The Chilling Spree (31 page)

“Flawless logic,” I said.  “Then again,
we’ll have to tie their motive toward Bobbi to Kyle Goddard’s
murder.”

“It’s a no brainer, Doc.  They blamed
Kyle for corrupting Bobbi just as much as they blamed Alex for
providing a roof over Bobbi’s head, clothes, food and most of all,
a forum that let him ... how did Randy Tippet put it? – advertise
his abomination publicly.”

“He used that word?”

“I’ve got it on tape,” Johnny said. 
“If I were to cite the real abomination, I’d call it on their
conditional love.  If I ever had a kid, I guarantee that he
could’ve grown up to be Jeffery fucking Dahmer and I wouldn’t have
abandoned him.  There would’ve been consequences for sure, but
he’d have known that I loved him and hated what he did.”

My gut twisted into ten knots.  Yeah, I
believed him.  What baffled me was the sense that continued to
grow that I hadn’t fooled Johnny one bit with any of my lies.

Perhaps it was the absence of evidence that
prevented him from arresting me and putting all that tough love
into practice.

The battle of brain and heart waged
anew.  Suddenly, keeping him close to me seemed like tempting
fate or putting the final nail in a coffin whose existence I could
no longer bear.

“Doc?”

“Yeah,” I said softly.  The dark blue
fabric of my skirt held an inexplicable fascination.

“Did you disagree with what I said?”

Wisely, I suggested we get back home. 
He had more potential witnesses to interview after all.

It’s funny how love makes us do stupid
things.  As a species I mean.  Honesty has never been
particularly important to me, but I know how much Johnny values
it.  Therefore it means something more to me now.  Hell,
it seems like my entire circle of friends for my adult life has
included people who lack the liar gene that I’m pretty sure Wendell
passed on to me at conception.

When David Levine was my closest confident
and mentor at the FBI, I had the presence of mind to keep him at
arm’s length, to remain so detached that the boundaries were
completely clear.  He knew how far he could go pressing for a
deeper level of confidence.  Somehow, after Rick died, I lost
that skill. 

Religious folk would probably call it a
reawakened conscience.  I don’t doubt that it happened, but my
initial instincts have so far remained intact.  Lie.  Run
if necessary.  Always have plan B in place, ready to disappear
and assume a new identity if need be.  If that day comes, I
won’t be leaving under the old assumed name of Diana Farber. 
She died when I landed in Darkwater Bay, mostly because Johnny
knows that lie.  He doesn’t understand why she existed in the
first place, and I was content to let him believe his assumptions
were correct.

Next time I run, I won’t even be
female.  The idea occurred to me on the drive back to my house
with Johnny after Ned’s funeral.  What can I say?  Real
life continues to inspire the fiction I may require at a later
date, especially if Johnny’s memories come flooding back and he
can’t accept his role in covering up Rick’s murder.  If Tippet
and Goddard could successfully pass for women, I’ll cut off my hair
and put on a bulky fat suit to pass for male in a New York
minute. 

One thing my conversation with Johnny made
me realize.  I don’t fear the consequences for the crime I
committed half as much as I dread the disappointment in his eyes if
he ever learns the whole truth.  There’s still the matter of
Danny Datello lying out there, an unuttered threat to my
freedom.  I doubt he knows anything that would truly implicate
me in Rick’s murder, but coupled with Briscoe’s suspicions now, an
accusation would damage me to the point of stirring up attention I
don’t want again.  Not just for me, but for Johnny too.

God forbid that anyone puts two and two
together and realizes the mastermind behind Johnny’s crime couldn’t
be anyone other than my father, who he visited mere hours before
this alleged weapon used to kill my ex-husband was
discovered.  There’s coincidence, and then there’s compelling
circumstantial evidence.  I’ve seen criminals go down on
theories much thinner and without as many dots that connect
easily.

I suppose that’s why plan B is so prominent
in my thoughts today, because these pieces are inextricably linked
in my mind now, and I feel the hounds nipping at my heels. 
The growls might be indistinct to the rest of the world.  In
my all knowing ears, the message is more than clear.  It’s
just a matter of time before this very tenuous house of cards comes
crashing down around me.

The focus that should be on the murders of
Bobbi Tippet and Kyle Goddard is nonexistent.  When Johnny
dropped me off at the house this morning, I refused to discuss the
matter of Belle Conall’s libel and its impact on the police and
OSI’s ability to investigate what shaped up to look exactly like a
hate crime.  Dev and Chris saw the morning edition of the
Sentinel when they got to my place.  I waved it off, kissed
Johnny’s cheek and told him I trusted him to do whatever he thought
was best.

You see, I have more pressing matters at
hand.  Love has dulled my life long education.  I need to
snap out of it and be prepared.  That’s why I locked myself in
the office and started working on building my escape
identity. 

God knows I love the MacBook I bought last
spring to replace the one Lowe’s goons stole from my hotel
room.  It is going to have an unfortunate electrical accident
just as soon as I’m done becoming whoever it is that will replace
Helen Eriksson if I have to leave Darkwater Bay.

Head and heart.  They are at battle
harder than ever before.  The only hope for a cease fire is
for my brain to convince these sappy emotions that this is merely
an insurance policy.  All things being equal, there’s a pretty
decent chance that nobody will put all of the pieces together and
realize that the FBI was right to look at me for Rick’s
murder.  Let’s face it.  Most cops are a little bit
paranoid, but I dwarf them in that regard.  Wendell’s lessons
have kept me prepared for most of my life.

Johnny Orion’s influence has dulled that
survival skill.  I’m not sure how to remedy the situation,
since something as small as eye contact decimates my resolve to
keep him happily in the dark.

On one hand, the notion of a clean slate,
telling him the whole truth and hoping that he loves me enough to
keep my secret is a siren’s song almost too strong to resist.

Almost.

On the other hand, the last viable option to
placate my heart is to perpetuate the Rick suicide lie I pedaled
successfully in October.  I don’t know if Johnny will ever
reach the point where he’s willing to cloak my sins even with
nagging doubt, but it’s one thing I cannot count on. 
Therefore, the lie might have to come before he remembers what he
really thought back in the day.

He was pretty adamant about consequences,
that they don’t erase love, but they don’t mitigate the
circumstances either.  Johnny doesn’t remember that he knows
Datello was at my wedding to Rick, that I was little more than the
mob’s insurance policy in the first place.

This tightrope has dragged my brain away
from my duties to Downey Division.  The single factor in my
favor, in terms of an excuse for being so detached when that hasn’t
been this city’s experience with me at all, is that Johnny needs to
believe in his abilities as a cop again.  He can’t do that if
I charge through the muck in this case and close it before they
figure out what the motive really is.

I could tell them right now.  It seems
pretty cut and dried to me.  Then again, cops always get a
little bit of tunnel vision.  Our world is seldom shades of
gray once the solid theory formulates.  If you think you know
who the perp is, and have sufficient evidence pointing in one
direction, nine times out of ten, that’s what you’ll discover in
the end.

What I didn’t realize was that my bias and
my distraction made me miss a major clue.  Well, perhaps miss
is a little harsh.  I overlooked something crucial in the
early stages of the investigation.  Perhaps that was the
niggling unease at the base of my spine that whispered to me that I
shouldn’t put my plan B ahead of a murder investigation.

Johnny was right about one thing. 
There are consequences for everything, whether we see them coming
or not.  Mine were about to strike a very hard blow.

I came out of the office with the laptop
tucked under one arm in time to fix an early dinner.  Devlin
was snoozing on the sofa in the family room.  His snores had
been a regular reminder that I was not alone all afternoon.

What Johnny and Chris decided to do about
the Sentinel debacle hadn’t been a blip on my radar.  Funny
how one homicidal urge died so quickly.  I grabbed the remote
for the television and flicked the power button.  The end of
some talk show blasted through the expanse between family room and
kitchen.  I adjusted the volume and padded toward the
bedroom.  The MacBook found its place under a box of spring
clothes that I hadn’t unpacked after moving into the house last
fall.  They would never be weather appropriate for Darkwater
Bay, given the incessant damp chilly atmosphere shrouding this
pocket of reality.

Back in the kitchen, I found Devlin
scratching his belly, sleepy-eyed and standing in front of the open
refrigerator door.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Mmm, little bit.  Mostly, I’m
tired.  God, I think I’m taking too many of those pain
pills.  It seems like that’s all I do.  Dope, sleep, dope
again.”

I grinned.  “It’s easy to get lost in
that haze, my friend.  Allow me to impart a little
advice.  Feeling some pain isn’t a bad thing.  Maybe you
should hold off on the next dose until it’s almost bedtime.”

He grunted softly and punctuated it with an
elbow to my side.  “You’re the one dumping them down my throat
every time I turn around.  If I didn’t know better, I might
think you’re trying to keep me out of the way.”

“What would you like for dinner?  I
lost my appetite for lunch, and since you were out here snoring
like a lumberjack, I let you sleep through one meal.  Hence
the early dinner tonight.”

“What sounds good to you?”

I shrugged.  “We could order in.”

“Nah, you’ve got tons of food in here
that’ll spoil if we don’t use it.”

The tomatoes in the vegetable crisper looked
like they were hours away from unviability.  “We could crush
some garlic, mash the tomatoes, chop some ‘shrooms and peppers and
make marinara for pasta,” I suggested.

“Lasagna sounds good.  You got any
noodles and cheese?”

“I think so.  Spaghetti would be
easier.  I don’t think I’ve got meat for the marinara,
Dev.  Maybe we should order something.”

“No way, Eriksson.  I don’t mind veggie
lasagna if you don’t.” He pulled out four tomatoes and started
juggling.

“Clown,” I chuckled and reached in to grab
one of them.  “I’d prefer we make the sauce on the stove
instead of the kitchen tile if you don’t mind.”

Devlin sobered for a moment.  “Are you
all right?  Orion seemed pretty worried about your reaction to
that news story.  Chris said it was probably a good thing that
you weren’t dwelling on it.”

“I sense that there’s another opinion
lurking in there somewhere.”  I glanced at him while preparing
to crush cloves of garlic.  “May as well spit it out,
Dev.”

“For the entire week that we worked the
Ireland case, I watched you get moody and distant –” he amended at
my disapproving stare.  “Fine, distant at least.  It
never meant you were worried or hurt or any other such thing. 
I learned pretty fast that it was a sure sign that the super brain
was racing far ahead of the rest of us.  What gives? 
What brilliant burst of insight did you get while everybody else
got concerned that you weren’t acting like Helen all of a
sudden?”

“It’s Johnny’s case now,” I shook my head
and smashed the fragrant roots under my knife.  I chopped with
vigor.  “Could you go into the butler’s pantry and find a red
onion?”

“That’s all I get?  It’s Johnny’s
case?  You can’t bullshit me, Helen.  You’re way ahead of
him.  Why not bring him up to speed sooner rather than
later?  We’ve got two dead boys and a growing suspect list
from what he said earlier today.”

“Maybe I’m backing out because he needs to
figure this one out for himself, Dev.”

“So what, you’re just gonna risk more
victims because his ego needs a pump in the arm?  That’s
wrong, Helen.”

I sighed and went for the onion
myself.  Dev’s footfalls echoed behind me.

“I think that the murders are done. 
These were specific and related.  Johnny’s on the right page
even if he hasn’t reached the same conclusion I have.”

“I disagree.  Why would he put this
night club owner into protective custody if he agrees that the
murders are done?”

“Because of that act, one that he initiated
on his own, I might add, the murders
are
done.  The
perp can’t get to the last target now.”

Devlin pulled the red onion out of my
hand.  “Stop avoiding me and talk.”

A heavy sigh parted my lips. 
“Fine.  I think Tippet’s parents did this thing.  The
crimes were hate motivated – at least in a sense.  It became
clear to me after Johnny told me the substance of his interview
with them that they believe their son’s death was God’s will. 
That’s not a normal parental reaction in the first place, but the
real key for me was that they were bitter that whoever killed Bobbi
missed his opportunity to get Alex Waters at the same time. 
Goddard was included because they saw him, like Alex, as
instrumental in leading their son further down the path of
depravity.”

Devlin followed me back to the kitchen and
got another knife from the butcher block on the counter. 
Onion-inspired sniffling commenced a moment later.  “Orion
says that it’s not a slam dunk unless they can figure out how the
Tippets would’ve gotten access to the staff-only area at the Pan
Demon concert.  Major snag in the theory, Helen.”