The nightmare that never ended.
Closing his eyes, James mentally counted to ten, then rattled the number off to her. Minutes later he heard his brother’s cell ringing and Mikey picking up.
James headed to the refrigerator, opened it, hung on the door, and gazed inside unseeingly. He could really use a boost to his own status with the women, that was for sure. He could use a little hero worship of his own.
And well, this psycho Justice dude . . . if he didn’t kill them, they would definitely be heroes. . . .
Huh, James thought.
That would be really cool. Even Belinda Mathis would have to take notice. At least she had his number.
CHAPTER 26
Geena Cho wore skinny black jeans that looked like they’d be impossible to take on and off, a pink, green, and white sleeveless silk top that scooped in folds at her neck, and a pair of diamond studs, one of which winked under the lights as she’d pulled her black, shoulder-length hair away from her left ear.
Harrison slid onto the empty bar stool next to her and said, “You’re a little overdressed.”
“I’m underdressed for this weather,” she contradicted. “Jesus, when is this fog going to lift?”
He looked around at the other occupants of Davy Jones’s Locker. Everyone was in parkas and sweaters and boots except for Geena. She looked exotic and attractive, and more than one male eye turned and glared balefully at him. He wanted to let them know he wasn’t interested, but the bigger problem was Geena herself. She was interested, in him. And it was bound to be a finely choreographed dance for him to get out of this tête-à-tête with the friendship intact. He wasn’t really sure he could make it happen.
“Thanks for all your tips,” he said.
She waved over the bartender, the same one who’d served him and Laura huevos the day before. He and Harrison made eye contact, a silent awareness, but the man kept his own counsel, a job requirement of all good bartenders.
“You’re entirely welcome,” Geena said with a smile, showing off a deep dimple. “I could probably be in trouble with my job, consorting with the press.”
“You could definitely be in trouble.”
“Then here’s to living dangerously.” She leaned toward the bartender. “I’ll have another appletini, and get him what he wants. He’s buying.”
“A beer. Draft. Whatever,” Harrison said.
“Done,” the man said.
As he started to move off, Geena called after him, “What’s your name, honey?”
“Alonzo,” he threw over his shoulder.
“Keep ’em comin’, Alonzo!” Geena then turned to Harrison. “I plan to get a little drunk,” she warned him with a knowing smile. “I’m off on Mondays.”
“You’re on your own on that, Geena. I’m staying sober until Justice Turnbull’s in custody.”
“Damn it, Harry,” she said, disappointed. “That could be months. Let’s take a little time out now, hmmm?” She pressed her martini to her lips and took a deep gulp. “Like I said, you owe me.”
“I do. But I’m not sure our ideas of payment are running along the same lines.”
“My God.” She set down her drink after draining the rest of it. Alonzo showed up with another appletini and Harrison’s beer at that moment. Geena carefully lifted her new drink to her lips and took another long sip. “So, am I wasting my time with you? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not really the relationship guy,” he deflected.
“Who said anything about a relationship? Jesus. You’re getting ahead of yourself, pal. I just wanna get laid.” She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “Don’t look so worried. And okay, maybe it’s the first step toward a relationship. I wouldn’t be against that, entirely, you know.”
Harrison twisted his beer glass around on its cardboard coaster. “Generally, for me, sex is better suited somewhere past the first date. Nothing good happens when sex comes first. And it’s really not where I am, anyway.”
She squinted at him. Understanding bloomed. “Oh, my God. You’re seeing someone else.”
“Now, where’d you get that?” he asked, slightly annoyed.
“No guy talks like that unless he’s already hooked into somebody else. Oh, crap. Are we destined to just be friends?” She sounded discouraged. “Alonzo!” she called. “You gotta keep ’em coming faster than this. I just got dumped by this guy before we even made it to first base. Wait a minute. We did share a kiss last time, right?” She frowned at Harrison. “Kinda chaste, if I remember right, but I guess it counts. So, we didn’t make it to second base, more’s the pity.” She rolled her eyes expressively.
“I can help you with that!” a male voice called enthusiastically from a corner of the room. He wore a baseball cap, and brown hair curled out from beneath it while he held up his hand, nearly touching the rather dusty-looking fishing net that was draped from the ceiling, part of the Locker’s decor.
Geena gave him a dimple. “Maybe later, pal. I gotta have a few more of these.” She turned back to Harrison. “So, why’d you meet me? Trying to pump me, so to speak, and not in the way I was looking for?”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, don’t be such a prude.” She let out a disgusted breath. Irritated, she took another swallow as a Chris Isaak song filtered through speakers hidden somewhere in the dark ceiling.
“You know Dr. Maurice Zellman, one of Justice Turnbull’s victims?”
“Uh-huh. The one that got stabbed in the throat. A real prick, I understand. Don’t know him personally, but yeah,” she said in a voice that sounded just short of “duh.” “He lives in that fortress above the beach just south of Tillamook. It’s the rock cliff above the beach just past Bancroft Bluff? Used to be a bunch of cabins there, and then Zellman bought the property and built that monstrosity.” Harrison was shaking his head, and Geena gave a deep nod. “Oh, that’s right. You’re new to the area. It was a big brouhaha at the time. People wanted to save the cabins and all that rah-rah historic shit. They were built in the forties—not much style, anyway. But Zellman got his way. You can’t miss it. Stone pillars at the entrance. Used to be a wrought-iron gate across the drive, but his son, or somebody, crashed through it a few months ago and it’s open now. I live south and drive by it every day on my way to work.”
“I was going to try and interview him.”
“Good luck with that. Like I said, Zellman’s a real prick.”
“Nothing new on the search for Turnbull?” he asked.
“Nah,” she said while the warbled notes of “Wicked Game” filtered through the cavernous room. “Sure you don’t wanna take this someplace else?” She waggled her sleek little eyebrows at him.
“Honestly, Geena, if things were different, you wouldn’t have to ask me twice.”
“Damn it, you are in a relationship. Alonzo!” She rapped her knuckles on the bar. “Bring on the booze!”
Justice stood in a copse of trees with a good view of the Zellman estate. The house was huge, constructed of a sand-colored stone. Carriage lights lit the front entrance and the four-car garage, which tilted away from the house at an angle. A number of vehicles sat outside the garage—a black Range Rover and white BMW blocked two of the doors, though the Lexus must have disappeared into the garage, as it was nowhere in sight.
It was growing dark, but it was mostly because of the remnants of the fog, as daylight lasted till nine o’clock or later in June in this part of Oregon. Justice had followed the doctor home with no real plan in mind, had parked his car outside the front gates and to the north about a half mile, in the lot of a small grouping of businesses that sported fresh seafood and local artwork and a variety store called Phil’s Phins and More.
Now he stood in the bank of trimmed shrubbery flanking the building. Rhododendrons heavy with dead blossoms, and hydrangeas starting to bloom. Through the fog, he saw a shadow. Froze. Then realized it was only a gray cat slithering behind a trellis.
Earlier, Justice had determine
d he was going to have to dump the Nissan altogether and soon, and had left it down the road with that intent. But now his mind left thoughts of planning behind and drifted instead to that place where he felt best. He was thinking about them, their golden hair and smoky eyes and smirking smiles. Distantly, he felt himself grow aroused, and normally that would snap him out of his fugue like the slap of an icy wave, but now all he could think about was their hips and butts and mysterious crevices and hot pink nipples. He could see them lying before him in a row, breasts heaving, thighs quivering in anticipation, and he moved to press himself inside each hotbed that awaited him. He would take them, rutting for all he was worth, sweating, groaning, spilling his seed into their waiting urns of molten heat. He would ride them in all his glory, screaming to the heavens as he branded them, one by one, fornicating, spilling his seed, making them sweetly sticky with his unborn souls.
He would take them all. They were his.
Forever.
He awoke as if slapped. Horrified.
He looked down to see he’d ripped open his pants and his hand was still on his cock, stroking furiously, as if by someone else’s hand. He dropped himself as if burned, ashamed at the way his member still rose up, pointing hungrily to the night sky, wanting them.
Throwing himself onto his knees, he dug at his hair and face. They were not his to take. They were rotten. Unholy. The devil’s playthings.
He had the sense that he was unraveling. Something . . . something . . . wasn’t the same.
With an effort he tried to think again of the sea. The sea . . . the lighthouse . . .
I turn my face to the cool air, the horizon, the molten ocean with its hot, waiting wet mouth. . . .
Justice snapped to in shock. He couldn’t go to his safe harbor! He couldn’t go there without thinking of them in that way.
He needed to start the killing. He needed his mission to be fulfilled.
He needed to begin.
Now.
With that idea sharp in his mind, he thought about transportation. . . .
Laura left the hospital at a quarter to nine o’clock and walked toward her car in the company of another nurse, who was yakking on her cell phone to her boyfriend. Her eyes darted around the lot; she half-expected Justice to appear. She knew what he looked like: blond, like her and her sisters; thin; stony. She knew more because of the picture they’d put on the news, one taken at Halo Valley, than anything from her own recollection.
But there was no Justice anywhere around, and she made it to her Outback safe and secure, waving good-bye to the other nurse, then punching down the button that automatically locked every door in the vehicle.
Her heart still pounding a bit, the car’s windshield wipers swiping the moisture from the glass, she drove the curving road to her house. All the while, she wondered how secure she really was. For all her bravado about going to work today, she hadn’t completely thought through the coming home part. At night. To an empty house.
She passed by several turnouts and viewpoints cut into the cliffs above the Pacific, then a number of businesses, most closed for the night, including a small sandwich shop in a blue shingled building, where a worker was just shutting its take-out window.
She pulled off the highway to the unnamed access road that led to her driveway without signaling, not wanting anyone to be forewarned. In her drive she clicked off her lights and coasted to a stop by her back porch. Her yard was dark, the shrubbery taking on eerie shapes in the fog-shrouded night. She thought of the two dead women, victims of Justice, and a deep shiver slid through her. There was a chance he was here.
Waiting.
She sat in her car awhile, thinking about the few steps to her door, the moments it would take to unlock it, the millisecond of darkness before she snapped on a light. Why hadn’t she left a lamp burning? Right now her place seemed ominously black and uninviting.
Her hand was on her cell phone. Should she call Harrison? Let him know she was home? Or would she interrupt his meeting with the woman from TCSD?
She stared down at the square lighted screen of her phone, then punched in his number. She didn’t really give a damn about interrupting him, she saw with a moment of surprising self-realization. She wasn’t wild about him having drinks with a woman, no matter what the reason . . . which was saying something she didn’t want to examine too closely.
But he didn’t pick up, which wasn’t surprising, and she clicked off without leaving a message. She thought about testing her mind, seeing if she could reach Justice, find out if her fears were founded or if he was in some distant place, but her courage fled before she could even muster it.
Why hadn’t she listened to herself, taken her own advice? Hadn’t she told Catherine to increase her wariness and get a dog? Laura could use a German shepherd or a Rottweiler or even a damned pug about now, any animal that would raise a ruckus if trouble ensued.
Like now.
She sat for ten minutes, willing herself to be calm, then cautiously stepped from her car. The fog was gone but the air was dense and cool. Night had fallen slowly, and though it was dark, there appeared to be the dimmest afterglow, which allowed her to make out the shape of trees, her back porch steps, the woodpile at the end of her drive from some previous owner.
Her hands fumbled in her purse for her keys, her fingers closing over them a moment before yanking them free. She hit the remote lock on the Outback and heard its chirp, letting her know she’d successfully locked it up; then she moved quickly to the back porch. With surprisingly unsteady hands she threaded the key in the lock and opened the door, pulling it shut behind her quickly, throwing the dead bolt.
Her house was dark and quiet. She flipped on a switch to the kitchen, and the room lit up with eye-hurting brightness.
She stood motionless except for her eyes, which darted to every darkened corner, every shadowed area. The dishes she’d left this morning were still in the sink; the jacket she’d tossed over the back of a chair, as she’d left it. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Yet . . .
Her heart thudded. She could count her heartbeats, hard and fast. Her mind was darting as well. Searching out the row of knives attached by their blades to the magnetic holder nailed to the side of the cabinet, the iron pan in the drawer beneath the oven, the various and sundry items that could wound or maim, like the meat thermometer with its tiny, sharp point.
She stood silently for an eternity of less than a minute before she willed herself to get past this frozen paranoia. He wasn’t here. She was alone. It was only her own fear working on her.
Forcing herself, she placed her purse on the table and sank into one of her café chairs, her back to the door at the far end of the kitchen, which opened into the pantry. She thought about that room behind her. Her mind suddenly couldn’t focus on anything else. After a half beat, she jumped up and yanked open the door, a scream rising in her throat.
But it was empty. Nothing there but cans of food, her mop and broom, a vacuum cleaner, the hose of which was duct taped against a leak, some odds and ends of paper products and cleaning supplies.
She never uttered the scream. Instead, feeling like she’d run a marathon, she returned to the table, resuming her seat. “Moron,” she muttered under her breath and still hoped Harrison would arrive soon. Staring at her purse, she pulled it off the table and sat it on the floor beside her, sliding her fingers into its side pocket, extracting her cell phone. She wanted to call Harrison again. Maybe leave a message this time. Let him know she was home and safe.
Except she had a bad case of the willies.
Something just felt off.
Hurry back, Harrison, she thought, sending the message out as if she could contact him mentally, as she did Justice.
Hurry. . . .
CHAPTER 27
Geena was growing more kittenish by the minute and had engaged Alonzo, the bartender, in their conversation. Harrison just needed to put in a little more time before he could ease away. If he was lu
cky, Geena would scarcely notice in her pursuit of the definitely interested bartender or the guy in the back corner, wearing a cap.
Alonzo, though, was ahead in the “get Geena race.” He was one of those guys who threw a bar towel over his shoulder and made the move look like a come-on. Geena wasn’t immune and turned a cold shoulder to Harrison after she’d decreed him interested in someone else.
Harrison could probably leave now, he reasoned, but a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t want to lose Geena as a source or a friend; timing was everything.
Alonzo had just learned Geena worked for the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department, however, and it was almost a deal breaker.
“Goddamn sheriff’s D arrested me once,” he revealed, his amiable expression fleeing as if it had been ordered to leave. “Thought I was in a gang.” He shook his head. “Fuckers. That Clausen . . .”
Harrison’s ears perked up. “Guy doesn’t like me much, either.”
“Clausen?” Alonzo shot him a look. “Why? What’d you do?”
“Made the department look bad.” Harrison shrugged. “Luckily, Geena doesn’t hold it against me.”
“Fred Clausen is a one-note act,” Geena said, waving a hand in that “let me tell you, even though I’m drunk” kind of way. “He likes who he likes, and he doggedly goes after stuff, I’ll give ’im that. But he doesn’t really look at every side, y’know?”
“I know,” Harrison agreed.
“But to say you were in a gang . . . ?” Geena slowly shook her head from side to side, struggling a bit as she focused on Alonzo.
“I knew guys from the Seaside area,” the bartender allowed. “Weren’t exactly a gang, but they were trouble. It wasn’t even Clausen’s case, though. Way outside of Tillamook County, but he knew I knew ’em, and they were involved in some kind of brawl. I ended up getting thrown in the department’s jail. Took a while to sort it out.”
“I hope you’re not gonna hold that against me,” Geena said. “I just work there.”