Lilah

by Marjorie DeLuca

  The back of Nick’s neck felt prickly. “You’re saying she might have recognized him when she came here.”

  Brad sat upright. “I’m saying she could’ve come here looking for him.”

  “You think she had something to do with the fire?” said Nick, the waves of panic rising to his throat again.

  Brad held up a hand. “It’s only a possibility. We still don’t have a definite report on the cause of the fire, but we found meth lab equipment in the basement and enough chemicals to blow the entire place apart.”

  “Then he’s the mystery meth dealer,” said Nick, barely able to comprehend the words he was uttering. “The guy that made my morning coffee for the last eight years is the sick bastard who destroyed innocent young kids.”

  “Blows your mind, huh?” said Brad. “Just remember I didn’t officially tell you. We wanna make a case strong enough to put this guy away forever.”

  “And the bodies?”

  “So far he’s admitting to the meth, but claiming he knew nothing about the bodies.”

  “Have you identified them yet?”

  “Can’t tell you that, Nick. Not yet. My gut tells me the evil sonofabitch used the meth to get the most vulnerable kids into a state of total dependence until he had some kind of hold on them. Then he got them back to his place and did God knows what to them. We don’t know if he was operating alone or if someone else was involved.”

  “So where does Lilah come in?” said Nick, feeling as if the entire world had suddenly shifted on its axis and everything he’d believed until now was a total lie.

  “When we talked to Jeff and Shayla – after they got you back home, they said you kept repeating over and over I saw her – she’s not dead. I saw her. They thought you’d seen a deer among the trees, but my question is, Nick, did you really see her? If you did we need to find her and talk to her.”

  Nick’s brain was racing. If she knew about Danny and had something to do with the fire, then there was a reason she’d showed herself to him. Maybe she wanted him to keep quiet and then again maybe she wanted him to find her. He took a deep breath and gripped the chair arms.

  Brad leaned forward in his chair. “Sorry you have to go through all this again, Nick, but it’s important to know if you saw her.”

  Nick shook his head. “I can’t – I mean I don’t know, Brad. My head was all mixed up. I thought I saw something but I’m not sure. I blinked and there was a deer standing there. Maybe I just wanted to see her so bad I imagined her there.” Nick’s eyes filled up again. The place was so empty without her.

  Brad handed his empty cup to Cari and got up. “I’ll leave you alone for now, Nick. Any plans for the next few days?”

  “I might head down to Phoenix – see my mom. I just have to get away from here until I can think straight.”

  “Understandable,” said Brad pulling on his coat. “Just make sure you keep your phone on. I wanna keep in touch with any new developments. And it goes without saying. You’ll let me know if you hear anything from Lilah.”

  “Sure,” said Nick, thinking that was the last thing he’d do.

  Cari left that afternoon. When she hugged him and told him to call her if he heard any news, he realized he was losing his last link to Lilah.

  “I loved her too, Nick. Never had a friend like her,” she said. “She had this way of making you feel like you were the only person in the room. Like she listened to your problems and somehow gave you a way of fixing them.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Nick.

  She looked up at him and straightened his collar. “Sorry,” she said, blushing. “It’s just this Mommy thing I do.”

  “Hey – you nursed me better than my own mom, Cari. I couldn’t have managed without you?”

  She looked up at him and smiled. “You’ll come and visit me next time you’re in the Twin Cities?”

  “Promise,” he said, opening her car door. She blew a kiss to him, started up the engine and pulled away, taking with her another part of the memory of his wedding.

  Once her car exhaust had dwindled to a wisp, he stood for a moment realizing he had to call in at Lilah’s house. No matter how difficult, he had to make himself go there to pick up his stuff. And maybe he could find some clues. Something to point him in the right direction to find her. And to find out why she’d come looking for Johnson. That was his sole purpose in life now. To track her down, because that’s what she wanted. He knew that now. And she knew he’d never reveal her whereabouts or her involvement with the fire. He was her husband and husbands didn’t tell on their wives.

  Seeing her car in the driveway gave him a weird chill and for one crazy moment he thought that if he rushed inside the house fast enough she’d be there curled up on the couch reading. But the darkened windows brought him back to reality. He stepped inside the musty darkness remembering that the last time he was here had been his wedding reception.

  The place was immaculate. He imagined Cari and the caterers clearing everything out – food, wedding cake, flowers and all. Nothing left to remind him of all he’d lost. The place was just as clean and tidy as Lilah always kept it. Her turquoise and purple Hawaiian apron hung off a hook by the pantry, Two glasses sat by an unopened bottle of champagne. He checked the fridge. Milk, eggs, yogurt, a few apples and oranges, some cheese strings. Not bad by his standards but bare by Lilah’s. He wandered into the bedroom, the emptiness in his heart so deep his body was sore with the pain of loss.

  The urge to be close to her drove him into the closet where all her clothes hung. The faint scent of her still clung to the blouses and sweaters that hung there like limp ghosts, and he pulled them to his face, burying himself in the memory of her.

  There had to be something. Some clue she’d left so he could find her. He left the closet and started going through the dresser drawers. Underwear, socks, makeup. It was like scratching a wound. Each item brought her back to him as if she was standing there and he could simply turn around and kiss her.

  The bedside table was empty except for a couple of books. He shook them out expecting a note to flutter out explaining everything. Only a receipt fell out. He was about to throw it away when he checked the place and date. It was from a hospital gift store in Lethbridge, Alberta, dated the 24th December - the date Lilah was with her grandmother. Pocketing the receipt, he shut the drawer. It was a start. He’d go there. Next thing was to check the spare rooms.

  The guest bedroom was empty. Nothing under the bed or in the closet. The third bedroom contained a few boxes. The first two were filled with hairdressing supplies. Another contained clothing. He pulled out a couple of Calgary Flames hockey sweaters, two team hats and a bunch of team tee shirts. He remembered the painters who’d told him of Lilah’s NHL connections and the tickets she’d given to them. Had she been married to a professional hockey player? Maybe she’d had a good divorce settlement. A small flame of envy began to flicker inside him. He had to get to her. No matter what.

  It soon became clear she was a person who carried very little history around with her. But at the bottom of a battered box he found a photograph. It was a family standing by the side of a hockey arena. Mom and dad stood behind three little boys, all holding hockey sticks. A little girl in a pink snowsuit whose dark braids stuck out from under a woolly hat, was sitting in front of them, cross legged on the ice. The small, heart-shaped face was so familiar. The writing on the back said The Belangers, 1985. Her name was Belanger. He held tightly to the picture. Where was it taken? He had to find the place.

  He lay down on her bed, his face pressed to her pillow, breathing in the faint smell of her perfume. It was so easy to drift into sleep there. A restless sleep filled with images of faceless half-formed figures that blurred and dissolved into a fog from which trees appeared, their branches silvered with frost and their trunks emerging from blue grey water. And he stood on the edge, afraid to step forward or look down into the icy depths. Afraid of what he might see. Afraid of a pale body that might float to
the top like a bloated fish.

  He woke with a start. The sun was low in the sky. Sitting up, he remembered the journey he had to make to Lethbridge in the morning. He needed to go home and pack the car so he’d be ready to set out at first light. Just as he opened the bedroom door, a creaking sound came from the kitchen. He stopped, his heart slamming against his ribcage. Maybe she was back. Racing along the hallway he realized how stiffly his hands were clenched. Then he stopped dead in his tracks. Sitting on the couch, staring out of the window was Ike Dewar, his knees planted firmly apart, his head resting against the chair back and his eyes fixed on Nick.

  28

  “How the fuck did you get in here?” said Nick, frozen to the spot.

  Ike shifted and cleared his throat. “If you leave the front door open it seems like a pretty clear invitation to come on in.”

  “So what the hell do you want?”

  “No need for bad manners,” said Ike, motioning for Nick to sit down in the chair opposite. “I’m about to do something I’ve been meaning to do for almost forty five years, but I want you to be the first to know about it.”

  Nick sat on the edge of the couch, wondering if and when Ike would pull out a gun and either put it to his own head or blow Nick away. He felt in his pocket for his phone.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna top myself in your living room,” said Ike looking at Nick with an expression that Nick had never seen on the guy. A look of fear and shame that softened the hard lines of his face and jaw. “I’m gonna tell you a story. Sit back and listen.”

  Nick settled back in the chair, his eyes fixed on Ike.

  “Back in ’68 I was the guy who smoked grass before breakfast. The guy who sat in the circle and burned his lips on the roach clip to suck the last bit of THC from the joint. I was the idiot who thought with his dick instead of his head. Parties, music and balling chicks were the only things on my mind. So picture me, crazy hair, tie-dye tee shirt at the Love In Rock Festival. Wasted for the most part. High from the moment I opened my eyes to the minute my damn fool head hit the pillow. Any pillow. Didn’t matter. She was giving. I was taking. Then along comes a girl. A gorgeous golden girl. Face like an angel, body like a dream. This girl shines. She dances with me and I’m in heaven. I think I’ve fallen in love. Fallen hard. She’s high too and we’re dancing. I take her to my buddy’s tent and we drop acid. I take one and I’m flying. Sex is mind blowing. She tells me she loves me and she takes another two pills. I’m so high - too out of it to stop her. I pass out. When I wake up she’s lying beside me and she’s unconscious. I can’t open her eyes. Like she’s in some kind of coma or something. I start to cry like a baby. My buddies show up. Jake Hardy, Aaron Castle, Ed Schuler. What the hell did you do? They keep asking me and I’m sobbing like a girl. We have to call an ambulance or tell the cops. They tell me no way. Castle says she OD’d in his tent and his parents will disown him if he’s associated with this fucking mess and he’s supposed to go to medical school this year. Schuler says you tell and that’s the end of my drug operation. Hardy doesn’t say anything. Just freaks out. Castle says he knows somebody who can help us. He goes away and comes back with this guy none of us know. A Canadian drifter that Castle scored the acid from. Says this guy spent a year in Vietnam and he knows a few things. He can get her away and try to revive her or take her to this doctor friend of his. All we have to do is get her to his tent and then he’ll take care of it from there. We do it. Castle carries her on his back because I’m still freaking out. We drop her in the guy’s tent and he says It’ll cost you. We give him everything we’ve got and split, still shit scared we’ll be found out.

  Then Jake Hardy finds a bottle of Wild Turkey and gets loaded. Somehow he wanders past the guy’s tent and takes a quick look inside. He comes back blubbering like a crazy man. Seems the crazy stranger was screwing the girl even though she’s out of it. Jake’s bawling that we have to stop this sicko. We follow him because he’s kicking up such a fuss and when we get back to the tent the guy’s gone and we find the girl and she’s covered in blood that’s leaking from her throat. It’s been slit right across from one ear to the other. And her tongue’s been cut clean out and stuffed into her mouth backwards. We fall apart. Throwing up, choking, crying. Then the guy comes back. Tells us we’d better keep it down or the cops will come along and we’ll all be up for rape and murder. I almost throttle the guy, but he’s strong. He’s smaller than me but he’s got some crazy kung-fu moves and he gets me down face-first on the ground. He says what could he do because she woke up and started to scream when he was screwing her. So now we all have a secret we have to keep because we’re all accessories to the murder.”

  Nick sat forward. “The girl was Susan Jonas.”

  Ike nodded, his face flushed with the terror of the memory.

  “And the guy was…”

  “Johnson. Danny Johnson. He raped an unconscious girl, slit her throat and cut out her tongue. Then made us take her body and bury it near Schuler’s barn. Told us we were all in it together. Then somehow Castle got money out of his parents and we paid Johnson off so he’d leave the state. But twenty years later he came back. In 1989.”

  “That’s when he opened The Beanery.”

  “It was all a front – the coffee shop. He wanted a place the kids would come to, because he liked them young. Said they were sweet and innocent - reminded him of his younger days.”

  “Castle and Schuler and me – we met with him. Told him we’d pay him off to get out again and he said no, he liked it here. And besides, it was only a one-off deal, the murder. A mistake he’d never make again. Said it was the drugs that made him crazy. That’s when things got stupid. Castle was a rich doctor already with two young kids of his own. I was a respectable farmer working my dad’s land, but Schuler’s son, Sam was up to his neck in his old man’s dope dealing business and he was all for letting Johnson stay because he’d worked out a deal with him. Johnson would supply him with cheap pills – ecstasy, uppers, acid as long as Schuler left the heavy stuff to him. We didn’t know it at the time, but Johnson wanted to set up a meth lab. Schuler was in the process of getting a dance club going in his barn, so cheap pills would bring in the customers. All he had to do was send a few along to Johnson. The ones who had a taste for something stronger. Hardy, Castle and me wanted nothing to do with it, but we couldn’t say anything because he held that girl’s death over our heads like we were condemned men.”

  “What about the kids who disappeared?” said Nick, his brain racing from everything he’d heard.

  “We knew Johnson was crazy, but we didn’t know he was a sick psycho. Once he got those kids on meth – and they trusted him ‘cos he kept an open door at his damned coffee shop – he got them back to his place and they never came out of there. Jake Hardy swore he saw Allie Lawson and Taye Kerber riding round in Johnson’s only days before they disappeared. He was a sick fuck, but we didn’t know how sick. Castle came to see me about it. Shit scared after Tara went missing from his own son’s grad party. Said Johnson had threatened to slit his son, Stephen’s throat if he ever accused him of anything like that again. Then that little Bauer kid went missing in the woods near Johnson’s place. His sister told us how much time he spent in that coffee shop before he got deep into drugs. Two years later Hardy came to us. Ruby Lindahl, his girlfriend was real upset. Her daughter, Emmie, had been getting crack from Johnson. We tell Castle and he paid Emmie big money to get out of town and set herself up somewhere far away from the psycho. She’s the only one we saved. But the trouble was, we had no real evidence to pin it all on Johnson. Even though we knew by then how twisted he was, we could never be sure.

  Then Castle finally moved away because he couldn’t take it any more. Personally I think he threw himself out of that boat. Hardy – well he’s just crazy old Jake now. And me? I can’t live with this secret for one more day. And now they found the bodies, and it’s certain that evil creep killed them. All I want is to make sure that sick sonofabitch g
ets put away forever. I wanna make sure he doesn’t lie his way out of it like the filthy snake he is.”

  “And how did Gorman fit into all this?” said Nick, studying Ike’s weathered face.

  “Gorman was Schuler’s buddy. Schuler got greedy and expanded into the Twin Cities, but he needed someone here to keep things cool with Johnson. Enter the snake, Ray Gorman, dope peddler masquerading as your friendly real estate guy.”

  “D’you know who killed him?”

  “There were three strikes against Gorman. He was spending more time doing real estate, then he was getting a taste for the young stuff and getting in Johnson’s way. Strike three – he started blabbing to you and was probably going to the cops next. Telling secrets. Tell you the truth, Gorman was a piece of shit. Deserved what he got.”

  “Then why were you fighting with Johnson at New Year’s Eve?”

  Ike sat back, his face beaded with sweat. “That’s where you come in, Hendricks.”

  “My story? He didn’t like me writing the story about the kids?”

  “That was only part of it. You were getting him riled up, digging into all that old history. But that wasn’t what we were fighting about?”

  “Something to do with Lilah?”

  Ike nodded. “Johnson showed up at my back door one night. Said he thought Lilah might have seen him slitting Gorman’s throat. Also said he thought he recognized her from somewhere back in his past. Said if it’s her, that bitch has something on me. Then he says he’s gonna give her a scare. At the party I tell him to keep his goddamn hands off her, he laughs in my face and I lose it.”

  Nick leaned forward. “He shot at her when she was on the ice.”

  “Sounds about right,” said Ike.

  By now Nick’s thoughts were so muddled he could barely put them into words. Ike interrupted before he could say anything.