CHAPTER 3
It had been a less than interesting day for
Harrison Frost, but then they all were since he’d been fired, let
go, canned, kicked in the ass, and ordered ten million miles away
from the Portland Ledger and his old job.
One day he was a respected investigative reporter; the next he was
dog meat. All because he’d tweaked a few tails that didn’t want to
be tweaked. And he would do it again. His brother-in-law’s death
was a homicide no matter how many people wanted to shriek
otherwise, and at some point he was going to prove that
fact.
But tonight . . . tonight he was
following another story, one with less drama but one that was a
fascinating character study nonetheless. He was sitting at an
outdoor café table, scrunched down in a half-lounging manner by
design, staring across Broadway—Seaside, Oregon’s main drag—toward
a waffle cone stand as this surprisingly soft June day faded into
night. His right arm was hanging loose, his fingers touching the
fur of his sister’s fuzzy mutt, Chico. He’d be lucky if the mean
little bastard didn’t turn around and bite him. The beast seemed to
have an aversion to men of all kinds, but the dog sure as hell
liked the girls, and that was exactly the reason Harrison had
deigned to take him out. Harrison was on a story that involved
teenagers, and he didn’t want the young girls to think he was some
creepy guy, so he kept Chico around to make him seem more
approachable.
Now the dog growled low in its throat,
so Harrison carefully removed his hand. No need to risk injury for
the sake of his costuming. Chico had snapped at him enough times
for him to respect the little bastard’s space. Jesus. The only
thing good about this assignment was it didn’t require much in the
way of self-realization and reflection. He could just move forward
and forget—or at least put aside—the events that had led him here.
It was a job. It didn’t require anything from him but to be in the
present.
Harrison glanced at his watch. It was
9:00 p.m. The girl Harrison currently had under surveillance was a
sixteen-year-old thief with a bad attitude, a habit of chewing gum
with her mouth open, and an enormous sense of entitlement. She and
her girlfriends and a few guy friends appeared to have banded
together and started stealing items from the more affluent families
in their neighborhoods or schools. Not that they weren’t affluent
themselves. It was a lark, an exercise, a way to kill time. They
were giddy and drunk with power and their own secrets. They were
zigzagging toward something worse: home invasion. It would take
only one time for a home owner to catch them in the act and the
situation would turn from burglary to something far worse. The
Seaside police weren’t really aware of the crimes yet, as the
victims had been unilaterally silent. Maybe they thought their own
kids were involved? Maybe they even were. The bottom line was these
kids weren’t on anyone’s radar but his, and Harrison had stumbled
on the story rather than sought it out.
He’d moved from Portland to the coast,
following his sister, Kirsten, and her daughter, Delilah, whom
everyone called Didi, after Kirsten’s husband, Manuel Rojas, was
gunned down. Harrison hadn’t meant to move with his sister. He’d
intended to stay hot on the story and expose Manny’s murderers for
the brutal killers they were. But that hadn’t happened; and when
Kirsten, sad and broken, quietly asked if he’d come with her, he’d
reluctantly done as she suggested; and now, over a year later, he’d
just moved from her little bungalow into his own apartment, which
was full of unopened boxes, a blow-up double mattress and sleeping
bag, and a couple of camping chairs that could fold up into a sling
for easy packing. Each sported a black, plastic cup-holder space in
the chair’s right arm. He’d set many a beer in that spot and nursed
it on the front porch of his sister’s place and now on the
miniature side deck of his own.
His sister’s husband, Manny, had been
killed in a senseless shooting rampage when a kid opened fire on a
group of people waiting to get into a nightclub before turning the
gun on himself. Manny was in that line, trying to stop an argument
that had arisen between two men over an anorexically slim blond
woman who was smoking a cigarette nearby. Then the kid suddenly
pulled out a .38 and sprayed several rounds into a madly fleeing
crowd. Manny and one of the men were killed instantly, the other
man and a woman and her boyfriend were critically injured and later
died in the hospital, and the twenty-year-old shooter, who was
underage and had never been allowed into the nightclub, turned the
gun on himself and pulled the trigger. He was later found to be an
unemployed high school dropout who was also a pharmacological
repository. He was filled with enough meds to knock out an
elephant. The anorexic blond woman was unhurt and had simply
sauntered off. She was only known to exist because of the security
cameras.
It was ruled a terrible tragedy. The
blame rested entirely on the extremely high and screwed-up kid,
who’d been dabbling in drugs since anyone could remember. But he’d
never shown suicidal or murderous tendencies. He’d never shown
aggression. When Harrison got a look at the security tape of the
shooting, he saw the kid had pulled out the weapon and shot Manny
point-blank. Then he seemed to wake up and realize what he’d done,
and he just sprayed gunfire from left to right and took out whoever
was in his arc of fire before he killed himself.
Manny’s partner in the nightspot, Bill
Koontz, obtained full ownership of the place, while Kirsten
received a small insurance stipend.
Then Harrison got an anonymous tip from
a cool female voice that suggested maybe the drugged-up shooter was
somehow connected to the business partner.
The blond woman? Maybe. Or maybe
someone else. But as soon as Harrison started writing pieces that
contained more questions and conjecture about Bill Koontz than
cold, hard facts, he was shown the door of the Ledger.
Which was just plain odd. A journalist
was supposed to expose the truth, right? Even if it pointed to
Koontz?
These thoughts passed across his mind
in half an instant. Yeah, maybe he’d screwed up. His sense of
impartiality certainly had taken a beating after Manny’s death.
He’d liked his brother-in-law, a darkly handsome man with flashing
white teeth and a deep belly laugh who’d won his sister in less
than thirty minutes upon one meeting over shared drinks. He had
wanted to find the conspiracy behind Manny’s death and had rashly
chased imaginary leads and listened to gossip and conjecture and
reported it as fact.
He’d really pissed off Koontz, who had
friends in high places. For that he wasn’t sorry.
And since that time he’d been forced
from his job—well, technically he’d quit when they’d given him the
“retract-or-you’re-fired” speech—he had steered clear of
conspiracies, major news stories, and anything that remotely
resembled real investigative reporting, until this teenage thievery
ring fell into his lap. Was the fact that he was interested in this
story progress? Was he ready to give up the bullshit small stories
he’d been delivering to the Seaside Breeze
and make a run at the big time again? Maybe even try to dig into
Manuel Rojas’s death a little deeper again? On his own time, of
course, and without involving the Breeze or
anyone else? He had friends in high and low places himself,
regardless of how he’d been treated in Portland. He sensed that if
he were to ever step forward into the larger arena, he would be
welcomed by some, reviled by others.
But did he really even give a damn? He
hadn’t for over a year. Yet . . . there was an itch beneath his
skin he couldn’t completely deny.
He shifted his weight and Chico growled
again.
“Oh, shut up,” Harrison muttered
without heat, an order that Chico utterly ignored, as the growling
continued on as if he’d been encouraged.
Night had fallen completely, and the
shops along Broadway were decked out in bright white lights, giving
it a carnival feel. Harrison glanced to his left, to the overhang
of the coffee shop/gelato bar/gift shop, where his “quarry” was
leaning forward and conversing rapidly with the girl behind the
counter. Without looking, he could describe them both in detail:
slim, dark-haired, practically nonexistent hips, expensive jeans or
cutoffs for weather like today’s, flip-flops, smirky smiles, eyes
that exchanged glances with their friends as they made unspoken
comments about the rest of the world. The one behind the counter
had her hair scraped into a ponytail; the one leaning over the
counter was wearing impossibly short cutoffs, so ragged they looked
like they might disintegrate. Her hair was tucked behind her ears,
and Harrison could see an earring that glimmered as she tossed her
head. Diamonds? Fakes? Hers, or something she stole . .
.
Harrison had followed the news and been
aware of some unconnected robberies, though it was nothing that
initially blipped on his radar. But then, one night while he and
Chico were on a walk along the beach neither of them wanted to
take, he overheard a girl—the one he was surveilling
tonight—talking about hitting the Berman mansion with a group of
friends. He’d noted the girl and her friends by habit and watched
them get to their feet from the stone bench where they’d been
sitting and amble toward Seaside’s main drag, where bumper cars and
stands that sold elephant ears stood cheek by jowl with trendy
clothing stores, art galleries, and wine shops. The girl he was
watching walked up to the counter of the hip gelato/coffee/gift
shop and talked in whispers to a girl behind the counter whose eyes
narrowed and mouth tightened into a cold, hard smile of
relish.
Two days later the Bermans were robbed,
the thieves taking money, jewelry, and expensive
handbags.
And Harrison had thought, Huh.
The last couple of days he’d made a
point of waiting outside the coffee and gelato store with Chico,
passing time, his mind traveling of its own accord to Manny and the
reasons behind his death. He’d gotten in trouble for suggesting his
brother-in-law’s death was more than a random killing, that Koontz,
Manuel’s business partner, one of those terminally charismatic
salesmen who showed you a smile, a handshake, and not much else,
was involved in some way. Both Koontz and Manny had known the boy
with the gun as someone who’d tried to sneak into their high-end
club with its lowbrow name, Boozehound, by showing fake ID more
than once.
Something was just off with the whole
scenario, but Harrison had been warned off, and so here he was,
waiting and watching as life continued on.
And now he was experiencing a low-level
excitement because this case intrigued him, the first since his
brother-in-law’s death. He had considered going to the police but
had dismissed it. He hadn’t really heard anything of substance and
was playing a hunch. He’d been burned badly enough trying to ferret
out the truth in Manny’s death, hadn’t he?
The girl with the glittery earring
started to stroll by him.
He yanked on the leash a bit, and
Chico, on cue, resisted, pulling away from him just as the girl
tried to pass. The leash tangled in her legs and she started to
fall.
“Hey!” she cried. “What the
fu—?”
Harrison, on his feet in an instant,
reached out and caught her arm, keeping her from actually hitting
the sidewalk. “Sorry.”
“Let go of me!” She managed to unwind
the leash from her legs and yanked her arm away from him. “Jesus,
can’t you control your damned dog!”
“Usually, but he does have a mind of
his own.”
She rolled her eyes as if she was bored
out of her mind with his explanation, then reached down and rubbed
her bare leg where the leash had bit into her flesh. A thin red
welt was developing.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No!” she said angrily, then
straightened to narrow her eyes at him.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“What? No!” Then, some of her anger
having dissipated, she added, “I’ll live.”
“Good.” He turned his attention to the
dog. “Chico! Here, boy!” Knowing she was still watching him, he
picked up the dog and tucked him under his arm. Chico’s eyes
glittered in pure hatred, as if he realized that he’d been used as
a pawn in some subtle game, but he didn’t growl or
snap.
“Cute dog,” she admitted, giving him a
long look.
“I guess.” He ruffled the fur on the
back of Chico’s head.
“No, I mean it.” She seemed to have
lost most of her quick-fire fury. Which was good. This was the
first time they’d made actual contact. “His name is
Chico?”
“Yeah.” Nodding, he said, “To tell you
the truth, he doesn’t like me much.”
“Yeah, why?” she asked. “You beat
him?”
“No. Not that he doesn’t deserve it.
Dogs, these days,” he teased. “You feed them, love them, give ’em
an education. Buy ’em a car when they turn sixteen, and whad’d’ya
get? Grief.”
She couldn’t stop her sudden smile,
even if she thought he was corny. Harrison half smiled back, aware
he’d sunk the hook. He knew how to be engaging, although he rarely
tried hard at it and basically used the skill only when he was
working. The rest of the time he was, by his own admission, a
loner. He didn’t trust many people. Most, he’d found,
lied.
And he couldn’t stand
liars.
“He’s actually my sister’s dog,”
Harrison said as he set Chico on the sidewalk again. “I take him
for walks, but he really just tolerates me.”
“Can I pet him?”
“Sure. Go ahead. He won’t bite you . .
. much.”
She leaned in closer, hesitated, saw he
was teasing, then reached forward. Harrison let Chico, who was
busting at his leash and wagging his tail, get his furry head
beneath her hand, sniffing and licking and wiggling all over. The
little traitor.
At the same time Harrison leaned back
in his chair, keeping a large distance between himself and the
girl; he didn’t want to scare her off. He was wearing jeans,
sneakers, a black T-shirt with a worn plaid cotton shirt as a kind
of jacket, the tails hanging out. His dark hair was longer than
usual, brushing his collar, and purposely a bit shaggy. He was
clean-shaven, and he’d taken off his sunglasses as the sun started
setting. He hoped he was unthreatening. He wanted
information.
“I’ve seen you here,” she said. “You
don’t have a job?”
“I got this dog-walking
gig.”
“How do you make money?” she asked,
ignoring that. Uninvited, she perched on the chair opposite him.
Suddenly, it seemed, she was curious. Or just didn’t have a place
to go.
“I don’t make much,” he admitted. “How
about yourself ? You got a part-time job of some kind? You look
like you’re in high school.”
“How old do you think I am?” She tilted
her head and smiled, striking a sexy pose. Almost flirty. Her anger
with him long forgotten.
“Eighteen?” He figured she was sixteen,
seventeen maybe.
“Fifteen going on thirty,” she answered
smugly. “Or, so my stepdad says.”
There were rules to interrogating
teenagers, Harrison had learned. Unspoken rules. Rule #1 was
pretend you want to talk only about yourself and watch what
happened. “I used to work in Portland for a corporation,” he said.
“I was a cubicle guy. Go to work at eight. Off at five. Go home,
have a drink. Watch the news. Eat dinner. Go to bed.”
“God, I’d kill myself,” she
said.
“Got me a paycheck.”
“Sounds mega-boring.”
“It was.” Okay, he’d never been a
cubicle guy. He could lie when he was working, but not when it
counted. When it counted, when it involved people he cared about,
then the truth was all that mattered. There was no other
option.
She tilted her head and looked at him
from beneath deeply mascared lashes. “I go to school at West Coast
High. You know it?”
Give a little information, ignore them,
and bam. They couldn’t stop talking about
themselves. “The one they built after that upper-end housing
development went in?”
“With the rich kids? Yeah. Only some of
’em aren’t as rich anymore. Their dads lost their jobs.” She
shrugged. “Too bad.”
“What about your dad?”
“Stepdad,” she corrected. “He still has
his job. But my dad lost his. He got fired.”
“Layoffs.” Harrison made a
face.
“Nope. He got involved with Britt’s
mom, and he used to work for Britt’s dad, so that was no
good.”
“Sounds like drama.”
“Shit, yeah. He can have them all,” she
said with sudden fury. “Britt’s a bitch.”
Harrison wondered if Britt was Britt
Berman.
Chico whined, stood on his back legs,
and dug at the girl’s knees, craving more attention. She scratched
his ears, then pulled back and brushed off her fingers. “Gross. Dog
skin.” She looked at her nails. “I do have a job . . . sort of . .
.” A smile snuck across her lips. A sneaky little
I’d-love-to-let-you-know-just-how-clever-I-am grin. “We kind of
formed our own company, and it’s not boring at all.” She bit her
lower lip, really trying hard not to tell him and yet unable to
stop.
“A company,” he repeated with a hint of
skepticism.
She rose to the bait like a breaching
whale. “Yeah, a company. Like we work together. We’re an
alliance.”
Alliance came
out sounding like she was tasting the word. It clearly wasn’t one
she was comfortable with. Something she probably heard watching a
reality show. If she hadn’t been able to see, he would’ve dug in
his cargo pants pocket for his phone and started recording her. But
her angle of sight would allow her to see him switching on the
phone, so he had to wait.
“Who’s ‘we’? You and your
family?”
“God, no.” She threw him a dark look.
“My stepdad is a butthead asshole. Worse than my dad. I’m talking
about my friends and me.” She glanced around, as if expecting some
of those friends to appear.
“High school kids?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” she
declared, pushing away from the table. “You don’t know what we can
do.”
Just then his phone started vibrating
against his leg. He ignored it, but very few people had his number.
His sister. His managing editor at the Portland
Ledger. His new editor at the Seaside
Breeze. He knew he should give it out more often, but he’d
been in a kind of self-imposed exile.
“Okay, you got me there,” he said. “I
don’t know what you can do.”
She took it as a challenge. “There’s a
bunch of us who . . . get together . . . and do stuff.” Her eyes
sparkled as brightly as the neon lights winking in the town; she
was proud of herself and excited, a sly smile teasing the corners
of her mouth.
“You and your fifteen-year-old
friends.”
“Yeah. Well, and some older ones, too.
Like Envy.”
“Envy?” Harrison repeated.
“You know what envy
means?”
“Got a pretty good idea.”
“It’s his initials. Get it? N. V. He
says it’s a deadly sin.”
“Okay,” Harrison said. His phone
silently buzzed again.
“There are seven deadly
sins.”
“Mm-hmm. Like in the movie Seven.”
“You know that one?” she asked in
surprise. “It’s really old.”
“Morgan Freeman. Brad Pitt. Gwyneth
Paltrow.” Really old, Harrison thought with
an inner snort, his hand easing toward his phone. But then this kid
would have been barely a thought when it was released in the
midnineties.
“We’re not weird, or anything, like in
the movie.”
“You just do stuff.”
“The seven of us,” she said. “Guess
which one I am.”
“Well, what are your initials? If
that’s how it works.”
“That isn’t just how it
works.”
“So, okay, you don’t look like
gluttony. I don’t really see you as wrath. Pride, maybe?
Lust?”
Her own cell phone chirped and as if
suddenly realizing she’d said too much to a perfect stranger, she
jumped to her feet. She glanced around her shoulder again, looking
like she wanted to take off and run, then glanced at a text message
on the screen of the phone.
“I can’t remember the other ones,” he
mused, but she suddenly racewalked across the street, as if she
couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
As soon as she was out of sight,
Harrison dug for his phone. He grabbed it just as it finished
vibrating. “Hello? Hello? Damn.”
Glancing at the number, he didn’t
recognize it, but when he called it back, it rang only once before
a woman’s voice asked cautiously, “Frost?”
“Who’s this?”
“Geena Cho.”
“Geena?” Harrison’s surprise was tinged
with caution as well. Geena worked in dispatch for the Tillamook
County Sheriff’s Department. He’d met her when she was off work at
a local dive, Davy Jones’s Locker, and they’d hit it off, but
Harrison was leery of getting involved right away. Every
relationship he’d had with a woman flamed too hot before he ever
got to know her. Then, as time revealed each other’s foibles,
baggage, and basic craziness, the heat was squelched fast. When
Geena said she worked for the sheriff’s department, it was enough
to cool Harrison’s blood even further. He’d kept her in the
“friend” box with an effort, as Geena was angling for something
more. She was one of the few he’d given his cell
number.
“We got an escapee from Halo Valley,”
she said quietly, and he realized she was talking on her cell and
giving him information the sheriff’s department might not want to
release just yet. “He injured two men, who were taken to Ocean
Park. Half the department’s at Halo Valley.”
“Who’s the escapee?” He was already on
his feet, yanking a reluctant Chico from sniffing a newcomer, a
fluffy white bichon who wanted to play. Chico just wanted to hump
the female dog, which was embarrassing to the bichon’s owner, so
Harrison, needing the whole circus to end, dragged the reluctant
Chico away.
“That guy from a few years ago who
terrorized the cult.”
Harrison remembered the story but not
the man’s name. “You got a name?”
“Hey, not yet,” she said, suddenly
reticent, as if she was already second-guessing her decision to
call. He couldn’t push her too far.
“So,” Harrison prodded, “this unnamed
assailant . . .” And legendary wacko. One he
could track down on the Internet as soon as he got to a computer.
His current cell didn’t have those capabilities. “He attacked the
two men at Halo Valley while he was trying to get
away?”
“That’s what it sounds like. I can’t
talk long. They all took out of here a couple hours ago, lights on,
sirens screaming. Everybody thinks the psycho’s coming our
way.”
“Who are the victims?”
“Hospital employees. That’s all I
know.”
Probably another way of
hedging.
“Okay.”
“Gotta go,” she said, almost as if she
regretted her rash call. Then, not subtly, added, “Remember. We
have a standing deal. I’m an ‘unnamed source in the police
department.’ ”
“That’s right,” he said, though he was
certain if anyone really wanted to know, Geena’s cell phone records
would be a dead giveaway.
“Harrison?”
“Yeah?”
“You owe me.”
That much he knew. “Thanks,
Geena.”
He wasn’t really sure what to do with
the information. His job description, loose as it was, wasn’t about
deep investigative journalism for the Breeze. Not that they wouldn’t run the story about this
guy. A psycho escaping a mental hospital was big news, especially
this psycho, who’d terrorized the area once before.
And Harrison had been given a jump on
the competition.
At what price?
his skeptical mind nagged. Remember, payback’s a
bitch.
Shoving his phone into his pocket, he
ignored the questions, snatched up Chico, who nipped at his wrist,
then headed swiftly back to his dusty brown Chevy Impala as a
couple riding a tandem bike whizzed past and the smells of caramel
corn and grilled hot dogs reached his nostrils.
His stomach rumbled, but he ignored
it.
As he reached his low-profile,
decade-old Chevy, he was nearly run over by a kid on a skateboard.
The skateboarder screeched around a corner and jumped a bench as
Harrison dropped Chico into his little car seat. The dog turned
around and bared his teeth as Harrison climbed into the vehicle.
Harrison bared his own teeth right back, and Chico curled his lip
and emitted a grrrr that would only scare
another dog of the same small size on a good day.
Checking the dashboard clock, Harrison
figured it would be just over thirty minutes before he could drive
south, drop off the mutt, and make it to Ocean Park Hospital. He
didn’t feel like fighting for attention at Halo Valley mental
hospital with the sheriff’s department all over the
place—especially Deputy Fred Clausen, whom Harrison had already
managed to get on the wrong side of—but Ocean Park, where the
victims had been taken, would be a better bet. He could probably
get some interviews there.
His teenaged Deadly Sinners were being
allowed a momentary reprieve while he tackled a different kind of
story. He liked that. The Deadly Sinners. Made for good copy, and
it sounded like the kind of thing the group—or this N.V. guy—had
dreamed up, probably from watching Seven.
Didn’t anybody have any new ideas anymore?
But Harrison’s mind was already
switching off the thieves to the more immediate story. “What’s his
name?” he said aloud, trying to recall as much as he knew about the
strange man whose obsessions had sent him on a killing spree in the
area of Deception Bay, a usually sleepy little seaside town, where
his sister and niece now lived. Had the guy escaped Halo Valley
just to be free? Or, did he have some new sick plan in
place?
Psychos were like that. They didn’t
just give it up as a rule.
Chico glared at him, and his little
black lips quivered into a snarl.
“You’re not as cute as you think you
are,” Harrison warned.
That earned him a series of
full-fledged barks and bristling fury.
Ten minutes later, Harrison dropped off
Chico with relief, shaking his head at the way the little fur ball
leapt into Kirsten’s arms and licked at her with wild love, his
tail wagging, whole body squirming.
She was standing in the front door of
her cottage, the smells of baking bread wafting outside to mingle
with the salty scent of the sea. Seeing Harrison’s expression, his
sister said on a sigh, “I don’t know what you have against
Chico.”
“Who says I have anything against
him?”
She stared him down, and he gazed back
at her with affection. She stood three inches shorter than he, with
the same tousled brown hair, the same hazel eyes, the same lean
body. She wore jeans and a dark blue T-shirt, and her feet were
bare. Chico wriggled from her arms and ran into the house, probably
in search of Didi, Kirsten’s daughter, who, by all accounts, should
be in bed by now, even though the sun hadn’t quite
set.
“It’s the other way around,” he assured
Kirsten. “I love the dog.”
She snorted as she closed the door.
“Yeah.”
“Really.”
But he was talking to himself as he
climbed back in the Impala. There was no accounting for what went
on inside Chico’s twisted little doggy brain, he decided, as he
turned the car south toward Ocean Park Hospital. Kirsten’s bungalow
was on the north end of Deception Bay. The town sat on a bluff
above the beach, spilling over onto both sides of Highway 101, and
was about twenty minutes from the hospital.
Twisted little doggy brain. Twisted
psycho-killer brain.
He would bet that Halo Valley Security
Hospital’s escapee was heading back toward his old haunts to pick
up where he left off. That was how it was with a twisted
psycho-killer brain. Almost instinctive, along the lines of
demented decision making.
“What’s your name?” he asked aloud,
into the deepening shadows.
And where the hell are
you?