Unseen

by Nancy Bush

  Lucky was hit with a wave of desire so strong it made her inhale sharply. It broke over her head and left her heart pounding, her thighs weak. She almost sat right down in the mud because she had the most powerful feeling that she’d made love to him. Recently. Her legs wrapped around him, his hips grinding deliciously into hers.

  Who is he?

  Will knocked on Gemma’s door and waited for nearly a minute. He knocked a second time, louder, then stood back and squinted up at the place. Maybe she wasn’t here. He called her home phone, and when he got her voice mail he tried her cell, which sent him to its voice mail immediately.

  Frustrated, he drove by the diner, but neither her truck nor Gemma herself appeared to be at LuLu’s. Sensing how disappointed he was, he swore under his breath. He needed to forget about her for a while. He was inordinately bad about picking women, and he didn’t want whatever this was with Gemma to be another mistake. He wanted it to work.

  The whole area was being searched for Heather’s body. Will had gone to visit Heather’s parents, whom she still lived with, and had broken the news that their daughter was missing. Their panicked gazes were embedded in his inner vision. He’d planned to go from their place directly to join the hunt, but between the feds and the rest of the sheriff’s department, the search was well in hand. He was debating heading on into LuLu’s and explaining Heather’s disappearance to Macie, but decided against it. If the girl wasn’t supposed to work today, it would just be fanning the flames of gossip and worry. If she was, the Yateses had probably already called and informed Macie of Heather’s possible abduction.

  And he wanted to tell Gemma who the missing girl was first.

  Jesus, what a mess. He prayed to God he was wrong about what had happened to Heather, but he suspected she was either dead already, or dying at the hands of their psycho flesh burner.

  His cell rang and he glanced at the Caller ID. Barb. “What’s up?” he answered.

  “Where are you?”

  “In Quarry, but I’m thinking about following up on that partial license plate number unless the search team wants me.”

  She snorted. “The feds have made it clear they’ve got it in hand. And anyway, if it’s our guy, the feeling is that he took the girl with him. Like he took Inga Selbourne. We’ll probably discover her barbequed in a few days.”

  Will winced at the terminology. “They said that?”

  “Just quoting Burl. He was outside the offices, trying to talk Dot into letting him inside. I came out and said he was wasting his time and he went off on you.”

  Will made a noncommittal sound.

  “I told him his banishment was directly from Nunce but he won’t believe it. He’s an asshole. We all know it.”

  Will decided to change that subject. “I’ve got four possible trucks. Two in Portland, one in The Dalles, and one in Seaside, that could match the partial.”

  “And you’re going to Seaside,” Barb guessed. “Who owns that one?”

  “Carl’s Automotive Repair and Car Rental.”

  “Think our girl rented the truck to do her deed?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ve got a call into Cecelia Bereth,” Barb informed him. “Spencer Bereth’s widow. She hasn’t called back, so I might go over there and see what I can find out. I talked to some people at Laurelton General. Cecelia’s shown up twice at the ER with a fractured arm. They have two boys, one’s thirteen and already been written up for a minor in possession of marijuana. The younger one’s been at the ER for contusions.”

  “Prince of a guy,” Will observed coldly.

  “One of the neighbors called me. She says she saw them fighting one day in the grocery store parking lot. Apparently good old Spence smacked Cecelia with the back of his hand because she accused him of looking lustfully at the female bagger’s chest.”

  “I don’t want to sound like I’m giving good old Spence any kind of break, but a lot of guys look lustfully.”

  “Yeah? Well, apparently this cashier hasn’t got any breasts yet. Daughter of the store owner and she’s about twelve and was just helping out for the afternoon. The neighbor was yucked out and so am I.”

  Will, who was driving his own Jeep rather than a patrol car, had turned onto Highway 26 and was heading west. Barb’s words brought up a mental image of the interior of Edward Letton’s van. “He a pedophile?”

  “Seems to like little girls,” Barb said. “I’m going to check with the store people, too. See if any of them remember the incident. Maybe this has something to do with his death, maybe not.”

  “All right. I’ll follow up on the truck.”

  “You know, if it was your friend, Gemma, who ran him off the road, she’s been doing the world a favor,” Barb said.

  Will had no answer to that. “Keep me informed on the psycho-burner.”

  “Will do. What do you think about him taking Heather Yates from Lover’s Lane on Halloween? Pretty bold.”

  “Like I said, he’s escalating. And maybe losing his grip.”

  “Think he saw her at the diner?”

  Will realized he’d made a concentrated effort not to think about that case. It wasn’t his, and he didn’t like its proximity to Gemma. But Barb’s words forced his mind to run through the events of the night before, whether he wanted to or not. “I don’t know, and I don’t know what his criteria is. The feds probably have an idea but they’re not telling us.” Something niggled in his head and for a moment he thought he had it, but then it flew away and he was unable to grab it.

  “What do you think’s going on there?” she asked, but he could tell she was just ruminating as well.

  “Nothing good.” Will hung up. He should have been glad, he supposed, that with everything else going on Barb had stopped attacking Gemma, at least for the moment. Instead all he felt was worry and a cold, growing certainty in his gut that, when this all shook down, he wasn’t going to like what he found.

  Lucky followed the sheriff’s department man’s black Jeep Cherokee from a safe distance. He was heading toward the Coast Range, which made her stomach jump and her heart squeeze. Where was he going? Did it have anything to do with her? She felt anonymous in her boosted Chrysler sedan, but vulnerable for reasons she couldn’t quite explain.

  The man from the sheriff’s department kept right on going. Lucky let cars get in between them, so she fell further and further behind. As they crested the last pass, she pressed her toe to the accelerator and pushed past them until she had a clear two-lane road in front of her, even if it twisted and turned and gave only short stretches of visibility.

  But as she entered the long, flat section just before 26 intersected with 101, she saw her quarry’s car up ahead. It was late afternoon. Early evening, really. She could just make the Jeep out, as the cloud cover had given the day a gray cloak. She moved up a bit on him but stayed far enough back not to gain attention.

  What was he doing?

  A few minutes later, he slowed to make a turn. Lucky gasped.

  He was turning into Carl’s Hunk O’Junks.

  She drove past, careful not to swivel her head or give him any reason to look in her direction.

  What was he doing?

  Could he possibly know?

  Carl’s Automotive Repair and Car Rental had another sign posted toward the side of the garage: Carl’s Hunk O’Junks. Beyond that were about thirty vehicles in varying stages of disrepair. Mostly they needed new paint jobs. It was hard to say whether their interior guts were reliable.

  Will entered the garage and heard the low rumble of a compressor and the fzzz-fzzz sound he associated with someone removing lugnuts. Sure enough, as he rounded the rear bumper of a lifted blue SUV, he saw a man bent over the task of replacing the vehicle’s front tire.

  “Hey,” Will said, and the man whipped around, air gun in hand. He was a tough, lean man with a long face, just under six feet. “Detective Will Tanninger, Winslow County Sheriff’s Department,” he introduced.

  “Holy Jesus,
man! Don’t sneak up on me.” His eyes examined Will’s uniform critically. “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to speak to the owner. Carl?”

  “Seth. He’s Carl’s son. Carl died of the cancer a few years back.” The man set down the air gun, wiped his hand on his overalls, held it out to Will. As Will shook it, he said, “Rich Lachey. Seth’s not here today, so I’m holding down the fort all by my lonesome. Something I can help you with?”

  Will considered Lachey. The man looked like the kind of mean son of a bitch who tore the wings off flies. But looks could be deceiving and all Will needed was to check on the license plate of one of Hunk O’Junks trucks. He explained as much to Lachey who glanced over his shoulder where, if he had X-ray vision, he could have looked through the garage wall to where the rentals were parked.

  “You wanna go look at ’em, have at it.”

  “Do you have the vehicles’ corresponding plate numbers?”

  “Well, sure. They’re in the file. But I don’t think I can show you nothin’ without Seth’s consent. I gotta job here I’d like to keep, if you know what I mean.”

  “Why don’t I start with the cars?” Will suggested, and Rich swept an arm in the general direction and went back to his task.

  It started to drizzle as Will stepped outside. The break in the rain was over for now. Hatless, as ever, he bent his head and stepped cautiously around mud puddles that had started to dry and now would fill up again. Muck along their edges sucked at the soles of his shoes.

  Will worked his way around the cars, ignoring them, focusing on the trucks. There was a white truck, two tan trucks and two light gray ones. He realized the gray ones only had license plates on one end and he stepped in a puddle that went halfway up his shoe as he walked around them. Their license plates weren’t even close to the one he sought. Muttering under his breath, he passed them and moved further through the vehicles, aiming for the white one which had a fine layer of grime all over its paint job. Its license plate didn’t match, either, so he moved on to the tan ones. Will examined them carefully. Neither of them matched either.

  Huh.

  But one of the tan trucks had a broken headlight, like the vehicle had glanced off something. Skin tingling, Will bent down and examined the crunched metal. There was a scrape of tannish paint, close to, if not exactly, the shade of Spencer Bereth’s wrecked van. He walked toward the back where there was a scrape and the bumper was twisted.

  Maybe Gemma traded the plates.

  The thought occurred to him but he rejected it outright. He knew the plate numbers of her father’s truck and Jean’s car. This wasn’t close.

  But then here…here was a whole plethora of license plates.

  Slowly, methodically, Will examined the rest of the Hunk O’Junks. Most of them were ten-plus years old. Not quite vintage. Definitely not close to approaching new. Halfway through the job his breath stopped, his heart started pumping hard. There was a silver Honda Accord parked to the far rear of the lot, and it had a deep dent in the hood. Will stared at it hard, afraid to touch it. He looked through the driver’s side window and examined the steering wheel and the windshield. No obvious signs of blood. Whoever had driven this car may not have sustained any injuries, but whoever it was, it wasn’t Gemma. Her car—Jean’s car—was accounted for.

  He went back to the front and noticed faint threads caught in the crumpled front bumper.

  Will swallowed. He would bet his badge that this was the car that had run down Edward Letton.

  That meant Gemma was safe. She couldn’t have been driving this car, and her mother’s.

  But there were a lot of hours between the time of Gemma’s accident and when Andy Johnson found her, he reminded himself.

  But two cars? Two silver cars?

  Too much of a coincidence. There weren’t those kinds of coincidences in nature. Two women who looked like Gemma driving two silver cars on the same day.

  Will closed his eyes. It just didn’t make sense. Yet…yet…this car…

  Carefully, he examined the license plate of the vehicle, his pulse racing light and fast. He didn’t recognize it.

  Straightening, Will walked carefully around every car in the lot and then suddenly there it was: the partial license number. On a red ’94 Volvo wagon.

  He sloshed back to the garage, now heedless of the rain and mud. Rich Lachey was just stepping outside. “Hey, Seth’s back!” he hollered. “I was just comin’ to getcha.”

  Will walked across the garage’s concrete slab, leaving muddy footprints in his wake. He went to the office door, wiped his feet on a mat, found Seth inside. The man had just hung up his coat and was turning toward his desk when he saw Will, taking in his rain-dampened shoulders, wet hair and muddy feet. “Rich said you were out looking at the cars.”

  “I need to know the license numbers and which vehicle they are assigned to. I think someone’s moved them around.”

  “What? Nah.”

  “I’m assuming they’re left outside, ungated.”

  “But no one would…” He shook his head. “No point to it.”

  When Seth realized Will wasn’t about to be put off, he lifted his palms. “Well, fine then.” He walked to a file cabinet and yanked open a drawer. “They’re all in these files,” he said. “You can look ’em up yourself. I got things to do.”

  “I’d like to know who rented one of your tan trucks recently. Will that information be in these files?”

  “Nope. But I can tell ya who off the top of my head.”

  Will had taken the two steps toward the file drawer and now he glanced back at Seth. “Who?”

  “Nobody. Not a human being. We ain’t actually been real busy around the rental business lately,” he said in disgust. “Last time we rented out was in August, and it was the mini-van. Came back with a big scratch the bastard swore was there in the beginning, though I always check. Got in a wrangle, we did. He threw fifty bucks at me and I let it go.”

  “Well, someone’s been driving one of the tan trucks and they broke a headlight and put some rear end damage on it.”

  “Uh-uh. No way.”

  “And the silver Accord has a big dent on the hood and a smashed bumper. Was that there before?”

  Seth swore violently and yanked open the back door to his office. “Show me,” he bit out and Will was forced away from the files to lead Hunk O’Junks’ owner to the damaged vehicles. Seth looked ready to explode.

  “Woulda been nice if somebody told me,” he declared furiously when they went back inside. He threw the accusation toward the garage, in Lachey’s general vicinity.

  Lachey took instant offense. “I ain’t in charge of the rentals. Never was.”

  “Who is?” Will asked.

  “I am.” Seth threw himself into the chair, which reared back like it was going to break a spring. But Seth knew how much stress the spring could take and he popped back upward, his expression dark.

  Will ran through the files until he found the tan truck. Its license number corresponded to the partial in his possession. “Bingo,” he said thoughtfully. He glanced over at Seth. “I believe the tan truck that is supposed to have this license number was involved in an accident a couple of nights ago. I’m going to call the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Department and have them impound it.”

  “The hell you will. That truck’s been sitting out there for six months or more!”

  “Someone stole it and ran another vehicle off the road. That driver’s dead. Vehicular homicide. You want to fight about that?” Will asked blandly.

  Seth looked poleaxed.

  “And the other car. The silver Accord. We’ll be taking that one, too.”

  “Another homicide?” he asked with a sneer.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Will watched the color drain from the other man’s face. “Got any idea who could be taking your cars? Maybe a woman?”

  Seth laughed shortly. “Women don’t much like my Hunk O’Junks, detective. They want remote locks and leathe
r interiors and GPS and fifteen cup holders for their morning lattes. Any woman wants one of these is way down on her luck.”

  Lucky sat in her car, hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel of the sedan. She was parked on a rutted, two-lane drive on the property adjacent to Carl’s, a service road for an industrial park that was only about half-filled. Lucky had her binoculars fixed on Carl’s place and saw the man walking among the rentals, then a few moments later Seth and the man reappeared and looked hard at some cars. The tan truck and the silver Accord.

  “Oh, God,” she murmured.

  Her head buzzed. She felt like she might pass out. Did he know she’d had one of the trucks? Did he? Did he know she’d traded in her last one after running that bastard off the road? Did he?

  Dimly she was aware that a large truck was backing from one of the bays of the building nearest to the road where she was parked. She had to leave. To move. To keep from being discovered.

  Easing her car into drive, she pulled forward, to the end of the lane where her view of Carl’s was obstructed. She turned into a parking spot whose yellow lines were all but obliterated. The building next to it was dark and empty, its business long defunct.

  The large truck rumbled away, toward the road. Quickly Lucky turned her car around and parked on the edge of the drive. It was growing dark. The shorter days lost light quickly. After about fifteen minutes the sheriff’s man’s Jeep drove away from Carl’s and turned east, away from the coast. She followed a few moments later.

  He drove all the way to Quarry and Lucky stayed behind him, letting cars in between them, then moving ahead of them in the passing lanes that dotted this stretch of 26 when it felt like she was getting too far behind. She thought he might go back to that same house, but instead he kept steadily on until he got to the outskirts of Laurelton. There he turned in to a residential area, which forced her to fall back.

  It was early evening but black as midnight as his taillights pulled into a driveway and he parked the Jeep outside the garage. She watched the headlights flick off as she drove on past and onto a side street. By the time she’d gotten herself turned around and dared drive in front of his three-bedroom ranch, he’d turned on the lights in the dining room and through the bare windows she saw him walking down the hall.