A Dark Lure

by Loreth Anne White

He gave a soft, derisive snort. “Holly’s moved in with her ex. She took Ty back to his real father. A stable environment, she said. She’s moved on. I’m the bad memory. I am the face of her own guilt. I’m the ‘affair’ she regrets having. She couldn’t look into my eyes without seeing it. Nor can I look into hers. We can’t go back, Liv. She’s pregnant again.” He seemed to struggle for a moment. “Oh, fuck, who am I kidding? I hate her for that. It’s as if having another baby, a new kid, is in defiance of our memories. Of me. As if she can blot it all out.”

  “Or it’s her way of coping, just moving forward.”

  He flattened his mouth.

  She looked away, thinking about motherhood. Children, babies. Loss. The pain could be big and breath-stealing. It had been utterly crippling for her. It still was.

  She ached with every molecule of her being to know what had happened to her baby. But she also knew she’d done the right thing in sacrificing her child to adoption. She would not have been a fit mother. Only once she’d reached Broken Bar and begun to find a measure of peace had she begun to believe she could be sound enough to raise a child. Until now. Until the flashbacks returned. And she knew it wasn’t possible—she’d forever be haunted by him. Dead or not, he lived inside her. At least she’d freed her baby.

  She wanted to tell Cole that she understood. That she’d lost family, too. That her daughter—wherever she was—would be just a little older than Ty and Jimmie.

  “Be careful, Cole,” she said quietly. “You don’t want to hold on to it too hard.” She paused. “You don’t want to be your father.”

  His mouth opened. He stared at her. Then he snorted. “Funny, how sometimes you can see so much about others, but not yourself.” He paused. “What about you, Liv?”

  Liv.

  It was the second time he’d called her that.

  “You try to outrun it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your past. You almost killed me back there, yet you won’t talk about it.”

  She got up suddenly, dusted off her jeans. “I really should go. I have errands to run, a fence to fix before a guided fishing trip later this afternoon. And there are several guests booked for dinner at the lodge. I should give Jason a hand.”

  She tried to walk smartly down the rutted track, but her legs felt like water, as if they didn’t belong to her. He was unraveling her like he unraveled the people in his books, peeling the layers away, exposing things she’d managed to keep hidden for years.

  She stopped suddenly and swung around.

  “I found out who left the newspaper and lure,” she called out, trying to reassert her ground, show she was sane. “It was the new guest I signed in. They belonged to him.”

  He got up. “Let me help you with that fence.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like it. A woman alone with armed squatters or poachers.”

  “Says he who profiles people who live on the edge.”

  He opened his mouth, but Olivia turned, breathing in deep and focusing on long, steady strides as she made her way back toward her horse. Ace came running to her heels. She could feel Cole’s eyes burning into her back—feel his need. She felt she owed him more comfort, after he’d shared like that. But she couldn’t offer more. It brought him too close to the fragile part of herself—the very human part that ached to share, to touch and be touched, to be held.

  So she refused to look over her shoulder. She wasn’t sure what had just happened back there, but the paradigm of her world had tilted dangerously.

  She mounted Spirit, and as they cantered up over the ridge, she saw a plume of dust rising down the valley. A gleaming black SUV was barreling down the dirt road toward the lodge. Norton Pickett. Myron’s lawyer. He had to be delivering the new will. Tension twisted, and she kicked Spirit into a gallop.

  After the sergeant left her office, Dr. Bellman leaned over, pressed the buzzer, asked for her assistant to bring in Gage Burton’s medical records.

  She paged quickly through her files, studying again the location of his tumor, the growth progression. She noted, too, that Burton had blown off his last appointment.

  She rolled her pen between thumb and middle finger, debating what the cop had just told her.

  I have reason to believe Gage Burton might be endangering his daughter . . . time could be of the essence . . .

  She reached for her phone, dialed Burton’s home number.

  It rang three times before going to voice mail. Probably because he was out of town, as the cop had said. Bellman then tried Burton’s cell. It clicked directly to voice mail, saying he was out of the service area. She sat for a while, rolling her pen between her thumb and middle finger.

  Once before, early in her career, there had been a time when, if she had intervened, she could have saved a child. Instead she’d adhered rigidly to her code of ethics. The child had died. At the time she’d promised herself if it came to a child’s life again, she would risk it—she would warn someone. She’d circumvent the bureaucracy. She could not live with letting it happen again. And Burton had been showing signs that worried her.

  She dialed Burton’s cell again, and this time she left him a message, telling him he needed to come in.

  Then she reached for the card the cop had given her. She dialed Mac Yakima’s number.

  Mac Yakima stared at the Tim Hortons sign through the rain-spattered windshield. They were parked in the lot outside. Martinello was one of those cops who actually did like donuts. She munched one now, powdered sugar on her chin.

  “Is Raffey attending the postmortem?” she said, taking another chomp. That woman had a metabolism like nobody’s business. She ran at least forty miles each week, and swam. Mac always got the idea that she was running from something. Like if she stopped long enough it might catch up with her. Maybe she ran just so she could thumb her nose at the cliché and eat donuts. That would be Martinello’s style.

  She was young for homicide. She had come to policing by way of a wealthy upbringing and a doctorate in criminology, which didn’t ingratiate her easily to the other officers who’d slogged up through the ranks and beat the streets in order to earn a place on the integrated homicide team. Mac figured she made a big deal out of stopping for donuts because she wanted to be more like a blue-collar cop. Or something.

  “Yeah. He’ll call if anything comes up.” Mac started the engine. “How was Burton when you drove him home after the party?” he said, looking over his shoulder as he reversed the cruiser.

  “Edgy. Probably pissed that everyone bailed on him.” She delivered the last of the donut to her mouth. “I would’ve been edgy, too. I mean, how often does a guy get to retire after a lifetime of service? Once. And no one can stick around long enough to finish a beer and see him off properly? They leave you standing in their dust while they rush out, all amped up about the next big call?”

  “Did he press you for information on the call?” Mac pulled out of the parking lot and joined the throng of traffic along Fourth. He shot her a glance.

  Her features had turned unreadable. Her cop face. Mac knew it well.

  “He was curious, yeah. Why?”

  “He mention anything about the bandage on his hand?”

  “He told me he hurt it while moving a bookshelf.”

  “I want to know where he was the night before the retirement party.”

  “Jesus, Yak, you can’t think—”

  “I don’t know what in the hell to think,” he snapped. “Burton knows about the bites out of the breasts. He knows about the note in the vic’s right eye socket. He even fucking knows what the note says.”

  But as she was about to speak, Mac’s cell buzzed. He pulled over to answer it.

  “Sergeant Yakima.”

  “It’s Dr. Bellman. Listen, I understand time could be crucial, and that you could potentially use this infor
mation to secure a warrant. But what I’m going to say, for the record, is theoretical. Purely conceptual. It does not pertain specifically to any patient of mine.”

  “I got it.” His gaze cut to Martinello. He mouthed the name: Bellman.

  “The answer is yes. Stress can undermine the body’s immune system. This in turn can exacerbate the growth of a lesion. Also, it’s fairly rare, but a relationship has been demonstrated between structural intracranial lesions and mental illness. Psychotic manifestations cannot be dismissed as a possible symptom.”

  “Okay, just so we’re clear in lay speak, that means someone with a brain tumor in a specific location of the brain could develop psychosis.”

  “It’s been demonstrated.”

  “And what could this psychosis—hypothetically—look like?”

  “In layman’s terms, psychosis is an umbrella tag for a number of mental illnesses of which schizophrenia is one, dissociative identity disorder another.”

  “Schizophrenia—that’s when you hear voices in your head telling you to do things?”

  “It’s a loss of touch with reality. And yes, often patients do hear voices giving them orders. Often it is not clear to the patient that this is something unusual, or that they’re ill. I hope this helps.”

  “Thank you, Doctor, it does.” He hung up. “Shit,” he said quietly. “Burton could be a very sick man.”

  He tried Gage’s cell again. No response. Or no service.

  Mac put the cruiser back in gear and reentered the stream of traffic. “The pathologist puts the time of death around eight p.m. on the night before Burton’s retirement party. The crime scene is a two- to three-hour drive from Burton’s residence. We need to know where Burton was that night. We need a warrant on his phone to find out where he is now.” He hefted out a heavy breath.

  “You and him go way back?”

  He nodded. “Right back to Fort Tapley up north. He was stationed there after Watt Lake, a lateral move that he never explained to me fully, but I understood it to be a result of his problems with the Watt Lake case. There was big political pressure to wrap that one up smoothly. He was a burr under the brass’s saddle, from what I understand. He would not—could not—drop this idea that they had the wrong guy. Despite all the evidence, he maintained the killer was still out there. He’s been obsessed with it ever since, and it’s cost him some major career moves. The deputy commish job could have been his, I reckon, had it not been for this obsession. Instead it went to Hank Gonzales, who was on the Watt Lake Killer task force back in the day.”

  “So this could be personal for Burton on a whole other level,” she said. “And what better way to keep the game going? To finally get everyone hunting again. To prove to Gonzales he was wrong all those years back. Is that what you think is going down here? That Burton’s having issues with retirement, grief, illness, and it’s made him psychotic—capable of killing?”

  “All we know is that Burton is a person of interest in the Birkenhead homicide. Our only one so far. And we need to find him, even if just to rule him out.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Through the scope of his bolt-action Remington .308 he studied the trio in the boat, the evening air chill on his ears. The snow was coming sooner than forecast. Of this he was certain.

  He zeroed in on his prey. His lovely, skittish, wounded deer. It intrigued him, really, how even a gut-shot deer would not stray too far from home territory in spite of the fact the hunter was near. The familiarity of home always outweighed the danger. Deadly mistake, that.

  Her hair caught the sun as it sank toward the tree-lined esker. She laughed. It was like a punch to his chest. The boat angled closer to the shadows and scrub along the shore where he hid. He could see her face clearly. Heat hummed through his veins.

  He slid his forefinger into the trigger guard, softly caressing the trigger. Then he gave it slight pressure as he exhaled. Poof. In his power. He could so easily just squeeze the trigger all the way through, crack the .308 into her skull. And she’d be gone. He slid his scope a little lower. Or he could put it right there, through her heart. He had the control. All the choices. Once again he was beginning to own her.

  Memories surged through him. The taste of her mouth. Her smell. The feel of her bare skin as he drove his cock up deep in between her legs. How he’d kept her shackled, the rope around her neck, as he’d forced her onto all fours like an animal. How he’d slapped into her, driving deeper and deeper until she screamed in glorious pain. Which made him wilder. His penis hardened at the thought.

  She’d stopped screaming one day.

  Even though he’d known he was still causing her pain, she’d fallen silent. He’d thought it was insubordination, a battle of wills, because she’d discovered that her screams only drove him wilder. He’d thought it was her trying to wrest back control.

  But then he’d learned different. A smile curved over his mouth. He panned his scope over to the man in the boat.

  Big man. Strong body with thick neck. Balding brush cut. A whisper of a memory feathered into his brain, but he was unable to grasp it.

  He moved over to the child.

  Long jet-black hair spilled over her shoulders, the ends lifting in the wind. She was not so much child but a creature reaching that special place between childhood and womanhood. That elusive memory feathered a little deeper into his brain, cold and unpleasant, like growing hoarfrost. But still he couldn’t shape it, hold on to it.

  He heard a voice.

  Eugene . . . come here. Leave your father be . . . Come sit on my lap and read to me, my favorite boy . . .

  A sick, dark change of mood twisted into him. His head began to hurt. Slowly, he lowered his scope.

  Tori was bundled up in her down jacket with a flotation device strapped over the top. She felt like the Michelin Man, stupid and uncomfortable, and she was still cold in the boat, especially in the forest shadows at the calmer end of the lake. The boat had a flat bottom with wet carpet in it. There were two bench seats, and a seat at the rear where the motor and tiller were. Olivia stood at the rear, casting. Ace slept on a towel at her feet. He wore a doggie life jacket, which Tori supposed was cute. Her dad sat in the prow where he dangled out his line and watched an orange bobber. She was shivering in the middle.

  Her gaze slid up to Olivia’s profile. She’d glimpsed the mean-ass scar around Olivia’s neck when that man had removed her bandana after she’d nearly fainted. It was impressive, that scar—she wondered what could have created something like that.

  Olivia cast her line out in graceful arcs over the water, settling her fly far out along the edge of a shoal. She held her rod with her right hand while she slowly pulled the line in with her left. It pooled in big coils at her feet. Tori noticed scars on the inside of Olivia’s wrists. Her pulse quickened. Had she tried to kill herself? Tori had read in novels about how it was more effective to cut lengthwise rather than across the vein if you wanted to commit suicide properly. Sometimes she thought of killing herself. If she was religious, and if she truly believed she would see her mother in the afterlife, maybe she’d have the guts to actually carry it out.

  Olivia flicked her line out farther. Water droplets sparkled in the rays from the sinking sun.

  The words from her mother’s manuscript crept into her mind . . .

  The sergeant watched mesmerized as the man cast out his line. Perfect, languid loops rolled out above the water, doubling back one loop over the other, sending sparkling droplets into sunshine . . .

  Those unarticulated questions lurking at the periphery of her brain crowded in a little closer as she thought of the Watt Lake sergeant. The three-eyed fly in her mother’s manuscript. She stole a look at her dad. He was intently watching Olivia, something unreadable in his face.

  Tori’s chest went tight. Her stomach hurt. She looked away, fighting a sudden surge of hot tears. She focused on the loon
nearby. The bird watched them with a red eye, its beak like a razor.

  Her dad took out his hip flask and offered it to Olivia. She said no thanks, but he said, “Go on. It’s cold. It’ll warm you up.”

  Olivia hesitated, then reached over and took the flask from him. She swallowed a mouthful and returned it. Tori felt blackness boiling up around her. She thought about her beautiful mom. Her mom would have packed a flask of cocoa. With cookies, or home-baked banana choc-chip muffins. The darkness boiled higher about her, drowning out the hurt, the pain, filling the great big hollow in her chest with anger.

  Anger at Julia Borsos for telling her she was getting fat, and claiming that’s why boys didn’t like her. She was gaining weight—she knew that. She’d been eating everything in sight since her mother died, as if trying to fill that empty hole in her life. Her skin had gone bad. No one loved her anymore. She was lost. Alone. Dangerously angry underneath it all.

  “Where did you go?” she muttered, not looking at her father.

  “What?”

  “Earlier, when you went for your walk?”

  He took another swig from his flask and replaced the cap. “I went to the campground for a look-see.”

  “Why?”

  “Just to get a lay of the land.”

  “Why did you take two guns?”

  Her father’s eyes flashed up. Tori felt a smug punch.

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did. What’s that in your boot right now, and in the holster under your shirt?”

  Her father swallowed slowly, a hot glint entering his eyes. Olivia was staring at him.

  Another smug punch. She’d forced her dad’s hand. Now the suicidal guide-woman wouldn’t like him.

  “Not easy to get a permit for handguns,” Olivia said, casting her line out in another series of long graceful arcs over the water.

  “You’re right. It’s not.”

  Olivia flicked another glance at him but said nothing more.

  “Why do you keep phoning Mac?” Tori pushed, unable to stop herself now.