Nowhere Safe

by Bush, Nancy

  Chew on that, Lazenby, you old cow.

  He prowled around the house a few more times, making sure everything was in its right place, everything was perfect. Daria’s body was a problem, but there were no windows to the garage and he was going to lock it up tight after he took out the Lexus. It was his now, he figured. She wasn’t going to need it any longer.

  With a rich feeling of ownership heightening his mood, he backed out of the garage and hit the remote, watched the door slowly close, wiping Daria’s remains slowly from view, almost like a magic trick.

  “How to Beat the Recession and Not Let It Beat You!” he crowed.

  Hah!

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  September had barely gotten in to work when George, who’d arrived before her, said, “There’s a detective from the Winslow County Sheriff ’s Department on his way.”

  “Winslow, not Clatsop?” she asked, thinking of the investigation into Hiram Champs.

  “Detective Will Tanninger from Winslow County. I wrote it down.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  As she settled into her desk, Wes arrived. “George says a detective from Winslow County SD is on his way. Have anything to do with you?”

  “Nope,” Wes said.

  “Maybe he wants to meet with the lieutenant,” she posed.

  “D’Annibal’s coming in later,” George said.

  “Whatever,” September said, turning her attention to the day’s work. “Nothing on our vigilante sketch yet?”

  “A few calls came in,” George said without much enthusiasm. “Dispatch sent over the list and I looked it over. I put it on your desk if you and Wes want to check them out. Did you talk to the principal at Twin Oaks?”

  “Yeah. Yesterday,” September said, irked that George seemed to be checking up on her.

  “She called again today. Wants to have some kind of forum at the school. I told her one of us would come,” he said.

  “Which one of us?” September asked.

  He merely lifted his brows and she was pissed all over again. “Fine,” she said, then asked, “Is Maharis still working with us?”

  “He’s got two missing persons now,” George said.

  September felt a twinge of conscience. D’Annibal had asked her to help him with the Gillian Palmiter case, but apart from going to Gulliver’s, she’d left it all to Blake. “I’ll check with him on those.”

  A few minutes later, the door opened into the squad room and a man and a woman walked in. The man was wearing the tan uniform of the Winslow County Sheriff ’s Department but the woman was just in jeans, a black ribbed, turtleneck sweater, and a black jacket.

  September got out of her chair and was in the act of offering her hand for a handshake, when she met the woman’s eyes directly.

  Holy Mother of God . . . !

  She was their vigilante!

  “Who are you?” she asked, her gaze on the woman as the man shook her outstretched hand and introduced himself as Detective Will Tanninger.

  “My name’s Gemma LaPorte,” she said, “and when Will and I saw the news last night, we realized you’re looking for my twin sister, Ani.”

  “What?” September asked.

  “We’ve been looking for her for four years,” Tanninger said.

  The squad room was dead quiet. Both Wes and George were staring at Gemma LaPorte as well.

  “Ani,” September repeated. “Why are you looking for her?”

  Tanninger said, “The same reason you are. Because she has a sixth sense about sexual predators and targets them for death.”

  Seeing the blank looks on their faces, Gemma said, “We need to give you some background.”

  “Yeah.” September looked around. “There’s an interview room down the hall. . . .”

  By the time Lucky pulled herself out of the safe cocoon of her room she figured Ugh had been at school for hours. She hadn’t had the nerve to follow him to Twin Oaks again and make sure. Even the parking lot was off limits now.

  Mr. Blue had been right to ask her to leave. If she were found at his place with that sketch of her all over the news . . . It didn’t bear thinking about. She owed him her life.

  But now her timetable had shrunk. There was no more time left. If she was going to get Ugh she was going to have to do it today.

  With that in mind, she put on her black jogging pants and her baseball cap and placed a money band around her waist, stuffing in the rest of the cash Mr. Blue had given her and her room key. She drew her black V-necked Lycra shirt over her head, hiding the money band, then slipped on her matching black jogging jacket. From a hiding place among her clothes, she rolled out a flat felt case that held four small narrow pieces of metal, a set of homemade lock picks she’d asked Mr. Blue to find for her. She put the felt case in her jacket pocket and zippered it in. Then she grabbed up her wallet, which contained her fake ID, and shoved it along with the other items Mr. Blue had given her into the small backpack she used on her forays. At the car, she added the items from her glove box into the pack along with the placard that she’d had under the seat.

  She would go to his house and wait for him.

  “The first time Ani crossed our radar was when she ran down a man named Edward Letton in her car,” Will Tanninger told them. “Letton was a sexual predator. He had a van equipped with ropes, chains, handcuffs . . . child pornography, and he was in the process of trying to abduct a girl from a soccer field when Ani drove straight at him.”

  “She saved the girl from capture,” Gemma added soberly.

  September absorbed that and asked, “What happened to Letton?”

  “He died from his injuries,” Tanninger answered. “Regardless of her motives, she killed him.”

  “He deserved to die,” Gemma said.

  “She’s your twin,” September said, not wanting to get into that gray area, though she felt very similar to Gemma.

  “I thought it was Gemma behind the wheel,” Tanninger continued. “We didn’t know Ani even existed.”

  “You didn’t know?” September asked Gemma.

  “We were separated. Cleaved apart, actually, as we were conjoined. I’ve done some research in the town of Deception Bay since Ani appeared in my life. Our birth mother was known to all the locals as Mad Maddie. She was a seer, of sorts, and she apparently passed on that ability to both Ani and me. She named us Gemma and Ani for the sign of Gemini. The doctor kept Ani as a kind of payment while our mother slowly lost all touch with reality. I was luckier with my adoptive family.

  “But I didn’t know any of this when Ani began killing. A psychologist would tell you she’s killing the doctor who abused her over and over again.”

  “Letton wasn’t her only victim,” Tanninger said. “But Ani was also being stalked by a killer who thought she was a witch and tied her to a burning funeral pyre. She escaped somehow, then stole a woman’s car from the town of Quarry. That car was found in the ditch on a side road deep in the Coast Range about a week later. There’s been no sign of her since.”

  “Actually, she was handed over the keys to that car by the woman’s developmentally handicapped son,” Gemma said. “I know she has to be stopped, but if there’s any way to save her . . .”

  A long moment passed and then September said, “Some might say she’s doing the world a favor, but our job as members of law enforcement is to keep her from harming anyone else.”

  “You sound like Will,” Gemma said, smiling faintly. “I’ve been thinking about her for years. I just want to be with her again.”

  Wes spoke up. “You know we’ll take every precaution to bring her in unharmed.”

  “Yes,” Tanninger said firmly. “But she is dangerous. She shot my partner and it was touch and go for a while.”

  “Okay,” September said, a little boggled by everything they had laid down.

  Gemma added, “She goes by Lucky. I don’t know why, but that’s what she calls herself.”

  Tanninger put in, “I don’t know what her time
table is, but she may have already targeted someone else.”

  After Tanninger went into the specifics of the cases Ani had been involved in four years earlier September asked, “How does she find her targets? I mean, choose one specifically.”

  “No easy answer to that,” Tanninger said, looking to Gemma.

  Gemma said, “You won’t believe me. I can tell already, but that’s fine. There is no explanation other than she just knows. It’s a kind of precognition. I have something like it, too, but it doesn’t work the same way.”

  September stared straight at her, afraid that if she turned even the slightest toward Wes or George that she would hit them with a “can you believe this?” look.

  Instead, she again went over the facts of the cases that Ani had been involved in four years before, keeping things on a level that made sense. Wes and George both asked questions, too, but in the end they didn’t know much more about Ani’s methodology than when they’d started.

  As they rose from the chairs, Tanninger said, “I want to be kept in the loop.”

  “Of course,” September told him, shaking his hand and Gemma’s once again. Wes and George echoed her sentiment. Knowing Tanninger was from Winslow County, she almost told him that she’d had some dealings earlier in the year with one of the deputies from his office, Danny Dalton, but decided against it. She hadn’t thought much of Dalton and Gretchen had considered him a complete moron.

  It was gratifying to realize that in Will Tanninger, the county had someone who appeared more than capable.

  After they walked Will and Gemma back through the squad room and the door closed behind them, September exhaled heavily and looked at Wes and George. “Well,” she said.

  “Yes, ‘well,’” Wes said.

  “Do you believe that shit?” George sank into his chair and it squeaked familiarly beneath his weight. “At least we know her name.”

  “Two names,” September reminded him. “She goes by Lucky.”

  “All right—Lucky,” George said. “How does that help us catch her?”

  “Is she setting someone up?” Wes asked. “There was quite a bit of time between Ballonni and Harmak.”

  “Let’s forget all the woo-woo and get down to basics,” September said. “Someone will have seen her.” She picked up the list George had left on her desk and saw the note that he’d scratched about Principal Lazenby’s request. “Let’s start calling and see what we come up with.”

  Wes reached over and took the list from her hand. “Won’t take long to get through these.”

  “Go ahead and do it. I’ll call Amy Lazenby back and see what I can do for her,” she said dryly, shooting George a look.

  He lifted his hands. “She asked for you. So sue me.”

  When Lucky got to the end of Ugh’s drive she found a spot on the street in her usual area. Drawing a deep breath, she climbed out of her car, slipping the small backpack over one shoulder. A man drove by in a car and gave her a wave, freezing her where she stood. Then she realized he’d recognized her from all the time she’d spent recently on this street. The houses were spaced far apart and back from the road so he’d probably seen her jogging, maybe even thought she lived on the street.

  But if someone got a good look at her, and put two and two together . . . ?

  This is your last time, Ani.

  She took a hard look around. Should she sneak up through the neighbor’s yard and scale the chain-link fence again, or should she boldly march up the driveway? Ugh should be at school and his roommate was still gone, as far as she knew. In the light of day, trespassing on the neighbor’s property didn’t feel safe anymore, but then, ever since she’d seen her face on television, nowhere felt safe.

  Her own indecision disgusted her. In the end, she walked up the driveway, cautiously coming around the bend that opened up to the front of the house.

  Ugh’s station wagon was still parked in front and the garage door was down. He must’ve taken the Lexus to school.

  She breathed easier. The girlfriend must still be gone if he was driving her car. If all went well, with her skill set, she should be able to break in to the house and lie in wait for him. With that plan in mind, she cautiously moved into the breezeway, taking a look at the back doorknob. She tested it, just to be sure it was locked, and then pulled out her picks, placing two into the tiny hole of the lock, listening for the sounds that meant she’d tripped the tumblers. She wasn’t as adept as she’d once been and it took long minutes before she gained ingress. When the lock popped, she quickly slipped the picks back to her zippered pocket, then moved stealthily through a small room that entered into the kitchen.

  The place smelled of disinfectant. Checking the sink, she saw traces of cleanser in the basin. She opened the cupboard beneath and plucked out a green can of Comet. The outside was slippery and damp. Was the roommate back after all? she wondered. Ugh just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would go into full-on cleaning unless he had a really good reason.

  Worried about the girlfriend, she did a careful reconnoiter of the house but found no sign of anyone. She was alone. But there were more signs of cleaning. The master bath had a woman’s toiletries all shoved together in a tight circle on the counter. No one had used them recently.

  What was he cleaning up?

  Back in the kitchen, she unzipped her backpack, the small ripping noise sounding like a cacophony in the tomblike silence of the house. She grimaced, listening hard, even though she knew she was alone. The loudest noise was her own thundering heart.

  As a final precaution, she slipped back across the breezeway and turned the knob on the garage, finding it locked as well. Once more she plied her picks to the lock and this one took even longer to open. If she survived this, she was definitely going to have to work on her breaking in skills.

  Opening the door, she was relieved to see that it was as she had suspected: no Lexus.

  But there was a rolled up tarp on the floor.

  Oh, God. Was that a body?

  Had he killed someone?

  Lucky tiptoed across the floor and stared down at the tarp a long moment before placing her hands on it and slowly unrolling it. It was a body. She could tell by the feel.

  Mouth dry, she unfurled it until a woman’s body lolled out, eyes open to a vacant view. Her frosted hair drenched in blood.

  She had to fight a scream. He’d killed the roommate.

  With extreme care, she rolled the woman back into the tarp, hoping it looked undisturbed. Ugh had grown even more bold, more dangerous. Carefully relocking the garage and returning to the house, she glanced around the kitchen, her eye falling on the coffee maker. He liked strong coffee. He’d told her that.

  Flipping open the top, she saw it was already set to make another pot. With determination she pulled out the stainless steel carafe and slipped the contents of one of her plastic bags inside.

  Then, grabbing up her backpack, she looked around for a good hiding place, settling on the second bedroom closet.

  At three o’clock, September grabbed her coat and messenger bag and said she was on her way to Twin Oaks.

  “You should send Maharis or another uniform,” George said.

  “Seems she wants me. Besides, Maharis is out canvassing bars, looking for someone who remembers the older man who hit on Jilly. I’m good with it.”

  Actually, she was frustrated that they weren’t getting any further traction on the investigation. The phone calls she and Wes had returned didn’t seem to be going anywhere. To a one the call-ins had been people looking for more information than offering it. She already felt like she’d dropped the ball with Maharis. She wasn’t going to fob some new task off on him.

  As she pulled into the Twin Oaks parking lot she ran into a blockade of parents picking up their kids. A line of cars snaked around the building. She sensed this was not the norm. With everything that had gone on the last week, the parents were being proactive in transporting their children safely back and forth to school.
<
br />   Amy Lazenby was already standing in the hall outside the front offices when September walked in. “Thank you for coming, Detective. We’re meeting in the gym. There are a lot of people with a lot of questions.”

  “Lead the way.”

  As they entered the room, September noted that only a smattering of chairs were taken, but within ten minutes it was standing room only. She looked out at the faces and waited as Lazenby addressed them all, introduced her, and then went straight to a Q & A. Parents peppered September with questions, most of which she couldn’t answer. They already knew most of what she did from the news: Stefan had been killed by a gunshot wound. A woman was involved. The same woman who they believed had tied him to the pole days before. The same woman suspected in the murder of Christopher Ballonni.

  About Claudia Livesay, she had even less information. “We’ve been gathering evidence on her disappearance, talking to family, friends, neighbors, anyone who might offer up a clue,” she assured them.

  “But you think it’s foul play?” one earnest man asked.

  “It’s too early to say.”

  A woman raised her hand. “I’m a friend of Claudia’s. I spoke to an officer and told him that she would never just leave Molly. Never.”

  There was a murmur of agreement. September really wished she had more solid information, but it was too soon. The tech team had gone through Claudia’s house but the results weren’t in yet.

  After another twenty minutes the meeting broke up. September was introduced personally to some of the faculty and staff. One woman came up to her and said, “I’m Bette Pearce. I teach sixth grade. I’ve talked to Claudia many times as her daughter, Molly, is in my home room. Graham knows her, too. . . .” She indicated a man who was hanging back, talking to another teacher who’d introduced himself to September earlier as Evan Tarker. “He has Molly for sixth period. No one’s interviewed any of us yet.”