"Well, that will certainly speed things up," Gage said.
"One question," Karen said. "Whatever you're not telling us, even if had nothing to do with the murder, was Connor or Jeremiah involved in any way?"
There was a bit of hesitation, a hitch as he closed the door, and in that moment Gage saw just how troubled MacDonald really was. He was adrift in an ocean of torment, and it was all he could do to keep his head above water.
"I wish I could help," he said, and then he was gone.
An image of Connor's bloody pulp of a head flashed through Gage's mind, and he felt a furious assault of rage course through him. He steeled himself against it. He stepped off the porch and walked a couple of paces away from the door, then turned and looked at the house, considering his options. One option was to throw his cane at the window.
"What do you want to do?" Karen asked.
"Call the police," Gage said.
"Right now?"
"Yep."
"But we don't have any proof."
"No, but I was assaulted. I can press charges, or at least make a lot of noise about doing so. We can make his life miserable. Maybe he'll crack."
"It'll also make Quinn pretty pissed off at you."
"He's always pissed off at me. Go ahead, make the call."
With a shrug, Karen pulled out her phone and started to dial, then her expression turned quizzical. She tapped a few times on the screen, read for a moment, then looked at Gage.
"What?" he said.
"We just got another email from DWR_forever," she said.
Gage looked at the house. Would MacDonald really be so bold to send the message while they were still standing outside? "What does it say?"
"It says, ‘I don't know who you are, but whatever crazy game you're playing, I think you have the wrong person.' But it's not what it says. It was when it was sent, according the date stamp on the message."
"What do you mean?"
"It was sent eight minutes ago," Karen said.
"Eight minutes," Gage said, and then he realized what she meant. Eight minutes ago, they were still standing in MacDonald's entryway. If either MacDonald or Thomas had sent a message, Gage certainly would have seen them do it.
Chapter 17
They rode in silence on windswept Highway 101, Gage contemplating the question Karen had asked when they'd gotten back in the van. If not MacDonald, then who was DWR_forever? Gage certainly couldn't rule out MacDonald's being involved in some way, despite the time stamp on the forum message, but if he was, he wasn't alone. More than that, the IP address was the same as before, from the school, which meant that DWR_forever was affiliated with the college in some way—student, faculty, staff. As Karen had pointed out earlier, this didn't mean he was literally at the college when he sent it, since he could have done so remotely, but there was a good chance he was.
The night air was thick, but it wasn't raining. The puddle streaks in the uneven road shimmered in the wind.
"Back to where we started?" Karen asked, as if reading his mind.
"Couldn't hurt. Let's grab some coffee on the way."
"There's coffee places open in Barnacle Bluffs this late?"
"Nope. Have to do with the stuff from the machines at the mini-mart up the road. With enough cream, it's almost drinkable."
"What if I like my coffee black?"
"As I said, you need cream."
She said she'd pass, but he bought her one anyway. She took one sip, claimed it was terrible, and immediately drank another. They returned to the same BBCC parking spot they'd been in earlier that night, but now, with the time closing in on ten o'clock, most of the lights in all but the dormitory were dark. They sat there for half an hour, drinking bad coffee, making idle chitchat, and watched two students cross the campus from the student union to the dorm. The student union had been the only building that appeared open, and they watched those lights go out too. Soon a couple of staff members appeared, chatted in the parking lot across the way for a moment, then got in their cars and left.
"Follow either of them?" Karen asked.
Gage sighed. "Nah."
"Kind of grasping at straws, aren't we?"
"I don't even know if there are straws."
"You want to go?"
Before he answered, Gage spotted another person pass under a lamp near the administration building, the beam of a flashlight bouncing along the sidewalk. With the thick night air, he could only see that it was stocky man in a gleaming parka. He got his hopes up until the man, heading generally in their direction, passed under another lamp and Gage saw the gray-and-blue uniform. Campus security. The man looked left and right, as if scanning for trouble, and eventually his gaze settled on the van.
"Uh-oh," Gage said.
"But we weren't even necking," Karen said.
The man approached cautiously, a hand on the baton attached to his belt, the flashlight shining directly at them. When the man got a little closer, and Gage saw the blocky gray hair and saggy, flushed face in glimpses around the flashlight's halo, he recognized him. It was the head of security, the guy who'd stopped them when they wanted to enter the dorm to retrieve Connor's drawing pad. What was the name? Jantz. Good old officer Jantz, doing a sweep of the campus grounds.
Jantz, stepping over to the driver's side, shone the light in Gage's face. Squinting, Gage rolled down the window, the heavy night air slipping into the van.
"Mind pointing that thing somewhere else?" Gage asked.
Jantz didn't lower the flashlight. "What are you doing here, sir?"
"I'll make you a deal. You lower the flashlight, I'll answer the question."
Mercifully, the flashlight lowered.
"Much better," Gage said.
"The campus is closed to the public, sir," Jantz said.
"Is it? Then my yoga class is canceled?"
"All classes are canceled."
"That was a joke."
Jantz didn't laugh. If anything, he looked even more serious, eyes narrowing, the lines in his face as sharp as carved wood. Gage wondered if Jantz was one of those poor souls born totally bereft of a sense of a humor. If so, Gage wondered how Jantz even found the will to live.
"You need to leave, sir," Jantz said.
"Sure. Question, though. You notice anything unusual the night Connor Fleicher was murdered?"
"I wasn't working that night," Jantz said. "I already told the police that. I was at Tsunami's watching the game. I … I wish I had been here. I could have—could have stopped it, maybe." He stopped abruptly, as if realizing he'd said more than he'd meant to say. "I really need you to leave now."
"Guilt can be terrible thing," Gage said. An image of Janet, drowned in the tub, one naked arm draped over the side, rose up in his mind. "Believe me, it can eat at you like a cancer, hollowing you out from the inside."
"I don't feel guilty," Jantz said, but the tone of his voice said the opposite.
"I'm just telling you, it can help to confide in others. Tell them what you're feeling. I wouldn't have thought so, but it's true. Take it for what it's worth."
Jantz said nothing for a long time, but there was something fragile about him, something thin that could break. It was hard to see his face clearly in the weak light from the streetlamp, but Gage thought he noticed a tear forming at the corners of the man's eyes.
"Sir—" he began.
"I know, I know," Gage said. "We need to go. Fine, going."
With a nod, Gage rolled up the window. He started the van with Jantz watching silently, his right hand still hovering over his baton. As Jantz back-stepped away from them, he moved closer to the cone of yellow light under one of the street lamps, affording Gage a better look at his anguished face. Gage had seen a similar face many times in the years following Janet's death—in the mirror every morning.
"Job probably pays crap," Karen said, "and then he's got to live with something like this happening on his watch."
Gage, sensing that she might not be talking entirely ab
out Jantz, looked at her. She met his eyes and looked away. Rumbling their way out of the parking lot, he debated about whether to broach the subject. Weaving their way back to the highway, through firs steeped in darkness, he debated some more.
"Karen—" he began.
"Save it," she said, her breath fogging on the passenger-side window.
"If you want to talk—"
"I don't."
They turned onto the highway, heading north. They had the road to themselves. The ocean was nothing but a dark expanse to their left. It could have been a desert or an alien landscape. Gage looked at Karen and found her staring out the window, not at the darkness where the ocean was but at the darkness on the east side, where they were passing the forested hills that led to the college and, beyond, three thousand miles of continent that somewhere contained whatever was troubling Karen.
"I think we should call it a night," Gage said.
Karen didn't answer. As they passed under a streetlamp, her weak reflection in the passenger-side window leered back at him like a skull.
"You want me to take you back to the inn?" he asked.
He detected a slight shrug of her shoulders.
"I'm going to break this thing open tomorrow," he said. "We're right there. MacDonald knows something, and I'm going to find a way to shake it out of him."
"Sounds good," she said.
It was spoken with all the excitement of someone headed to the DMV. He was losing her again. He needed to toss her some kind of lifeline, but he didn't know how. He mulled over what had set her off. Gage had mentioned guilt to Jantz. She had made a comment about his having to live with something like this happening on his watch. He decided to take a chance.
"Did someone die?" he asked.
She turned to him sharply. "What?"
"Who was it? Another agent?"
She sighed. "Garrison—"
"I've been racking my brain for what kind of mistake could bring a tough cookie like Karen Pantelli to her knees, and I figure it's got to be pretty big. Were you protecting someone?"
"It wasn't like that," she snapped.
"Then what was it like?"
"I told you, I don't want to talk about this."
"I think you do."
"What?"
"I think you do," he repeated. "I think you want to talk about it. You just don't know how to get there. So I'm taking you there. I'm forcing the issue. You've got to get whatever this thing is off your chest before it crushes you. So let's talk. How did it start? Give me some details."
"No," she said.
"What kind of mistake was it? Were you drinking or something? Sleep through your alarm?"
"Oh, fuck off."
"Must be getting close," Gage said.
"You're not getting close at all. You don't know anything!"
"Then help me understand!"
Even in the dark, he could see that her eyes were big and glaring. It was right there, about to surface, all that pain and rage and guilt. She was so close to letting it all out, teeter-tottering on the edge, and he waited in anticipation for the big reveal. But in the end, she merely shook her head and turned back to the dark window.
"Just take me back to the inn," she said.
"Fine," he said.
"It's not you," she said. "I just … can't go there. Not now."
"Not with me, anyway. I'm just some guy you slept with."
Even this wasn't enough to rile her up. She said nothing. He wondered if she'd open up if he tapped her on the head with his cane. At this point, he was willing to try anything. They drove to the inn's parking lot without either of them saying a word. He crossed through the tunnel under the highway and pulled into the roundabout by the front door. When they stopped at the curb under the red awning, he expected her to hop out in a hurry, but she just sat there.
"You think I should stay at the Turret House instead?" she asked.
"What?"
"With Zoe," she said. "I was just thinking, she's all there by herself."
"By design," Gage said. "Alex didn't book any guests. She's just watching the house itself."
"Yeah, but I know you'd feel better if she wasn't alone. And if you offered to stay there, she'd get all offended. But me? I could just tell her that the inn was a bit pricey and I wasn't expecting to stay here this long, so if I could save a few dollars, I could stretch out my visit a bit longer."
"A bit longer," Gage said.
She studied his face. "If you want me," she said.
"You know I want you. I think we've established that without a doubt."
That got her to smile. "So it's okay then?"
"You'll have to ask her, since she's the one Alex left in charge, but if you show up with bag in hand, I doubt she'll refuse you."
"Then I better get my bag."
"You better. But you don't want to drive your own car?"
"I'll come back for it later."
While she disappeared, he waited at the curb, the van's engine idling. It was more of a smoker's cough than an idle, all rattle and wheeze, and he could see the mustachioed night clerk beyond the double glass doors eyeing him with annoyance. Karen wasn't gone long, five minutes at most, before she was back at the same desk paying her bill. It occurred to him that he could have offered to have her stay at his place. He wondered if it had occurred to her too. Probably, and yet she hadn't asked. He pondered what that meant. He pondered why he hadn't thought of it until now, and why even now, he wasn't sure it was a good idea.
When she hopped back in the car, she must have seen that something was troubling him, because she raised an eyebrow.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing. All set?"
"Sure thing, boss."
"We haven't received any response from DWR_forever, have we?"
She pulled out her phone, swiped and clicked, and a moment later shook her head no. Gage put the van and gear and headed back to the lonely highway.
"You know," Karen said, "he might not have anything to do with Connor's death at all."
"He might not," Gage said, nodding.
"But you think he does?"
Gage tapped the steering wheel. "I think we need more information, that's all. And I think he—or she—might be able to give us some. Can you search his posts and tell me anything more?"
"I already looked at all of them. It was just the same sci-fi stuff as everybody else. He didn't really post that much. Only a handful of times, maybe a dozen. It was the same as the other two, SpockLives2008 and Fireflyawesome."
"Who showed up first?"
"Good question. Let me check." A moment later, she had the answer. "DWR_forever was the last to post, a couple weeks after the other two. He also has only eight posts. The other two have more, maybe twenty each. Hmm. Get this, he only posted in discussion threads that other two were in, and only after them … I'm reading … Yeah, not a lot there. But you know, he kind of parrots the other two. It's not like he has any original thoughts."
"So maybe he's not as interested in the subject matter and he's just there for them?"
"Could be," she said.
"Brainstorm the name with me. What could it stand for?"
This time, she took longer to respond. They were halfway to the Turret House, rattling along the empty highway, the van's high beams cutting a swath through the darkness. Behind them, a distant pair of lights was approaching, but otherwise they had the road to themselves. At this point, the highway climbed to a bit of a crest, a guardrail on the left protecting them from the bluff's drop-off to the beach, a deep drainage ditch to the right that climbed into the forested woods. Barnacle Bluffs was a long and narrow city, the eventual merging of tiny coastal hamlets from long ago, and this was one of the gap areas. In moments, they'd be back down into the shops and houses again.
"Well," she said, "given the forum, there's a good chance it's science-fiction related."
Gage nodded. "A good chance. How about … Darth Will Rule Forever?"
"Not bad. Hm
m. Demons Wish Rage Forever?"
"Doctor Who Remembers Forever?"
Karen smiled. "That's really good. You're sure you're not a closet science-fiction fan?"
"I always thought it would be neat to have a TARDIS," Gage said. "Then I could jump around in time and cause all sorts of havoc."
"There you go again," she said. "As a bit of fangirl myself, that kind of talk does get me a little hot and bothered. Be careful or I might ask to see your light saber."
"Dirty girl," he said. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Those headlights, once distant, had closed the gap between them in a hurry.
"Like that surprises you about me," Karen said. "I'm thinking about Connor's drawing, though, the one with DWR and all those animals. Not sure how that's science-fiction related."
"It did seem almost religious," Gage said, "with all those animals mixed with people. A Noah's ark feel."
"Ducks Want Rights?" she offered.
"Somehow, I don't think so. How about Dreams Will Realize?"
"Too hokey for these boys, I think. But there's something … it's like we're so close to it. You know what I mean?"
Gage did. It was the same feeling when he was trying to remember someone's name and he was close but not quite right. Jonathan instead of Jacob. Suzie instead of Sally. But why would he feel that way? That would imply he'd already heard what the initials stood for, but that couldn't be the case, could it? That drawing had seemed so out of place from the others in Connor's sketch pad, but there had to be a reason it was there.
The headlights behind them suddenly loomed large in the van's rear window, high and spaced wide apart. A Hummer? It was dark blue if not black and so close it could have been attached to the van by a trailer hitch.
"Guy's certainly a little close, isn't he?" Karen said.
"Probably drunk. Hold on. When we get off the hill, I'll pull off the road and let him pass."
Only Gage never had a chance to pull off the road. He'd barely finished the sentence when the Hummer gunned it, the big engine roaring like a locomotive's. There were no approaching cars in the oncoming lane, so Gage eased off the accelerator, intent on just letting the jerk pass—but then the Hummer did something unexpected. It veered not to the left but to the right, into the gap between the highway and the drainage ditch.
The Lovely Wicked Rain: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series) Page 18