The Many (15 page)

2

Dawn stayed with Rosaline and Pete immediately after her mother’s death. She didn't remember agreeing to the move – she just found herself in Rosaline's car one morning, driving up to Seattle. Dawn was taken to psychologists, counselors, even Rosaline and Pete’s geriatric priest. They were all worried about her because she wasn't crying, or eating, or speaking much beyond yes and no. But what did they expect her to say? I'm upset? I'm struggling to keep it together? Oh, and by the way, where were you fucking people when I really needed your help? When you could’ve done something useful?

At the funeral in Portland, Dawn finally broke her silence. She wasn't expected to say anything, but she stepped forward after the minister finished her politically charged eulogy, annoyed that she'd painted Isobel as a brave lesbian first and mother second. Dawn didn't have a speech prepared so she said the first thing that popped into her head – the Dixie Chicks’ “Wide Open Spaces.” She wasn’t the best singer so she simply recited the lyrics to the first verse and chorus. The minister looked uncomfortable, but Dawn knew the people who cared about her mom would get it. Tears started flowing. Dawn wasn’t looking for a reaction, but she felt better for making the funeral personal. Isobel would’ve appreciated it.

Once the initial numbness had worn off, Dawn quickly filled with anger. She declined Rosaline's invitation to move to Seattle permanently, saying Isobel would've wanted her to stay in the house. It was partly true – Isobel had loved that house – but Dawn's strongest motivation was vengeance. She wasn't going to let Maxine get away with killing her mother. She didn't care if it took her the rest of her life and then some, she was going to make that bitch pay. 

Money was no longer an issue. Isobel had a small life insurance policy that the company reluctantly paid out when Rosaline's lawyer put pressure on them. With eighty-five grand in her bank account, Dawn reckoned she had two years of mortgage payments and basic living expenses covered. Meaning she had two years to work full-time on bringing Maxine down.

The incentive was there, but on the first morning she sat down at her computer, she was struck by a feeling of helplessness. Revenge was much easier to embrace as a concept than to actually achieve. Short of buying a gun and shooting Maxine, she didn't know how to proceed. Her leads with the police and the dating site had been exhausted; there were no new angles to pursue. And if revenge was off the menu, what did she have left?

After skimming the internet for a while, she took a taxi across town and paid $1,600 cash for the mud-brown Civic she’d planned to buy a few weeks earlier. Then she went to the mall and bought the Demonia boots she'd been ogling for ages, along with a couple of tank tops, a black scarf and a new pair of black jeans. Then she drove back to her lonely house and flopped on the sofa, feeling tired and useless and moody. She watched TV deep into the night, becoming steadily more agitated.

Over the next two days, Dawn spent as much time out of the house as possible. She drove into the city and wandered slowly through museums and art galleries, camped out at the library to read books about dead musicians, went to the multiplex to see films she could barely recall afterwards. She didn’t care what she was doing as long as there were people around and her mind was distracted.

On her third night alone, Dawn was microwaving a frozen pizza for dinner when the landline rang. She answered with a sigh, thinking Rosaline was checking up on her.

“Hello, is this Dawn Flint?” a man asked.

“Who is this?” Dawn said.

“You don't know me, but my name is Karl Morgan. Detective McElroy suggested I get in contact with you.”

“Okay,” Dawn said, encouraged by the caller’s friendly, youthful voice.

“This is going to sound strange, but my sister committed suicide last month, and I think she might've had a similar experience to your mother. She was a happy, normal person until she went on an online date.”

Dawn’s pulse began to quicken. “Your sister dated Maxine?”

“No, Stacey was straight. She dated an eye doctor called Adam Reynolds. But Dr. Reynolds and Maxine are connected.”

“Connected how?”

“It's hard to explain over the phone. Can we talk in person?”

Dawn frowned, her defenses up. What if Maxine was using Karl Morgan to lure her out? Maybe Maxine still considered her a threat, and she wanted to tie up loose ends. On the other hand, if Karl was on the level, and he’d been through a similar experience, she definitely wanted to hear about it. And she could easily check Karl’s background with Detective McElroy.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess we could meet.”

“Great. How about I come to your place? I’d invite you over to mine, but it’s…”

“–No,” she said firmly. “I’ll meet you at Addict, ten-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Addict?”

“It’s a coffee shop downtown.”

“Okay, sure. I can look that up. But how will I recognize you?”

Dawn thought for a moment. “I wear a lot of black.”

After hanging up, Dawn returned to the kitchen to check on her pizza. As she waited for the final seconds to count down, she questioned why she suddenly felt reenergized, like there was more air in her lungs. It wasn’t like her situation had changed. Isobel was still dead. She was still heating up frozen pizza for one.

The reason hit her just as the microwave pinged. The phone call with Karl had brought her hope.

The hope that she wasn’t alone.

3

Detective McElroy thought he knew downtown Portland like the back of his hand, but he walked past the battered metal door twice before he realized it was the entrance to Nikki’s. Typical hipster joint, he thought dryly. If he hadn’t looked up the address online, he wouldn’t have known it existed.

The dusky, warehouse-style bar was up a narrow staircase on the second floor. Dark wood paneling, soft candle lighting, and secluded booth tables against the flickering walls. A Lorde track was playing from an old fashioned jukebox. McElroy was secretly pleased he recognized the artist. Maybe he wasn’t as out-of-touch with popular culture as he thought.

At four-thirty on a Monday afternoon, the booths were empty. The only patrons were seated up at the long, copper-topped bar. Four women – two young, two older. One of the middle-aged women burped loudly, and her friend slapped her hard on the back in mock punishment. They both laughed.

McElroy was a touch embarrassed he hadn’t clicked straight away. No wonder he’d never heard of Nikki’s.

There was only one bartender on duty – a pretty young thing with short dark hair and a sleeveless black top.
Lila Hewitson
.

McElroy had been waiting all day to follow up leads in the Isobel Flint case. He couldn’t make inquiries back at the station, not with a dozen cops looking over his shoulder, so he’d busied himself with routine paperwork, pretending to have heeded Vance’s warning. But there was no way he was letting go. McElroy knew he’d stumbled on something big – something even bigger than a serial rape case. Vance’s blunt interference all but confirmed it.

Getting Karl Morgan and Dawn Flint to meet was the first step. They could compare notes on their deceased relatives, and McElroy was betting there’d be plenty of similarities. In the meantime, McElroy planned to do a little digging on Maxine. He’d bullied the Sweet Violets’ administrator into giving up Maxine’s dating history, and apart from Isobel, Lila Hewitson was the only other name on the list.

He went up to the bar, where Lila was cleaning glasses. The burping woman noticed him first. She elbowed her friend, and they both stared at him shamelessly, their lips curling in amusement.

“Woah, I like my girls butch, but honey, you are too much,” the burper said in a thick Southern accent.

They laughed at him, and McElroy nodded in good humor. The situation called for a laid-back approach, otherwise Lila would probably clam up. He’d keep the badge in his pocket for as long as possible. Besides, he really was thirsty.

“Bourbon,” he said, sliding into a stool at the opposite end of the bar from the four women. They were all eyeballing him now, but only one showed genuine animosity. She looked about twenty and her blunt features were fixed in judgment. Daddy issues, McElroy guessed.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?” Lila asked coolly, not rushing to pour his drink. She had a tiny waist and nice, firm breasts. Barbed-wire tattoos circled her slender biceps. McElroy imagined there was a ton of strength behind her small frame.

“One hundred percent,” he confirmed.

She shrugged and poured a decent-sized shot, watching him closely. McElroy drank it in a gulp and nodded for another.

“You in a hurry?” she said, filling his glass.

He shook his head. “Nah, just feeling on edge. I’m not feeling the love here.”

“Really?” she said with a sarcastic smile.

“Hey, Max!” yelled the burping woman from the opposite end of the bar. “Is that your name, Max?”

“No. It’s Walt.”

“Ha! I knew it. Guys like you always have dog’s names.”

McElroy let the insult wash over him. Surprisingly, Lila stood up for him. “Go easy, Shelly. Walt here isn’t making any trouble. He’ll be on his way soon.” She turned back to him and lifted an eyebrow. “You will be on your way soon, right?”

“Yeah, well before rush hour.” He downed the second shot and blinked slowly, feeling the sweet alcohol fill his head. He would’ve liked to settle in for the afternoon, talking to the pretty-but-unattainable Lila, but he had a job to do. And McElroy knew his job tended to suffer after about shot number four.

He nodded for another drink, thinking he still had one up his sleeve. Lila was on the same wavelength. “Last one, okay?” she warned.

“Gotcha. Actually, Lila, I came to talk to you.”

The warmth left her eyes. “You’re a cop,” she said evenly.

“Walt McElroy,” he said, holding out his hand.

She gave him a look that let him know touching of any kind was out of bounds. McElroy tried not to feel offended. “You want to see a badge?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Why are you here?”

“Maxine Salinger.”

“I see,” she said, leaving him to serve the burping woman and her friend another round of screwdrivers. They’d lost interest in him now – engrossed in their own conversation. Even the angry, blunt-featured girl had turned off the stink eye.

When Lila returned, she poured herself a shot and threw it down. “I should’ve known you’d want to talk to me,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. “I read about Dawn’s mom in the paper. She killed herself, right?”

“It looks that way. Did you know Isobel?”

“Nope. I only know what Dawn told me.”

“How do you know Dawn?”

“We had coffee a couple of weeks ago, not long after her mom disappeared. She thought Maxine was responsible and she wanted me to dish the dirt.”

“And did you?’

“Yeah, I was happy to. Maxine’s a fucking psycho.”

“Strong words. Could you tell me what you told Dawn?”

Lila was again happy to oblige. McElroy listened to her vivid account of her date with Maxine, from the overly flirtatious dinner conversation to the late-night diversion through the woods near Mount Hood. He wasn’t surprised that Maxine eventually caved in when Lila ordered her to turn the car around. Despite her diminutive size, he would’ve backed Lila in a catfight, any day of the week.

“What do you think would’ve happened if you hadn’t woken up?”

“I don’t know,” Lila said, sounding a little edgy for the first time. “I guess she wanted to sleep with me.”

“But you don’t sound sure.”

“I’m pretty sure. Why else would she drive me to a cabin in the woods, right?” Lila looked at him nervously and then quickly glanced away. She hadn’t been reassured by McElroy’s flat expression.

“Lila, is there anything else you can tell me about that night? Little details about the gravel road you were on? Or things you might’ve noticed about Maxine?”

She thought long and hard before answering. “Okay. During dinner, even though Maxine was making all these sexual references and trying to play footsy under the table, I got the feeling she wasn’t into me. Or into my type, really.”

“You mean girls?”

“Yeah. We’re all different, obviously, but I just wasn’t getting the vibe off of her. I thought she might have been a first-timer, out to experiment something she didn’t get around to in college.”

McElroy nodded. The first-timer explanation was safe, easily digested. But he was thinking of other possibilities, and he suspected Lila had considered them, too. Like maybe Maxine wasn’t taking her back to the cabin for herself.

He didn’t want to worry her though. “Nothing else?” he said, reaching for his wallet. “No clues about your location in the woods? Signs or gates or houses you might’ve seen”

“No. Like I said, it was dark. I could only see trees.”

“Were you up high? Did you feel you’d traveled uphill?”

“I don’t think so. It must’ve been near the foothills.”

“Okay.” McElroy slapped a twenty on the bar and stood up. The quick-fire bourbon shots made his head spin a little. “Thanks for your help, Lila. Much appreciated.”

“Hey, quid pro quo, Detective. What’s all this about? Did Maxine have something to do with Isobel Flint’s death?”

“No. Not directly, anyway.”

“So why are you asking so many questions about her? What’s she supposed to have done?”

“I honestly don’t know. Not yet anyway.”

“But you must have a theory.”

He shrugged, turning his back to her and waving goodbye. He didn’t have a theory, more of a feeling, and it was dark and unfathomable and impossible to describe.

“See ya, Walt!” the burping woman called out as he headed down the stairs. “Don’t come back without your collar on!”