Blind Spot (12 page)

What hospital was she at?
What hospital?
If only she’d seen that newscast, but she couldn’t bear to look at those vacant blue eyes and blond hair.

She pulled out the clipping again. What did it say?…
victim was taken to a nearby hospital…

Nearby hospital. She thought about it hard and knew. Laurelton General. It was closest to the rest stop. That’s where the cold, evil man stealer was. That’s where Rita’s baby was.

That’s where Rita needed to go to get her baby back.

And Rita had two days off, starting tomorrow.

Lang was driving south on 217, thinking about turning off onto Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and a fast-food lunch, when he got the call from Curtis.

“Drano wants to see you,” he said without preamble.

“When?”

“As soon as you can get here.”

“I’m getting lunch.”

“Come after.”

“Okay.”

Lang flew past his off-ramp and kept north on I-5 into downtown Portland. He didn’t want to talk with Drano, to have to make plans. He wasn’t ready. This investigation, regardless of its threads to Halo Valley Security Hospital, was just what the doctor ordered.

He’d met with Denny Ewell, the long-haul trucker who’d discovered the dying male victim and the unconscious female one. Ewell had been passing through Portland on one of his trips and had agreed to meet with Lang face-to-face. They’d met at a truck stop off Sunset Highway, just outside Laurelton, and the trucker had given Lang a moment-by-moment account of what had happened after he’d come out of the restroom and discovered the two injured people.

“The guy died right there, I think,” Ewell finished, running a hand through his short, receding gray hair. “He said, ‘The baby,’ and bent over the pregnant lady. She had these marks across her belly and then the guy just keeled over. I think I touched him. He was holding his chest and there was a lot of blood.”

“The pregnant lady was unconscious.”

“Yeah.”

“Did the male vic say anything else?”

“No.”

Lang asked a few more questions, but Ewell could offer nothing further. It was about as much as Lang already knew. They shook hands and Lang thanked him for his time.

“It was bad, man,” Ewell said as they walked to their respective rigs. “About as bad a thing as I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.”

Now Lang considered who this killer and potential baby stealer might be. Man, or woman? If it was a man, there had to be a woman involved in some way, he suspected. Cutting a baby from a woman’s womb wasn’t your everyday crime. It came from some twisted maternal kernel deep in the killer’s brain and that said: woman. Men just didn’t think the same way. The male vic had tried to stop the killer and been stabbed, murdered for his efforts. Could a woman have killed him? The height and angle of the man’s chest wounds said yes.

He pulled into an underground parking structure near the Portland police station, took a ticket, and found a spot that he could back into. Old habits. He never wanted to waste time reversing in tight quarters.

Drano was in his office behind a glass wall when Lang entered the squad room. He was greeted by other officers with both welcoming handshakes and careful smiles. Lang suspected they worried he might want his job back and a number of them, like Celek, would be demoted. Celek’s freckled face couldn’t hide his anxiety and Lang said, “Stop worrying so much,” as he cruised into Drano’s office.

Drano was on the phone and he motioned Lang to a chair. Curtis, who’d also been on the phone when Lang arrived, appeared in the doorway and took another seat, shaking his ex-partner’s hand. Lang said, “I owe you a beer.”

“You did not see me first. I saw you in the outer hallway.”

“Bullshit. The outer hallway’s not visible from your desk.”

“The door was cracked open. I saw you coming.”

Drano slammed the receiver into its cradle. “Politicians,” he muttered.

“Somebody putting pressure on you to solve a case?” Lang asked.

“Always.” Lieutenant Draden clasped his hands on his desk and gazed hard at Lang. “Detective, you don’t need to be here.” He swiveled his head to make sure Curtis knew he was talking to him.

“This a secret meeting? I called him in for you!”

“Curtis…” His world-weary face looked even wearier.

Trey lifted his hands and left. “I owe
you
a beer,” he stated firmly as he walked out the door.

“I thought that rule only applied when you met at bars,” Drano said.

“It’s everywhere, now that we’re not working together.”

“I got a call from Tillamook County. You want that job or not?”

Lang said, half-surprised, “I thought you were going to offer me employment.”

“I would’ve, but I knew you wouldn’t take it, so it’s off the table. And now, with new budget constraints, the position’s terminated.”

Lang considered that information, testing his own feelings. He was surprised at the small jolt of regret. He’d had no interest in returning, yet now that the door was closed, he wondered if he’d made the right choice.

“But Tillamook County still wants you. If you want a job, you’d better take it soon. Economic climate sucks. Everybody’s feeling the pinch.”

Lang nodded slowly. Did he want the job? He liked what he was doing. Liked something for the first time in a long, long time. “I’ll call Sheriff O’Halloran today.”

“Good.”

At the pause, Lang asked, “Is that it?”

Drano eyes glittered with faint humor. “You want me to ask how you’re doing? See if you’re mentally ready to come back to work?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice. How’s that depression? You still looking for revenge? Think you’re stable enough to be part of the team?”

“Get outta here.” Drano waved him away. Despite his words, Lang knew the lieutenant had wanted to see his ex-detective in the flesh because he really did want to know how Lang was doing.

Lang had just passed a test he hadn’t even known he was taking.

He pointed at Curtis, who, once again, was on the phone, on his way out. “Okay, I’m going to let you buy me that beer,” Lang declared loudly.

He headed for his truck, a Subway sandwich, and a trip to the coast to see Sheriff O’Halloran and check with Tim Rooney, also of Tillamook, whose truck had been stolen by person or persons unknown and had apparently ended up in the hands of the victims.

Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

“Dr. Norris?”

Claire had just finished with a patient when her office phone rang. She recognized the voice of Eugenie Ledbetter, a local midwife whom they’d called on to monitor Cat’s baby. Claire immediately straightened, her hands tightening on the receiver. “Eugenie. Is something wrong?”

“No…” But she sounded unsure.

“Are you with Jane Doe?”

“I’m in her room. She’s been making motions with her hand as if she’s…slicing her abdomen.”

Claire relaxed a bit. “I know. That started yesterday.”

“Have you looked at the incisions? The score marks?”

“I’ve seen them.”

“It’s just that they seem almost uncoordinated.”

“Random,” Claire agreed. “Made by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.”

“I was wondering if you thought…”

“What?”

“If you thought there was a chance someone
wasn’t
trying to steal the baby.”

Claire stared across her office room. “What are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that the marks aren’t deep. They’re healing well, which is great. But it’s like someone just hacked at her without getting close enough to do any real damage, or they never meant to. These cuts aren’t like the shoulder wounds at all.”

“So what do you think?” Claire asked.

“I don’t know.” Eugenie sighed. “It’s just an observation. Thought I’d let you know.”

“Thanks.”

Claire hung up, lost in thought. She’d spent the evening before lost in thought as well, half-hoping Dinah would be around, though she wasn’t; half-glad that she was alone. She’d sat on her deck and let the rain-washed air dampen her face. Many of her thoughts had turned to Cat and her baby, and not necessarily from a professional point of view. Not so long ago Claire had wanted a baby very badly. She’d even managed to convince her wishy-washy husband at the time to give the parent thing a whirl. Claire suffered through two miscarriages, and that’s when her husband said he really didn’t want to try again; he’d never really wanted children in the first place.

After that the marriage just wasn’t the same, and it fell apart. They’d been living in Salem, about two-thirds of the distance from Halo Valley to Deception Bay’s one-third, in the opposite direction. So Claire left Ron and Salem and up and moved to the coastal town, making a new life for herself.

She realized that one of the reasons she felt so bonded to Cat was because of the girl’s pregnancy. Didn’t take a lot of professional skill to call that one. And the score marks were just so horrific; they tugged at Claire’s maternal heartstrings.

But…Eugenie wasn’t sure the score marks were an actual attempt to take the baby. That’s what she was intimating, whether she’d put the thought into words or not. So what did that mean?

With sudden decisiveness, she called down to the first-floor nurse’s station and asked for Darlene, who was beckoned from the morning room.

“Yes?” Darlene asked.

“I want to take another look at Cat’s wounds.” She explained to the nurse about Eugenie’s concerns.

“Okay, I’ll meet you there in ten,” Darlene said. As a nurse, she would redress the wounds. Claire could do the same, but she wanted someone with her and Darlene was a good ally.

Darlene was already in the room when Claire entered and was in the process of removing the bandages that Eugenie had already disturbed. Cat’s eyes were closed and she seemed unaware of the procedure.

When Darlene was finished, she and Claire gazed down at Cat’s abdomen and the now scabbed-over wounds.

“They’ve healed well,” Darlene observed.

“Very well,” Claire agreed.

The wounds were like random hash marks and looked as if someone had swiped at Cat from a few feet away.

“Are you going to call Detective Stone?” Darlene asked.

“I’ve got Detective Tanninger’s number.”

Darlene nodded. “What about Dr. Freeson?”

“I’ll let the police decide if this is important.”

“Freeson’ll have a cow.”

“I’m sure he will.”

Claire headed back to her office, looked up the Winslow County Sheriff’s Department phone number on her computer, and placed the call from her cell phone. She gave her name to the woman who answered and asked to speak to Will Tanninger, who was unavailable. She explained that her call concerned her Jane Doe patient at Halo Valley Security Hospital. The woman at the other end assured her Detective Tanninger, or someone else, would call her back.

Claire hoped that someone else was not Langdon Stone.

The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department was in a low building in the center of town, an island created by two sides of Highway 101, which broke around it like waves around a jutting boulder. The southbound lanes were on the west side; the northbound on the east. There was a parking lot on the south end of the building with a few scattered department vehicles. Lang pulled his Dodge truck into a reserved spot, as there were no visitors’ spots available. Probably catch hell for it, or get his truck towed, but he didn’t plan to be here long.

It wasn’t the greatest start for a résumé, but it was raining like a son of a bitch and he didn’t feel like walking.

Bending his head to the onslaught he hurried across the lot, up a couple of concrete steps capped by a sagging metal rail, and whooshed inside the door, making sure it was properly closed against a tearing wind, the kind the coast was known for.

He was in a short hallway that led to a reception area that wasn’t much wider, at the end of which sat a heavyset woman in a tight tan uniform.

“Can I help you?” she demanded.

“My name’s Langdon Stone. I have an appointment with Sheriff O’Halloran.”

“Well, if you did, you don’t anymore. Sheriff’s out working a case.”

She had a lot of attitude in her manner. Lang pegged her around forty. Maybe divorced. Black hair with fine strands of gray pulled into a tight bun at her nape. Black eyes that warned him not to piss her off. Her name tag read Johnson.

Lang said, “I talked to him. He said he’d be here, but things change. I’ve got another appointment, so I’ll come back.”

She frowned suspiciously. “What’s this concerning, Mr. Stone?”

“Employment. Specifically mine. With this department.” He smiled and headed back out the way he’d come.

The rain hit him like a wall. A true Oregonian, Lang never used an umbrella. Mostly the rain, though incessant, was the thin, drizzling kind, although if he was really planning a permanent move to the coast he might have to rethink that. Here the weather was fiercer, wilder, and wetter.

He was soaked as he drove toward the farm of one Mr. Timothy Rooney, his leather jacket squeaking, possibly ruined. The farm was just south of the city of Tillamook proper, off a two-lane road that branched from 101, then branched again. He drove past the large silver mailbox nailed to a two-by-four that read
ROONEY FARM
before he knew it; the rain was a silvery curtain. Backing up, he turned into the gravel drive and bumped along for a quarter of a mile. On either side were sunken fields dotted with black-and-white dairy cows; the road had been built up between them. Tillamook was a lowland known for its flooding. It was also the site for premier cheese making. The Tillamook Cheese Factory produced and sold cheese nationwide, hence the dairy cows.

But in the heaviest flood season, the cows were as susceptible to flood waters as the humans; more so, given their habitat. Lang had never lived in the area, but he watched the news, and every couple of seasons farmers were scrambling to save their herds from drowning.

The Rooney farmhouse was a rambling affair that may have once been a saltbox but now had wings jutting off at odd angles, all of it decrepit with grayed wood exposed under peeling white paint, the force of nature evident everywhere, from the leaning sheds to the missing shingles on the roof. The barns beyond looked to be in the best shape. Rooney knew how to take care of his livestock.

Lang sloshed the truck through mud puddles the size of craters and parked next to a once-reddish pickup with mud-caked tires, its body being washed clean of the same by the pounding rain. Taking a readying breath, he opened the door and gingerly slid his boots onto one of the tiny isthmuses of hard ground between the puddles. He crab-walked his way to the front porch, rain running down his bent head and sliding beneath his collar. If he wasn’t completely soaked to the skin before, he was now.

Knocking on the door, he shifted to one side to avoid the rivulet of water that was running through a hole in the porch roof and racing down one of the posts, dropping huge plops of water along its way.

It took several more attempts at knocking before the door was answered. A man in his seventies, back ramrod straight, opened the door and eyed him with a hard look of suspicion. His hair was gray, clipped short, and his face was weathered. He looked like he squinted a lot, and he was dressed in brown work pants and a gray shirt.

“You that detective from out of town? You sure picked a hell of a day to show up.”

“They’re not all like this?” Lang asked.

Rooney didn’t seem to appreciate the humor. “I’m Tim Rooney,” he said, shaking Lang’s wet hand. “You’d best come in, I suppose.”

Lang glanced down at the wet marks his boots were making on the rough plank board floor but Rooney waved off his concern. “This is a working farm. I don’t have a wife no more. Nobody cares but me.”

He led the way to a kitchen with a small table crammed in the corner and motioned for Lang to take a chair. “Like a drink?” he asked. “I’ve got water…and milk.”

Was that the faintest bit of humor in the older man’s eyes? Lang said, “Water, thanks.”

“Not enough of it outside,” Rooney said.

He poured each of them a glass, then sat across from Lang at the postage stamp–sized table. “You’re a time waster, son. I told you that truck was stolen long ago.”

Lang nodded. They’d tried the license plates, learned they, too, were stolen, and had traced the truck’s owner back to Rooney through the VIN number. It could have been through a number of thieving hands before it found its way to the rest stop victims. “How long ago?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a year.”

“And you never reported it missing?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I knew who took it.”

Lang’s brows shot up in surprise. “You knew who took it? You didn’t say that before,” he declared with some heat.

Rooney was unperturbed. “Nobody asked me. They asked me if it was my truck. I said yes, and that it was stolen right off my property. I asked ’em when I would get it back, and they said they were investigating a crime and would get back to me. And here you are. So, when am I gettin’ my truck?”

“Who took it?” Lang could hear the frustration in his own voice.

“Well, it weren’t the people you found at that rest stop, if that’s what you mean. Saw that on the news,” he explained. “Figured that was my truck. Cade musta sold it to ’em.”

“Cade? He took your truck?”

He nodded. “Had to be Cade Worster.”

“Who’s he?”

“Thievin’ Injun. Gave him some odd jobs around here and he thanked me by takin’ my truck.”

Lang wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or strangle the old coot. “This Cade Worster, who you say stole your truck, is Native American?”

“Part, yeah. Maybe more’n just part. Damn near all, I’d say.”

Lang was having a helluva time keeping Rooney on point. “He live around here?”

Rooney made a motion toward the north. “He’s a Foothiller, up by Deception Bay. You know the Foothillers?”

Lang shook his head.

“Okay, well, you got your whites, and you got your Injuns. Back in the day, this is. The Injuns were already here but then all of a sudden they had to make their way for the whites who came in and took up all the land. Pushed ’em back toward the mountains.” Rooney swept an arm toward the east, in the general direction of the Coast Range. “So’s then the whites take the coast land and the Injuns move east, but the two groups get a little hanky-panky goin’ on and mix together and after a while, you got your Foothillers.”

Lang found himself staring at the gray-haired man who spoke with such blythe, political incorrectness. “And Cade Worster’s a Foothiller.”

“Don’t get me wrong, son. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with being a Foothiller. My wife was a Foothiller, bless her soul. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ an Injun either. But a thievin’ Injun is what ain’t right.”

“But you didn’t have him arrested.”

“Mister, Cade Worster is some kinda relative to me through my wife, bless her soul. Couldn’t have her rollin’ over in her grave just because Cade’s a good-for-nothin’ who’s givin’ ’em all a bad name. Stereotypin’ them bad.”

“But Cade Worster is not the man who died at the rest stop.”

“Cain’t be. I saw him the day after it happened, and I saw him again yesterday.” He snorted. “Bad pennies always show up.”

“You saw Cade Worster yesterday. The man you think stole your truck?”

“I
know
he stole my truck. Hell, son, you need to write this down? That’s what I’ve been sayin’!”

Rooney was growing as annoyed with Lang as Lang was growing exasperated with him. “You think I could talk to this Mr. Worster?”

“You can sure as hell try, though he won’t be talkin’ back. He gets real quiet when the authorities come around, you know what I mean?”

“Like he has something to hide?”

“Huh.” He nodded several times, as if happy Lang and he were finally on the same page. Then he skewered Lang with a look through very sharp blue eyes. “You know where Deception Bay is, right north up the coastline?”

“I know it.”

“There’s a—residential district, I guess you’d call it, straight east and up against the mountains, in the foothills.”

“The Foothillers.”

“Yessir.” He wagged his head with a faint smile, as if Lang, dense as rock, was finally catching on. “It ain’t a reservation. That’d be up north in Washington state.”

“Got it.”

“And it’s not a town, really. It’s a community.”

“Foothillers community.”

“That’s it. Lot of mixin’ of blood, but white folks are looked on with some suspicion.”

“This community sounds like it falls under the jurisdiction of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Have to be, I guess. You with them?” He looked over Lang’s drenched civilian clothes.

“Maybe. Yeah.” Lang shrugged. “I’ll know in a couple of hours.”

“Huh.” He leaned back in his chair. “If’n you find Cade, tell him I’ve got some jobs for him, if’n he wants ’em.”

“You’d hire him? Even though he stole your truck?”

Rooney shrugged. “The boy’s got a strong back when he cares to use it. Truck wasn’t worth much anyway. I am gettin’ it back, though, right? It is my property, after all.”

“If you own it, it’ll come back to you.”

“When?”

Lang spread his hands and shook his head.

“Huh,” Rooney said, then after a moment, “You want some more water?”

Lang said no, thanked him, then headed out through the still pouring rain to his Dodge truck. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was four o’clock, and as he put the vehicle in gear, his cell phone rang. It was Will Tanninger; he’d plugged his cell number into his contact list and
Tanninger
popped up on the screen.

“Stone,” he answered.

“Got a call from your doctor friend at Halo Valley, Dr. Norris. I called her back. Apparently there’s some thought that the knife wounds on the pregnant vic’s abdomen weren’t meant to cut out the baby.”

“What? That’s bullshit!”

“A midwife pointed out that they look too unfocused, like an afterthought. You want to go over there and check it out?”

“To Halo Valley?”

“Where are you?”

Lang opened his mouth to say, “Tillamook,” but nothing came out. He was far closer to the hospital than anyone in the greater Portland area. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to make another trip there.

“Stone?”

For a coward’s beat, he thought about pretending his cell phone was breaking up or he’d lost the signal. Instead, he heard himself saying, “It wouldn’t be till later tonight. I’ve got a couple appointments.”

“I don’t think it’s urgent. You could go tomorrow. Or I could send someone else.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Just check it out. Listen to the staff. See what’s going on there. I don’t know why they’d minimize the crime, but something’s off.”

“Okay.” Lang said a few more words, then rang off. He liked Tanninger. He liked the work. He just didn’t like the idea of heading to Halo Valley. He wasn’t much for hospitals in general and certainly Halo Valley in particular.

Rita Feather Hawkings was well into her shift but her eyes were constantly turning to any clock she could find. She didn’t wear a watch and she didn’t own a cell phone to check the time, so she prowled by the nurse’s station more often than usual just to get a fix on the hour.

“What’s with you?” Carmelita asked once.

Rita ignored her and concentrated on her own plans. She would leave tonight, as soon as she got off work. It would be a bit of a problem because she shared a car with her mother, and her mother expected Rita to do all the shopping for her. If Rita were gone for a few days, Delores would wonder why.

But she’d done it before. Lots of times. That’s how she’d learned that Rafe had left her bed to go behind the gates of that cult and screw the brains out of that blond whore! Tasha. One of
them.
All dressed in their printed cotton dresses, looking like they were from another century. Walking inside the property like zombies. Pale. Stupid. Lifeless.

Siren Song. That’s what their place was called. Rita was pretty sure they hadn’t named it themselves, ’cause she’d had to take some literature courses—as few as she could manage—when she’d first gone to school, and she knew that a Siren was a sexy, mythological female voice that called out to seamen and when they sailed toward it, their boats were smashed on the rocks. Or something like that. But it was a sexy voice, and there was nothing sexy in that compound with its blond female ghosts. They just didn’t seem real. All of them girls. All of them! She’d never seen a man there, except, of course, for Rafe.

He’d been their gardener, their handyman, their deliveryman. And he’d fallen for that fucking Tasha!

He hadn’t told Rita at first.
At first,
he saw them both, both Rita and Tasha. Rita had been livid when she’d accidentally learned the truth. She’d followed Rafe and seen him with
her.
Seen them groping each other under a full moon. Watched through the iron bars while hiding in the brush.
Groping.
Rafe had been all over Tasha and she’d stood there quivering, naked, her skin glowing. Rita had been sure that she herself was pregnant. She and Rafe had made love so many times. Rita was an innovative lover, not like this stick of human flesh that couldn’t even move. She’d wanted to scratch the bitch’s eyes out, and her hands had stretched like claws toward them before she remembered herself and pulled back.