Nowhere Safe (6 page)

“Are you winning the battle?”

Lucky froze, her spoon in midair. This was as close as he’d ever come to talking about her mission. Maybe he knew more than she suspected.

She set down the spoon. “There’s no real battle. Well, there is. I just find people that need to be . . . neutralized . . . and then I neutralize them.”

“The police used the term ‘neutralize’ when they killed the gunman who opened fire at Clackamas Town Center.” He looked at her over his own soup spoon as he ladled the broth into his mouth.

“I’m on the front lines of a war that will never really end,” she said, stepping carefully. “I’m just trying to keep ahead of the enemy.”

“Sounds like an arms race.” He put his spoon down and picked up his knife, deliberately buttering a thick slice of bread.

“What?”

“You’re at war, but your enemy is evolving.”

“Do you know what I do?” she asked.

He stared past her and out the window. “There’s a particular type of newt that lives in this area. The Pacific newt. I’ve seen them in the back.” He pointed to the garden outside the window, a garden shaded by the thick stand of Douglas firs that surrounded the property and led back into acres and acres of woods owned by the forest service. “Their skin is poisonous—highly poisonous. So if you pick one up you need to wash your hands. If ingested, the poison will kill most animals. It’s highly toxic.”

Lucky waited. Sometimes Mr. Blue went on about things that seemed to have no rhyme or reason, yet inside was buried sage advice.

“Do you know what a garter snake is?” he asked.

“Just a harmless, everyday snake?”

He nodded. “It’s not poisonous, apart from a venomous quality to its saliva that may help with digestion as it eats its prey live. The garter snake is a predator of the newt and has developed a resistance to the newt’s poison. So, over time, as a natural defense mechanism, the poison in the newts increases, becoming the new normal, as they say, and then the garter snakes die off until they develop a stronger resistance and can once again eat the newts with impunity until the newts’ poison becomes more toxic. It’s an arms race. I believe the garter snakes are currently on top.” His gaze returned to hers. “Are you?”

“I’m not really in an arms race,” Lucky protested.

“You might be and just don’t know it. Be careful.”

There was something about this conversation—a long one for him—that seemed to be telling her something. Should she tell
him
something? A little bit about her plans? Was this what he was asking?

“I don’t intend for them to win,” she said, purposely keeping her meaning vague.

“You can’t often predict the outcome of an arms race.”

Her heart beat heavily, almost hurting. She was rarely so honest with anyone. “I don’t think I have much time.”

He returned his attention to his soup, but she thought she sensed a sadness in him. “Is it enough to get done what you need to do?”

She thought of the sensation, the almost odor, at the school. After she took care of Harmak, once and for all, she intended on tracking the source of that feeling. Maybe he would be her last. “I hope so.”

“If you need anything, just ask.”

“I will.”

She helped clean up the remains of the meal, then headed to her room. She needed to take care of Stefan Harmak soon. She should have given him enough to kill him, but she’d pulled back. The thought of those schoolchildren finding his dead body had influenced her. Now, she was going to have to catch him somewhere else, and the problem was, she’d put him on alert. Maybe she
was
in an arms race.

She shook her head, angry at herself, and gazed at her reflection in the old fly-spotted mirror above the ancient bureau. Once she was through with Harmak, she would figure out who was responsible for the noxious aura left behind at Twin Oaks, an invisible vapor trail.

She tilted her chin up. Could she play the part of a teacher, or a teacher’s aide?

“I would like to apply for a job,” she said aloud, forcing her normally grim face to lighten with an almost smile. “I hear Twin Oaks Elementary is a great school. . . .”

 

 

September lay next to Jake in bed, her head tucked onto his chest while they watched a lineup of sitcoms. Jake’s arm rested lightly around her, and she felt content and languid. “Sorry I’ve been such a bad patient,” she mumbled sleepily.

“Nah, you’ve been fine.” He was distracted.

“I’ve been a royal pain. You don’t have to spare my feelings.” She smiled. “Today was fun, though.”

“Mmm.”

Realizing he wasn’t paying attention, she glanced up at him, her gaze traveling down the firm line of his jaw. “I’ll move in this weekend as long as I don’t have to do any heavy lifting.”

“You will?” His attention came back to her with a bang.

“I’ve been delaying, I realize. We haven’t known each other all that long.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she corrected herself, “We’ve known each other, but it hasn’t been that long since you and I got like this.” She lifted a hand, to encompass the fact that they were lying in bed together.

“I spent too much time with Loni.”

“We both were living our lives.”

“I know, but a lot of it was . . . a waste.” He looked down at her. “I can move your stuff myself.”

“I have a queen bed. And your brother’s laid up and making babies. I wish I could promise Auggie’s help, but his schedule’s too unpredictable.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“You’re a happy camper now?”

“Very happy.”

“We’re not kidding ourselves, are we?” she asked suddenly. “Making all these plans too soon?”

“Nah.”

“Okay. Good.”

There was silence between them for a few minutes, and then the news came on. Jake had the television on channel seven and Pauline Kirby, in all her feral glory, came up, her attractive but sharp features making September’s skin crawl a bit as she remembered how the relentless reporter had drilled her with questions during their interview about Do Unto Others. “Can you—” she started, but Jake had already switched the channel.

“A little of her goes a long way,” he said, and he settled on a station with its reporter outside a post office.

September recognized the flagpole that the male reporter was standing by. “Oh . . . they’ve already made the connection.”

“What?” Jake asked, as September hadn’t filled him in on the case in detail.

She didn’t answer as the reporter launched first into an account of Christopher Ballonni’s death, and then, how the recent crime at the basketball pole mirrored Ballonni’s.

“They don’t have Stefan’s name yet,” she realized.

“Ah . . .” Jake said, as she’d told him over dinner about her earlier trip to the hospital to see Stefan and his story about being tied to the basketball pole. “You didn’t say what happened to Stefan was part of a pattern.”

“I’m not on Stefan’s case. But they’re letting me follow up again on Ballonni. I’ve put a call in to his widow, but I haven’t heard back yet.”

Jake nodded. September couldn’t tell whether or not he was bothered that she hadn’t told him everything. “It’s not the only case we have,” she reminded him, recalling the woman’s body found in Foxglove Park. Wes was following up on that one, hoping to learn her identity.

“No, it’s fine. I was just thinking that if Pauline Kirby realizes Harmak is your stepbrother, she’ll be after another interview,” Jake said.

“
Was
my stepbrother. She’ll learn it eventually, but it’s not the first thing that’ll crop up.”

“You hope.”

“Yeah, I hope. So, enough about me. Tell me about your work. How’s the office move going?”

“Uh . . . slow.”

“Slow, because . . . ?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m making the right choice.”

She lifted her head to look at him. “Maybe you don’t want to quit.”

“Maybe I don’t,” he agreed, shaking his head.

“What changed your mind?” she asked.

His gray eyes glanced down at her. “You. Maybe. This.” His gaze went to the gauze bandage on her shoulder, so close to her throat. “I thought it was the job that was the problem, but now I’m not so sure.”

“You said you wanted to change your life. Maybe you mean . . . Loni,” September suggested.

“No. That’s been over for almost a year.” He was frowning at the television, which had switched to a commercial.

“What’s wrong?” September asked.

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just . . . figuring it out.”

“You sure it doesn’t have to do with Loni?” she asked carefully.

“What do you mean? No. That’s over. You know that.”

“Why are you so defensive?”

“I’m not defensive.”

“No?”

“No.” He heard himself and switched off the television with a snap of his thumb on the remote. “She’s . . . not a part of my life. I don’t want to see her anymore. It’s over. And I just don’t want to think about her.”

“Okay.”

He expelled a long breath. “She called me today,” he admitted. “I was cleaning out my desk and she called and I just started feeling . . . bad . . . guilty, I guess. It’s not about the job. You were right on that. It’s about Loni and how I don’t want to deal with her anymore, and that makes me feel like a shit.”

“I know it’s a cliché, but her problems are her problems, not your problems.”

“I know. It’s just that I’m happy, she’s not, and I don’t know that she will be, ever. So . . . yeah. Not good.”

“Sounds like survivor’s guilt,” September said.

“Well, she’s not dead.”

“You know what I mean. So, you’re staying with the job?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not at all.”

September snuggled back down against him, aware that her pulse had jumped raggedly but was now settling into a normal rhythm. She could talk big about Jake with Loni, like she understood everything about their years and years of a long relationship, but secretly it worried her a little. “Maybe I can rustle up Auggie to help with the move this weekend,” she murmured, her voice muffled against the skin of his chest.

He leaned down and looked at her. She glanced up. “What?”

For an answer he kissed her on the lips. The kiss lingered and when he finally pulled back, he asked, “You won’t back out?”

“ No.”

“Cross your heart, hope to die?”

A shiver slid down her bare back and Jake pulled her in closer. “Just cross my heart,” she said.

“Any more interest in the Johnson file?”

“Tomorrow, bucko.”

“Shucks.”

Stefan was hanging up his coat in the back of Mrs. Runderfeld’s—Mrs. Run, to the kids—classroom where he was in the middle of a six-week training cycle when there was a knock on the open doorway. That bitch from the office, Lazenby’s suck-up gopher, stuck her head inside.

“Mr. Harmak, could you come to the office, please?” she asked.

The second-graders were still coming in off the playground from the first bell, rushing to their seats, talking and bustling their way to their desks.

Stefan’s heart seized up. “What for?” he asked.

“Principal Lazenby wants to see you.” She ducked out and disappeared.

Mrs. Run had been talking to a kid’s mother, a scatterbrained blonde with implants whose son ran in a pack of snotty little shits, entitled monsters with too much money and no discipline. Now, the teacher turned and lifted her brows to Stefan. So damn self-righteous he wanted to smack her.

“She probably wants to make sure you’re over that flu,” she said.

Stefan left the room, wading through the line of kids arrowing into the room. There was little Melissa with her sweet smile and little green dress. She was the best behaved of the girls, kind of forgotten in the back of the room. He tried to help her whenever he could.

Lazenby’s office was toward the front of the building in a group of rooms behind the visitors counter. His heart was knocking as he entered the administration area and went to her office. When he looked inside, she wasn’t there.

“Go on in. She’ll be right back,” Maryanne said. Her chair was right behind the counter and she greeted parents and kids by name.

She was a suck-up gopher, too.

He seated himself in one of the chairs opposite Lazenby’s desk and anxiously waited for the middle-aged hard-ass bitch to return. Maybe it was like Runderfeld said and they were worried he would send another round of the flu through the school. They didn’t know it was his excuse for being out the day before.

Lazenby bustled in. She was about five two with big breasts atop a barrel-shaped body, short, gray hair, and a pair of reading glasses perpetually on her nose. She shut the door behind her as she said, “Hi, Stefan. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he said.

She nodded as she took her seat behind her desk. “You called in with the flu yesterday about ten-thirty.”

“Sorry. I kept thinking I would make it in.” His palms were sweating. He wasn’t even sure why he was keeping up the lie. Though he’d hoped he wouldn’t be found out, he’d caught the late news last night, and though they hadn’t named him, there was speculation all over the place that whoever had tied the teacher up at Twin Oaks had also killed a postman earlier in the year. Stefan vaguely remembered the incident. He hadn’t once thought about it when he was tied up, and it wouldn’t have come to him at all if he hadn’t seen it on the news.

Jesus. Who was that bitch? What did she want? At least she hadn’t killed him like the postman, but she’d sure as hell taken his van, and his mother was all over him about that one!

“You should have told September that the psycho who did this to you took your van!” she’d declared as soon as they were alone.

“I’ll tell her,” he’d snarled back. “It’s just so fucking humiliating.”

“Language, Stefan,” she’d responded, to which he’d started hysterically laughing and couldn’t stop.

Amy Lazenby adjusted her glasses and said, “When I got here yesterday morning, the Laurelton police told me that a man was drugged and tied to one of our basketball hoops. Later, a detective called and said it was you.”

September!
Goddamned do-gooder! “I was sick,” he defended himself. “After being left there all night . . .” The catch in his voice was very real.

“Do you think you should be here today?” she asked.

“Maybe not.” He grabbed onto the thought as if it were a lifeline. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be home, locked in his room.

“I’ve already taken a number of calls from newspeople. This is a media storm, Stefan, and I’d like to contain it as much as possible.”

Stefan made an inadvertent sound of fear.

“Are you all right?” she asked, sounding sincere, but he knew better than to trust anyone. They were all on the other side.

No one had mentioned the sign yet, the one he’d been forced to write. But it was coming. The news was already talking about what the postman had around his neck:
I MUST PAY FOR WHAT I’VE DONE
. It was a goddamned nightmare!

“I feel sick,” he said, his stomach roiling, and then he broke down and started crying. He covered his face with his hands and bent double.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, sounding surprisingly kind, and that got Stefan wailing even more. He nodded behind his hands, and she said, “I’ll get someone to take you.”

He couldn’t make himself drop his hands from his face. He wanted to disappear forever. That bitch. That fucking bitch. He was going to track her down and kill her. How could she do this to him? It wasn’t fair. It just
wasn’t fair!

 

 

September put a second call in to her brother on her lunch break. She’d left him a message earlier and she’d tried texting him as well. When his voice mail answered again, she clicked off and sent another text: Need some muscle this weekend to help move my stuff to Jake’s. You available?

She was walking back to her desk when her cell phone rang in her hand. “About time,” she said aloud, lifting it up to see who was calling. But the number on the screen wasn’t Auggie’s and there was no name. “Hello,” she answered at the same moment she realized why the number was so familiar: it was Mrs. Ballonni’s.

“Is this . . . the detective who left a message yesterday?” Janet Ballonni asked, slowly picking her words.

“Yes, it is. I’m Detective Rafferty. I was wondering if I could talk to you about your husband.”

“I already talked to that other woman detective. Twice,” she stated flatly.

“I know, but we’re investigating a new angle now. Would it be possible to meet with you and go over the case in person? At your house, or work?”

“I don’t have a job anymore. Company downsized and I got laid off. Life’s a bitch and then you die, right?” she added bitterly. “I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you that I didn’t tell Detective Chubb or that other one.”

“Detective Sandler.”

“Yeah, her.” She sniffed. “I said the same thing to both of them.”

“I understand, but this new angle may help us in discovering who killed your husband. Would it be possible for me to come by today?”

“Oh . . . no . . . not today.”

“Tomorrow?”

She sighed heavily, as if weighing her options, then said grudgingly, “Okay, tomorrow. You can come by the house in the afternoon. I’ve got Pilates in the morning. But make it early,” she added suddenly, as if she’d just thought of something. “Twelve or one. No later.”

“How about one?” September was inwardly jubilant that she’d at least capitulated.

“No later,” she warned again.

“I’ll be there right at one tomorrow.”

Wes was on the phone when she hung up, and he signaled with his hand that he wanted to talk to her. George was staring into his computer. He’d been taxed with calling the houses nearest Foxglove Park and finding out if any of the neighbors had seen anything that would give them a clue into the name of the female victim left in the park.

Wes said, “All right,” and hung up the phone. “Harmak’s name’s out there now. Bound to happen. I talked to Amy Lazenby, the principal, and either it went from there or somebody from the hospital or EMTs, whatever. Not that it’s a secret, but it puts you one step closer to Pauline Kirby.”

“I can handle her. I’ve got a face-to-face with Janet Ballonni tomorrow. Can you go?”

“What time?”

“One.”

“Can you make it earlier? I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.” He lifted his hands and dropped them in frustration.

“She was pretty specific about the afternoon.”

“Okay, well, then it’s George.”

Fat chance,
September thought.

They both looked over at Thompkins. As if sensing their perusal, George glanced back at them, frowned, and then turned his attention to his computer screen. Ideally, the detectives investigated cases with their partners, but with all the budget cuts these were not ideal times. No one had assigned partners.

“I’m getting ready to track down your stepbrother and see if I can get anything else out of him,” Wes added.

“Ex-stepbrother,” September said automatically. “I’d go with you if D’Annibal would allow it.”

Wes shook his head. “We’re going to have to pry George out of that chair.”

“Good luck with that.”

 

 

Lucky drove Mr. Blue’s van past the two-story daylight basement house where she’d followed Stefan Harmak home several weeks earlier. She circled the neighborhood and then parked down the street, wishing she had wheels that were less distinguishable. Once upon a time, when she’d first begun her mission, she’d appropriated vehicles from Carl’s Hunk o’ Junks near Seaside on a regular basis. But after nearly getting caught, and losing her life strapped to the pyre, she’d simply burrowed in at Mr. Blue’s and accepted his goodwill, which included only the truck for transportation.

She had to make do with what she had.

Easing out of the vehicle, she glanced up and down the tree-lined street. The one advantage was the trees were evergreens, which were mostly overgrown, and the neighborhood didn’t have curbs and sidewalks. It was one of those areas where the yards just meandered into dirt and gravel and then the blacktopped street, and the vegetation screened her progress somewhat as she walked down the road. The disadvantage was she had to walk on the street itself, but there was very little traffic in the middle of the day.

Harmak’s house—where he lived with his mother, she’d learned later—was obscured by a rampant laurel hedge that made approaching it easier. She walked right by it, surreptitiously glancing down the driveway—the only view past the laurels to the house—seeing the way the ground sloped off the back, creating the lower level.

If she could get behind the house, it looked like the laurel hedge did not circle the back. If she came at night, she could approach from the rear, but she would have to move along the edge of one of the neighboring properties.

She walked past the house that lay to the east of Harmak’s and realized there were very few windows on the side of the house closest to Stefan’s. In dark clothes, she could probably sneak down the line of laurels on their side of the hedge and then come up behind Harmak’s.

And then what? she asked herself. Two people lived at the residence. She had no quarrel with Harmak’s mother. Hmm . . .

She took a circuitous route back to Mr. Blue’s truck, climbed behind the wheel and drove away, careful not to go by Harmak’s house again. She purposely wound through the neighborhood until she found where she’d left his van, still undisturbed, and then she headed away.

The first time she’d picked up on Stefan was at the same mall where she’d hit him with the stun gun, immobilized him, and then driven him to the elementary school. She’d been at the mall on a mission for Mr. Blue, picking up various supplies. Normally she made her forays into Seaside or some of the other beach communities, and when she did she wore a lot of makeup—darkening her eyes or covering them with shaded lenses if it was sunny, throwing on lipstick and blush with a heavy hand, making Ani look more like a caricature of herself than the real thing, so that when she went out as herself she would be less easy to identify. But on that particular day she’d gone as herself, Ani Loman, mostly known as Lucky, and had headed east toward Portland, passing by the town of Quarry, feeling the shiver that invariably slid down her back at the remembrance of her near-death experience each time she did, heading into the town of Laurelton. She’d still planned to go all the way to Portland but she’d taken a side trip to the mall.

She’d walked past Harmak and felt that aura, that god-awful sensation, and she’d just kept on walking rather than have him get a look at her. She turned into a dress shop, stopped, then walked to the edge of the door and peered out. Harmak was just turning his face away from her, so maybe his gaze had followed her. She wasn’t sure. But whatever the case, he wasn’t looking at her any longer and she was bound and determined to find out who he was.

She watched him as he wandered the mall, staying far behind in case he should see her, but he never did. She observed him watching the shoppers, the girls that strolled by in flocks. His eyes betrayed him. He liked them young.

When he finally left the mall, she followed after him, watching as he climbed into a white van. Mr. Blue’s truck was not all that far away, so she went to it and climbed inside. She had a pair of binoculars in the glove box and she pulled them out and leaned back and down in her seat until she could watch him with just the two eyes of the binoculars visible, though it was from far enough away and at an angle so that she was fairly certain he couldn’t see her.

An hour went by and then a group of young tweens stepped out of the mall, the girls giggling and laughing and teasing with several boys. They moved through the crowd in a loose pack and Lucky could see the way Harmak’s attention zeroed in, laserlike, on the youngest-looking girl, whose body hadn’t made the leap into womanhood. As they all disappeared together, she also saw the frustration and longing on his face. Something about it made her feel better because she believed he hadn’t acted on his feelings yet.

And she was bound and determined to stop him before he did.

When he drove away, she followed at a distance, all thoughts of shopping for Mr. Blue emptying from her brain. She watched him turn at the laurel hedge and she drove past as he was climbing from his van, which he’d parked in the driveway that ran alongside the house. He glanced her way, but she was pretty sure only the back of the truck was visible to him in the deepening twilight. Nevertheless, she was electrified with the sensation of his lust. It came to her in a pulsating wave.