“Can you walk?” she asked. She hadn’t bound his feet.
“You want me to come watch TV with you?”
“Just the news.”
They stared at each other another moment or two, then he got awkwardly to his feet, carrying the chair on his back as Liv preceded him across the living room toward the west end of the house. Directly ahead was a bathroom and there were bedrooms to the right and left of a short hallway. She could see the television in the bedroom to the right—the room toward the rear of the house—and headed that way. Auggie followed after her, banging the chair into the wall several times and swearing softly in the process.
By the time he’d slammed his chair down near the door and sat upon it and Liv had perched on the end of the bed, it was five forty-five. Had it really only been hours since the attack?
The remote was tossed on the bed beside her. Liv snatched it up and hit the POWER button. The Channel Seven news came up and it was the weather. They both watched in silence as more sunshine was predicted, and more, and more. “It’s been a beautiful week so far and there’s more to come,” the weatherman said with a smile.
“Beautiful week,” Liv repeated as they went to commercial, her voice breaking. She wanted to lie down on his bed and bury her face in the covers and never come up.
“What started this?” Auggie asked her, a note of concern entering his voice, which nearly did her in.
She turned down the volume but kept her gaze on the commercial—something about being ultra-fit with the use of a “miracle product”—but her thoughts were far removed. At length, she asked him, “Do you know about what happened at Zuma today?”
A pause. “Someone shot up the place,” he said carefully.
“I was out to lunch, literally . . . but I came back and they were all dead, dying, injured,
shot
. . . .” She looked over at him and saw he was staring at the .38 she’d laid on the bed beside her. “It wasn’t this gun. This one hasn’t even been fired . . . yet. I just went home and got it and then I ran out.”
“You work there.”
“I’m the missing employee.”
“You should call the police,” he said immediately. “If what you’re saying is true, then—”
“That’s just it. They won’t believe me. They never believe me.”
“Never believe you?”
“I don’t trust them. I don’t like them and I don’t want them.” She shook her head. On a half-laugh, she gestured to his trussed-up state, “And now, it’s too late anyway.”
“I wouldn’t press charges.”
“Oh, sure,” she said with a snort of disbelief.
“Livvie, they’ll help you. They want to get in touch with you.”
“Of course they do!” she said emphatically. “And they’ll throw me into an interrogation room and try to wring out a confession and use my past against me and before you know it, it’ll all be my fault. And maybe it is anyway!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not meant to.”
“What did you mean about ‘my past’?”
“Nothing!”
“Well, why the hell did you say it was your fault? I believe you, that you didn’t shoot those people at Zuma,” he added.
“I didn’t.”
“Why were they shot? Do you have any idea?”
She shook her head slowly.
“You do have an idea, Livvie,” he argued, watching her closely.
“It’s just Liv . . . please . . . and, yeah, someone’s after me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but it’s always been there. I’ve always known it, felt it. I think this—
massacre
—has something to do with me.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “I can’t explain it. I don’t have any proof. I know you won’t believe me. Why would you? But it’s a feeling I have, and it’s
real.
” She paused, then added, “I’m not . . . completely nuts.”
He was studying her in a way that made her extremely uncomfortable. She was about to say something to break the tension, when he said, “We’ll go to the police together. I’ll take you and we’ll tell them—”
“NO!”
He drew in a breath and exhaled it slowly. “If you would just—”
“Shhh.” The news had come back on and Liv turned up the volume. The anchorwoman was saying, “—just learned that there are two confirmed dead at the Zuma Software shooting this afternoon, Paul de Fore and Aaron Dirkus.” Liv made a sound of pain. Aaron. She’d known he was dead. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it! Turning away, she curled up on the bed like she’d wanted to before. But her ears could still hear: “Zuma’s owner Kurt Upjohn has been taken to Laurelton General Hospital in critical condition as has Jessica Maltona, one of the company employees. Police are looking to question Liv Dugan, another Zuma employee who was apparently not at the scene at the time of the shooting and appears to be missing. They want to talk to Ms. Dugan. If you’ve seen her, please call the authorities.”
A picture of a much younger Liv flashed on the screen. Her hair was shorter and she recognized the steps of Hathaway House in the background. She realized the picture was one that her father had from her teen years. Lorinda, she thought, swallowing hard. Lorinda had given the police her picture.
“They’ve got my picture,” she said.
“Doesn’t look much like you. How old were you? Thirteen?”
“Sixteen.”
“Was that your high school in the background?”
“Something like that,” she said tiredly.
They watched the rest of the report and then Liv dragged herself to her feet and headed back to the kitchen where she sank into the other kitchen chair, laying the gun on the tabletop in front of her. Auggie followed after her, clomping along with the chair on his hunched back. He banged it down, and they stared across the table at each other.
“Looks like someone wanted to take out Kurt Upjohn,” he said. “This was about Zuma Software, not you.”
“You’re wrong.” She wanted to believe him. She really, really wanted to believe him. But the timing of the package. . . and Dr. Yancy saying she’d buried the truth . . . and something about Hathaway House.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Because I just know. I’ve always known.”
“What have you always known?”
“Stop humoring me. I know what you think. That I’m crazy, or deluded, or misinformed. And you think I’m wrong about these killings. That I’m egocentric, maybe, that it has to be about me, when it’s obviously not. That I’m a drama queen. That I have to make this about ‘my stuff’ when it’s clearly a different matter entirely.”
He didn’t respond, which was a telling admission in itself.
“They’re after me,” she said in an unsteady voice. “That’s why I jumped in your car.”
Phillip Berelli was slouched in a chair inside D’Annibal’s unoccupied office. He’d needed somewhere to sit outside of the squad room, which, though mostly empty, had a feel of interrogation and criminal processing that scared honest citizens and felons, hopefully, alike. Those under arrest were brought in through a back door to a general booking area that led to several holding cells and then the squad room, holding some of the more raucous accused felons away from those at the station for other reasons, but that didn’t mean much to Berelli.
He’d called his wife, then barely said another word on the ride over, looking for all the world like he might pass out at any moment. Since they’d been at the station, he’d mostly just sat, staring straight ahead. After half an hour Gretchen had left them and gone to find someone to complain about Guy Urlacher, the man at Laurelton PD’s front desk. Guy took his role seriously enough to piss off everyone. He wasn’t really
wrong
to make everyone identify themselves; he was just too eager and had turned following regulations into an art form. The good news? Guy’s attitude was the only thing Phillip Berelli had reacted to thus far. Berelli said that Paul de Fore, who’d been hired at Zuma as a kind of security guard, suffered from the same overzealous need to control. Since that admission, the man had simply sat in a blank-staring funk, so September had left him for a few moments and just returned.
“Here,” she said, handing the man a cup of coffee strong enough to melt steel.
He took the cup reluctantly and cradled it in his palms. Not an encouraging sign.
“So, Paul de Fore,” September said. “Tell me more about him.”
“Paul . . .” he murmured, shaking his head dolefully as his breath caught on a sob.
“Take a drink, Mr. Berelli,” September said.
As if he needed someone to tell him what to do, Berelli obliged, sucking in the dark liquid and coughing a bit as it went down his throat.
“I know you want to go home, and we want to take you home, too. We just need some help. A little background. That’s all,” she said.
“I don’t know anything. Kurt . . . Mr. Upjohn . . . he’s . . .”
“He’s in surgery,” September told him. “Miss Maltona, too.”
“Paul’s dead,” he said, as if trying the words out, disbelieving them.
“Yes.”
“So’s . . . Aaron . . .”
September nodded. “But Mr. Upjohn and Miss Maltona are still alive, and the other employee, Miss Dugan.”
“She called 911.”
“Yes,” September said. The security tape had captured Olivia Dugan’s return, shock and phone call. If it was an acting job, it was a damn good one.
“She’s lucky she wasn’t there,” he said. His face crumpled as he added, “She and Jessica didn’t like Paul much.”
“She and Jessica were friends?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You said Paul took his job too seriously?”
He nodded. “He kinda wore his own uniform. No one asked him to,” he added softly, as if by saying it quietly he could keep from maligning the dead.
“His duties were . . . ?”
“Nothing specific, I guess. He would go upstairs a couple of times a day and just patrol around. And he’d go outside and check the grounds. Mostly, he stood by the door.” He stared down at his shoes and admitted, “Nobody much liked him. He kinda took things on himself.” He made a face. “I overheard him tell Kurt that Jessica took off on her break. She left the building.”
“That’s not allowed?”
“Well, you can’t really stop anyone from leaving on their break, legally. Kurt just likes to know where every employee is at all times. He wants the girls to go at noon and be back at one.”
“The girls . . . Miss Maltona and Miss Dugan?”
“Liv musta gone to lunch late,” he said. “I was upstairs. I came down and she wasn’t there and Aaron had unlocked the side door.”
When he trailed off, September encouraged him, “The side door’s generally always locked.”
“Yeah. But Aaron got the key and unlocked it, and Kurt found out and they had words.”
“Why did Aaron unlock the door, do you know?”
“Like I said, he just likes messing with his dad. His mother and Kurt don’t get along. She uses Aaron to get to Kurt, and Kurt doesn’t really know what to do with him. Aaron’s kind of a slacker and . . .” He cut himself off, his eyes filling with tears.
“Can you tell me a little more about Olivia Dugan?” she asked as Gretchen returned, her mouth a grim line.
“Liv is quiet. Keeps to herself. I think Aaron likes her, but she’s careful.”
“Careful, how? With his feelings?” September sipped from her own cup of coffee, hoping Berelli would drink up as well. He needed something to keep him going.
“Careful in every way,” he said, looking into his coffee cup. “Afraid to say too much.”
“Afraid?” Gretchen jumped on the word.
“Not . . . like that . . .” he said. “She’s just . . . quiet.”
Gretchen frowned. “Was there anything different in the last few days? Something you can think of that might have precipitated this event?”
Berelli turned to September. “Can I go home now? I can’t think of anything else. I’m just . . . tired.”
Gretchen looked irked, but she gestured to September and said, “Detective Rafferty will give you a ride home.”
“My car’s still at Zuma,” he said.
September said, “I’ll take you to it.”
Berelli tossed a look toward Guy Urlacher as he and September passed by the front desk and pushed their way through the two sets of glass doors that led outside. “Liv isn’t involved in this,” he said. “I know she took off, but she was just scared, y’know.”
“Uh huh.”
“She’s just lucky she wasn’t there. Really lucky.” When September didn’t respond, he added, “I mean it. I’m right about Liv. She’s just one of the meek ones, y’know?”
September nodded.
Liv stared at her gun, which rested on the table beside her left hand. She was still seated across the table from Auggie. Each of them was working through their own thoughts, but it had been quiet a long time and Liv finally could stand it no longer.