After She's Gone

by Lisa Jackson

  “Because you’re like all the other males in America?”

  “You really don’t know?” He was staring at her again and her skin began to heat, her fingers turning slick.

  “But you’ll tell me.”

  “Damned straight, I will. It was because she reminded me of you, Cass. She looks like you, she sounds like you and . . . and you didn’t want me.”

  “I always . . .” She bit her tongue.

  “Don’t say it. You broke up with me before you went to LA and I figured you needed to go follow your dream, to find yourself, or just run away for a while. You were young, so hell, the only sensible thing to do was let you go.”

  She swallowed hard, remembering that the only tie that had caused her to doubt her decision to leave Oregon was her feelings for Trent. She’d been ready to leave her mother, her stepfather, and her sister in her dust, but saying good-bye to Trent had given her serious second thoughts, doubts she’d wrestled with but ultimately ignored. “It was hard,” she admitted, feeling some of the old pain. “Hard to leave you. But . . . Yeah, I did.” The truth was it had happened and she wasn’t going to deny it. “So far,” she said, “you’re right. And then you came to LA.”

  “Right. I wasn’t ready to give up, so I thought I’d see if we could give it a second chance.”

  She remembered seeing him again. Reigniting what they’d once had, ending up in a whirlwind romance and an elopement to Las Vegas. It had been exciting. Thrilling. And oh, how she’d loved him. She didn’t want to consider it now, how he’d made her feel, how he’d turned her inside out with the brush of his lips against her ear or the sensation of his tongue tracing the hollow of her throat.

  Once more she was driving too fast and eased off the gas pedal.

  “You seemed to be on board.”

  She couldn’t deny that those first few months of marriage were pure wedded bliss. But that was before Allie had set her sights on the rugged cowboy-turned-stuntman who had married her sister. Soon after the wedding, Allie had tried to set her straight about her new husband by warning Cassie that Trent was a player, that within weeks of Cassie moving to LA, Trent had shown interest in her as well as other girls and women around town.

  Allie had even insinuated that Trent had cornered Allie one night while Cassie was still living in Falls Crossing and tried to kiss her and “God knew what else.” Cassie hadn’t believed the story initially, but over time, she’d begun to have doubts.

  Had she really been so blind? Had she believed Allie because dealing with Trent and trying to make a relationship work was too difficult? Had she run from her marriage just as she’d run from her life in Oregon?

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Maybe you should trust your own instincts.” He slid her a glance that she caught.

  “You might not like the outcome.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  When he didn’t say anything more, she prodded. “That’s it? All you have to say.”

  “For now.” He leaned back in the seat. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.” With that, he lapsed into silence.

  Which gave her a lot of time to think.

  She turned on the radio and her favorite LA station was starting to fade, the long road north stretching out for hundreds of miles, the future uncertain.

  Rhonda Nash didn’t put much faith in “hunches” or “gut feelings” or hypothetical “theories.” She was a cold, hard facts kind of cop and those feelings spilled over into her private life, which probably explained why, at nearly forty, she’d never married though she’d gotten close a couple of times. It was just that her bullshit meter was nearly always on alert and a lot of men she’d dated didn’t pass the test.

  So when she found a connection in a case she was working on, some little piece of evidence that tied parts of the ongoing investigation together, she experienced a little sizzle of anticipation, a spike of adrenaline that fired her blood and, as was the case in the disappearance of Allie Kramer, propelled Nash into action.

  Nash had been contacted by Jonas Hayes, who worked homicide in LA. A woman’s body had been discovered in a parking lot near a club in Venice Beach. She’d been identified as Holly Dennison, who not only had worked with Allie Kramer and Lucinda Rinaldi on Dead Heat, but who had been found wearing a mask, a distorted image of Allie Kramer.

  The pictures were disturbing, a set of digital photos of a woman’s dead body wedged between a couple of cars in a parking lot. The first set showed pictures of the corpse wearing the mask. The second set was the victim without the mask, a woman’s face with fixed gaze and ashen skin tones, Holly Dennison, a set designer, who like Rinaldi, had worked on Dead Heat. A third set was of close-ups of the mask, front and back, and the one-word message scrawled on the picture’s back.

  All in all, weird as hell.

  The cause of death wasn’t yet official, but a single gunshot wound to the torso, a through and through, made an educated guess simple.

  Why had the mask been placed on the victim’s face? What connection, other than the obvious movie link, did Dennison have to Allie Kramer?

  Now, Nash hurried out of the station house in Portland and felt the slap of cold April rain. At four in the afternoon, rush hour was already in full swing. Cars, trucks, vans, bikes, and buses clogged the city streets, inching from one red light to the next, each vehicle angling around the others in an effort to find a way out of the heart of Portland.

  Making her way along the crowded afternoon sidewalk, Nash pulled up the hood of her coat and tried to imagine how Holly Dennison, a dead woman in LA wearing a grotesque mask of Allie Kramer, fit into the case. The connection was obvious. Almost too obvious: the message on the mask’s back side.

  A single word: Sister.

  Bingo. Connection.

  Who was Allie Kramer’s sister?

  Cassie Kramer.

  Who fought with Allie on the night she disappeared?

  Cassie Kramer.

  Who felt betrayed by her sister’s involvement with her estranged husband?

  Cassie Kramer.

  And who just happened to be in LA when the murder of set designer Holly Dennison occurred?

  Cassie Kramer.

  But why would Cassie leave such an obvious clue, almost framing herself? Even though she’d recently been a patient in the mental ward of Mercy Hospital, Cassie seemed coherent. She had a documented quick temper, but was she really homicidal? Could she have found a way to make her sister disappear? Was Allie Kramer, like Holly Dennison, already dead? Then why hide one body and leave the other to be found?

  Things weren’t adding up.

  There were still too many inconsistencies.

  Another reason to head to LA and sort a few things out.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Double T, in a baseball cap and rain jacket, fall into step with her.

  “Did I hear right?” he asked as they reached the corner. “You’re flying to California tonight?”

  “In three hours if I can make it to the airport in rush hour.”

  “Could set you up with a police escort. Make sure you get to PDX in time.”

  “Funny guy.” She checked her watch. Told herself there was plenty of time. “You know there’s been an Allie Kramer sighting down there.”

  “Isn’t there always?” This wasn’t news. Ever since the popular star’s disappearance, the police departments in LA, Portland, and even places in between received “tips” that the missing woman had been seen. “I swear, Allie Kramer’s more popular than Elvis these days. And more visible. Didn’t we get a call last week from somewhere in Alaska? And don’t forget that little town outside of Birmingham. Good Lord, someone even called from Molalla, here in Oregon.”

  He nodded, drips spilling off the bill of his cap.

  “Each time we do a follow-up, it’s a case of mistaken identity. Once, the woman spotted was eighty-two years old . . . and then later a man was sure he’d seen her.” Both sightings hadn�
�t panned out. “People see what they want to see. You know that. You’ve interviewed enough eyewitnesses to a crime, each contradicting the other.”

  “But now you’re flying south because some woman who was loosely associated with Dead Heat was murdered. The last I heard LA isn’t in our jurisdiction.”

  She almost smiled as she waited for the light to change. “Already cleared it.”

  The light finally switched and she and Double T stepped off the curb into the swarm of pedestrians crossing to the other side. Once on the opposite sidewalk, she and Double T veered off toward the parking structure.

  “You work fast,” he observed.

  “No one higher up likes all the press the Allie Kramer case is getting, the pressure to solve what happened to her and arrest whoever it was who was behind the Rinaldi shooting. The public wants answers. The press is in a feeding frenzy and the brass are feeling the heat.”

  “You’re convinced the dead woman in LA is linked to what happened up here,” he said as they climbed the stairs of the elevated lot.

  “Uh-huh. If we didn’t now have a dead body, I’d almost think this was a publicity stunt gone bad.”

  “But we do have a dead body. Or LA does.”

  “There’s more going on than just homicide.” Slanting rain poured through the open windows of the stairwell, dampening each landing. Nash barely noticed. “You saw the pictures.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it’s not our jurisdiction,” she said, remembering the shots of the mask that had been left on the corpse, “but Holly Dennison’s murder has bearing on our case. I just need to figure out how.”

  “And here I thought you just wanted to head south and sip margaritas under the palms.”

  “I’m saving my frequent flyer miles for the islands. You know, preferably one with scorching sun, white sand, ocean breezes, and hot pool boys.”

  His lips twitched. “I’ll hold down the fort while you’re away.”

  “Do that. It won’t be long. Fingers crossed, I should be back by tomorrow night.” She found her Ford Focus wedged between a monster truck and an equally large SUV, both parked in Compact Only slots. “Doesn’t anyone read?” she muttered and clicked her keyless lock before inching between the truck and the driver’s side.

  “Give ’em a ticket.”

  “I wish.”

  With a final grin cast in her direction Double T peeled off in search of his own vehicle.

  Nash couldn’t open her damned door, so she made her way back to the rear of her Focus, opened the cargo door, and cursing every moronic driver on the planet, crawled over the backseat, then into the driver’s side. Worrying that her mirrors might scrape the sides of the encroaching vehicles, she hesitated before firing the engine. Then she thought, too damned bad. If she scraped the nearby rigs, too bad. She eased her way out of the space, took a deep breath, and started down the ramp leading to the street. She planned to pick up something to eat at a local Thai food cart, then head to the airport and hopefully make her flight. With the traffic and the rain, she didn’t have a lot of time. She couldn’t even run by her house on the east side, but thankfully she always kept an overnight bag filled with the essentials, including a toothbrush and change of clothes, in her Ford.

  Just in case she ever got lucky.

  So far, at least in recent memory, she had not.

  CHAPTER 20

  They pulled into a truck stop near Redding to fill up on gas and food. Inside the long, flat-roofed restaurant, they sat on opposite sides of a booth next to a plate glass window. The view was of the freeway, headlights and taillights streaking past, illuminating the night. A few other customers were scattered under the unforgiving overhead lights as a fiftysomething waitress with a forced smile and tired eyes took their orders, then disappeared through swinging doors.

  “You okay?” Trent asked. His voice actually had a tender quality to it.

  “Fine.” That, of course, was a lie. She wondered if she’d ever be “fine” again. She tried to find a smile and gave up, lifting a shoulder and whispering, “I guess I’m as fine as I can be, all things considered.”

  His eyes, a shade of brown that was almost gold, seemed understanding, even kind, so she glanced away quickly and was thankful when their drinks arrived.

  Thinking a jolt of caffeine might help her stay awake, Cassie had ordered a Coke. Trent settled in with his beer and ignoring the frosted glass that was left for him, took a long pull from the bottle.

  “I’ll drive for a while,” he offered, and she nodded. The silence that had been fairly companionable in the car was now awkward and she was grateful when his cheeseburger and her club sandwich arrived. They concentrated on their meals for a few minutes before she decided to be proactive. “Did Allie’s mood change?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, just before she disappeared?”

  His eyes found hers and his gaze wasn’t friendly. “How would I know? Did you even hear what I told you before? We were not involved. I have no idea what was going on in her mind.” He took another long drink, then said, “You just don’t give up.”

  “Not when it’s about my sister.”

  “Or a story,” he added, reaching for his beer.

  That momentarily stopped her. “You looked through my work? My computer?”

  “No computer. I didn’t see one.” That was right, she remembered, she’d had her laptop with her earlier today. “But you did leave some notes lying around. I read them.”

  Okay, so he knew about her plans to write a screenplay about Allie. So what? Everyone would know soon enough, including, she hoped, Allie herself, once she was found. A tiny doubt skidded through her mind, a worry about her sister’s whereabouts and the possibility Allie might never be found, but she pushed it aside. She picked at her sandwich and persevered. “So, did you know any reason Allie might have gone to Santa Fe? Does she know someone there, maybe a plastic surgeon? Probably around 2007?” The problem was the numbers didn’t add up. In 2007, Allie had still been in Falls Crossing....

  Trent just stared at her, then with a shake of his head took another bite from his cheeseburger. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s just that I got this weird message from Portland. Actually the phone number is my psychiatrist’s cell, but I don’t think she sent it.” She scrounged in her purse, withdrew her phone, and scrolled down to the cryptic text she’d received before sliding her iPhone across the table. He glanced at the display.

  “Look, Cass, I don’t know how to make you get it. I really don’t know Allie, only through you as my sister-in-law. As for this”—he thumped the tiny screen with a finger—“I have no idea what it means. None.”

  He was so emphatic, she almost believed him. Which sent her back to square one. “Are you sure?”

  “Jesus, Cass. I don’t know your damned sister! I didn’t sleep with her!”

  A man in a baseball cap who had been forking a bite of meat loaf into his mouth turned his head. Trent noticed the guy and lowered his voice. “That’s it, Cassie!” he warned. “You’ve got to find a way to trust me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.” Scowling, he studied the message on her phone and appeared to somehow rein in his anger. “So this is what you’ve got? Santa Fe 07?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A message from your doctor?” He slid the phone across the table that was topped in Formica straight out of the 1960s, and dug into the rest of his meal.

  Cassie nodded.

  “Could the text have been sent to you by mistake?”

  “I suppose.” She’d considered that possibility herself. “Or maybe it’s just gobbledygook. You know, maybe the doctor let one of her grandchildren play with it and . . . no, I don’t think so.” Virginia Sherling didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would let kids touch anything associated with her professional life, and Cassie wasn’t sure the woman had ever been married or had a child.

  “Did you cal
l her? Ask her about it?”

  “Called. Didn’t leave a message.” She frowned. “I’m her patient, her mental patient. I didn’t want to leave some kind of voice mail she might misinterpret.”

  “By thinking you were . . . what? Hallucinating about a text? It would show on her phone, too.”

  “It’s touchy with the doctor. Dr. Sherling didn’t release me. In fact, she thought my leaving Mercy wasn’t the best idea, and she said so.” She pushed aside the remains of her sandwich. “I decided to leave it alone for a while. Besides, everything at the hospital was so out of sync,” she admitted.

  “What do you mean?”

  She hesitated.

  “Cass? If you want me to help, you have to confide in me.”

  “Hey, I didn’t ask for your help. You showed up on my doorstep. Remember?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  She might have said more but the lift of one eyebrow, silently accusing her of not acknowledging that she might want his help, no matter how hard she protested, caused her to rethink her position. Knowing she was probably making a mistake of immense proportions, she nevertheless told him about her dream in the hospital, about the nurse from an earlier era telling her that her sister was alive. But she kept the part about the reasons she’d checked herself in, the hallucinations and blackouts to herself. She saw no reason to muddle the issue. At least not yet.

  He didn’t remark, just kept right on eating while he listened. When he was finished, he pushed his plate aside.

  “You think the nurse was real,” he said.

  “Rinko said he saw her.”

  “Rinko?” Trent repeated, his eyes narrowing. “The kid at the hospital with all the car stats?”

  “And sports statistics,” she said, fishing into a side pocket of her purse again. “You know him?”