Unseen (11 page)

She eased into the softly lit room. He lay on the bed, eyes open. Her heart jerked. He was awake!

But then she realized he was not really awake. He was in some kind of altered state. A coma.

She moved to the head of the bed, hovering over him, gazing hard into the bastard’s flat stare. He was definitely out.

Her hand reached for the pillow but she hesitated. She wanted to strangle him. Make him pay. Squeeze the life from him. Make him suffer like so many men had made her.

She knew without being told that he was dying.

Edward Letton would not be leaving the hospital, despite Laurelton General’s best efforts. He was on his way out of this world. Soon to be gone.

A part of her felt relief that she wouldn’t have to kill him. Another part longed to snuff the fucker out.

She left in a controlled hurry, retracing her steps to the women’s room. To her consternation someone was in her cubicle. Looking up, she could see the acoustic tile hadn’t quite fallen back into place. From her angle she could see the edge of the strap of her bag.

For a brief moment she wondered if she should just chance it. Walk through the hospital lah-di-dah, no one noticing another aide in scrubs. They got away with it all the time on television.

But this was Laurelton General. A small hospital where everybody knew everybody.

Her heart pounded, blood singing through her veins. She hadn’t done anything. Letton was still alive. But she sensed a mounting urgency to get away quickly. She turned to the door just as the occupant of her cubicle flushed the toilet. As the woman left the stall Lucky scurried to another, closing the door before she could be seen. She waited, counting seconds, as the woman slowly went through her ablutions and took her time leaving the bathroom. Quickly, Lucky entered her cubicle and climbed onto the toilet. She was reaching upward when she heard the door open again and she sank back into a crouch, heart pounding. The new person went straight to the sink and started washing her hands. She heaved several huge sighs, as if life were wearing her down, then yanked a paper towel free of its holder.

Lucky closed her eyes and waited and waited. Finally, after another few excruciating minutes, the woman left. Quick as a cat, Lucky jumped up, slid back the acoustic tile and jerked on her bag. It tumbled into her arms. She changed rapidly and redressed in her disguise, tucking away the scrubs. She didn’t bother with the makeup, just yanked the knit cap over her hair.

A lot of work for nothing.

Sticking the earplugs in her ears she be-bopped out of the place, head ducked low in her baseball cap. People would remember her, but it wouldn’t matter. Once again she’d been lucky.

It was her nature.

“What do you think it means? The cigarette burns?” Barb asked.

She’d asked him the same thing twice a day since they’d found the body. Will gave her his stock answer—a shrug—and glanced at the clock. After six. Time to go home.

“Maybe it’s nothing,” she mused. “He likes to burn things. Maybe he’s just bored.”

He got to his feet and headed for his jacket, which was in the back room. Sometimes Barb just liked to hear herself talk. His mind was full of thoughts of the still unidentified dead body they’d found at the airstrip. He was also thinking about Edward Letton and felt as if he should go to the hospital and look in on him.

“Is it something I said?” Barb appeared in the doorway of the staff room. He could feel the negative energy and glanced back to meet her snapping black eyes. Will realized with a sense of inevitability that this was it. The showdown. When he least wanted it. He was going to be forced to address the issue that had been simmering between them. “You’ve hardly said five words to me the past week,” she accused.

“We’ve talked about our cases.” Will started to shrug into his jacket, then changed his mind. It was still unseasonably warm outside.

“That’s not what I mean. You’ve shut me down. You’ve done it on purpose.”

They were alone; everyone else had already left. Barb appeared to have specifically chosen a time when other ears weren’t listening. Will supposed he should be grateful for her discretion but he felt both annoyed and half-relieved. He wanted this thing between them to be resolved and over. But the way she was standing in the doorway made it impossible for him to leave without practically pushing her aside.

“Well, go ahead,” he said, turning to face her.

“Go ahead?” She tilted her head warily.

“Say what you want to say. You’ve been working up to this for months.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She was affronted. He’d preempted her first strike.

“We shouldn’t have even tried dating. In our jobs, business and pleasure don’t mix.”

“Bullshit, Tanninger.” Her face turned red.

His temper started a slow simmer. He was stuck in this thing now. He wished he could just leave while she had a tantrum, flung herself around and screamed names at him. Get out of the drama.

But he couldn’t.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“You’re not the hero you think you are,” she declared. “Just because you don’t talk a lot doesn’t mean you have anything going on in that prehistoric head of yours. You know that, don’t you? That men’s brains are more prehistoric than women’s? The divider in our brains that splits the left and right hemispheres? It’s thinner in women. That’s why we can multitask while men are single-minded gorillas. It’s a scientific fact.”

“All right.”

“Oh, thanks for placating me. That works so well.”

“It was the only single-minded thought I had.”

“Funny. You’re a laugh-riot. Ha, ha, ha.” Barb strode into the room.

“Stop,” he bit out, sounding serious enough that she did just that.

But she recovered fast. “What are you afraid of?”

“This,” he admitted, indicating both of them.

“I’m not dying for your attention, y’know,” she shot back. “But you could give me some courtesy instead of acting like I’m a piece of furniture.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I’m not a moron. You don’t give a shit about anything, least of all respecting me.”

Will couldn’t help the groan that escaped his lips. Every perp he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing was all about him
respecting
them. It was a universal code for
I got no defense,
a lowlife’s gambit to end the inquisition.

“I respect that you’re a good investigator,” Will said tautly.

She snorted. “You don’t respect me as a woman. You ignore me. You shut me down.”

“I’m trying to work with you as a partner.”

Her brows lifted. “You think I’m hard to work with?”

“You’re spoiling for a fight. It’s not going to matter what I say.”

“You’re making me feel like this is all my fault!” she said in a tight little voice.

“I hardly know what we’re talking about anymore.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Will.” She looked like she was about to cry but she shook her head. “Fine.” She lifted her hands as if she were completely done.

“Can we move past this? Be partners?” He gazed at her curiously, wondering if it was even possible.

“That what you want?”

“Yes.”

His honesty seemed to finally undo her. She turned around and headed back out of the staff room. Will followed her, hesitating by her desk as she sat down and showed an inordinate amount of interest in a pile of paperwork.

“We need to find out who the burned girl is,” he said. “No one’s turned in a missing person’s report for someone her age in the tri-county area.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked tightly. She didn’t look up.

“She’ll be missed eventually.”

“Are you going home?” she asked as he turned to leave.

“I’m going to stop by the hospital. Check on Letton. And Ralph.”

“I’m going to my apartment and I’m going to drink a bottle of wine. I’m off tomorrow.”

Will inclined his head and went on his way. He wasn’t sure anything had gotten accomplished between him and Barb.

Gemma awoke slowly and viewed the red walls of her bedroom. Her brow furrowed. What time was it? She didn’t remember going to bed.

She lifted her head and realized she was wearing sweats. Had she been jogging? Tentatively she smelled the fabric, lifting an arm, but there was no scent of sweat.

You were cold.

That thought came flooding back. She’d felt like she was coming down with something and she’d thrown on the sweats in an effort to warm up. She’d been wearing a short-sleeved shirt earlier and some capris as the weather was still surprisingly warm.

She found the shirt hung on a hanger in her closet and the capris in the wash basket in the laundry room, an annex off the kitchen. She picked up the capris and tested the fabric with her fingers. Outside night had fallen in earnest and through the laundry room window she could see pinpoints of stars in a black sky.

“Edward Letton’s dead,” she said aloud. “Or dying.”

You killed him.

She dropped the capris back in the basket and walked into the kitchen, shaking her head slowly. She didn’t believe that. She wasn’t responsible for his death. She hadn’t run him down.

Gemma struggled to recall and got a blinding headache for her efforts. From what Macie had said she’d run out of the diner, chasing someone, and from what Gemma could figure out, that was the last memory before she woke up in the hospital. And it wasn’t even her memory.

She heard something outside and froze. She was suddenly conscious of how lit-up the kitchen was. How she stood in the glare of the light, illuminated. She flicked the switch and was plunged into darkness. Sliding cautiously to the back door she tested it to make sure it was locked. Satisfied, she tiptoed into the living room and across the dark room to the front door. She stood there for long minutes, but silence prevailed. Cruising to the other side of the room, she looked out one of the windows. In the corner of her vision she could see the front porch and the envelope lying on the step.

Her heartbeat skipped. She waited more excruciating minutes, then crossed to the door, snapped it open, scooped up the envelope and relocked the door in less than five seconds. Heart pounding, she stood with her back to the door panels and stared at the white rectangle. It was unaddressed.

Rechecking all the locks, she scurried upstairs, drawing the curtains in her bedroom. Sliding a thumb under the sealed flap, she pulled out a sheet of paper.

In a scrawling hand were five words.

I see into your soul.

The wolf drove into his carport and climbed out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. He walked straight through the house and out to the back yard. He could see the house across the way but its lights were snuffed out. Too late for them. They couldn’t stay up past nine.

His eyes fixed on the sliver of moon, he threw back his head and roared, the sound funneling from a primitive core, spiraling upward. He could almost see it rise. Fine wisps of smoke racing upward.

The mother-witch was dead.

The nurse-witch was dead.

He needed to find the one who’d escaped him.

It was only a matter of time.

She had to burn.

They all had to burn.

Chapter Eight

When Will arrived at work the following morning he was greeted with a photo of his burn victim smack dab in the center of his desk. The pretty dark-haired girl was smiling on the exterior deck of a restaurant or bar, flanked by other partiers, and holding a martini high in the air like a salute.

“Inga Selbourne,” Barb told him coolly. He had a feeling every conversation with her was going to be cool from now on. “A nurse at Laurelton General. She was renting an apartment behind a farmhouse outside Laurelton. The people who own the property, Pearl and Edgar Gillroy, called Laurelton General looking for her. Apparently Inga was late on the rent. They learned she hadn’t been to work in over a week and so called Laurelton PD. Missing persons sent that out and I picked it up this morning.”

“Gotta be her,” Will agreed. “Good work.”

She shrugged. “Paint by the numbers.” But he could tell she was pleased with the compliment.

“Have you contacted Laurelton PD?”

“Told ’em she was down in the county morgue. They’re going over her apartment. Sounds like it was the crime scene.”

Will nodded.

“You going to the hospital?”

Laurelton General was under the county’s jurisdiction and the body had been found outside the Laurelton city limits, so the sheriff’s department was as much involved in the homicide as was the Laurelton PD. “I’ll call Mac and see what’s up,” Will said, referring to Sam McNally, a longtime homicide investigator with the Laurelton PD.

Within the hour Will was on his way to Laurelton General. While the grunt work at Inga’s apartment was being done by the crime scene team, Will figured he’d gather background on Inga herself.

It was the second time in as many days that he’d made a trip to Laurelton General. After his fight with Barb, he’d headed to the hospital and been somewhat dumbfounded to find Smithson’s chair empty again. He’d stepped inside Edward Letton’s room and been convinced by his waxy pallor and blank stare that Letton had one foot in the grave already, and another searching for a toehold. He thought it would be a miracle if Letton climbed his way out of that wide-eyed coma and back to the land of the living.

He’d had to tamp down his anger as he waited for Smithson to return to his post. Will wanted to crawl up the man’s ass over his lack of a sense of duty, but it seemed like a moot point as it was clear Letton wasn’t going to be making a break for it and no one seemed particularly interested in another attempt at rubbing him out.

It was another ten minutes before Smithson had returned, ambling down the corridor, munching on those little horn-shaped snacks and sucking down a super-duper large diet cola. He’d made a stutter step upon spying Will, then kept on coming, his guilt at being caught in the act quickly changing to resentment. “Checking up on me?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Will said.

“I was barely gone.” He’d jerked his head in the direction of Letton’s room. “He’s not lookin’ too good, anyway.”

If he’d liked Smithson better, Will would have agreed and maybe even added that he didn’t think the man was going to make it. As it was, he said, “Don’t leave unless a nurse is with him.”

“I hear Jenkins and Turner have been released from night shift. Why do I have to stay?”

Will hadn’t bothered to answer. He was the one fighting to keep a round-the-clock guard on the man. Someone had tried to kill him once. It wasn’t a stretch to think she might try again.

Now, he was at the hospital once more, in search of a Nina Cox from administration, the name he’d been given when he’d asked about Inga Selbourne.

As he walked through Laurelton General’s front doors, fleetingly he thought of Letton’s wife, Mandy. She’d come down hard on Gemma LaPorte, shrieking that she’d tried to kill her husband. But Mandy hadn’t been much of a presence around the hospital after those first few days. She was about Gemma’s same size and build except much rounder. Was there any chance that she was the one who’d run him down? In Will’s experience, disenchanted spouses entertained murderous thoughts. If Mandy Letton had learned of her husband’s proclivities—and how could she have not guessed, or at least had some idea?—she could easily have become an avenging angel.

“Detective Tanninger?”

Nina Cox was a middle-aged woman with a good figure and a sharp, assessing eye. She took him in in one glance as she waved him around the administration counter toward a back office. He walked past several desks and rows of file cabinets, then through a door into a windowless room with a utilitarian desk and two uncomfortable-looking chairs.

“Ms. Selbourne was only here for eight months,” she said briskly, acting as if Inga’s short employment record somehow absolved the hospital of the taint from her death.

“What were her duties?”

“She wanted to be a surgical nurse, but she didn’t possess the skills or training. Mostly she worked on the floor. You can talk to Janice on four. Inga reported to her.”

“Thanks.”

On four…Gemma LaPorte’s floor.

“Go to the north wing. ICU. She’ll be around there somewhere. Janet Cumberland, RN.” Nina started to lead him back out, then stopped and, without turning around, said over her shoulder, “I’m sorry she’s dead, but Inga didn’t really fit with our community at Laurelton General.”

“How so?” Will asked.

“She talked too much. Chatty, chatty. Cheery, cheery. Like she’d been appointed the job of keeping up everyone’s spirits. It was grating. You always knew when Inga was around because she couldn’t shut up.”

“Ah.”

She gave him a sideways look. “Couldn’t shut up about her sex life, either. A sex murder, is my guess. One of her cretin boyfriends.”

With that she strode forward, head high, almost stomping. Will followed her, then turned toward the elevators in search of Janet Cumberland, RN.

Gemma thumbed through the local phone book and found Dr. Bernard Rainfield’s number. It was probably somewhere in Jean’s files as well, but it was simpler to just look him up and give his office a call. Placing the call, however, she learned that connecting with the doctor wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. She reached his answering service, who said if it wasn’t an emergency then she could wait for his call.

No, it wasn’t an emergency, Gemma assured the bored voice, but after she hung up she wondered if a lie might have been a better idea. She wanted to talk to the doctor soon. Felt almost compelled all of a sudden.

She’d been freaked out by the note on her porch. She’d dropped it and backed across the room as if it were about to sprout horns and cloven feet and come at her with a devil’s yawning grin. Instead, it floated to the ground and lay there and as time passed Gemma went from terrified to mildly tense to out-and-out annoyed.
I see into your soul
sounded more like the doings of one of Jean LaPorte’s impressionable clientele than some evil killer bent on her destruction.

Gemma had eventually picked up the letter and turned it over in her hands. She sometimes could get a reading off people when she brushed up against them, and though her ability wasn’t as effective with inanimate objects, she tried her best to feel the author’s intent, to no avail.

When nothing came to her, she took the letter and envelope to her office and laid them on the top of the empty outbox. Jean had left the place exceptionally tidy. Anything worth saving was in its proper file and Gemma’s cursory examination of said files had only convinced her that half the town of Quarry was nuts, and all of the neighboring hamlet of Woodbine. If she ever did decide to get into the psychic business she would have enough work to keep her busy seven days a week.

She had a sudden desire to phone Will Tanninger but managed to hold herself back. Instead she spent a half hour musing to herself about the missing gaps in her memory, hoping some cemented memory would jar loose and give her a place to start.

Nothing.

She glanced at her watch. She’d told Macie she would come in for the afternoon shift just to get started, though she wasn’t really due at the restaurant till the following week. She’d found her yellow uniform hanging in the closet and now she pulled it out, examining it carefully. It was clean and crisp like she’d just laundered it. She pulled it over her head and found a pair of white sneakers.

Staring at herself in the mirror, she grimaced at the remnants of her injuries. The reddish-brown tint to her skin was still clearly visible. Applying thick makeup to her face, she turned her head from side-to-side. It would do for the moment. By next week, when she started her full shifts, it would hardly be noticeable…she hoped.

Will found Janet Cumberland RN at the fourth floor nurses’ station, a semicircular hub that claimed the corner of the hallway. One nurse stood behind the bar-height counter, reading from a manila folder with a white and red tab. She slid him a look as he appeared, then snapped the folder shut and stood up straight at the sight of his uniform.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Her ID read J. Stanzo, RN. She was short, trim, and her hair was scraped into a tight ponytail that made her skin appear to pull back at the eyes. “I’m looking for Janet Cumberland,” he told her.

Her eyes slid down the hall and Will automatically turned, but there was no one around except a patient awkwardly moving a wheelchair along. As he watched, a middle-aged woman with short, gray hair came out of the nearest room, guiding the man along with a sure hand. When she was satisfied with his progress she turned toward the nurses’ station, her shoes squeaking softly along the shiny linoleum floors.

She had pale blue eyes and she looked at Will askance as Nurse Stanzo said, “He’s looking for you.”

“Janet Cumberland? Detective Will Tanninger,” he said, extending a hand. “Nina Cox suggested I talk to you.”

“About Inga.” She shook his hand, her gaze fixed on his name tag as if rechecking his identity. “We’re all shocked. Murder.” She didn’t seem to know what to do with that.

Janet was aware that Nurse Stanzo was hanging on their every word, so she moved down the hall and Will fell in step beside her. Halfway to the next corridor, she stopped and turned to him. “I don’t know what I can tell you. Inga seemed to enjoy her job. She had a lot of energy and she had a tendency to maybe talk too much about the party scene.”

“Any particular party scene?”

“She liked to bar hop in Portland. I got the impression she went to dance and meet—possible boyfriends. She was good-natured.”

“Possible boyfriends? She wasn’t seeing anyone steadily?”

“Not that I know of. She didn’t confide in me a lot. Her closest friend at the hospital was DeeAnna Brush in administration. DeeAnna quit about a month ago.”

“Ms. Cox didn’t mention her.”

Janet made a snorting sound. “She wouldn’t. Nina’s—competitive. That’s why DeeAnna left, according to Inga.”

“Competitive in what way?”

“She’s the boss. No room for anyone else, I guess.”

Will nodded. “Ms. Cox seemed to feel that Inga talked too much.”

“Nina doesn’t like anyone having fun, and DeeAnna and Inga were all about it. They went out partying together from time to time. Nina’s judgmental nature drove DeeAnna to distraction. She’s at Good Sam now.”

“I’ll check with her. Thanks. What were Inga’s duties here at the hospital?”

“She was a floor nurse on five.”

“Five, not four?”

“Both. But the last few weeks she worked on five.”

Will felt a tweak of interest. “We have a guard on five, outside Edward Letton’s room.”

“Inga was only here a few days while he was here.”

“But she had contact with him?”

“Not really. Myself and a couple of other long-timers were the only ones the hospital allowed at first. We’ve all eased up a bit.”

“I’m just trying to get an idea of who might have something against Ms. Selbourne.”

Janet shook her head.

Will asked, “Anything else you can think of that might help us locate her killer?”

“Well, this is a bit off-point, maybe…”

“Anything,” Will said.

“Yesterday I was up on fifth and your guard was missing.”

“I know,” Will said, silently cursing Ralph Smithson again. The man caused more grief than good.

“But there was a woman in the hallway. In scrubs. But she wasn’t part of our nursing staff. I know everyone.”

Will almost said, “It’s a big hospital,” but there was something about Janet Cumberland that kept him quiet, made him believe her. “You think she was visiting Letton?”

“I don’t know. She was walking away from me. I just saw the back of her, but since the guard was gone I went into Letton’s room and he was the same.”

“Wide-eyed coma? I saw him yesterday, too,” Will explained to her sharp look.

“I think she may have been in his room. Just a feeling I have. But when I walked down the hall after her, she was gone. Maybe took the stairs. Maybe your man knows something more.”

“Thank you,” Will said a trifle stiffly. “I’ll ask him.”

She shrugged. “Probably nothing. And I don’t think it had anything to do with Inga. I just wanted to mention it, since you’re here.”

Will didn’t know what to feel as he trudged up the stairs to the fifth floor. Smithson was sitting in his chair, looking as bored as he possibly could without actually nodding off. For once he was sans junk food.

“Do you recognize the nurses that attend Letton?” Will asked without preamble.

“Well, sure. Not much else to do around here.”

“Did you see a new one yesterday?”

Ralph’s face whitened a bit, then filled with red color as if he were suffering from apoplexy. “I was only gone a few minutes. You were here yourself.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m sure I’ve seen her before. It was just the first time she talked to me.”

“What did she say?”

Ralph opened and shut his mouth twice before saying, “She was friendly. Just passing by. She didn’t have nothing to do with the pedophile.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He was belligerent.

“How do you know, since you were gone from your post?”

“Jesus H, man. Jenkins and Turner aren’t on graveyard anymore. You’re just keeping me here to harass me.”