“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stay where you are.” Detective Kent’s voice had lost all its patience; he was done playing good cop. Andrew’s eyes sought out Neil.
“I’ll take care of everything here, Andrew. Not to worry.”
“Mr. Hayes.”
Andrew couldn’t tell whether the cop was frustrated that the situation with Emily and Vandin had gotten to this horrible point, or enraged that they were running off like vigilantes. Either way, Andrew didn’t give a shit. Emily was somewhere out there, prey to a psychopath, with no one to protect her.
Suddenly, S.J. shoved her way between Bolen and Sommers, her eyes narrowing at the sight of the detective.
“What’s going on out here?” she asked, annoyed at the delay in the photo shoot.
“We’re leaving,” Andrew told her and grabbed a hold of his bag that stood waiting by the front door. “Come on guys.” He motioned to Simon and Christian who were ready to go. None of them even bothered to cast off their long leather dusters from the shoot.
“What?” cried S.J., clearly having reached the end of her patience. “You said you’d work through the day, and I expect just that. What is this all about? And who the hell is he?” She glared at Detective Kent, who raised his shaggy eyebrows in surprise at the seething woman before him.
“S.J., extenuating matters have come to light in the last several minutes. I think it’s wise to let these gentlemen go,” Neil explained.
“What extenuating matters? There are no extenuating matters. You get yourselves in here right now and finish what you’ve committed to.”
Sommers and Bolen didn’t say a word, although they knew full well all that had just transpired. They were way too thrilled to lap up all the drama. It made good copy.
“We need to leave now! If you have a problem with that—take it up with our manager,” Andrew said caustically.
“And who would that be?”
“Neil St. John.”
Her eyes darted between them, then zeroed in on Neil as the realization sank in. She started laughing derisively. “Oh my, my, my. You played that perfectly, didn’t you? All nobly retired, no desire to step back into that soul-sucking fray, you said. Oh, that’s rich. Neil St. John, lost in mourning over his dead wife. Neil St. John, the great philanthropist, the broken-hearted humanitarian who’s still in bed with Atlantic after all these years. How much of a cut are you getting, then?”
Neil studied her coldly. “I have no ties to anyone except these men. So you and I, S.J., will step back into that room and arrange the date and times for this session to resume. We will do it with respect and decorum. Do I make myself clear?” His glare then shifted from S.J. onto Sommers and Bolen. “I do not have to remind you why, because all of you know how wildly successful these three men are going to be. If you want to have a prayer in hell of having access to them, or so much as breathe the same air as they do in the future, you will march yourselves right back into my house and not utter another single word. Now, please excuse me while I walk my clients to their car. I will be with you shortly.”
Neil waited until they retreated back into the living room and slammed the door. With an about face he took Detective Kent by the arm and escorted him out the door as Christian, Simon, and Andrew raced to the car.
“Mr. Hayes, I have to ask you a few more questions!” the detective shouted after him, breaking away from Neil as Andrew yanked open the car door.
“Mr. Hayes!”
“I need to go!”
“Mr. Hayes, do you want to see your fiancée alive again?”
That froze him dead in his tracks.
“Don’t think you can run off and track this Vandin down yourself. It would be a huge mistake on your part. He fits the profile of a violent obsessive. Extremely sadistic, extremely unstable, but also extremely intelligent. He researched her past extensively. He knows her well enough to be able to anticipate her every move. If forensics comes back positive on Miss Schandler, we’ll know he isn’t afraid to use deadly force to get what he wants. Plus, he had your personal journals, Mr. Hayes. Do you have any idea how he could have obtained them? Have you been robbed recently?”
“No.”
“Well, somehow he had them. He also had in his possession certain articles of women’s clothing as well. Older style clothes, vintage sweaters, were found in close proximity to the wall that was covered in Miss Thomas’s photographs. We don’t know if any of those items belonged to her.”
“Bloody hell.” Andrew closed his eyes to steady himself.
“This is important, Mr. Hayes. You are not dealing with a sane mind here. He is also registered as owning a revolver, which we could not find on the premises.”
The car’s door handle seemed to bend at the force of Andrew’s grip. He’s carrying a gun…
“We also located a large stash of high-end electronic equipment in his home. That equipment is portable and easy to use on a cell phone, so understand—if he’s in a car following her now, he can still convince her he’s Detective Obester. If he contacts her before we do, she will be a sitting duck. It’s a miracle he never got her alone before now.”
“I was a bloody idiot.”
“Mr. Hayes, I’ve seen this type of psychopath before. There’s very little you can do to stop him once he has a target. Do you have any idea why he may have this obsession? Did they have a relationship?”
“Never.”
“Did she spurn his affections in any way?”
“Yes. And he ridiculed her for it. He nearly assaulted her in his office.”
“Well, whatever’s happened, someone or something pushed him over the edge. Potentially some emotional shock or traumatic occurrence, there’s no way of knowing. Do not attempt to apprehend him on your own. Do I make myself clear? I’ll notify the authorities where Emily Thomas and her friends are heading. And we’ve put out an APB on Vandin.”
“Are we done here?”
“I’ll need a number to contact you.”
Andrew felt Neil’s hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about anything here. I’ve got it all under control. Go find them.”
“I’ll be in touch if we learn anything,” continued Detective Kent. “Be careful, all of you. You’re dealing with a sadistic and possibly armed man who has already committed one violent assault. Find Miss Thomas and her friends and have them call headquarters as soon as possible. We need to question her further.”
They shook hands and jumped into the truck. “Go,” Neil said, and banged his hand on the roof; Andrew nodded to him, bloody thankful for everything he had done. “Andrew,” Neil shouted as they backed up. He quickly rolled down the window.
A crease etched between his eyes. He seemed to be struggling for words. “Just…call when you can.”
They had contacted the winery, leaving specific instructions for the girls to call them the moment they arrived. More like yelled the instructions. Andrew was sure the proprietors thought he was mad, but short of threatening them with certain death, he made them swear they would lock the girls up in a wine cellar until they got there.
They were a half an hour away now. Andrew’s hand brushed against Nick’s ring in his pocket. He sought out the key Emily had found in Nora’s keepsake box, rubbing it like a rosary.
Suddenly, his coat pocket buzzed. He dropped the key and seized his phone; his eyes riveted on the user ID. He connected the call, nearly shouting in relief into the phone.
“Christ. Emily, thank God! Sweet girl, oh sweet girl. Listen, just listen. You need to go to the closest police station and wait there. Don’t go crazy, just let me talk. Detective Anthony Obester is not who you think he is. He’s Vandin. Vandin has been impersonating him, faking his voice. You’re in real danger, Emily. Please, please, if he calls don’t answer. Just get yourself and Margot and Zoey to a police station, wherever you can find one, and we’ll meet you there.”
He let out a heaving sigh, tears burning his eyes, so fucking glad he had finally reached her.
Thank you God, thank you God. I’ll never ask for another thing again in my life. Ever.
What he heard next made his blood run cold.
“Hello, Andrew.”
The words pounded in Andrew’s head, his vision clouding in chaos.
“Who is this?”
“You seem to possess a passing intelligence. I thought you would know that.”
“Vandin, you sick, twisted mother—where is she? What have you done with her?”
“Do you not know she has the most beautiful eyes when she’s frightened? Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful eyes. They are the Thomas eyes, did you know that? So light blue, like silver, like the spray of the ocean. All the Thomas woman have them. She told me. But she doesn’t like them, she hates them. Hates them.” His voice was disjointed like an addict, raw.
“What the fuck have you done with her?”
“It’s your fault, all your fault, all of it. You were supposed to leave—that’s what I swore you would do. That’s what I told her. Because she wasn’t meant for you. She would be wasted on you. Wasted, wasted.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Did you ever tell Emily you were institutionalized, Andrew? Did they make you bite down on the metal? Shock you? They are cold places, aren’t they? You need to lock up your journals better. It makes it too simple to steal them from your desk. It’s best not to leave secrets lying around. And all that poetry you wrote to her, did you read it to her in that old brass bed of yours? It smells of her, doesn’t it? The sheets, the pillows.”
“If you’ve touched her—if you’ve laid one bloody hand on her—”
“I felt it inside her when I kissed her. The hesitation, the unknowing. She was afraid and pushed me away. She needed more time. But I’m tired of waiting. So tired. There are too many sounds, too many terrible voices, and it won’t stop. She’s here all the time now. She screams at me, but she tells me about Emily. She understands, but she won’t stop screaming. Do you not understand? The screaming? I’ve tried to be reasonable, I tried to tell her, but she won’t listen to me. Emily is so young. And I love her.”
“Where is she? Is she safe? Let me talk to her, damn it. I’ll give you whatever you want. Is it money?”
“No! I want you to leave us alone. I won’t leave her. I won’t leave her to face that monster, because it is going to kill her. She knows! She says it is fate, destiny, and she screams of the cliffs, the rocks, how it will murder her. She’s seen the blood, the death. How can I let you near her? You cannot keep her safe from it, you know that!”
“Please, I’ll do anything. What do you want me to do?”
He could hear nothing but a dull sobbing and wet, racked gasps as though Vandin were about to begin pleading, then he heard a growl and silence as though he had forgotten the call entirely. The sound of a car door slamming came next, feet on gravel, and Vandin’s staggered breaths.
“She’s here,” he whispered in relief. “She’s here. I see her now.”
The line went dead. Andrew held the phone, unable to move, unable to breathe. Losing control, he crashed his fist against the dash and howled at the top of his lungs.
24
* * *
ZOEY DROVE ALONG A ROAD that was barely visible in the low swirling fog. Oaks snarled together like crooked hands hunched against the harsh wind of the coast. They’d been driving for miles along an obscure country road that was quickly deteriorating into a narrow county road, then barely a road at all. “Where are we?” she asked. Next to her Margot peered at the yellowed map in her lap. “Belden.”
In the backseat, Emily pulled her favorite cashmere cardigan from the bag at her feet and wrapped it around her shoulders, pressing her chilly hands against the vents. She missed Andrew. Her phone had no coverage out here in the wilds, and Margot’s had died not long after they had left the city. Zoey had left hers behind at the house in a fit of bad humor.
When first she heard the sound of Andrew’s voice pour through the speakers that morning, her breath had caught in her throat. For better or for worse, all of the women in the car realized they were involved with “The Next Big Thing,” words usually reserved for magazine covers and award shows. Never had she felt so disconnected between who she knew them to be and how the world perceived them. Zoey seemed perfectly at ease with all of it, but she was born to live on a tour bus, dye her hair an even wilder shade of pale, and dance in bangles at the foot of a stage.
Then Andrew had proposed, and the world had changed. She found herself gazing at her hand, at the sweeping lines of life and love, and thought of how there had never been wives there.
“Of course he wants to marry you,” she could hear her mother’s sermon in her ear. “What kind of future could an academic have with a musician? What happens if he never succeeds? You’ll be supporting him your whole life. Have you thought this through?”
No, she hadn’t—she didn’t want to. Her mother didn’t even know about the seminar this summer; how would she ever drop the bombshell of having her only daughter hooking up with a rocker? She rued even opening an e-mail she had received from her right before they left the house. Mercifully, it made no comment about her love life, but it did turn out that her father may have had a distant aunt named Noreen, although she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure—it could have been Norma. Still, as she read it, the possibility existed that she shared a history with Noreen Thomas. That Nora’s blood ran in her veins.
“I found it!” Zoey screamed, her voice yanking Emily back to the present.
Outside the van’s windows, an American Gothic of a town emerged from the fog. The main street was lined with well-worn storefronts and porches, complete with planters of wildflowers and rocking chairs. The fog was so thick it seemed to have a life of its own as it billowed around them. Indistinct shapes swept in and out of it. As Emily stepped out of the minivan, a chill crept up her spine, causing the hair on the back of her neck to slowly stand on end.
Turning around, she scanned the two blocks of small shops from the church to an old inn. No one seemed out of the ordinary—just normal people going about their busy day. She blamed her unease on her firmly entrenched urban roots flailing about in the wide open country. Still, she hurried to catch up with Margot and Zoey.
A restaurant was found in short order—a café with stained glass windows and a preponderance of ferns. Halfway through lunch, Margot looked up from her salad and cursed under her breath. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Yo! Muse-lady and amigas! Fancy seeing you here! We’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” crowed Dwayne, surrounded by his startled fellow stoners, Dinesh and Buck. They all scrambled forward to meet her, dragging stray chairs in their wake. They grinned goofily as they sat down, their trademark black capes replaced by Broom Flyers Local 313 T-shirts. Egan swept in through the door last, hooking what looked like car keys on his studded belt, and nodded a cursory greeting.
“Sorry, I didn’t get your call. What are you doing here? We didn’t think we’d see you until we got to the winery,” Emily asked him.
Margot speared her salad. “Remind me to thank you for that,” she muttered pointedly to Zoey.
“We’ve been shopping,” Dwayne replied in a tortured tone. “Dinesh’s girlfriend, you know, Lucretia, the witch? She wanted him to pick her up something here, or she said she’d turn him into frogspawn…”
Dinesh frowned, a bit put out.
“Here? Why here?” asked Margot, unable to resist.
“Antiques. She wants—”
“No wait,” interrupted Margot, “a cauldron, scales, a familiar.”
“An engagement ring,” Dinesh divulged, a distinct tremor in his voice.
“Oh. She must have heard the radio this morning. My sympathies.”
Emily shot her a look. Margot seemed less than impressed by the unorthodox proposal but had the good grace to rise to the mandatory level of celebration.
Dwayne grumbled at the injustice this detour had caused. “We we
re all set to check out Belden Cemetery for a potential future meeting site of The California Astral Liberation Coalition before we met up with you at the winery. Seriously good ghost juju over there from what we’ve heard. And they’re even supposed to have a lot of slabs for sitting around and dining. It would have been awesome. But nooooo…the witches, man, you can’t say no to the witches.”
“You have parties in graveyards?” Zoey asked.
“We like to refer to them as meet and glides,” Egan corrected her.
“Jesus,” Margot muttered.
“We were at Placerville last year,” Dwayne informed her. “Then the year before in Georgetown doing karoke with the ghosts, and I’m still hoping to get to Disneyland at some point and get a glimpse of ‘Mr. One-Way.’ He’s this dude who died on Space Mountain back in the seventies. Bummer way to go, though. But we gotta stay focused on the task at hand, right? Dealing with The Lady in Red. That’s one gnarly mother. You know there’s a rumor that they keep her locked up in a room at the Noyo Inn, right?”
“Like Bertha Mason,” said Emily softly.
“I’m thinking more like Linda Blair, personally,” Egan reasoned. “But there’s been worse.”
He proceeded to enlighten them on the goriest episodes of hauntings he had come across in his illustrious career. Near the end of the lunch, he spoke in a hushed voice of Madame Lagree’s “torture chamber” in Savannah, an old house plagued by the spirits of twice-dead ghosts—ghosts which were known to have possessed people and driven them to suicide. “Truly the nastiest ghouls on this plane of existence. Ghosts ain’t the most happy campers to start with, but these dudes are really twisted, mean mothers. Thought they could get all ‘Resident Evil’ on folks and pull off high-level human possession. Dumb asses. It tears them apart, like literally. There’s only so much of that shit they can take, though.” He continued to describe an apparition whose limbs had been chewed away and another who looked like her arms and legs had been broken and set at odd angles, when Margot pushed back her chair in disgust.
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 41