by Bush, Nancy
“She probably wants to make sure you’re over that flu,” she said.
Stefan left the room, wading through the line of kids arrowing into the room. There was little Melissa with her sweet smile and little green dress. She was the best behaved of the girls, kind of forgotten in the back of the room. He tried to help her whenever he could.
Lazenby’s office was toward the front of the building in a group of rooms behind the visitors counter. His heart was knocking as he entered the administration area and went to her office. When he looked inside, she wasn’t there.
“Go on in. She’ll be right back,” Maryanne said. Her chair was right behind the counter and she greeted parents and kids by name.
She was a suck-up gopher, too.
He seated himself in one of the chairs opposite Lazenby’s desk and anxiously waited for the middle-aged hard-ass bitch to return. Maybe it was like Runderfeld said and they were worried he would send another round of the flu through the school. They didn’t know it was his excuse for being out the day before.
Lazenby bustled in. She was about five two with big breasts atop a barrel-shaped body, short, gray hair, and a pair of reading glasses perpetually on her nose. She shut the door behind her as she said, “Hi, Stefan. How are you feeling?”
“Better,” he said.
She nodded as she took her seat behind her desk. “You called in with the flu yesterday about ten-thirty.”
“Sorry. I kept thinking I would make it in.” His palms were sweating. He wasn’t even sure why he was keeping up the lie. Though he’d hoped he wouldn’t be found out, he’d caught the late news last night, and though they hadn’t named him, there was speculation all over the place that whoever had tied the teacher up at Twin Oaks had also killed a postman earlier in the year. Stefan vaguely remembered the incident. He hadn’t once thought about it when he was tied up, and it wouldn’t have come to him at all if he hadn’t seen it on the news.
Jesus. Who was that bitch? What did she want? At least she hadn’t killed him like the postman, but she’d sure as hell taken his van, and his mother was all over him about that one!
“You should have told September that the psycho who did this to you took your van!” she’d declared as soon as they were alone.
“I’ll tell her,” he’d snarled back. “It’s just so fucking humiliating.”
“Language, Stefan,” she’d responded, to which he’d started hysterically laughing and couldn’t stop.
Amy Lazenby adjusted her glasses and said, “When I got here yesterday morning, the Laurelton police told me that a man was drugged and tied to one of our basketball hoops. Later, a detective called and said it was you.”
September! Goddamned do-gooder! “I was sick,” he defended himself. “After being left there all night . . .” The catch in his voice was very real.
“Do you think you should be here today?” she asked.
“Maybe not.” He grabbed onto the thought as if it were a lifeline. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be home, locked in his room.
“I’ve already taken a number of calls from newspeople. This is a media storm, Stefan, and I’d like to contain it as much as possible.”
Stefan made an inadvertent sound of fear.
“Are you all right?” she asked, sounding sincere, but he knew better than to trust anyone. They were all on the other side.
No one had mentioned the sign yet, the one he’d been forced to write. But it was coming. The news was already talking about what the postman had around his neck: I MUST PAY FOR WHAT I’VE DONE. It was a goddamned nightmare!
“I feel sick,” he said, his stomach roiling, and then he broke down and started crying. He covered his face with his hands and bent double.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, sounding surprisingly kind, and that got Stefan wailing even more. He nodded behind his hands, and she said, “I’ll get someone to take you.”
He couldn’t make himself drop his hands from his face. He wanted to disappear forever. That bitch. That fucking bitch. He was going to track her down and kill her. How could she do this to him? It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair!
September put a second call in to her brother on her lunch break. She’d left him a message earlier and she’d tried texting him as well. When his voice mail answered again, she clicked off and sent another text: Need some muscle this weekend to help move my stuff to Jake’s. You available?
She was walking back to her desk when her cell phone rang in her hand. “About time,” she said aloud, lifting it up to see who was calling. But the number on the screen wasn’t Auggie’s and there was no name. “Hello,” she answered at the same moment she realized why the number was so familiar: it was Mrs. Ballonni’s.
“Is this . . . the detective who left a message yesterday?” Janet Ballonni asked, slowly picking her words.
“Yes, it is. I’m Detective Rafferty. I was wondering if I could talk to you about your husband.”
“I already talked to that other woman detective. Twice,” she stated flatly.
“I know, but we’re investigating a new angle now. Would it be possible to meet with you and go over the case in person? At your house, or work?”
“I don’t have a job anymore. Company downsized and I got laid off. Life’s a bitch and then you die, right?” she added bitterly. “I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you that I didn’t tell Detective Chubb or that other one.”
“Detective Sandler.”
“Yeah, her.” She sniffed. “I said the same thing to both of them.”
“I understand, but this new angle may help us in discovering who killed your husband. Would it be possible for me to come by today?”
“Oh . . . no . . . not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
She sighed heavily, as if weighing her options, then said grudgingly, “Okay, tomorrow. You can come by the house in the afternoon. I’ve got Pilates in the morning. But make it early,” she added suddenly, as if she’d just thought of something. “Twelve or one. No later.”
“How about one?” September was inwardly jubilant that she’d at least capitulated.
“No later,” she warned again.
“I’ll be there right at one tomorrow.”
Wes was on the phone when she hung up, and he signaled with his hand that he wanted to talk to her. George was staring into his computer. He’d been taxed with calling the houses nearest Foxglove Park and finding out if any of the neighbors had seen anything that would give them a clue into the name of the female victim left in the park.
Wes said, “All right,” and hung up the phone. “Harmak’s name’s out there now. Bound to happen. I talked to Amy Lazenby, the principal, and either it went from there or somebody from the hospital or EMTs, whatever. Not that it’s a secret, but it puts you one step closer to Pauline Kirby.”
“I can handle her. I’ve got a face-to-face with Janet Ballonni tomorrow. Can you go?”
“What time?”
“One.”
“Can you make it earlier? I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.” He lifted his hands and dropped them in frustration.
“She was pretty specific about the afternoon.”
“Okay, well, then it’s George.”
Fat chance, September thought.
They both looked over at Thompkins. As if sensing their perusal, George glanced back at them, frowned, and then turned his attention to his computer screen. Ideally, the detectives investigated cases with their partners, but with all the budget cuts these were not ideal times. No one had assigned partners.
“I’m getting ready to track down your stepbrother and see if I can get anything else out of him,” Wes added.
“Ex-stepbrother,” September said automatically. “I’d go with you if D’Annibal would allow it.”
Wes shook his head. “We’re going to have to pry George out of that chair.”
“Good luck with that.”
Lucky drove Mr. Blue’s van past the two-st
ory daylight basement house where she’d followed Stefan Harmak home several weeks earlier. She circled the neighborhood and then parked down the street, wishing she had wheels that were less distinguishable. Once upon a time, when she’d first begun her mission, she’d appropriated vehicles from Carl’s Hunk o’ Junks near Seaside on a regular basis. But after nearly getting caught, and losing her life strapped to the pyre, she’d simply burrowed in at Mr. Blue’s and accepted his goodwill, which included only the truck for transportation.
She had to make do with what she had.
Easing out of the vehicle, she glanced up and down the tree-lined street. The one advantage was the trees were evergreens, which were mostly overgrown, and the neighborhood didn’t have curbs and sidewalks. It was one of those areas where the yards just meandered into dirt and gravel and then the blacktopped street, and the vegetation screened her progress somewhat as she walked down the road. The disadvantage was she had to walk on the street itself, but there was very little traffic in the middle of the day.
Harmak’s house—where he lived with his mother, she’d learned later—was obscured by a rampant laurel hedge that made approaching it easier. She walked right by it, surreptitiously glancing down the driveway—the only view past the laurels to the house—seeing the way the ground sloped off the back, creating the lower level.
If she could get behind the house, it looked like the laurel hedge did not circle the back. If she came at night, she could approach from the rear, but she would have to move along the edge of one of the neighboring properties.
She walked past the house that lay to the east of Harmak’s and realized there were very few windows on the side of the house closest to Stefan’s. In dark clothes, she could probably sneak down the line of laurels on their side of the hedge and then come up behind Harmak’s.
And then what? she asked herself. Two people lived at the residence. She had no quarrel with Harmak’s mother. Hmm . . .
She took a circuitous route back to Mr. Blue’s truck, climbed behind the wheel and drove away, careful not to go by Harmak’s house again. She purposely wound through the neighborhood until she found where she’d left his van, still undisturbed, and then she headed away.
The first time she’d picked up on Stefan was at the same mall where she’d hit him with the stun gun, immobilized him, and then driven him to the elementary school. She’d been at the mall on a mission for Mr. Blue, picking up various supplies. Normally she made her forays into Seaside or some of the other beach communities, and when she did she wore a lot of makeup—darkening her eyes or covering them with shaded lenses if it was sunny, throwing on lipstick and blush with a heavy hand, making Ani look more like a caricature of herself than the real thing, so that when she went out as herself she would be less easy to identify. But on that particular day she’d gone as herself, Ani Loman, mostly known as Lucky, and had headed east toward Portland, passing by the town of Quarry, feeling the shiver that invariably slid down her back at the remembrance of her near-death experience each time she did, heading into the town of Laurelton. She’d still planned to go all the way to Portland but she’d taken a side trip to the mall.
She’d walked past Harmak and felt that aura, that god-awful sensation, and she’d just kept on walking rather than have him get a look at her. She turned into a dress shop, stopped, then walked to the edge of the door and peered out. Harmak was just turning his face away from her, so maybe his gaze had followed her. She wasn’t sure. But whatever the case, he wasn’t looking at her any longer and she was bound and determined to find out who he was.
She watched him as he wandered the mall, staying far behind in case he should see her, but he never did. She observed him watching the shoppers, the girls that strolled by in flocks. His eyes betrayed him. He liked them young.
When he finally left the mall, she followed after him, watching as he climbed into a white van. Mr. Blue’s truck was not all that far away, so she went to it and climbed inside. She had a pair of binoculars in the glove box and she pulled them out and leaned back and down in her seat until she could watch him with just the two eyes of the binoculars visible, though it was from far enough away and at an angle so that she was fairly certain he couldn’t see her.
An hour went by and then a group of young tweens stepped out of the mall, the girls giggling and laughing and teasing with several boys. They moved through the crowd in a loose pack and Lucky could see the way Harmak’s attention zeroed in, laserlike, on the youngest-looking girl, whose body hadn’t made the leap into womanhood. As they all disappeared together, she also saw the frustration and longing on his face. Something about it made her feel better because she believed he hadn’t acted on his feelings yet.
And she was bound and determined to stop him before he did.
When he drove away, she followed at a distance, all thoughts of shopping for Mr. Blue emptying from her brain. She watched him turn at the laurel hedge and she drove past as he was climbing from his van, which he’d parked in the driveway that ran alongside the house. He glanced her way, but she was pretty sure only the back of the truck was visible to him in the deepening twilight. Nevertheless, she was electrified with the sensation of his lust. It came to her in a pulsating wave.
She immediately began plotting her next move. She’d killed sexual abusers before. Several times. During her recovery at Mr. Blue’s she’d told herself to stop playing with fire, so to speak. It was the only way to stay alive. But she’d disregarded her own advice almost immediately after she was well. She’d moved to Portland for a time, eventually making her way into the protection of Rick Wiis, a businessman who modeled himself after Hugh Hefner and offered employment to young women who might or might not be escorts, and might or might not be Rick’s girlfriend du jour. Lucky had thought she could use Rick’s place as a base, but she’d quickly learned that wasn’t going to work. In his employ she was constantly put on parade under men’s lustful stares and she didn’t do well with that. Since there was no way she was about to entertain any of the men who roamed Rick’s bar and back rooms looking for sex—even if she’d been able to, there was the problem of explaining the burned and scarred flesh on her back—her time at Rick’s was short-lived and unlamented.
Besides, the sad and lonely losers who hung out there were not the pedophiles she sought. She left Rick’s employ and returned to Mr. Blue’s. It wasn’t as handy a place to launch from, but Mr. Blue didn’t ask questions and he had no expectations. It felt, for Lucky, as close to a home as she’d ever had.
Picking up Harmak was almost too easy. He’d been at that point of slipping into the dark side, and he was tired of waiting. She’d followed him home and then she’d followed him to work. Learning he was employed at Twin Oaks Elementary had stepped up her game. If he touched one hair on one of those children’s heads she would kill him with her bare hands and screw the consequences.
From the early days when she’d nearly gotten herself killed taking out sick scum like Harmak, she’d learned to try and make their deaths look like suicides, if she could, inexplicable homicides if she couldn’t. When she ran across Christopher Ballonni, the mailman with the searing eyes as he looked at any of the little girls along his mail route, she’d thought long and hard what she wanted to do with him. She’d run across him at the post office. She’d been walking back to the truck after picking up some packages for Mr. Blue—she never asked what—and Ballonni had whipped by in his mail truck. She was immediately enveloped in the stench of his intentions. She’d gazed at him hard and he must have felt the weight of her stare because he turned and narrowed his eyes on her before wheeling out of the parking lot.
She went back to Mr. Blue’s and plotted what to do. The stun gun was his and she diffidently asked if she could borrow it. He nodded and said, “It leaves marks,” and so she’d changed her mind, borrowing a .38 from Mr. Blue’s cache of firearms. She’d picked out the cardboard for the sign, tied some twine to it so that it could loop around his neck, tucked a felt pen
in her pocket, then wiped everything down so there were no fingerprints. She bought some zip-ties and thrust them in another pocket.
Then she made her concoction laced with roofies and put it in a thermos.
It was as cold as Ballonni’s dark soul and she was wrapped in a long black coat, wearing a fedora-type hat, sunglasses, and thin, flexible leather gloves. She timed it so she had the sign under her arm, the thermos in her hand, the gun in her pocket, and was walking across the parking lot just as he was finishing his route. As she approached, he glanced up. She smiled and, not immediately recognizing her for the threat she was, he smiled back, waiting to find out what she wanted. Even though it was freezing cold, she wore nothing under the coat and she flashed him as he was opening his driver’s door, letting him get a good hard look at her body. She had too many curves to be his cup of tea, but it shocked him enough that she was allowed to draw close and press the muzzle of a gun under his ribs. “Get in,” she whispered, reaching down and grabbing his flaccid cock through his pants.
“I don’t—”
“Get the fuck in the car or I will shoot you dead right here.”
He protested some more, but, with his eyes on the .38, he complied, scooting across to the passenger seat at her insistence. At gunpoint she drove him to a nearby park where, because of the frigid February weather, no one was around. It was a far riskier move than with Harmak; she could have been seen by other employees, Ballonni could have tried to overpower her, anything could have happened.
But all Ballonni wanted to do was protest his innocence. She had the wrong guy. He was a husband, a father. A good guy. She pretended to listen while she pressed the barrel of the gun against his temple and picked up the sign from where she’d dropped it behind the seat.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the felt pen, handed it to him, and ordered, “Write this: I MUST PAY FOR WHAT I’VE DONE.”
His blustering escalated and she put the index finger of her free hand against his lips. Gradually, he wound down and then he recognized her as the woman he’d seen earlier.