by Lisa Jackson
Which was just plain odd. A journalist was supposed to expose the truth, right? Even if it pointed to Koontz?
These thoughts passed across his mind in half an instant. Yeah, maybe he’d screwed up. His sense of impartiality certainly had taken a beating after Manny’s death. He’d liked his brother-in-law, a darkly handsome man with flashing white teeth and a deep belly laugh who’d won his sister in less than thirty minutes upon one meeting over shared drinks. He had wanted to find the conspiracy behind Manny’s death and had rashly chased imaginary leads and listened to gossip and conjecture and reported it as fact.
He’d really pissed off Koontz, who had friends in high places. For that he wasn’t sorry.
And since that time he’d been forced from his job—well, technically he’d quit when they’d given him the “retract-or-you’re-fired” speech—he had steered clear of conspiracies, major news stories, and anything that remotely resembled real investigative reporting, until this teenage thievery ring fell into his lap. Was the fact that he was interested in this story progress? Was he ready to give up the bullshit small stories he’d been delivering to the Seaside Breeze and make a run at the big time again? Maybe even try to dig into Manuel Rojas’s death a little deeper again? On his own time, of course, and without involving the Breeze or anyone else? He had friends in high and low places himself, regardless of how he’d been treated in Portland. He sensed that if he were to ever step forward into the larger arena, he would be welcomed by some, reviled by others.
But did he really even give a damn? He hadn’t for over a year. Yet . . . there was an itch beneath his skin he couldn’t completely deny.
He shifted his weight and Chico growled again.
“Oh, shut up,” Harrison muttered without heat, an order that Chico utterly ignored, as the growling continued on as if he’d been encouraged.
Night had fallen completely, and the shops along Broadway were decked out in bright white lights, giving it a carnival feel. Harrison glanced to his left, to the overhang of the coffee shop/gelato bar/gift shop, where his “quarry” was leaning forward and conversing rapidly with the girl behind the counter. Without looking, he could describe them both in detail: slim, dark-haired, practically nonexistent hips, expensive jeans or cutoffs for weather like today’s, flip-flops, smirky smiles, eyes that exchanged glances with their friends as they made unspoken comments about the rest of the world. The one behind the counter had her hair scraped into a ponytail; the one leaning over the counter was wearing impossibly short cutoffs, so ragged they looked like they might disintegrate. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and Harrison could see an earring that glimmered as she tossed her head. Diamonds? Fakes? Hers, or something she stole . . .
Harrison had followed the news and been aware of some unconnected robberies, though it was nothing that initially blipped on his radar. But then, one night while he and Chico were on a walk along the beach neither of them wanted to take, he overheard a girl—the one he was surveilling tonight—talking about hitting the Berman mansion with a group of friends. He’d noted the girl and her friends by habit and watched them get to their feet from the stone bench where they’d been sitting and amble toward Seaside’s main drag, where bumper cars and stands that sold elephant ears stood cheek by jowl with trendy clothing stores, art galleries, and wine shops. The girl he was watching walked up to the counter of the hip gelato/coffee/gift shop and talked in whispers to a girl behind the counter whose eyes narrowed and mouth tightened into a cold, hard smile of relish.
Two days later the Bermans were robbed, the thieves taking money, jewelry, and expensive handbags.
And Harrison had thought, Huh.
The last couple of days he’d made a point of waiting outside the coffee and gelato store with Chico, passing time, his mind traveling of its own accord to Manny and the reasons behind his death. He’d gotten in trouble for suggesting his brother-in-law’s death was more than a random killing, that Koontz, Manuel’s business partner, one of those terminally charismatic salesmen who showed you a smile, a handshake, and not much else, was involved in some way. Both Koontz and Manny had known the boy with the gun as someone who’d tried to sneak into their high-end club with its lowbrow name, Boozehound, by showing fake ID more than once.
Something was just off with the whole scenario, but Harrison had been warned off, and so here he was, waiting and watching as life continued on.
And now he was experiencing a low-level excitement because this case intrigued him, the first since his brother-in-law’s death. He had considered going to the police but had dismissed it. He hadn’t really heard anything of substance and was playing a hunch. He’d been burned badly enough trying to ferret out the truth in Manny’s death, hadn’t he?
The girl with the glittery earring started to stroll by him.
He yanked on the leash a bit, and Chico, on cue, resisted, pulling away from him just as the girl tried to pass. The leash tangled in her legs and she started to fall.
“Hey!” she cried. “What the fu—?”
Harrison, on his feet in an instant, reached out and caught her arm, keeping her from actually hitting the sidewalk. “Sorry.”
“Let go of me!” She managed to unwind the leash from her legs and yanked her arm away from him. “Jesus, can’t you control your damned dog!”
“Usually, but he does have a mind of his own.”
She rolled her eyes as if she was bored out of her mind with his explanation, then reached down and rubbed her bare leg where the leash had bit into her flesh. A thin red welt was developing.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No!” she said angrily, then straightened to narrow her eyes at him.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“What? No!” Then, some of her anger having dissipated, she added, “I’ll live.”
“Good.” He turned his attention to the dog. “Chico! Here, boy!” Knowing she was still watching him, he picked up the dog and tucked him under his arm. Chico’s eyes glittered in pure hatred, as if he realized that he’d been used as a pawn in some subtle game, but he didn’t growl or snap.
“Cute dog,” she admitted, giving him a long look.
“I guess.” He ruffled the fur on the back of Chico’s head.
“No, I mean it.” She seemed to have lost most of her quick-fire fury. Which was good. This was the first time they’d made actual contact. “His name is Chico?”
“Yeah.” Nodding, he said, “To tell you the truth, he doesn’t like me much.”
“Yeah, why?” she asked. “You beat him?”
“No. Not that he doesn’t deserve it. Dogs, these days,” he teased. “You feed them, love them, give ’em an education. Buy ’em a car when they turn sixteen, and whad’d’ya get? Grief.”
She couldn’t stop her sudden smile, even if she thought he was corny. Harrison half smiled back, aware he’d sunk the hook. He knew how to be engaging, although he rarely tried hard at it and basically used the skill only when he was working. The rest of the time he was, by his own admission, a loner. He didn’t trust many people. Most, he’d found, lied.
And he couldn’t stand liars.
“He’s actually my sister’s dog,” Harrison said as he set Chico on the sidewalk again. “I take him for walks, but he really just tolerates me.”
“Can I pet him?”
“Sure. Go ahead. He won’t bite you . . . much.”
She leaned in closer, hesitated, saw he was teasing, then reached forward. Harrison let Chico, who was busting at his leash and wagging his tail, get his furry head beneath her hand, sniffing and licking and wiggling all over. The little traitor.
At the same time Harrison leaned back in his chair, keeping a large distance between himself and the girl; he didn’t want to scare her off. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, a black T-shirt with a worn plaid cotton shirt as a kind of jacket, the tails hanging out. His dark hair was longer than usual, brushing his collar, and purposely a bit shaggy. He was clean-shaven, and he’d t
aken off his sunglasses as the sun started setting. He hoped he was unthreatening. He wanted information.
“I’ve seen you here,” she said. “You don’t have a job?”
“I got this dog-walking gig.”
“How do you make money?” she asked, ignoring that. Uninvited, she perched on the chair opposite him. Suddenly, it seemed, she was curious. Or just didn’t have a place to go.
“I don’t make much,” he admitted. “How about yourself ? You got a part-time job of some kind? You look like you’re in high school.”
“How old do you think I am?” She tilted her head and smiled, striking a sexy pose. Almost flirty. Her anger with him long forgotten.
“Eighteen?” He figured she was sixteen, seventeen maybe.
“Fifteen going on thirty,” she answered smugly. “Or, so my stepdad says.”
There were rules to interrogating teenagers, Harrison had learned. Unspoken rules. Rule #1 was pretend you want to talk only about yourself and watch what happened. “I used to work in Portland for a corporation,” he said. “I was a cubicle guy. Go to work at eight. Off at five. Go home, have a drink. Watch the news. Eat dinner. Go to bed.”
“God, I’d kill myself,” she said.
“Got me a paycheck.”
“Sounds mega-boring.”
“It was.” Okay, he’d never been a cubicle guy. He could lie when he was working, but not when it counted. When it counted, when it involved people he cared about, then the truth was all that mattered. There was no other option.
She tilted her head and looked at him from beneath deeply mascared lashes. “I go to school at West Coast High. You know it?”
Give a little information, ignore them, and bam. They couldn’t stop talking about themselves. “The one they built after that upper-end housing development went in?”
“With the rich kids? Yeah. Only some of ’em aren’t as rich anymore. Their dads lost their jobs.” She shrugged. “Too bad.”
“What about your dad?”
“Stepdad,” she corrected. “He still has his job. But my dad lost his. He got fired.”
“Layoffs.” Harrison made a face.
“Nope. He got involved with Britt’s mom, and he used to work for Britt’s dad, so that was no good.”
“Sounds like drama.”
“Shit, yeah. He can have them all,” she said with sudden fury. “Britt’s a bitch.”
Harrison wondered if Britt was Britt Berman.
Chico whined, stood on his back legs, and dug at the girl’s knees, craving more attention. She scratched his ears, then pulled back and brushed off her fingers. “Gross. Dog skin.” She looked at her nails. “I do have a job . . . sort of . . .” A smile snuck across her lips. A sneaky little I’d-love-to-let-you-know-just-how-clever-I-am grin. “We kind of formed our own company, and it’s not boring at all.” She bit her lower lip, really trying hard not to tell him and yet unable to stop.
“A company,” he repeated with a hint of skepticism.
She rose to the bait like a breaching whale. “Yeah, a company. Like we work together. We’re an alliance.”
Alliance came out sounding like she was tasting the word. It clearly wasn’t one she was comfortable with. Something she probably heard watching a reality show. If she hadn’t been able to see, he would’ve dug in his cargo pants pocket for his phone and started recording her. But her angle of sight would allow her to see him switching on the phone, so he had to wait.
“Who’s ‘we’? You and your family?”
“God, no.” She threw him a dark look. “My stepdad is a butthead asshole. Worse than my dad. I’m talking about my friends and me.” She glanced around, as if expecting some of those friends to appear.
“High school kids?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” she declared, pushing away from the table. “You don’t know what we can do.”
Just then his phone started vibrating against his leg. He ignored it, but very few people had his number. His sister. His managing editor at the Portland Ledger. His new editor at the Seaside Breeze. He knew he should give it out more often, but he’d been in a kind of self-imposed exile.
“Okay, you got me there,” he said. “I don’t know what you can do.”
She took it as a challenge. “There’s a bunch of us who . . . get together . . . and do stuff.” Her eyes sparkled as brightly as the neon lights winking in the town; she was proud of herself and excited, a sly smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
“You and your fifteen-year-old friends.”
“Yeah. Well, and some older ones, too. Like Envy.”
“Envy?” Harrison repeated.
“You know what envy means?”
“Got a pretty good idea.”
“It’s his initials. Get it? N. V. He says it’s a deadly sin.”
“Okay,” Harrison said. His phone silently buzzed again.
“There are seven deadly sins.”
“Mm-hmm. Like in the movie Seven.”
“You know that one?” she asked in surprise. “It’s really old.”
“Morgan Freeman. Brad Pitt. Gwyneth Paltrow.” Really old, Harrison thought with an inner snort, his hand easing toward his phone. But then this kid would have been barely a thought when it was released in the midnineties.
“We’re not weird, or anything, like in the movie.”
“You just do stuff.”
“The seven of us,” she said. “Guess which one I am.”
“Well, what are your initials? If that’s how it works.”
“That isn’t just how it works.”
“So, okay, you don’t look like gluttony. I don’t really see you as wrath. Pride, maybe? Lust?”
Her own cell phone chirped and as if suddenly realizing she’d said too much to a perfect stranger, she jumped to her feet. She glanced around her shoulder again, looking like she wanted to take off and run, then glanced at a text message on the screen of the phone.
“I can’t remember the other ones,” he mused, but she suddenly racewalked across the street, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
As soon as she was out of sight, Harrison dug for his phone. He grabbed it just as it finished vibrating. “Hello? Hello? Damn.”
Glancing at the number, he didn’t recognize it, but when he called it back, it rang only once before a woman’s voice asked cautiously, “Frost?”
“Who’s this?”
“Geena Cho.”
“Geena?” Harrison’s surprise was tinged with caution as well. Geena worked in dispatch for the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department. He’d met her when she was off work at a local dive, Davy Jones’s Locker, and they’d hit it off, but Harrison was leery of getting involved right away. Every relationship he’d had with a woman flamed too hot before he ever got to know her. Then, as time revealed each other’s foibles, baggage, and basic craziness, the heat was squelched fast. When Geena said she worked for the sheriff’s department, it was enough to cool Harrison’s blood even further. He’d kept her in the “friend” box with an effort, as Geena was angling for something more. She was one of the few he’d given his cell number.
“We got an escapee from Halo Valley,” she said quietly, and he realized she was talking on her cell and giving him information the sheriff’s department might not want to release just yet. “He injured two men, who were taken to Ocean Park. Half the department’s at Halo Valley.”
“Who’s the escapee?” He was already on his feet, yanking a reluctant Chico from sniffing a newcomer, a fluffy white bichon who wanted to play. Chico just wanted to hump the female dog, which was embarrassing to the bichon’s owner, so Harrison, needing the whole circus to end, dragged the reluctant Chico away.
“That guy from a few years ago who terrorized the cult.”
Harrison remembered the story but not the man’s name. “You got a name?”
“Hey, not yet,” she said, suddenly reticent, as if she was already second-guessing her decision to call. He couldn’
t push her too far.
“So,” Harrison prodded, “this unnamed assailant . . .” And legendary wacko. One he could track down on the Internet as soon as he got to a computer. His current cell didn’t have those capabilities. “He attacked the two men at Halo Valley while he was trying to get away?”
“That’s what it sounds like. I can’t talk long. They all took out of here a couple hours ago, lights on, sirens screaming. Everybody thinks the psycho’s coming our way.”
“Who are the victims?”
“Hospital employees. That’s all I know.”
Probably another way of hedging.
“Okay.”
“Gotta go,” she said, almost as if she regretted her rash call. Then, not subtly, added, “Remember. We have a standing deal. I’m an ‘unnamed source in the police department.’ ”
“That’s right,” he said, though he was certain if anyone really wanted to know, Geena’s cell phone records would be a dead giveaway.
“Harrison?”
“Yeah?”
“You owe me.”
That much he knew. “Thanks, Geena.”
He wasn’t really sure what to do with the information. His job description, loose as it was, wasn’t about deep investigative journalism for the Breeze. Not that they wouldn’t run the story about this guy. A psycho escaping a mental hospital was big news, especially this psycho, who’d terrorized the area once before.
And Harrison had been given a jump on the competition.
At what price? his skeptical mind nagged. Remember, payback’s a bitch.
Shoving his phone into his pocket, he ignored the questions, snatched up Chico, who nipped at his wrist, then headed swiftly back to his dusty brown Chevy Impala as a couple riding a tandem bike whizzed past and the smells of caramel corn and grilled hot dogs reached his nostrils.
His stomach rumbled, but he ignored it.
As he reached his low-profile, decade-old Chevy, he was nearly run over by a kid on a skateboard. The skateboarder screeched around a corner and jumped a bench as Harrison dropped Chico into his little car seat. The dog turned around and bared his teeth as Harrison climbed into the vehicle. Harrison bared his own teeth right back, and Chico curled his lip and emitted a grrrr that would only scare another dog of the same small size on a good day.