Unseen (18 page)

Carefully, feeling needles and pins in her right leg as she stirred, she peered hard through the windshield, trying to make shapes out of the darkness. She determined she was on that same road where she’d seen the girl who’d waved at her. She’d been obsessed by thoughts of the girl. Who was she? Why did it feel so important? Was she in danger? Lucky had incredible antennae when it came to sensing pending trouble.

Turning on her lights, she pulled onto the road, heading in the direction of the town of Quarry. She had an aversion to the place, which she’d recognized subconsciously, but only now fully realized that she’d been avoiding it. Wrinkling her nose, she decided maybe it was time to face whatever was bothering her about the place. With a kind of dread she didn’t understand, she pressed the accelerator a bit, feeling like she was heading toward an unknown doom.

A darkish van rattled out of a driveway without stopping and Lucky jammed on her brakes. “Hey!” she yelled, but the van driver couldn’t hear her as it sped ahead of her toward Quarry.

Lucky immediately felt the affront of a driver who’d damn near been sideswiped. She touched her toe to the accelerator again, her earlier misgivings buried under a righteous indignation. Who the hell was this yo-yo?

The van swept into Quarry ten miles over the speed limit. Lucky slowed down. She didn’t want to draw any attention to herself. She got the heebie-jeebies as she passed the PickAxe tavern and shivered in spite of herself. The van turned in almost directly across from the tavern into LuLu’s diner.

Alarm bells rang inside Lucky’s head. LuLu’s…A hand-printed sign advertising homemade peach cobbler had been tacked onto the permanent free-standing wooden one with LuLu’s Diner written in script. Lucky tucked her truck between two others in the back lot just as the van driver slammed out, his vehicle jolting to a stop under the electrical pole. She caught a glimpse of his hardened face in the sodium vapor light. Shivers raced along her spine. She knew him. Could feel the blast-furnace fury he was consumed with.

She leapt out of her vehicle and, hiding between the cars, watched him approach the front of the diner. Something stopped him. Some latent remnant of good sense or self-preservation. Whatever his issue he couldn’t just crash inside and take it out on his target with the whole damn restaurant as his witness.

Lucky’s eyes zeroed in on the man as she crouched behind a newer Dodge Ram truck and gazed at him across the hood.

And then
she
came out of the restaurant. The girl. Saying something over her shoulder, a backpack carelessly looped over one shoulder. Unaware that disaster was waiting for her.

The angry man took a step toward her. Lucky moved to the front of the truck, poised on the balls of her feet.

“You fucking little thief,” he spat at the girl who stopped in her tracks, stunned. “You think you can just take my son’s bike and get away with it?”

“I brought it back,” the girl said in a strangled voice.

“You
stole
it!” he roared.

The girl tried to be brave but she was shaking. “I said I was sorry.”

It took all of the man’s strength to keep a grip on his temper. He stared at the girl whose face had contorted into a frown. There was something here. Something Lucky could feel. Her heart began a slow, painful tattoo. She knew that look in the man’s eyes, could sense his changing emotions, from rage to driving lust. She’d suffered through it enough times. He stared at the girl with hot eyes and Lucky’s fists clenched. She wanted to slam the bastard’s head in the ground, strangle him, cut off his balls. He wanted the girl.
Wanted
her. Like Edward Letton had wanted the soccer player.

Red fury filled Lucky’s head, nearly blinding her. She would go after him bare-handed if he made one move on the girl.

The front door of the diner slammed open, the screen flapping back on itself as a man in a cap stepped up. “He botherin’ you, Charlotte?” the newcomer demanded.

The girl hesitated and the angry man spat on the ground and turned away. “It’s okay, Captain,” she said quietly. But she couldn’t take her gaze away from the man who was now striding to his gray van.

Lucky eased back out of sight, backing up toward her own vehicle, her eyes glued to the man’s vehicle. When he slammed his door shut she bolted for her truck, twisting the handle as he threw his van into drive. It rattled out of the lot and turned west.

Moments later Lucky moved out behind him. She had no plan of action. Nothing but her wits.

But she was bound and determined to kill the bastard. Take him out. Make the world a better place. There was no right or wrong.

There was simply now.

Charlotte headed back inside the diner, shaking, the Captain at her heels. Macie was in the kitchen. Charlotte had left a few minutes early. Had planned to wait in the car and turn the radio on. Now she hesitated before telling her mom what had just taken place.

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Charlotte murmured to herself.

The Captain’s eyes snapped fire. “What’d that man say to you?”

“Uh…nothing much.”

“He was swearing at you. Who was he?” The Captain was full of repressed rage.

“I don’t know.”

Macie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “What is it?” she asked sharply, seeing her daughter’s pinched face. She looked at the Captain.

“Man in a van was swearing at her,” he said.

“What did you do?” her mother asked.

“Nothing!” Charlotte declared resentfully. “I was just walking to the car.”

“You must have said something, or done something. He wouldn’t just swear at you.”

“Well, he did.” Charlotte clomped to one of the booths and sank into it, tucking her chin on her crossed arms. She had to think. Think. She felt scared and weirded-out at the same time. That man was Robbie Bereth’s father!

“What happened?” her mother asked in a calmer voice. She sank into the seat opposite Charlotte’s.

Charlotte looked into Macie’s thickly mascaraed eyes. The only person who would really understand was Gemma. She was the one Charlotte needed to talk to. “I need to call Gemma,” she said.

“Oh, no. Leave her be. She’s got things she’s working through. She’ll be here tomorrow.”

“But I’ll be at school!”

“Oh, good. You actually plan to go.”

“I need to tell her something!”

“Well, tell me, and I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

Charlotte glowered and buried her face into her arms again. Okay. Tomorrow. She would tell Gemma after school. Of course, she would have to leave early again to make sure she got to the diner before Gemma’s shift was over, but that just meant staying up a little later tonight and getting ahead on a few more assignments.

“What?” Macie cocked an ear her way as Charlotte mumbled into her arms.

“I said okay.”

“Good. Well, come on. We’re done here. Denise and Milo will close up.” She slid out of the booth and Charlotte reluctantly followed.

At first the van appeared to be heading back to the house from which it had come, but the driver suddenly must have guessed she was on his tail because he circled around and wound back to Highway 26. His tactics confirmed that she was behind him, but there was nothing for it now but to stay on his taillights.

He was heading toward the coast, but then he veered off, onto a private logging road. Cool-headed, Lucky turned in behind him, hearing gravel crunch beneath her tires. These roads wound for miles and she was unfamiliar with this one, but she was on a path and intended to stay there.

Abruptly the man pulled over. Lucky slowed and pulled in behind him, her headlights illuminating his van. Reaching over, she unlatched the glove box and grabbed her .22. Small as it was, it felt heavy in her hands. Her heart beat hard and fast.

He rolled down his window and she did the same. “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled from inside.

Lucky didn’t respond. She waited, counting slowly in her head. A minute passed. Two. All around them were stately Douglas firs except for the gravel line where the logging road aimed into darkness.

Suddenly his door flew open and he jumped into her headlights. She saw the crowbar in his hand.

Her spit dried in her mouth. She’d set this in motion. He was a dangerous beast.

“Come on, bastard,” she whispered.

He glared at her, head thrust forward. Lifted the crowbar high. With a yell he ran forward and flailed at her headlights.
Smash.
Splintering glass tinkled in the aftermath.

Her right beam still held steady.

“Get out of here!” he screamed, advancing on her.

Lucky threw open her driver’s side door and jumped to the ground. He slammed it shut, nearly on her, breathing hard. “Who are you?” he demanded. His eyes fell on the gun, leveled at his chest.

“One more step and I’ll shoot you,” she said through gritted teeth.

His mouth curved into a humorless smile. “Oh, will you?”

“Watch me.”

He turned instead and headed for her other headlight. Lucky followed him and aimed.

Blam.

He shrieked to high heaven and grabbed backward, stumbling. She’d hit him in the ass. He fell down and crawled forward, flipping onto his back and staring up at her through the uncertain light, his expression incredulous. “Why? Why?”

“Because you like little girls, you fucker.”

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed.

“I don’t think so.”

They were frozen. Staring at each other. “I know you,” he said in disbelief. “You followed me before. You put your damn car in the ditch.” He was breathing heavily.

“You wanted that girl at the diner. How many have you molested already?”

“That girl stole my boy’s bike! She needed to be taught a lesson. That’s all I was gonna do.”

“Liar.”

Lucky raised the gun and the bastard just stared at her through wide, horror-filled eyes. She wanted to shoot him dead. Leave him like so much road kill. Let his rotted corpse be found by someone else.

But—she—couldn’t—do—it.

She ground her teeth together. She’d suspected this. Suspected she couldn’t kill in cold blood.

It infuriated her.

Sensing her indecision, he scrambled backwards, moaning at the bullet lodged in his butt. He was lucky she didn’t have a more powerful weapon or the bullet would have passed right through him and left one hell of an exit wound.

She let him go. Let him explain how he’d got shot in the ass.

Feeling incredibly weary, she watched him climb back into his van, switch on the lights, turn around and leave the way they’d come in. Lucky got back in her truck, laid her head on the steering wheel and fell into a storm of tears she didn’t understand. She cried for all the terrible things she’d done. All that she’d lived through. All the innocent children who endured horrible torture at the hands of self-serving, arrogant, sick adults.

She turned the truck around and followed in the wake of the van, whose taillights vanished as it turned east onto the highway toward Quarry. She decided to head back to Seaside and so when she reached the highway she went west.

She’d barely gone a mile when she saw headlights behind her, closing fast. He’s coming after me, she marveled. She sped up. Not far ahead was a passing lane. She moved to the right side lane and slowed down. He came on her hard, his headlights bearing down.

Bam.
He rammed into her, but it was more a tap as she’d pressed her foot to the accelerator as he approached. But the steering wheel jumped in her hands and she scrambled to hold it firm before slamming on her brakes, bracing herself.

Hit me, you bastard,
she thought furiously.

At the last second he swerved around her. The side window was down and he was shouting obscenities.

He had to be losing blood. Had to be running on adrenaline.

He was ahead of her and she hit the pedal, the truck jumping ahead with a spurt.

But he was weaving. Bad.

Across their two lanes and into oncoming traffic, and back.

Catastrophe loomed.

Distantly, around a corner, she could see the beams of an oncoming vehicle. An innocent victim.

She screamed.

The gray van lurched from the oncoming lanes back, skimming in front of her. Lucky stood on her brakes and her truck shimmied, tires shrieking, as the van slid by as if on ice and right off the edge of the road, tumbling into a ravine.

Yanking the wheel as hard as she could, Lucky straightened out her truck. She saw brake lights from the oncoming car as it came to a stop to help.

Lucky didn’t wait. She tore forward and headed straight to the coast, worried only one headlight and a damaged rear end were a dead giveaway to anyone looking for her.

Chapter Fifteen

Gemma tried to stifle a yawn as she poured coffee into the cups of the middle-aged foursome in the back booth. As soon as one yawn ended another began.

“Too much partying for you,” the man with the horseshoe-shaped balding dome announced.

“I went to bed early,” Gemma denied.

“Uh-huh.” He waggled his brows at her as if they were in on the joke together.

When Gemma returned to the kitchen she fought back another yawn.

Macie said, “Just how late did you make it to bed?”

“Not really sure.” Gemma shook her head. She’d woken up on the couch in the wee hours of the morning, but she couldn’t really remember falling asleep. At least this time she’d had her clothes on.

“Heather’s going to actually make it in today,” Macie said, “and Denise is here, so if you need to go on home, go ahead.”

“Thanks. I might.”

“Did anything happen?” she asked in concern, giving Gemma a searching look.

“No. I’m fine, really. Just tired. Maybe this is a reaction to seeing Tremaine Rainfield yesterday. I kinda had a realization.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been running away from the truth and I don’t want to anymore. Okay, so I can’t remember everything. I’ve got most of it. So, if there’s bad stuff I haven’t learned yet, bring it on.” She paused. “And I quit taking any medication awhile back. It was hit or miss anyway, and I just want to start fresh.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

“I asked Detective Tanninger to meet me here this morning,” Gemma admitted.

“Yeah?”

“I have some things I want to talk over.” Gemma thought about the demolished car in Patrick Johnson’s outbuilding. A part of her still wanted to keep that information to herself.

Macie put a hand in her apron to check for her notepad and started to head to one of the booths to take an order when she turned back suddenly. “Which reminds me, Charlotte wants to talk to you. She was all insistent last night, but I told her to leave you alone.”

“Know what it was about?”

“Haven’t a clue. She got in some kind of pissing match in the parking lot with some jackass who was swearing at her, at least that’s what the Captain said, if you can believe him. Half the time he just likes to make a fuss. But Charlotte was upset. I couldn’t get her to tell me what it was about.”

“Maybe I’ll stick around and wait for her to get home from school.”

“That should be about noon,” she said darkly.

Gemma grinned. She knew she should probably care more that Charlotte was such a truant, but since no one denied she wasn’t getting her work done—in fact she was excelling in it—it was tough to be a hard-ass.

“Don’t worry about sticking around just to see Charlotte. She asked me about home schooling her, can you imagine?” Macie said in horror.

Gemma laughed, an honest to goodness
har, har, har
.

Macie cocked her head and smiled. “That’s a sound I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“I’m unburdening myself,” Gemma said. “It’s—freeing.”

“Just don’t let that detective railroad you into admitting something you didn’t do.”

“Won’t happen.”

“Okay, then. If you need me, just say so and I’ll send him outta here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

The door opened and a woman in her sixties with coiffed silver hair strutted in, chin lifted defiantly. She pinned Gemma with a sharp look from pale blue eyes. Davinia Noack, Gemma realized, greeting the woman with a remote smile as if she didn’t recognize her, and indicating an empty booth.

Davinia was having none of it. “Gemma LaPorte,” she said accusingly, firmly rooted to the floor just inside the door. “I heard you were working here. I heard you were avoiding me, but I couldn’t believe it. What are you doing, my dear? When God bestowed such a talent on you. Why do you spurn His gift?”

Gemma grabbed some menus. “The booth in the corner’s open,” she said, determinedly leading the way.

Davinia followed on her heels. “Why are you being like this?”

“I’m…not my mother,” she said, handing Davinia a menu.

Immediately Davinia dropped it as if it burned her. “I’m not dining,” she stated flatly. “I came here to reason with you. And to give you some information that you sorely need.”

“Okay.” Gemma made a high-sign to the table of four. She was pretty sure they needed coffee refills.

“You know my Carl, sometimes he goes to the PickAxe.” Her lips puckered as if the word tasted sour. “Well, he was there when Kevin Dunleavy and his brother Jerome were having a heated discussion about you.” Gemma had been moving away but now she glanced back. Davinia’s eyes glowed with triumph at gaining her attention. “That’s right. They were very nasty about Jean and you. Poor Carl didn’t know whether to say something in your defense or not. I told him he should have!”

“What exactly were they saying?”

“They said both of you were freaks and that you were a killer.” Her face flushed. “They’ve always been very nasty boys!”

Gemma instantly wanted to defend Rome, but she held herself back. So, he’d been a school crush. What did she really know about him? “Well, sticks and stones, Davinia,” Gemma said, though the Dunleavys’ continual condemnation of her family was really pissing her off.

“Will you really not give me a reading?” she asked, her imperious demeanor slipping a bit.

Gemma lifted a hand as she headed for the foursome. “Call me. I’ll call you back, I promise, and we’ll make an appointment.”

“Bless you, child!”

Macie looked over at Gemma with amusement. Gemma just shook her head, called herself ten kinds of a fool, then glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. She wondered when Will Tanninger planned on showing up.

“…Thanks, Mac,” Will said into his cell phone. He swiveled his desk chair and saw Barb give him a
what gives?
look. He’d been scribbling on a pad and she came around to look over his shoulder as she cruised by. “Doesn’t sound like any of ’em is our guy, but I’ll pass the information on to Enders.” He hung up and said to Barb, “Mac canvassed the bars where Inga Selbourne liked to party. She hooked up with a few different guys, but wasn’t really attached to any of them. Apparently the last one she was interested in was a real estate guy named Daniel Sommers. He’s since moved on to another party girl who’s alive and well, and no one knows anything.”

“Maybe he’s lying. Could be a great cover.”

“Mac doesn’t think so. Our doer seems more antisocial. This group parties together.”

“He could fit himself in,” Barb said stubbornly. “Act like he’s one of them.” She loved playing devil’s advocate.

“I don’t think he could fit himself in,” Will disagreed. “He’s leaving his DNA all over the place like he doesn’t know or care. He’s got some major cuts he needs to hide, courtesy of Inga. He’s compelled to burn the bodies and mark them with cigarettes. And it seems like he’s escalating. If he burned a first one that we haven’t found yet, that one was awhile ago. These two, Selbourne and Markum, were killed in the space of a couple weeks.”

“If there is a first one,” Barb repeated.

“We’ve sent out enough information that if she exists, we could get a hit,” Will said.

“The cigarette burns could be random.”

“Could be.”

She finally acknowledged, “But they’re so deliberate they look like he’s doing it on purpose. You think it’s a message for us?” Then, pissed: “Not us. The feds. They’re taking all our information and giving us nothing.”

“Their case. Doesn’t mean we can’t have our own theories.”

Barb asked, “What’re yours?”

“Our guy doesn’t seem like the kind who wants to dance the dance. He doesn’t care about publicity, or that we’re all trying to find him. He only seems interested in finding his targets and killing them.”

“Burning them,” Barb said. “Maybe he just hasn’t gotten around to dancing the dance.”

“Does it feel that way to you?” he asked. “Like he’s engaging us in a game?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m no expert.”

“There’s some reason he’s targeting his victims. Something cues him to his next one. And it doesn’t seem like he has a check-off list. He’s not methodically marking them off. His victims are all over the place, as if they cross his path somehow and he tags ’em.”

“His path is from Laurelton to outside Seaside and maybe beyond.”

“Serial killers can cover a lot of distance. Bundy went from Washington to Florida and back with lots of places in between.”

Barb said, “This guy’s no Bundy.”

Will nodded. “He’s too local.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Laurelton airstrip. You gotta know how many people work there and that you can get away with leaving a body there. That’s not something you’re going to just run across. He’s been around the area enough to know that.”

“You think he’s from Laurelton?”

Will shook his head. “Maybe he was just at the hospital. Maybe that’s how he found Inga. I think he’s from the coast somewhere. He found Jamie Markum by some means. Maybe he was at the bar, but then wouldn’t he have seen her with the guy?”

“Phil…” Barb glanced down at some of her notes. “Herrington.”

“I don’t think he followed her from the bar.”

“So, where’d he pick her up?”

“Her route? She works for To You Today.”

Barb smiled. “You gonna share that with the feds?”

“They’ve probably already thought of it.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Will said, “I’m going to call Don Enders at Clatsop County and talk some more. Jamie’s homicide is in his jurisdiction.”

“So, what about victim one, if she exists? Where’s she?”

“Somewhere between here and Seaside, or along the coast? Not toward Portland and denser population. Our guy’s more small town.”

“A lot of theory without a lot of fact,” Barb observed, but she wasn’t trying to criticize him. As Will shut down his computer, then shoved his chair back from his desk, she asked, “Where are you going?”

“To Quarry to talk to Gemma LaPorte.”

Her brows arched. “Business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure.”

She’d been about to needle him with another question, but his answer stopped her short.

“She promised me a piece of peach cobbler from the diner where she works.”

“Oh, right. Bet that’s not all she promised.”

“So far, that’s it.”

“Watch yourself, Tanninger.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“I mean it. There’s something about her that you like, but she’s a mystery. She’s hiding something.”

“You’re starting to sound a little like Burl,” he said as he headed out the door. It was too bad their working relationship seemed to always spiral down to this.

“Better than being a sucker,” she called after him.

Charlotte tried to think of a way to escape, but she could feel the teachers and administration staring at her, like they’d all banded together to keep her on the school grounds. She was never alone with just kids. There was always some adult hanging around, looking kind of stupid and out of place. She knew it was because of her. They were all focused on keeping her at school.

Shit.

And Robbie Bereth, who wasn’t in any of her classes, thank the Lord, was a real pain in the butt. Glaring at her across the playground. Talking with his friends, one of whom was a big, fat bully and who’d yelled something at Charlotte she hadn’t really understood. One of those bad words that you only hear on HBO or Showtime or in the movies.

Didn’t matter. They could say what they wanted. Charlotte had something on Robbie, something really big. Too big to fall into a pissing match over. In fact, she felt sorry for him and that had kept her temper in check when he acted like such a moron with his buddies.

What she had was that Robbie’s dad was the guy Gemma had chased from the diner. The one who’d looked at Charlotte all strange and icky-like. She had the distinct feeling he’d be the kind who would try to lure you into his car with one of those lies, like he was looking for a lost puppy and could she help him. He was a bad dude, for sure.

“Ass-wipe,” she muttered aloud.

Mrs. Ondine gazed at her fiercely. “What did you say, Charlotte?”

“She said ass-wipe,” Davey Corulo piped up, the traitor.

The teacher held a finger up to Davey, annoyed with him but still fixed on Charlotte. “Should I send you to the principal’s office?”

Are you asking me?
Charlotte almost said, but lowered her eyes and shook her head. Sometimes you just had to act like you were beaten.

“Have you finished your Halloween story?”

Charlotte nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

“You haven’t turned it in.”

Charlotte flipped open her notebook and handed over the paper to Mrs. Ondine, who glanced at it and frowned. For a moment, Charlotte worried that she’d forgotten to remove “shit” from her final draft, but then Mrs. Ondine said, “Did you get help with this?”

Charlotte was outraged. More because other kids got all kinds of help from their parents and she hardly ever asked Macie to step in. “No,” she stated flatly.

“In my experience, most kids don’t hate Halloween,” she said. “Just the opposite.”

“I don’t hate Halloween. I was picking the other side. You said there are two sides to every issue.”

Mrs. Ondine inhaled noisily through her nose. She wasn’t completely old. She maybe was younger than Mom, but she had this way of being that made her seem
ancient.
“Not sure you really developed an ending,” she said, turning away.

Charlotte could tell that there was an issue developing between them and they were going to be on opposite sides. Inwardly sighing, she wondered how—
how
—she was going to get out of here and find Gemma.

She felt Davey’s eyes on her and slid him a cold glare.

Don’t mess with me, ass-wipe
, she thought, but she didn’t say it.

When Will Tanninger walked into LuLu’s, heads turned. He was with the sheriff’s department. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His hair was a tad longish and added a rakish touch to his chiseled face, and the wind that had kicked up outside had tossed a brown lock nearly into one eye. Gemma felt heat rush through her as she watched him brush it back. She pretended to not even notice him as she snapped an order up and pushed the wheel around so the page was in front of Milo’s nose.