by Lis Wiehl
“Let me show you the guest room and the bathroom.” Ophelia turned to go down the hall, and Allison followed.
“Your house is so quiet.”
“When I moved in I had extra insulation blown in the walls. The blinds are also noise-reducing.”
The same white honeycomb shades Allison had seen in the living and dining rooms were in the guest room as well.
“You don’t like sounds?” Allison asked.
“Street noise is very distracting. And now because it’s so hot, I have to have the central air on. That whooshing sound is a constant annoyance.”
Allison nodded, even though she had been unaware of it.
On the counter of the small bathroom, Ophelia had laid out a neatly folded but much washed T-shirt and soft cotton drawstring shorts. They sat between a brand-new white towel and a lidded glass bowl filled with cotton balls. “I figured you’ll probably want to change. The waist on the shorts is elastic, so they should fit you. And the towel is for you. It’s the guest towel. So please don’t touch my towel.” She pointed at a faded lavender bath towel hanging on the towel rack.
“Okay. I won’t touch your towel.”
Ophelia nodded, looking satisfied, apparently oblivious to the note in Allison’s voice.
“When you’re at the drugstore, could you get me something too?”
Allison told Ophelia what she wanted, then threw the dead bolt after Ophelia left. She was turning to go back to the guest room when her eye caught on Lindsay’s purse. Taking a deep breath, she sat down on the couch and shook out its contents. Doodled sketches of signs for Lindsay’s Lattes and More. Plastic chips from Narcotics Anonymous that looked like poker chips but marking varying milestones of sobriety: one month, two months, six months. ChapStick. Lipstick. A pair of earrings made from peacock feathers.
And a plastic accordion of snapshots. Some were of people she didn’t recognize. One was of Lindsay’s old boyfriend, Chris, and Allison found herself hoping it was truly old, as if she still needed to save Lindsay from him.
Another photo was of the two sisters in front of a Christmas tree. Allison was about ten, Lindsay seven, both in their pajamas, half dazed with sleep.
Here were she and Lindsay sitting on the hood of the station wagon, two sets of long tanned legs in cutoff shorts. They were making bunny ears behind each other’s heads, grinning as widely as they could. Allison didn’t remember the picture, but she knew who had taken it. Their dad.
Out of the two dozen or so photos, there was only one that showed him. He was leaning against an old red Mustang he had sold the year she was born. His hair was longer than she ever remembered it being, his face open and without care. He had been younger than she was now.
Allison flipped through the rest of the photos, looking for more of their dad, but didn’t find any. Yet he was in every photo Lindsay had kept of their family, because it was his eyes that had framed the shot, his voice that had directed them, his hand that had pressed the button.
And suddenly Allison was crying again, crying for the loss of Lindsay, the loss of her father, the loss of her family. Only she and her mom were left.
When Ophelia returned thirty minutes later, Allison was dressed in the clothes the other woman had left her, her hair still wrapped in the towel. She was beginning to feel as if she had entered some strange limbo, a place between heaven and hell, between the pain of Lindsay’s death and the knowledge that it had been meant for her, between grief and revenge.
“I purchased what you asked for.” Ophelia held out the plastic bag from Rite Aid.
Without a word, Allison went into the bathroom. Three minutes later she was staring at a pink plus sign on a white plastic wand.
Allison was pregnant.
Her sister was dead, and she was carrying a new life.
CHAPTER 30
When she saw the plus sign on the pregnancy test, Allison’s first reaction was a fear so strong it nearly overwhelmed her. A voice inside her screamed that she had to get out of this house, get out of this city, get out of this state. She had to run away and hide. Not just to save herself, but to save the new life inside her.
But where would she go? Where could she guarantee that the killer couldn’t find her? Where could she live freely and without fear? In her bones Allison knew that if the man who had killed her sister discovered she was still alive, he would hunt her down and correct his mistake.
But she couldn’t die. Not when she was carrying a new life. Allison rested both hands on her still-flat abdomen. She had prayed for this pregnancy, begged for it, longed for it.
But for her prayer to be answered now? Now, when her friend was dead, her sister was dead, and her own life was on the line? When everything could be over before it even began?
Why now? Allison asked God silently.
The answer came to her like a lamp being lit in the darkness. For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Allison made herself take a deep breath. God did have a plan for her, she reminded herself, and this baby must be part of it. This pregnancy was a reminder that she still had hope and had a future.
And she wanted to live! To live without fear. And to do that, she could not hide. She would not. Instead, she would find this guy and make sure he was locked up for good. In the mirror, Allison met her own shadowed eyes, then lifted her chin.
When she came out of the bathroom, she found Ophelia sitting at the dining room table, which was empty except for a pen and a notebook. The black-and-white cat was in her lap. Even standing ten feet away, Allison could hear it purring.
“I took that test you got for me. I’m pregnant.”
Ophelia looked down at the cat and rubbed behind its ears. “Is that such a good idea?”
If Allison had been expecting congratulations, she hadn’t been factoring Ophelia into the equation.
“Well, it’s not exactly like I planned to be the target of a killer at this point in my life. But my husband and I have been wanting a baby.”
Not exactly trying, though. They had been too scared to try on purpose, too scared to even talk about it. If they didn’t voice their hopes, it wouldn’t hurt so much when they were dashed.
Setting the cat on the floor, Ophelia said, “Do you feel okay?”
“I feel fine.” Allison remembered the parking lot at the VQ, the bathroom at the bank. “Although I have thrown up twice in the last few days. I figured it was just from the heat and the stress.”
Ophelia shot a glance at her belly. “You don’t look pregnant.”
“Of course I don’t. I’m only a few weeks along. About as early as you can be and still have it show up on the test. You don’t really start to show until the second trimester.”
Eighteen months ago Allison and Marshall had greeted that first pregnancy with such joy. He had gone with her to every doctor’s visit, pored over What to Expect When You’re Expecting, held her in bed at night while they giddily batted back and forth ridiculous baby names. (“Opal Moon!” “Twelve!” “Oak!” “Rotator Cuff!”)
Allison had just been entering her second trimester when things went horribly wrong. She remembered Dr. Dubruski’s intent face as she moved the ultrasound wand over Allison’s belly. Slowly the doctor’s expression had changed from concentration to consternation. Even though she had been flat on her back, Allison had felt as if she were falling. Marshall had gripped her hand, and it had felt like the only thing tethering her to the earth.
A few days later she had joined the invisible club of mothers who had miscarried. Her dreams for their baby had ended in blood and pain, in sadness and even shame that she must have done something wrong, no matter what Dr. Dubruski said.
Now the only person who knew about the new life within her was this strange woman Allison had met just yesterday.
“I should call my husband.” She walked over and picked up Lindsay’s phone from the mantelpiece where she had put it earlier.<
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“Wait a second,” Ophelia said. “Didn’t you want your husband to leave town? Because if he learns that you’re pregnant, he might feel that he needs to stay to protect you.”
And just when Allison had been thinking this odd woman didn’t understand human beings at all . . .
“You’re right. Having the killer think I’m dead is the only advantage we have.” She set down the phone. “And we have to get this guy. We have to. For Lindsay and for Cassidy.” The thought of her sister and her friend gave Allison new strength. She remembered the almost jaunty way the man had loped out of the bank. “I’m not going to be whimpering in some corner, waiting for him to come back for me. The only real way I can protect this baby is not to hide, but to go after this guy and get him before he gets me.”
“The hunted becomes the hunter,” Ophelia said, offering Allison a small smile.
“Exactly. Only to do that, I need you to help me track him down.”
“Today we have a different problem from the one you presented me with yesterday.” Ophelia steepled her fingers. “It’s both more complicated and perhaps more easily solved. We need to figure out why someone would want to kill both Cassidy and you.”
“It has to be somehow connected with what we do.” Allison took a seat across from her. “Our personal lives do overlap, but that’s all grown out of our professional ones.”
“The Triple Threat,” Ophelia said.
“That’s right. And I think all three of us have actually been targets. On the day Cassidy was murdered, Nicole told me that someone had tried to run her down while she was out jogging. At the time she thought it was just a careless driver, but now I don’t think it was any coincidence. I think it was somebody trying to cover his tracks. Then Cassidy was murdered and Rick was framed for it. And I’m supposed to be dead in a bank robbery gone wrong. For some reason, someone wants to kill the three of us. But I can’t think of anything we’ve done that merits three murders.”
Ophelia said, “I have come to understand that people act the way they do to correct what they perceive as an imbalance in the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“For example, a shoplifter might feel deprived—of love, of money, of attention—so she steals things to make up for it.”
“But surely the store she steals from didn’t deprive her of those things.” Allison wondered where Ophelia was going with this. “And stealing won’t really give her the underlying thing she needs.”
Unperturbed, Ophelia continued to stroke the cat. “However, it does give her something, and perhaps she figures something is better than nothing. I’m not saying it makes sense to us. But it makes sense to the people who do these things. And whoever is trying to kill the three of you feels that doing so will correct some sort of imbalance, an injustice.”
“But in all the years I have been a federal prosecutor, I have never asked for the death penalty. Never.” Allison slapped her hand on the table for emphasis. “Yet something we’ve done is worth all of our lives?”
Ophelia shrugged. “It may not be logical to anyone but the man who’s after you. But I’m not sure the why is even important. What we really need to figure out is the who. There are two ways to approach this, and I think we need to utilize both. One is to look at all the people you three helped put away. There’s a database I can access to find all your prosecutions, and another database I can cross-reference to find out if Nicole was involved. What I won’t be able to look up as easily is whether Cassidy covered them. I need you to make a list of those so I can start narrowing it down.” She slid the notebook and pen toward Allison.
“That’s not going to narrow it down much. I prosecute somewhere between fifty and seventy-five cases a year. Nicole and I work as a team more often than not, and Cassidy covered most of our cases. That’s got to add up to hundreds of defendants.” The idea was overwhelming but then Allison thought of a way to whittle it down. “Except it has to be a recent case, right? Because why would someone suddenly want revenge for an old case?”
“It could be a recent case,” Ophelia said. “But not necessarily. It could be someone who has served his term and been released and now wants to punish you. Or someone whose sentence was overturned. Or a relative who has now decided to take revenge because an appeal was recently turned down or it’s the anniversary of a sentencing. Try to think about some of the bigger cases you handled, ones where Cassidy might have done a whole series of stories instead of just one. It wouldn’t be logical to kill her just for covering a story once.”
“Nothing about this is logical,” Allison said. The world felt like it had gone topsy-turvy.
“But what’s happening is logical to the killer,” Ophelia said. “And if we knew who he was, it would go a long way toward stopping him.” She tapped her lips with her index finger. “You know, these guys carried off a bank robbery pretty well. Maybe we should first consider any bank robbers you prosecuted.”
“Maybe. But prison is like college for criminals. They go in knowing about one kind of crime and come out with an education in all the others. And one of the things cons talk about most is the best way to rob a bank.” Allison looked at the pen and notepad, but didn’t pick them up. “You said there were two ways. What’s the other?”
“We can also try to work backward by figuring out more about the man you saw in the bank. Two of our witnesses have talked about a bald man, perhaps with a droop on one side of his face. Do you remember prosecuting any bald guys? Any bald guys who’d had a head injury or suffered a stroke?”
“The only bald guy I can think of was a biker in the Mongols who went by the name Little Man.” Allison saw him in her mind’s eye, glowering at her from the defense table. “But he had to be close to four hundred pounds. He’s in prison for racketeering and drug dealing.”
“Well, if the person who killed your sister is the same person Roland and Angel saw, then we know he’s thin, bald, tall, and has intense eyes. And possibly a droop on the left side of his face. Does that sound like anyone you know?”
It didn’t, did it? Something nagged at her, but when Allison tried to focus on it, it slipped away.
Ophelia tried again. “You’re the only one who’s seen this guy, who has probably met him before. Was there anything about him that was at all familiar?”
Allison thought of the man she had seen loping away from her. “I only saw him and the other guy, the one with the bag of money, for a few seconds. And mostly from behind. I barely paid attention to either of them. All I was focused on was finding my sister.” Allison felt a jolt of electricity. “Wait a minute!” She straightened up. “The bank will have surveillance footage! We can get Nicole to get us a copy. There should have been at least three or four cameras that taped the robbery. I’ll be able to see him from all different angles.”
“You’ll also probably be able to see him shoot your sister.” Ophelia cleared her throat. “Do you think you can handle that?”
CHAPTER 31
While they waited to see if Nicole could get the tapes for them, Ophelia had Allison dye her hair and then took a pair of scissors to it.
Allison had never thought of her hair as heavy, but having ten inches gone left her head feeling unexpectedly light. Or maybe the feeling was a side effect of the whole crazy day. She had learned about Rick’s probable innocence, held her dying sister in her arms, and discovered she was pregnant. It should have all been too much, but instead of feeling overwhelmed, she felt blank and empty. As if her head were a balloon and she might just float away into the sky. The feeling reminded her of when they had found Cassidy’s body. Maybe her body and mind were conspiring to protect her.
Leif and Nicole called to say they were coming by around eight. When Ophelia let them in, they both stopped short and stared. Between the new short cap of dark red curls and the loose-fitting shorts and T-shirt, Allison’s look had changed dramatically from the woman who had walked into the bank six hours earlier.
“Wow!” Nicole
blinked. “If I didn’t know that was you, Allison, I would never guess.”
Leif turned to Ophelia. “You did a great job.”
“It’s a little uneven, but I did the best I could.”
Leif set a plastic bag on the table and began to pull out white takeout boxes. “We thought you guys might be hungry, so we picked up Chinese.”
At the sight of pot stickers and the smell of broccoli beef, Allison’s stomach rumbled and her mouth watered. How could she be hungry when her sister was dead? But the answer was as near as her belly.
Allison had asked Ophelia not to share the news of her pregnancy. She wanted the focus to stay on finding the man who had killed her sister and Cassidy. And if she managed to get out of this situation alive, then the person who should hear the news first was Marshall.
Nicole held out a thumb drive. “Here’s the footage from the surveillance. I figure I must know this guy too, so I’ve watched it and watched it. But when I look at the guy who shot Lindsay, he doesn’t ring any bells.” She laid a cool hand on Allison’s arm. “I don’t know if you should eat before or after you see this. Because I’ll warn you, some of it will make you sick. It did me.”
“Lindsay can’t be any more dead than she is. And I’ll do anything to find her killer.” Maybe it was better her emotions were already walled off, Allison thought. She would watch the video dispassionately. Like a computer. Like Ophelia.
They dished up plates of food and then Ophelia led them into her office. It was yet another plain room, this one with a blond wood desk and a silver Macintosh desktop with the largest screen Allison had ever seen.
Ophelia inserted the thumb drive and clicked to open it. There were a half-dozen files.
Leif said, “We have footage from six cameras altogether. Four from the teller area—that’s one behind each teller. One camera showed the lobby. And one was outside the bank’s entrance. Once the alarm was triggered, the cameras were programmed to automatically save the footage from fifteen minutes before the alarm and continue for fifteen minutes after. Oregon Federal has gone to all digital film.” A lot of banks just shot a frame or two per second, which was why most footage of a robbery looked herky-jerky.