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 determined 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. . .
.