Nowhere to Run (24 page)

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Authors: Nancy Bush

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BOOK: Nowhere to Run
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His grin widened and there was the trace of a dimple. He’d been looking at some photos of Emmy Decatur and September saw the picture of Sheila Dempsey had been moved to his desktop and placed alongside the crime scene photos of Emmy.
“What do you think this is about?” she asked him, gesturing to the line of pictures.
“Some sick white boy carvin’ up his women.”
“White boy?” September lifted her brows. “No chance he’s black?”
Pelligree snorted. “This is your people kinda crazy shit. No offense.”
“None taken. Are you serious?”
He nodded once. “I know a lot of brothers who do a lot of bad, bad things. Drugs, killin’, rape . . . as bad as it gets. But this carvin’ writin’ thing. That’s a different kind of sick. Gotta be a white boy, for sure.”
“You sound kinda racist, Wes.”
“I’m just sayin’ . . . we got our shit, you got yours.”
“I’m not going to actually agree with you, but I’ll take your point.”
“And it’s Weasel, not Wes.” After a moment, he added, “Nine.”
She laughed.
“Why’re you called that?” he asked. “What kinda nickname is that? I’m Weasel ’cause my brother named me and it stuck.”
“I heard that. You sure it’s not because you weasel out of things?” she asked.
“Ah, ah, ah.”
He wagged a finger at her and she smiled and said, “I’m surprised you don’t know about the Nine thing, since you’ve worked with Auggie.”
“Your brother doesn’t tell me nothin’. And he’s been outta here for months bustin’ Cordova’s ass.”
“Okay, well, I was born on September 1. Right after midnight. The ninth month, so I’m Nine.”
He looked disappointed. “Must be somethin’ more to it. Nobody calls Auggie Nine, and he’s your twin. Born the same day.”
“We were born within minutes of each other,” September agreed. “Auggie’s real name is August, as you undoubtedly know.”
“Nobody calls him that.”
“My family does.” She made a face. “Don’t get me started on them. But here it is: my brother—August—was born at eleven-fifty-seven on August 31. I was born six minutes later. We’re twins, but we were born different days and different months.”
He gazed at her in mild horror as her words sank in.
“I know,” she agreed. “It’s—flukey. To make matters worse, my father insisted we each be named after the month we were born.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Wha’d I say about white people havin’ their own weird shit?”
“I won’t condemn my whole race,” she said, “but my family? They definitely have their own weird shit.”
“How many of you Raffertys are there?” he asked.
“Five. Oldest brother, March. Then my sisters May and July. Then Auggie and me. My mother died in an automobile accident when I was in fifth grade and my sister May was killed in a botched robbery. My father’s still alive.”
She stopped suddenly and he eyed her cautiously. “The way you say that doesn’t bode well for daddy-daughter relations,” he observed.
September let that one go by. She’d said about all she wanted about her father. “I suppose Auggie’s nickname could have been Eight.”
“Knew a guy named Crazy Eight once.”
“Drug dealer?” September guessed.
Weasel’s smile was faint. “Close enough.” He pressed a finger to one of the photos and moved it to the side. September glanced past the array to the folder on the right side of his desk. It looked like an older homicide report; the print on the corner of one page that was peeking out was from a typewriter, not a printer.
Wes caught her look. “D’Annibal asked me to research the killer who strangled women around Rock Springs and Malone in the eighties and early nineties.”
“What for?”
“Don’t know. Got the impression someone asked him for it.”
“Who?”
“Maybe Crazy Eight?”
“If you mean Auggie, I wouldn’t be calling him that. What would he want with that information?” September mused, thinking hard. Then, “Please don’t tell me it has something to do with Olivia Dugan. I’ve got this wild idea that he’s falling for her, losing perspective.”
“Nah,” Weasel said, but something in his careful expression made her realize he was just placating her. She sensed he might have already had these thoughts himself.
Peachy.
She picked up the picture of Sheila Dempsey. “You knew her? Or, met her, somewhere?”
“She was a semi-regular at The Barn Door on Highway 26, on the outskirts of Laurelton, headin’ toward Quarry.”
“I know it,” September said, recalling the red barn-shaped building with the white trim and the sliding door that entered into a shit-kicker bar complete with mechanical bull and wood shavings on the floor.
“They have that seventy-two-ounce steak. You eat it all, it’s free. Course you have to eat the potatoes and green beans that come with it, too.”
“Don’t tell me you tried that.”
“Sure did. Ate it all, too. Threw up right afterwards in the alley behind the place and woowee, did it ever piss off my old lady. I was apologizin’ for a month. But Sheila was right there, cheerin’ me on with some of the other regulars. Afterwards, she clapped me on the back and said I was a man, regardless of the spewin’. I got an earful about her from Kayleen all the way home that night. Two weeks later, Sheila’s body turns up in that field.”
September glanced at the crime photos from this morning and suppressed a shudder. “Are you going to take over this case, then?”
“I don’t want to step on any toes, but I’d like to. I want to find the bastard who killed her and this new one.” He glanced at the crime photos and pressed his lips tight. “I talked to Sheila’s husband after they found her. It’s county’s case, but I felt connected.”
“I get it.”
“He was . . . they were estranged and he wasn’t all that helpful. I kinda wanted it to be him, but maybe that was because he was such a bastard. Fuckin’ narcissist. Once they narrow down the time of death on this new vic, I’m sure as hell gonna check his whereabouts for the time of the killin’.”
“They were both strangled. . . .” September slid a glance toward his file. “You think there’s some kind of connection with the Rock Springs strangler?”
“Mebbe. But I was asked to pull this file on Saturday, before you found that body. I thought it had something to do with the Zuma case, but D’Annibal just said get the information. I took a trip out to Rock Springs this mornin’. Talked to some retired cops who were on the case at the time. Got this file.” He tapped it with a finger.
“Find out anything?”
“The Rock Springs strangler killed a bunch of women, mostly prostitutes. Left their bodies in fields. Strangled ’em by hand, but didn’t mark ’em up. Then he stopped. Cops on the case think he was killed or incarcerated for some other crime or just went to ground. Hard to know.”
“Doesn’t really fit the m.o. for Sheila Dempsey or Emmy Decatur,” September said.
Weasel sighed. “That’s what I thought, too. I’ll ask D’Annibal what it’s all about when I give him the file.”
His desk phone rang and he frowned at it. “Now, who’d be callin’ my direct line?”
He snatched up the receiver, said, “Detective Pelligree,” listened for a moment, then said in a surly voice, “No comment,” and slammed down the phone. “Jackals,” he muttered. “Don’t ever let ’em get you on camera.”
“I take it that was the press.”
“Bastards,” he muttered harshly.
Gretchen came into the squad room at that moment, looking pissed herself. “The girlfriend of Martin’s at the front. For once Urlacher’s fuckin’ protocol is working. She’s asking for you.”
“Me?” September asked.
“Yeah. Jesus. Will this day never end? I see George isn’t here.” She threw a dark glance toward his desk.
“I’ll go see what Jo wants,” September said. She realized Gretchen’s surliness was a cover-up for her own emotions. Meeting Emmy Decatur’s parents at the morgue and having them definitely identify the victim as their daughter had been a low point. Mrs. Decatur just wept into her hands and Emmy’s father kept saying, “Emmy was such a beautiful girl. Such a beautiful girl. So, beautiful . . .”
Gretchen wandered over to Wes’s desk as September started out and asked him, “What do you think of the Dempsey and Decatur killings? Different than Zuma. More intimate.”
“They’re just different flavors of the same sickness,” Weasel said. “They feel like revenge. Payback.”
“Y’think?” Gretchen asked, interested.
“The Zuma guy goes in all balls out. Blows ’em all away. He’s rampant nuts. Somethin’ set him off and maybe he’s coverin’ his ass or maybe he’s just all-out crazy and pissed off. But this one . . .” September looked back to see him frown down at the photos on his desk. “This one’s smaller, more intimate. He’s cagey about it. At least so far. He’s sendin’ a message but it’s obscure and personal and he’s not sure yet how far he’ll go. He’s testin’ the waters.”
September walked to the front where Jo Cardwick was pacing the floor of the reception area. Upon seeing her, the girl just collapsed into September’s arms and bawled like a baby. Under Guy Urlacher’s worried eye, she led her to a chair and simply let her cry, remembering as she did that Jo said Trask had seen some old pictures of people at Olivia Dugan’s apartment just before the whole Zuma massacre, and that Olivia had been sorta crazy about them.
What did that mean? Who was in the photos?
 
 
I can’t think. My head hurts. I had to kill her. I couldn’t wait. I had to take her out to the fields and dispose of the body. My fingers tremble from the feel of those soft bones at the base of her throat and I harden just remembering. But she knew too much. She knew my plans for Olivia.
I’ve lost Olivia . . . lost her . . .
But I can find her again.
Olivia . . . Olivia . . . Lllliiiivvvv . . .
I close my eyes and stroke myself, feeling the heat.
I imagine her cool, white throat in my hands.
I scream her name as I climax. “Lllliiivvvv!”
You are mine.
You can’t realize the truth. I have to stop you.
Stop you.
Stop you . . .
Chapter 17
They drove through the town of Rock Springs around four o’clock, the August sun hot on lawns of bleached grass and two-lane asphalt roads shimmering with heat, giving the illusion they were slick with water. The original clapboard buildings from the late 1800s had been mowed down and replaced along the edge of the small stream that ran behind the buildings. Garrett Hotel had been rebuilt in its original style though the Garretts were long gone and the Danners, the other family so prominent when the town was first getting started, had all but moved away, too.
Liv knew of the local history from placards around parks and street names and varying school pageants that had celebrated the town and its inception. Now she looked out the Jeep’s window, her chest constricted. She hadn’t been back since she was sent to Hathaway House. Albert and Lorinda had moved while she was a patient, and she’d never seen fit to return.
But Patsy and Barkley Owens still lived here. Not all that far from the small house where Deborah Dugan had supposedly taken her own life.
They passed the east end of the town and Liv got a glimpse of Fool’s Falls as it rushed in a froth down a cliff-face into the stream that ran behind the town and meandered on its way to the city of Malone.
It was strange to be here. She felt disembodied. Moving through a place she’d only lived in a dream.
Auggie pulled up to a curb near Patsy and Barkley Owen’s address. “You ready?” he asked as he switched off the engine.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Liv had placed a call to Patsy, saying she’d been given her address by Everett LeBlanc and that she was Deborah Dugan’s daughter. Patsy had sucked in a short gasp of breath, waited five seconds, then choked out an invitation to come by.
So, here they were.
She stepped out of the car and shaded her eyes. There weren’t many trees on this street, but from the looks of the roots and stumps, there once had been. Her T-shirt was sticking to her back and she was glad it was dark blue, so maybe her sweating was less noticeable to others.
Auggie’s T-shirt, dark gray, was also sticking to him. It was growing ever hotter as the day moved on.
Liv searched her feelings and realized that dread was the overriding one. Meeting Everett had taken a lot of energy and now with Patsy, she just felt zapped. Maybe it was an improvement over paranoia and fear, although those emotions were just below the surface along with an abundance of sexual desire. She was awash in emotions after trying for years to forcefully shut them down.
The walkway to the front porch was tidy, the dry grass edged, clipped short, and sporting more brown patches than green. The Owens weren’t wasting water, except maybe on the two window boxes of petunias that flanked the front door and looked a little worse for wear from the beating sun.
Auggie rang the bell and stepped back and a few minutes later a trim, middle-aged woman with brown hair and green eyes opened the door. The cautious, almost bruised look around her eyes was hauntingly like Liv’s own expression; one she’d seen many times in the mirror. Liv looked at Patsy and she stared right back, and only when Auggie said, “May we come in,” did she seem to come to herself and step aside.
“You’re . . . ?” she asked Auggie.
“Olivia’s friend,” was his terse reply.
“Barkley—my husband—is . . . um . . . coming home from work. He does maintenance at the golf course in Malone and usually sticks around on Sunday in case something goes wrong, but . . . he thought I might need him . . .”
Liv drew a deep breath and said, “I’m really sorry to just burst in on you.” Then she handed her the package, explaining about the birth certificate and photos within it. She’d transferred the note from her mother to a pocket of her backpack, deeming it too personal to share with her birth parents.
Patsy seemed glad for the distraction of the birth certificate and photographs. She was apparently finding it as hard to meet Liv’s eyes as it was for Liv to meet hers.
“I don’t know any of them,” she said at length. “Well, other than your adoptive parents. I’ve always known who they were.”
“I’m looking for Dr. Frank Navarone,” Liv added. “I believe he’s the man trying to grab the camera from the picture taker.”
She sifted through the photos until she found the one Liv meant. Frowning down at the picture, she said without lifting her head, “I don’t know him.”
“I was thinking he was maybe from around here. . . .”
“I wish I could help you.” She handed the pictures back, then clasped her hands together so tightly her knuckles showed white. After a moment, she said, “I didn’t want to give you up, y’know? Everett and I were so young, and we were penniless and didn’t know the first thing about building a life. We were kids!”
Liv regarded her helplessly. “It’s fine. I didn’t mean to stir things up.” She wanted to add,
It doesn’t matter
, but since it clearly did to Patsy, she knew how insensitive that would sound. Even though Deborah had only been Liv’s mother for a few short years, she would be her mother forever. Patsy was a stranger.
“Would you like something to drink?” she said. “I’ve got fresh lemonade.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to trouble you. . . .”
She was already gone, and while they heard her open the refrigerator Liv looked to Auggie.
In her ear, he said quietly, “I think we’ve hit a dead end. She’s on her own track.”
“I can’t just up and leave,” Liv whispered back.
“Okay. But I sense minefields ahead. . . .”
Patsy returned with a tray holding three glasses of lemonade. Liv and Auggie each took a glass and thanked her. “Sit down,” she invited. “Please.”
Liv took a chair across from the loveseat where Patsy sat after putting the empty tray on the coffee table. Auggie sat on the only other chair, a wooden rocker with a needlework cushion.
“I had serious second thoughts about adoption. I told myself I was doing the right thing, but how do you ever know? After you were born, I went to the adoption agency to . . . I don’t know . . .
change
things, if I could. I wasn’t thinking straight, and I didn’t have money for a lawyer. There was a young woman at the agency who got the files confused and thought I was the adoptive mother, not the birth mother. She said Deborah Dugan’s name before she realized her error. I pretended not to notice. She hustled me out of there, was probably afraid she’d lose her job and all that, but I just left. I didn’t forget the name, and I . . . well . . . I followed Deborah for a while. I kept tabs on her and your father and you.” She half-smiled. “Everett and I split up soon afterwards, but I always thought I had the Dugans, y’know? Like they were my friends. I could see you from afar, and your little brother?”
“Hague,” Liv said.
“He was so cute. And you were so lively and outspoken. Fierce.” She smiled, remembering.
Liv shifted uncomfortably. Oh, how things had changed.
“Then Deborah . . . died . . . and Albert remarried, and I had to let it all go. It wasn’t healthy for me, either . . . so . . .” She drew a sharp breath. “Then I met Barkley and changed my life. I never really expected to meet you. It’s all so long ago now . . .”
Liv drank the lemonade down. It was cool and tart and puckered her mouth a bit. When silence fell among them, she said, “This is really good,” and Patsy struggled up another smile.
Auggie said, “Can I ask you some questions about that time?”
Patsy didn’t seem to hear for a moment, then she nodded.
“There was a serial killer, a strangler, in the area,” Auggie said.
“Oh, yes. We all locked our doors and windows at night. It went on for a few years.” She drank from her lemonade, her gaze shifting from Auggie, to Liv, then down to her hands. “They were mostly prostitutes from the Portland area. He dumped their bodies in Rock Springs.”
Auggie flicked Liv a look, then asked, “Were any of them from around Rock Springs?”
“I don’t . . . recall . . . You could probably look it up.”
Liv’s feeling of otherworldliness continued. It was hard for her to believe this woman gave birth to her. She’d always expected to feel something more when she met her birth mother, but she just felt off-kilter and eager to escape.
A big, fat, yellow tabby cruised into the room and fixed Liv with its gold eyes. Her dream came back to her. And her conversation with Aaron. She reached a hand toward him and the tom sauntered forward and allowed her to slide a palm down his back.
“He never does that,” Patsy said with mild surprise.
“Fat cat,” Liv whispered to him affectionately and he started to purr.
A few moments of awkward silence ensued, and then Auggie got to his feet and said, “It’s getting late. Thank you for your time.”
“And the lemonade,” Liv said, standing as well. The cat slid back and forth between her legs. She’d never had a pet growing up, hadn’t really thought about them. Now she wanted to pick up the purring beast and bury her face in its fur.
She felt Auggie’s hand at her elbow and amidst some last good-byes, he guided her out to the porch. Squinting up at the sun, she said, “My father always called the doctors who treated Hague and me fat cats. He hated them. I always thought it was a derogatory term until now.”
“That was a nice fat cat,” Auggie observed. “They’re not all that way. I’m a dog guy.”
“Auggie Doggy,” she said, almost by rote.
“Dr. Augdogsen to you.”
She tried to muster up a response, maybe even some of that fierceness Patsy had commented on, but she couldn’t do it. They got back in the Jeep and Liv looked back at the house, hoping to catch another glimpse of the tom, but he was inside, out of the heat, and they drove away from the neat house just as a blue Chevy Blazer pulled up and a middle-aged man climbed out and watched them leave. He was short and balding and a bit paunchy and he lifted his hand in good-bye, looking a bit perplexed. Barkley Owens.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to meet him, too,” Liv said.
“I hear you. You met your biological dad and mom today. That’s more than enough for a decade or two. Family . . .” He shook his head.
“Are your parents still alive?” she asked.
“My father is. Don’t ask me about him. My mother died in an automobile accident a lotta years ago.”
“You have any sisters or brothers?”
He made a face. “Not that I want to talk about.”
Auggie drove through a Burgerville on the way back and Liv bought them each a hamburger and fries, a Coke for him, a Diet Coke for her.
“I’m going to pay you back with interest,” he said as they headed up the freeway to the turnoff to Highway 26—called Sunset Highway at this stretch—and to the Sylvan exit and his home.
“If you want to go to Bean There, Done That and ask about your wallet I can stay in the car,” she said, but the thought of being so close to her apartment sent shivers down her nerves. She wasn’t ready to turn herself in yet. She asked herself, honestly, if she ever would be and didn’t have an answer.
“Nah, but I think we should go see Hague.”
“Now? What about the burgers?”
“We’ll stop at the house. Eat. Then go see your brother, okay?”
“Okay.”
Auggie pulled into the garage a few moments later and gathered the two drinks while Liv grabbed the bag of food and followed him inside. They sat at the table like an old married couple, like they’d been doing it for years, and dug into the food. At least Auggie dug in, Liv forced herself to eat some of everything then sipped at her Diet Coke.
She didn’t want to go see Hague. She wanted to stay right here. With Auggie. Forever. “What’s your last name?” she asked.
He thought a moment, then said, “Rafferty.”
“Auggie Rafferty.”
“August Rafferty,” he corrected her. “I think . . . tomorrow we’re going to have to go to the police.”
“No.”
“Liv, if we don’t find out anything from your brother or—”
“I need more time. Just a little more time. Please. August. . .”
“Nobody calls me that but my family. Auggie’ll work just fine.” He sounded depressed.
“I’m sorry. Let’s go see Hague. And tomorrow we can go to Halo Valley and see if we can find out more about Dr. Navarone. Then we can talk about the police. Not tonight, okay?” She felt desperate. Their time together was coming to an end and she didn’t want that.
“Everything changes tomorrow,” he said, and he sounded so sober that her heart clutched.
“Okay. I—I can . . . okay . . .” She swallowed hard.
“Let’s go talk to Hague,” he said, getting up and tossing the crumpled bag into a trash can by the back door.
She couldn’t decipher his mood as they headed across the river to Hague’s condo. Her anxiety ratcheted up as soon as they drew near; she would have to see Della, most likely, and Hague’s companion was unpredictable. She probably knew that the police were looking for Liv, and was just as likely to turn her in as help her.

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