Nowhere to Run (20 page)

Read Nowhere to Run Online

Authors: Nancy Bush

Tags: #General, #Fiction

BOOK: Nowhere to Run
4.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Um . . .” Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t . . . Martin, I think.”
“I’m gonna go find out what happened,” he answered, already moving, already planning.
“I’m going with you.”
“Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll get some more information and I’ll bring back some soup.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” she said, swallowing hard.
He’d been halfway out of the room, but now he crossed back to the bed. Looking down at her, he said tautly, “I’ll be back. I promise. Do you believe me?”
She hesitated. “Yes. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but yes, I believe you.”
“Stay put. Try to relax. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“An hour . . .”
“Or so,” he said. “Don’t panic. Trust me.”
She nodded, and he was gone.
He phoned the lieutenant as soon as he was out of view of the house. D’Annibal answered on the second ring, as if he were waiting for his call, which he probably was.
“Where the hell are you, Rafferty?” D’Annibal demanded as an intro.
Auggie shot back, “What happened to this Trask Martin? Who’s on that? He’s Liv Dugan’s neighbor.”
“We know that. Did she tell you his name?” he asked suspiciously. “We didn’t release it.”
“Yeah, she told me. She nearly fainted when she saw that he’d been gunned down!”
“You know, the only reason we’re not chasing her down like a dog is because supposedly she’s been with you,” he returned levelly.
“She
has
been with me. Ever since yesterday afternoon.”
“How the hell did that happen?”
Auggie thought about how Liv had climbed into his Jeep and held him at gunpoint and decided some things were better left unsaid. “We struck up a conversation and one thing led to another.”
A hesitation, then, he managed to laugh faintly. “You always get the women.”
“It isn’t like that.”
Yet
, he thought. It isn’t like that
yet
. “I haven’t told her who I am, but she’s scared, and she thinks the other Zuma shootings were incidental, in that she thinks the killer was after her.”
“Why?”
“Mostly because of her past . . .” Auggie gave him an abbreviated rundown of Liv’s mother’s death and the package that was sent, and finished with, “I don’t know if she’s right, but I want to follow this through. Even if it doesn’t pan out with the Zuma shootings, there’s something there.”
“What about the neighbor?”
“She was sick when she saw it on the news. She believes his shooting has to do with her, too, but doesn’t know why. That’s why I’m sticking close to her. There’s a connection there. Has to be.”
The lieutenant humphed his agreement. “Nine’s on the case,” he said, answering one of Auggie’s earlier questions.
“My sister?” He stared through the windshield, aware of a cop car ahead. “Hang on,” he said, pulling the phone from his ear. He didn’t want to be pulled over for using a cell phone while driving and he didn’t have Bluetooth, or an ear bud with him.
Nine was the detective on the Trask Martin homicide?
Nine?
The deli was on his left and he pulled over and into a spot. “You still there?” he asked the lieutenant.
“Yeah. How soon can you bring Dugan in?”
“Uh . . . She’s got some trust issues, with the police. It’ll happen. Just give me a little time. Believe me, she had nothing to do with Martin’s death. She was with me the whole time.” An eely feeling slid down his back.
But she was gone for a while last night. She went to see her brother.
“Talk to your sister,” D’ Annibal said. “She can give you the particulars about the Martin homicide. Don’t take too long. I want Dugan brought in by Monday.”
“Okay. Oh, and have someone look into the serial strangler who was around the Rock Springs area about twenty years ago.”
“I remember that case,” D’Annibal answered. “What’s that got to do with this?”
“I don’t know. Nothing maybe. Olivia Dugan’s from that area.”
“All right. Monday,” the lieutenant reminded him as he hung up.
Auggie sat for a moment, staring through the windshield.
But Liv didn’t fake that reaction to Martin’s death. That was real,
he reminded himself
.
Worry was scratching at his brain. He knew Liv wasn’t the Zuma shooter. Knew she wasn’t . . . But she’d taken her gun with her when she’d gone to see her brother, so she could have stopped by her apartment.
But no. It just
wasn’t
true. Couldn’t be. She was too careful and responsible and nice.
And he liked her.
He punched in the number to his sister’s cell. “Well, good God,” Nine greeted him with when the connection was made. “How’re you doin’, big bro? What’s been happening in your life? Having a little R&R with one of our suspects?”
“Not one of your suspects. Maybe a person of interest. How’re you doin’, yourself?”
“Okay.” She sounded wary.
“I
am
with Olivia Dugan,” he admitted. “I told D’Annibal about it.”
“And how did that come about?” Like D’Annibal before her, he gave her a quick recap of how he’d come to be with Liv. She listened silently and when he finished, she said, “So, you’re bringing her in.”
“Not quite yet. I’ve left out the part that I’m a detective.”
“Oh, peachy. Why? No, I don’t even want to know. Just tell her, and let’s get her down here for a statement. The victim died at her doorstep, after all. I interviewed Martin’s girlfriend, Jo. She thinks we oughtta be looking at Olivia Dugan.”
“Any particular reason for that, other than that they’re neighbors.”
“Not as far as I can tell.” September filled him in on what she’d learned about the murder of Trask Burcher Martin, which wasn’t a helluva lot at this point.
“What kind of gun was used in the killing?” Auggie asked. He tried to keep his voice on the edge of disinterest even though he was keyed to the answer.
But his sister knew him too well. “Why?”
“September . . .” he said on a long-suffering sigh. “Just tell me.”
“A Glock.”
Thank you, God.
He closed his eyes and exhaled. Liv had a .38. That cleared her, unless she possessed a second gun, which was about as likely as igloos in Florida.
“Auggie?”
“I gotta go. D’Annibal told me to bring her in by Monday. I’ll do that.”
“Why can’t you bring her in now?”
“I love you, too,” he said.
“Don’t play with me. You’ve got to tell her who you are!”
“You’re breaking up. Gotta go.”
“Liar!”
He clicked off. When she rang back, he ignored the call. Pocketing his cell, he climbed out of the car . . . and remembered his wallet beneath his seat. He hadn’t asked Liv for money, and now how was he going to explain being able to purchase the soup?
Maybe he should just tell her who he was. What would she do? What
could
she do?
Peeling back the tape that held his wallet to the underside of the driver’s seat, he pulled it out and extracted a twenty, then put it back in place. He went inside and placed a to-go order for two bowls of chicken tortilla soup. A young woman served it into cardboard containers with plastic lids and placed them into a bag along with hunks of baguette. Auggie felt his mouth water as he headed back to the Jeep and then drove home.
At the house, he parked the Jeep and yanked down the garage door. He slipped the key into the lock of the back door, twisted, gently pushed it open and called softly, “Lucy, I’m home . . .” into the darkened interior.
She appeared like a wraith, standing at the edge of the kitchen in her jeans and a light top, the color indiscernible in the blackness of the room.
“Can I turn on a light?” he asked.
“Do you have to?” She sounded uncertain.
“Are we hiding? I mean, more than before?”
“I thought maybe . . . you wouldn’t return.”
He flipped the switch and they blinked at each other. He realized her shirt was light pink and she had a black pullover in hand. Beside her was her backpack, zipped up and standing at the ready. The package was nowhere in sight. “You were leaving,” he said.
“Thinking about it.”
“Ye of little faith. Here.” He set the bag of food on the table and pulled out the containers of soup. The scent of chili and tomato was enough to send his salivary glands into overdrive once again. There were plastic soupspoons inside and he handed one to Liv.
For a moment she hesitated, then said, “Did you—learn anything about Trask?”
“A few things. Sit down and eat. We’ll talk afterwards.”
 
 
Fifteen minutes later they were still at the table, but sated and quiet. Liv had been so certain he’d left her that she’d gone through seven levels of hell debating what to do next. Now, she felt weak and less sure of herself, all her energy used up. Trask was dead, and she didn’t know if she had the strength to go on. It was all happening too fast and she couldn’t put the pieces together in any meaningful way. Her head was loaded with information, none of which made sense.
She looked into the bottom of her empty soup container. “This was really good.”
“I know. Sometimes I’ve gone there every night for a week.”
Her lips tightened. “How did you pay for the soup?” she asked carefully.
He didn’t miss a beat. “I stole from your purse.”
“You couldn’t have. It was in my backpack.”
He grinned, then, looking so boyish and unrepentant that she was afraid to hold his gaze, afraid what he would see in her face. “Okay, I scrounged some money out of my car. No easy trick. Luckily there was a bunch of change in the glove box.”
She hadn’t noticed any extra cash when she’d popped it open, but she hadn’t looked all that closely, either. She’d been so undone that he’d lied to her about the car charger.
And also he’d lied about having an ex-wife.
“Just how much of what comes out of your mouth is the truth?” she asked.
Chapter 13
For a moment she thought he was going to pretend offense, but then his gaze narrowed a bit and he inclined his head. “About 92 percent.”
“So, how am I to know when we’re in the other 8 percent?”
To her shock he reached over and covered her hand with his. The heat of his skin sent a prickle of warning up her arm. Dangerous. He was dangerous. To her.
“Right now, it’s all about truth,” he told her, sounding so serious that she wanted to jerk her hand free of his and wrap her arms around her torso for protection. “I need to talk to you about your neighbor. Trask Martin.”
“You found out what happened to him. Who did you talk to?”
“There was a newspaper left at the deli, and I read what was there. Not much more than what we heard on the news. But I do believe his death, the timing of his death, has to do with you.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “I want you to tell me exactly what happened between you and him. He saw the photograph. Who else knew he saw it? His girlfriend?”
She carefully withdrew her hand. “No, she wasn’t there. No one else knew.” She thought back to Trask, feeling a weight on her heart. Another weight, along with the one already in place for Aaron. After a moment, she told him, “Trask did say something to me.”
“What?”
“After I saw Hague, I stopped by his apartment Thursday night, and we had drinks with Jo and then he walked me back to my place. He told me he’d seen someone outside my door, kind of lurking, I think. It gave me a jolt.”
“Did he talk to the guy?” Auggie asked, watching her closely.
“No. The guy took off when he said something to him.”
“What’d he look like?”
“He was wearing a hoodie, so Trask thought he might be young, but he really couldn’t tell how old he was. The guy just turned away and Trask watched him, I guess. Anyway he left in a truck . . . a gray GMC. 2005. Trask said he noticed, because he used to have one just like it.”
“When was this?”
“Sometime in the last couple weeks?”
“Before you got the package from your mother?”
“Yeah . . . I guess so.” Liv stirred, uncomfortable, and got to her feet. “It just made me feel, again, like I was right: someone’s following me.”
Auggie also stood up, clearly rolling that over in his mind. “Maybe that’s how he learned about the package, because he was keeping close tabs on you.”
“I got it at work. I don’t know how he could possibly know. It was always in my bag. Even the people that worked there didn’t know about it, except Paul de Fore, and he never saw what was in it.”
“What about when Trask saw the photos? You said no one else was around. Could there have been someone? Someone you didn’t notice?”
Liv thought back to when Trask stopped by her apartment unannounced. “The door was open for a few minutes. If someone was there, they might have heard him say something about the photos? But there was no one on the balcony when Trask left. I just don’t see how.”
“Somebody killed him, and if it has to do with you, it probably has to do with the package, too. And that may, or may not, have to do with the Zuma killings. But there’s some connection to you.”
She was happy to have an ally. Happy and surprised. She knew she should ask him more questions about himself; something just wasn’t ringing true. But she almost didn’t care. It was just such a relief to have someone
listening
to her. “What now?” she said into the growing silence where she could tell he was thinking hard.
“You don’t have a cell phone.” He said it as a fact.
“No.”
“You’re twenty-five. I can’t name you one other twenty-five-year-old I’ve met in the last few years who doesn’t have a cell phone.” He paused, then added, “I’m guessing it’s another way to keep the bogeyman from finding you.”
“I do have a land line,” she pointed out.
He half-smiled. “You and everybody else over fifty.”
“That’s . . . not accurate.”
“Close enough, but okay, we’ll use my phone.”
“Who are we gonna call?”
“Your doctor. The one who treated you at Hathaway House.”
“Dr. Yancy . . .”
He nodded. “Maybe she can remember the zombie doctor, and then you won’t have to go through all those bureaucratic hoops.”
“I don’t know where she is,” Liv protested.
“I can check the white pages on my phone. What do you know about Dr. Yancy?”
“Nothing really.”
“No idea where she lived?”
“Somewhere in the Portland area? Not that far from Hathaway House, I think. She mentioned something once.”
He clicked a few buttons, scrolled around a bit, waited a few minutes, then said, “There are about four Yancys listed with a ‘y’ ending, and another three, with an ‘ey’ ending.”
“There’s no ‘e’,” she said.
“Okay, then, how about Buzz Yancy?”
“She wasn’t married.”
“What’s her first name? There are some initials listed for first names here. That’s usually women.”
Liv pictured the slim, middle-aged woman with the dark hair and solemn eyes. Dr. Yancy wore reading glasses, which she had a tendency to set down on her desk and pick up with some regularity, even when she didn’t put them on. “Her first name was Fern. I remember thinking it was a plant. There was a notepad on her desk with initials. FSY. I don’t think I ever knew what the S was for.”
“There’s one F. Yancy listed.”
Liv felt her pulse start to beat hard. “Well, that’s probably her, don’t you think?”
“One way to find out . . .” He dialed the number, then handed Liv the phone.
 
 
Auggie’s stomach muscles were tight. He’d put his phone in her hand and there was a chance, even though she wasn’t familiar with cells, that something could give away his deception. September could call back, for Chrissake. He was pushing it, but there it was.
“It’s just ringing,” she said after a tense moment. “If it goes to voice mail, I can’t tell her who I am. People are looking for me.”
“Then name someone else from that time you were there. Use another girl’s name. Say you’re her.”
“I—maybe Talia . . . O’Conner.”
Auggie nodded encouragingly. A moment later Liv stumbled through the voice mail giving Talia’s name while Auggie quietly whispered his cell number in her ear and she repeated the digits into the phone.
After she hung up she handed Auggie back the cell, which he tucked into a pocket. Then they just looked at each other.
“You’re good at this,” she observed.
“Eight percent of the time,” he answered. Then, “What about your birth certificate?”
“What about it?”
“Why was it in the package?”
Liv cocked her head and frowned. “I have no idea. It just listed my birth parents, but I always knew I was adopted.”
“Well, maybe your mother just wanted you to have it,” Auggie posed, “or maybe there’s something else there. Some other meaning. She had a purpose in keeping these things together, setting it up for you to receive them at twenty-five.”
“You’re thinking she was getting ready to take her own life,” Liv said tiredly, looking away.
“Nope. I’m going with your theory that something else happened. Maybe something that set up what happened at Zuma. Or, maybe something your mother knew or suspected that put her in danger. She sent this to you, just in case. Your brother didn’t get anything, did he?” he asked as an afterthought.
“Not that I know of.”
He shrugged. “You were the oldest.”
“I was adopted and Hague’s theirs.”
Auggie gave her a long look. “Now there’s a difference we haven’t explored. Your mother put your birth certificate in the package, and not your brother’s. So, who are your birth parents?”
“I don’t know them. My father never mentioned them, so I doubt he knows who they are,” Liv said.
“Let’s look at that birth certificate again.”
“It’s the hospital certificate,” Liv said, as she dug into her backpack, pulled out the package and slid the contents onto the table once again. “The one with the impressions of my feet. My parents’ names are written on it.”
“How did your adoptive mother get this?” Auggie wondered aloud, picking it up. “Father, Everett LeBlanc. Mother, Patricia LeBlanc.”
Liv took the paper from him. “Malone General Hospital. The closest one to Rock Springs.”
“So, maybe your mother knew the LeBlancs,” Auggie hazarded a guess. He pulled out his cell and tried the white pages for Rock Springs and some of the neighboring towns. “There’s an Everett LeBlanc in Malone,” he said.
Liv inhaled and exhaled, her eyes huge. “Okay.”
“Want to call?”
“Who should I say I am this time? If I tell them Olivia Dugan, they could know I’m their daughter. And even if they don’t, my name’s been all over the news the last couple days.”
“We don’t know what they know,” Auggie said. “I’d be honest but a little careful. Tell them you’re Liv Dugan, not Olivia, just in case they’ve been listening to the news. Say you’re looking for the Everett and Patricia LeBlanc who gave up a girl baby for adoption twenty-five years ago.”
He punched in the numbers and handed her the phone again. She listened as it rang and rang and then left a voice mail almost verbatim to what Auggie had told her. Auggie quietly repeated his cell number and she echoed it into the receiver. She handed him back the cell and he clicked off.
“Now what?” she asked.
“We wait.”
 
 
September got the call from Channel Seven just after five-thirty. Luckily, it wasn’t Pauline Kirby but an underling, trying to find out information, and since there was really nothing new to report, their conversation was over in a few minutes. When she was off the phone, September assessed her feelings about the whole thing and decided she hadn’t liked being asked question after question by someone who was basically reading a script and hurrying her through the answers. She filed that aspect of the job under the heading of Try To Avoid.
It was getting later and she fooled around at her desk until nearly seven before she finally left. She would have stayed on, for lack of anything better to do with her time, but perversely she didn’t want her coworkers to think she was a loser without any social life. It wasn’t like she hadn’t dated. She just hadn’t dated in a while . . . a very long while.
She’d texted Auggie numerous times since his abrupt phone line cutoff. So far he’d been singularly unwilling to respond. How like him to play the cowboy and just run off with the investigation anyway he liked.
Her
investigation. Well, hers and Gretchen’s. She kinda wished Wes Pelligree were a part of it, too, but he was busy with other things, cases that were wrapping up and a court appearance where he was a witness for the prosecution against a man who’d faked his own death for the insurance money, which his wife then promptly absconded with and he’d run her down and shot her and now they were both having separate trials and heading toward prison terms.
On her way out she passed Wes’s empty desk and noticed the picture of Sheila Dempsey—something from her high school days, September guessed—which was propped up against his desk lamp. Dark-haired, in her thirties, slim and attractive, Sheila’s body had been found in a field just outside the city limits, in Winslow County, though her place of residence was an apartment complex not all that far from the station. She’d been strangled and the flesh on her torso had been scored with lines that resembled letters, but maybe weren’t. It wasn’t Wes’s case, it was county’s, but he’d met her once at a bar sometime recently and her death bothered him.
Or, at least that was the word around the office. Wes hadn’t said anything about her himself, but September had kept her ears open on the subject and had queried George about it a bit, at least until George had given her a look that said, “What the hell is it to you?”
There was no way September was going to admit she had a mild attraction to Wes, especially since he was deeply invested in his own relationship with a woman from his days as an athlete at a junior college. Their relationship was solid; that was fact. So, September kept her case of “the warms” to herself.
 
 
Liv lay on the couch in the darkness, staring at the ceiling once more. She moved onto her side and punched up the pillow, squeezing her eyes closed. Auggie was back in the bedroom and they were waiting for morning. Maybe someone would call them back.
There’d been an awkward moment or two when neither of them knew what to do. Auggie had finally said he was going to bed, but he was taking a shower first. Liv thought that sounded like heaven, but was too uneasy to strip off her clothes and spend a few moments naked with him around. Maybe in the morrow.

Other books

Lady Outlaw by Stacy Henrie
Street Game by Christine Feehan
Red Feather Filly by Terri Farley
DarklyEverAfter by Allistar Parker