The Lion, The Lamb, The Hunted

by Kaufman, Andrew E.

  We ordered our food, then sat silently for a while. I was busy processing my afternoon misadventure and watching CJ rearrange her silverware again and again.

  Finally, I said, “So what’s Baker’s problem?”

  “You mean besides the obvious?” She moved her fork to the other side of her plate again, didn’t bother looking up.

  “The guy doesn’t like me.”

  She laughed a little. “I don’t think he likes anyone, except maybe himself. Not even sure about that.”

  “He acted awful suspicious, like he thought I might be involved or something.”

  “I think he probably just didn’t appreciate you walking in on his murder scene. They don’t much like that, especially a reporter, and especially one who’s not from around here…you get extra piss-off points for that.”

  I raised my brows, nodded.

  She pointed her spoon at me. “But I did warn you about the locals.”

  “Noted.”

  The waiter came with our food. Lasagna for me, angel hair pasta with stewed tomatoes and olive oil for CJ. I watched our server leave, then said, “And while we’re on the subject of narcissistic cops… what’s Jerry Lindsay’s story?”

  She laughed. “Jerry’s okay. You just have to know how to work him.”

  “Apparently, I don’t.”

  She sipped her wine, wiped her lips with a finger. “Why? What happened?”

  “He was an ass. Wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  A needling grin. “Like I told you...”

  “Yeah, yeah… I don’t know the secret handshake.” I gave my lasagna a stab. When I looked back up, she was swirling her wine in the glass, apparently amused by her own thoughts.

  “What?”

  She leaned back and stared at me for a moment, and then, “Correct me if I’m wrong here, but for someone who’s supposed to be doing a story about missing and exploited children, you sure seem awful interested in this one.”

  “I’m fascinated by it.”

  “Yeah?”

  I took a bite, chewed, nodded.

  “And why’s that?”

  “The death penalty, the lack of a body, the mother killing herself …in a mental hospital, no less. You have to admit it’s a sexy story.”

  She stuck her fork in the pasta and watched as she carefully twirled it. “Yeah, I’m just not buying it.”

  “Not buying what?”

  “The story you’re trying to sell me here. About how fascinating you find it all. There are lots of fascinating stories about missing kids everywhere. And like I said before, I’m sure California’s got plenty of them. So how ‘bout it, Pat, wanna tell me what really gives?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this interest in the Kingsley case. What it’s all really about?”

  “It’s not about anything. Just looking at some things.”

  “Things,” she said, gazing toward the ceiling as if contemplating the word, then right back at me, “and you won’t tell me what those things are?”

  “Nothing special.” I turned my attention to the lasagna, pushed at it with my fork, fully aware she had her eyes trained right on me.

  She said, “Keeping secrets, are we, Patrick?”

  “No. It’s not that.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Uh-uh.” I looked up and made an attempt at sincere eye contact; she wasn’t buying that either.

  “Pat….” she said, her tone slowly climbing an octave.

  “What?”

  “Wanna tell me how come you don’t want to play? How come all of a sudden you’re taking all your toys out of the sandbox?”

  “I never had them in the sandbox. And how come you’re cornering me?”

  “I’m a reporter. It’s what I do. And do you always answer a question with a question?”

  “Only when I feel like someone’s trying to force my hand.”

  “Force your hand…” She pushed her mouth to one side, looked away, nodding. “Okay. Now I get it. I didn’t realize we were on opposing teams. Good to know.”

  “CJ, it’s not like that. I didn’t mean it that way—”

  “Then what?”

  I fell silent.

  “You know, Pat, we are both on the same side here, just in case you didn’t realize it. And if you’re worried about me trying to steal your story or your thunder, you’ve got the wrong gal, ‘cause I just don’t roll that way. Not that I expect you to believe that. You barely know me, but—”

  “So what’s your point, CJ?”

  “My point is that we both have the same interests here. That’s all. We’re after the same thing. It’s our job to find the truth. Everything else is secondary, at least from where I stand.”

  I remained silent.

  “Listen, Pat,” she said, her voice taking on a tone of diplomacy, “if you’ve stumbled across something important—and I get the feeling you have—I want to hear about it. But even if you’re still looking, I think I can help you there, too.”

  “What makes you think I need any help?”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” She closed her eyes, smiled, shook her head. “All I’m saying is it’s pretty obvious you’ve been hitting some walls, and that’s not likely to change. Nobody here wants to talk to strangers about the Kingsley case. I told you that. It’s just the way it is. Me on the other hand, I’m from around here. I know the place, know the people, and I know a lot about this story…and people will talk to me.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, but—”

  “I wasn’t finished. I can help you cut through a lot of the crap around here. Why should we spin our wheels separately when we can cover twice the ground, twice as fast? Know what I mean?”

  I thought about it some more.

  “So what do you say, Pat?” She leaned forward, a slight grin. “Team player or free agent? Which do you want to be?”

  I wrestled against my thoughts. CJ was right, there was no love for me here. Baker, Lindsay, and the creepy messages at the hotel had all made that painfully obvious. Then I thought about Dennis Kingsley. The moment I mentioned CJ’s name his whole attitude changed, and the wall between us fell. Suddenly, he trusted me and opened up.

  But could I trust her? I wanted to, but trust and me, well, we’re not the best of friends. There were those old demons…I was used to working by myself. I was used to being by myself. It was lonely, but it was familiar. And safe.

  “Hello? Still with me there, Pat?”

  I brought my focus back to her. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “How we doing on that decision? Make any progress yet?”

  Take the leap, Patrick. For once in your life, stop being afraid of everyone, and just do it.

  I looked into her eyes for a moment longer, studying her eager expression. “Okay. But I need to know something, first.”

  “Name it.”

  “Are you willing to throw out everything you believed to be true about this case? To entertain new possibilities? Ones you never thought existed?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Of course.”

  “Okay,” I said, and took a breath. “I’ve found some things that could potentially blow the case wide open.”

  She leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “Hit me.”

  “I don’t think Lucas kidnapped and murdered Nathan Kingsley.”

  Her expression fell, her jaw, too. “What the…are you serious?”

  “I think he was wrongly convicted and sent to the electric chair, needlessly.”

  CJ fell back in her seat and stared at me for a good five seconds, and then, “That’s crazy…where the hell are you getting this?”

  “I assure you I’m not just throwing out theories with nothing to back them up. Since I got to town I’ve interviewed people extensively, read through scores of records, gathered quite a bit of information, and my gut tells me they got the wrong guy.”

  “What kind of information?”

  I pulled out a copy of Lucas�
�s alibi note from my pocket and slid it across the table, keeping my eyes on her.

  She reached for it, held my gaze for a moment, then read it. The farther down she got, the wider her eyes grew. When she was done, she let it drop onto the table and stared at it. Then she looked back up at me. “Where did you get this?”

  “From Nissie Lambert. Lucas’s sister.” I told her the story, watching her face become stricken as I described Ronald Lucas’s choice to protect his daughter instead of himself. Then after I finished, said, “And that’s not all. I also think Jean Kingsley was murdered.”

  “She committed suicide.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But she hanged—”

  “Staged,” I said. “Made to look that way.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding…”

  “I’m not.”

  “But why? And by whom?”

  “Remember that name I asked you about? Michael Samuels?”

  She nodded.

  “I came across something interesting—and disturbing—while going through the visitation logs at Glenview. There was a guy lurking around the place while Jean was a patient. Signed in under that name claiming to be her nephew. Jean didn’t have a nephew, and the D.L. number Samuels left in the guest log comes up as a fake.”

  “And you think he killed her?”

  “The hospital records put him there, and so does an employee statement.”

  “Who? And what did they say?”

  “Can’t say who. I promised confidentiality.” Then I told her about the stained gown, how it got dumped, and about the missing guest log from the night Jean died.

  “But you have no idea who Samuels is…or even why he did it?”

  “That’s the part I can’t figure out.”

  “What about Nathan? Do you think this Samuels guy also killed him?”

  I let in some air, blew it out quickly. “There’s a chance.”

  “Wow,” she said, now staring vacantly across the restaurant. “Just wow.”

  “I know.”

  She looked back at me. “But why would he have wanted them both dead?”

  “Good question. I don’t know.”

  “And how did Lucas get drawn into all this?”

  “I think he was a pawn.”

  “But whose?”

  “Can’t figure that one out, either. But if I had to guess…someone with an awful lot of power. Someone with the ability to manipulate the system.”

  I had an idea who that might be.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The rest of dinner was very quiet.

  CJ appeared deep in thought, probably trying to make sense of what I’d just told her, and by the look on her face, without much luck. For me, the reality of my mother’s and Warren’s involvement was setting in.

  I drove CJ to the Observer to pick up her car. For a long while neither of us spoke. Finally she shifted in the seat so her whole body faced me and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if it turns out Lucas was innocent. I don’t know if I can deal with that.”

  I kept my eyes on the road and nodded, not knowing what to say. There wasn’t an easy answer.

  “Even if we clear his name,” she continued, “it doesn’t seem like that would be enough. It would be way too little, way too late. He’s dead.”

  “If we find the person who really killed Nathan, it’ll make a difference.”

  She answered with silence, staring out her window, slowly shaking her head.

  It was quite a change from the salty reporter I’d come to know, the one who just earlier had been trying to corner me. CJ Norris may have had a tough exterior, but I was discovering that the inside was very different. For the first time, she seemed vulnerable and uncertain. I thought about the contrast, the complexity, wondering why I found it so appealing. Was I attracted to her? Of course, but I had a rule I’d never broken and didn’t intend to now: I don’t date other reporters. Ever. I have a hard enough time holding on to women with normal lives; being with one of my own would only complicate matters to the nth degree. And with CJ, our strong personalities together would be like adding gasoline to a fire.

  CJ screamed.

  I turned to her and saw a large SUV outside the window just before it rammed us hard, sending us careening onto the shoulder. I overcorrected, tried to aim the car back toward the asphalt, but the SUV rammed us again, this time from behind. The impact threw the car forward and jerked us like a pair of floppy rag dolls.

  u spy now u die

  The words flashed through my mind like a grenade explosion.

  The SUV punched into us from behind, this time harder. I could feel the sweat dripping down my forehead and my pulse banging through my body. There seemed to be no escape as our car—and our lives—went out of control.

  I checked the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of them coming up on us again, fast. They moved alongside us, just enough to nudge the side of the car with their front bumper. I fought for control of the wheel as they started to force us off the road again. Beyond it was a drop. We were riding the shoulder now, loose gravel flying up against the car’s undercarriage, the SUV now right alongside us, preventing us from getting back onto the road. I wondered how much longer until we went over the edge.

  And then with a final burst of power, the SUV sent us right off.

  Our car went down diagonally across the steep embankment. All I could do was hang onto the wheel and try to keep us at an angle rather than heading nose-first straight down the slope.

  We finally hit the bottom, crashing into a dense group of scrub brush that brought us to a stop. My hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that they had cramped closed.

  Complete silence.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d been hurt, felt no pain, but knew the power of shock, how it can have a numbing effect. I’d just narrowly escaped a bleeding crisis with the dog, now I was facing yet another.

  Bleeding. Was I?

  Just the thought was enough to renew my panic. As soon as my hands relaxed, I felt around my body, furiously patting my clothes like a man who’d lost a wallet full of hundreds.

  mending mending mending…

  The words repeated in my head as I kept checking for blood.

  And then, relief: pants, shirt, head, neck, and arms all dry. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath; it felt like the first one since this whole thing had started.

  But that relief had a very short shelf life. Panic returned when I glanced over at CJ: head back, mouth wide open, unconscious. Blood spilled down the side of her head.

  “CJ!” I yelled, then leaned over and grabbed her shoulder. “Can you hear me? CJ?”

  No response.

  I fumbled in my pocket for my cell phone to call for help.

  And noticed the single drop of blood on the seat between my legs.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Random images often invade my dreams. Some I can identify, others are elusive. Dark, formless, and gritty, they slip through the folds of my inner consciousness; most leave as quickly as they come, but the ones that stay with me seem so real…I can feel them, smell them, sense their emotional charge. It’s as if they speak to me in a language that doesn’t use words.

  I’ve had these dreams since I was a kid. Don’t know why. Don’t understand them.

  The dream about the woods is the most frequent, the most vivid, the most disturbing. I’m flying through a forest face down. Rain is falling hard, loud claps of thunder slapping at the air, water filtering though the trees and soaking my body. As I continue, I realize there is blood—lots of it—dripping onto the forest floor, covering the dead, wet leaves. The farther along I move, the more the blood seems to pour, until finally, the ground beneath me is a rich velvety red.

  Am I bleeding to death?

  In the distance, I hear a voice, like someone singing. It echoes through the trees. Haunts me. Sounds like a little girl or—I’m not sure who it is. I can barely make out t
he words:

  Never fades

  Never lies

  Never dies

  Then I am standing in the middle of a clearing, with a little boy blocking my way. He smiles and motions for me to follow him, turns to head deeper into the woods. His back is horribly disfigured: gnarled flesh with two gaping wounds from shoulder to waist. I ask him what happened, and he tells me he was once an angel, but someone ripped the wings from his body.

  And then the dream jumps again, and we are standing together on a bridge, overlooking a stream. He stares at the water, his expression sad and troubled. I look too; and as I do, something powerful shoves me forward. I burst through the railing. Everything is happening in slow motion as I sail through air, pieces of wood flying all around me. I see the bridge above me. The little boy is no longer there; instead, watching me, laughing, is my mother.

  I begin my downward spiral.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I threw my hands up to my face, ran my palms over it, and felt something wet. I checked my face in the rearview mirror. There was a gash above my eye, no more than a half-inch long; but there’s no such thing as a small cut in my world. For the first time since childhood, I was broken open, my blood betraying me. I felt it trickling down the side of my head and neck now, faster, faster. How long before I bled to death? Minutes? Seconds?

  I heard a wild scream, and for a split second, thought it came from me.

  No, no…it’s the sound of sirens in the distance, coming closer, getting louder. Help on the way.

  Soon firemen and paramedics were sliding down into the ditch. They pulled the doors open. One group began loading CJ on a stretcher. Another reached for me. I had my hand pressed tightly against the wound; I could feel my palm full of blood, and my shirt was wet. “I’m a Type Three VWD!” I said to the nearest paramedic.

  He yelled up the hill with urgency, “Get me some Desmopressin! We’ve got a bleeder here!”