Nowhere to Run (21 page)

Authors: Nancy Bush

Tags: #General, #Fiction

But then, before he’d gone to sleep, he’d actually walked past where she was sitting on the couch, removing her shoes. He was wearing boxers and nothing else as he strolled into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.

He stopped by the couch briefly, made a comment about trading places with her, the bed for the couch. She’d vehemently shaken her head, and he’d shrugged and moseyed on.

She, meanwhile, had lain back on the sofa cushions fully clothed, her mind caught on the smooth muscles she’d seen moving beneath the skin of his shoulders, the hard curve of his back, his taut, hair-dusted thighs.

She was shocked at herself. In the midst of her terror and anxiety,
this
was the overriding emotion quickening her blood? Desire? Lust?
Sex?

With an effort, she dragged her feminine attention away from him and concentrated on the more urgent problems at hand.
Dr. Yancy. Think about Dr. Yancy.
But a pair of faintly amused blue eyes crowded her inner vision. She flung her arm over her eyes, as if that would help, and squeezed her brain shut.

“Liv.”

Immediately she flung back her arm and popped her eyes open. The room was empty and dark. She was alone. Had only heard him in her head.

What?
she answered silently.

The room was quiet. There was no sound anywhere. All in her head.

Then, a voice said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Dr. Yancy.”

She recognized it. It was her own voice. Sullen and combative.

She saw herself at Dr. Yancy’s desk and the doctor was regarding her with concern.

“You saw something,” Dr. Yancy said. “Something you’re repressing.”

“What?” Liv demanded. “
What?
I didn’t see
anything!
”

“Something,” the doctor insisted. She was fading in and out, a watery vision.

“All I saw was my mother, hanging by her neck!” Liv practically screeched.

“Something else . . . maybe something that didn’t actually have to do with that day. . . .”

A cracked door. A beam of light. In the glint of illumination, the wetness of an eye as he turns and sees her . . . outside . . . outside . . .

“I don’t want to talk anymore!”

Slam!
She was out the door. Running. Running.
Running!

And Dr. Yancy’s voice was calling after her, “It was him, Olivia. You saw him.”

The memory sank away and Liv came fully awake, drenched in sweat. She heard the door to Auggie’s bedroom slam open and suddenly he was there, beside the couch, kneeling beside her.

“You cried out,” he said.

“I saw him. The monster. I saw him through a crack in the door. Dr. Yancy made me remember at Hathaway House but I ran away from her.”

“Who is he? The monster?”

“Monster?” She blinked.

“You said ‘the monster.’”

“I meant . . . the doctor. The zombie. The bogeyman. I think maybe I saw him, and he’s the serial strangler. But if he’s the doctor in the picture, that means Mama knew him. . . .” She swallowed. “Maybe she
knew
about him and that’s why he had to kill her.”

“Okay, wait. Take it slow. We’ll start with him. We’ll call Dr. Yancy again in the morning, if she hasn’t called back. See what she knows about the doctor.”

“Okay.”

He smiled at her and actually had the audacity to sweep her hair back from her forehead before he turned to leave. Liv had to fight the desire to call him back. She kept her lips pressed tightly closed with an effort. The last thing she needed was to suddenly depend on him too much.

Chapter 14

The next morning Liv woke up when he walked past her to the kitchen in a pair of low-slung blue jeans and no shirt. She sat up, finger-combed her hair, then followed him into the kitchen. He’d picked up his cell and was looking at it.

“Let’s go somewhere for breakfast,” he said.

“I don’t want to be seen. . . .”

“If you’re with me, it’s less chance you’ll be recognized. Put on your baseball cap again.”

“I guess I’m buying, huh.”

That stopped him short and he shot her a look. “I . . . guess so.”

She smiled faintly. “No problem. But I’m going to take a shower first.”

“Do it,” he said, turning back to his phone.

“Is there . . . a towel?”

“Should be. Linen closet’s in the hall outside the bathroom.”

She left him working through his phone and wondered if he’d lied about being such a loner. Maybe he’d contacted someone. He could be texting someone right now.

With a last look back at him, she picked up her backpack and headed into the bathroom.

Auggie had indeed received a text. A raft of them, actually. Mostly from his sister. At least she’d shown the good sense to move from phoning to texting. He’d turned off the text “alert” and they came in silently.

It was Sunday. He had one day until he needed to bring, coerce or drag Olivia Dugan to the Laurelton police station.

He heard the taps turn on and he texted his sister, telling her to stop texting him. He would bring Olivia Dugan in tomorrow. Monday. And did she have any leads on the Zuma massacre, or Trask Martin’s death?

She texted back:

New case. Short-handed. Will get back to you.

New case? Something that superseded the Zuma shooting? Not likely.

“Hmmm,” Auggie said aloud.

What was that about?

September stared down at the cold, white corpse of the woman and felt ill. The woman’s body had been stripped to the waist and her abdomen was carved with the scrawled words:

DO UNTO OTHERS AS SHE DID TO ME

“Jesus, somebody went to a lot of trouble.” Gretchen’s nasal tones were normally cool, curling around the edges with disdain, but staring down at the female corpse she sounded shaken. “‘Do unto others as she did to me.’ What the hell does that mean?”

“Who is the ‘she’ he means?” September asked.

“Or the ‘she’
she
means,” one of the techs corrected her. Bronson, September remembered.

“This wasn’t done by a woman,” Gretchen said with a cold look at Bronson.

“I’m just saying it’s possible,” he argued, although lamely. “She’s been strangled, too. There are ligature marks.”

“Anyone taking bets on whether she’s been sexually abused?” Gretchen asked.

There were no takers.

“You have all the charm of a boa constrictor,” Bronson said. He had a nerdy, prim look and a way of rolling his eyes that was epic theater.

“Shut up,” Gretchen said, though it was almost an afterthought. She was gazing around the clearing where the body had been found while they stood on the edge of a small, wooded area filled with Douglas firs, oaks and scrub pines.

“This is a lot like Sheila Dempsey,” September observed. She hoped to stall the pissing contest between Bronson and Gretchen, though they seemed to like to go at each other. She’d learned that much on her few weeks on the job.

Bronson rocked back on his heels. “Mebbe,” he allowed.

Gretchen’s lips grew even tighter, as if she were forcibly holding back another argument.

They were on the north side of the clearing where the shallow grave had been discovered by a couple of day hikers on a jaunt carrying a picnic basket and a bottle of wine. Now the basket was upended, the wine spilled in a red river on the ground and both hikers were sitting in bug-eyed silence on a moss-covered log, their arms entwined in a hug of support. The man’s mouth was twitching as if he couldn’t control it; the woman looked ready to keel over.

Sheila Dempsey’s body had been discovered in an overgrown field behind an abandoned building. Unlike this one, she’d been stripped bare, where this victim still had on her jeans, socks and a pair of running shoes. Her chest was bare; no sign of a blouse or bra.

“Dempsey’s the picture on Weasel’s desk,” Gretchen said, as if they’d asked.

September nodded. For a moment they all stood in silence in the shadow of the firs while Bronson slowly rose, brushing his palms together as if to rid himself of the taint, all of them sheltered from the noonday heat which was blistering nonetheless.

An hour earlier, D’Annibal had received the call. Neither George nor Wes had been available while Gretchen and September had shown up by mutual agreement to go over the Zuma case. Gretchen wanted to interview Camille Dirkus and September had offered to go along.

But then the call came in and they were sent out after the hikers called 911.

Now it was September’s turn to gaze past the body and over the dry, yellow field grass that ranged north from their large copse of mixed oak, fir and pine trees. This too, could be the county’s problem; this crime was right on the city line, but the dispatcher had called Laurelton PD.

D’Annibal had apparently claimed rights to this case, or maybe county was simply bowing out. Somewhere along the line, a guy from county named Jernstadt, since retired, had royally pissed off the lieutenant according to remarks she’d heard around the squad room. The result was nobody wanted to go head-to-head with D’Annibal, involving whatever he decreed, and therefore there was no strict protocol on jurisdiction. If the lieutenant wanted a case that could be considered county, the prevailing thought was to let him have it. So, though September and Gretchen were already working hard on the Zuma Software case, Laurelton PD was on this one, too. County might complain about it, but they would acquiesce. D’Annibal did things his own way and his attitude was, if county didn’t like it, they could just go screw themselves.

Said attitude didn’t exactly foster warm and fuzzy relations, but such was the way of things.

Gretchen dragged her gaze away from the body and shook her head. “Learn anything from those phone records, Nine?”

September shot a look at her partner who’d apparently detached from the scene around them. “Yes,” she said. She’d been scouring Kurt Upjohn’s phone records and had discovered several numbers that had yet to be identified from the myriads that he’d placed to friends, family and business associates. “I was hoping maybe Camille Dirkus could shed some light.”

“Yeah, whenever that interview takes place,” Gretchen grumbled.

“I was thinking about giving the list to George.”

Gretchen snorted. “Good idea. He’s bound to be back in the squad room now. He just always misses the calls to the field. Weasel’s on something else, drugs and gangs, like your brother was.”

Was
being the operative word, September thought.

“I’m not stopping on Zuma. This has gotta be somebody else’s, or we need some serious help.”

“Yeah.” September gazed down at the body again for another moment, unsettled. “I wonder who she is.”

“We’ll check missing persons.” Gretchen made a face. “I wonder who
he
is,” she added, meaning the killer.

Bronson shot her a look as a hot breeze caused the oak leaves and fir and pine needles to dance lithely, as if waving at the victim and the group of bystanders. Victims left in fields . . . something tickled the back of her brain.

“Get her covered and outta here before the fucking newspeople show up,” Gretchen ordered the techs.

“You do your job, we’ll do ours,” Bronson said. “The ME’s on his way.”

“Don’t get all testy on me, Bron.” Gretchen offered a humorless smile. To September, she added, “Maybe this second body will make our letter carver easier to find and we can get back to Zuma.”

September had her doubts, but she kept them to herself.

Waiting proved more difficult than Liv had anticipated. They went to a small café and Liv ordered an omelet that she moved around her plate as the morning dragged slowly by. For all the talking they’d done, all of a sudden it felt like she and Auggie had run out of things to say to each other. As they got up to leave he really struggled with the fact that she was picking up the tab, but what could he do? She wanted to suggest they go back to Bean There, Done That and see if someone had turned in his wallet, but she couldn’t.

“I can’t afford for us to get pulled over,” she said, to which he answered, “Okay,” and the subject appeared to be closed.

Now, back at his house, they were both sitting at the table, lost in their own thoughts, when his cell phone suddenly rang, surprising them both.

He swept it up quickly and got to his feet. “Hello?” he answered as Liv’s pulse began to race. He shot her a look. “Ah, yes. Talia’s right here . . .”

Carefully, he handed Liv the cell and she said, “Dr. Yancy?”

“Yes,” the doctor answered cautiously.

Liv could visualize the woman in her mind: small, birdlike, with short, dark hair and narrow glasses that she looked over the top of. “I was just wondering if you could maybe help me with remembering a few things.”

Dr. Yancy’s voice said, a bit uncertainly, “Did Hathaway House give you my number?”

“No, I took a chance on F. Yancy. I knew your first name was Fern. I—um—”

“You’ve been having dreams,” Auggie whispered. “About the doctor . . .” He moved his hand in the “go ahead” signal.

“I’ve been having dreams,” Liv said. “About a doctor . . . at Hathaway House. I feel like it’s important somehow.” Auggie was nodding at her.
Good. Good. Keep going,
he mouthed. “A visiting doctor, maybe? He wasn’t there all the time. He kind of—stalked, if you know what I mean.”

Dr. Yancy didn’t answer immediately. “Have you spoken to anyone else at Hathaway House about this?”

“I wanted to talk to you first,” Liv said.

“You know I’m retired?”

“You helped me.”

“But I wasn’t your personal doctor, Talia.”

Liv swallowed hard. She’d forgotten that. “I always trusted you,” she stated honestly. “Do you know the doctor I mean?” she asked urgently. “Do you remember him?”

“I think you mean Dr. Navarone.”

Navarone!

“Dr. Navarone,” Liv repeated for Auggie’s benefit. “He wasn’t one of the regular doctors.”

“He was on staff at Grandview Hospital during that time,” she said. “He came to Hathaway when he could. We were always short-staffed.”

Liv felt her senses swirl. “Grandview,” she said faintly.

“You know the hospital’s no longer in existence,” Dr. Yancy went on. “Loss of government funding. Grandview’s now an elder-care facility.”

“Oh . . . no, I didn’t know,” she murmured.

Auggie was eyeing her with concern. She could imagine what she looked like: white face, pale lips, shadowed eyes. And she felt like she was going to faint. Gripping the receiver harder, she said, “I’d like to reach Dr. Navarone. Do you know where he is now?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.” A pause. “Are you all right, Talia?”

“Fine.”

“I know Hathaway House is for teens, mostly, but if you’re looking for a recommendation, I could give you some names, or make some calls—”

“No, no . . . thank you, but no . . . I’m . . . I’ve got that handled. I just wanted to find Dr. Navarone.”

She said slowly, as if thinking over her words, “I don’t know quite why you’re so interested in him, but he might not be the right doctor for you.”

“Oh?”

“His methods were unorthodox, and he was . . .”