by Nancy Bush
Lang snorted.
“Celek’s been doing a helluva job. I couldn’t ask for a better partner. And he’s better-looking than you are. Gets all the chicks. They swoon.”
Curtis almost made Lang smile. Almost. He knew Curtis’s new partner, Joshua Celek: a chubby, freckled thirty-year-old with a sunny disposition and a belief in human nature that couldn’t be hammered out of him no matter how much depravity he encountered on the job. He looked and acted like a kid out of a fifties sitcom. He’d been elevated from robbery to homicide after Lang unceremoniously walked away from the job he’d worked for nearly a decade.
“Swoon,” Lang repeated.
“Yeah, swoon.”
“Well, that’s good, then, ’cause I’m not coming back.”
“Who says there’s a job waiting for you? You’re out. The chief…the captain…Lieutenant Drano…they’re all glad your pain-in-the-butt attitude is gone.”
“Drano called me yesterday. Offered me more money and a new partner if I had problems with you.”
“Drano’s on vacation in Mallorca.”
“Yeah, he got back last night and phoned me as soon as he touched down at PDX.”
“You’re lying. Good one, though.”
Lang did smile now, and Curtis reached over and knocked Lang’s baseball cap off his head. They locked their arms around each other’s necks, alarming their waiter, who’d already seemed to want to comment on their choice of beer with breakfast. It was a long-standing rule with Lang and Curtis: whenever they met, whichever one saw the other first, that one would buy the first beer. Lang had spotted Curtis and had ordered two Budweisers and they’d been enjoying them with bacon and eggs.
Curtis shoved Lang away from him and said to the waiter, “You don’t have to call the cops. I got a badge. Just off duty and trying to knock some sense into my friend here.” The waiter nodded slowly but the consternation on his face didn’t quite leave. “Really,” Curtis said.
“Okay. Can I get you anything else?”
Lang said, “Scotch and water, hold the water.”
“No. Thanks.” Curtis waved the waiter off. “Not until after nine thirty.” As the waiter turned away, he admitted to Lang, “Okay, butthead, Drano does want you back. We all do.”
Lieutenant Draden was called Drano because his craggy, world-weary face and dispirited manner made him seem drained of life. He was, in fact, savvy, smart, and surprisingly full of ideas, but you had to get to know him a while to see the man behind the persona. So far Celek hadn’t clued in. Curtis had told Lang a story about the newbie homicide detective and his penchant for keeping the gory details from Draden, as if it might somehow spiral him over the edge, that almost made Lang chuckle. Almost.
“Celek thinks if he tells Drano anything but sunshine and lollipops that Drano will jump off a bridge.”
“Tough to keep details from your lieutenant.”
“Oh, he writes up these bang-up reports—way better than yours, except for spelling and punctuation, your specialty—”
“Thank you.”
“—and then he tries to make me turn them in. Like Drano won’t see his name at the bottom. Celek’s got all kinds of weirdness. Nicety-nice stuff that takes up so much time and energy that you want to knock him sideways.”
“You’ve controlled yourself so far?”
“No thanks to you. When are you coming back?”
“I told you: I’m not.” Lang shoved back his chair. “Let’s go somewhere with a pool table.”
“Too early. Besides, you got enough money off me last time we played.” Curtis threw some cash on the table and said, “My treat.” Lang threw the same amount down and walked away. Swearing, Curtis picked up Lang’s cash and followed him onto the street and into a pouring rain, surprisingly chilly for September. “I’m giving this to charity,” he said, waving Lang’s bills at him.
“To the Neglected Children of Strippers Named Taffy or Sugar or Cinnamon.”
“Only if they’re my kids,” Curtis agreed, playing along. Their relationship was long and deep. “When are you going to give up the vendetta? Marsdon’s behind bars.”
Lang frowned and shook his head, rainwater collecting on his black hair. “That facility is a hospital, not a prison.”
“Damn near a prison. And at the risk of getting my head bit off, the man’s sick.”
“Sure, he’s sick. But he killed my sister. And now he gets to stay at the very hospital where he slit her throat? Why not send him to a five-star hotel?”
“He’s in the lockdown section. With all the other super crazies who are incapable of standing trial.”
“He should be in prison,” Lang insisted, his jaw tightening.
“Not according to the courts and the doctors,” Curtis reminded him quietly. They were getting into dangerous territory, and even being the good friends that they were, Trey Curtis was completely aware of the depth of his friend’s anger, misery, and need for retribution. He didn’t want to get in the way.
“Doctors,” Lang sneered. “She’s dead because of them. Because of her.”
“I’m not going to argue with you.”
“You’re sure as hell doing a good job of it.”
“I’m just lobbing out little facts. Doesn’t mean I like any of it.” He lifted his hands in surrender.
“He could stand trial,” Lang insisted again. “Heyward Marsdon the Third is at Halo Valley because of his grand-dad’s money.”
“He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, Lang. He’s probably where he should be.” Lang looked ready to argue. He certainly wasn’t going to capitulate, so Curtis went on, “You’re too good a man, too good a cop, to let this define your entire life. Do what you can in the matter, but do it on the job. Drano wants you back. I want you back. Hell, even Celek wants you back.” He paused, then added, “No matter what you think, Halo Valley ain’t no summer camp.”
“I want him dead,” Lang said then.
“So do I, man,” Curtis agreed. “For you. I wish he’d hang himself, or throw himself in front of freeway traffic, or put the barrel of a forty-four in his mouth. But it’s not gonna happen, and neither you nor I is going to make it happen. So, let’s move on.”
“Move on,” Lang repeated, his eyes taking on a faraway look as he gazed over Portland city center’s morning traffic. “I got a job offer from the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Which you haven’t taken yet, either.” They were standing under a narrow awning and had been speaking in fierce, if partially hushed, tones. “So, okay, I got a different job for you,” Curtis said. “Something I want you to look into.”
“What, am I your personal gofer now?”
“A body was found at a rest stop on the outskirts of Winslow County. The guy was stabbed to death, and someone tried to cut out the baby from his pregnant companion. Didn’t succeed, as far as I know. She’s at Laurelton General. He’s at the county morgue.”
“I saw it on the morning news,” Lang said, then, “Not your jurisdiction.”
“That’s why I want you to look into it.”
“And piss off a lot of people who might think I should mind my own business.”
“I hear the county’s swamped and would like some help,” Curtis said mildly.
“You’re full of it.”
“Call the sheriff and see if I am.”
With that Curtis gave him a light punch on the upper arm and bent his head to the falling rain. Lang watched him walk up the street. He wasn’t going to call Winslow County’s Sheriff Nunce, a man who’d been reelected the fall before though it was rumored he had been reluctant to run again, had been, in fact, expected to retire. Lang had met Nunce a few times over the years when their cases overlapped and had found the sheriff congenial and able to share investigative work, but that didn’t mean Nunce would be looking for Lang to stick his nose in where it didn’t really belong.
“Celek doesn’t want me back,” he said aloud, though Curtis was long out of earshot.
He bent his head to the rain as he headed toward his gray Dodge truck, yanking open the stubborn driver’s door, ducking inside. Slamming the door shut with an effort, he reminded himself he needed to take the truck in and have the door fixed. He just didn’t ever seem to have the energy or initiative. He’d been that way for months, ever since his sister’s death.
Now, running a hand through his wet hair, he stared through the windshield. He’d found parking only a block and a half away from Dooley’s, the breakfast/lunch pub where he’d met Curtis in downtown Portland, not far from the station. Curtis was walking back to work and Lang, though he refused to admit it, felt a faint twinge of regret or envy or a mixture of both. He didn’t want his old job back. He didn’t want a new one, either. He’d been unable to concentrate on it after Melody’s death. He wanted Heyward Marsdon’s neck in a noose, and that’s all he wanted. Not exactly the kind of attitude conducive to good police work.
And Marsdon’s damn family. Wealthy. Arrogant. Above the law. Unable to believe in their son’s culpability though it was understood all around that Heyward III had indeed committed the unthinkable crime. Of course the asshole had feigned remorse. Had actually shed tears. And there had been a lot of psycho mumbo jumbo about schizophrenia and illness and an inability to truly understand his own feelings and actions.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The guy was sick, all right. Sick in the head. But someone to be pitied? Lang simply did not have it in his heart. Heyward Marsdon had killed his sister and he had to pay for it along with the rest of that supercilious hospital staff. Heyward’s doctor, Claire Norris, being at the top of Lang’s hit list.
Throwing the truck into gear, he rumbled into traffic and was cut off by a guy in a black Ferrari on his cell phone who nearly got his rear end crunched by Lang’s truck. Lang was half amused, half irked when the driver flipped him off. He pulled up on the left side of the asshole and rolled his right window down. The driver looked up and threw him a cold look.
Lang signaled for the man to hang up and the bastard released the bird a second time, pointing at him with that same middle finger, making deep, stabbing motions. For half a second Lang thought about continuing the insanity. He felt an almost overpowering need to drag the guy out of the car and beat the hell out of him. Transference? The need to release pent-up aggression? You bet. With an effort he turned his eyes forward, set his jaw, thought about Dr. Claire Norris, and wondered if he could have just one meeting with her. He’d been advised against it by a passel of lawyers. He was too personally involved. It wouldn’t do any good. She wasn’t completely responsible. Marsdon had killed Melody, not anyone from the hospital. He wasn’t thinking clearly.
The Ferrari jumped ahead, then screeched to a halt at a light where a gaggle of teenage girls were trying to cross the street. They stared at him in collective horror, then broke into the filthiest language and gestures Lang had ever seen from a group their age. Lang pulled up on the driver’s left again and smiled over at him. He could practically see the steam pouring from the guy’s ears. The girls became truly obnoxious. Standing directly in front of his car and not moving, dangerously, until Lang worried for them as the light was about to turn green.
But they sauntered away, arms crossed behind their backs, middle fingers sticking up for the Ferrari asshole’s uninhibited view.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Lang wasn’t much for religion, but a few key phrases sometimes popped into his head from time to time, a gift from his sister, who’d flitted from religion to religion like a butterfly to a flower.
His sister. Beautiful. Fresh. Intelligent. Deeply flawed.
Lang shook his head. Couldn’t think of her. Instead he concentrated on the other woman who haunted his thoughts: Dr. Claire Norris. The reason Heyward Marsdon III had been outside hospital walls looking for whatever his sick, twisted brain considered its next need. Dr. Claire Norris. She’d probably been the conduit for Melody and Heyward to meet. The good doctor, introducing one homicidal sicko to a sweet but slightly twisted woman with delusions and hallucinations of her own, probably putting them together in some kind of therapy class.
Claire Norris. Lang had seen her from afar, a slim, dark-haired, prettier-than-average woman with a strained look on her face. She had witnessed something horrific; he could give her that. His own mind shied away from what must have happened in that room. But Dr. Norris was the one who had okayed Marsdon’s release into society. It was her name on the form. She was the one with the ultimate responsibility for Melody’s death. She was the one who allowed Marsdon to cut his sister’s throat.
He’d said as much a number of times, to anyone who would listen. He’d been told his thinking was convoluted. He was just looking for someone to blame. He needed antidepressants and therapy. He needed help.
Drugs? That kind of help? From the psychiatric community? Like he was going to listen to anything those headshrinkers from Halo Valley had to say. Quacks, every one. Self-serving quacks.
He was driving out Sunset Highway through a misting rain, leaving the Portland skyline in his rearview mirror, passing through the tunnel and headed west into the sunset. Except today the horizon was all gray and dreary. No sun in sight. Two weeks ago it had been blazing hot. Early September. Not much change from August. Then bam. They’d been hit with an early storm and now this rain.
Well, the rain suited his mood.
He exited the freeway on the outskirts of Laurelton, still within the western edge of the Portland city limits. He’d bought the property as soon as he’d scratched up enough money for a down payment, and after their parents died in a fiery crash on I-5, he had Melody move in with him. She’d been seventeen and he’d been twenty-three. Now he was thirty-seven and she would have been thirty-one this past May if not for Heyward Marsdon.
She’d been in and out of rehab more times than he liked to recall. She was crazy without medication. She hated taking medication. She took the wrong kind of medication. She crashed. She went to rehab. Got clean. Got crazy again.
But…she was such a sweet, funny person when everything was in line. Slightly ironic, slightly off-kilter, slightly acerbic. He loved her. And now she was gone.
He’d quit the force shortly after Melody’s death, though Drano had told him the job was open whenever he felt like stepping back in. Lang supposed he should have felt grateful, but all his energies were directed somewhere else and he didn’t honestly give a damn.
Now when he walked into his house, he had the peculiar notion that Melody was there. Something in the air. A leftover scent. But it was an illusion. He’d identified her body in the morgue. There was no question it was her. No question she was dead. No question where the responsibility lay. It was just sometimes—rarely—Lang wanted her back so badly that he almost made himself believe it could happen.
Nutty behavior. Grief taking over the sane part of his mind from time to time.
Walking onto the small back deck outside the kitchen, he was impervious to the shivering drizzle that seemed to have gripped the area in a firm hand. The deck was about three feet off the ground and he’d been building steps to it from the backyard, more for something to do than any serious interest in home improvement. Now he tested the wooden rail and wondered if he should change them out to wrought iron. He could do the work himself.
Trying to come up with something to fill your time?
Back inside, he poured cold coffee from the pot into a mug and heated it in the microwave. He thought about Claire Norris some more. He’d seen her on television, mostly; in person he’d had to keep his distance and he didn’t want to be too near her anyway. Self-preservation. He didn’t want to do anything rash.
So, he’d watched her on television with an intensity that was undoubtedly obsessive. He’d DVR’d her only interview with the press and kept it still. She was about five-eight with sexy legs and small feet encased in sensible black pumps. She wore a lab coat over a skirt or dress, mostly. Her hair was chin length,
and she had a tendency to tuck it behind her ears when she was speaking, an unconscious focusing act. She was good-looking, her teeth white, her waist slim, her chin slightly pointy. She appeared…honest, he could admit. But then, that was Halo Valley’s prime disguise.
Now Lang threw himself in a chair in front of the television. Clicking around, he found nothing but game shows, talk shows, and daytime dramas. He stared out the sliding glass door to the rain-soaked cedar boards of his deck. Then, like an addict, he accessed his DVR interview of Claire Norris. Dr. Claire Norris.
She only said a few words, and Lang knew them by heart.
Pauline Kirby: Would you have done things differently, knowing what you do now?
Claire: Heyward Marsdon the Third is under continuing psychiatric care.
Pauline: But shouldn’t he have been locked up? Shouldn’t you have known?
Claire seemed to struggle a bit when a man with a goatee jumped forward and practically shoved her aside.
Dr. Freeson: I’m Dr. James Freeson with Halo Valley Security Hospital. We always strive to give each of our patients individual care. Dr. Norris has been Mr. Marsdon’s primary psychiatric physician for several years and is highly competent.
Blah, blah, blah.
Lang rewound and watched it again. Funny, how Freeson initially sounded like he was defending Claire Norris, but after hearing his tone a thousand times and seeing his face, Lang suspected the man was trying to distance himself from the woman who’d brought this destruction to the hospital.
He watched it again and then froze the picture on Claire Norris’s face.
“You’re obsessed,” he said a few minutes later, never taking his eyes from the screen. “It’s dangerous.”
I got a job for you. Something I want you to look into.
Curtis was worried about him. Maybe he was right. Maybe Lang was starting down that nutty lane his sister had traversed most of her adult life.
With a feeling of inevitability, he picked up the phone and asked for the Winslow County Sheriff’s Department.