A Dark Lure (21 page)

Mac Yakima stared at the Tim Hortons sign through the rain-spattered windshield. They were parked in the lot outside. Martinello was one of those cops who actually did like donuts. She munched one now, powdered sugar on her chin.

“Is Raffey attending the postmortem?” she said, taking another chomp. That woman had a metabolism like nobody’s business. She ran at least forty miles each week, and swam. Mac always got the idea that she was running from something. Like if she stopped long enough it might catch up with her. Maybe she ran just so she could thumb her nose at the cliché and eat donuts. That would be Martinello’s style.

She was young for homicide. She had come to policing by way of a wealthy upbringing and a doctorate in criminology, which didn’t ingratiate her easily to the other officers who’d slogged up through the ranks and beat the streets in order to earn a place on the integrated homicide team. Mac figured she made a big deal out of stopping for donuts because she wanted to be more like a blue-collar cop. Or something.

“Yeah. He’ll call if anything comes up.” Mac started the engine. “How was Burton when you drove him home after the party?” he said, looking over his shoulder as he reversed the cruiser.

“Edgy. Probably pissed that everyone bailed on him.” She delivered the last of the donut to her mouth. “I would’ve been edgy, too. I mean, how often does a guy get to retire after a lifetime of service? Once. And no one can stick around long enough to finish a beer and see him off properly? They leave you standing in their dust while they rush out, all amped up about the next big call?”

“Did he press you for information on the call?” Mac pulled out of the parking lot and joined the throng of traffic along Fourth. He shot her a glance.

Her features had turned unreadable. Her cop face. Mac knew it well.

“He was curious, yeah. Why?”

“He mention anything about the bandage on his hand?”

“He told me he hurt it while moving a bookshelf.”

“I want to know where he was the night before the retirement party.”

“Jesus, Yak, you can’t think—”

“I don’t know what in the hell to think,” he snapped. “Burton knows about the bites out of the breasts. He knows about the note in the vic’s right eye socket. He even fucking knows what the note says.”

But as she was about to speak, Mac’s cell buzzed. He pulled over to answer it.

“Sergeant Yakima.”

“It’s Dr. Bellman. Listen, I understand time could be crucial, and that you could potentially use this information to secure a warrant. But what I’m going to say, for the record, is theoretical. Purely conceptual. It does
not
pertain specifically to any patient of mine.”

“I got it.” His gaze cut to Martinello. He mouthed the name:
Bellman.

“The answer is yes. Stress can undermine the body’s immune system. This in turn can exacerbate the growth of a lesion. Also, it’s fairly rare, but a relationship has been demonstrated between structural intracranial lesions and mental illness. Psychotic manifestations cannot be dismissed as a possible symptom.”

“Okay, just so we’re clear in lay speak, that means someone with a brain tumor in a specific location of the brain could develop psychosis.”

“It’s been demonstrated.”

“And what could this psychosis—hypothetically—look like?”

“In layman’s terms, psychosis is an umbrella tag for a number of mental illnesses of which schizophrenia is one, dissociative identity disorder another.”

“Schizophrenia—that’s when you hear voices in your head telling you to do things?”

“It’s a loss of touch with reality. And yes, often patients do hear voices giving them orders. Often it is not clear to the patient that this is something unusual, or that they’re ill. I hope this helps.”

“Thank you, Doctor, it does.” He hung up. “Shit,” he said quietly. “Burton could be a very sick man.”

He tried Gage’s cell again. No response. Or no service.

Mac put the cruiser back in gear and reentered the stream of traffic. “The pathologist puts the time of death around eight p.m. on the night before Burton’s retirement party. The crime scene is a two- to three-hour drive from Burton’s residence. We need to know where Burton was that night. We need a warrant on his phone to find out where he is now.” He hefted out a heavy breath.

“You and him go way back?”

He nodded. “Right back to Fort Tapley up north. He was stationed there after Watt Lake, a lateral move that he never explained to me fully, but I understood it to be a result of his problems with the Watt Lake case. There was big political pressure to wrap that one up smoothly. He was a burr under the brass’s saddle, from what I understand. He would not—could not—drop this idea that they had the wrong guy. Despite all the evidence, he maintained the killer was still out there. He’s been obsessed with it ever since, and it’s cost him some major career moves. The deputy commish job could have been his, I reckon, had it not been for this obsession. Instead it went to Hank Gonzales, who was on the Watt Lake Killer
task force back in the day.”

“So this could be personal for Burton on a whole other level,” she said. “And what better way to keep the game going? To finally get everyone hunting again. To prove to Gonzales he was wrong all those years back. Is that what you think is going down here? That Burton’s having issues with retirement, grief, illness, and it’s made him psychotic—capable of killing?”

“All we know is that Burton is a person of interest in the Birkenhead homicide. Our
only
one so far. And we need to find him, even if just to rule him out.”

CHAPTER 13

Through the scope of his bolt-action Remington .308 he studied the trio in the boat, the evening air chill on his ears. The snow was coming sooner than forecast. Of this he was certain.

He zeroed in on his prey. His lovely, skittish, wounded deer. It intrigued him, really, how even a gut-shot deer would not stray too far from home territory in spite of the fact the hunter was near. The familiarity of home always outweighed the danger. Deadly mistake, that.

Her hair caught the sun as it sank toward the tree-lined esker. She laughed. It was like a punch to his chest. The boat angled closer to the shadows and scrub along the shore where he hid. He could see her face clearly. Heat hummed through his veins.

He slid his forefinger into the trigger guard, softly caressing the trigger. Then he gave it slight pressure as he exhaled.
Poof
. In his power. He could so easily just squeeze the trigger all the way through, crack the .308 into her skull. And she’d be gone. He slid his scope a little lower. Or he could put it right there, through her heart. He had the control. All the choices. Once again he was beginning to own her.

Memories surged through him. The taste of her mouth. Her smell. The feel of her bare skin as he drove his cock up deep in between her legs. How he’d kept her shackled, the rope around her neck, as he’d forced her onto all fours like an animal. How he’d slapped into her, driving deeper and deeper until she screamed in glorious pain. Which made him wilder. His penis hardened at the thought.

She’d stopped screaming one day.

Even though he’d known he was still causing her pain, she’d fallen silent. He’d thought it was insubordination, a battle of wills, because she’d discovered that her screams only drove him wilder. He’d thought it was her trying to wrest back control.

But then he’d learned different. A smile curved over his mouth. He panned his scope over to the man in the boat.

Big man. Strong body with thick neck. Balding brush cut. A whisper of a memory feathered into his brain, but he was unable to grasp it.

He moved over to the child.

Long jet-black hair spilled over her shoulders, the ends lifting in the wind. She was not so much child but a creature reaching that special place between childhood and womanhood. That elusive memory feathered a little deeper into his brain, cold and unpleasant, like growing hoarfrost. But still he couldn’t shape it, hold on to it.

He heard a voice.

Eugene . . . come here. Leave your father be . . . Come sit on my lap and read to me, my favorite boy . . .

A sick, dark change of mood twisted into him. His head began to hurt. Slowly, he lowered his scope.

Tori was bundled up in her down jacket with a flotation device strapped over the top. She felt like the Michelin Man, stupid and uncomfortable, and she was still cold in the boat, especially in the forest shadows at the calmer end of the lake. The boat had a flat bottom with wet carpet in it. There were two bench seats, and a seat at the rear where the motor and tiller were. Olivia stood at the rear, casting. Ace slept on a towel at her feet. He wore a doggie life jacket, which Tori supposed was cute. Her dad sat in the prow where he dangled out his line and watched an orange bobber. She was shivering in the middle.

Her gaze slid up to Olivia’s profile. She’d glimpsed the mean-ass scar around Olivia’s neck when that man had removed her bandana after she’d nearly fainted. It was impressive, that scar—she wondered what could have created something like that.

Olivia cast her line out in graceful arcs over the water, settling her fly far out along the edge of a shoal. She held her rod with her right hand while she slowly pulled the line in with her left. It pooled in big coils at her feet. Tori noticed scars on the inside of Olivia’s wrists. Her pulse quickened. Had she tried to kill herself? Tori had read in novels about how it was more effective to cut lengthwise rather than across the vein if you wanted to commit suicide properly. Sometimes she thought of killing herself. If she was religious, and if she truly believed she would see her mother in the afterlife, maybe she’d have the guts to actually carry it out.

Olivia flicked her line out farther. Water droplets sparkled in the rays from the sinking sun.

The words from her mother’s manuscript crept into her mind
. . .

The sergeant watched mesmerized as the man cast out his line. Perfect, languid loops rolled out above the water, doubling back one loop over the other, sending sparkling droplets into sunshine . . .

Those unarticulated questions lurking at the periphery of her brain crowded in a little closer as she thought of the Watt Lake sergeant. The three-eyed fly in her mother’s manuscript. She stole a look at her dad. He was intently watching Olivia, something unreadable in his face.

Tori’s chest went tight. Her stomach hurt. She looked away, fighting a sudden surge of hot tears. She focused on the loon nearby. The bird watched them with a red eye, its beak like a razor.

Her dad took out his hip flask and offered it to Olivia. She said no thanks, but he said, “Go on. It’s cold. It’ll warm you up.”

Olivia hesitated, then reached over and took the flask from him. She swallowed a mouthful and returned it. Tori felt blackness boiling up around her. She thought about her beautiful mom. Her mom would have packed a flask of cocoa. With cookies, or home-baked banana choc-chip muffins. The darkness boiled higher about her, drowning out the hurt, the pain, filling the great big hollow in her chest with anger.

Anger at Julia Borsos for telling her she was getting fat, and claiming that’s why boys didn’t like her. She
was
gaining weight—she knew that. She’d been eating everything in sight since her mother died, as if trying to fill that empty hole in her life. Her skin had gone bad. No one loved her anymore. She was lost. Alone. Dangerously angry underneath it all.

“Where did you go?” she muttered, not looking at her father.

“What?”

“Earlier, when you went for your walk?”

He took another swig from his flask and replaced the cap. “I went to the campground for a look-see.”

“Why?”

“Just to get a lay of the land.”

“Why did you take two guns?”

Her father’s eyes flashed up. Tori felt a smug punch.

“I didn’t—”

“You did. What’s that in your boot right now, and in the holster under your shirt?”

Her father swallowed slowly, a hot glint entering his eyes. Olivia was staring at him.

Another smug punch. She’d forced her dad’s hand. Now the suicidal guide-woman wouldn’t like him.

“Not easy to get a permit for handguns,” Olivia said, casting her line out in another series of long graceful arcs over the water.

“You’re right. It’s not.”

Olivia flicked another glance at him but said nothing more.

“Why do you keep phoning Mac?” Tori pushed, unable to stop herself now.

Her father met her gaze in silence. Then he reached over. “Here, why don’t you hold this rod. Watch the bobber out there. If it dips suddenly underwater, lift the rod tip up, and tug the line gently like this.” His voice was dark and low, his eyes narrow.

Tori swallowed. “I don’t want to fish.”

“Go on. Hold the rod.”

“No.”

Silence. Their gazes warred.

“I don’t understand fishing, anyway.” She wrapped her arms tightly over her stomach.

“What do you mean?” Olivia said as she reeled in her line.

“You just throw them back into the water, so why bother catching them in the first place? I don’t see the point. I’d far rather kill them. And I don’t see why we needed to come on this stupid trip.”

An iridescent bug landed on her knee. It had a thin, stick-straight body marked by bands of black and blue—a deep, luminescent blue that didn’t seem natural. Its wings were a translucent gossamer, its eyes big round balls at the tip of its head. Its little body pulsated, and its wings quivered.

“Wow, look at that,” her father said. “A damselfly this late in the season—that’s unusual.”

Some exchanges are as subtle as the touch of an iridescent damselfly alighting on the back of your hand. Some are seismic, rocking your world and fissuring into your very foundations and setting you on a new path . . .

Tori reached for the bug and squished it dead. She flicked the gunk off her fingers into the water.

She felt shock radiate from her father.

“Goddammit, Tori. What is
wrong
with you?”

Olivia watched them both. “Your father was right,” she said calmly as she cast again, settling her fly like a live insect on the surface of the dark water. “It’s really unusual to see a damselfly this late in the year.” Wind gusted and the water spiraled in patterns across the lake. The sun was sinking toward the far ridge, streaking the sky with violent pinks and oranges. “They’re usually all gone before the first frosts. This one must be special—I’m surprised the cold nights didn’t kill it and that it lived long enough to visit you like that.”

Tori swallowed.

It started, as all dialogues do, when a path crosses that of another . . .

She began to shake inside. It was as if her mother were here, whispering the words of her book into her mind.

“A damselfly nymph can live deep underwater for two years,” Olivia said. “A whole lifetime for a nymph. Then when it’s ready, it will swim to a plant and crawl up the vegetation into the air. Its skin then breaks, and it unfolds delicate little wings. That’s a vulnerable moment for the damsel. It must pump body fluids into its abdomen and wings, which causes both to lengthen into the form you saw on your knee. And once the wings are dry it takes flight and starts a whole second life cycle outside the water. It’s like getting a second chance where everything is new again.” She smiled. “Or that’s what I like to think—that there can be stages in life where you become a whole different creature. Where there are new possibilities.”

Olivia gently tugged her line, making her lure swim like a bug over the surface. She seemed to be considering something deeply as she watched her fly. Then she said, “When I was a little girl, when I got really down about something and felt like there was no hope, my mother would take me aside and say, ‘Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
’
” She flicked the tip of her rod, looping her line and setting the lure out even farther, at the very edges of the dark water in the forest shadows.

“Damselflies and dragonflies are like the butterfly—symbols of new beginnings. Some people even feel they’re spiritual totems.” Olivia glanced down at Tori. Her eyes were the same green as the water, and Tori thought about her scars again. She wondered if Olivia had gotten a second chance when she hadn’t managed to kill herself. Something shifted slightly in her.

“Adult damselflies are not really a big food source for the trout,” Olivia said. “But the fish predate heavily on them while they’re in the nymph stage. But those little nymphs”—she met Tori’s eyes again—“they’re just as predacious themselves. They lie in wait for other aquatic bugs to get in range, then grab them with jaws designed especially for chomping. That circle of life thing—” She stopped, and her gaze flicked to the water as her rod tip bent slightly.

“That’s why I like to fish,” she said, her attention still on the rod tip. “It teaches you to watch and understand the insect life and cycles of the lakes and rivers and seasons. When you try to mimic nature by designing a fly, it gives you a respect. And yes, you kill and eat the fish you catch. But you only take what you need. The rest you learn from and put back.” She paused as her rod tip dipped slightly again. She raised the tip, but again, it must have just been a nibble.

“I can teach you to tie a damsel if you like?”

Tori looked away. She felt her father watching her. She felt sick. She could imagine the damsel pumping up its little body. Wanting a second chance at life. A strange sort of thick emotion bubbled inside her.

Olivia’s rod tip suddenly bent over hard.

“Oh, got a bite!” She lifted the tip high, keeping the line taut. “Here,” she said, thrusting the rod into Tori’s hand.

Tori took it in shock.

“Stand up,” Olivia said as she grabbed the tiller. She started the engine and moved them slowly into calmer water.

Tori got to her feet, wobbling as the boat rocked a little.

“Keep the tip of the rod up. Keep your feet planted wide apart and flex your knees. You’ll balance easier.”

Anxiety whipped through Tori as the line started to zing.

“It’s running. Diving down deep. Let it go, but keep that tip up, keep some tension on the line.”

The coils of line on the boat floor started rapidly feeding back into the rod eyes and out into the water. Her mouth went dry. She was shaking.

Suddenly there was no tension on the line.

“Bring in some line! Pull it in with your hand. The fish has changed direction and is swimming back to the boat. It’ll spook when it sees us and run again. Be ready.”

Tori swallowed, frantically pulling in line. Her skin felt hot.