by Lisa Jackson
Checking the dashboard clock, Harrison figured it would be just over thirty minutes before he could drive south, drop off the mutt, and make it to Ocean Park Hospital. He didn’t feel like fighting for attention at Halo Valley mental hospital with the sheriff’s department all over the place—especially Deputy Fred Clausen, whom Harrison had already managed to get on the wrong side of—but Ocean Park, where the victims had been taken, would be a better bet. He could probably get some interviews there.
His teenaged Deadly Sinners were being allowed a momentary reprieve while he tackled a different kind of story. He liked that. The Deadly Sinners. Made for good copy, and it sounded like the kind of thing the group—or this N.V. guy—had dreamed up, probably from watching Seven. Didn’t anybody have any new ideas anymore?
But Harrison’s mind was already switching off the thieves to the more immediate story. “What’s his name?” he said aloud, trying to recall as much as he knew about the strange man whose obsessions had sent him on a killing spree in the area of Deception Bay, a usually sleepy little seaside town, where his sister and niece now lived. Had the guy escaped Halo Valley just to be free? Or, did he have some new sick plan in place?
Psychos were like that. They didn’t just give it up as a rule.
Chico glared at him, and his little black lips quivered into a snarl.
“You’re not as cute as you think you are,” Harrison warned.
That earned him a series of full-fledged barks and bristling fury.
Ten minutes later, Harrison dropped off Chico with relief, shaking his head at the way the little fur ball leapt into Kirsten’s arms and licked at her with wild love, his tail wagging, whole body squirming.
She was standing in the front door of her cottage, the smells of baking bread wafting outside to mingle with the salty scent of the sea. Seeing Harrison’s expression, his sister said on a sigh, “I don’t know what you have against Chico.”
“Who says I have anything against him?”
She stared him down, and he gazed back at her with affection. She stood three inches shorter than he, with the same tousled brown hair, the same hazel eyes, the same lean body. She wore jeans and a dark blue T-shirt, and her feet were bare. Chico wriggled from her arms and ran into the house, probably in search of Didi, Kirsten’s daughter, who, by all accounts, should be in bed by now, even though the sun hadn’t quite set.
“It’s the other way around,” he assured Kirsten. “I love the dog.”
She snorted as she closed the door. “Yeah.”
“Really.”
But he was talking to himself as he climbed back in the Impala. There was no accounting for what went on inside Chico’s twisted little doggy brain, he decided, as he turned the car south toward Ocean Park Hospital. Kirsten’s bungalow was on the north end of Deception Bay. The town sat on a bluff above the beach, spilling over onto both sides of Highway 101, and was about twenty minutes from the hospital.
Twisted little doggy brain. Twisted psycho-killer brain.
He would bet that Halo Valley Security Hospital’s escapee was heading back toward his old haunts to pick up where he left off. That was how it was with a twisted psycho-killer brain. Almost instinctive, along the lines of demented decision making.
“What’s your name?” he asked aloud, into the deepening shadows.
And where the hell are you?
CHAPTER 4
The Vanagon had seen better days, Justice thought, eyeing the vehicle as it limped to the side of the road. From his vantage point on the bluff, he had a bird’s-eye view of the narrow lanes snaking below.
Volkswagen had stopped making them sometime in the ’90s or early 2000s, a more modern rendition of the Volkswagen bus, but they, too, had disappeared from the showrooms, replaced by Touaregs and Jettas and Passats and others. In his younger years Justice Turnbull had been interested in all makes of cars. It had been a passion. But that was before his mission was revealed and he talked to God, who asked him—ordered him—to annihilate the armies of Satan, armies being incubated in the wombs of the whores who’d been spit from the depths of hell and who pretended their innocence. Whores. Every one. Satan’s profligates.
They were locked inside a prison of their own making, one they believed was a sanctuary. Fools! Sick-minded, stench-riddled fools. Siren Song. With its wrought-iron fencing and gates. It could be breached. It could. It was only a matter of planning. And timing. He smiled to himself as he thought of those inside and what he would do to them. Theirs, each and every one, would be a slow, torturous death. Each of the witches would learn what it meant to turn on him; they would feel his pain. . . . They would burn. . . .
In time.
One at a time.
His nostrils flared, and he felt a little curdle of recognition that things weren’t as they should be. Not all of them were “safe” inside the walls surrounding Siren Song. Despite Catherine’s vain attempts at locking them away, a few of the more stubborn and curious ones had escaped. They, women who straddled two worlds and elected to stay outside, would have to be taken care of first, before the onslaught he would wreak on their filthy prison, where they huddled, feeling smug and secure. Oh, how wrong they were.
Killing them all would be simple.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Who had said that? Old Mad Maddie herself. His upper lip trembled at a blurry memory that wouldn’t quite come into focus as he thought of her. Palm reader? Visionary? Fraud!
Eyes narrowing, he decided that the Vanagon wasn’t going anywhere soon. It seemed disabled, a flat tire, at the very least. Was this his sign from God? Was this his path?
He scented the air, his nostrils quivering. Their odor was like a pulse that he alone could smell. It came to him in waves, the scent of rotting meat. He felt almost faint with his last intake of breath; then he opened his eyes and gazed at the lights of the marooned Vanagon again.
Time to go.
As daylight waned, he moved carefully, near silently, down the hillside and through the gnarled pines and berry vines rooted in the soil. His mind settled upon the filthy witches he’d been asked to annihilate. He’d almost lost track of them during his incarceration because he’d been drugged and held inside a windowless tomb. And the concrete walls had made it difficult for him to track them. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t even smell them at first.
Now, though . . .
They were easiest to smell when they were pregnant, and he’d caught the scent of those who’d lain with the devil and carried Lucifer’s spawn within their wombs several times in spite of the hole they’d tried to throw him into.
But they couldn’t contain him forever. He was sent to do God’s bidding. And God wanted the devil’s issue burned in the fires of hell. This was Justice’s mission.
In a dream, a vision of sorts that had occurred while he was in the hospital, he’d seen himself faking an illness in order to escape the prison walls. It had come to him late at night, awakening him with a start, the remembered odor lingering in his nostrils. He didn’t doubt that it was the word of God for a second and had followed the instructions he’d heard during a fragmented sequence of vignettes, images of exactly how he was to escape from the moment he’d arisen. His body had been covered in sweat, as if he’d actually done the deeds within the dream, and he never faltered.
It had almost been too easy. Dr. Zellman, that pompous idiot, had wanted to believe he understood him and the inner workings of his mind.
But Zellman had never suspected Justice’s innate intelligence. Nor had Zellman, the egomaniac, understood Justice’s intellect, his ability to read the doctor’s motivations. More telling, Zellman hadn’t counted on Justice’s raw animal instincts, his prowess as a predator, his keen awareness of how to lure in his prey before viscerally attacking.
Justice, knowing Zellman’s weaknesses, had pretended, and the idiot with his esteemed degree had bought it.
One less obstacle to worry about.
Now Justice approac
hed the Vanagon quietly, ever watchful. Its owners apparently liked the psychedelic lifestyle most often associated with the Volkswagen bus and the ’60s, as its sides were embellished with hand-painted peace signs, rainbows, and images of girls with long hair that turned into vines and became twigs for doves to roost upon. Justice had once had a small replica of a VW bus in his toy car collection, but it had not sported the artistic detail this vehicle did. The Vanagon’s colors had faded over time, but it still flaunted its homage to the hippie culture.
As Justice appeared from the scrub pines at the side of the road, a long-haired dude with a headband and John Lennon glasses straightened from his perusal of the left rear tire.
“Hey, man,” he drawled in greeting. The van was parked in a small turnoff, and there wasn’t a lot of room for maneuvering unless you wanted to get a wheel in the ditch. The guy himself was smoking a joint and seemed to be considering his bald, deflated tire. He held out the joint to Justice, who simply said, “Marijuana.”
“Yeah. Weed, man. Good stuff.”
“No, thank you.” The sickeningly sweet herb stench clouded Justice’s sense of smell.
“Jesus, damn,” the guy said, gesturing in the direction of Justice’s prison and squinting behind his glasses as he let out a puff of smoke. “Did you see? The whole damn county sheriff’s department went flying by thataway!” He hitched a thumb and shook his head. “Not one stopped, y’know.” Then, as if considering the consequences if a cop had stopped and found his weed, he added, “Maybe that was a good thing.” He took another long drag.
“Which way are you going?” Justice asked, talk of police making him anxious.
The dude pointed the opposite direction, west, toward the coast, and after a few seconds exhaled a pent-up cloud of smoke. “Where’d you come from?” he rasped.
Justice gestured in the general direction of the steep hill to the north. It was flat-topped, a mesa, basically, since clear-cutting had taken off its timbered top. He’d driven the hospital van up a muddy track along its eastern side, over sticks and small boulders. He’d nosed the van through a forgotten chain gate that had been there since the beginning of the decade and broke with little resistance as he’d gunned the engine. He knew the area and had planned where to go when he escaped, and so he’d driven straight to the hilltop and then partially down the back side, parking the hospital van on the edge of a cliff side. Climbing out, he’d grabbed the jacket the orderly had left, with its Ocean Park Hospital patch on the sleeve; then he put the vehicle in neutral, got behind it, and pushed.
The van had shot straight down into a gully, snapping off small trees on its way, crashing and blundering, splashing into a small stream at its bottom and turning onto its side. It made a horrendous amount of screeching noise—tree limbs grabbing at it—but it had made it all the way down and the whole noisy melee was over in the space of two minutes. Wary, ears straining, Justice had waited at the top of the mesa, squatting in the underbrush, hoping the van’s noisy crash was a distant rending for anyone within earshot. He’d then seen the line of police vehicles fly by far below, lights flashing in the early darkness, sirens screaming. He’d watched them disappear, and he’d sat down on the top of the mesa and waited, unsure of what form God’s next message might be.
Then, as if God Himself had answered, this psychedelic relic of a Vanagon had staggered to the side of the road. Without doubting for an instant that this was his destiny, Justice had trekked rapidly down.
“Can I get a ride?” Justice asked, trying not to cough at the vile smoke, a sense of urgency running through him. He couldn’t leave himself exposed, not for any length of time, even though darkness was approaching.
“Can ya help me fix my tire?” the dude asked hopefully.
“Gotta pump?”
“Yeah, but there’s a hole, man.”
“Got a spare?”
“Nah . . . not one that works . . .”
“Get me the pump,” Justice ordered. He heard the sound of a car’s engine whining closer and fought the urge to scramble back into the bushes.
“Uh, okay.” The guy looked him over again, and then, as if deciding Justice was just a little tightly wound, he shrugged and opened the rear of the van, rattling around through a bunch of baby gear—a Big Wheels, a Pak ’n Play, some kind of circular bouncing device with brightly colored knobs—until he found a toolbox and the pump.
The car’s engine was louder, and Justice, pretending to be looking over the axle, hid on the far side just as the car, a rattling old Toyota, cruised past. He caught a glimpse of the driver, a red-haired teenager, a girl, who didn’t so much as glance at the disabled Vanagon as she drove lead-footed toward the next town.
“I’m Cosmo,” the dude said, as if he’d just realized he’d never introduced himself. He dropped the toolbox at Justice’s feet. “You?”
“Bob.”
Cosmo frowned. “Your name tag says . . .”
“Yeah, I know.” Justice waved off the question and bent down to the box. If the guy got too suspicious, he’d have to take a hammer from the box and . . . His fingers curled over the smooth wood handle as he explained, “Had to borrow my buddy’s today. Left mine in my car. Sometimes I’m a damned fool!”
“Well, Bob, if you can fix this thing, I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go,” Cosmo declared with an easy smile that showed a row of slightly crooked teeth. If he had any doubts about “Bob,” they were lost in a fog of pot.
“You got any gum?” Justice asked, trying not to show his anxiety as he pushed the hammer aside and studied the rest of the contents of the box. Wrench, screwdriver, box cutter . . . all weapons he could use.
“Uh . . .” Cosmo ran his hands through a few pockets and pulled out a pack. “Bubble gum.”
“I can pump the tire full of air, put some gum on the leak.” Justice palmed the box cutter with its razor’s head and stealthily slipped it into his pocket before he straightened again, his shadow lengthening over Cosmo. “Good for a few miles, I think. But you’ll have to get it fixed in Tillamook.”
“I can do that.” Cosmo was nodding, a little more comfortable. “Sure you don’t wanna toke? Or a beer? They’re not cold. I had to leave my woman and the kids for a while. Big fight. Big, big fight. Got any kids? Babies.” He shook his head, long tresses beneath his headband shivering. “All they do is cry.”
Justice thought of babies. Of pregnancy. Of the unborns. But he didn’t respond as he bent down and pumped up the tire while Cosmo finished his joint, then chewed up some gum.
All the while he thought of time ticking by, the cops. . . . Oh, God, had they reached the hospital and now were returning? His stomach tightened, and he told himself to relax, try to stay cool.
Gingerly taking the slick pink wad from the other man’s fingers, Justice had discerned where the nail was and he stuck the gum over it in a thin and messy line. Might help. Might not. All he wanted was to get off this stretch of road and fast. Before the cops returned.
“Nice, man,” Cosmo said, grinning widely as he surveyed the near-bald tire with its pink patch.
Justice knew cars. Engines. Boats. He knew about babies, too. The devil’s spawn. His nose suddenly filled with the sweet, rotting scent of betrayal and deceit, a smell that was only growing stronger. One of them was nearby. The one that could hear him and shut him out! They all were cursed with some ability, and this one . . . she was close. His skin crawled and the back of his mind went dry as he tried to call up her image. . . .
He snapped back quickly.
Hurry! You’re wasting time!
Cosmo was saying, “My old lady, she got really pissed at me ’cause I said, ‘Can’t you shut him up?’ which was kinda mean, for sure, but she just went nutso. Threw all my clothes out the door. So I took the van and all this kid stuff and just fuckin’ took off. I love her, man. And the kids. But it was a bummer. You a hospital employee?”
The patch on the jacket again. Damn. Justice gave a quick nod. “I’m an EMT.”
“Yeah? Like the guy whose jacket you’re wearing? Huh.”
Justice tensed up. Cosmo was putting two and two together. “Yeah, we work for the same company.”
“So . . . what’re you doin’ out here?”
“Hitchhiking. Got my own problems with a woman,” he improvised again, hoping to strike a chord with the man.
“Ahh . . .” He seemed to try and think that one over, but Cosmo wasn’t really tracking all that well.
Justice glanced at the tire. “Won’t last long.”
“But long enough to get to Tillamook?”
“Depends on how fast the leak is.”
“Well, get in, man,” Cosmo said suddenly, as if he’d told himself not to look a gift horse in the mouth—another one of Maddie’s old sayings. God, why was she coming to mind today? Cosmo threw the toolbox in the back of the Vanagon and slammed the door. “We’re losin’ daylight. Let’s roll.” He walked to the front of the Volkswagen and slid behind the steering wheel.
As Justice climbed into the passenger seat and cracked the window against the thick scent of marijuana, Cosmo fired up the engine of this less than discreet getaway vehicle.
In a few seconds, they were out on the road, bumping along as the vehicle’s shocks were shot, too. Justice was counting off the seconds in his head. How long before the sheriff’s department started circling back? They had to realize which way he’d traveled after he turned out of Halo Valley’s long drive to the two-lane highway that connected the Willamette Valley to the coast. He knew he had only a small window of time in which to disappear. He would have headed east, toward Salem, if he’d known the area better, but Justice was most familiar with the ins and outs of the Oregon coastline. The land was rugged here, steep, craggy cliffs rising above the pounding surf. Hundreds of acres of old-growth timber. Hidden coves that the Pacific had carved at the shoreline.
Lots of places to hide.
And, more importantly, that was where she was.