by Lisa Jackson
“I’m at Dooley’s, drinking a longneck. Get down here and I’ll get you one.”
Lang relaxed back into his chair, grinning in spite of himself. “Yeah, well, I’m about a hundred miles away, so it’ll be a while. Hey, Curtis. What’s up?”
Trey Curtis was Lang’s old partner from the Portland Police Department, where Lang had been employed before coming to the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department. They had a long-standing rule that wherever they met, the first one to spot the other bought the latecomer a beer. Dooley’s had been one of their favorite spots in Portland, but Lang had been away a long time.
“I got a call for you, actually. For the department there, anyway. A woman named Kay Drescher thinks she knows that unidentified woman whose picture you’ve been running.”
“Yeah?”
“Says the Jane Doe’s name is Stephanie Wyman. Drescher’s been trying to reach her by phone and can’t raise her. Wyman lives in an apartment in the Pearl.”
Lang had straightened up as soon as Curtis started talking. The Pearl was a pricey section of Portland abounding with shops and galleries as well as upscale condos and historic homes. “You got the license number and make of Wyman’s car?”
“Check your e-mail. It’s been sent your way, along with her driver’s license and a secondary photo. She drives a silver two thousand four Nissan Sentra.” He rattled off the VIN and license plate numbers.
Lang took note as he clicked on to his department e-mail. “Hasn’t been released yet, but the woman—Wyman, if it’s really her—died last night of her injuries. Let’s see what we’ve got.” He clicked open the e-mail, caught the picture of Stephanie Wyman, and felt a new sense of rage when he looked at her smiling, young face. “Yep. Jane Doe and Stephanie Wyman. One and the same,” he said.
“Well, shit.” Trey let out a long world-weary sigh. “This Kay Drescher’s on her way to the station now, so I’ll give her the news. When we’re done, I’m heading over to Wyman’s apartment. I’ll call you when I know more.”
“Thanks.”
Lang wondered if he should drop everything and head to Portland but decided against it. The homicide had taken place in Tillamook County, and he was pretty damn sure it was related to Justice Turnbull and that this Stephanie Wyman, or whoever she was, was just an unlucky victim of his overall plan to harm the residents of Siren Song. But the trail was still here, not Portland.
Savvy was just coming back to her desk with a full cup of coffee, and Lang looked at it longingly and swept up his own cup. Before heading to the vending area, he brought her up to date on the car information, finishing with, “Let’s find that Nissan,” to which Savannah nodded and sat at her computer to gather all the pertinent details and get the word out to their officers.
The morning routine at Kirsten Rojas’s house was more like a study in controlled chaos. Her daughter, Didi, jumped up at six thirty, which got Chico barking and turning circles, and Kirsten herself started calling orders like a drill sergeant just to keep everybody working toward the same goal: to get Didi to preschool by nine.
Laura found the craziness comforting, a normal family living a normal routine and expecting normal things to happen during their day. She had slept in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and now stumbled into the bathroom to wash her face, only to promptly throw up the little bit she’d eaten the night before.
Rinsing out her mouth and washing her face, she dried her cheeks on a towel and then ran a hand over her abdomen before heading out of the bathroom.
Pancakes were being poured onto a griddle as she entered the kitchen area, and she smiled wanly at Didi, who’d regarded her earlier with wide-eyed suspicion upon finding a strange woman on the couch. The little girl with the dark pageboy had then ignored Laura and jumped on Harrison, who pretended to be able to sleep through her efforts to wake him up, which included beating on his chest with her small fists and attempting to jump on him, which Kirsten managed to halt before real damage occurred by sweeping Didi away from her uncle, hollering at Harrison to get up, and apologizing to Laura for the noise at the same time.
“Pancakes,” Didi announced, dipping a piece in a bowl of maple syrup before popping it into her mouth.
“I see,” Laura said.
“Would you like some?” Kirsten asked, her gaze moving past Laura to the living room. “Harrison! Are you up! Get moving!”
“Got any coffee?” he responded, appearing at the arch that separated the kitchen nook from the living room. His hair was a disheveled mess, his jaw darker than ever with his beard shadow. He wore a pair of low-slung, disreputable jeans, but his chest was shirtless.
Laura glanced away, but not before the memory of his lean male chest was burned onto her retinas. She felt oddly light-headed and hoped to hell it had something to do with her pregnancy, knowing, really, that it probably didn’t.
Kirsten half smiled. “I work at a coffee shop. What do you think?”
“Is it made?” he questioned, to which she snorted and poured him a cupful into a mug that said LIKE I CARE in bold black letters on a white background.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked Laura, whose stomach still wasn’t sure. But she felt Harrison’s look and said, “That would be great.”
“Pancakes, too?” Didi demanded, frowning as if she expected Laura to refuse.
“Please.” Laura just hoped to hell she could get them down without drawing attention to herself. She was momentarily swept by a feeling of drowning; it was overwhelming, the things that were happening. She hadn’t had enough time to process half of what she was feeling and going through.
“After I get Didi to preschool, I’ve got to stop by the store and pick up some supplies. And then I have a half shift today, so I’m going to work around noon. What about you two?”
“Supplies?” Harrison asked.
“Beads.”
“Aha.” Harrison turned to Laura. “My sister’s into quilting and knitting and, of course, macramé. She has beads and hemp and pots and plants and all kinds of stuff.” He waved a hand around the kitchen, where there were a number of potted plants snuggled in knotted, ropelike slings sporting colored beads and hanging from the ceiling. “Macramé,” he said again, pointing to the knotted rope. “Really big in the seventies. Kirsten’s trying to bring it back.”
Kirsten shot him a look of mock fury, then hurried Didi through the rest of her meal, while Laura sipped at her coffee and managed a few bites of her pancakes. Harrison tucked into a stack covered with syrup and two cups of coffee before Kirsten and Didi and Chico, who’d been locked, whining, in Kirsten’s bedroom while they ate, appeared at the door.
“We’re heading out,” Kirsten said, glancing between Harrison and Laura.
“You’re taking the dog, right?” Harrison asked.
“What is it with you and Chico?” she asked. “No, I’m not taking the dog. Look. He likes Laura.”
Chico had taken up residence at Laura’s feet, his beady eyes focused on Harrison, waiting for even the slightest move.
“So, you’ll be back in like what? An hour?” Harrison asked.
“Yeah . . .” She glanced at her brother. “Chico’s already been outside and done his thing, but it wouldn’t kill you to walk him.”
“Right.”
“You’re insufferable,” Kirsten said on a sigh.
Harrison managed a smile. “Only when it comes to the dog.”
“I’ve got to get to work,” Laura said. “We’ll be out of your hair.”
“It’s not that,” Kirsten said. “I just was wondering what was going on, y’know?”
Harrison shared a look with Laura, then said, “Full details later, but it’s to do with Justice Turnbull.”
Kirsten glanced at Didi, who was looking at the adults with a scowl, sensing she was being left out of the conversation on purpose. “Okay,” Kirsten said. “I’ll be back later. We’ll talk then.”
After she left, Harrison picked up Laura’s barely touched plate and
his own clean one, put them both in the sink. “Thought you had the afternoon shift.”
“I just wanted to let your sister know I had somewhere to go.”
“I’d rather you stuck around here. You look a little pale,” he added. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Really. But there’s something kind of strange . . .”
“What?”
“When I was running away from Justice, he touched me. He got his hand in my hair and then he raked his finger down my back.”
“He scratched you?”
“No . . . not really. He just touched me, but it felt like a burn. I can still kind of feel it.”
“Want me to look?” he asked, concerned.
She was still wearing the T-shirt and sweats she’d slept in. Carefully, she turned her back to him and lifted up the hem of the shirt. She felt him staring at her skin, but after a moment all he said was, “There’s no mark.”
“Good.” She yanked down her shirt. “And there’s another thing. I think there’s something wrong with him,” she said slowly. To the ironic lift of Harrison’s brow, she added, “I mean physically wrong. He’s sick. More than what we think.”
“Huh.”
“I told you I could sometimes tell things about people by touching them.”
“Or them touching you?” he pointed out.
“Yes,” she said. Then, more strongly, “Yes!”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “All right.”
“With Justice, I got an even stronger hit. There’s something really wrong with him. It’s going to kill him.”
“Good!”
“I don’t know when, though.” She shook her head, wishing she had more answers. “I don’t know. But I’m going to tell Catherine and my sisters. It will go a long way to making them feel better.”
“You’re going to Siren Song today?”
“Maybe.”
“We need to go to the authorities.”
“I know. I will. Later,” she said. “I am a little tired. But I promise. Later today.”
Harrison gave her a sideways look, then glanced at his watch. “I’ve got some things to finish up, but I’m not leaving you here by yourself. Maybe you should come with me.”
“Your sister will be back in an hour.”
“Will you stay here with her, then?” he asked.
She hesitated, then nodded. “Until work.”
“Then, I’ll leave when she gets back.”
“What’s on your agenda today?” she asked when the conversation stopped cold for a few moments.
“First, I’m going to the Deception Bay Historical Society and read about your people. I met a guy yesterday. An old guy who knows Dr. Loman. Herman Smythe?”
Laura shook her head. “I don’t know him.”
Harrison gave her a quick recap of his meeting with the man in the wheelchair at Seagull Pointe and then said, “Then I’m going to call his daughter, Dinah, and see what she has to say.”
“You’re still working on a story about my family?” she asked cautiously.
“Just background, but yeah. I’m not going to report anything you told me that was off the record, but, Lorelei, Justice isn’t going away. He’s trying to kill you. And your family. And the whole damn thing’s going to blow up at some point, and hell yes, I’m going to write the story. And I won’t be the only one. But first and foremost, I want you to be safe. That’s what I really care about.”
She wanted to be upset. She wanted to scream and yell, to rant and rave, to let out all her frustrations. Instead she bit her tongue, unable to refute anything he’d said because it was simple fact.
“You’re the truth seeker,” she said at length, expelling her breath in a sigh.
“Well . . . yeah . . .” He was clearly lost about the direction her thoughts were turning.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?” he asked cautiously.
Laura would have liked to argue with him just for argument’s sake, but in truth she didn’t want to be alone, either. “Okay, I’m going to trust you,” she said, then headed for her overnight bag and a shower.
Kirsten was as good as her word and reappeared just as Laura was finished dressing. Harrison told his sister to take care of Laura, received a growl from Chico when he gave her a short hug, then left, sketching a good-bye with his right hand as he headed out.
Laura watched his dusty Impala back down Kirsten’s short driveway.
“All right, he’s finally gone. How did you meet?” Kirsten demanded as soon as Harrison was out of sight. She had dropped her bag of beads and rope and various other items on the counter and was now rummaging through it. “Tell me the truth. And don’t be embarrassed if it started out as a one-night stand. I know my brother.”
Laura stood in silence, unable to think of a reply.
Looking up, Kirsten said in surprise, “Oh, sorry. You haven’t slept with him yet. I thought the whole bed/couch thing was just you being private about it.”
“Your brother’s into one-night stands?” Laura asked.
“Not always,” she said, but her face said it was a lie.
“Mostly?”
“How did you meet him again?”
Laura thought about it a moment, then admitted, “Justice Turnbull has me on his short list. I’m related to the women at Siren Song. Many of them are my sisters. Harrison was after a story . . . but he’s been trying to protect me.”
Kirsten stared at Laura in amazement. “Oh . . . sweet . . . Jesus . . . Sit down. We gotta talk.”
CHAPTER 30
In the afternoon Trey Curtis called Lang back and said that Kay Drescher was driving to the Tillamook County morgue to identify Stephanie Wyman’s body because, even though Kay was just a friend, Stephanie was estranged from her only living relative, her father, who lived somewhere on the East Coast, anyway.
“Kay Drescher doesn’t believe it’s her friend,” Curtis warned Lang. “Just won’t believe it, but is concerned enough to make the trip. I think she thinks she’ll get there and be able to tell you that the body is someone else.”
Lang thought of the photo ID, and Drescher was going to be disappointed. The woman in the morgue was Stephanie Wyman or her identical twin. “I’ll tell O’Halloran.”
“Found her car yet?”
“Not yet. Got a few other things going around here.” Lang sketched Curtis in a little about the double homicide at Bancroft Bluff. “Clausen and Delaney are on-site, and I’ll probably be heading that way.”
“Wow. All we got going around here is a TriMet bus driver in a wrangle with a bicyclist that’s turned nutty. Fistfight. Threats on the Internet. Lots of play in the news.”
“Is Pauline Kirby on it?” Lang asked with distaste. He’d had a wrangle with her himself not so long ago.
“Of course.”
“She’s everywhere,” Lang said.
“Uh-huh. And she’s really milking that story about those entitled teen criminals in Seaside. You got any part of that?”
“No. Different jurisdiction, thank God.”
“I saw her on the news last night. She says they broke into their wealthy friends’ houses and didn’t so much steal as pretend like they lived there. Kind of like the teens that broke into the famous people’s homes around Hollywood and just hung out.”
“They stole a few things, too. I read Harrison Frost’s accounts in the Breeze,” Lang said. “And Clausen’s stepson knew one of the victims.”
“Sheeeit. And then you’ve got psycho Turnbull, who killed Stephanie Wyman.”
“Allegedly. But yeah . . . he did.”
“Maybe he’s left your area,” Curtis posed.
“I hope not,” Lang responded grimly. “I want to get him.” At that moment Lang’s cell phone buzzed, and he picked it up and examined the caller ID to realize it was Savannah. “Got a call coming in. I’ll check with you later.” Hanging up the desk phone, he pressed the green ON button on his cell. “Hey,” he answered.
>
“Burghsmith found a silver Nissan,” she said tersely. “Looks like it was abandoned at that strip mall where Phil’s Phins is. He ran the plates, but they belong to a Ford Taurus, not a Nissan compact.”
“Turnbull switched plates?”
“Uh-huh. The Taurus belongs to a Gerald Moncrief, who’s currently living at Seagull Pointe. Turnbull probably switched ’em out when he dropped off the Jane Doe and smothered his mother.”
“So, it’s like we thought. Then Turnbull attacked Jane Doe for her car, then left her dying at Seagull Pointe when he came to kill Madeline. Maybe he meant for her to die, maybe not. Either way, she’s gone, and now he’s abandoned her car. We have a possible on who she is. A woman named Stephanie Wyman from Portland.”
“Someone coming to identify the body?”
“A friend,” Lang said.
“Man . . . ,” Savannah said on a sigh.
“I know.”
“We gotta get this guy,” she said, shaking off the moment and sounding determined.
“Yep. I’m going to update O’Halloran.”
“I’m heading over to the double homicide,” she said. “You coming?”
Lang considered, then said, “I think you’ve got it covered. I’m going to follow up on Turnbull. When you’re finished there, come on back and we’ll put our heads together and try to figure out what he’s driving now.”
Harrison pulled into the parking lot at the Breeze, climbed from his car, and turned his face toward a watery sun that looked like it could build up some real heat as soon as the marine layer burned off. He had gone to the Deception Bay Historical Society and asked for the history of the Colony and was given a once-over by a middle-aged woman wearing narrow-lensed glasses. She informed him that they possessed an undocumented history, and when he said that was okay, she led him to a bookshelf, where she pulled out a slim volume that was more a manuscript with a laminated cover than a real book.
She then told him that many people seemed to have an interest in the women who lived at the lodge and asked what his particular reason for searching into their background was. He thought about telling her that he knew one of them personally, then decided that was a bad idea. But when he said he was a reporter and was doing background work on a story, he thought she was going to rip the missive from his hands. And then, when he wanted to borrow it for a while outside of the building, she visibly paled, as if the thought of a world outside her control might make her swoon.