by Lis Wiehl
“Nicole told me a little bit about it. He was playing with fire, and it got out of control.”
“Yeah, it was an accident. There were only a couple of real killers at Spurling.”
“There were killers there? Real killers?” Despite the sweet smell in the air, Allison felt a little sick to her stomach. “What do you mean— like they killed someone in a fight over drugs? A robbery gone bad?”
Lindsay pursed her lips. “There were some like that, sure. But there was one girl who took Joey in as her pet, and she was a real killer. An on-purpose killer. Her name was Sissy. She killed two little kids when she was thirteen.”
“Thirteen?” Allison tried to picture it. Were you even capable of understanding murder when you were that young? “What happened?”
“She said her four-year-old cousin had come to live with her and her grandma. Sissy didn’t like him getting all the attention, so she killed him and made it look like an accident. Except that same day, the day she killed her cousin, she was babysitting another little kid, a three-year-old. And Sissy started worrying that the girl was going to tell on her when she got older. So a couple weeks later she killed her too.”
“How did she kill them?” Allison asked. Thinking smothering. Or some kind of poison.
“She drowned them. She drowned them both.”
Allison was horrified. “And this Sissy just told you all this?”
Sending Lindsay to Spurling had been like sending her to a hardcore prison. The only life lessons she had probably learned there were to be a better criminal.
Lindsay shrugged. “She told everybody. It was part of the therapy. You had to talk about what you had done and show how sorry you were. But Sissy? It was always a lie when she said she was sorry. She never meant it. Really, she liked to talk about how she had killed those kids. She wanted to keep us all in line. Everyone there knew that Sissy would do whatever she wanted. She messed a couple of people up pretty bad while she was at Spurling. Some she hurt physically, and some she hurt”—Lindsay tapped her temple—“up here. Played with their heads. She lied all the time. Sissy always had these big stories about how she was related to royalty, how she had been in a movie, how she had almost died. She had Joey thinking that she loved him, but then she’d tell on him when he broke a rule, or make fun of him behind his back. Everything was like one big game to Sissy.”
“Really?” Despite herself, Allison was fascinated by this digression. A thought nagged at her, but she was too worn out from the long day to follow it. She forced herself to refocus on the question. “So when you think about the Joey you knew, does it surprise you to think that he grew up to be a killer?”
“Well, it was a long time ago,” Lindsay said. “But the Joey I knew only loved two things in this world. Fire. And Sissy.”
CHAPTER 50
Channel Four
The police had already taken away Jenna’s computer, but that didn’t mean that her files were gone. Staff at Channel Four shared a server where they were supposed to back up their work every night. But as with the phone system, Cassidy had discovered that there were varying levels of compliance. Jenna, however, seemed to have backed up her files religiously.
Cassidy had already taken a quick look through Jenna’s computer the morning before it was seized. But now she had a better idea what she was looking for: any connection between Jenna and this dead guy, Joseph—Joey—Decicco.
Searching the server for the name Decicco turned up nothing. But the word arson turned up dozens of files—including the draft of a script Jenna had been working on only the day before she was killed.
Studio—OC—Jacobs. Fire officials now say the fire that destroyed this home in Southwest Portland was intentionally set.
VO—server video: swfire.01—More than forty firefighters battled the flames that erupted two weeks ago, but the house was a total loss. But this fire turns out to be more than just a case of arson. Instead, it’s a twisted tale of revenge—and murder. And we caught the would-be killer on camera.
=============
Server—video+
audio (file: swfire.07)
(In cue: “Burning down the house was supposed to teach her a lesson . . .”)
(Out cue: “. . . and tonight, she is in fear for her life . . .”)
Caught on camera? If Jenna had gone to the motel alone, then how had she planned to get footage?
Andy said Jenna had been asking about hidden cameras. When Cassidy finally tracked him down, she found him outside, loading camera equipment into one of the station’s vans.
“Andy, didn’t you say Jenna asked about lipstick cams?”
With a grunt, he heaved in a black duffle bag. “Yeah, she wanted to know where we rented them. I told her we usually go to this store called the I Spy Shoppe. With two Ps and an E on the end. Why?” His eyes narrowed. “Do you have a line on what happened?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Cassidy was already taking her keys from her purse. “I’m following up on some connections.”
The I Spy Shoppe turned out to be housed in a strip mall in Southeast Portland, sandwiched between a Thai restaurant and a tanning salon. A bell tinkled when Cassidy went inside. The store was a single square room with blank white walls and industrial gray carpeting. There was a cash register, a counter, and a dozen glass display cases. Behind the register, a brush-cut clerk was reading a magazine. He didn’t even bother to look up when Cassidy walked in.
The nearest case held a dozen items made to hide keys or valuables. A fake rock. A hollowed-out candle. A giant can of Fritos. It all looked unconvincing. A key holder that was supposed to resemble a pile of dog droppings seemed more likely to appeal to a nine-year-old boy than to deter thieves.
The items in the glass case the clerk was standing behind were sleeker and more expensive looking, designed to appeal to men with James Bond fantasies. At least Cassidy hoped they were fantasies, she thought as she waited for the clerk to look up from his reading. Car bomb detectors, night-vision goggles, vehicle trackers. A briefcase that would shock anyone who attempted to force it open with 10,000 volts. Was this stuff even legal?
“Excuse me,” Cassidy finally said when the man continued to ignore her. “I’m thinking you might have sold something to my coworker.” She took out the photo of Jenna she had scanned into her computer earlier. “If so, I need to know what it was.”
She expected him to say he couldn’t provide any info. After all, this was a spy shop. Or shoppe.
Instead his lips curved into a half smile as he regarded the photo. “I remember her. Tall, long blonde hair, with these legs that went on—”
“Yes, yes.” Cassidy waved her hand to cut him off. She didn’t like to think of how he had clearly slavered over Jenna but hadn’t even bothered to look at her twice. “I take it you don’t know that she’s dead.”
His eyes bulged. “What?”
“Her body was found in the Columbia River yesterday. She was murdered. Now I’m helping the authorities try to figure out what happened. And to do that, I need to know what she bought here.”
His face had gone pale. “It was one of our cameras. It’s popular with parents who want to know what the babysitter really does.”
“Well, Jenna’s not a parent. She works—worked—with me at Channel Four. So was it like one of those stuffed teddy bears?”
“Nah. It’s made to look like a smoke detector.” He turned to the case behind him, took out a box and opened it up. Inside was a tan plastic smoke detector. Or at least what looked like one. “You attach it to the ceiling, and it records video on a memory card. It’s motion activated. And she sprang for the deluxe version. That records audio too.”
“Did she say what she wanted it for?”
He shrugged. “As far as I can remember, she just wanted to know if it would be good for recording a conversation between two people.”
Jenna must have gotten the camera as insurance. A silent witness to whatever had gone on in that motel room. But instead
Joey gunned her down.
But what had happened to the disguised camera? Had Joey spotted it, killed Jenna, and then ripped it down and destroyed it? Or—Cassidy felt a surge of excitement—could it still be there, mounted to the ceiling? Innocent looking. Invisible.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“So you’re following the same story that Jenna was?”
“That’s right.” Cassidy’s hand was already reaching for the handle of the door.
“No offense, lady, but have you thought that doing that might get you killed too?”
At the Barbur Bargain Motel, the yellow crime-scene tape was gone from the doors to the two rooms Jenna had rented. Cassidy knocked impatiently on both doors but got no answer.
She hurried into the motel’s office. Behind the counter was the same Grecian-formulaed guy she had interviewed just two days earlier. “Hello. I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Cassidy Shaw. From Channel Four.”
His lips pinched together. “I remember you. I talked to you on the phone. And then you came out and did a story on that girl of yours.”
“That’s right. Now I need to get back in those rooms she rented. I think she might have left something there.”
He crossed his arms. “We already told the cops. The only things she left behind were her purse, car keys, and car.”
Cassidy wasn’t about to tell him what she was looking for. Not until she had her hands on it. “It’s something that wouldn’t be obvious. But it could be important in solving her murder. So can you help me out?” She gave him the smile that worked on 99.9 percent of the people she met.
The motel manager was clearly in the 0.1 percent. His eyes narrowed. “Help you out? After what you did to me? You described my motel as”—he made air quotes—“a location where police have made a lot of prostitution busts. Let me tell you, missy, that was not good for business. A lot of people like to stay here because it’s close to the hospital or they need a place to stay for a couple of days, but all of a sudden they’re canceling and going someplace else. My bookings have dropped by half.”
“That’s not because of my report.” Cassidy tried to appeal to his common sense. “That’s because someone was murdered here. That wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t your fault either. It just happened.”
“You’re the one who made a big deal about it.” He shook his head. “I don’t care what kind of line you try to feed me, lady, I’m not letting you in there.”
CHAPTER 51
Bridgetown Medical Specialists
As Nic was parking her car in the parking lot attached to the medical office, her BlackBerry buzzed. With a sigh, she slipped it from her belt and said hello.
“Nicole? It’s Cassidy.” Cassidy’s words were so fast, they ran into one another. “You need to come to the motel where Jenna was murdered. I just found out she bought a spy camera that looked like a smoke detector. I think she installed it at the motel. And Nic, I think it’s still there! The owner won’t let me in, but if it’s still there, then it might have recorded Jenna being shot—and whoever killed her.”
It was a relief to think about something other than herself. Nic would much rather put the key back in the ignition and drive over to the Barbur Bargain Motel than to go see Dr. Adler. But she made herself get out of the car and press the button to lock the doors. “I’m actually at the surgeon’s.”
Embarrassment colored Cassidy’s voice. “Oh, I’m sorry, Nic. I completely forgot.”
“That’s all right.” She knew how single-minded Cassidy could be in pursuit of a story. “I’ll call Leif and ask him to look for it.”
When Nic explained the situation to Leif, she kept her voice matter-of-fact. “Cassidy’s right. It could be important. If you do find anything there, could you call Allison?”
“Sure thing.”
Leif hesitated, and Nic knew he wanted to ask her where she was and why she couldn’t do it. But in the end, he settled for simply saying good-bye.
These are very individual choices, Nicole,” Dr. Adler said. They were seated in his office, and for once Nic had all her clothes on. “There is no wrong decision. In your case, you could opt for either a lumpectomy or a mastectomy. If we do a lumpectomy, we’ll remove the cancerous tissue and conserve as much of your breast as possible. Then you’d have radiation once a day for six weeks. A lumpectomy plus radiation is about as effective as a mastectomy.”
Even though she had already read the same thing on the Internet, Nic dutifully wrote lump + rad = mast in her notebook.
“So if you choose to go with the mastectomy, you probably won’t need radiation. And a plastic surgeon could rebuild your breast as part of the same surgery.”
Nic ordered her head to nod again. It was still hard to believe that she, Nicole Anne Hedges, was sitting in a padded chair in a breast surgeon’s office, looking at the crow’s-feet that radiated from Dr. Adler’s kind eyes or the unruly black curl that stuck up on the crown of his head like a rooster’s comb. And when it was too hard to look at Dr. Adler’s face, focusing on the back of his computer or the wall behind him with its framed diplomas and arty photograph of a hovering blue dragonfly.
And it was nearly impossible to believe that she had an alien presence growing inside her that had a mind of its own and wanted to kill her. It was like something from a science fiction movie. And as much as she liked and trusted Dr. Adler—which she did—Nic would rather have Sigourney Weaver from the old Aliens movies by her side. Kicking down doors and blasting anything that moved.
But instead, Nic asked in a reasonable voice, “Radiation—is that what makes your hair fall out?”
“No. That’s chemo. Radiation side effects are usually minimal.”
She made another note. “Would I have to miss work with radiation?”
“Probably not. While you have to go every day, it only takes a few minutes. Patients tell me it takes longer to change out of their clothes than to get their radiation therapy.” Dr. Adler tapped his pencil on his desk. “But even if your lymph nodes are clear, you may still need chemo. It depends on what kind of cancer you have. And you’re young, which means you’re at higher risk of recurrence. There are tests that can help you decide.”
Chemotherapy. On the Internet, Nic had read that chemotherapy could cause early menopause. The Internet told her all kinds of things she would rather not know. For example, that breast cancer was the second leading cause of cancer death among African American women. And that black women died at a 20 percent higher rate than white women.
If Nic had chemotherapy, then Makayla would probably never have a brother or sister. Only a few weeks ago she had found herself staring at Leif during a meeting and wondering what a child of theirs would look like. Now all that was gone, dust.
Nic took a deep breath and told herself that the important thing was to make sure that Makayla still had a mommy.
But the worries crept back in. Chemo meant that Nic would lose her hair. It wasn’t so much the hair, it was that everyone would know. People at work. Maybe even strangers. Nic kept herself to herself. Would there come a time when she might as well be wearing a billboard that said CANCER VICTIM?
Her eyes burned, but she blinked rapidly until the feeling went away. This morning she had woken up to a wet pillow. She had told herself she had just drooled in her sleep. She certainly hadn’t been crying.
“I thought breast cancer was just breast cancer,” she told Dr. Adler now.
“That’s what we used to think, but we’re learning that there are a lot of different kinds out there. Some are more aggressive than others. We try to fingerprint and identify each breast cancer as an individual cancer, rather than having just one blanket treatment for all types.”
“How will you know what I have?” All her reading had just left Nic confused.
“Part of it will come through the pathology reports on the tumor. And we’ll send some of the tissue out to a specialized lab to look at the genetics
to help us decide about chemo. We’ll also look at the lymph node the tumor drains to, to see if it’s spread.” Dr. Adler continued to talk about Nic’s choices, but it was all a blur. If she wanted a mastectomy, then they could use an implant or take fat from her belly or even her butt. But even if she opted for a lumpectomy, he still might need to do a mastectomy if he opened her up and found the cancer had spread further than they thought.
“Take a few days to think about your options,” he said finally. “Consider what’s right for you.”
How much of this was just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, Nic wondered as she walked out of Dr. Adler’s office holding a pile of pamphlets and brochures. She didn’t care what happened to her breasts. She just didn’t want to die.
She was dragging by the time she got to her parents’ house to pick up Makayla for her swimming lesson. Her daughter was in the den, doing her homework. Finding her parents alone seemed like a sign. Nic knew she couldn’t put off telling them forever, especially since she would soon need to spend the night in the hospital while Dr. Alder removed the cancer and a lymph node or two. And it had gone better than she thought, telling Allison and Cassidy. She had ended up feeling loved and supported.
Her parents were sitting in their matching recliners, watching the news. Nic took a deep breath. “Mama, Daddy—I have something to tell you.”
Her dad aimed the remote control at the TV and switched it off.
Berenice gave Nic a look that only a mother could give—part knowing, part annoyance. “Is it about that young man you’re dating? Because we already know.”
“What?” Nic blinked, knocked off course.
“Your cousin Ducky saw you two inside a restaurant.”
Nic gave her head a little shake as if it would help her rearrange her thoughts. “Leif and I work together. Just because I share a meal with someone doesn’t mean I’m dating him.”
“Oh, really, Nicole.” Berenice’s eyes narrowed, and Nic suddenly remembered how it was a failing proposition to try to slip anything past her mama. “You’re trying to tell me that you’d have breakfast with any of the other agents on a Saturday? Ducky said this guy was feeding you with his fork.”