CHAPTER 15
Harrison was stunned.
Had he heard right? Justice Turnbull
had killed someone, and Laura knew about it? All his attention was
now on the conversation, the sounds of Seaside in June
fading.
“You’re sure about this?” he said into
his cell.
“Yes. No. Maybe. But . . . yeah, I’m
sure,” she said, and he heard the tremor in Laura’s voice. “It’s a
woman. Not one of my family, I’m pretty sure. Someone else.” He
heard the panic rising in her voice.
“Hey, slow down. Are you
okay?”
“No. I’m definitely not okay. Oh,
God.”
Frowning, thinking hard, he kicked out
his chair, climbed to his feet. “How do you know?”
“You know how I know. I
explained.”
He glanced over at Jenny, who was
standing behind the counter, her arms crossed under her breasts as
she glared suspiciously at him. Giving her his shoulder, he asked,
“He called you? Telepathically?”
A pause. “Well . . . yes.”
“And . . . ?”
“He wanted me to know . . . he’d killed
someone. Oh, God I . . . I don’t know who. I know I sound like a
freak but—”
“You don’t. Not to me.” He tried to cut
her off before she really lost it.
“This has never happened
before.”
“Try to calm down.”
“Are you nuts? Calm down? Did you hear
me? He just murdered someone!”
“Okay,” he said, pulling out one hand
and splaying his fingers as if she could see him.
“Hey, buddy! Watch it.” A woman jogging
past nearly ran into his arm. He ignored her.
“Okay. Where are you?”
“At my house.”
“Where’s that?”
She hesitated.
He couldn’t blame her. He was virtually
a stranger.
“I want to help.” He didn’t remind her
that she had called him.
She let out a long breath, then, with a
“What does it matter, anyway?” rattled off her address. Quickly. As
if the longer the words stayed in her throat, they might choke
her.
“Got it. I’ll see you in about half an
hour,” he told her, calculating the drive without traffic and fog.
Inaccurate for a Saturday afternoon on any day in June, worse today
because of the fog that was between Seaside and Deception Bay, and
the extra cars driven over to the coast for the beach cleanup, but
he didn’t want her to think it would take him as long as it really
would. She might regret everything and try to back out of seeing
him.
Glancing back once to Jenny, he saw she
was helping a customer, her attention on scooping up some
pink-tinged ice cream into a waffle cone, while the woman counted
out bills from her wallet and a toddler clung to her leg. He knew
that he was leaving the robbery story at a critical time, that
Jenny might just lead him to the rest of the teen criminals, but he
didn’t care.
But Justice Turnbull was the story of the moment.
And Laura might be in danger. Alone.
Vulnerable to whatever Turnbull wanted to set into motion. And you
were instrumental in this, weren’t you? Encouraged her to
“communicate” with a homicidal maniac.
He felt more than a little pang of
guilt, but then he hadn’t really bought into the telepathy, or
whatever she called it. . . . The lodge, dead mother, creepy aunt,
mental communication, and walls she built in her mind all sounded a
little paranoid.
Except that Justice Turnbull was on the
loose again.
That thought spurred him
on.
He hurried to his Chevrolet, jumped in,
and drove with repressed urgency, one hand on the horn at the
lollygagging weekenders, who were all over the place for the Clean
Up The Beach!! event. The miles rolled slowly under the Impala’s
wheels, and Harrison was a bundle of nerves, alternately standing
on the brakes and willing himself not to pound on his horn at the
slow-moving traffic. Vans, SUVs, sedans, pickups . . . a line of
summer traffic that stretched along 101.
Swearing under his breath, he finally
reached the turnoff to her house, a humble cottage with loads of
deferred maintenance. It had been over an hour since her
call.
“Damn.”
Jumping from the car, he snatched up
his laptop from the backseat, then set it back down again, leaving
it with his digital recorder. After locking the Impala, he patted
his back pocket for the small notebook that always resided there.
He didn’t want her to think he was setting up shop, though that was
what his half-baked plan was. At least partially.
There were creaky wooden steps that led
to an equally creaky front porch, all painted gray, worn through on
the treads, listing slightly. He pounded on the door, peering
through one of the three diamond window inserts that ran in a
diagonal across the top. He watched through the tiny pane as she
hurried to answer him, appearing from the back of the house, her
darkened hair tucked behind her ears.
When she opened the door, all he saw
were her eyes, greenish blue, serious, careful, full of secrets.
And scared to death.
For an instant, he wanted to yank her
forward and fold her into his arms, to tell her that it would be
all right. To even brush his lips over her hair and comfort
her.
Holey moley!
He slammed on the mental brakes before
he did something stupid and was shocked by his reaction. His arm
actually reached out before he caught himself, and he ended up
gesturing lamely to cover the lapse. What the hell was wrong with
him?
“You okay?” he asked, and she, too,
appeared to want to rush into his arms, but she didn’t, just hung
onto the side of the door and let out her breath.
“Yeah. I mean, I have to be.” She
managed a weak, unhappy smile and nervously peered over his
shoulder. “Come on in.” Ushering him inside, she shut the door and
shoved the dead bolt into place. Then they stood in the foyer, with
the gray light emanating through the three diamond panes. She
chewed on a corner of her lip and shook her head. “He’s toying with
us,” she said softly. “He wanted me to know what he’d done. That
he’d murdered someone.” Her eyes thinned thoughtfully. “He wanted
to crow about it.”
“He told you his motives?” Though it
still seemed ludicrous, the whole telepathy thing, he let that go.
For her, at the very least, it was real.
“I just . . . Oh, God, sometimes it’s
like I understand him.” She shivered. “Sick, huh?”
“No judgment calls here,” he said. “So
who’s this woman you think he killed?”
She shook her head. “I don’t
know.”
“Did you . . . see . . .
her?”
“No.”
“Well, what happened? What did he say
to you?”
“You sound impatient,” she said
suddenly.
“I am impatient,” Harrison responded
right back. “If he’s killed someone, you bet I’m
impatient!”
Her blue eyes assessed him, charged him
with lying. “You don’t believe me. Not really. You just want
information and you think I’m an idiot!”
When she turned, he grabbed her arm,
and she jerked back as if he’d burned her. “You called me,” he
reminded her.
“And I thought you’d be a better choice
than the police. Am I wrong?”
She was half turned away and gave him
only her face in profile. He noticed her lips and chin and the
curve of her cheek. The downy softness of the hairs at her temple.
The wing of her brow, many shades lighter than her hair
color.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said
to the room at large, as if it were an awakening. She walked
through an archway.
“You’ve got a killer after you,” he
stated bluntly, following her into the living room with its rock
fireplace and furniture that had seen better days. “That, I
believe, is fact. I don’t know about all your communication with
him and your family, but I don’t really care. You’re not safe. A
lot of people aren’t, like maybe this woman he let you know
about.”
She shrugged and shook her head, her
arms wrapped around her torso, as she stared through the window
facing the street and driveway. His Impala, parked in the drive,
was visible, as was a house, a similar bungalow, across the
street.
“If you had something more concrete,
I’d tell you to call the cops.”
“I don’t want to talk to the
authorities,” she stated quickly.
“I know. And I get why you don’t. Hey,
I’ve had my own problems with them, and sometimes they’re just too
damn difficult to deal with. Take Detective Fred Clausen, for
instance, at the TCSD. I was looking into some unsavory behavior on
the part of the deputies there, and he barely contained himself
from physically throwing me into the street.” She didn’t seem to
hear him, but he soldiered on. “’Course, I was . . . inferring . .
. that the guy had looked the other way when his brother had sex
with an underage high school student, and that didn’t go over so
well.”
“Inferring?”
“Okay, accusing. I wasn’t wrong about
the bastard, but nobody wanted to hear it, especially Clausen. I
ran the piece anyway, though my editor was quivering in his
boots.”
“What happened?” she asked, turning
slightly so he could see her profile again. There was something
sinuous in her movements that she was completely unaware
of.
“Guy got fired from his coaching
position at the school for some ‘other’ reason,” he said. “Then the
girl turned eighteen and they took off together. Everybody was
pissed at me, even her parents. They didn’t like the affair, but
they didn’t like publicity even more. No charges were filed. But
the story was true. It happened when I first got to the
Breeze and I was getting over a few image
problems of my own at the time.”
“Such as?” Now she turned all the way
to face him.
In for a penny, in for a pound. He
didn’t like talking about what had happened to Manny, but she’d
opened up to him. Now it was his turn. Tit, as they say, for tat.
“I accused my brother-in-law’s business partner of setting up his
murder and making it look like an accident.”
Recognition lit her eyes. “Now I
remember you. I saw you on television in conjunction with that
shooting outside the nightclub. You thought there was more to
it.”
Harrison snorted. “I’m a conspiracy
theorist, if you believe Bill Koontz’s lawyers and the implication
of Pauline Kirby and her news crew.”
“Koontz was your brother-in-law’s
business partner?” she clarified, her eyebrows pulling together as
she pieced together what she’d heard.
He nodded. “He’s sole proprietor of
Boozehound now. Manny’s dead. And my sister and niece got next to
nothing.”
“You believe Koontz set up your
brother-in-law to be murdered.”
“You got it. I can’t prove it. Yet. But
I will.” He added, “I lost my job at the Portland
Ledger over the way I handled the story, but again, I wasn’t
wrong.”
She thought that over. Opened her mouth
several times to say something, then closed it again. Finally, she
said carefully, “If you stay ahead of the police on this story . .
. if you could find Justice first, or a lead to him . . . that
would go a long ways to reestablishing your credibility, wouldn’t
it?”
“Well. Yes. Of course.” He gazed at her
seriously.
“Okay,” she said and inhaled a long,
shivery breath as she dropped onto the couch.
“Okay?”
“I want you to help me. Really help me,
and my family. I want you to keep us safe from Justice, and in
return I’ll try to lead you to him, or, more accurately, allow him
to be led to me.” She shivered as she spoke, as if she felt she
were treading on the graves of the undead.
“Okay,” he repeated.
They looked at each other.
After a moment, Harrison asked, “So,
how exactly do you call Justice?”
“If I drop the wall down for a moment,
he’ll sense me.” She glanced away, as if embarrassed at how silly
it sounded.
“So . . .” He lifted his palms,
silently asking what she wanted to do next.
“I don’t . . . I just can’t do it yet.
I’m afraid,” she admitted.
He nodded, watching her. “Got any kind
of timeline on that?”
She half laughed but still worried her
hands. “No. I’ve just got to work up my courage. It’s . . . it’s
not that easy.”
“Okay. Yeah. I see. I’ll wait till
you’re ready.” And in truth, he wasn’t too thrilled about the
prospects of her communicating with Turnbull. If there were another
way, if he could hunt down the bastard personally, or find a way to
sic the police onto him, that would be better. But, for now, there
weren’t any other options.
She gazed at him through wide, soulful
eyes. “Thanks. I’m just . . . I need . . . to know that my sisters
are all going to be safe. I don’t want to make things worse.” She
closed her eyes for a second, buried her face in her hands. “If I
did anything to hurt any one of them, I don’t think I could live
with myself.”
“I’m not going to let him hurt you,” he
said, meaning it.
“Us,” she said softly.
“All of you,” he said. “Catherine. Your
sisters. But no one’s safe while he’s on the loose. Trust me,
Lorelei, I just want to get him.”
“And write about it.” She lifted her
head and smiled then, without a trace of humor. He felt a small
twinge of conscience at using her for his own purposes, but he
meant to keep her safe. He’d promised himself.
“And write about it,” he
admitted.