you. Didn’t want to deal with the police, so he drove you to the hospital himself. Came back and told me what he’d done. He wasn’t drunk, mind you, but you know how those things go…” His lips pursed and Gemma could see he didn’t agree with his grandson’s choices.

  Gemma said, “Is that why you waited so long to get in touch with me?”

  “I didn’t know we had your purse until today. It was in the car, but we didn’t see it when we moved it.”

  Gemma could see Patrick Johnson had left a lot unsaid about his feelings about his grandson, but she didn’t much care. She was just grateful that they’d contacted her first.

  She insisted on paying him for his trouble, however, and wrote him a check, which he reluctantly accepted.

  “What do you want to do about the car?” he asked.

  “Can I leave it for now? I’ll have it towed later, if that’s okay.”

  They were walking back to the main house and he just nodded and waved vaguely in her direction. “There’s no hurry.”

  “Thank you,” she said gratefully.

  “Just glad you’re okay, miss. That was a nasty accident. You were settin’ there awhile. Musta happened sometime in the morning or early afternoon. Car was down on an angle. Couldn’t be seen from the road too well, and my grandson only saw you ’cause he nearly took that corner too fast himself. Overcorrected and almost followed right in after you.”

  “Where was this?” Gemma asked after a moment of sober reflection.

  “One of the side roads off twenty-six.” He gestured toward the west.

  “I don’t remember,” she admitted.

  “You said you were chasing a child molester.”

  Gemma stared at him. “I did?”

  “That’s what my grandson said. You said it over and over again on the way to the hospital.”

  “Did I…mention his name?”

  He shook his head.

  “Or, whether I caught him…?”

  “You could ask my grandson, Andy. But I don’t think so. He woulda said so. He’ll be home from the mill later on.”