Wicked Lies

by Lisa Jackson

  Serious faces, deep in conversation, they didn’t notice. Dunbar said something Harrison couldn’t hear. They stepped out of the way as a collapsible gurney was pushed through the front door to a waiting ambulance.

  Harrison craned his neck as the gurney passed.

  Zellman’s teenaged son, Brandt, was lying pale as death, an EMT in attendance and holding an IV bag as the boy was loaded into the back of the waiting ambulance. Thank God. At least he was alive!

  Stone looked up, spied Harrison in the car and, with a quick word to his partner, strode over. He unlocked the back doors. “Come on out,” he said and, as soon as Harrison was on his feet on the drive, unlocked his cuffs. “You don’t listen,” the detective said, “but it’s what you should expect if you show up at a crime scene brandishing a weapon.”

  “I know.” Rubbing his wrists, Harrison heard the sound of a car’s engine racing and looked up just as Dr. Maurice Zellman’s black Lexus, headlights glowing, squealed to a stop.

  “Oh, hell!” Stone was already heading toward the doctor’s sleek car. “Stay put,” he ordered Harrison over his shoulder as the doctor threw open the door of his car.

  “Brandt?” Zellman whispered brokenly, his face ghostly pale, his eyes round in horror. “Oh, no, oh, no!”

  “Doctor Zellman, if you’ll get back into your car until we sort this all out.” Stone was all business.

  “Not Brandt. Oh, God, not Brandt. He’ll be all right!” Disbelieving, he collapsed across the hood of his car. “Not Brandt. I . . . I have to go with him! I’m a doctor,” he rasped weakly as Detective Dunbar crossed the drive to the Lexus.

  The doors to the ambulance slammed shut, and an EMT got behind the wheel. Sirens shrieking, lights flashing, the ambulance took off, roaring down the drive.

  Zellman appeared confused. “I don’t understand . . . Brandt . . . son . . . I have to go with him. I should never have left. . . .” His eyes were dark with guilt. And then he swallowed hard, with difficulty, it appeared. He seemed dazed, almost a zombie. . . .

  “Dr. Zellman,” Savannah Dunbar said and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Oh.” Blinking several times, he looked around. “Patricia? Where’s my wife?” He cleared his throat and his eyes glittered. “What the hell happened to Patricia?” His gaze was nearly accusatory as he glared at the detectives. “What did that bastard do to her?” He glanced from one of the cops to the other, then collapsed to the ground. “He said he’d ‘get me.’ That’s what he said. And I knew . . . oh, dear God.” His voice was nearly mute.

  “He threatened you? You never said?”

  “Patient-doctor confidence,” Zellman snapped, sitting on the wet pavement, rain plastering his hair. Then, less angry, he added regretfully, “And I didn’t believe him. . . .”

  “He was a convicted murderer,” Stone said in disbelief.

  Zellman’s eyes closed. Then he seemed to gather himself and, with Stone’s help, climbed to his feet again. “Where’s my wife?” he whispered. “Patricia. I want to see her.”

  Harrison felt that little tickle of apprehension that was innate, an inborn response that came right before a devastating blow. Maurice Zellman felt it, too. His head was already shaking when Savvy Dunbar said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Zellman. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  Laura’s cell phone rang just as she was driving through the north end of Seaside, trying to determine if she would attempt to locate Harrison’s apartment or stop at the offices of the Breeze to see if someone had heard from him.

  Eyes on the road, she dug through her purse, retrieved it, and flipped it open. Ignoring the fact that it was illegal to talk on a cell phone without a hands-free device, she answered, “Where are you? I was scared out of my mind that something happened . . .”

  “Lorelei?” a fragile woman’s voice said.

  Laura’s heart dropped like a stone.

  “It’s Catherine. You said to call if there was trouble.”

  Oh, no!

  “What’s he done?” Laura demanded, fear jetting through her blood as she remembered Justice’s threat.

  You’re nexxt, Ssisster.

  “It’s Ravinia and Isadora,” Catherine admitted, her throat catching. “Justice attacked them.”

  Laura’s heart froze as she braked for a red light.

  “He had a knife. . . .”

  My knife, Laura thought, remembering her missing butcher knife in Justice’s hand as he stood outside her kitchen door.

  “I’ve been so wrong,” Catherine said, her voice, barely a squeak, catching.

  “Are they all right? Isadora and Ravinia, are they okay?” Laura demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But they’re alive?” Oh, please God.

  “Yes.”

  “Call the sheriff’s department. Detective Stone. No, better yet, call nine-one-one. Have you done that?”

  “No, we’re private here, you know—”

  “Damn it, Catherine! He attacked my sisters! Your nieces! In the one place they were supposed to be safe! Where is he now?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Look, I’ll be there in . . . ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Hang on.” She hung up and then, before she thought twice, dialed 9-1-1. To hell with Catherine and her secrets, her need for privacy, the gates, and the whole damned thing.

  Until Justice was either locked up forever or killed, no one would be safe!

  Paying no attention to the speed limit, hoping she would pick up a cop who was in some unseen hidey-hole and waiting for speeders, she blasted on toward Siren Song. Was that where Harrison was? Where was he?

  No police car followed, only a guy in a low-slung Porsche, who sang past her as she pulled into the turnoff to the lodge, swerving to a stop. For the first time in memory she saw the gate open and a man standing on the far side.

  “You Lorelei?” he asked, eyeing her and nodding to himself as the front door to the lodge swung open and Cassandra flew down the steps, her blond hair flying out behind her.

  “Yes, Earl. This is my sister. Come on!” Cassandra’s pretty face was twisted with worry, her eyes round, and she paid no attention to the fact that the hem of her skirt was taking on water and dirt as it skimmed the wet ground. “Hurry, Laura!”

  “Where’s Catherine?”

  “Inside.”

  Laura glanced at the man. “Who’s—?”

  “Earl’s our groundskeeper. You don’t remember? He’s been gone for a week or so, but he’s back. It was his cell phone Catherine used to call you.”

  The groundskeeper was tall and slightly stooped, with a thin swatch of gray hair. He wore an open rain jacket over a flannel shirt and overalls and boots caked in mud. He was nodding his agreement as he closed the gate behind the two women.

  “Don’t lock that!” Laura ordered. “And please, stay here. I’ve called the police.”

  “Oh, no!” Cassandra sent her a panicked glance as they reached the porch. “Catherine will kill you.”

  “She’ll have to stand in line. What happened?”

  “It was Justice!” Cassandra shuddered. “He climbed over the wall and tried to kill Ravinia. If Isadora hadn’t been there . . .” She shuddered again. “I don’t know what would have happened.”

  They walked through the open front door and into the parlor, where a fire smoldered and Ravinia was lying upon one of the long couches that had been draped in white sheets. Isadora was seated in the rocker, bandages surrounding each of her forearms, while Ophelia and Lillibeth hovered nearby.

  The smells of ashes, smoke, and something savory, like stew, were partially hidden by the acrid scent of antiseptic. Bleach and iodine, Catherine’s answer to ridding germs from everything.

  Catherine, ashen faced, was filling glasses of water from a pewter pitcher Laura remembered from her youth, something that had been passed on for generations, or so she’d been told.

  Her hair pulled into a long, solitary braid that snaked between her shoulder b
lades, Catherine looked up as Laura and Cassandra entered. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, hurrying to greet Laura. “You’re a nurse. I was hoping you had your own kit with you.”

  “Let me see how bad it is, but no, I don’t have a kit.” She noticed gauze strips and patches, in sterile packets, along with a role of adhesive tape that had to be a quarter of a century old. “Don’t suppose you have any butterfly bandages or . . . never mind.”

  A bandage was over Ravinia’s shoulder, the white gauze turning scarlet. “What happened?” Laura asked and Ravinia looked away.

  “She was trying to escape,” Catherine said, not bothering to hide her accusatory tone. “And she ran into Justice.”

  “He was here?”

  “Inside the fence,” Ravinia clarified, her voice low, her lips turned down at the corners. Obviously, her run-in with Justice and brush with death hadn’t lessened her rebellion. Her gaze flicked to Catherine, as if the older woman were a jailer. “It wasn’t safe here. If he hadn’t seen me, he might have come into the house and slaughtered all of us. All he had to do was wait until we were asleep.”

  “She’s right,” Cassandra said.

  None of the other sisters were in the room besides Ravinia, Cassandra, and Isadora.

  “Tell me what happened,” Laura said to Ravinia as she knelt beside the couch on which her sister lay, “I’ll take a look at your wounds.”

  “He tried to kill me.”

  “You were outside?” Laura was unwinding the bandage. Blood was still seeping a bit.

  “I’m just so sick of this place.” Ravinia threw her aunt a look. “We never get to do anything, not even socialize with other home-schooled kids, and no computers or telephones, and television only once in a while. . . .” She cast a look at an ancient bubble-eyed console that stood in the corner. “It’s a weird, weird life.”

  “That’s because we’re weird-weird,” Cassandra murmured ironically.

  “But you got out.” Ravinia glanced up at Laura as she unwound the last bit of blood-soaked gauze. “You and Becca. She even married and had a kid. And you, you were married, too. You got to have a real life!”

  Laura’s lips flattened. Real life, be damned. She lifted the bandage, and Ravinia sucked in her breath as the gauze pulled away from her wound, a deep, nasty cut that might have been deeper if the knife hadn’t been partially deflected by her collarbone. Fortunately, her artery hadn’t been nicked, but she thought Ravinia’s muscle might be damaged. “So you were outside. . . .”

  “Then he was there! I stepped around the corner and caught him looking at the window. I gasped and he saw me and just leaped.” She outwardly trembled. “I saw the knife in his hand and tried to run away, but he caught up with me and whirled me around. He hissed at me! Called me names and I was kicking at him when he swung the knife down. Then . . . then Isadora came running.”

  “I’d been looking out the window,” Isadora said. “Pulling the curtains shut when I saw him. It was dark. I didn’t know what was happening, but I grabbed the first thing I could find, which was the cast-iron skillet, and ran outside. I screamed and hit him over the head with it, and his knees buckled for a second. . . .”

  Laura watched as Isadora swallowed hard, her lips moving silently as she relived the horror. “Then,” she said, her voice softer, “he turned and I saw his eyes. There was light. . . . The moon? I don’t know, but they were glowing! Ice blue. Horrible! He sprang at me, swinging his knife. I put my arms in front of my face and was screaming and running backward when Catherine came with the gun.”

  “Gun? You shot at him?” Laura asked, reaching for a fresh roll of gauze.

  Catherine shook her head. “I couldn’t. It was too dark. I was afraid I’d hit Ravinia or Cassandra. . . . I shot into the air and he bolted. Disappeared into the night.”

  “And you didn’t call the police? When you knew they were looking for him?” Laura accused as she began to cover Ravinia’s wound with a fresh bandage.

  Catherine’s jaw was set, her eyes narrowing, as in the distance the sound of sirens split the air.

  “Looks like I didn’t need to, now, did I? You took care of it.”

  Before Laura could respond, her cell rang. She saw on her caller ID that Harrison was finally calling her, and she felt instant, gratifying relief. “Hold this,” she said to Ravinia, placing the fingers of her unharmed hand over the sterile gauze patch. “Hold it tight.” Then, “Hey,” she answered.

  Harrison was terse.

  “Sorry about running out on you. There’s been trouble down at Zellman’s house. Turnbull was here.”

  Laura glanced in surprise at her sisters, all of whom were staring at her and eavesdropping on her conversation. “Then he’s been busy, because he came to Siren Song last night. Wounded a couple of my sisters. I called nine-one-one when I heard about it, and I think the cops are just showing up.”

  “Don’t go anywhere. I’m on my way!”

  Harrison snapped his phone shut and headed for his car. Stone was standing near one of the police cruisers, cell phone pressed to his ear, his eyebrows drawn together in a hard scowl, while Detective Dunbar was still dealing with Dr. Zellman, trying to reason with the man as they all stood in the rain. While the detectives and deputies of the department were wearing caps emblazoned with the sheriff’s department logo, Zellman and Harrison were bareheaded.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Dunbar asked the psychiatrist, who, after watching his wife’s body bag being placed in the back of the medical examiner’s van, had somehow pulled himself together.

  “I need to go in and change.” He tugged at the bandage at his throat.

  “Sorry, not until the investigators for the crime lab are finished.”

  “I need to go in—”

  “It’s a crime scene now.”

  “But—”

  “Is there anyone we can call to be with you?”

  “No,” he said, his tone rasping with the effort. “I need to get to Ocean Park, to see my son! Brandt, he was injured and . . . I’m leaving!”

  “I don’t think you should be driving alone.”

  Zellman pulled himself together and breathed down his nose in that superior way of his. “I said, I’m fine. I’m a doctor. I should know.”

  Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode to his car. Seconds later he was wheeling out of the drive. Dunbar caught Harrison watching and just shook her head.

  Harrison turned to witness Zellman’s Lexus streak through the trees and rain. What kind of a man acted like that just after learning his wife was murdered and his son brutally attacked and fighting for his life? Something was definitely off with the good doctor.

  But then Zellman always had been a prick.

  A tech came through the front, carrying a plastic bag of bloody bedsheets.

  “From the kid’s room?” Dunbar asked.

  “Yeah. Someone left him for dead.”

  She took one look at the blood-soaked sheets, then turned quickly and doubled over to vomit in a stand of rhododendrons just shedding their blooms.

  “You okay?” Harrison asked.

  “Yeah.” She wiped at the back of her mouth with her hand. “Nothing to do with this.”

  One of the officers overheard and grinned like a ghoul. “Sure, Dunbar. It couldn’t be blood and death and violence. Must be some other reason.”

  Spitting into the ground, she stood up and regarded him coolly. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  The officer started to laugh uproariously, then cut himself off when he saw her expression. “You’re kidding.” Then, “Who knocked you up?”

  Stone joined their group at that point, just in time to hear her say, “Don’t worry about it. It isn’t mine.”

  He did a double take, and he and Harrison exchanged a mystified look. “Uh . . .” Stone had momentarily lost his train of thought, but then he shook himself out of it and said, “That was the boss. Seems our boy was busy last night. An attack was reported a
t Siren Song. Two of the women injured. A unit and ambulance have been dispatched.”

  Harrison said, “I heard. I just called Laura. She’s there.”

  Stone was already striding to his car. “I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll wrap things up here and then head north,” Dunbar said.

  Harrison didn’t wait. He was already jogging to his Impala. He figured the detectives would try to talk him out of driving to Siren Song, but they might as well save their collective breaths. He was going to see for himself that Laura was all right.

  “Hey!” Stone yelled at him. “You might want this.” He was holding up the 9 mm. “You do have a license. I checked.”

  “Told you.”

  Stone handed him the gun, then slid behind the wheel. “It’s nothing personal, Frost,” he said. “It’s just I don’t trust reporters.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Mike Ferguson found the old motel fascinating as hell. He’d hitchhiked to Deception Bay first with an elderly couple in a pickup that looked like it was from the sixties. They took him as far as the cut-off to Jewell and Mist at a crawl. Then two teenagers picked him up in a hot Toyota 4 Runner. They didn’t believe in going less than sixty-five, which was fine by Mike. He got to the turnoff to Seaside in that cool rig, then had to walk a couple of miles before the ride to Deception Bay with a guy who claimed to be a cook at some place called Davy Jones’s Locker. The driver of the Ford Focus had dropped him off in the middle of town, and Mike then worked his way to the old motel that Mad Maddie, Justice Turnbull’s mother, had once called home. Ignoring the chained fence with its faded NO TRESPASSING sign that creaked with the wind, he’d soldiered on through the rain to the front of the motel.

  The place was a wreck, but Mike couldn’t help from poking through the old dilapidated cupboards and closets of the units. There really wasn’t a lot left. It looked like someone had camped here at some point and left an old rat-eaten sleeping bag in the living room of the manager’s unit, the best one of the whole sagging stream of cabins. Strung together with carports, each individual cabin was falling apart. The roofs had gaping holes in the shingles, and bricks had fallen off the chimneys. A couple of doors had been nailed shut, and there was plywood over most of the windows. The fence surrounding the place was like Old Man Ramsby with his mouth of gaps where teeth were supposed to be.