Night Tides (14 page)

Rachel knew this was the moment. She had to do something; she couldn’t just let Patty be snatched off the street. She looked around for any inspiration and found it in a red Wisconsin
W
bumper sticker slapped haphazardly on the car hiding her.

She stood and ran up the hill, deliberately letting her feet slap the sidewalk to make as much noise as possible. “Whooo-EE!” she yelled as if drunk. “Go Badgers!
YEAH!”

Patty turned toward her, then walked on more quickly. The truck stopped, turned in the opposite direction, and drove rapidly away. Rachel reached the corner in time to see Patty rush up the steps to one of the apartment houses. The door slam echoed in the night.

Rachel put her hands on her knees and bent over, stretching her hamstrings and gasping. Okay,
there:
princess saved, dragon thwarted. That should make the spirits happy. Now all she had to do was run three miles back to her apartment and grab what little sleep she could before it was time to open the diner again.

She listened once more for the truck’s motor but heard nothing. Satisfied, she jogged wearily toward home.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

R
ACHEL
,
HEAD DOWN
,
watched her own feet slap on the sidewalk. It was a bad habit, one of the main ones she’d tried to break since taking self-defense classes in college.
Walk with your head up
, the instructors had warned,
as if you can handle anything that comes your way. Looking down implies weakness
. And usually she did so, but tonight she was just too tired.

Which was why she didn’t notice the truck pacing her, lights out, until it was almost too late.

Her mind was whirling with the night’s events. What did it mean that the lake spirits could pull her from her body at will and send her wherever they wanted? Would it happen again? And why, after displaying only scenes from the past, did they now show her a glimpse of the future? Did it signal some change in the dynamic that had sustained her all these years?

A tire crunched over a discarded plastic soda bottle. Rachel looked up sharply and saw the truck. Its lights were out, and the dark shape behind the wheel radiated malevolence.

The outline alone was enough to spook her. With no conscious decision, she ran, cutting across a yard and tearing down the sidewalk toward home. She didn’t glance back to see if the truck followed. By the time she stopped beneath a tree, huddling in its shadow, the vehicle had vanished. She waited to make sure it didn’t reappear.

Had it been the same truck? She couldn’t be sure. She began to tremble, delayed shock looking for a foothold in her system. She refused to give it one, though, and instead took off toward home, running as fast as her weary legs would go.

As she ran, her common sense took the time to berate her for being a fool. Was she a detective? A bodyguard? A night watchman, even? No, she was a restaurateur, for God’s sake, a glorified fry cook. All she could do, all she should be
expected to
do, was pass on information so that the people trained and paid to deal with these problems would know where to look for them. All along she’d assumed the spirits were omniscient, or at least had access to more information than her limited human consciousness. Now she knew better. Who sent a fry cook to do a bodyguard’s job?

I
T SHOULD
’
VE BEEN
enough terror for one night.

She stopped a couple of blocks from the diner to walk and cool down. Because it was late, and quiet, and she still twitched from adrenaline, anything out of the ordinary stood out in sharp relief. So the black truck parked in front of her diner, engine running, muffled music audible, might as well have been under a spotlight.

She ducked into the shadow of the old battery factory. Luckily the night’s other events had pretty much burned out her need to panic; now she was only weary and annoyed.

What next, an alien invasion?

But this wasn’t the same truck as before. It was newer, a Nissan, and had some sort of writing stenciled on the door. She was at the wrong angle to read it, though.

She wiped sweat from her eyes with the tail end of her shirt. If she went back to the corner, she could cross the street, go up two blocks, and approach the diner from the other side. Then she could slip in through the back kitchen door, and whoever sat in the truck would never see her. She would, as always, be safe and secure.

Part of her, though, wanted to force the confrontation, to see the face of whoever was waiting for her. She was angry now and at the end of her patience.

After the last stalking incident with Curtis the obsessed delivery driver, she swore she would never tolerate such behavior again. She had done nothing to encourage him, yet he left her flowers, sent her cards, and finally began driving past the diner at all hours. She learned to recognize, and dread, the sound of his truck’s diesel engine. Still, it did not terrify her until he began showing up just at closing or right before opening, his angular face pressed against the glass, a smile more predatory than seductive splitting his face. She’d called the police, notified his company, and sworn out a protective order against him. The new driver on his route told her he’d left the state. It had been weeks, though, before she truly felt safe again.

She had a gun in her apartment, bought right after the Curtis incident. She kept it loaded, cleaned it once a month, and told absolutely no one about it. Not even Helena knew. Given her other secrets, keeping this one was a snap. But she’d always wondered if, in the moment, she could pull the trigger on another human being.

If they pushed things tonight, she knew. They’d go down.
Et tu
, babycakes.

She quickly circled the block and, staying in the shadows, crept to the kitchen door. She slipped her key in the lock and turned it. There was no resistance; the door was unlocked. Only she and Helena had keys, and Rachel never forgot to lock up.

She opened the door enough to peek inside. It was dark and silent. “Helena?” she hissed. There was no response. More loudly she said, “Helena, it’s me. Are you here?”

She got no answer. She entered quietly and closed the door behind her, careful to lock it. Then she stayed in the shadows, crept to the front window, and peered out. The truck was there, engine idling, music playing. She still could not make out the words on the door.

She rushed up the stairs to her apartment.
That
door was still locked, and she opened it in record time. Without turning on any lights, she went to the dresser. Tainter, sensing her mood, halted midway through his bound of greeting and scampered aside.

She lifted the gun, reassured by its weight in her hands. It was a short-barreled .38 revolver, the classic Colt “ladies’ gun.” The smell of metal and oil gave her a rush of power. She purposefully strode to the window, the weapon held against her thigh. Carefully, she turned the handle on the blinds so that they slowly angled down.

She had a clear line of sight at the driver-side tires, and the windshield gleamed with reflected street light. She might not be able to see who was in there, but she could surely take him out.

Her thumb flicked the safety off. In her mind, her ex-husband, Don, her stalker, Curtis, her lecherous uncle Hammy, all stood before her.
You just need to do it until you learn to like it
, Don said.
I can’t wait to put my tongue all over you
, Curtis panted. And worst of all, Hammy, saying in that tone adults use when kids are being stupid,
It’s just so you’ll know what to do to your boyfriends when
they
kiss you, honey
.

None of them believed she’d shoot. They were about to learn different.

Whoa
, she thought suddenly.
I
am
panicking. This is anger, not sense. I’m pissed off because of the other things, not
this
thing. I should handle this thing differently, before I really mess things up
.

The anger dissipated almost at once, leaving behind a sense of chagrined calm. She closed her eyes, counted slowly to ten, and made sure the rage was gone for good. Then she flicked the safety back on, replaced the gun in her nightstand, and dialed 911. She gave a concise report of the truck sitting outside her building. The operator assured her a car would be sent immediately. She snapped the phone closed, dragged her old bar stool to the window, and waited.

It took ten minutes, but finally a police car did pull up beside the truck, and its blinding spotlight shone into the cab. After a moment the driver’s window rolled down and her stalker leaned out into the light. She could see only his dark hair and wide shoulders. But when the door swung open and he stepped out of the vehicle, she immediately recognized him.

Ethan Walker
.

She gasped as her body, despite all the night’s drama, responded to this realization.

E
THAN SQUINTED
into the policeman’s light and waited politely. Never speak first, Marty always told him. Nothing pisses a cop off worse than a mouthy perp, and a pissed-off cop is more likely to hurt you.

The thick-bodied black woman looked at Ethan’s driver’s license and saw that it was the same name as written on the door of the truck. She said, “Sir, have you been drinking?”

“No, ma’am,” Ethan said. The buzz from the pizza place had faded, and he’d picked up a cup of coffee from Denny’s on his way here.

“Then what are you doing out here?”

He took a deep breath. There was no point in making anything up. Sheepishly, he said, “I met a girl here yesterday. I don’t know how to get in touch with her. I just sort of… I don’t know, I just wanted to come by. Visit the scene of the crime, you know?”

“Crime?” the officer repeated.

“Yeah, you know.” He grinned. “Where she stole my heart.”

For a moment she kept her stern, straight face. Then she busted out laughing. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Halfway,” he said with a shrug.

“That might be cute, if you were fourteen. But by all appearances, you’re a grown man.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’d think you’d be able to handle a schoolboy crush a little better than this.”

“Crush” doesn’t do it justice
, he wanted to say. Instead, he said, “I suppose you’re right. I didn’t think it through very well.”

She handed him back his license. “Okay, Romeo. But this is a pretty quiet neighborhood, and with all these girls disappearing, people are skittish. They see a big black truck sitting out here in the middle of the night, engine running, and they call us. So why don’t you toodle on home and try again tomorrow, during the day? Maybe bring her flowers?”

Ethan smiled. “Yes, Officer. Sorry for the bother.”

“No bother, as long as you’re telling me the truth and I don’t catch you back here again.”

“You won’t.”

“All right, then. Good night,” she called as she walked to her car.

Ethan put his wallet back in his pocket, climbed into his truck, and sat there feeling more stupid than he had since high school algebra class. It was one thing to have sexual fantasies about a woman you barely knew but another entirely to sit outside her place of business as if she might magically appear, answering the same carnal call of the night. Was he suddenly a love-struck adolescent again?

He put the truck in gear and sped away.

R
ACHEL WATCHED
his truck vanish into the night. She was shaking again, but not from fear. The god-awful lust had returned, just as bad as before, as if the night’s tryst with the lake had not even happened.

She went into the bathroom and started a cold shower. Her fingers shook as she peeled off her sweaty clothes. And as the icy spray first touched her, something she’d completely forgotten rose from her memory, adding an emotional chill to the water’s effect.

Back at Father Thyme’s, the man in the Packers cap had asked,
Out late again?
She was not a regular at the coffeehouse, and she visited the lake in secret, so how did he know she was out late
again?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A
KNOCK ON THE DOOR
awakened Rachel. She was sprawled facedown on the couch, the TV playing softly in the background. She wore only a man’s undershirt, and when she moved, every muscle protested. She stood with a groan, dislodging Tainter from the small of her back, and grabbed sweatpants from the floor in the bathroom. Without removing the security chain, she opened the door.

Helena stood there, her expression odd. “What time is it?” Rachel asked sleepily.

“It’s five A.M., but… something awful has happened.”

“To you?”

Helena looked like she might cry. “No, it’s … Can you please open the door?”

Rachel closed the door, removed the chain, and opened it all the way. “What?”

“You better come downstairs and see for yourself.”

Rachel followed Helena downstairs. When she came into the diner, she froze, eyes wide.

The dry-erase walls were covered in enormous, sloppy red writing.
Fuck you bitches
was written in two-foot-high red letters along one wall.
Kiss my ass whores
took up another wall. One of the counter stools had been wrenched from its base, and red paint had been poured into the toaster and coffeemaker.

“Jesus Christ,” Rachel whispered. “How did… When…” After the events of the previous night—hell, she though bitterly, of just a few
hours
ago—she lacked the stamina to control herself much more. She felt tears surge up, and it took everything she had not to let them fall.

The kitchen door opened and Jimmy entered, whistling. When he saw the writing he stopped in mid-note. “Holy shit. What happened?”

Helena shook her head. “I don’t know. What time did you get home last night, Rachel?”

She said nothing, but the evening’s events rushed through her head. The door had been unlocked, but she hadn’t turned on the lights when she went to look out the front window. She had been so focused on the man in the truck that she hadn’t even glanced at the walls. Had Ethan done this? No, that made no sense at all. If not him… then who? The man she’d chased away from Patty? Some random gang of teens?

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Rachel said. She caught Jimmy staring at her breasts, which the baggy undershirt did little to hide. Crossing her arms, she said, “Jimmy, go down to the Ace Hardware across from St. Vinnie’s thrift shop and get three gallons of red paint and three of those long-handled rollers. Do it fast; they open at five-thirty. Helena, you go out to Target and get us a new toaster and coffeemaker; they’re open twenty-four hours. When Jimmy gets back, we’ll paint over those lovely comments and get ready for our customers. I’ll order some replacement wall panels and a new stool today too. In the meantime, put a
wet floor
sign over that spot so nobody gets tetanus from those broken screws.”

“On it, boss,” Jimmy said, and left. Helena put her hand on Rachel’s shoulder and said, “Are you sure? Shouldn’t we call the cops or something? Maybe not open today?”

Rachel shook her head. “I’ll talk to my insurance company and see if this is covered. If they need a police report, then I’ll call the cops. But if we don’t open, then whoever did this wins.”

Helena started to say something else, thought better of it, and followed Jimmy outside.

When she was alone, the morning sun just lighting the tops of the trees outside the window, Rachel sighed, bowed her head, and allowed herself to cry for five minutes. Who could have done this? Who could hate her that much?

Only one name came to mind: Don Talley, her ex-husband. He was petty enough to do this, but would he? She recalled the truck that followed her on the way home. She hadn’t looked closely to see if it was, in fact, the same truck that had menaced Patty. Could it have been Don, intending harm only to her?

That marriage had been the single biggest mistake she’d ever made. She had met him at a wedding she catered back when she ran Soirees to Go, and at first he’d seemed so easygoing, likable, and charming that she thought, briefly, he might understand her relationship with the lakes. He’d dazzled her with his attention, and before she knew it she was Mrs. Rachel Talley.

By the end of the next six months, she was ready to commit murder or suicide, whichever opportunity presented itself first. Don had hidden a mass of insecurities the size of Australia behind that charming exterior, all of which he now felt free to expose. At first she’d tried to reassure him and assuage his ego, but it was just too much. And it all coalesced and eventually centered around one thing: her inability to have an orgasm with him.

She’d mentioned she liked to skinny-dip and planned to tell him the whole truth soon after their honeymoon. But almost at once he became fixated on making her come. He insisted that if he had just five more minutes, even when they’d stretched things out to nearly an hour, she would’ve gotten “there.” He blamed everything on her lack of regular orgasms, and since he also kept her away from the lakes, she grew more tense and snippy as well. Their home became a battleground and their bed the Russian front: cold, brutal, and the site of unbelievable carnage.

But Don hadn’t contacted her in years. The last she heard, he was in Hong Kong. What could have brought him back after all this time, seeking revenge only now for some perceived wrong?

She looked up at the graffiti. It was impossible to identify the handwriting. And if Don had come all this way, would this be
all he
would do?

That thought made her carefully look around for more damage. She found none, but perhaps this was merely the beginning of something. Would she have to be on her guard constantly now, like she’d been for Curtis?

“No,” she said aloud, hands on her hips. “No one will terrorize me. Not Don, not Curtis, not anyone.” Her words echoed off the empty, defaced walls.

Then she headed upstairs to get ready for the day.

T
HEY MANAGED
to cover the words before the first patron, Mrs. Boswell, arrived. She looked at the patchy painting, scowled a bit at the smell, but said nothing. She took her usual seat, opened her newspaper, and began to read. Helena poured her coffee and took her order as if nothing unusual had happened.

Suddenly Mrs. Boswell exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness. Oh, this is awful. Did you see this?”

She pointed at a photo on the front page. “That poor Chinese girl who disappeared—Ling Hu. They found her body last night, or, rather, early this morning.”

Rachel looked up from the sink where she was wiping down the new coffee carafe. The name cut through her hazy, sleep-deprived brain, carried on the half-remembered melody of Patty Patilia’s song. She rushed from the kitchen, sat on the counter, and swung her legs over it to the other side. She peered at the newspaper over Mrs. Boswell’s shoulder.

“I knew it would end like this,” Mrs. Boswell said. “But it’s still just so awful.”

The byline was by Julie Schutes. The lead paragraph read:

Fishermen found the body of missing UW–Madison student Ling Hu in Lake Mendota before dawn this morning. Police say at present they know neither the cause of death nor how long the body had been in the water.

Rachel scanned the rest of the article. With nothing new to report, it simply rehashed the previous coverage. This included reprinted quotes from people who knew the girl, photos of the original crime scene and apartment building, and of course a photo of the girl herself, the image significantly smaller than the one showing her covered body being loaded into an ambulance.

Rachel felt hollow as she stood up. She knew nothing about this girl, she’d had no visions regarding her, and had gleaned her
Lady of the Lakes
info from the usual cop scuttlebutt. But there was Ling Hu, smiling in one picture and dead under a sheet in the other. The other two missing girls would no doubt soon meet a similar end. But at least she’d saved Patty.

“That’s so
sad,”
Mrs. Boswell said. “She was such a lovely little thing.”

The door opened, and Elton Charles entered, sweaty from his morning run. “Did you see the news? They found one of those girls who disappeared.” He did a double take at the red walls but, like Mrs. Boswell, said nothing.

“I was just reading about it,” Mrs. Boswell said, holding up the paper.

Helena put a large glass of orange juice down in front of Elton, then turned to Rachel. “Are you all right?” she asked quietly. “If you need to go upstairs for a while…”

Rachel shook her head. “I’m just really tired,” she said, and went into the kitchen and began scrubbing red drops of paint from a pot, just to have a task. She was too exhausted to cry again, but she knew it would come tonight when she was alone—tears for a total stranger. And then there was the practical consideration: What would
The Lady of the Lakes
have to say about this?

H
ELENA WATCHED
her boss with concern. She couldn’t imagine why this news bothered Rachel so much, when she’d taken the vandalizing with such equanimity. They didn’t know the victim, and while it was sad, the world was full of sad things.

Before she could ponder it further, though, the bell over the door jangled and Marty Walker entered. He hung his suit jacket on the wall peg and took his usual seat at the end of the counter, nodding at Elton and Mrs. Boswell. Then he stared at the red walls.

“Surprised to see you in here,” Helena said as she put coffee in front of him. “Shouldn’t you be at Lake Mendota with all the other cops?”

“I have been. Now it’s all about waiting for test results and other lab things.” He nodded at the red wall. “What happened?”

Helena glanced back toward the kitchen. “Spur-of-the-moment experiment. What do you think?”

“It’s a little… ragged around the edges, isn’t it?”

Helena shrugged. “That’s what I thought too. Way too modern art for me. But there was no way to know without doing it. I bet we go back to the white walls pretty soon.”

Marty looked at her oddly, then looked past her at the kitchen doorway. “Is Rachel back there?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you ask her to come out here a moment?”

Helena turned and called, “Hey, boss! You got a visitor.”

When Rachel approached, Marty stood and said, “Can we step outside for a moment?”

Rachel glanced at his shoulder holster. “Your gun’s showing. Am I in trouble?”

“No, nothing like that. Just something I’d like to discuss in private.”

R
ACHEL FOLLOWED
Marty outside. It was already warm, and the air hung with mist the sun had not yet burned away. She put her hands on her hips and said, “Yes, Officer?”

“I want to apologize for my idiot brother.”

“Again?”

“Apparently. I talked to him this morning about his little, uh…”

“Covert surveillance?” She said it without a smile, because it certainly wasn’t funny.

“Let’s say overzealous approach.”

“Let’s say stalking.”

“Rachel, I’m really sorry. So is Ethan. He was just lonely and sleep-deprived and not thinking things through. He wanted to come with me and apologize himself, but I said it’d be better this way.”

“Did he really?”

“Yes,” Marty said. “Ethan takes things to do with personal honor very seriously.”

“That whole once-a-soldier thing.”

“No, he’s always been that way. I admit you’ve seen the less admirable aspects of him, but, really, he’s a good, decent guy. He didn’t mean to step on your toes when he chased away that troublemaker, and he didn’t realize parking outside the diner would freak you out.”

Rachel looked down as she pondered this. Someone had spray-painted a small stencil of a broken heart on the sidewalk, and it was faded but still visible. At last she said, “He probably didn’t even know I lived here, did he?”

“Probably not. I didn’t tell him.”

“And he
is
your brother.”

“All my life.”

“And I
did
invite him back. Although I kind of imagined it would be during business hours.”

Marty smiled.

She blew a curl from her forehead. She had been passive in responding to everything that happened last night; here, at least, was a chance to be direct. “Okay, Marty, tell you what. Give me his number and I’ll call him and talk to him. If it’s like you say, just a string of misunderstandings, then everything’s cool. But if he does one more weird-ass thing, he’s out. For good, end of story, restraining order filed. I mean it.”

Marty handed her a business card. “That’s his office and cell number.”

She read over the card. “He runs his own business?”

“Well enough to support our father’s farm too. Because God knows Dad isn’t making any money at it.”

Rachel put the card in her pocket. “Okay. But I’m serious: no more weirdness. I don’t need it, and I won’t put up with it.”

Marty held up his hands. “It’s between you and Ethan now.”

J
ULIE
S
CHUTES
sipped stale coffee as she read through the text on her screen. She desperately wanted a shower but didn’t trust the office to let her know if any new information came in. She wasn’t some blank-skulled TV reporter, after all; she was a whole lot more than her pretty face and top-rate legs, although she was not above using whatever it took to get the story. Her coworkers, especially the female ones, saw this as an unfair advantage and took any chance to sabotage her.

The call about Ling Hu’s body had come in at 3:30 A.M., and she was at the crime scene fifteen minutes later. On the way there, she’d called Sam Garnett and told him to hold the morning edition, that she’d have the story within an hour. It had taken a Herculean group effort to get it done, and she’d actually been impressed with the way Garish stroked everyone’s ego so that the end result was important to them all. Maybe he wasn’t such a putz.

She’d written the story on her laptop in the car, then pasted in sections from her earlier stories to reach an acceptable word count. Now she had to write a
real
story for the next day’s edition. She had her contacts at the coroner’s office primed to notify her as soon as the cause of death was determined, far in advance of any official announcement. Using her most sympathetic, gosh-I’m-nearly-in-tears voice, she’d left messages with Ling Hu’s friends, seeking comments. She’d written the outline and all the prose around the comments, so now she just had to wait for the phone to ring.