A Question of Ghosts (11 page)

“The police report on your parents’ shootings was not overly detailed.” Jo searched her memory. “The forensics back in the late seventies were still pretty rudimentary. Based on my very limited knowledge of crime investigations, the patterns drawn of the scene and the ballistics report could have been consistent with a murder/suicide. Given Madelyn’s history of mental instability and their history of arguing—”

Jo broke off, appalled that she might have mistepped again, but Becca was watching her calmly.

“So it’s feasible that the cops missed the possibility of an outside shooter.” Becca cleared her throat thoughtfully. “But wasn’t Voakes’s first known killing a robbery gone wrong? A house burglary or something?”

“Yeah, he robbed his first two victims, ransacked their places,” Marty said. “After that, the cops think he just caught a taste for murder. No more robbery, just thrill killing.”

“My nomination for the crappiest word coinage ever.” Khadijah grimaced and turned to Becca. “But that’s what we were wondering, baby. Is there any chance this maniac broke into your kitchen that night?”

“Then why am I still alive?” Becca’s voice was dull. “No one robbed this place. Why would Voakes have shot my parents and left a witness? I was sitting right out here.”

“This could have been his first time, if he broke in here,” Marty said gently. “Maybe just to rob the place. He sees your parents, freaks out, shoots them. Out the kitchen door he goes. He wouldn’t have even known you were in here. You wouldn’t have seen anything.”

“I wouldn’t remember anything, if I had seen it.” Becca rubbed her eyes. “I don’t remember anything from that night, except my folks arguing, my mom handing me that damn doll.”

“He raped two of the women, Becca. And your mother just said…” Marty looked away, and Jo remembered the last message with an uneasy chill.

Becca rubbed her eyes hard. “Is Voakes even still alive? Maybe we can skip over to the state pen and ask him about all this.”

“Well, here’s the thing.” Those bitter lines formed around Marty’s mouth again. “Voakes never spent a day in the pen. He was judged innocent by reason of insanity. He’s been hospitalized at Western State since nineteen eighty-three.”

“No, here’s the thing.” Khadijah drew a deep breath. “Your mother said you’re in danger, Becca. There’s no way she could know this, but…Voakes won’t be at Western much longer. He’s getting out.”

*

The muted clicking of Jo’s laptop bothered her. The low purr of the static from the radios provided a partial cushion of white noise, but Jo didn’t like disturbing the cathedral quiet of the living room. Becca, Marty, and Khadijah were sprawled on the couch and the floor in various postures of oblivious sleep, and she didn’t want to wake them.

Jo straightened her legs beneath the low table and stretched silently. The blue glow of the screen provided the only light in the dark space, save for the ongoing flicker of the muted television.
Xena
episodes played on in a constant loop, a welcome backdrop to Jo’s work.

Dawn was probably two hours off, but she couldn’t sleep now if she tried. Her blood still hummed with the thrill of this study. She had examined the recording of the dinner at the Healy house second by second, and picked up no other messages—or at least no other words. She would have to tell Becca about the almost subliminal sounds that surfaced briefly at random moments throughout the recording; a woman’s soft weeping.

She looked down at Becca’s blond head, cushioned by the arm of the sofa a foot from her elbow. There was no need to dread telling her of those mournful sounds. Even relaxed in sleep, even given the harrowing nature of the last few days, there was a certain strength in Becca’s features. Jo knew there was courage in her, or she wouldn’t attempt this daunting project at all.

She gazed at Becca’s sleeping profile pensively and turned back to the keyboard. She flipped past the graphs and charts mapping tonight’s whispered message, the readings from the Spiricom, to the narrative portion of her notes.

RH continues cooperative.

Becca’s conscious bond to her mother is ambivalent, given her anger at her perceived abandonment.

Her father remains a cypher to me. It’s relevant that I have spent time in the company of Scott Healy’s daughter, his brother, sister-in-law, and therapist, and I’ve learned virtually nothing about the man.

Jo glanced at the television and her fingers stilled on the keys. The episode was “Many Happy Returns,” a silly offering of the last season, but the ending scene was moving. The warrior and the bard seated together on the cliffs at sunset, Gabrielle reading aloud from the scroll Xena had given her. Jo reached for the remote and paused the image.

Jo stared down again at Becca’s still face. She moved her hands slowly over the keys, tapping out the words to Sappho’s poem.

Awed by her splendor

stars near the lovely

moon cover their own

bright faces

when she

is roundest and lights

earth with her silver

Jo studied the verse, aware of the tears filling her eyes, but indifferent to them. She returned to her charts and worked methodically, the stilled image of the two women gold on the television screen.

Marty shifted on the floor, snoring with a soft, contented buzz, Khadijah’s arm sprawled across her throat. The long shadows in the room began to lighten and grow blue, and Jo heard the faint piping of birds outside. At first, their gentle trilling disguised the sound at her elbow, Becca’s deep sigh as she stirred in her sleep.

A dozen expressions shifted over Becca’s dreaming face, rendering her a strong woman and frightened girl in swift turns. Jo reached out and almost touched her hair, her fingers inches from its lush softness. Becca murmured again, and her eyes flew open.

Jo made herself lower her hand to the arm of the sofa. “It’s all right, Becca. You’re safe.”

Becca closed her eyes and sighed again, in apparent relief this time. She lifted her head and blinked at Jo.

“Have you been awake all night?” Becca cleared her throat and peered at her through her tumbled bangs, managing to sound maternal and disapproving at the same time.

“I’ll lie down for a while later.” Jo kept her voice low, as much to soothe Becca as to preserve sleep for the others. She still looked shaken. “A nightmare?”

“An old one.” Becca lifted herself on one elbow and drifted her fingers through her hair. “Nothing I haven’t dissected with Rachel, ad nauseam.”

Becca’s expression cleared, and Jo knew the topic was closed. Jo was beginning to understand every nuance of Becca’s mercurial features, an honor the best psychiatrists in Seattle predicted she would never have.

Becca nodded at her sleeping friends and chuckled. “I don’t know if you planned on a group sleep-in, tonight. I hope you’re not too uncomfortable with all this company.”

“If they don’t eat my rations, I’ll let them live.” Jo was pleased with herself. That had sounded rather Xenic. “I don’t mind them. Do you think you can sleep a little longer? Today might prove pretty busy.”

Becca nodded and rested her head back on the cushioned arm. “I think Rachel has privileges at Western State.”

It took Jo a moment to track her train of thought. “Really? At the hospital where Voakes is held? I wonder if there’s any chance she’s interviewed him.”

“I doubt it.” Becca yawned into the pillow. “Rachel doesn’t specialize in criminal behavior; I don’t see why she’d know him. But she might be able to talk to his doctors for us.”

Rachel Perry might be able to get Jo into the most notorious psychiatric hospital in the state to meet with Voakes before he was released. She didn’t find it necessary to clarify her intent to go solo at the moment; Becca’s body was relaxing into the deep couch.

Becca blinked sleepily at the television, and a smile touched her lips. “Ah, Jo. This is probably my favorite scene ever.”

Jo looked at the stilled image of the warrior and the bard, the scroll containing Sappho’s poem between them. “Yes. Mine, too.”

Becca’s eyes were closing again.
“Awed by her splendor,”
she murmured.
“Stars near the lovely moon cover their own bright faces…”
Her voice trailed off as she drifted into sleep.

After a moment, Jo reached out and let her fingers brush gently through Becca’s hair.

Chapter Eight

“I don’t suppose you could—”

“Absolutely not.” Becca said this as firmly as possible around a mouthful of chocolate croissant. “I’m not calling Rachel again at eight in the morning, Jo. One voice mail is enough. She hasn’t been well, and this isn’t a big crisis.”

“Time is a factor, however.” Jo was in her relentless mode this sunny morning. Becca stepped aside and let a bare-chested, studded-nippled young man zig between them on his unicycle. He tipped them a friendly wave. Ah, Capitol Hill in summer.

“Khadijah said the article indicated Voakes might be released from Western soon,” Jo added.

“Are we in training to chase him? Slow down a bit, Batman.” Becca touched Jo’s forearm briefly. Her calves were beginning to ache with this long downhill hike. By unspoken agreement, they had avoided the street with the large window featuring mannequins. “You’re really thinking we should go see this crazy serial killer? First, that Rachel can get us in, and second, that you’ll be able to tell anything about what happened to my parents just by watching his face?”

“First, I’ll be going to Western alone. I see no reason to expose you to a psych ward.” Jo must be in butch protective mode, as well as relentless. She was also a bit deluded if she thought she could make sweeping decisions about Becca’s welfare without her input. “Second, Voakes is a psychopath. I have no idea how revealing his expressions will be. I’m not sure what I can learn from him, but it’s worth a try.”

Jo nudged her subtly and nodded down a side street. Becca realized she remembered the necessity of avoiding the windows of the Quest Bookshop as well. She felt oddly touched by this and wished she could make up her mind whether Jo’s protectiveness comforted her or chapped her butt.

They walked down the tree-shaded sidewalk toward Jo’s office. Becca felt more awake and alert than the single tall latte she had consumed could account for. Nightmare aside, she had slept several hours surprisingly well on that sofa, in the company of her best friends, with Jo sitting nearby. She remembered the low music of Jo’s voice, telling her she was safe. She thought of a question, wanting to hear that music again.

“Why wouldn’t you let me drive us down here? All my car would have had to do was creak to a stop at intersections. It can still do that.”

“Perhaps, but it’s almost fifty miles to Western State.” Jo fished a set of keys out of her back pocket. “We’re picking up my car. I’m hoping to drive to the hospital later today, if Rachel Perry ever answers her—”

Jo broke off abruptly and touched Becca’s arm. She was staring at the locked gate of her building with a fierce intensity, and Becca followed her gaze. The stinging smell hit her the next moment, a light but acrid chemical stink.

Becca claimed no great understanding of criminal trespass, but she could quote entire
Law & Order: SVU
episodes by heart, and she recognized acid poured over a lock when she gaped at it. Not some half-assed acid, either. The thick steel plate of the barred gate was gouged, not just scratched.

Jo nudged Becca back gently and grasped a high steel bar on the gate. One tug opened it a few inches, the lock rattling and useless.

“Jo, we need to call the police.” Becca reached in her pocket for her cell. “Whoever broke in might still be in there.”

“By all means, call them.” Jo guided Becca farther back. She pulled open the barred gate and slipped through it. “Wait for them out here.”

“Joanne!” Becca was exasperated. “Would you wait one macha minute? This will take all of two—”

“I doubt there’s any danger, but I’ll be careful.” Jo’s shoes cracked on the broken glass of the entry. The inner door swung open with ease, and she went through it.

Becca’s cell crackled in her ear as the 911 dispatcher answered, and she snapped out information tersely, stepping back to the curb to read the house number. “Great. Thank you.” She snapped her phone shut, muttering to herself. “All right. Capitol Hill cop response time, without reports of bazookas going off, at least fifteen minutes. If we had driven my car,
Dr. Call
, at least I would have the chobos in my trunk!”

She decided her nerves couldn’t take this. Becca was reasonably certain no one was going to shoot Joanne Call with a bazooka in the next fifteen minutes, but she wasn’t willing to risk it. She blew out a disgusted breath and stepped gingerly past the iron gate and into Jo’s inner room.

“It’s all right.” Jo’s distant voice was lifeless. “Whoever it was is long gone.”

The room was utter destruction. Becca came to a dead halt and looked around in appalled silence. Every single radio that had sat on high shelves on the walls was now shattered on the hardwood floor in a jumble of broken pieces and wiring. Every tape recorder and record player had suffered the same violent fate. Half the shelves were torn down, wrenched out of their brackets by what seemed a titanic rage.

“Jo.” Becca felt like she had the breath punched out of her. “Jesus Christ.”

“Try not to touch anything.” Jo stood across the room with her back to Becca, her hands clasped behind her, studying a smashed case on the wall. She glanced over her shoulder as Becca came toward her. “And watch the glass. It’s everywhere.”

Becca picked her way carefully across the floor. She glanced at Jo’s large desk in the corner and wished she hadn’t. The expensive computer was a shattered ruin across its oak surface. “Police are on their way.”

Jo stood very still, her gaze diamond-sharp on the devices that lay in mangled pieces in the broken case. The muscles in her jaw stood out in stark relief.

“These were special to you.” Becca touched her wrist tentatively. “Were they communicators—Spiricoms, like the one at the house?”