“Yeah, I’m the reason. It’s me.”
“Take it easy, Nine. I’m just saying. Both Dempsey and Decatur turned up since you’ve been with LPD, and the Zuma killings and Trask Martin. Almost like from the moment you came on board.”
September didn’t answer. It was a meaningless fact. As a partner, Gretchen was fine, but she sure could be a pain in the ass, too. She suddenly, fervently wished she could bounce ideas off Auggie; she could talk to him.
If he would let her.
With a dark cloud building over her head, September settled back in the seat and tuned out Gretchen, concentrating on the task ahead.
Halo Valley Security Hospital. Liv had heard tales about it, with its two sides, A and B; Side A for the mentally challenged; Side B for the criminally insane. When she was at Hathaway House it represented the next step. If you can’t get well here, Halo Valley awaits....
It was nonsense, of course. Halo Valley was a private mental hospital, a modern facility that was funded by both donations and wealthy patients’ families and bragged about an impressive success rate, at least on Side A. One of the Side B inmates had escaped a while back—a real psycho—and the resulting bad press had hurt the hospital’s reputation some. Still, Halo Valley was considered a first choice by anyone seeking more one-on-one help than the state-run mental hospital could provide.
The landscape flashed by: furrowed fields with milk-chocolate colored earth, stubbles of hay, bent and dry, Douglas firs framing large plots of land. Halo Valley was in the center of the Willamette Valley and down I-5 about eighty miles from Portland.
Auggie turned off the freeway just outside Salem and drove west. Liv looked out the window and noticed Vandy’s, a rambling building with a shake roof bearing a scripted sign that sported its name in red neon. She’d heard about it somewhere before. Ah, yes. Kurt Upjohn had met a woman there once and carried on a torrid affair for a couple of weeks, which had brought Camille Dirkus into the office, screaming. Aaron had told Liv that this kind of thing happened at least once a year. He’d started smoking dope as a means of pushing reality away.
Liv slid a glance at Auggie. He was watching the road with concentration while his cell phone, sitting in an accessories slot in his dashboard, was charging away. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, which put a niggling worry in her head. He was looking no more forward to this interview with the powers-that-be at Halo Valley than she was.
The entry to the hospital was unprepossessing: a small metal sign at road level just inside the lengthy drive with
HALO VALLEY SECURITY HOSPITAL
painted in black letters.
They turned in and drove for a quarter of a mile before the hospital loomed into view, a concrete and redwood block with razor wire peeking out from the roof of the back building, which was brick, dividing it from the first.
Auggie pulled into a space two parking sections over from the main portico. He switched off the engine and looked at Liv. “How do you want to play this?”
“I don’t want to go in there,” Liv answered, the words popping out before she could stop them. Flushing, she added, “Geez, I’m a chicken. Sorry. I’ll go. Now that I’m this close, I’m just—dreading it.”
“I’ll go,” Auggie said, unplugging his cell phone and pocketing it as he started out of the Jeep.
“No, no. I’ll go.” Liv unbuckled her seatbelt, but Auggie turned around, leaning in the door.
“I may get stonewalled,” he told her. “Wait here.”
“I should go. You’re dreading this almost as much as I am.”
He frowned. “No, that’s not . . .” He dropped his gaze for a moment, then said, “We’re going to the authorities later today. Let’s not have someone recognize you and send the posse out before we get there.”
“I’m not . . . sure . . .” But he was already walking away, covering the distance with ground-devouring strides.
Auggie’s insides were churning with tension. He could scarcely look at Liv, and yet his eyes wanted to drink her in as if she was the last sight he would ever see. This wasn’t going to be good. Nope. Wasn’t going to be good.
He pressed the buzzer at the main entrance, looking through the glass doors. A woman sitting at a long desk asked him his name. “August Rafferty,” he said, deliberately leaving off
Detective
. He didn’t want Liv finding out before he was ready to tell her.
He heard a double-click and pushed through. Ahead was a room with couches and a television, where several people were sitting around. No one seemed to be watching TV, and none of them seemed to be interacting, either.
He felt a cold feeling between his shoulder blades. Nerves.
The woman at the desk regarded him impassively, waiting for him to tell her why he was there. “I’m trying to locate Dr. Frank Navarone who worked here for a while. I think he’s been gone a few years.”
“There’s no one by that name working here now. . . .” She glanced toward a computer monitor, then slid to it, pushing rapidly on the keyboard.
“Is there someone here who was working at the same time he was?”
“Let me call the director’s office.” She placed a call and said quietly that a man was asking about one Dr. Frank Navarone. Was there someone who could help him? When she clicked off, she said, “Nurse Champion will be right here.”
Nurse Champion. That didn’t sound good, somehow. And when Nurse Champion with her black pantsuit, iron jaw, barrel torso and squinty eyes appeared, his fears were realized.
She spoke in a surprisingly soft voice. “May I help you?”
Auggie tried on a concerned expression. “I hope so. I’m looking for Dr. Frank Navarone who used to work here.”
“He’s been gone for three years.”
“Can you tell me where he went?”
“’Fraid not. I understand that he may no longer be in the medical profession.”
“He was a visiting doctor to other facilities around Portland while he was here,” Auggie said like he knew, though he was carefully fishing. “Hathaway House . . . Grandview Hospital . . . maybe others . . .”
“I believe that’s correct.”
Auggie’s badge was in the car, taped under the front seat with his wallet. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with this woman who, though she was regarding him mildly, would be a wall of resistance if he pushed.
“I’m guessing he lost his license because of something that happened at Halo Valley,” Auggie said.
There was a long silence while she studied him closely. He almost told her he thought she would be a good interrogator, but decided that might be counterproductive.
“What is your purpose in finding Dr. Navarone?” she asked.
“I’m not planning to sue him. I’m really looking for information.”
“May I ask what kind of information?”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. Nope. This wasn’t going to get him the desired results. It would be better to come back with the power of the law behind him. He’d known that before he set off this morning. He’d just been delaying telling Liv the truth.
“Thank you,” he said, turning back to the front doors. The woman at the desk had to buzz him out again and when he was outside he sucked in a lungful of air. Jesus. What a place. It felt like the walls were moving in on him.
Liv’s eyes were round pools of anxiety as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Nada,” he told her regretfully.
She’d been sitting rigidly and now she collapsed back like a punctured balloon. “They didn’t know where he went?”
“They didn’t want to tell me if they did, so I don’t know.” He put the Jeep in gear, reversed, then headed back down the long drive to the road.
Liv felt inordinately let down. She wanted answers and a resolution. Closure. As they drove back toward Portland, she tried to think of a course of action. She needed a plan. It just felt imperative, and she sat with her hands in fists as the miles sped by beneath the Jeep’s tires.
“It’s noon,” Auggie said as they turned onto the 217 juncture, which would take them to Sunset Highway and his place. “I know you don’t want fast food, but maybe we should eat before going to the police?”
She clenched her jaw, then relaxed it. “Fast food’s fine,” she said, reaching for her backpack and her wallet.
“I’ll go through KFC,” he said. “Chicken. It’s what’s for dinner.”
“I think that slogan is for pork.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know.” She looked out the window, feeling anxious and itchy. She didn’t want to go to the police. She didn’t think she would. She wasn’t ready and maybe never would be, but if he forced her? Coerced her? What would she do? All she wanted to do was run, just like Hague had urged her.
RUN!
They went to the KFC less than a mile from his house. Her hand scrabbled around in her backpack, touching the cold barrel of her .38, before closing on her wallet. She set the backpack down in the well at her feet and looked in her wallet, pulling out a twenty. She was going through her money. She really should insist Auggie go back to Bean There, Done that, or head to his bank and figure something out about accessing his own cash.
“I think I need to talk to Dr. Knudsen at Hathaway House. That’s where it all started for me. She’s back today.”
“After we go to the police.”
Liv didn’t answer. He looked at her, and she gave him a nod, hoping she could go through with it.
They reached the window and Auggie looked at her for her order. She just shook her head. Food. She needed it for sustenance but her appetite had all but disappeared.
“Two individual meals with cole slaw and mashed potatoes. . .” He glanced her way and she simply nodded.
“How many pieces of chicken?”
The cell phone, plugged into the charger, suddenly lit up. There was no ring; Auggie had it on silent, but Liv’s eyes slid to the screen. A text message showed:
Bring Dugan IN!!!!
“Three pieces,” Auggie said.
Liv dragged her eyes away, confused. Dugan. He’d told someone about her? Who?
Bring her in?
What did that mean? Someone was urging him to take her in to the police? But who . . . how . . . ?
She froze, staring through the windshield, barely aware as he took the twenty she’d pulled from her wallet and paid for their order.
He didn’t want to tell you who he was.
He doesn’t have any ID and doesn’t seem to worry about it.
He jumped onto your side pretty fast and stayed there.
Liv glanced down briefly as Auggie pulled back into traffic. The screen from the phone was dark again.
“I got the standards, cole slaw and mashed potatoes. I coulda got french fries.” In her peripheral vision she saw him glance her way, smiling.
Oh, God . . . oh, my God . . .
And her mind jumped to their lovemaking. The tender touches and soft sighs and pleasure.
Her heart was pounding so hard she thought he might be able to see it.
“Did I do all right?” he asked.
“What?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Mashed potatoes instead of fries.”
She was going to be sick. Sick. The smell of the chicken, normally such an enticing aroma, nearly emptied her stomach.
You jumped in his car. You did that.
But he was there . . . waiting . . .
He was watching her now, a line forming between his brows. “You all right?”
“Mashed potatoes are great,” she said with an effort.
“You look kinda pale.”
“I’m exhausted,” she admitted. “I just need to lie down, I think.”
“Okay.”
Later, she couldn’t remember how she got out of the car, how she managed to act normal enough to get inside the house, how she mustered enough energy and bluff to put him at ease enough to sit down in one of the chairs and start digging into the sack with their food, putting the plastic covered plate with her meal on her side of the table.
The twine was still on the counter. She walked over to it, still holding her backpack.
“I’m gonna make this up to you, y’know,” he said. “I’ve got a running total in my head of how much you’ve spent on our meals.”
“You’ve provided a place to hide,” she said, shocked by how normal her voice sounded now. Adrenaline was coursing through her veins. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
Carefully, she set down her backpack and pulled out the .38. It wasn’t loaded. Did he know that? She had ammunition. All she had to do was pull it out.
“Are you gonna sit down?”
“I just want a glass of water.”
“I got you a Diet Coke.”