Wicked Lies

  At the door, Harrison leaned closer and said, “I want to get this guy. I mean I really want to get him.”

  “Me, too,” Laura responded with feeling. She wouldn’t rest easy until he was behind bars. Or dead.

  “If you can help me, I’m all for that, no matter how you do it,” he said, shouldering open the door to the gray day beyond. “If he calls to you, let me know.”

  “I will.” And she would, though what good it would do, she didn’t know. Standing on the front steps and looking toward the ocean, she noticed a fog bank crawling closer to the shore. Eventually, it would obscure the beach completely, making it difficult for the beach cleaners, volunteers who had come to the coast, to pick up the garbage, to do their job.

  He thought for a moment as they started down the wide stairs, disturbing a seagull that was scavenging near the walkway. “Wait a minute. Does it work both ways? Can you call to him?”

  Laura had never tried. Didn’t want to. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Anything was possible.

  “Maybe the question should be, would you consider calling to him? You know, to draw him out?”

  She paused on the bottom step and glared at him. “Let me get this straight. You want me to place myself in danger. He’s a psychopath, you know. If . . . if I let him in, he’ll know where I am.”

  Harrison frowned, squinting against the fractured sunlight slipping through the thickening fog. “And he’ll come for you. That’s what you think?”

  “Yes!”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Pretty much—yeah.”

  His scowl deepened. “Okay. That’s not good.”

  “Not good at all.” She felt the cold dampness of the morning caressing her skin, chilling her bones again.

  “Does he know where you work?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about me but my name. At least I hope he doesn’t,” she said with a catch in her heart as they crossed the pockmarked parking lot, their shoes crunching on loose gravel.

  “Does he know what you look like?” he asked.

  Laura touched her dyed hair before she could stop herself, and she saw his eyes follow the gesture. “If he got anywhere near me, he’d know me, I think.”

  “That why you didn’t want to be on camera last night?”

  “I didn’t want to be on camera for a lot of reasons, but yes,” she admitted, “that was the biggie.”

  “So when was it that you last heard from him?” he asked.

  “This morning, when I was in the shower.” She remembered his hiss over the shower’s pulsing spray, and she felt Justice’s malevolence all over again . . . so close . . . so damned close. “He told me he was coming for me.”

  “In those words?”

  “No . . . I don’t know.” Laura felt embarrassed now. Her secrets bared. The way Harrison was looking at her and struggling to understand was excruciating.

  “Let me get this straight. Since he escaped, you think you’ve been getting stronger messages,” he reiterated.

  “I know I have. It’s possible his messages might have been blocked while he was at Halo Valley. I hadn’t heard from him at all while he was incarcerated.” Harrison nodded slowly, and she said, “I know what this sounds like. The lady is loony, one step away from a room at Halo Valley herself.”

  “Nah.” He shook his head, and she noticed his hair was darkening with the damp air. “I’ve heard a lot of weird stuff over the years. Maybe you’ve got some ability. Maybe you don’t. Maybe this is just insight. Maybe it’s something more. I don’t really care.” He seemed sincere. She didn’t dare look too closely into his eyes, though, because she was afraid she might get lost in them and start believing everything he said, and that, she knew, would be foolish. He was saying, “But I’m willing to go with it and see where it leads. You obviously believe it, and if it helps find the bastard, fine. But it sounds like you think you haven’t heard from him for a while because he was locked away.”

  “Yeah . . . it might be the distance, but . . . I have the feeling that it could be because he was on some kind of meds, drugs that inhibited his ability somehow. But that’s just a guess. I don’t really know.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The thing is he wasn’t able to reach you until he escaped. But now he’s coming in loud and clear.”

  “Right,” she said, knowing it was, at least partially, a lie.

  The pregnancy. That’s why he’s so close. He found me because I’m pregnant. It wasn’t just because he’d been incarcerated.

  “What?” Harrison asked, his gaze searching her face, as if reading her thoughts.

  I need to save my baby.

  She nearly stumbled at a pothole, and Harrison caught her arm. “Hey, you okay?”

  No, I’m not. I’ll never be as long as Justice is free, maybe not until he’s dead. Trying to get a grip on her runaway emotions, she closed her eyes and faced the ocean, feeling the heavy air, pent up with rain, calm her racing mind, while his strong hand held the crook of her elbow steady.

  “Look, I’m going after him,” he said with conviction. “He’s a killer. Maybe the police will find him. Maybe I’ll find him first.”

  “For your story?” She heard the bite in her words as they reached her Subaru.

  “For the good of humanity.” He offered her a smile and dropped her arm. “And yeah, it’ll be a helluva story.”

  A question hung between them—unspoken and blurry, like fog—yet she guessed what was on his mind. “You want me to help you find him, don’t you?” Of course he did. That was what this interview was really about.

  “Yes.” He was honest. “But that decision’s yours. Meanwhile, I’ll do some investigating. Maybe his mother knows something. Or maybe one of your sisters or your aunt? Any chance I could talk to them?”

  “No,” she stated quickly. “You’re a reporter. And a man.”

  “Hmmm . . . okay. Well, Justice lived around here. Your family’s here. He’s going to come back this way to get to you all. The police aren’t idiots. They know that, too, and it’s merely a matter of time before he’s caught.”

  “But you want to find him first,” she guessed, fishing in her purse for her keys.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “A crazy plan.”

  He shrugged.

  “And ‘the cult’ will make a big story.”

  “Not bigger than the recapture of a psychotic killer. Maybe a nice side story,” he admitted, unabashed. “But I’m off the record until you give me the green light.”

  She had to believe him. Trust him. She’d just bared her damned soul . . . well, almost. She hadn’t mentioned the baby or the fact that being pregnant made her more vulnerable, more easily found by Justice. “So, what are you going to do now?” she asked as she unlocked her car.

  “Right now? For starters, stick close to you. If he’s sending you messages, I want to be around when you receive the next one.” Harrison slid her a look. “And if you change your mind and decide to call him first, I want to be on that party line.”

  “Why do I feel I’m being used?”

  “Not at all.”

  So much for the “good of humanity” line.

  “I don’t think you should count on me dialing up the psycho,” Laura said, opening the Outback’s driver side door. “It’s the old self-preservation thing, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t put you in danger.”

  She sent him a look that said more sarcastically than words, “Sure.”

  “Seriously, I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Save that for some idiotic romantic, B-rated movie.”

  He touched her arm again. Long fingers curling over her jacket’s sleeve. “I’m not kidding. But this is your call.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “If you change your mind, if you want to catch him soon, let me know.”

  “Don’t hold your breath!” She pulled her arm back, grateful to break any touch with him. What had
she been thinking? That he cared? For the love of God, she barely knew him! “There’s the sheriff’s department. They’ll handle it.”

  “They’re doing their best, I’m sure,” he agreed.

  But the unspoken end of that sentence was, “They just don’t have your unique resource to pinpoint his location.”

  “Will you call me? The next time you ‘hear’ from him?” He handed her a card and scratched a number on it. “My cell,” he said, and she, telling herself this was crazy, the damned reporter was on a fool’s mission, slipped the card into a pocket of her purse. Foolish, foolish woman!

  “I’ll think about it. Thanks for breakfast. You were right. The huevos were worth it.”

  “You’re welcome, Lorelei.” He gave her a quick grin, and he headed for his Impala, jogging across the asphalt and gravel, his back straight, his legs striding in an easy, athletic lope.

  She dragged her gaze away and climbed into her car.

  Pulling out of the lot, she checked her rearview mirror and saw him slide into the interior of his beat-up Chevy. A sexy man. A very sexy man with a mission. Just exactly what she didn’t need in her life right now.

  Still, she watched him nose the Impala out of the lot and wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself into.

  CHAPTER 14

  Dr. Maurice Zellman sat in a room on the second floor of the hospital. As Lang strode across the threshold, he noted the white gauzy bandage around the man’s neck and the sharp lines of pain that bracketed his mouth. Zellman’s eyes, however, were bright with anger, and as soon as he saw Lang’s TCSD uniform, he lifted a hand and motioned him forward.

  “Dr. Zellman, I’m Langdon Stone with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department,” he introduced as he took a few steps toward the bed.

  Zellman motioned more furiously, and Lang moved next to the bed, to where he was gazing down at the man with the trim beard and grimly set mouth. Zellman touched his bandaged throat, then pointed to his quivering lips and shook his head slightly.

  “You can’t talk.” Lang nodded. “You’ve had surgery. How about I ask a couple of yes or no questions and you let me know what the answer is by nodding or shaking your head?”

  A curt nod.

  “I just want to clarify some facts. Your patient, Justice Turnbull, stabbed you in the throat with your own pen.”

  Zellman pressed his lips together and nodded again as the sound of a rattling medication cart slid through the door Lang had left ajar.

  “He wasn’t wearing handcuffs. Was that your decision?”

  The doctor gazed at him with burning eyes and didn’t respond.

  “He attacked the security guard, Conrad Weiser, and took off in the hospital van. Thinking back, do you remember anything, anything at all, that now seems significant? Something that could lead us to him now? Something small, maybe, but that on reflection, could have been a clue that he had plans to escape?”

  Zellman just stared at him. Lang could feel the man’s fury rolling off him in waves. Anger and embarrassment, perhaps. The doctor’s lax standards had directly led to Justice’s ability to escape. And he knew it.

  Lang said, “If something comes to you, maybe you could write it down. Or, if you remember something that may have come from your therapy sessions, something that could help . . .” Lang knew he was treading down that super sacrosanct road of patient/doctor confidentiality, but hey, the psycho had stabbed Zellman in the throat and that had to count for something in Lang’s book.

  Zellman, pursing his lips, motioned imperiously for a pen and paper, and Lang stepped into the hall and grabbed the attention of a junior nurse, who scurried to get him what he needed, returning quick enough for Lang to flash her a smile of gratitude that made her blush.

  He handed the small pad and pen to Zellman, who looked long and hard at the pen itself for long seconds before writing: The lighthouse. His mother’s motel. Seagull Pointe?

  “Seagull Pointe is where his mother resides,” Lang said for confirmation.

  Zellman nodded once more, and his shoulders seemed to sag a bit, some of the starch leaving him.

  “We’re checking those places, but so far, he hasn’t shown up at any of them. Anywhere else?”

  Zellman considered, his eyes narrowing. After a few moments, he wrote: He wants to watch the sea. He spoke of it with reverence. He would face west. Even being locked up.

  Lang thought about that and considered. There was a lot of seashore along the Pacific Ocean. “You think he’ll stay around Deception Bay?”

  Once again, Zellman inclined his head sharply.

  “And will he go after the women at Siren Song again?”

  At this, Zellman frowned and wrote: They are his obsession. He paused, then scribbled: But anyone in his way will be at risk.

  “He never directly attacked the lodge last time,” Lang said. “Think he would launch a full-scale attack now?”

  Zellman’s mouth compressed. He’ll take them one by one. They are too strong in numbers. He is smart. Calculating. Capable.

  There was almost admiration in the words. Had the good doctor let himself be taken in by Justice? Or was he trying to explain his ridiculous lapse in judgment in allowing Turnbull to get the better of him?

  “If you think of anything else . . . ,” Lang said, glancing at the notebook he was leaving in Zellman’s care.

  The doctor nodded grimly, then gazed straight ahead, his brows a black line of fury and resolve. Lang figured Zellman detested being bested, being played for a fool, and good old homicidal Justice had done just that.

  Zellman’s eyes blazed a quiet, smoldering anger.

  Maybe he’d been taken in, but he sure as hell wasn’t happy about it.

  The June day was gray and gloomy and cold, and fog was creeping from inland, obscuring surrounding dunes, houses, commercial buildings, and the Coast Range. Justice stood on the socked-in beach, able to see little but the frothy waves that rushed toward his booted feet.

  Even with the fog, there were people everywhere, and it had taken him by surprise. Normally, on a day with this weather, Oregon beaches would be practically empty. He was so involved with his internal world and the urgency of his mission that he’d nearly run into two separate individuals in the short distance from the parking lot of the clam shack and the beach itself.

  Now he heard, before he saw, a group of maybe seven people wandering his way, talking together in bright tones, wearing coats, hats, gloves, and boots, their heads turning this way and that, arms stretched out and fingers pointing. He turned away as they approached and then saw the baseball cap that one sported with bright red letters that said, CLEAN UP THE BEACH!!

  A beach cleaning day with volunteers. He felt instantly protective and selfish of this stretch of sand. Get away, he thought. Damned do-gooders. Leave me and this place alone.

  His fingers curled inside Cosmo’s gloves. He looked just like them, he realized. It was a perfect cover. God’s next gift to him. Cosmo’s boots, jacket, and pants, which were belted tight as Justice was thinner than the hippie by at least twenty pounds.

  The group moved on, a vanishing knot in the low-lying mist, and Justice let out a pent-up breath. He stood quietly, his face to the sea, and thought about the crowds that were bound to be scouring the sand all day. Crowds hidden in the fog.

  But maybe that could help him.

  Where there were people on the beach, there was bound to be vehicles left in the various lots and turnouts near the dunes.

  He was good with vehicles.

  Energized, Justice walked northward and toward the road, pretending to be bending down and searching through the beach grass for litter as he put distance between himself and his temporary abode. It was still miles to Deception Bay, but he didn’t plan to walk the whole way. He could take a car or truck or SUV and keep it for hours, maybe days, if he planned it just right.

  About a mile from where he’d started, he trudged through the dry sand of the dunes toward the beachfront houses beyon
d, then followed a short, two-block road that teed into a meandering lane that eventually found its way to Highway 101, which began an upward rise along this stretch, allowing for a wide parking area with a view of the ocean, at least on clear days. Normally, this lot held about three or four cars, but today they were crammed in every which way, with even more vehicles jammed in behind them and fog wisping between the tightly packed bumpers. About three rows back from the beach was a silver compact, its rear end dangerously close to the highway. It was nose in to the viewpoint, but there was really no room for it. Its driver was a young woman on a cell phone who was half in, half out of the opened driver’s door and was practically spitting into the receiver.

  “No! Hell! I can’t park anywhere. Anywhere! This volunteer stuff is crap, Kay. God, no. I haven’t seen Derek at all, and if he’s not here, then fuck this. I’m outta here.” She listened for a few seconds, then said, “Just tell him I was here, okay? I’m going home and sleeping off this damn headache. I’ll call when I get to Portland.”

  She snapped the phone shut and suddenly felt Justice’s attention. Without turning his way, she demanded, “What are you staring at, freak?”

  He felt a familiar coldness spread through his insides. Freak. Changeling.

  There was no one around. Fog had settled over them, making the farthest cars seem like some indistinct humps in a lot that time forgot. He leaned forward and said, “You’re going to get your tail hit.”

  “Fuck you.” She grabbed for the door handle, but Justice was between them. “Get lost, loser!” she screamed.

  He backhanded her so hard that her head made a popping sound.

  “Wha—what?” she cried, trying to stand up from the driver’s seat, but Justice grabbed her head with both hands, stared into her wide, blue, terrified eyes, then twisted with all his strength. She fought him hard, scratching his arm, which only excited him more, convinced him that she was vile. With renewed energy and a thrill running through his soul, he wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed until she gasped what sounded like a last breath.