“It’s on the left side,” says a female voice behind me, making me jump. I gasp, whirl around, and see a woman in her thirties standing behind me.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” She pushes past me and reaches to the left of the doorway; a second later, the room is flooded with light. I see that it has been set up with a dozen chairs in a circle, and more chairs and several tables folded up and leaning against the far wall. “You’re here for the grief support group?” the woman asks.
“Yes, I am,” I say, following her inside.
“You’re new here.” She looks at me, smiling warmly. I nod. “Well, welcome, though I suppose this isn’t the sort of thing one wants to be welcomed to, now is it?” She laughs, a nervous titter. “Anyway, I’m Lori Vickers. Widow for almost a year now. Car accident.” Her expression sobers as she says this, but quickly turns back to a smile. “Who have you lost?”
I think fast. I’m not normally a superstitious person, but every so often, I hedge on the side of caution, just to cover my bases. I don’t want to claim the death of anyone I currently have a relationship with, for fear that it might somehow come true. Even though my logical mind would know it was nothing more than a coincidence, I’d always wonder, and always harbor some guilt.
“My brother,” I say. “Cancer. Very unexpected.”
“Oh, how awful,” Lori says. “How old was he?”
“Thirty-three,” I say, using Desi’s age, though even this level of connection to a real person in my life makes me a smidge uncomfortable. But Hurley taught me that if you’re going to lie convincingly to someone, it helps if you use as many facts and truths as possible. Too many lies create too long a trail to keep track of.
“Well, you did the right thing in coming here,” Lori says. “It’s a good group.”
“How many people typically attend?”
“Oh, it varies. We have some core regulars who have been coming every week for months now, but eventually most folks move on. Or so I’m told. Most weeks it’s eight to ten people. And we have folks of all ages and types, old folks and young folks, housewives and career women, one single dad. It’s a good mix.”
“Who runs the group?”
“There are two people, actually. Michaela and Dennis. Sometimes they tag-team us, and sometimes they take turns. Michaela has a practice here in town, and Dennis is a counselor somewhere. I forget where. But they’re both very good.”
I hear the sound of someone approaching and the squeak of wheels on a cart. Three people enter the room, one of them a dietary employee for the hospital, who wheels in a cart laden with cookies, coffee, and water. The other two people are an older man and an older woman.
“That’s Minnie and George,” Lori says to me in a whisper. “They both lost their spouses last year and they’ve kind of bonded. I think they might even be dating now. Sweet, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I say. Then I take out my cell phone and start scrolling through the messages until I find what I need. I pull up a picture of Liesel Paulsen, the one from her driver’s license, and I show it to Lori. “Do you know this girl? Does she come here?”
Lori looks at me rather than at the picture with a hurt expression on her face. “What are you doing? Are you some kind of investigator or something? Because this group is private. What happens here, who comes here, and what gets said here is confidential.”
“No, no,” I assure her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that her family was friends of my family, and she told us how helpful this group was for her after her mother died.”
I watch emotions play over Lori’s face, concern, empathy, and curiosity. She finally deigns to look at the picture and I see her eyebrows shoot up.
“You knew Liesel?”
My heart speeds up a notch. “Not well. My parents knew her parents, her mom, before she died.”
“A very sad case, that one. I think she—”
Whatever she is about to say is cut off when four more people enter the room. There is a man who looks to be my age, his face stamped with pain, and I guess that his loss is more recent. There are also two more women, who look like they’re in their fifties, and judging from the way they interact with one another, I gather that they are friends.
The fourth person is a man, and it’s someone I know, or at least recognize. It’s Kirby O’Keefe.
“Hello, Dennis,” Lori says, bestowing a smile on the man.
He smiles back at her, and then his eyes settle on me. “We have a newcomer,” Lori says, looking over at me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“It’s Mattie,” I say after thinking fast about whether or not my real name will give anything away.
“Hello, Mattie,” O’Keefe says. “Welcome to our group.”
“Thank you, I think.”
O’Keefe smiles understandingly. “Yes, I suppose it’s not a place anyone wants to be, but if you need us, it’s nice that we’re here.” He moves on then, chatting with some of the others, while my mind scrambles. What should I do? I don’t want to risk clueing O’Keefe on the real reason I’m here, and I don’t want him to get away.
“Excuse me, is there a bathroom down on this level?” I ask Lori.
“Yes, just down the hall and around the corner. On the other side of the elevator.”
I get up and leave the room, passing two more women on their way in. They smile at me as I pass, an awkward, trying-to-be-friendly-but-sorry-you’re-here kind of smile that feels forced. As soon as I’m in the bathroom, I take out my cell phone and call Hurley. He doesn’t answer, and I curse under my breath, wondering if he’s busy or if he’s not answering on purpose because he’s so mad at me. I leave a message, letting him know where I am and who I’ve found, and ask him to call me as soon as possible.
Next I try Richmond’s number, but once again, I get voice mail. I leave the same message with him, and ask for him to call. Unsure what I should do next, I decide to return to the meeting room and sit there until someone calls me back. I’m about to head that way, when I hear a toilet flush in one of the three stalls. Belatedly I realize I should have checked underneath the stall doors before placing my calls to make sure I was alone.
The stall door opens and a second before I see who’s about to come out, I get a whiff of something that makes my blood run cold: eucalyptus. In the split second before I see her face, my mind argues that it means nothing, plenty of people use eucalyptus-scented stuff for a variety of reasons.
But when I see her face, and the cold, curious smile she bestows on me, I get a sinking feeling that my goose is cooked.
“Hello,” she says, stopping in front of me. “I saw you earlier today, at the pizza restaurant.”
“Yes,” I say, trying to look innocent and unafraid, even though my insides are trembling. “In Necedah.”
“Yes. And here you are now in Mauston. What a coincidence.”
I can tell she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence at all, and I back up a step. “Well, you know how it is with these small towns,” I say.
She narrows her eyes at me, cocks her head to the side, and stares with a hard glint. “If we met twice in one day in Necedah, or here, I wouldn’t think anything of it. But to meet there and here? What are the odds?”
Between the skeptical tone in her voice, and the predatory look on her face, my warning bells are clamoring. I turn around and head for the door, hearing and feeling a rush of movement behind me that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. As I’m reaching for the door handle, the woman steps in front of me again, blocking the door.
“I think we need to talk,” she says, grabbing my free arm—the injured one—and giving it a yank. I yell out with pain, and it startles her. She steps back and I make another grab for the door, but she slams it shut with the flat of one hand before I can pull it open.
“Who are you?” she says, moving her face in closer to mine. She eyes me with intense scrutiny. “And how do you know Kirby?”
“Y
ou two work together?” I say, answering her question with one of my own. “Nice setup. Having a woman involved makes everything look less suspicious.”
She doesn’t offer me a denial of any sort, but she doesn’t respond, either, other than to tilt her head to one side and narrow her eyes again.
“What tipped you off at the pizza place?” I ask. I figure if she is part of a human-trafficking ring, my goose is probably cooked already anyway. If she’s not, if I’ve somehow misinterpreted all of this—and I’m certain I haven’t—it won’t do any harm to ask.
“It was too easy,” she says. “It all happened too fast and a little too perfectly. My gut said sit and watch, and that’s what I did. As soon as I saw you come strolling across the parking lot and do that walkabout thing in the restaurant, I knew I was right to be cautious.”
She rears her head back and eyes me from head to toe. “Though I have to confess, I never would have pegged you for a cop otherwise.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Really? Who, or what, are you then?”
I quickly debate several lies, and decide on the truth. “I’m an investigator for the medical examiner’s office in Sorenson. I’m looking into the death of Liesel Paulsen.”
“Yes, an unfortunate situation, that one,” she says with mock sympathy. She sniffles, sidles her body in between the door and me, then reaches into the bag she has hanging over her shoulder. I’m not surprised when she produces a gun, a cute little snub-nosed number, with pearl on the handle.
I back up into the bathroom, distancing myself from it and her.
“Smart girl,” she says.
“Yeah, well, I’ve already been shot once this week, and have no desire to repeat the experience, thank you very much.”
She gives me an amused but skeptical look, clearly wondering if I’m telling the truth. I pull down the sleeve of my top and show her part of the dressing on my shoulder. She nods then and smiles. “Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
Keeping the gun aimed at my chest, she takes a cell phone out of her pocket with the other hand and manipulates the screen with her thumb. After a few seconds, she says, “It’s me. You need to leave the room right now and meet me at the elevator. We have a problem.” She listens a moment, and her face suddenly contorts with fury. “I don’t give a damn how awkward it is. Get here now!”
She stabs at the screen with her thumb and then shoves the phone back into her coat pocket. Stepping to one side of the door, she waves the gun at me, indicating that I should move over to her side. I do so, and keeping me in the gun’s sights, she cracks open the bathroom door and peers out into the hallway.
I can see out, too, and at first, the hallway is empty. Then I see O’Keefe come hurrying toward us.
“Let’s go,” she says, waving the gun hand toward the hall. “No funny business.”
I walk past her and step into the hallway, feeling her jab the gun into my ribs. “The stairs,” she says to O’Keefe, nodding toward them.
O’Keefe looks from her to me, and then back to her again. “Michaela, what the hell are you doing?”
“Shut up and go,” Michaela says in a low but deadly voice.
O’Keefe hesitates a second or two, but the look on Michaela’s face convinces him to do as she says. He opens the door into the stairwell and holds it for us. The jab of the gun urges me forward and I enter the stairwell and start climbing.
“Check the hall at the top,” Michaela says, and O’Keefe goes sprinting past us to the top landing. Once there, he cracks the door, peers out, then gives us a nod.
“I don’t have my coat,” I say, thinking stupidly, desperately, that I need to stall for as long as I can. I have no doubt that if I leave with these two, no one will ever see me alive again. Michaela lets me know what she thinks of my protest with another jab of the gun.
O’Keefe leads the way, but instead of going to the right when he exits the stairwell, thus going out the way I came in, he takes a left. At this end of the hallway is a door, and when O’Keefe pushes through it, I see that it is the start of another stairwell, this one going up, as well as an exit—one of those doors you can go out, but can’t come in. By exiting the building this way, O’Keefe is avoiding contact with the information desk and anyone using the main entrance, as well as possibly avoiding any security cameras.
It’s a good plan for him and Michaela, but not good news for me.
CHAPTER 30
The exit that O’Keefe leads us through deposits us on a side area of the hospital. There is a narrow concrete path leading around to the front and back of the building, but off to the side, there is a low concrete retaining wall, and beyond that what appears to be a steep drop down a hillside into a wooded area. I look up and scan the edge of the building, searching for security cameras, but I don’t see any.
“Give me your cell phone,” Michaela says, sniffling as the cold makes her nose run.
I fish the phone out of my pocket and hand it to her. She sets it on the ground and raises her foot as if to stomp on it.
“You might want to hold off on that,” I say.
She gives me that queer smile of bemused amusement again. “Why is that?”
“There’s a video recording on there that you might want to look at,” I explain. “When I was in the pizza restaurant, I wasn’t just observing, I was recording. And the FBI has a copy.”
“You’re lying,” she says, but the ambivalence on her face tells me she isn’t sure.
“Check it out,” I say with a shrug that makes my shoulder smart.
She stares at me, gauging my honesty, and then sneezes. Sniffling again, she wipes her nose with her sleeve and then bends down to pick up the phone. After swiping at the screen a few times, she apparently finds what she wants. She holds the phone up, watching the screen as O’Keefe looks over her shoulder.
“Holy shit,” O’Keefe says after a minute or so. “There you are.”
Michaela frowns, then shrugs. “So what? There’s no reason for anyone to connect me to her. If they suspected me, they would have nabbed me then and there.” She tosses the phone down to the ground again in disgust. “You’re the one they’re after. That crazy-ass doctor told you so. And I heard this one”—she waves the gun at me—“on her phone leaving a message for someone that said she saw you and wanted to know what to do.”
O’Keefe dismisses her claim with a pfft, but then casts an angry glance my way. After a moment, he lets out a heavy sigh. “Face it, Michaela,” he says, looking back at her and shaking his head. “We’re done here. Between Dr. Crazy giving me up, and you getting caught at that restaurant, it’s only a matter of time.”
Michaela frowns at this. “We can make it work,” she says, shaking her head. “The situation here is perfect, and the money is too good to give up. Besides, who else is going to give you another chance with your record?”
“We can’t get greedy. We have enough money for now,” he says. “We can start over at the new spot. Everything is in place.”
Michaela shoots him an angry look and lets out a breath of disgust. “Whatever possessed you to take that girl to a hospital?” she says, a bitter tone in her voice.
The expression on O’Keefe’s face is there and gone in a flash, but I see it and it surprises me.
Michaela starts pacing, wearing a circular path in the snow just beyond the walkway.
His face now deadpan, O’Keefe leans toward Michaela as she paces toward him. “It’s time,” he says in a no-nonsense voice.
Michaela shoots him an irritated look, which then morphs into one of resignation. “I need to think,” she says, still pacing. The gun is pointed toward the ground, and for the moment, she seems to have forgotten about me. “Our handlers aren’t going to let us just walk away after what happened to that girl,” she says. “We know too much. We’re a liability.” She pauses in her pacing and arches her eyebrows at O’Keefe.
The two of them are staring at one another, several feet aw
ay from me, their eyes locked in silent communication. I see something click between them, some understanding that is mentally shared, and then they turn in unison to look at me.
I get a sinking feeling in my gut, realizing they have likely determined me to be their biggest liability. If I’m going to make a move, it’s now or never. “It looks like my call for help has paid off,” I say, looking past them toward the far edge of the front parking lot.
Both of them whip around, Michaela raising her gun, ready to fight. I take three huge steps to the retaining wall and leap over it. My feet touch ground several feet down, hitting a patch of ice and snow. The next thing I know, I’m on my butt, sliding, frozen snow getting jammed up the back of my shirt. I try to slow my descent a little with my hands, but when I hear the whine of a bullet overhead, I decide to let gravity do its work. My attempts to rudder myself make me turn sideways, and suddenly I’m rolling like a log. I put my arms over my head to protect it, feeling my injured shoulder scream in protest. I hit something with my feet and it spins me around so that I’m headed down the hill headfirst. From this position, I can see the hillside above and faces peering down at me. I also see something that gladdens my heart: the wash of red and blue oscillating lights in the night sky.
My head hits something hard and unresisting, my body comes to a jarring halt, and I see stars where there wasn’t any a moment before. I struggle to see what’s happening on top of the hill, but my eyes won’t focus. My fight-or-flight instinct is at war with my graying consciousness, and it’s only with a huge amount of determination that I’m able to keep from passing out.
My nursing instincts take over and I do a quick head-to-toe assessment of myself. I palpate my head with my right hand to see if anything feels soft and mushy where it shouldn’t, then move to my neck, running my fingers down the cervical bones in back to feel for steps, deformities, or pain. The wound in my left shoulder is throbbing, but the pain is helping me to stay focused. I wriggle my torso to check for pain in the rest of my spine, and when nothing leaps out at me, I manage to sit myself up and lean against the trunk of the tree that halted my descent.
Dead of Winter Page 29
