by Lisa Jackson
“How did she get here?” Savvy asked aloud, though it was more a rhetorical question than anything else, as she motioned to the woman lying on the bed.
Inga Anderssen pursed her lips and folded her arms across her chest. “We aren’t certain.”
“Who found her?”
“I think the morning nurse’s aide, but I’m not sure,” Inga hedged.
Savvy turned and pinned the woman with her gaze. “Find out who it was, and send her to talk to me. I’ll need a conference room, a list of anyone who visited Madeline Turnbull or had access to her room and this one as well. I want this facility sealed off and any tapes from your cameras inside these walls, as well as the film from the parking lot.”
“But . . . but . . . I don’t think we have cameras or . . .”
“Then tell the director what I need. But first, take me to Madeline Turnbull’s room.” She thought for a moment that Inga would refuse her, but Savannah was the law. Inga turned on her heel and, stiff-backed, led Savvy through a maze of hallways to the room where Justice Turnbull’s mother had died.
There were no obvious strangulation marks on Madeline Turnbull; her neck did not display the same bruising. But Savvy bent down and looked closely into the woman’s eyes and thought she saw the telltale signs of petechial hemorrhaging that signified constriction of airflow. She glanced at the pillow, then back at Madeline Turnbull.
Inga bustled up and bent over the woman’s body, staring into her eyes as well.
Smothered, Savvy concluded and thought Inga knew it as well.
“I’ll need that private room,” Savvy said. “Where the hell is your boss?”
“I’ll get Mr. Morrow.”
“Do that,” Savvy said, unable to hide her irritation with the incompetence of the nursing home staff in general as she waited for the medical examiner to arrive.
CHAPTER 21
It was one o’clock when Laura stopped by Conrad Weiser’s room in intensive care. She didn’t know the security guard all that well but felt oddly responsible for his injuries because of her connection to Justice. She wished she could have warned him somehow of the coming danger, even though she knew that was unreasonable.
Nina Perez was waiting for her as she left the ICU and said, “No change,” less a question than a statement of fact, and Laura nodded.
“Dr. Zellman is being released soon,” the nurse then told Laura. “He still isn’t talking.”
“Have they determined whether it’s definitely physical damage to the voice box or emotional trauma?”
“I’d say a little of both, but I’m not his doctor.” She looked troubled. “You think the police are any closer to catching Turnbull?”
“I hope so,” Laura said, wondering if even now Justice was on his way to find her. A shiver skated down her spine. She was having second thoughts about calling to Justice. Despite her earlier bravado, she knew that taunting him was dangerous, even deadly.
As she was walking back to the nurses’ station, she happened to see Zellman being released into the care of his wife. The trim woman had wheeled her husband to the door of the hospital, per hospital policy, but the injured doctor practically jumped out of the chair as soon as he was outside the front doors, nearly kicking the offending chair into the surrounding shrubbery. On his feet, he started striding across the parking lot, bristling with outrage or anger or something, his wife half jogging along behind him.
Laura watched them for a long moment. The rumor was that Justice hadn’t been handcuffed when he’d been escorted by Zellman to the van, and that his escape was mostly Zellman’s fault. Underestimating Justice was something Catherine had said everyone at Siren Song had been guilty of, once upon a time. Laura didn’t plan on being a victim to it again.
Or had she already by tweaking his tail last night?
Staring through the hospital’s front doors, seeing her own watery reflection, a strange feeling creeping across her skin, she backed away from the glass panes automatically, her heart slamming into her ribs in a hard, systematic beat.
He was out there.
Somewhere.
Waiting.
And it felt like he was right outside. . . .
Justice stared, unblinking, through the windshield of the woman’s compact. He was in a different world. A world that swirled with emotion and half dreams and urgency that racked his body with pain. Colors blended and shapes shifted, as if he were underwater. He closed his eyes, and his mission pounded through his brain. He needed to take them. All of them. Soon!
They were miserable creatures, and their old taunts ricocheted through his brain, reminding him of why they were all doomed, why he had to defeat them. He felt the one that was outside the gates like a living snake within him, twisting his insides, curling around his guts, tightening and writhing, sickening him. His skin crawled at the smell of her; that nauseating scent filled his nostrils.
She was close. So close.
Then he knew.
She was inside the walls of this hospital. This hospital.
Ocean Park.
Inside, tucked away, thinking she was safe behind a curtain of fog and the concrete and steel walls. And she was laughing at him.
Shaking with the effort to fight the bile in his throat, he yanked himself to the present and gazed hard at the front of the hospital. He was parked in the side lot with a narrow, angled view to the front doors. She was in there. Just inside the vestibule. Invisible with the fog.
But she felt him. This he knew. He heard the pounding of her heart, sensed the blood pumping furiously through her veins . . . hers and that nasty little incubus within her. He smiled as he sensed her fear.
Good.
Let her terror rot her from the inside out. She, who dared summon him!
I’m here, witch. Just like you wanted!
He thought about the car he was driving, a silver Nissan. How long was he safe with it? He’d left its driver almost dead at Seagull Pointe, but they would learn who she was and come looking for her vehicle. He’d switched plates with old man Gerald’s Taurus, which would buy him some time, but he was doomed to find another car.
A frisson disturbed the murky air.
Suddenly he jerked to attention, squinting toward Ocean Park’s entrance. Exiting the hospital at that moment were Dr. Maurice Zellman and the woman whom Justice guessed to be his wife. Justice’s gaze narrowed on her. Holding on to her hair to keep it in place, she was hurrying to catch up to the doctor’s longer strides to no avail. Zellman’s large steps and ramrod straight back ate up the distance to a black Lexus that crouched near a security lamp. Wifey barely managed to scramble into the passenger seat and was still closing the door when Zellman backed out in a tight turn, his tires giving a little broop against the pavement as he hit the gas and the sedan leapt forward, narrowly missing a green minivan parked in the next space.
Zellman half turned Justice’s way as he passed, and Justice smiled coldly, wondering if the doctor could feel him as he purposely sent the man a warning. But Zellman seemed as oblivious as ever, glowering through the Lexus’s windshield. The doctor had no ability to sense Justice at all.
From the interior of the Nissan, Justice watched Zellman’s departing car with a sort of detached interest, not the urgency the women of the lodge inspired, but a kind of clinical curiosity. The doctor had counted himself as Justice’s savior. This meaningless cockroach, this self-congratulating piece of dirt, deigned to believe he knew something—anything—about him!
And then Justice caught an overwhelming whiff of Lorelei’s pungent aroma.
He swiveled his head so hard the vertebrae in his neck cracked. He barely noticed. His nostrils flared and his lips curled at her noxious odor.
Pregnant whore!
I’m coming for you, he told her, but the wall she’d erected was tall between them, one he couldn’t scale.
I’m coming for you!, he screamed. Sick witch! You can’t hold me out forever!
She was inside the hospital. Righ
t there. All he had to do was slip inside . . . !
Blinded with need, he slammed out of the car and moved to the side door of the hospital, stopping just short of the security camera, shaking with a desire to kill so intense it stole his common sense. The middle of the day was no time to attack her, but he didn’t care. He wanted her. Now.
With a frustrated scream caught in his throat, he dug at his scalp, ripping at his hair. He needed the sea . . . a cold Pacific breeze . . . the lighthouse. . . .
He took a step forward, into the camera’s range, then pulled back. Ducking his head, he returned to his vehicle, slid inside, and slouched in his seat. Flexing his fingers on the steering wheel, he attempted to regain control. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, let the bitch win.
He wanted her badly. Could almost feel his hands clenching over her soft throat as he felt the life seep out of her. He imagined watching her naked whore’s body burn in a foul and malodorous stench that would rise to the heavens in thick black smoke as her body was condemned to hell.
Lorelei.
Above all else, he needed to snuff out her life and that of the life she’d spawned.
Could he charge inside and just take her? Could he?
Zellman’s Lexus was stopped at the end of the parking lot. He and the wife were arguing, apparently, and the vehicle was stalled while they yelled at each other. Then it jumped forward again, and Justice watched Zellman drive to the end of the lot and turn onto the main, tree-lined drive that accessed the hospital from Highway 101.
Glancing back, Justice stared at the hospital until it felt like his eyes were burning in his skull. Then, grinding his teeth with impotent fury, he shoved his car into gear and hit the gas. He’d follow the doctor.
“You all right?” an impatient voice demanded in Laura’s ear.
She’d dropped into a chair in the front reception area, her legs practically collapsing beneath her. That feeling . . . that recognition . . . Though she’d had her mental wall held high, she’d sensed Justice on the other side, his malevolence nearly smothering her.
It was Dr. Loman who’d questioned her, his blue eyes cold ice as he glared down at her.
Of course she would run into him. A brush with the older doctor was even worse than one with her own ex-husband. Loman was imperious and arrogant and dictatorial.
What was it with the doctors here at Ocean Park? Most of them seemed to be egomaniacs, well, except for calm Dr. Hanson and funny Dr. Charles, one of the few women surgeons on staff. But the docs at the top. Imperious, self-inflated jerks.
“I’m fine,” she said to Loman.
“You’re not fine if you’re sitting down on the job,” he pointed out, frowning darkly.
Oh, great. Of course.
“Just catching my breath.” Laura got to her feet and bit her tongue to keep from saying something sarcastic as she sidestepped the man.
He followed after her, soft-soled shoes squeaking on the tile. “I know who you are,” he said, surprising her. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted. “You’re one of them, and I know them.”
Laura glanced over her shoulder to catch a glimpse at him. He seemed like he was on the verge of exploding, as if something she’d done had sent him over the edge.
She knew what he meant. Dr. Dolph Loman and his now deceased brother, Dr. Parnell Loman, had been the doctors who’d attended Laura and her sisters when they were children. Laura recalled Dolph, though Parnell was a distant memory. She half recalled something salacious and unpleasant in regard to Parnell and her mother, or maybe it had been Dolph, or maybe it was all faulty memories, a fabrication she’d concocted from the lore she’d garnered about her promiscuous mother. All this time she’d worked at Ocean Park, she’d hoped Dolph hadn’t recognized her. Now she knew that hope had been in vain.
“So, you’re diagnosing patients now?” he said with a faintly disguised sneer.
“Was there something specific you wanted, Dr. Loman?” she asked him coolly.
“Mind yourself,” he snapped. “You’re a nurse here, not a doctor. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Is it?” She reveled in his look of surprise. “Seems to me you’re saying a lot more.”
“We both know about your family,” he said, recovering quickly. “Soothsayers and nuts and quacks.”
“Quacks,” she repeated, eyeing him hard. “Is that a new medical term?”
He flushed, the barb hitting home. “My reputation is impeccable.”
“I remember your brother,” Laura said, though it was nothing short of a lie.
That left the old man speechless. He opened his mouth and shut it twice before saying quickly, “My brother was an excellent surgeon! His death was a tragedy.”
He seemed to want to say more, but he was definitely flummoxed by Laura’s decision to confront him right back. He strode off, muttering about her rudeness, and she wondered what exactly had gone on between her mother and Dr. Parnell Loman and/or Dr. Dolph Loman. Would Catherine tell her, if she asked? Would she even really know?
Laura headed back to her rounds, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the events of the past few days, but since there was no way to explain, and because she wasn’t about to blame her weakness on her pregnancy, she drew several deep breaths and soldiered on.
She was beginning to wish she’d listened more to Harrison. She’d been so sure she’d be safe at the hospital, but now she longed to be with him, safe within his protection. Grabbing her cell from her locker, she placed a call to his and wound up with his voice mail. She hesitated, frustrated, but instead of leaving a message, she replaced the phone and determined she could get through the rest of her shift without talking to him. It was just a case of mind over matter.
CHAPTER 22
“Detective.”
Lang strode through the front doors of the department instead of the back because he’d parked his Jeep on the street rather than in the rear parking lot, which was currently full of potholes as deep as the Grand Canyon. May Johnson, the unsmiling, heavyset black woman who manned the front desk, spoke the single word like a cannon shot. She didn’t much like Lang, and he didn’t much like her. He thought she was arrogant and uncompromising, and she’d disliked him on first sight as well, seeming to regard him as too loose on rules, too entitled, too, maybe, male. She definitely considered him a cowboy in both dress and spirit, and now, looking down at his dusty boots—definitely not department issue—Lang allowed that yes, that part was probably true.
He reluctantly slowed his steps and gazed at her expectantly. He’d just come from the scene at Seagull Pointe, and he wanted to report to Sheriff O’Halloran before he headed back out. “Yeah.”
“Sam McNally returned your call.”
Lang lifted his brows. Geena Cho was dispatch, and to date Johnson had let her deliver all Lang’s messages rather than go out of her way to make sure he was informed.
“Thanks.”
She nodded curtly, then nearly bowled him over by asking, “How’s the adoption going?”
Johnson’s icy facade was at a full-blown thaw. Lang could scarcely credit the change. “It’s going. Slowly.”
Lang’s fiancée, Dr. Claire Norris, was trying to adopt a baby girl whom she’d grown extremely close to. Lang, too, hoped it would happen soon and had been mulling over dragging his beloved to the altar to finalize that step and hopefully give that process a jump start when Turnbull’s escape completely screwed up his timetable.
As if embarrassed by her familiarity, Johnson turned abruptly away, and Lang walked along the counter that stretched the length of the reception area, ending at the back door, then turned down a hallway that led toward the main part of the building and the jumble of offices therein.
The smell of old coffee crept through the hallways from the lunchroom, and phones jangled. A couple of deputies who’d pulled all-night duty at the Tyler Mill fire still smelled of soot as they walked by.
Sheriff Sean O’Halloran was in his office, at his desk, looking troubled. His
normally smoothed gray and white hair was in disarray, and his blue eyes, usually bright with inner humor, looked dull and tired. “Goddamn Turnbull,” he said.
“Goddamn Turnbull,” Lang agreed. “Looks like he smothered his mother and strangled this other woman, whom we’re trying to identify.”
“She still alive?”
“Just.”
“Nobody knows her?”
“Nobody at Seagull Pointe,” Lang said. “Savvy and I checked with everyone on staff and the patients who could be of help. We did a turn around the parking lot, checking for extra vehicles. No other cars than those that belong to residents. Also, no security cameras, although the director was quick to point out that they planned on getting some soon. Lot of good that does us. The upshot is we don’t know who she is or how she got there. She’s young. The theory is, she ran into Justice somehow and he strangled her and killed his mother.”
“Any chance—any chance at all—it wasn’t him?”
Lang hesitated. “That a rhetorical question?”
The sheriff sighed heavily.
“You want us to work some other angle?” Lang asked.
O’Halloran shook his head. “Nah. Not until we count out Justice Turnbull completely.” The two men discussed the case at length, then, after they’d exhausted all the new information and Lang turned to go, the sheriff added, “Got a call in from a farm east of Garibaldi. Seagulls and buzzards circling something, which turned out to be a dead body. Male. Sent Delaney down there. The guy’s been dead a couple days.”
Garibaldi was south of the city of Tillamook, but still in Tillamook County. “Any missing person reports?”
“We’d checked the tags on this hippie van that’s been parked overnight in that day lot viewpoint north of town for two nights. Called ’em up to tell them it was going to be towed, and this woman just started screaming that her husband was missing. So, we think our body could be this guy. Actually, he’s her significant other. They haven’t officially tied the knot. But the van’s in both their names, and he left their happy home in Salem in a huff a couple days ago and hasn’t been heard of since.”
