by Tami Hoag
But even knowing the logical explanation, she couldn’t shake the feelings. She couldn’t stop seeing the baby. What deep psychological twist did that represent? That somehow Casey’s tragedy had given birth to something within her?
She had pursued the Penny Gray case in part because of Casey. Maybe somewhere in the back of her mind she had imagined her coverage of that case propelling her forward in her career.
Or it was just a creepy dream conjured up by a damaged, tormented, overtired brain fueled by meatball ricotta pizza.
She wished she could have accepted the last explanation. Guilt wouldn’t allow it. The guilt that came from having pushed Casey’s story to the far reaches of her memory. If Casey had been her inspiration to pursue her career in journalism, then Casey’s story should have remained important to her.
Dana looked up at the photographs on the shelves behind her again, the emotions attached to those images stirring inside her: delight, silliness, love—each facet of happiness that comprised the simple joy of youth. The emotions prompted her memories of those times like sparks firing a long-dormant engine.
She had spent the better part of a year just trying to remain in the present, to survive and fight to drag her broken self forward from zero. She hadn’t chosen to forget Casey or their friendship or the tragedy that had taken her friend from her. She had set those things aside out of necessity to focus on rebuilding herself. But those memories were pieces of the puzzle, too, and the time had come to get them back.
Taking a deep breath and letting it go, she reached out and turned on the computer.
* * *
“DID YOU SLEEP WELL, sweetheart?”
“Sure,” Dana mumbled as she shuffled into the kitchen.
She was still wearing the clothes she had gone to bed in. They were wrinkled and damp with sweat. She had pulled her hood up and hid herself as deeply as possible within the tunnel, trying to keep the dark circles beneath the bloodshot eyes hidden from her mother’s eagle eye.
She had started nodding off at her desk around five and had grudgingly curled up on the bed and pulled herself into a tight little ball around a pillow clutched for security. Sleep had come in torturous fits and starts, a few minutes at a time, never deeper than just below the surface. Her heightened sense of danger never allowed her the luxury of a deep, restful slumber. On constant alert, that part of her brain was convinced she had to be able to wake and bolt and run for her life in a matter of seconds.
That same paranoia prevented her from taking the sleeping pills Dr. Dewar had prescribed. Even though she knew in her logical mind that she was safe behind locked doors, the primal instincts were too strong to override. When she was in that state of hypervigilance, she couldn’t help thinking, what if she took the pill and fell asleep and couldn’t wake up? What if she couldn’t wake and escape a physical threat? What if she couldn’t wake and escape the horror of her nightmares?
At Weidman she had learned all kinds of tips and strategies to help her relax and sleep. None of them quite translated to real life once the fear had dug its hooks in. The trick was to implement the strategies before the panic set in, but they never seemed necessary until after the panic set in.
Keeping her head down, she slid into a chair at the big table. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her like a pair of heat-seeking missiles.
“I made that egg casserole you used to like,” Lynda said. She brought the pan to the table and dished a scoop onto the plate in front of Dana. “Don’t forget you have your first appointment with Dr. Burnette today.”
Which meant she would have to take a shower and find something to wear that she hadn’t slept in or on or thrown on the floor for the cat to make into a nest. The prospect was daunting on no sleep. She found her thoughts paralyzed at the decision of where to start, what to do first. Would she remember how to run her shower? Could she manage it without flooding the entire lower level of the house?
And, provided she surmounted the obstacles of getting ready and actually made it to the appointment, what would this new doctor know about her? What would she expect? What did Dana want her to know? What should she be willing to share? Would she be able to trust this woman? What if she didn’t like her? What if they didn’t like each other?
The questions swirled around like angry bees inside her sleep-deprived, fuzzy mind.
At least the doctor was a woman. She seized on that thought, cutting a look at Roger. He sat at the far end of the table, ignoring her, his interest absorbed in a newspaper. He was probably still angry with her for what she’d said at dinner. He had a capacity for sulking that usually prompted her mother to fuss around him like a nervous toy dog. Before Dana would have tried to distract him with some happy chatter. After Dana had no interest in pandering to him.
“Eat your eggs before they get cold,” her mother said, taking her seat at the near end of the table.
Dana picked at the food, sniffing at a forkful, tasting the tiniest experimental bite.
The television on the wall opposite the table was tuned to the local morning news, a network affiliate out of Louisville. The male/female anchor team had shared the news desk for years with a pleasant, easy, back-and-forth style. Dana had grown up watching them and found something comforting in seeing them again, like seeing old friends. She checked the clock and used the remote to up the volume. Top of the hour. Hard news would lead.
The male anchor began with a serious expression. “And in Shelby Mills, Indiana, last night, a nineteen-year-old female was reportedly attacked and sexually assaulted while walking home from her job as a waitress at the Grindstone Café and truck stop. The victim, whose name is currently being withheld—”
Lynda grabbed the remote and hit the mute button. “We don’t need to hear about that,” she declared, scowling.
“It’s news,” Dana said.
“It’s bad news. I don’t want to hear bad news.”
“Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t stop it being true.”
Roger snapped his newspaper and peered over the top. “Don’t you think your mother has had to deal with enough?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you could start the day without arguing with her.”
“We aren’t arguing,” Lynda said. “Can we just have breakfast?”
“A girl was raped last night,” Dana said, staring at her stepfather. “We’re supposed to pretend that didn’t happen?”
“We don’t have to talk about it over our eggs,” he said.
“Is that what you said when it happened to me?” Dana asked. “I guess I owe you an apology for being so inconvenient and inappropriate as to be a victim of a violent crime.”
Her mother sighed. “Dana . . .”
Roger’s face darkened with anger, but he wouldn’t quite look at her. He never did. He couldn’t deal with her disfigurement. That was why he hadn’t come to see her more than he had to during her recovery despite the fact that he was in Indianapolis all the time.
It hurt her more than she wanted to admit, and in that moment Dana felt an acute and painful longing for her father. The ghost of the little girl in her owned the certainty that Daddy would have somehow still found her to be the most beautiful girl in the world, scars and all.
Roger folded his newspaper and set it aside, pushing back from the table. “I have to go. I have a meeting with Wesley.”
“God,” Dana said as he left the room, “he doesn’t even bother to deny it.”
“That’s not fair,” her mother said.
“Not fair to who?”
“Roger has taken a very hard line on crime, and he’s promoting victim advocacy because of what happened to you.”
But was that out of conviction or was it a convenient campaign issue? Dana wondered. His sudden great compassion for crime victims hadn’t been extended to her personally
. Frankie’s criticism of Roger from the night before came back to her now, her assertion that the media scene in the driveway had been good free publicity. Was that what she was to him now? A free ticket to get on the news? Was Roger now meeting with his campaign manager to think of more ways to capitalize on the notoriety of being stepfather to the only living victim of a serial killer?
The idea stung more than she wanted it to.
Appetite gone, Dana turned her attention back to the mute television screen as she picked at her now-cold eggs. They were rolling video of a manager from the Grindstone standing in the parking lot outside the café, frowning grimly as he spoke. The truck stop was located maybe ten minutes away, on the edge of town near the interstate.
Casey had worked part-time at the Grindstone that last summer.
The coincidence gave Dana a chill. The memory of the feeling she had experienced last night while standing at the French doors to her patio came back to her now—the sense that something evil had been lurking in the darkness, staring at her.
Something evil had been lurking. It just hadn’t come for her this time.
She wondered if it had followed her here, if Doc Holiday had been a vehicle, a host, and the evil had passed from him to her. Now she had brought it home with her, and it had gone out into the darkness last night to stalk another victim.
It was a stupid notion, she knew, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that came with it.
She reminded herself that Shelby Mills was a growing community within commuting distance of Louisville, a big city with big-city problems. While her hometown had been a safer place when she was a child, people here locked their doors now and took the keys out of their cars. Guns and drugs were too readily available, and consciences were seemingly in shorter supply than they had been in the last millennium. Burglaries, theft, and drug-related crimes were not uncommon.
But violent crime was still rare enough to be shocking. And to have news of a sexual assault greet her on her first morning home was unnerving. The lack of sleep along with the post-traumatic stress had stirred her paranoia. Then she had spent nearly two hours reading articles about Casey’s disappearance seven years past.
Even seven years ago, the sheriff’s office had not been without suspects in Casey’s disappearance. The making, buying, and selling of methamphetamine had become a huge problem in the area. Rumors had gone around that Casey might have crossed paths with someone in the drug trade. She had known kids who dabbled in it. A classmate of theirs had died because of crystal meth. After that Casey had talked about becoming a counselor for people with addictions.
She might have unknowingly stumbled onto a deal going down or might have simply been spotted by a ruthless opportunist from that world who had seized the moment. The drug world and the world of sex trafficking were bound together like kudzu vines. She could have been taken by one and turned over to the other for profit.
People had wanted to zero in on John Villante as the prime suspect because he was the boyfriend with a bad reputation, but singling him out also answered a simple human need for evil to have a face and a name. If her boyfriend did it, then the evil was contained within Casey’s own circle of acquaintance.
Everyone feared random acts of violence, the bogeyman who struck without reason or warning. The boyfriend was the answer that made people feel safe. Better to blame someone they knew than to think evil could have pulled in off the interstate to strike like a snake and leave. But Dana knew firsthand that happened all the time.
It could have just as easily happened in Shelby Mills that summer Casey Grant went missing as it had in Columbia, Missouri, nearly two years ago when Doc Holiday had abducted Rose Reiser from outside a convenience store when she was en route to college in St. Louis. Her body had been found days later, cast into the snow along a truck route in Minneapolis.
It could have happened again last night to a nineteen-year-old waitress walking home from a late shift at the Grindstone Café. Doc Holiday may have been dead and gone, but Dana knew the world would never run out of men willing to take his place. From the dawn of time to the end of time, the world would never run short of cold, cold hearts.
10
What the hell were you thinking, John? You can’t just drive off in the middle of your shift! What the fuck?”
Tony Tarantino tossed his hands up in the air and turned around in a circle like a man doing a bad folk dance. They stood in the alley behind the restaurant, hemmed into a corridor by the Dumpster on one side and the Tomato Bug on the other. The smell of garlic cooking was already in the air as the kitchen started to prepare for the day’s business.
John stood sideways, trying to minimize the claustrophobic effect of the tight space. Even leaving himself an exit route, he still felt trapped. Across the alley, the welding shop was in full operation; the sounds of the torch and metal on metal skated across his nerves like razor blades. He wanted nothing more than to bolt and run, but he stood his ground and took his boss’s abuse.
Where he had probably once been described as a fireplug, Tony now more resembled the corner mailbox—square and stout with stubby legs and a big mouth. A steady diet of pizza and bread sticks had packed the fat on since his retirement from the Marine Corps. John had seen the photographs of his days in Desert Storm and other global hotspots. He had once been a badass. Now he was just an ass, just another pussy-whipped middle-aged guy with a mortgage and a bitchy wife and a couple of spoiled, ungrateful kids.
“And then we get a call from Senator Mercer’s wife, having a shit fit that we sent you there in the first place,” he went on, red-faced. “Why the hell did you take that delivery?!”
Because that’s my job, John thought, but he didn’t say it. What good would it do him to point out that he had been the only delivery guy available and that it would have been Paula having the shit fit if he had refused to take it? Of course, now he wished he had done just that. Then the bitch could have fired him before he had the chance to embarrass himself and before he had the chance to let Dana Nolan call him a killer and dredge up a thousand memories he didn’t want to have. He could have avoided going on the radar of the Liddell County Sheriff’s Office, courtesy of Tim Carver.
“Roger Mercer is running for office, for Christ’s sake,” Tony ranted on. “He’s a fucking state senator! Do you have any idea how many fucking pizzas we deliver to his campaign office? Or how many we deliver to Mercer-Nolan Landscaping, for that matter?”
“No, sir.”
“More than your fucking weight in fucking gold!”
He huffed and puffed and threw in a “Jesus Christ!” for emphasis.
John just shoved his fists harder into the pockets of his fatigue jacket and hunched his shoulders against the onslaught. He was an old hand at weathering tirades. He’d been riding out his father’s since as long as he could remember. No drill sergeant could dish out what John Villante couldn’t take. The army had been a piece of cake by comparison.
“So am I fired?” he asked quietly, looking down at his boots.
He had already been wondering what he might do next, where he might find someone willing to hire him to do something, anything. Jobs were scarce in general. Scarcer still for him.
Any prospective employer checking his record would find he had a psych discharge from the army. They wouldn’t care what exactly that meant. And if they dug a little deeper, they would find out he had done five months in the brig for assault prior to the psych discharge. No one would want to hear about how he had lost seventeen buddies in two tours of duty—five at once in the incident that had given him his head injury. They wouldn’t want to take the time to understand the depression, the PTSD, the attempts to self-medicate, the doctors’ attempts to overmedicate him. No one would care about the details.
Of the few jobs available to him, there were bosses who would thank him for his military service like good patriots but refuse to hire him for
the very same reason. He was a trained killer just out of the VA hospital with a head injury and a history of psychological problems. How could they risk having him around?
And of the jobs available to him, there weren’t that many he could tolerate. He couldn’t be in the midst of too many people. He couldn’t handle the chaos of multiple conversations going on around him. The noise was magnified and reverberated inside his skull until he thought his head would explode. He couldn’t be surrounded by people, couldn’t have people behind him. They got too close, moved too fast. His instinct to react, to protect himself, was too quick. His self-defense skills honed in army combatives training were too dangerous.
At least working at Anthony’s he was able to come and go, to walk away from the noise. Paula was a cunt, but he could take a small dose of her, then leave. The waitresses ran interference for him as much as possible, bringing his deliveries out to the Tomato Bug so he could avoid her altogether much of the time.
Tony jammed his hands on his hips and huffed and puffed some more. John awaited the verdict, stoic in his resignation. He could already hear his old man gloating.
“Fuck,” Tarantino said, but without the bluster.
John glanced at him without raising his head.
“Paula’s got me by the balls on this, kid,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about that missing girl. That was before we came here. But Paula saw it on the news last night after the Mercer woman gave it to her with both barrels over the phone. She went fucking ballistic on me!”
“I don’t know what happened to Casey Grant,” John said.
Tony held his hands up. “I’m not saying that you do. I’m not saying you did anything to her. I’m sure you didn’t. I think you’re a good kid, John. But this is a small town. Word spreads like a fucking grease fire.” He held his hands up as if framing his new motto. “‘Anthony’s: Killer pizza delivered by a murder suspect.’ I can’t have that.”