by Lisa Ladew
“I don’t know who he is. I think Pam said his name was –” Katerina thought hard, remembering when she was in the bathroom kissing the toilet. “Mr. Smith, yeah, that’s right, it was Mr. Smith.”
West glanced at his watch. “Would Pam still be at work?”
“What time is it?”
“5:45”
“No, the office closes at five.”
“Okay, we’ll have to call her tomorrow and have her pull the records. We need his full name and his phone number or address or whatever she’s got.”
Katerina looked at West gratefully. The way he just… accepted this, was wonderful.
“So is this in the Westwood Harbor Police Department district?” she asked.
“No. This is the district of the Tetam County Sheriff Department.”
“Then why did you call and ask for our police to come?”
“Because I’ve worked with the Sheriff out here before, he’s a real jerk. I didn’t want him to bully you without any other police to witness his actions.”
Katerina swallowed hard. The last thing she needed to deal with right now was an asshole cop.
As she fretted and worried about it, and felt the pull of the woman in the forest, time somehow passed. Eventually, a cop car pulled up behind them. West got out and walked to the officer. Katerina got out also and watched them. They shook hands and then hugged. West spoke quietly to him for several minutes and then brought him over to meet Katerina.
“Katerina, this is my friend Blaise Cornwall. Now that he’s here, I am going to call the Tetam County Sheriff. Do you mind telling him your story?”
Katerina shook her head and West squeezed her arm encouragingly. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured to her and then walked to the ambulance.
Katerina told the story again but she couldn’t read Blaise’s expression. It certainly was not the warm, believing expression that West had displayed.
Before she was even done, another car pulled up behind the police cruiser. It was the lawyer. Katerina had to tell her story all over again. Each time, she felt a little more ridiculous, if that was possible.
As the men discussed what to do and what the Sheriff would do, a 4 x 4 truck painted with police colors and with a light bar on top, approached from the other direction. It stopped in front of the ambulance and officer inside got out. Katerina took a deep breath and tried to prepare herself mentally for him.
“Don’t worry, West said, “that’s not the Sheriff. It’s one of his deputies. He’s not a bad guy.”
Katerina let out the breath she’d been holding, but she couldn’t muster a smile.
Once again, Katerina had to tell her story and then the entire crew headed for the woods, West in front, Katerina lagging behind.
West showed them where the body was and the two police officers circled it, talking. Katerina and the lawyer stayed in the field, Katerina glad she wasn’t alone. The deputy called out another deputy, and had him stand watch at the body.
After they made the trek back to the vehicles, the deputy took Katerina’s statement, and it became clear that he was not going to arrest her, so West’s lawyer left.
As a cool, silent night fell, Katerina sat in the ambulance and watched the police procedures. It had been more than four hours. The deputy from Tetam County had said his sheriff was out of town so he called in a neighboring county’s sheriff, who came in with a team and lights and they set everything up, then began the process of extricating the woman from the woods.
Katerina was glad that nobody had asked her to make the trip back out to the woods again. She watched West talk with the police officers and wondered when they’d be able to get out of there. She just wanted this day to be over.
West broke away from the officers and strode back to her, his cell phone in his hand. “Lieutenant Masterson wants to know if we need meals sent out here,” he asked her, concern on his face.
Katerina tried to force her exhausted brain to think. Hungry? She wasn’t hungry. Would she ever be hungry again?
“No thank you,” she said.
West gave her a smile and turned away, talking into the phone.
When he hung up, he came back to the ambulance and slid into the driver seat. “Lieutenant Masterson wants to know if you need some time off,” he said.
“No!” Katerina responded, shocked. West looked at her strangely and she bit her lip, embarrassed to say that she couldn’t afford to take any time off. Sure, she was making more money now than she ever had in her life, but she wouldn’t see any of it for weeks, and she had bills to pay and food to buy. Plus, she was scared if she took time off after only a few days working with the department, it wouldn’t look good on her record. She didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this job. Well, anything more than bizarrely finding a hidden body on her second day.
“The deputy said we can go,” West told her.
Katerina felt relief course through her. “Oh great,” she said.
West checked his watch again. “Yep, just in time for the end of our shift.”
Katerina tried to laugh but found that it stuck in her throat.
West drove back to Westwood Harbor slowly, silently. Katerina watched out her window, glad for the silence.
Once back at the ambulance bay they quickly did a post-shift restocking, then checked out.
Before she could make a beeline for her car, West stopped in front of her and seemed to struggle with his words. Katerina didn’t think she could stand anything he was going to say. She thought she saw pity and fear in his eyes. She didn’t want to deal with either. She squeezed his arm quickly and thanked him for all his help. Then she ran around him and all the way to her car.
On the way home, staring up at the yellow moon, the images slid back into her mind, taking up their old, familiar place.
A bitter disappointment sliced through her, as slick as any knife. But then she realized that it was only two images competing for space in her thoughts.
The woman with the liquid brown eyes was gone.
Chapter 13
He took the day off work. He couldn’t concentrate anyway. He hadn’t been able to concentrate for three days now. He sat in the parking lot of Ironwood massage, his car out of reach of the eye of the few security cameras, and watched the building. Three days ago, he’d gone in to that building to get a massage and that’s when it had happened. What exactly had happened, he wasn’t sure, but he knew it was nothing good. He’d been laying on the table, drowsing, waiting for his massage therapist to come in and start. It’d been years since he got a massage and he was looking forward to it. When she finally came in everything had seemed normal, but then when she touched him, he’d felt a strange draining sensation that had made him even more tired. His head had felt like it weighed one thousand pounds. It had seemed to him that she drugged him – stuck a needle right in him somewhere and shot something into one of his veins – but he couldn’t seem to care about it. He tried to make himself care about it, because if she was drugging him, she knew. But he couldn’t.
And then she had been out the door. He hadn’t even had the energy to lift his head up and see what was going on. He might even have fallen asleep. But then she’d come back, his energy had returned, and everything had been normal. The massage had been pretty good, nothing to write home about.
But when he’d gone to pay the receptionist, she had apologized. He called the receptionist’s face up in his mind in full detail. She had been cute, and perky, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Just the sight of her had interested him but he had quelled his interest. Westwood Harbor wasn’t his domain.
“I’m so sorry about your first therapist, sir,” she had said.
“First therapist?”
“Yes, she got sick and had to go home,” the receptionist had said, her wide eyes fixed on his. “But we don’t think she’s contagious or anything,” she had added.
He had puzzled over that the entire drive to work. He had tried to remember exactl
y what had happened when he felt so sleepy and drained.
And finally, he decided that he had to talk to this ‘first therapist’. He had to find out what had happened to her. He wanted to know how she had drained him or what she had done to him. Had she taken part of his soul? Had she taken part of his memories or thoughts? He didn’t think he believed in that sort of thing, but he thought he’d better be safe. Because if she had, that would make her very dangerous, and there was only one thing you did with dangerous people. You took care of them. If you were smart and safe. And he was both smart and safe. Safe to a fault, his brother always said.
He watched the building, not quite daring to go in, but not entirely sure what he should be scared of. He didn’t even know what she looked like. But he knew what the cute little receptionist looked like. Damn the agreement he had made. He would take the cute receptionist and find out the other woman’s name and address. And then he would pay her a visit too.
He waited all day but the receptionist didn’t come out for lunch. He didn’t see her until after 5:30. She slipped into a tiny, blue sedan and pulled out of the parking lot, never noticing the car staying three car lengths behind her.
He followed her to a two-story, green apartment building. He had no idea if she had a husband or kids waiting for her, but at this point he didn’t care. He would take care of them all if he had to.
He got out of his car when she got out of her car. When she started up the steps, he hung back for just a moment and then started up the steps behind her. He kept his pace slow, so he didn’t freak her out. As soon as he saw her fit her key in the lock of a door a few feet away from the stairs, he quickened his pace. As she pushed her door open he pushed in right behind her, startling a small squeak out of her, but that was it. As soon as she looked like she was going to scream, he clamped a hand on her mouth.
“No screaming, sweetheart. You scream, you die, understand?”
With the arm he had slung across her chest, he could feel her pulse beating madly in her neck. It excited him. He had a syringe, and he would use it, once she had answered his questions. But he couldn’t chance it before. She wasn’t nodding or trying to signal the affirmative. In fact, she was still struggling in his arms. He squeezed her tighter to him and leaned into her ear closely. “Stop struggling or-.”
He had to stifle his own scream as she bit him on the finger, hard. It felt like she had his entire hand in her mouth and was grinding the fingers to the bone. He pulled his hand backwards and she dropped straight down, pulling herself out of his grip. She ran fast, down the hallway, disappearing from sight.
He swore, and launched himself after her. Was there another exit back here?
At the end of the hallway was what looked like a small bedroom. He saw her disappear inside it. He passed a door on his right without even a glance, his feet pounding hard on the floor.
He burst into the bedroom and saw her immediately on the side of the bed, fishing around in a drawer. Just as he reached her, she turned around and shoved a gun in his face. Without thinking, which was so unlike him, he grabbed the gun and twisted it, wrenching it mercilessly, trying to rip it from her grasp. He watched her finger tighten on the trigger and he wrenched harder, so it wasn’t pointed at him. He flipped the gun all the way around until it pointed at her and as he tried to tear it from her grasp, she tried to hold onto it.
One of them squeezed the trigger and her face disappeared.
“Shit!” He stood, mouth agape, unable to believe what just happened. He hadn’t even got her own name out of her, much less the name of the woman he was looking for.
He prided himself on his ability to think on his feet and he pushed himself to use that ability now. Act, be smart, you can get out of this.
He grabbed part of the bedspread and wiped the gun down with it, then he pressed her fingers back to it again.
Then he turned and strode back down the hall, his body doing the work of his brain.
He stopped for a second at the door, made his face into the proper surprised mask, then opened it slightly. First pulling his sleeve down over his fingers, he found his hand reaching back and locking the knob from the inside. Smart, he told himself, and then rushed out the door. He looked right and left, and saw a man a few doors down, wearing the same look of cautious exploration that he had on.
“Did you hear that?” he yelled at the man. “It sounded like a gunshot!”
“Yeah, where did it come from?” the man yelled back.
“I think it was down there,” he called, pointing, then pounded down the stairs. When he was certain the man wasn’t following him, he got in his car and drove away quickly.
He needed a plan B.
But before he could even start to think of one, he realized that with any luck at all, he wouldn’t need to. The police would now deliver the woman’s name to him. Suddenly, he was eager to go back to work, and he knew he would be able to concentrate just fine.
Chapter 14
Something pulled Katerina from her sleep. She rolled over and looked at the time. 11:30 AM. She had slept through her alarm again. She scrubbed her face with her hands and was glad that she had at least woken up a little bit earlier this time. Did she dare examine her dreams? Did she have a choice? She missed the days when all she had to worry about when she woke up was if she would make rent and where her next meal would come from.
The night before, she had wanted to stay up and think about what had happened that day, but as soon as she got into her apartment, a bone-weary tiredness had dropped upon her, forcing her into her bed, where she fell asleep almost instantly.
A knock sounded on her front door, urgent and loud. Oh, so that’s what had woken her up. She got up and ran down the hallway, pausing to look out her peephole. It was a uniformed police officer. Foreboding flooded through Katerina and she quickly undid her locks.
“Yes?”
“Are you Ginger Holloway?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to come to the police station with me, ma’am,” he said.
Katerina’s heart sped up. “Why?” she stammered.
“I don’t know the specifics, but you need to come.”
“Okay, just let me get dressed.” Katerina ran down the hallway, jumped into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, grabbed her phone, and threw her uniform into a bag. She didn’t know if she would get a chance to come back here later - she didn’t think she was under arrest though. She wondered briefly if someone had decided she was responsible for whatever had happened to that woman after all, and then she pushed the thought away. If she were under arrest, the cop never would have let her go to her room by herself. As she walked slowly back down the hallway to her door, she speed dialed West’s number.
“Hello?”
“West, there’s a police officer here and he says I have to go to the police station.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.” No hesitation, no questions, he was just going to meet her there. Katerina smiled to herself at his… his what, his chivalry? His thoughtfulness? She honestly didn’t know what to think of him but she was grateful for him.
“Can I drive my own car?” she asked the officer.
“Yes, I will follow you.”
Katerina got into her small car and drove the fourteen miles to the police station. On the way there, she tried to assess the state of her mind. The woman with the liquid brown eyes was still gone out of her ever-present picture show, but the other two women were still there. Some of the urgency of the images seemed to have been lost though, with the discovery of the first woman. Maybe because she knew what she was dealing with now? At least she did a little.
With that done, her mind was clear to turn to what was going on now. If her mom hadn’t already been gone, she would’ve been scared for her mother. But she had no one in her life right now. This had to have something to do with what had happened yesterday.
When she arrived at the police station, the officer waited for her to get out of her car, and then le
d her through a side door without a word. She walked, slightly behind him, down the starkly white hallway, and held her breath. How was West going to find her?
Finally, he led her through a pair of double doors and into what could only be an interrogation room. She swallowed and sat down.
He left her there, and she waited, trying to keep her breathing under control.
Finally, the door opened again, and a slim, brown haired man in a suit came in. He sat down across from her and asked, “Are you Ginger Holloway?”
She nodded.
He dropped a sheaf of papers in front of her. She rifled through it and read a few lines. It appeared to be a write-up of the incident that had happened yesterday where the body had been found. She even saw a several-paragraph statement that she had made.
After she had glanced through each paper, he said, “My name is Detective Gagne. I’ve been assigned this case.”
Katerina didn’t respond. She didn’t know that the Westwood Harbor Police Department had made a case. She thought that had been left up to the Sheriff of Tetam County.
He spoke again. “Do you know a Pam Troper?”
Sudden fear sliced through Katerina like a knife. She was afraid she knew where this was going. Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head, mutely. Why hadn’t she called Pam yesterday? Why hadn’t she warned her? This was all her fault.
“You don’t know her?”
“No, I do,” Katerina managed to say. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
The detective looked at her blankly, but Katerina could tell she had said the wrong thing. Her phone buzzed. She ignored it.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“Because I’m here. Because you had someone come to my house and get me. Because Pam worked with me on the day that I had those horrible images come into my mind of all the dead women. He went after her, didn’t he?” Katerina bit back her tears, and tried to hold herself together.
Instead of answering her questions, Detective Gagne asked another question. “When was the last time you saw her?”