by Nancy Bush
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She clicked off.
“What’s wrong?” Lang asked, leaning up on one elbow. He’d thrown the comforter over them and now, as she gathered up her undergarments and pants and blouse, she could see his chest and upper arms and the line of his hips in the dim light sneaking around the door from the hall.
“One of the patients is off his meds, apparently. He’s combative.”
Lang checked the time on his watch. Just after six thirty and black as pitch already. “I don’t want you to go,” he admitted.
Claire smiled, tucking in her blouse. “I don’t want to go.”
“When will you be back?” he asked suggestively.
“As soon as I can?” She left it as a question, and for an answer he came off the bed like a lion and backed her against the wall. Claire was laughing madly and Lang’s growls of amusement matched hers.
Finally, breathless, she pushed him away from her, but kept him at arm’s length, admiring his naked form in the half light. She touched his chin and turned his head, examining the cut. “I could still get the butterfly bandage.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. What are you going to do while I’m gone?”
“Stay in bed. Wait for you.”
She would have laughed if thoughts of Heyward Marsdon hadn’t been crowding her mind.
“Actually, I’ve been thinking,” he admitted. “Unless Tasha was kidnapped, she would have no idea where to go but Siren Song except maybe the Foothillers’ community, since that was Rafe’s hometown and it’s close to the lodge. Maybe she’d go there? Cade didn’t know her, but maybe Rafe confided in someone else.”
His cell phone rang before Claire could answer, sounding muffled because it was inside the pocket of his pants. Lang casually went over and picked it up. His naturalness was a powerful aphrodisiac and Claire had a bit of difficulty heading into the hall in search of her purse and coat.
She heard him say a few words and then hang up. A few moments later he appeared, shirtless, but snapping the top of his jeans. “That was Clausen, from the department. They had a complaint from a couple who live on the edge of the Foothillers’ community. Someone sitting outside of their house in a car.”
Claire gave him a strange look, waiting for the punch line.
“They live on the same street as Cade Worster.”
“That’s…coincidental.”
“Yeah. This couple apparently makes a habit out of calling the police and reporting on the neighbors. But Clausen knew I’d be interested because of Cade.”
“Call me and tell me if you learn anything,” Claire said.
They looked at each other for a long moment. Slightly flustered, she turned toward the door. “You can push the button in to lock the door behind you.”
“What? No kiss good-bye?” he asked.
She glanced back, a smile hovering on her lips. Then she shook her head and disappeared into the dark night.
Rita had moved her vehicle to the block that lay on the back side of Cade’s place. The houses on this street backed up to the ones on Cade’s, and an alley ran between them, giving access to both the rear of Cade’s house and the rear of the homes on his street. Rita didn’t dare drive up the alley, as it was seldom used by cars.
She couldn’t trust the Blackburns. They’d seen her sitting in her car. Even if they didn’t recognize her, they were alerted to her presence, so she drove away after Cade helped Tasha back inside his house.
Now she didn’t have the same line of sight, and she’d spent some fretful hours until nightfall. But there were lights on in Cade’s house and the Wrangler wasn’t moving, so it looked like maybe he and Tasha were in for the night in spite of themselves.
Knife in hand, Rita moved like a wraith between the houses that faced the street where she was parked, coming into the alley on the north side of Cade’s house. What a piece of shit it was. Worse than her mother’s. Someday she, Rita, would have a loving family. A baby. And a father. And all these fuckers who looked down at her could go fuck themselves.
Rafe had been her ticket out of here. Rafe.
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. For you, Rafe, she thought, moving up the back stairs. For you.
Dr. Paolo Avanti paced the hospital’s empty morning room, worried he’d made a huge mistake with Rita.
She was just the kind of woman he knew better than to involve himself with. He’d learned the hard way that the power of sex could be his ruination. Rita was a nightmare girlfriend. She’d already pressured him for a job and he’d allowed it. His dick was constantly hard, thinking about their next liaison in one of the bedrooms, or a closet, or a staff room. Anywhere. All he wanted to do was thrust himself inside her and slam away.
And she knew it. She understood. She’d awakened the slumbering beast inside him that he thought he’d slain once and for all after his last loveless marriage. He’d taken the position at Halo Valley to concentrate on his career. Halo Valley was in the middle of nowhere, for all its prestige, and he’d thought that would be good for him, but it wasn’t. He longed for something more sophisticated than Vandy’s cowboy bar, or that dive of a place in Deception Bay, Davey Jones’s Locker. He’d been there once and found a woman, and she’d blown him in the backseat of his car and then passed out. It was all he could do to wake her up and stand her outside so he could drive away.
And then a long dry period. And then…Rita.
God. He was glad she was sick and been out today. In his mind, he was trying to come up with some reason to have her fired. He needed her out of Halo Valley before he was completely under her power and discovered. Freeson was already looking at him sideways, as if he had an inkling.
But he wanted to screw the hell out of Rita once more. Wanted to buck himself against her raised ass. In the meeting room. Or in the supply room off the kitchen.
“Avanti?”
The questioning female voice brought him back with a thump. Claire Norris was looking at him strangely. She’d just come in and he hadn’t even heard her, he’d been so lost in his fantasy.
He had to turn away, waiting for his hard-on to dissipate. Had she noticed? It wasn’t the kind of thing the doctors at this place missed. “What?” he demanded, surly.
“Where’s Heyward? I heard he wouldn’t go back in his room.”
“Who told you that? He’s in his room. Go look.” He waved her away, his back still turned.
“What about Thomas McAvoy?”
“Alphonse wrestled him into restraints.”
“Restraints.” He could hear her wince. “Is Gibby in his room as well?”
“I don’t keep track of every patient here, Dr. Norris.”
He heard her departing footsteps as she headed in the direction of Marsdon’s room. He was sorry, now, that he’d been instrumental in moving Marsdon. The kid wasn’t much of a threat, but he was fixated on Claire, and that in itself caused friction with the Marsdon family.
Paolo closed his eyes and breathed in noisily. Oh, he didn’t want to leave this place, even if it was provincial, but if things kept going with Rita, he might have to. Rita. He imagined his hand capturing a swelling breast and his dick jumped to attention again. If Rita had a cell phone he’d call her up and demand she come and suck him off. The idea made his head swim a little. But she didn’t have a phone. She was a fucking dinosaur when it came to technology.
“Rita,” he muttered through his teeth.
Lang drove by Cade’s house on his way to the Blackburns’, turning at the end of the block, which was also the edge of the field where he’d chased after Cade. Cade’s house was completely dark. He wondered briefly if the kid was out doing some nefarious deed. He wasn’t a bad sort, but he wasn’t a straight arrow, either.
The wind had kicked up, throwing shivery torrents of rain around from every direction. Lang bent his head into a gust as he climbed from his truck. He was fairly certain he was running a fool’s errand, but he nevertheless trudged up a se
t of brick steps to an upper porch and more wooden stairs. The Blackburns’ house, unlike most of the one-story ramblers, was a three-story Victorian whose front porch looked northward across the field. Their home was on the edge of the Foothillers’ community and Lang guessed the sprawling, mostly Native American residential area had grown from the base of the Coast Range toward the sea, the Blackburns’ land being the most northern point and nearly the most western as well. The plots of land grew larger from here toward the sea; the community less central.
He pressed his finger to the button beside the door and heard deep within the house a resounding bass ding-dong. Very funereal.
A porch light went on overhead, and an older man’s voice asked, “Who’s there?”
“Langdon Stone. The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department sent me.” The Blackburns phoned so often, apparently, that the department limited the number of times they actually got in their vehicles and made a house call. Most of their complaints were appeased by simply having someone listen to them.
The door cracked open, spilling dim, yellow light onto the porch. An old gent peered out at him, then opened the door. Both he and his wife were backlit, and they shuffled aside as the man said, “Come in, then. I’m Clifford. This is Portia.”
“We’re so glad to see you!” Portia said enthusiastically. “Come in, come in.”
Lang stepped across the threshold and they ushered him into a front room filled with antique furniture. The lights flickered ominously as the wind rattled around the outside eaves.
“Oh, I hope we don’t lose power. Sit down, please,” Portia invited him, eyeing the overhead lamp anxiously.
Lang really preferred to stand, but they were so overly excited to see him that he perched on a maroon velvet settee. Portia was small, round, and white-haired with bright eyes and Clifford was tall, lean, slightly stooped, and had a tendency to squint.
“You called about someone waiting in a car. A woman,” Lang said.
“Yes, sir. I think it was Rita.” Portia folded her hands primly and lifted her chin.
Lang’s interest dwindled. He’d known it was a long shot, but he’d hoped it was Tasha. “You know her, then.”
“Oh, yes. She’s one of the Indians. I shouldn’t speak badly of her. I don’t even know her. I just know the family,” Portia said meaningfully.
“Uh-huh,” Lang said.
“Aren’t you going to write this down?” she asked.
Clifford said, “I could get you a notepad, if you don’t have one.”
“Why don’t you tell me about Rita, and we’ll go from there,” Lang suggested. He wondered what time it was, what Claire was doing, if she’d learned anything more from Gibby, if she was thinking about spending the night together in bed, making love until dawn.
“She was sitting out in that car. I believe it might belong to the family. I don’t know what she was doing. She was pointed in the other direction from her aunt’s house.”
“Her aunt’s house?”
“Across the field.” Portia gave him a stern look. “They just discovered her bones last year, you know. But she was killed here a long time ago.”
“Years,” Clifford said with a nod. “And he burned the field to hide it. Nobody knew.”
“Angela was a prostitute,” Portia said through tight lips.
“And a witch,” Clifford said in a hushed tone.
As if hearing him, the wind howled outside and the lights flickered again. But as they all glanced around, distant bells rang in Lang’s mind. He recalled a little about a woman’s bones that had been dug up behind her home about a year earlier. The news had reached statewide and he and Curtis had talked about it even though it was in Tillamook County, because the locals had called her a witch.
Now he realized those locals were probably Portia and Clifford Blackburn. “TCSD dug up the bones,” he said.
“That’s right!” Clifford was pleased he remembered.
“Rita is the dead woman’s niece, and she was outside your house today, sitting in her car,” Lang said. He thought he could end the interview by promising to look into it.
“She was watching down the street,” Portia said. “Waiting for someone.”
“She was friends with the boy that was murdered. I saw her with him at the camper,” Clifford said. “But she was waiting for someone else.”
“She glared at me,” Portia said, sniffing. “I just looked out and she glared at me!”
Lang’s attention snapped back hard. “This Rita was friends with Rafe Worster?”
“Rafe Black Bear,” Portia corrected. “Poor soul. Have you found out what happened to him?”
“We’re working on it. What’s Rita’s full name?” Lang asked.
“Rita Feather Hawkings,” Cliff told him. “She lives with her mother, Delores, over there.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the Foothillers’ community. “Delores’s sister, Angela, was Angela Feather Haines.”
“The prostitute,” Portia reminded. “Across the field.”
Cliff said, “I don’t think I ever heard that Delores took her married name. She still goes by Feather. But she was married to Hawkings once, I believe.”
“Rita could be a bastard child,” Portia responded quickly, sounding both elated and scandalized. “I want to know why she was out there. Just waiting.”
“Which house is Delores Feather’s?”
“If you’re going to talk to Rita, don’t tell her we talked to you!” Portia looked worried suddenly.
“Rita coud be at the hospital,” Cliff said, also looking concerned. “Keep our names out of it.”
“She’s at a hospital?” Lang asked.
“She’s a nurse at Ocean Park,” Portia said.
The hairs on the back of his arms lifted. Claire’s friend said a nurse, or someone wearing nurse’s garb, had claimed to recognize the pregnant and catatonic victim of the rest stop attack.
“Her aunt’s a witch,” Portia said with a quiver to her voice. “Angela was crazy, you know. Sexually crazy. She had two sons from two different fathers and they were both not right, either. We were afraid of them, but they’re both gone.”
“Rita could be just the same.” Clifford echoed his wife’s fears.
“We don’t know why she was parked outside!”
They were working themselves up and Lang did his best to calm the waters. “I’m sure it was nothing, but I’ll talk to Rita. You said her car was facing away from the field? Toward Cade Worster’s house?”
“In that direction,” Clifford answered. “Cade’s a thief, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said. “His cousin Rafe was with a companion when he was killed,” he tried out. “A pregnant woman who we think may have been his girlfriend.”
“What did she look like?” Portia asked.
“Blond. Blue-eyed. Do you know who she could be?” he asked, not wanting to give them more information than they already had.
He stumped them with that news. They both shook their heads, regretfully on Portia’s part. She looked crestfallen that she hadn’t been on the forefront of new gossip.
“You don’t mean she’s from that cult, do you?” Clifford asked slowly.
“Oh, my stars! They’re all mixed in together.” Portia placed a hand to her mouth. “They’re witches, too.”
“I’ll talk to Rita,” Lang said. “Do you know her mother’s address?”
Clifford gave it to him, then warned again, “Leave our names out of it.”
“Make us an unknown source,” Portia suggested.
Lang promised to be discreet.
“Dr. Norris, you came!” Heyward said when she entered his room. “Thank you!”
He was sitting in his bed, wide awake but glad to see her, and Claire, who’d steeled herself for this moment, felt her own tension slide away. “How are you doing, Heyward?” she asked.
“I didn’t mean to kill her. You know I didn’t mean to kill her. I love Melody. I want her back. I want
her back!”
“We all want her back, but you know it can’t happen,” Claire said.
“It wasn’t Melody in that room. I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“I know, Heyward.”
“It wasn’t you, either.” He looked stricken, eyes stretched wide. “It wasn’t.”
“Dr. Prior is your doctor,” Claire reminded him, naming the psychiatrist from Side B who still was in charge of Heyward’s care.
“It wasn’t you!”
“I’m going to call him now,” she said, though she knew he had undoubtedly already left hospital grounds. After-hours rotations were for interns and residents, and Zellman was one of Halo Valley’s more prominent and celebrated psychiatrists, who tended to treat the most dangerous and/or infamous patients on Side B, of which Heyward could conceivably be both.
“You don’t have to call him.” Heyward stuck out a palm to stop her. “I know what happened. I’m on my meds now. I know it was a hallucination. I just wanted you to know that it was real to me. I never wanted to hurt anybody.” His eyes watered with the remembrance. “I’m so…sorry. Did you…get the cake?”
“Oh, yes, Heyward. Thank you,” Claire said, meaning it.
She heard someone come in behind her and jumped, but it was only Avanti.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, seeing Heyward’s unshed tears.
Claire looked at the man in the bed. All she saw was a lost, confused, and mentally ill patient who was not the monster of her nightmares. “Heyward was apologizing,” Claire said to Avanti. To Heyward, she added, “Apology accepted.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” he choked out.
She left the room, affected by his misery. She still wasn’t convinced he was on the correct side of the hospital. Off his meds, he was a real danger to himself and others. But on his meds there was no question that he was horror-struck at what he’d done, nearly unable to comprehend that he was truly responsible.
She really didn’t know where he belonged.
When Lang knocked on Delores Feather’s front door there was no answer. The place was completely dark, not a light on, even though it was only a few minutes past eight. Were they out? Asleep early? He walked around the building, looking for answers.