“Liv?” Still in last night’s clothes, Emily stood at the kitchen’s entrance, already shell-shocked. The bomb hadn’t even been dropped yet. “What’s going on? Why did you make French toast?”
“Sit down, Em.”
“You’re scaring me.” But her sister did as she was told, taking her place at the table. Just as she had the morning Olivia had found their mother lying impossibly still in her bed. She’d tried to protect Emily from the fallout to make up for all the times she hadn’t been there. This was no different.
“Are you hungry?”
Olivia didn’t wait for an answer. She took the plate that had been warming in the oven, and placed it on the table with a fork and knife. Her sister stared at it as if she’d just served her a heap of arsenic.
“Detective Decker came by the house this morning. The lightkeeper found a body near Little Gull.”
Emily looked up at her, horrified, then pushed the plate across the table. It slid off the edge and clattered against the floor, leaving a sticky mess of toast and syrup and eggs and broken wedding china. “I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up. You let me sleep! My friend is dead and you let me sleep.”
Olivia moved toward her, her arms extending, but Emily had already fled with the table knife in her hand. She ran from the kitchen and into her room.
“Emily! Wait.”
The door slammed in Olivia’s face but she pushed it back open, her chest aching when she spotted her sister kneeling near the wall, thrusting the knife’s dull edge into the canvas. Her painting of Little Gull destroyed, stabbed clean through.
“Why?” Emily wailed. A question for which Olivia had never had an answer, though she pretended to on a daily basis. She’d sat through eight years of schooling. Spent her alimony. Stayed up until her eyes twitched reading Freud. Because she’d wanted that and only that. To know why.
Olivia held her sister, let her cry. Her own tears she kept dammed. Safely walled behind her eyes. This morning, with Deck, was the first time she’d cried in years. Since long before her mother’s funeral, when Erik had moved out the last of his things. But Deck couldn’t have known that when he’d reached for her, he’d caught her so off guard she’d lowered her wall, letting tears spill over and making a stupid promise she had to keep.
“I hate French toast,” Emily said, when her crying finally slowed. She sat back against the wall, wiping her eyes on her shirtsleeve, yesterday’s mascara smudged beneath them.
“I thought it was your favorite.”
“It was. It used to be.”
The ache in Olivia’s chest deepened. Like an axe driven through the middle of her breastbone. She’d been a fool to think Emily would forget.
“Do you even remember the last time you made it?” Emily asked her, already accusing.
In her mind, she traveled back two years. Olivia wearing a black dress she’d bought at Neiman’s in San Francisco. It seemed too fancy for the Grateful Heart Chapel. “Of course.”
After Emily called in sick and crawled into her bed, Olivia lied to her, telling her sister she had to report to work at the prison. That the warden had scheduled a meeting to discuss his concerns about Drake. She hated to leave Emily but she saw no other choice. She didn’t want Em to know what she was doing. She didn’t want anyone to know.
“I’ll take the rest of the day off. Be back in an hour. Call my office number or Leah’s if you need anything.”
Twenty minutes later, Olivia made her way through the prison control booth on autopilot, mindlessly displaying her ID badge and exchanging a chit for the MHU key, though she didn’t plan on visiting her office. She needed a spot away from prying eyes. Still, she wondered if Hank would show his face. According to Deck, he’d been the last one to see Shauna alive. But Olivia didn’t buy him as the killer, mostly because of the staged nature of the first two scenes, the pretend sexual assaults. She had Hank figured for the kind of guy who would take what he wanted if he wanted it bad enough.
Olivia entered the main prison and stared down the runway. She’d never seen it so empty. No signs of life in either direction. Just those shiny floors, polished by men with nothing but time. The officer at the booth had told her the warden had just issued a mandatory lockdown—necessary movement only—after the administration had gotten word about the discovery at Little Gull.
The eerie clap of her flats down the quiet hallway unnerved her but emboldened her too. She’d rather it this way. No one saw her while she waited outside the administration office, slipping in behind a member of the free staff and into the office left vacant since Teresa Gunderson’s departure on long-term disability leave three months ago. She scrawled a quick IN USE on the whiteboard hanging from the door and closed herself inside.
Olivia logged onto the computer and navigated through the Institutional Directory until she located Edwin Lacy, Jr., her father’s correctional counselor.
She moved with purpose, not allowing herself to stop and think as she dialed the number. As it rang and rang and rang. Because she’d already made up her mind the moment Deck had pleaded with her. Not with his words, but his eyes.
“Edwin Lacy. How can I help?”
Olivia considered that question and the warm voice that delivered it. It came with the familiar prod of guilt. “Good morning, Mr. Lacy. My name is Belinda Jett, and I’m an attorney here in San Francisco. I’d like you to locate an inmate on your caseload for me. His name is Martin Reilly, inmate number 22CMY2. I need to speak to him immediately about his upcoming parole hearing.”
“You’re Reilly’s attorney, ma’am?”
“Yes, sir.” She held her breath, hoping she’d managed to sound as confident and demanding as any other lawyer.
“Alrighty. The inmates on SNY were just released for breakfast, so it’ll be a few minutes before I can locate him and transfer the call to the attorney visiting booth. Should I buzz you back?”
Now that she’d finally done it, she couldn’t imagine hanging up and waiting for the shrill sound of her past to zip down the phone line and into the office. To shatter the tomb-like quiet. “I’ll hold.”
Olivia thought of the last time she’d spoken to her father. She’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor in her studio apartment in Palo Alto, the phone receiver tucked against her shoulder, highlighting her Victimology textbook, when he’d delivered the news about his transfer to Valley View. I’ll only be an hour’s drive away, he’d said, hopeful. I’d be real happy to see you. I’ll bet you’re all grown up. He’d wanted her to be excited but she’d only felt a strange concoction of resentment and dread. Turns out she’d preferred him three hundred miles away. Still did, to be honest.
“Hello? Ms. Jett? This is Martin Reilly. Please don’t tell me they postponed the hearing.”
Ten years had passed, an eternity really, but her dad’s deep baritone turned her into a little girl again. She drew in a breath.
“Are you alone?” she asked. “Just say yes or no.”
“Of course. Attorney–client privilege. Mr. Lacy’s got me in the booth. I thought I’d be meetin’ you in person though. My case is pretty complicated, and I’m real nervous about the psych eval. I’ve never talked about my crime.”
“This isn’t your attorney. It’s Olivia.”
“Olivia? My Olivia?”
“Calm down, Dad.” The word felt strange and heavy on her tongue. Practically foreign.
“I’m just… it’s… it’s just damn good to hear your voice. You sound so professional. I read all about your award from the FBI a few years back. Saw it in the Post. I was showin’ it around the dayroom like a proud papa. I’m so glad Em convinced you to give me a chance to explain. To tell you who I am now. I tried callin’ you a few weeks back at the prison. Left a message. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about—”
Whatever came next, Olivia couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t go back there. To that nightmare in Apartment E that hadn’t been a nightmare at all. But her real life. “She didn’t. Em doesn�
��t know. I’m not calling to talk about the past.”
“Oh.” The silence had a sound. The low drone of disappointment. “Well, are you okay? Is Emily? I heard about those murders up there in Fog Harbor. It’s all over the news. Is it true those ladies worked at the prison?”
“Yes, they did. We’re both fine.” Olivia tried to imagine her father as a patient. She tried to keep her distance. Tried to ease them both into it, this awkward dance. “Have you heard anything? Any talk on the yard?”
“About the murders? How the hell would I know anything about that?”
His indignation—the way he said murders like a thing he couldn’t claim—wriggled under her skin, and she lost all pretense. “C’mon, Dad. Or should I call you Mad Dog?”
“I’m not involved in that nonsense anymore. I debriefed, Liv. I’m out of the gang. If anything the Oaktown’s got a target on my back.”
“How did you get a cell phone then?”
“What?”
“You didn’t leave that message for me from a prison phone. You couldn’t have.” The Inmate Calling Service, GTL, required prepayment, and Olivia wouldn’t have spent a dime to hear her father’s BS.
“I called from Mr. Lacy’s office. You can ask him. Give me the benefit of the doubt, alright? I thought, you being a shrink and all, you’d believe I could change. But I guess all that bleeding heart mumbo-jumbo doesn’t apply to me.”
“I believe people can change. I’m just not sure you’re one of them. I’ve seen your C-file. You’re still breaking the rules.”
“That was three years ago. That cell phone wasn’t even mine.”
“Sure. Haven’t heard that one before. Let me guess. It belonged to your cellie.” With her bitter arrows lodged in his chest, her father sighed like he’d admitted defeat, and Olivia let go of the breath she’d been holding. She’d gone so far off track she’d forgotten about Deck completely.
“I have a favor to ask. That’s why I called. I think we can agree you owe me that much at least.” He offered no protest, so she plowed ahead. “Do you know Ben Decker?”
“The dirty cop?”
Olivia winced. “Yes. He’s in SNY, like you.”
“Obviously. A cop, specially one like him, wouldn’t last a day on the mainline.”
“So you know him?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I mostly keep to myself. This place is nothin’ but sex offenders and gang dropouts like me.” At least he didn’t use words like chomos and snitches like the old Mad Dog would have. Maybe that was progress. “Anyway, what about him?”
“Is Oaktown going after him?”
“I told ya. I ain’t Oaktown no more.”
It was Olivia’s turn to sigh in frustration. “Would you just keep your ear to the ground? Word at Crescent Bay is that Oaktown might want to take him out to settle a score.”
“That’s askin’ a lot, Liv. Who’s this guy to you anyway? Please don’t tell me he’s your boyfriend. That you got yourself involved with some cowboy cop. You always did know how to pick ’em. I told you not to marry that Ziegler boy. That one time you brought him to meet me, he could barely look me in the eye.”
“Really? You want to lecture me about my choices? You weren’t there for me or Emily or Mom. You chose Oaktown over your family. I think I turned out pretty well, all things considered.”
Her father cleared his throat expectantly.
“No, he’s not my boyfriend. Not that it’s any of your business. Are you going to help me or not?”
“I did hear a rumor, now that you mention it. Good ole Inmate.com.” Olivia rolled her eyes. Inmate.com. There was the prison slang she’d expected from him. In the past twenty-seven years, he’d surely become fluent. “They say he’s got to pay to stay, if you catch my drift.”
“I don’t speak inmate, so…”
“Give me a break. You work at a prison. You know what it means.”
Olivia squirmed. The last time she’d heard the phrase, one of her patients had ended up dead on the exercise yard with ten puncture wounds to his neck. He couldn’t afford to pay; he couldn’t stay.
“Who does he pay?”
“He lets a couple of the Oaktown dropouts use his canteen account.”
She felt sick. “You?”
“Hell, no. Look, I’ll keep an eye out. But I’m not fightin’ anybody for him. I’m too old for that shit, and I want to get out of this place someday. Have a chance to do it better. To make things right. To tell you exactly what happened that day back at the Double Rock. I’d like the opportunity to be your dad again. If you’ll let me.”
Those words tugged at her heart but Olivia held firm. She’d had too much time to mull over the past. Not only the murder but all of it. The empty promises. The times she’d cowered in the closet with her teddy bear while he’d raged, high on meth and Jack Daniel’s. The nights her mother crawled in bed with her and cried them both to sleep. “Those are just words, Dad. You have to earn my trust, and it won’t be easy.”
“I’m counting on it.”
After Olivia hung up the phone, she sat there for a moment, stunned. That she’d done it. That he’d been different than she’d expected, different than she’d remembered. That a long-frozen part of her had started to thaw. Which is exactly why it felt necessary to admonish herself out loud. Him too.
“Don’t you get your hopes up.”
Olivia logged off the computer. She straightened the phone and the keyboard and tucked the mouse back into the top drawer. She left no trace, peeking through the cracked door before she exited Teresa’s office and headed back to the runway which appeared as long and empty as when she’d left it. A deserted road to nowhere.
She hoofed it in the direction of the control booth, hoping to get in and out of the prison unseen. She couldn’t face anyone today. Not after this morning and its cruel surprises. Shauna’s lifeless body and Deck’s broken bird and Emily’s wailing.
As Olivia neared the exit, she readied her ID badge, glancing down to remove it from the small plastic sleeve she wore on a lanyard around her neck. When she looked up, two identical frames emerged from the control booth. She gave a tentative wave, as Maryann and Melody approached blank-faced. Neither woman smiled, which confirmed they already knew the worst of it.
Just before Olivia had left the house, the breaking news of the discovery at Little Gull had interrupted Good Morning San Francisco. She’d muted the TV in a hurry, before Emily could hear it, and watched as the camera panned the beach at Crescent Bay, its pristine beauty marred by the garish yellow of the crime scene tape. By now, the whole town would have been clued in to the headline plastered at the bottom of the screen: Fog Harbor Serial Killer Strikes Again, Another Local Woman Found Dead.
“Have you heard?” Melody asked, coming to a stop right in front of Olivia. Sure-footed, she rested her hands on her duty belt, as Maryann rocked from one foot to the other, her own hands hidden in her pockets.
Olivia nodded at them grimly.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Maryann said. “Another one. And to think, we just saw Shauna at the Hickory Pit. It’s like an episode of Forensic Files. I don’t think I’ll be watching that show anymore.”
Melody considered her sister with skepticism. “That’s a likely story. Should’ve stopped a long time ago, if you ask me. Keeps her up every night, jumping at all the little noises. Thinking it’s some crazed lunatic with a bone saw and lye.”
Twittering, Maryann shook her head. “Not every night. And Olivia understands. It’s just fascinating what some people can hide. Like this guy, the Seaside Strangler—”
“That’s what Maryann calls him,” Melody explained, as Olivia’s eyes ping-ponged between them. “I still think it’s the Vulture myself.”
“Anyhoo… the Seaside Strangler must be a regular wolf in sheep’s clothing. With everyone on such high alert after Bonnie, it’s a wonder he’s been able to carry out these attacks without getting caught. He must be very clever.”
Melod
y coughed, a short and sudden burst that reddened her face and quieted her sister. “I’m surprised to see you here. I know Emily and Shauna were friends. She must be taking it hard.”
“Yeah. I was actually on my way home. I just popped in to check on a few patients.”
Olivia didn’t feel good about lying. But she’d learned to keep whole parts of herself tucked away for safekeeping, not so different than the perps on Maryann’s TV show. But she gave herself a pass. Impersonating an attorney and fibbing to her colleagues seemed small potatoes compared to burying bodies.
“I thought about calling in sick, too,” Melody said. “Usually, one of us stays home with Mom, but I needed the overtime. Those damn medical bills don’t pay themselves.”
“How is your mother?” Olivia asked, letting her eyes wander to the exit. She felt desperate to leave this place. To get back to Em.
The sisters gave a synchronized shrug, with Maryann speaking for them, her eyes flat behind her glasses. “Sad to say, but she’s got one foot in the grave. She never did recover after she broke her hip last summer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. She’s lucky to have you both. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
Olivia prepared to make a break for it. Already, she could imagine herself giving the exit door a push. Could feel the cold air stinging her skin, could smell the redwoods, their branches waving her on as she fled.
“Should we ask her?” Maryann nudged Melody.
“Ask me what?”
Maryann leaned in conspiratorially. “Well, we were thinking of organizing a little something in honor of Shauna, Laura, and Bonnie. Nothing too elaborate. Just a small staff get-together after Bonnie’s funeral on Sunday to share stories and memories. Would you want to help us set up?”
A flash of Grateful Heart Chapel and the scream that sent her running. She didn’t know how she would sit through the funeral, much less what came after. “Do you have a venue?”
Watch Her Vanish: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Rockwell and Decker Book 1) Page 25