Blind Spot (23 page)

What am I doing here?
he asked himself.

As if she’d heard his unspoken thought, she said, “You looked so wet, and I felt like it was my idea to go to Siren Song today.”

“I would have probably been out in the rain with or without you.” He inhaled carefully; he didn’t want to relax too much around her.

“You want to come in the rest of the way?”

She’d taken off her shoes, and after a moment’s hesitation he yanked off his cowboy boots. His socks were damp but at least they wouldn’t leave a wet and muddy trail. Running a hand through his hair, he followed her through a small galley kitchen to a sitting room with windows that looked out through the storm toward the ocean.

“I don’t have food,” she said, reaching into a cupboard. “But I’ve got wine.” She pulled out a bottle of red.

“Thanks, but I’ve got to go soon.”

“All right. I’m going to have a glass,” she said, peeling off the foil, then opening a drawer and finding a corkscrew.

Lang felt completely out of his element. This wasn’t how this day was supposed to go. He should be talking to her about Heyward Marsdon, berating her for going against the intention of the courts, arguing with her over what really happened in her office, what Melody might or might not have said. But he didn’t doubt that she wanted to help their Jane Doe/Colony girl, and that’s what he was there for now.

“What did you put in the note?” she asked, pouring the red wine into a stemmed glass.

“I gave them your name and profession. Thought that might stir things up. Not just a woman. A woman doctor.”

His gaze fell on the glass of wine and, seeing that, she held it out to him. Feeling like he was falling into a trap, he reluctantly accepted the drink. There was something sensual about the rain and the wine and the storm outside, and it made Lang feel like a traitor.

“My sister didn’t ask to be killed,” he said again, taking a quick gulp of the wine.

She didn’t respond, just poured her own glass with a concentration that spoke volumes.

“Nobody asks to be killed,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Why did you tell the guard she said that?”

“Because she did,” Claire stated flatly. “I’m sorry. I should have kept that information from Wade, but I was in shock. I spoke the truth without censoring myself.”

He thought that over. Finally said, “My sister was screwed up, but she wasn’t suicidal.”

Claire started to say that it wasn’t about suicide, that Melody’s plea to “do it” stemmed from her delusion, but stopped herself. Instead, she said, “If I engage in this argument, we’ll fight, but it won’t alter the facts.”

“Great deflection. They teach you that in shrink school?” he demanded.

She took a heavy swallow. “In shrink school, we learned that sometimes we’re the object of transference.”

“You think I’m transferring my anger over my sister’s death to you?” he asked with an edge of danger.

“Yes.”

“So what I’m feeling is simply misdirected anger. Great. I feel so much better. Thanks for the cure, Doc.”

“You
should
be angry,” she said tautly. “We should all be angry. We failed. The system failed, and nobody wants to admit that Heyward Marsdon the Third is a ticking time bomb. A man—a very sick man—who will likely go off his meds again, and then anything’s possible. Yes, I know, Detective. I’m not hiding my head in the sand. I don’t think he should be on Side A, but does he belong on Side B?”

“Yes.” He was adamant.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Then where does he belong?” Lang demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, finally. An honest answer.”

“They’ve all been honest.”

He wanted to come back at her. He really wanted to yell at her. The cooler she seemed, the hotter he got. But he could tell that she was bothered that Heyward had been moved. Bothered and unsure. Well, hell, why not? The bastard had held a knife to her throat, too, hadn’t he?

A knock sounded on the back door and Claire whirled around, sloshing a bit of wine, her free hand to her throat. Tense, Lang thought, again, understanding how fragile her own state of mind was, no matter how logically she spoke.

“Dinah!” she said a moment later as she headed to the back door.

A moment later a blondish woman walked in, having deposited her own coat and boots in the mudroom. She wore a dark blue caftan and her hair was long and braided. He realized she was the neighbor even before she introduced herself.

“I’m Dinah, from next door.”

“Langdon Stone.”

They shook hands, assessing each other. Claire poured the newcomer a glass of wine and handed it to her. “Detective Stone was with the Portland police and is starting with the Tillamook Sheriff’s Department soon.”

“Detective,” Dinah repeated, frowning. “You’re not…?”

“Yes. He’s that Detective Stone.” Claire didn’t look at him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, turning to encompass both him and Claire, clearly knowing that he was Melody’s brother.

He opened his mouth to explain but Claire stepped in, telling her about Cat and the circumstances that had pulled him into the investigation and how it had led to Deception Bay and Siren Song.

Dinah listened intently, jerking a bit at the mention of the cult’s lodge. Lang narrowed his gaze on her and said, “You’re familiar with Siren Song?”

“Anyone who lives here knows about them,” she side-stepped. “I still can’t get over that Claire let you into her space. All that compressed negative energy. It’s unhealthy.”

He slid a look out the rain-washed window in the direction of her home. “You some kind of New Age quack?”

“That’s one definition, I suppose.” Her mouth quirked.

“A quack’s quack?” He looked from her to Claire. “Beautiful.”

Claire held her tongue with a comeback, but with an effort, he could see. She said tightly, “You’re very quick to name call.”

“I’m a two-year-old inside. I’ve been told that before. In all my relationships.”

“You don’t seem like you’ve had many relationships,” Dinah said. “Not ones that count, anyway.”

“Oh. You’re a seer, too,” he said. “This gets better and better. Do your colleagues at Halo Valley know about her?” he asked Claire.

“Do you want to start a fight with me?” Claire asked.

“I’ve been trying all night, lady.”

Dinah said with amusement, “I think I walked into a lover’s quarrel. The ‘seer’ missed that one.” She started to head out.

“Don’t go. I’m on my way out.” Lang set his empty glass on the counter. “Thanks for the help, Dr. Norris. If Catherine of the Gates ever gets back to me, I’ll be sure and let you know.”

“You want to know about the Colony?” Dinah asked.

Both Claire and Lang turned to look at her, hearing something in her tone that arrested them both. She motioned for Lang to return and walked into the living room, curling herself into a chair, much like a cat, tucking her feet under her legs.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“Quite a lot, actually. My father wrote the book on them. Literally. He amassed a history of the Colony complete with old letters and newspaper articles. The works. And he knows Catherine personally.”

Catherine looked over the sea of blond female heads and felt every one of her fifty-seven years. Her own hair was going gray, still threaded with blond, but those strands were diminishing day by day. She’d done her best to keep them all safe. She would continue to do so. But the breach of Natasha’s disappearance was bringing the outside world too close. She hated the outsiders. Hated them all. They were too inquisitive and their sole aim seemed to be to strip Catherine and her charges bare of all their secrets. The outsiders called them the Colony and had latched on to the whimsical name of Siren Song for the lodge itself—Mary’s name for it. Both tags had been adopted by the women inside as well. They were the current generation of the Colony and they lived at Siren Song. So be it.

But Catherine wanted no further influence from them, and tonight’s meeting was called to ensure all of their agreement.

“Natasha has been found,” she announced.

There was a murmur through the crowd. Anxious faces turned her way. Catherine spread both notes on the table; she’d braved the rain to collect the second one.

“I am going to meet with the sheriff’s department,” she went on. “I should only be gone several hours. As ever, Isadora is in charge.”

“Lillibeth said there were two of them at the gate this time. The man, and a woman?” Ophelia said, her eyes bright. She was the youngest and the most interested in the outside world, an interest Catherine was desperately trying to quell.

“That’s right,” Lillibeth piped up.

“Let Catherine speak,” Isadora intoned. She was the oldest and the most like Catherine…the least like Mary.

Catherine glanced down at the second note. “The woman’s a doctor. Dr. Claire Norris. A psychiatrist.” That announcement met with silence and Catherine almost smiled. “She will not be treating any of us.”

“Is she Natasha’s doctor?” This was said fearfully from Cassandra, who worried almost as much as Catherine about the outsiders and their influence.

“I will find out.”

The girls—women, really, though Catherine had trouble thinking of them that way—asked more questions that she had no answers for. After a while the discussion dwindled and the girls trooped into the kitchen to finish the preparations for dinner. Lillibeth hung by Catherine, as she was always wont to do, but eventually Catherine turned her over to Augustine, who was the most nurturing of the group.

Catherine then mounted the back stairs to her room, an austere single room at the northwest corner of the upper hall with a view of both the front gate and the Pacific Ocean. The abandoned lighthouse was a deeper black shape in an already black sky. The island was an ugly hump of rock, also a faintly darker outline against the curtain of night. She could see a flicker of light from the island. Mary’s island, she thought grimly, though it was known on maps as Echo Island because of the way sound refracted off its sharply planed rock walls.

She stepped away from the windows long enough to scrape a long wooden match across the stone tabletop of her nightstand and light an oil lamp, waving out the match and replacing the glass surround. She then carried the lamp to a small wooden desk on the opposite wall from the bed and sat down in the matching chair. Picking up a modern ink pen and a cloth-covered notebook, she began making a list of items to buy while she was on her errand. Groceries. Paper supplies. New bedding, as some of the duvets were too worn to last out the winter. Catherine could appreciate ready-made items; she wasn’t as backward as the outsiders would believe. They even had electricity on the first floor and indoor plumbing.

But she had a wall to keep fortified. Lives to protect. If the outsiders should ever understand the extent of her girls’ gifts…

Disasters had already struck. Tragedies heaped one upon another. Lifetimes of troubles that had spilled over into these modern times despite Catherine’s best efforts.

There was an account of the Colony’s history, written down by a man who still set Catherine’s teeth on edge. One of Mary’s many lovers. A self-proclaimed historian who’d been old enough to be Mary’s father! A profligate who’d roamed the coastline and taken more women than any man had a right to, dropping children in his wake without a care. He’d wanted to be in the pages of the history he detailed. He’d known of the Colony womens’ powers and Mary’s inability to turn from Satan’s grasp, and he’d wormed his way into Mary’s bed, seduced her with grand gestures and his damn evil book that was filled with half truths and outright fiction. Oh, but Mary had wanted to believe! And what she’d done to be with him. The lies. The evil tricks.

The fornication.

Catherine squeezed her hands painfully together as she recalled her sister’s cries of ecstasy from wild sex acts with him…and so many others. It was only when Catherine wrested control of Siren Song away from Mary that the lives of Catherine and Mary’s string of children had settled into a righteous path.

But now Mary was gone and the historian was in a care facility, his brain riddled with as many holes as a block of Swiss cheese. She was glad he couldn’t remember. Glad he was no longer a threat to them. If she could have gotten her hands on his account, she would have destroyed the manuscript immediately, but by a series of events it had found its way to the local historical society, a group of well-meaning but fairly stupid do-gooders who had no idea what the Colony, and Catherine herself, were about.

She’d actually gone to the old church that was now the Deception Bay Historical Society and examined the book herself. They’d known who she was and had stared at her, so it had been impossible to steal the leather-bound scrapbook of notes and letters and fiction. She’d wanted to tell those wide-eyed women a thing or two. She’d wanted to negate everything about her family as lies. But she’d kept her thoughts to herself, glad, at least, that the account ended with Catherine Rutledge and Mary Rutledge Beeman. No more names listed. None of Mary’s many female children.

The problem was, there could be more pages out there. Somewhere. Written down by either the historian himself or the doctor who had been entrusted with the book until his own death, whereupon it had somehow become property of the historical society. In that regard, Catherine would have preferred it was still in the hands of the historian himself; she could have found a way to get it back. Now it was public record. Compiled and collected and written down all in one place. Easy to access, if you knew what you were looking for, and it had already surfaced a year and a half ago and been pored over and examined, and people had come to her gates asking questions.

Catherine closed her eyes and sighed. She didn’t want to think about it anymore, but now there was this latest problem of Natasha. Natasha, who’d never been happy with Catherine’s precautions, who’d longed to join the outsiders though Catherine’s own visions, and Lillibeth’s instincts, had foretold of death and madness should Natasha be allowed to leave as others had in the past.