Nowhere Safe (5 page)

“That’s good,” September told him. “Progress.”

“Anything on the guy who did this?”

“Not so far.”

Though her father and Dashiell, her half brother, had seen a shadowy figure running away, there had been no clues to whoever had set the fire, and therefore there was no knowing what the motivation was. Braden had made a fortune over the years in various financial deals and had earned himself enemies by the truckload, but was that behind who had started the fire? Someone who wanted payback? Or, was it the work of vandals? One of the ever-evolving group of disenchanted teenagers who seemed to bump from tire slashing to petty theft to vandalizing—and now maybe to arson?

Though, like her sister, July, September felt Stefan Harmak might be capable of anything, there was nothing to link him to the crime other than rampant speculation. He certainly could hold a grudge against Rosamund for usurping his and his mother’s place at the house, but for all his character flaws, Stefan was more a griper than a doer, as far as September could see.

“If I learn anything you’ll be the first to know, I promise,” September told her father, who grunted an assent, then asked her a few questions about Auggie. September parried her father’s probing remarks. Auggie was hard to get hold of at the best of times and damn near impossible for Braden as he actively tried to dodge his father. Finally, realizing he wasn’t going to get anything further from her, Braden said good-bye and September clicked off with a sigh of relief.

“More family,” Wes said.

“More family,” September agreed.

Foxglove Park wasn’t that far from the field where the body of another young woman had been discovered the summer before, September realized as they drove past. The Do Unto Others Killer had left the body of Emmy Decatur in a field about a half a mile west. September recalled meeting with the press—the scoop-monger, television reporter, Pauline Kirby—and going on camera at the site to try and keep the public calm and informed about the depraved serial killer whose MO included carving words into his victims’ torsos, strangling them, and leaving their bodies in open fields. Looking out the passenger side window toward the field now, she thought about the man whose obsession with her had been a trigger to those killings, whose knife had been driven into her shoulder, a slice meant for her throat. She was lucky to be alive.

“Someone walk on your grave?” Wes said as she involuntarily shivered.

“Do you sometimes think about the guy who shot you?”

He thought about her question, but then slowly wagged his head from side to side. “Bullet caught my hip bone. Doctors took it out but had to scrape the bone to do it. When I move too fast, it jabs me, but the bastard who did it’s in jail. That’s what I think about.” Wes turned onto a smaller road. “Here we are.”

Although it was designated a park, Foxglove was actually a wetlands, an area designated by the city as a refuge for wildlife, a place adopted by some concerned citizens and glorified with its own name but little else to define it as a park. There were no paths or benches or water fountains. It was a shallow depression with cattails and dank maple leaves floating in shallow pools of water invaded by an overall scent of rot. The kind of place environmentalists love and germaphobes abhor.

There were already several cars parked alongside the road. Some lookie-loos and what appeared to be the bicyclist who’d apparently found the body, the uniform standing next to him. As Wes pulled to a stop they looked back to see the crime scene van heading toward them down the two-lane rural road, and behind it, the coroner.

The uniform introduced himself as Hadley and then said, “This is Mr. Morland,” indicating the cyclist.

“I come by here every day,” Morland said as soon as September and Wes introduced themselves. “Every day. Sometimes I walk into the park, if it’s dry out. Thought it might be dry enough today and so . . .” He shook his head.

September looked past him to a spot where a flash of white showed on the soggy ground beneath a thin copse of maple trees. Skin.

“She’s just lying there, peaceful-like,” Morland went on. “Not a scratch on her, far as I could tell, but I didn’t want to touch her. Well, except for checking her pulse, like. She musta taken something. Pills or something.”

The tech team came through so September and Wes stepped back. They asked Morland some more questions, but the cyclist kept repeating the same information. Officer Hadley didn’t know anything further, either, and the lookie-loos pressed forward, eager to talk, but they’d come after the fact and were no help.

September heard the light beep signaling a text coming into her cell phone and looked down at the screen. It was a message from Jake.

Zupan’s was a local specialty grocery store chain that also served five or six daily soup choices. She texted back: Yes, please. In truth, she was beginning to feel the effects of her first day back—no thanks to Jake, too—and the thought of collapsing into bed was enough to make her sigh.

One of the techs, Bronson, who was as prickly as a briar and loved to complain, made his way out to them as the rest of the team packed up their gear.

“So, have we got a homicide?” Wes asked him before he could open his mouth, which caused a line of irritation to form between the tech’s brows.

“Could be suicide. Looks like she ingested something. Have to figure out what she poisoned herself with before we know.”

“Foxglove?” Wes asked.

Bronson’s frown deepened. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wes deadpanned.

“Could be,” was Bronson’s surprising answer as he headed to the van.

Wes turned to September, the look on his face causing her to break into a smile. “You don’t think . . .” he started.

“That someone poisoned her with foxglove and then brought her to Foxglove Park? No.”

“Bronson was fucking with me.”

“That’s what he does.”

Wes stared down the tech as Bronson climbed into his van. “Maybe Foxglove Park’s named for a reason, like it’s full of foxglove. And maybe she ate some, thinking it was something else. Like eating the wrong kind of mushrooms.”

“Seriously?”

“She probably overdosed on prescription drugs.”

“And decided to die in parklike surroundings,” September finished.

They both looked back at the chilly, damp, leaf-choked swamp and Wes snorted.

“Or, maybe it’s a homicide,” September said.

They watched as the woman’s body was lifted onto a stretcher, carried from her bed of leaves and into the coroner’s van.

First Stefan, and now this Jane Doe. It had been a full day already, September thought as Wes drove her back to the station. Even though there were a few more hours before her shift would be up, she checked with D’Annibal to make certain he was okay with her leaving early, and when he waved her away, she gathered her things and headed out to her silver Pilot. A lot of avenues to explore when she got to work tomorrow.

She moved her shoulder up and down as she drove up Jake’s drive, assessing the amount of pain the movement caused. Not too bad. Sorta bad. Standable, anyway. But she didn’t think it would take that long before she was back to her old self. It was the being tired, a natural part of the healing process, apparently, that surprised her. She looked forward to a bath and the soup Jake had promised, and an early night.

As she got out of the car, her thoughts turned to Stefan. He was probably a little stiff and sore himself, but at least he was alive.

Who had done that to him? Zip-tied him to a pole, just like Christopher Ballonni? Who was this kidnapper—or, this killer, in Ballonni’s case—who’d gone to such lengths to make a point?

“I
WANT WHAT I CAN’T HAVE
,” she said aloud. As she mounted the steps to Jake’s front door she tried to picture the avenger who’d made Stefan write the sign, draped it around his neck, then had left him in front of his place of work for maximum humiliation.

Leaves skittered beneath the tires of Mr. Blue’s truck and blew into the deep ditches on either side of Highway 26. The tires spun at an even fifty miles per hour—well, as even as she could make it given the truck was a bucket of bolts with a small dent in the driver’s side door and a rusted area along the top of the back tailgate. It had once been white beneath the layers of road grime, but now it was closer to dirty gray.

But she was lucky to have its use.

Lucky. Like her name.

She hit a pothole and bounced upward, slowing down to forty-five. She was anxious to get back. Anxious to put distance between herself and the scene of the crime. It had taken her most of the day to work her way from Twin Oaks to the mall where she’d left the truck, mainly because she’d been careful not to be seen by anyone and had spent more time whiling the hours away than actually walking or catching the west-side train during rush hour, when she’d be least remembered. Lying low was her best defense as she knew the police would be asking about anyone seen in the general vicinity of where Stefan Harmak had been left. She’d taken him to the school in the dead of night and then had driven his van to a residential area with a lot of cars parked along the streets, easing the van into a spot. It might not be found for days, if all went well. She turned off the overhead light before locking the van and slipping into the dark, moving like a wraith through the silent streets to a deserted commercial office building that she’d scoped out days earlier at the far end of the residential district. There, she went around the back side, dropped her backpack on the ground beside her, and simply slid down the wall and sat, her back against the side of the building until just before rush hour. Then, she hoisted the backpack over one arm and walked toward a street that was lined with fast food restaurants, a Red Roof Inn, and a couple of gas stations. She dropped the keys into a trash can filled with leftover food and cardboard boxes from a Burger King, then switched out her baseball cap for a straight, black, chin-length wig with bangs. Next she stuck several pieces of gum in her mouth, enough to keep her chewing like a cow, partly because she wanted to be remembered for the chewing, if anyone saw her, and less for her appearance, partly because she was hungry. And then she headed toward the main intersection.
Thank you, Christopher Ballonni
, she’d thought, remembering the mailman with the penchant for gum. Part of his shtick, but it worked for her in other ways.

At the intersection, she’d hit the WALK button. Across the highway was a Park and Ride for the bus and she could see commuters unlocking their cars, coming from the bus stop. She’d figured if the police got that far, the commuters would only remember the wig and the gum. She’d climbed onto the bus and then let it take her all the way into Portland, where she’d gotten off and hit a busy Starbucks, lined with customers. In the restroom, she removed the black wig and brushed her natural light brown hair down straight, tossing the gum in the trash. She put on a pair of slim-lensed glasses with no prescription, then left the restroom holding Stefan Harmak’s cell phone, which she pretended to be rapidly texting into as she walked out of the coffee shop. She had her own fake cell phone, one she’d appropriated earlier in the year from a loud, rude asshole who’d been in a huge shouting match over politics at a different Starbucks in a different city. She’d taken it because he’d pissed her off and everyone else in the place, too. Later, she found the phone was useful as a prop.

But Stefan’s phone was hot, so she’d carefully wiped it down and as she walked into Portland, tossed it into another trash can, before heading to another bus stop and eventually winding her way back to the mall. If they traced the phone, it wouldn’t be connected to her.

Now, she held Mr. Blue’s truck onto the road and tried not to pay attention to the internal clock that was always ticking inside her head. Before the event that had nearly killed her, she hadn’t really noticed the passage of time. She hadn’t cared. But since her recovery, time had been like a partner in her mission. She sensed she was heading toward a final showdown and it was sooner than she might like.

Lucky wasn’t her real name, but it was the one she went by these days. Her name was Ani, if anyone cared, and they didn’t, except maybe for that detective she’d been attracted to—more attracted to than she wanted to remember—and he would only care because he would use it as a way to find her.

And then, her sister might care, too—maybe—but Lucky had to stay far, far away from her as well.

The last time she’d seen her was when she’d been lashed to the pyre, feeling the scorching flames burning nearer . . . and nearer....

The memory scratched across her mind and the tight scars on her back felt even tighter. Easing her shoulders like she always did, she tried to loosen the skin but the damage was too deep. To this day, she felt an abiding fear of fire. She was lucky to be alive.

Lucky.

Mr. Blue only knew her by Lucky. She never said who she really was and he didn’t ask. She was his guest, his ward, his friend, but only for the time being. They both knew, or maybe just she did, that their time together was destined to be brief. As she knew her time in this world was destined to be brief. She sensed it like she sensed many other inexplicable things, and her ability was what had earned her Mr. Blue’s protection.

That and the fact that he liked her. Like a daughter. And she, who’d been used by her “father” every way in creation, felt the same way about Mr. Blue being her surrogate father. They liked each other and that was more than either of them could say about anyone else on the planet.

She hadn’t told Mr. Blue that she was a fugitive, that the long arm of the law was after her, had almost reached her a time or two. He didn’t ask questions on things he didn’t want to know about. The less information the better, in this case. Occasionally, he requested that she go and get things for him as he rarely left his ramshackle house near the natural hot springs on his private property.

That was Lucky’s job, too. To shoo trespassers from the hot springs, which were believed to be a rejuvenating treatment, a natural spa. Once in a while some enterprising asshole and his girlfriend would hike onto Mr. Blue’s property and avail themselves of the hot springs and Lucky would deal with them while Mr. Blue stayed in the shadows. Yes, she was a fugitive, but a number of years had passed and her face wasn’t as well known as it had been. With that inner sense that rarely did her wrong, she knew that she wasn’t at the top of the Winslow County sheriff ’s hit list any longer. Other law enforcement agencies weren’t paying that much attention, either, especially with the murder rate and increase in property crimes, hate crimes, personal crimes, and every other kind of crime. She got her information from Mr. Blue, who, though a loner and hermit by all accounts, had a satellite dish and Wi-Fi stick that allowed him to access the Internet and God knew what else. He was a study in contradictions. A guy who knew a hell of a lot about a hell of a lot. Lucky considered him the first true friend she’d ever really had.

Now she turned off 26 to the long, rutted access road that wound to Mr. Blue’s house and the hot springs beyond. She bumped along, mentally crossing her fingers that the old truck would make it. To date, it hadn’t failed her, but vehicle maintenance did not seem to be Blue’s priority.

When she reached the house, she parked on one side where several rusting appliances had come to die. She had a room that jutted out the back of the house from the garage, which had been turned into a greenhouse/storage room of sorts for Mr. Blue’s various herbs and plants and other items for sale of varying degrees of legality. There was a bathroom just inside the main house from the garage that was mostly for her use; Mr. Blue’s rooms were at the opposite end of the three bedroom ranch. Sometimes Lucky didn’t see the man for days because he kept himself burrowed in his rooms with his books and computer. Other times, they met in the middle and shared meals together and short conversations about what he needed her to do, or what she might need from him. Neither of them was much of a conversationalist and they appreciated that about each other.

She literally owed Mr. Blue her life as he’d effectively saved it after she’d been brought to his doorstep, burned, feverish, and exhausted. Those weeks of him spoon-feeding her herbs and broths and then applying salves to her back were a misty haze of pain and gratitude.

She wasn’t sure what he would think of her mission to rid the world of abusers and pedophiles who crossed her path. He might applaud her, but he might also think her methods too dangerous and turn her out. Once or twice it had been on the tip of her tongue to tell him about her special ability to sense an abuser, how brushing up against them sent her a message so loud it was almost as if the guy had blurted out his guilt in a scream. But she wasn’t certain he would believe her, and she had no explanation for her “sixth sense,” the same sense that told her time was running out. The hourglass had been turned over and the sands were slipping through. The showdown was coming. She was either going to die soon or be arrested, and if it were a choice, she would take the former.

To that end her mission was everything to her. Before she was through she planned to take out as many perverted bastards as she could.

Which was why she was still mulling over her decision to let the sick fuck who’d tried to nab the girl at the mall live. The weather wasn’t cold enough for him to die. She’d left him with an admission of his guilt hung around his neck, but that was only part of it. The humiliation. There would be lots of questions directed at him, too many for him to come up with answers for.

But she should have killed him. She should have. She’d done it before, and she was undoubtedly going to do it again before her mission was complete. So, why had she left Harmak alive?

Climbing out of the truck, the memory made her nose twitch. It wasn’t a true scent exactly. It was more a feeling. She’d had to drag Harmak’s dead weight to the basketball pole outside the school and she’d been glad it was pitch black because it was hard work and took longer than she’d suspected. With Ballonni, she’d just pulled up to the flagpole, dumped him out and tied him up, but with Harmak she’d had to traverse the basketball court and some grounds before she got him where she wanted him.

It was then the scent distracted her. She’d been tired and breathing hard and hurrying back to Harmark’s van when she’d become aware of it. A feeling of . . . well, there was no other word for it:
evil.
It almost had an odor, something of rot and sickness. She’d turned her nose toward it and realized it wasn’t from Stefan, though he certainly gave off the same vibe. But this one was different. More fully developed? And it was coming from around the school. If she’d had more time, she would have searched it out right then and there, but she couldn’t risk it. And then it had dissipated and she’d had to jump in the van and leave fast, before anyone was about or Harmak woke up.

Now, she unlocked the man-door to the garage and crossed to her room, registering the musky and dry and sometimes pungent scents of the herbs, plants, mushrooms, and various substances inside that comprised the mainstay of Mr. Blue’s stash. The deadlier plants were elsewhere. Mr. Blue didn’t want anyone knowing about them unless there was a particular deal to be made, and then it was at his choosing. He also traded in illegal drugs like Rohypnol—roofies—to the right person and since Rohypnol was sold legally in Mexico, he had his own connections that were outside the traffic of the vicious drug lords of that country. Mr. Blue had his own rules, and he was more of a connoisseur of rare and exotic botanicals than your ordinary dealer who only worked for money could ever hope to be. You had to have a damn good reason to come to Mr. Blue for help, and then he might, or might not, deign to offer you what you sought.

She could smell chicken and herbs and realized Mr. Blue was making soup in the kitchen, so she removed her hand from the locked knob to her room and instead opened the door to the interior of the house, stepping inside.

Mr. Blue, whose real name was Hiram Champs, was stirring a large pot on the stove. He looked over upon hearing her and said, “I’ve made us dinner.”

She looked into his blue face and said, “I’ve got the sourdough loaf.”

“Cut it up and put the butter on the table. It’s already set.”

Lucky put the sack she’d carried from the car onto the counter, grabbed the bread knife and started slicing. At the last moment, Lucky had remembered she’d told him she would get some groceries and she’d pulled into a Safeway on the edge of Laurelton before turning west and heading home.

She glanced over at Mr. Blue, whose hair was a light gray but whose skin was blue. For years he’d drunk a concoction of colloidal silver that he made for himself, believing in its medicinal properties. The silver had settled into his skin and turned him permanently blue. Though he pretended not to mind, he rarely went out in public, preferring not to be stared at. The color added to his overall mysticism and he had followers and minions who attended to all his needs, just wanting to be near him. But the only person he allowed to stay more than a few minutes at a time was Lucky.

They ate in near silence, seated across from each other at the dining room table, which was placed in front of a picture window that faced out the back and onto his herb garden. Beyond that was a forest of Douglas firs, maples, and pine. Lucky’s room could be seen through the window to the south and the eaves were hung with bird feeders. Hummingbirds hovered, even on the coldest day, and when Lucky was outside they sometimes whirred past so fast it felt like a huge insect zooming near her ear.

“Did you finish what you set out to do on this trip?” Hiram asked, ladling up the last of the soup in his bowl.

Lucky hesitated. Normally, he didn’t ask questions that he might not want to know the answer to. “I was just thinking I’ve left some loose ends.”