by Nancy Bush
They thought about it for a while, then Liv said, “I think I’m ready to go get my car.”
He looked at her. “And . . . bring it back here?”
“If that’s okay.”
“More than okay.”
She nodded.
“So, we’re okay, then?” he questioned cautiously. “We’re past that?”
“That, being your deception?” she asked.
“Yeah. That.”
She smiled faintly. “Let’s go get my car.”
“All right. I’ll even buy you breakfast.”
“Make it lunch. I want to go to my apartment first.”
They drove into her apartment complex and Liv pointed to her parking spot, feeling like a stranger at this place though it had really only been days since she’d left. She spent as little time as possible inside her unit, glad to have Auggie by her side. She glanced at her unplugged phone and answering machine. Nothing about it felt like home.
As soon as they were finished, Liv followed him back to his house in her Accord, parking next to him in the two-vehicle carport. This felt more like coming home, but she warned herself not to assume too much. Then they climbed into the department Jeep and headed to a bistro in downtown Portland.
“It almost feels normal,” Liv said. “Or, at least what I think normal must feel like.”
“Being together?”
“Being . . . aware that this nightmare might be over.” She slid him a look. “And being together.”
“You don’t have to humor me.”
“I’m not.”
It was more of an admission of her feelings than she’d allowed to date, and he appreciated it. “We’ve got him, Liv. It’s just a matter of time before he cracks.”
“I hope so.”
They finished up lunch, then went back to the house. Auggie placed a number of calls to Trey Curtis and his sister, then Curtis again, while Liv curled into the living room recliner and closed her eyes. Sometime later, she sensed Auggie come over and look down at her. “I’m gonna talk to Navarone again,” he told her. “I’m tired of waiting for crumbs of information.”
She wanted to say, take me with you, but forced the words back.
“Stay put,” he said, giving her a light kiss. Then a little harder one, until Liv was clinging to him and it was a while later that he disengaged himself. “Lock the doors,” he said, digging in his pockets for his keys.
From the window, she watched him climb into the Jeep and back out of the drive, leaving her car alone in the carport. He’d been gone about ten minutes when she wandered into the kitchen and saw his cell phone lying on the kitchen counter where he’d set it before coming into the living room.
She snatched it up and stuck it in her pocket. Good. It gave her a reason to go after him to the Portland Police Department. Grabbing her backpack, she dug around for her keys, then headed out to the car through the front door, testing to make sure it was locked behind her. Hurrying down the walk, she crossed the carport toward the driver’s door, hitting the remote as she neared it.
Movement in the corner of her left eye. She half-turned. Something slammed into her head and she went to her knees, crying out. Jean-clad legs swam into her line of vision.
“Wha—?”
She was hit again. A large piece of wood. Vaguely she heard an engine and then sometime later—minutes? Hours—that engine sound was right by her ear.
And then she was on her back, being dragged. The last thing she saw before she went out cold was GMC in large letters across the back of a gray truck.
Chapter 24
He was only ten minutes out when he glanced down for his cell phone and realized he didn’t have it. He almost went on anyway. He didn’t know what the hell Navarone was up to, and he wanted to see for himself.
But no cell phone was simply a bad idea.
Muttering to himself, he turned the Jeep around and went back to his duplex, pulling into the drive next to Liv’s Accord. The sight of it brought a smile to his lips. Things were working out.
He unlocked the front door, expecting her to meet him like she had the night before but he made it all the way inside with no sign of her. “Liv?” he called loudly as he walked toward the kitchen. “I forgot my phone.”
He stood in the kitchen and looked at the empty space on the counter where he remembered setting the cell down. Realizing she must have taken it upstairs, he took the steps two at a time, saying, “I’m tellin’ ya. You’re gonna have to get yourself a cell phone. Especially if you keep stealing mine.”
There was no one in the master bedroom. No one in the bathroom. No one in the spare bedroom.
Auggie went back to the kitchen then stood perfectly still for the space of five heartbeats, his mind racing. She was gone. But where? Her car was sitting outside and all her things were here. Except where was her backpack?
It’s not Navarone, his gut told him. Then, He’s got her.
No.
He raced back outside, suddenly galvanized into action. The ground was too hard and dry for tire tracks; he could see nothing. But then his eye caught something that didn’t look right. A piece of fir bark and a disturbed place in the gravel.
And now that he was oriented, he could see where something had been dragged to the edge of the gravel drive and the edge of his lawn was smashed down from a vehicle’s tire.
Panic swept through him. He had her! He had Liv. They’d been wrong!
But who? How?
Who could he call?
Hague.
He had no phone. Liv had his phone.
He leapt into the Jeep and burned out of the drive, racing toward the Laurelton PD. Half of him wanted to stop and demand to use some neighbor’s phone, or a grocery store, but the other half knew he needed to get to the station and trace the GPS on his cell.
Liv woke up slowly. She was lying on rough-hewn boards. Her head was foggy and she sensed the concussion she’d been spared earlier was in full bloom. Her shoulders ached, and she realized her hands were tied behind her back. She tried to muster up the strength to fight but couldn’t do it. The heat was overwhelming and the putrid odor surrounding her sent her into a gag reflex she did her best to quell. She could hear him rustling around somewhere outside of her line of vision, and she couldn’t have him come back. Not yet. Not till she was stronger.
Where am I?
She opened her eyes to slits and saw she was in some kind of small outbuilding.
There were landscaping tools. And pieces of wood. And that odor! God! Like something dead.
And then she saw the leg, sticking out from under a tarp. Wearing a woman’s shoe.
She bit down on her tongue and drew blood, holding back the scream as her mind closed down and darkness descended again.
September was avoiding Pauline Kirby’s second call by taking a short drive out of the station. She’d stopped at Starbucks and gotten a soy Chai Tea Latte and was pulling into the lot when one of the department Jeeps squealed in behind her and stopped.
“Hey,” she said, climbing from her car, when she saw Auggie slam out of the Jeep and run the three spaces it took to reach her.
“He’s got her. He’s got Liv. I need to track my cell phone. She’s got it with her. Goddammit, Nine. Stop staring and give me your phone!”
“Who’s got her? Did Navarone get released?”
“No. Come on.” He grabbed her arm and hustled her into the station with him. “I need to get a ping off a cell tower and locate that phone.”
“Okay, okay. You sure someone’s got her?”
“Yes.”
They went down the hall to Querry’s office, the department’s tech whiz, who asked for Auggie’s phone number, zeroed in on it in a matter of minutes, and gave them the coordinates, adding, “It’s not moving right now.”
“That’s west on Highway 26,” Auggie said.
“Toward the coast?” September suggested.
“Give me your phone,” he said to September.
> She handed it over and said, “I’ll come with you.”
“No, stay here. I need you to get me Hague Dugan’s number. Probably unlisted.”
“I can get another phone.”
But he was already running for the door.
Laurelton was on the western edge of the metropolis considered Greater Portland. About seventy miles due west was the Pacific Ocean. Auggie’s cell was located in the weeds of a ditch about ten miles outside of Laurelton and just before the eastern foothills of the Coast Range.
He found it fast. Faster than he’d expected. It was just right there. He picked it up and stared at it helplessly.
September’s phone rang and she said, “Okay, commit this to memory,” and then she rattled off a series of numbers and said, “Hague Dugan.”
“Say them again,” he said, feeling dull. Fear was squeezing him like a vice.
September repeated the digits, then said, “You need help. What do you need?”
“I’ll call you.”
The second time Liv came to she found herself tied to a chair, much like she’d tied Auggie. The kidnapper behind her, his breath ruffling her hair. Gooseflesh rose on her skin and she feigned more sleep. She needed time. Time.
Auggie, she thought in anguish as her mind worried at her predicament.
The shoe . . . the dead woman’s shoe . . . she’d seen that shoe somewhere recently, hadn’t she? Not Angela Navarone and her Ferragamos . . . somewhere else . . . in an apartment?
The phone.
It was in her pocket. If she could just get her fingers free!
But then she glanced down at her jeans and saw the pocket was flat.
A faint cry of disappointment issued from her throat and it alerted him that she was awake. He came around to stand in front of her, about five feet away. Liv braced herself but he wore a hoodie that obscured his face and jeans and sneakers. Yet . . .
He was very familiar. Then he removed the hood and she stared into the face of her own father, Albert Dugan. She blinked once, to see if she was dreaming, and yet felt a strange sense of inevitability and understanding. He was the bogeyman. So close . . . so very close.
He smiled and said softly, “Lovely Livvie.”
And she said, “Lorinda wore those shoes to Hague’s.”
Auggie was halfway back to Hague’s place. He’d called and called and called with no response. He’d gotten Albert and Lorinda’s number from September as well, but no one answered there either. Hague had to be there. He never left. Unless he was at the cantina . . . Rosa’s Cantina . . .
He grabbed up the cell to call September again when it rang in his hand. “Rafferty,” he bit out.
“Detective . . .”
“Hague?” Auggie asked quickly. “Are you there?”
“You’ve been calling.”
There was no time for preliminaries. “Someone has Liv! Someone took her, and it’s not Navarone! Who is it? Do you know? Do you?”
“You’re looking too far . . . he killed those women . . .”
“The strangler? Who is he?”
“Out of the corner of my eye . . . I always knew . . .” He was fading out.
“I’m almost at your place, Hague. Five minutes. Stay with me. I need to know who it is.”
“My father,” he said, then the connection ended.
Liv’s mind raced. Her father. Her adoptive father. The only father she’d ever known. “You gunned those people down at Zuma,” she said. “You killed Aaron and Jessica and Paul . . . and Trask . . .”
“You made me,” he said. “Waving that package around, saying you were going to investigate. Showing it to your neighbor. I saw! I saw! You stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.” He kept right on smiling.
She realized she’d never seen him smile before. Not a real smile ever. And this one was downright blood-chilling.
“You killed Lorinda. Your wife.”
“She should have left it alone. She left it alone for a lot of years, but then she didn’t.”
The phone call. Lorinda had wanted Liv to call her back. Something about her father and Hague and Liv. Lorinda had been frightened, frightened of her husband.
Then Dr. Yancy’s voice slipped into her head. “You saw something that you’re repressing.”
And then the memory came so easily. That little piece that had been floating around in her subconscious, bumping along the wall of her fear.
“I saw you,” she said. “Out in the field. You were . . .”
Masturbating.
The night of her birthday. A piece she hadn’t wanted to remember. The piece Dr. Yancy had tried to elicit from her subconscious.
Liv had said she’d stayed in the den the whole time, but that was a fallacy. A lie she’d told herself. No . . . she’d walked out the back door and seen her father in the dim square of light from the kitchen window, his hands working in a manner she hadn’t quite understood at the time, his gaze zeroed to the place where her mother stood.
“You killed Mama, too,” she said, surprised at how conversational her voice sounded. A little father-daughter chat.
“You told her that you saw me outside. You told her what you saw,” he said. “And you know what she did? She accused me of killing those whores. She was going to go to the police. Stupid little Livvie. You told, and so I had to kill her. Your fault, little girl.”
She stared at him. His face was the same, but it seemed unrecognizable. He was totally nuts, she realized. “I’m not to blame for any of this.”
A spasm crossed his face and he rubbed his temples. “You think it’s my fault? Your mother was a whore! She was having an affair with that hoity-toity Navarone. She was done with me, her own husband, and I wanted to kill her. I thought about it, but I would have let her live. I still wanted her even though she wouldn’t share a bed with me. We were sleeping apart. So, I found other women to fuck, but I always thought about her . . . and then . . . you . . .”
She swallowed. Had to keep him talking. Had to. “Why Sylvia Parmiter?”
“You know about her? Of course you do,” he snarled. “All your investigating!” He shook his head angrily and said, “Sylvia saw some scratches on my arm. Deb was having one of her fucking barbeques so she could get her lover over. She was panting for Navarone all the time! Sylvia stepped into the bathroom when I was at the sink, washing my face, cooling off. I’d shoved up my sleeves and she saw the scratches. Stupid bitch didn’t get it immediately, but I knew she would. I had to stop her, so when Don was out one night I dragged her from her bed and put my hands around her throat . . . and pressed . . .”
He was breathing hard, getting an erection. Liv watched him start to reach for himself, her memories dancing, pinpoints behind her eyes.
They keep their hands in their pockets . . . wear rigor smiles . . .
Liv had thought he’d been referring to the doctor—Navarone—but maybe he’d seen something about Albert, too.
But he was just a baby!
It could have been later. After their mother’s death. Maybe he’d seen something that scared him, though he didn’t know what it was. Sensed, like she had, that their father was the killer, but neither of their unformed, child minds could process the information correctly.
“Mama sent the package to the lawyers,” Liv said, dragging her gaze away from him.
“Bitch!” His eyes flew open and his erection failed. “A safety precaution against me!”
“It didn’t implicate you,” Liv said, playing for time.
“That’s only because you’re stupid. You and your brother. You thought it was Navarone.”
“Did you kill Glenda?”
“Who?”
“Glenda Navarone Tripp?”
“Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” His hot gaze touched on her breasts, which were thrust forward as her arms were pulled back.
Desperately, Liv said, “You were fighting with Mama on my birthday. You hit her.”
“She deserved it.” He moved f
orward and reached out a hand. She felt bile move up her throat, but instead of touching her breast, the fingers of his right hand slid around her nape and then forward, until his thumb fit inside the well at the base of her throat.
“What were you fighting about?” Liv asked.
“She suspected about Sylvia . . . I had to hit her. She said she was leaving me for Navarone.”
I’m done, Mama had told Liv.
And that’s when Liv had gone through the back door and seen what she’d seen, not understanding, burying the memory except for the bad feeling that haunted her soul.
“I watched her often. Through the window. From the field. I only really wanted her . . . then . . .” he said in that ultrasoft voice that sounded more menacing with each syllable. “But that night was the last. She even told you she was done. That’s when I knew I had to finish it. I went back in after she sent you away. I wanted to caress her.” His hand squeezed Liv’s throat. “But I had to do it differently, or even those morons at the Rock Springs police would have found me. So I hung her.” His hand squeezed harder, his breath raspy. “I wanted to touch her, but I couldn’t.” His other hand joined the first in a circle around the base of Liv’s neck. Liv’s heart was jumping wildly in her chest. He’d come back in the kitchen, knocked her mother senseless, then hanged her. If either Liv, or Hague, had gone back to the kitchen at that time and caught him, they would have been killed as well.
“You hit me with your truck,” Liv said, desperately trying to keep the conversation going. “You ran me off the road.”
“The truck isn’t registered to me. Lorinda found it. She asked too many questions . . . and now this is the last time I can use it, because you damaged it!”
Liv surfaced briefly from her paralyzing fear. “You hit me.”
He yanked his hands back from her throat then slapped her. Hard. Her ears rang. She felt darkness enveloping her once more and she welcomed it.