Unseen (19 page)

Macie was finishing an order and she glanced over, her brows lifting, and Denise automatically reached a hand up to smooth her own wild, brown curls. Gemma called herself an idiot for caring, noticing, wanting something she couldn’t have. Yes, she knew he wasn’t immune to her; he’d said he didn’t want her to be guilty. But that could mean anything. Didn’t count for anything in the man/woman arena.

Will had spied Gemma, so there was no hiding from him. She stepped briskly up as Denise asked, “Would you like a table?”

“I’m actually here to see Ms. LaPorte,” he said, greeting Gemma with a faint smile.

“Oh.” Denise gave Gemma a long look before she turned away.

“Would you like a table?” Gemma repeated.

“Although I definitely want to try the peach cobbler, I’ve got some other appointments, so I’d better pass.” His gaze traveled down her lemon yellow uniform. “Can we talk somewhere?”

Gemma turned back and caught Macie’s eye. Macie sidled up, giving Will the elevator eyes. “You can leave right now, hon. We’ve got it covered. Heather swears she’ll be in at one, but even if she flakes on me again, we’ve still got it covered.”

“Sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

Gemma grabbed her coat from the back room, then Will held the front door and they walked onto LuLu’s porch. The wind snatched at her hair and felt cold against the fingers that held her coat closed at her throat. Rain blew fitfully, a sideways flurry. Also cold. “Hello, winter,” Gemma murmured.

“I didn’t mean to take you from work,” he said.

“No, I know. I’ve been tired all day, so Macie told me to leave. I’m just filling in while I figure things out.”

“You want to go to my car?” He glanced around dubiously. There was nowhere to be safe from the elements outside, and nowhere to be free from eavesdroppers inside.

“Sure.”

Together they hurried, heads bent, through the fitful, wind-driven slaps of rain. Will quickly unlocked the door to his department-issued vehicle, a tan-and-brown sedan with
Sheriff’s Department
slanted in letters across the doors. Gemma got in the passenger side and slammed the door, and as Will climbed in the driver’s side she caught a whiff of spicy men’s cologne, understated. Not too much, just enough to make her want to inhale deep into her lungs.

He looked at her and she looked at him. She said, “You want to kiss me.”

Surprised, he yanked his gaze away. “What makes you say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“You called me with some information?” he reminded her, seeking to get the conversation back on track.

Gemma nodded. “I want to tell you something about myself first. I can read people’s emotions. I mean, really read them, sometimes. It helps if I can see the color red at the same time, but it’s not mandatory.”

Will half-smiled. “What?”

“I know what it sounds like, but I’m not crazy. No matter what the Dunleavys say.”

“You know about them?”

It was her turn to look surprised. “How do you?”

“The feud between your family and the Dunleavys was brought up by a retired deputy who lives in Woodbine,” Will explained. “A friend of the Dunleavys.”

“And he told you they think I’m crazy?”

“All LaPortes are crazy,” he said, straight-faced.

“Damn, I’m sick of this small town. I don’t know why I came back!” Gemma declared. Then she held up her hand. “Yes, I do.”

Will said, “Don’t worry. He hasn’t tainted my view of you.”

“But hearing that I can read minds, how’s that working for you?”

“I thought you said you read emotions.”

“Okay.” Gemma inhaled a deep breath. “Let me start over. Reading emotions is like reading minds. I feel the emotion and know why it’s there. Simple in some cases. Not as obvious in others.”

“You can read my emotions?”

She shot him a sideways look. She was close enough to see that his eyes weren’t as dark brown as she’d initially thought. There were striations of gray in the irises. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t want to ask me what you’re feeling?”

“I know what I’m feeling. Frustration.”

“You wanted to kiss me the other night. You still want to.”

He broke eye contact, glanced away, then met her gaze again blandly. “What if I said you’re wrong.”

“You’d be a liar.”

“I want you to be straight with me, and I want you to be innocent of all charges. That’s what I want.”

“I’m not trying to put you on the spot, detective. I’m just proving a point.”

“Okay.”

There was silence for a moment, then Gemma said, “I went to see a psychologist yesterday, Dr. Tremaine Rainfield. I thought he could help me, but now I’m not so sure. He wants me to go under hypnosis to recover some of my repressed memories. But not about what happened with Edward Letton’s accident; that’s secondary. He wants me to go way back to my childhood, to those pieces of my past that are a complete washout, memory-wise.

“But what he really wants is for me to be his test case. He wants to make a name for himself by using my case. He’s known me for years, peripherally, because I used to see his father, Dr. Bernard Rainfield, throughout my childhood. Apparently I’ve had memory lapses for years.”

“So, he’s going to cure you and hold you up as an example?”

“Do you know what DID is, detective?”

“I’ve heard of it before—”

“It’s Dissociative Identity Disorder. Which means Tremaine thinks I have multiple personalities.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know where he gets that. Something in my past maybe…I didn’t ask. But that’s not what my memory lapses are about. That’s not it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” she repeated suspiciously.

“I’m waiting to see where this is going. I don’t have your ability to read minds.”

She made a sound of frustration, then stated flatly, “I know where my mother’s car is.”

That got his attention. “Where?”

“I got a call from a farmer near Elsie. His grandson was the one who found my car. In a ditch with me in it. The Camry’s in their barn. Wrecked pretty badly. It was the grandson who took me to the hospital.”

“It—wasn’t the car that brought you to the hospital.”

“Nope.”

Will could tell he’d really pissed her off, but what had she expected? He didn’t believe for a minute that she had extra abilities. And it really chafed him that she thought she could read him so well. Even if she was right. “When did you get the call?”

A pause. “A couple of days ago.”

“So, okay. Let’s go see it.”

“I already have.”

“Then let’s go see it again,” he said. “That’s why you called me, isn’t it?”

Gemma said, “After it’s examined you’ll be able to tell if it ran down Letton, won’t you?”

He nodded. “If there’s forensic evidence.”

“I didn’t do it,” she said. “I would know if I had.”

“See…” He exhaled slowly. “It’s that kind of comment that leaves me wondering.
I would know if I had
isn’t the same as
I know I didn’t
.” When she didn’t respond, he twisted the key in the ignition and asked, “What’s the address?”

Gemma told him, then added, “I went to see it for myself. As soon as Patrick Johnson called. His grandson, Andy, works at a lumber mill but he’s off work by three. He’s not around in the evenings much, but we could catch him this afternoon, I suppose.”

Will saw his trip to Clatsop County and a meeting with Detective Don Enders disappearing. The burn psycho wasn’t really his case anyway. He’d just wanted to meet with Phil Herrington personally, to get a feel for what had happened the night Jamie Markum was killed. But if he went, Will’s actions would undoubtedly rile up the feds, and though a part of him kind of liked the idea of poking a stick at them, another part knew it wouldn’t do anything to progress the case.

Better to just do his own thinking and see what cropped up.

And besides, the revelation of the car took precedence.

And he was scared of what those results might end up being.

He glanced over at Gemma, who’d gone quiet, the frown on her face revealing she might be regretting being so frank with him.

When he switched off the ignition, she asked, “What are you doing?”

“We’ve got time to kill before the grandson gets off work. Looks like I’m gonna get that peach cobbler after all.”

The wolf slowly, deliberately removed the spare tire from the ten-year-old Volvo wagon and slowly, deliberately replaced it with the original tire, which he’d patched after removing a bolt from the center of its tread. Construction sites were dropping stuff everywhere and drivers were picking it up.

“Hey, dummy!”

He didn’t look up from his task, just rolled the tire to the rear of the vehicle and flipped up the rear hatch. The spare fit under a section in the floor of the wagon.

“You got a problem with your hearing? Just because Easy wanted you to have ‘gainful employment,’” Rich said in a sing-song voice, “doesn’t mean you can just show up whenever you like. Seth’s gunnin’ for you, buddy. You were supposed to be here two days ago. What happened?”

Wolf didn’t respond. He’d shown up at the garage today and gotten to work. Seth had been on the phone and had waved him in the general direction of the cars, and Wolf had taken it from there.

But now Seth was gone somewhere and Rich always got mean when Seth left him in charge.

“My brother talked to Seth but he didn’t get me the job. I got the job.”

“Bullshit, moron. Seth liked Easy and so he took you on. But your brother’s gone now, isn’t he? Dead, dead, dead.” Rich mimed throwing a noose around his neck and jerking the rope tight, his eyes rolling back and his tongue hanging out.

Wolf’s blood boiled but he didn’t change expression. He wouldn’t mind killing Rich but that wasn’t his mission.

“Wha’d you and him do to your old lady?” Lachey asked now, and Wolf felt both fear and rage. He knew about that?
How?

As if hearing the words inside the wolf’s head, Rich went on, “Easy told me about how you wanted to stick your dick into her wet pussy. But she didn’t want you ’cause you were too stupid. But Easy…he had a way with women, huh. Even dear old Mom. Said she was a witch. Said she was an Injun witch.”

Wolf went completely still except for his beating heart. He could feel it galloping in his chest like a wild animal. He and his brother had had a pact. His brother would never tell. Never! Wolf was stunned to realize that he had.

Lachey was leaning against the wall, watching him, goading him. The wolf could not let himself be goaded. It was not his mission. But against his will he thought of the mother-witch. Her swelling breasts. Her freshly laundered dress. Her smoky breath. Her black hair.

His head felt like it was about to explode. He needed the One witch. The one he’d followed. He needed her bad.

“You gettin’ a boner, there,
Wolf
?” he sneered. “Thinking about fuckin’ your honey-hot mama. Easy talked about how good she was. Mmmhmmm.” He moved his crotch around in a circle, grinning. “Wha’d you do to her, huh? Where is she? She dead like your brother?”

“Fuck you,” Wolf stated flatly.

Rich started laughing and he changed his circular motion to hip thrusts. “Your brother take her against a wall like this?” he asked, turning toward the line of car parts hanging on the walls. He started moaning and jerking and pretending, his head turned Wolf’s way, his mean eyes filled with the devil’s mischief. “You hear her moanin’, wished it were your dick inside instead of Easy’s. Huh? That why you killed her?”

“I didn’t kill her,” he said.

“Yeah? That’s not what Easy said.”

“My brother wouldn’t lie.”

“He wasn’t lying. And neither was Ani.”

The wolf saw red. A curtain of red covered his eyes. He turned toward Rich, stumbled forward. Lachey yanked a piece of pipe from the wall and waited for the attack.

“Come on, fucker,” he whispered.

“Rich!”

Seth’s voice boomed across the garage. He wasn’t a big man, but he had a tense way about him that the wolf, and Rich, too, eyed with a certain amount of respect.

Rich kept an eye on Wolf, who’d stopped in his tracks. He hung the piece of pipe back on the wall. “I was just funnin’ with him,” he said, unperturbed, and sauntered away.

Seth frowned at Wolf and gestured for him to follow him into his office. Wolf complied and as soon as they were inside, Seth started in: “Your brother wanted me to take you on and I did. He’s been gone a long while and you’ve been out to lunch.
Out to lunch.
You don’t show up. You don’t call in. You don’t act like you even want a job. What the hell’s going on with you?”

“I just work on special projects,” Wolf said.

“That’s what your brother said. That’s how he talked me into hiring you and you sure as hell know your way around a car or truck, that’s for sure. That’s why I haven’t kicked your sorry butt to the curb. But I am now. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I had some work that needed to be done, and you weren’t anywhere. No phone. What the hell happened to that? You forget to pay the bill, or don’t you care? Maybe you don’t want people calling you. You’re a goddamn hermit. But I need somebody who I can
get a hold of
.”

Wolf just stared at him. Seth had fired him. That’s what he’d heard.

“Your attitude just brings the Rich Lacheys of the world on you like a pack of jackals.” Seth glared at him. He was mad, but he was also unhappy. “Damn it,” he said. “I’m going to have to let you go.” With that he punched open the cash drawer and pulled out a wad of bills. “About three hundred,” he said. “For work already done. That’s it.”

Wolf took the cash and turned toward the door. He was almost relieved. He wanted to kill Lachey, but if he could get away and never come back then he would get over it.

“Wait!”

The wolf stopped but didn’t turn around. He heard the cash drawer open and shut again.

“For the car washing,” Seth said, and pressed another group of twenties in his hand. “I don’t know how many you did, but I don’t want to cheat you. You’ve taken good care of them.”

Wolf wondered when the last time was that Seth looked at the cars, but it wasn’t his problem anymore. He counted up how much cash he had at home and how much this was, but the numbers escaped him. He would figure it out later. He could get another job. He wasn’t worried.