Unseen (10 page)

Sally Van Kamp, a roundish, middle-aged woman with curly dark hair and an intense attitude, recoiled a bit upon viewing Gemma’s face. “Oh, my, my. You really did have an accident, now, didn’t you?”

And here she’d been thinking she was starting to look almost normal. “Well, yeah.” Belatedly, she invited, “Come on in.”

“I made this up special for you, honey.” She held out the casserole and the hot pad beneath. Gingerly, Gemma took it from her and headed into the kitchen, Sally at her heels.

“Looks the same,” Sally observed.

“I haven’t changed much around here since Mom died.”

Sally cricked her neck and eyed Gemma thoughtfully. “I never heard you call her Mom before. Sounds funny. You always called her Jean, like she was a stranger.” She laughed like it was a big joke.

Gemma let that go by. It
had
felt strange saying Mom. It was a relief to understand her relationship with her mother a little better, and she realized that maybe Sally Van Kamp wasn’t the only one who could gain some information out of their upcoming reading.

The reading itself made Gemma a little nervous. She could recall her mother’s hocus-pocus ways, but she would never be able to do that. Or, had she already? Sally acted like they’d not had a reading since Jean’s death, but maybe that was just Gemma’s hope.

“Er, when was the last time we met for a reading?” Gemma asked as they moved to the office and Sally sat in one of the club chairs while Gemma took a seat behind the desk.

“You’re kidding. You’ve been promising me and promising me, just like you have Allie Bolt and Davinia Noack. I thought it was never going to happen, I surely did.” She tilted her head again and peered hard at Gemma. “You still suffering from those spells? Jean worried herself sick over you, but she said you had a gift.”

Her words brought a sharp recollection back to Gemma: a tête-à-tête between Gemma and her mother. They’d been sitting in the kitchen and Jean was berating her for taking off with “that Dorrell boy.” Gemma had just returned from following Nate Dorrell to Fort Lewis, and in those years when Gemma had been away, Jean had been forced to rely on her own psychic ability—read that to mean her wits—to keep her business afloat. It hadn’t helped that brokenhearted Gemma had preferred to work at the diner with Macie rather than become her mother’s assistant.

“You’re selfish,” Jean had told her. “These people need our help.”

Engulfed in her own pain, Gemma had lashed back, for the first and last time. “I’m not going to help you lie to them. I’m through with all that. I’m going to the diner! Macie’s waiting for me.”

She’d tried to slam out the door, but Jean held it firm. “Macie, Macie, Macie. That’s all I hear. She doesn’t care about you! She’s got her own little girl. The only one who cares about you is me!”

“Dad cared about me,” Gemma snapped back.

“Peter’s gone.” Jean clamped her lips together. For all her ranting, she’d loved her husband. “We have each other, and that’s all that’s left.”

“I’m not going to swindle people out of hard-earned money.”

“Watch your tongue. You have a gift, dear. You know you do. Better than mine,” she admitted grudgingly, which wasn’t saying much since Jean’s psychic ability was the kind sent away for on the back of a matchbook cover. “You know things, Gemmy.” Her look was assessing and sly. “Don’t you? You know things.”

Gemma had wanted to deny it, but she’d seen pieces of the future on enough occasions that arguing the point would only escalate their argument. “Yes.”

“And you don’t want to use that to do good? I’ve told them, you know. That you came from those Indians and you’re like a witch doctor.”

“Shaman,” Gemma corrected, then could have kicked herself when Jean said delightedly, “Yes. Shaman! You see? That’s what you are.”

“I’m not a shaman. I’m not a seer. I’m not even Native American, as far as I can tell. I’m…intuitive and empathetic and I can read people, that’s all.”

“Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep.”

“I’m not doing the readings.”

“I’m not asking you to. I just need to consult with you sometimes, that’s all. Margerie Merrill wants to know if her son is in heaven. She’s worried his soul didn’t cross over. I want you to look into your brain and come up with an answer.”

Gemma had stared at her mother in exasperation and affront. “That’s not the way it works.”

“Well, how does it work, huh? Tell me that.”

There had been no way for Gemma to explain that she simply experienced feelings. A sensation that came off in waves from a person. And it wasn’t like whatever she felt had anything to do with any question someone might ask of a deceased loved one. It just came to her. Sometimes.

And besides, Jean knew all that anyway. She was just being querulous, trying to get her way.

Now Gemma suddenly realized that Dr. Avery had not told her about his son’s impending nuptials. She’d simply picked that up by her own internal radar, her mind-reading ability. It had taken her over a week to recover her lost memories, and at the hospital she hadn’t known enough about herself at that point to realize what she was doing. But while her face and body healed, she began remembering, maybe not completely, but enough that she understood herself a lot better now than directly after the accident.

But to her mother that day, she’d said, “It’s like radio signals. I pick up what’s being sent out. I can’t send something back. Your friends can’t ask me questions and expect answers from their deceased loved ones.”

“Gemma, don’t be dense. I can do that part. I just want you to say something nice about them. If you pick up a radio signal, let me know. More authentic.”

“What if I don’t get anything?”

“Just
try.
”

“Gemma!”

Sally Van Kamp’s voice brought her back to the present with a jolt and Gemma started as if stung.

“Where did you go, girl?” Sally asked.

“Nowhere.”

Sally’s small eyes were suspicious. “You having a vision of some kind?”

“I was thinking about you,” Gemma lied, “and it took me away.”

“I want to know about my Jerry. He’s not doing so well since he got back from Iraq. He and Bonnie are always fighting and I think she’s stepping out on him. She was whoring around while he was gone, and she’s still at it. They may not be married but Jerry thinks of Bonnie as his wife. He wants a family.”

Gemma gazed at the red chrysanthemum she’d plucked from a grouping around the front porch and put it in a vase on her desk. Its spiky petals reached toward her from a yellow center.

“He has a drug problem,” Gemma said.

Sally reared back in horror. “Well, now that’s a lie, girl. Those are trumped-up charges.
She’s
the addict!” She blinked several times. “Why would you say that? That’s not the kind of thing you see.”

But it was. Exactly the kind of thing Gemma saw but Jean would never let her tell. The unvarnished truth. And she’d picked up a thread of this particular thought straight out of Sally Van Kamp’s pea-brain, so clearly, despite her protests, Sally thought it was true, too.

“There are a lot of unresolved issues between your son and his girlfriend,” Gemma said. “The kind of issues that may require professional counseling.”

“Like Dr. Rainfield,” she sniffed.

“Yes,” Gemma told her, unfazed. “Dr. Bernard Rainfield would be a good choice.”

“Hah,” Sally humphed. “Old enough to be my father, and that’s saying something. I wouldn’t trust anything that man had to say.”

“He’s been my doctor for a lot of years,” Gemma reminded her mildly.

“That’s ’cause of your headaches. My Jerry is fine.”

“Well, that’s what I see,” she said.

“What else do you see?”

Gemma thought a moment and shook her head. “That’s it.”

“Well, that ain’t much, is it?”

Jean LaPorte had always given her clients a panacea of rosy futures and expectations, but Gemma wasn’t interested. She hoped Sally and her ilk would stop bothering her. She didn’t want this legacy and if Sally got the picture today, that would go a long way to discouraging the lot of them.

Sally’s sharp eyes stared at Gemma. When Gemma didn’t go any further, Sally finally sensed that their session was over. With great reluctance, she reached for her purse, but Gemma stopped her.

“No payment.” She waved her off.

“No payment?” Sally’s hand hovered over her purse. She looked happy for a brief moment, then yanked out two twenties and slapped them on Gemma’s desk. “You just don’t want to help me, do you? Trying to cull out some of us. Well, it won’t be me! You take this!” She shoved the money toward her, ignoring Gemma’s protests. “I don’t care if you see Allie and Davinia, but don’t you dare get all high and mighty with me!” With that she sailed out of the room and slammed out of the house.

“Lord,” Gemma said to the empty room.

A knock on her front door a few minutes later had her thinking that Sally was back to apologize. Gemma drew a breath, then headed for the door.

But it was someone else on the opposite side: a man about her age with a round head and a mouth that dipped down on one side.

Tim Weatherford. A classmate of Gemma’s whose mental slowness had made him the butt of many Quarry High jokes. Tim, whom Gemma had defended when they were young. Tim, who was giant-size and dubbed Little Tim by the whole town. He’d had a crush on Gemma for as long as she could remember and as she’d grown older she’d treated him with careful respect, very aware that he was someone who didn’t understand boundaries.

Little Tim, whose mind she could read easily.

Another piece of her past she’d forgotten until now.

“Hi, ya,” he said as she opened the door. He was over six feet and hunched forward, his head in front of his body.

“Hey, Tim. How are you?”

“I’m real good. Real good. I’m glad you’re back. I want to go to the quarry with you.”

“Uh…” She turned toward the west for a moment, where the quarry lay, thinking. The quarry the town was named after, was behind her property, bordering both hers and the Dunleavys. There was a ridge above it where enterprising high school kids liked to park and fool around, a makeshift lover’s lane. This was what Tim meant. “Tim, I have a boyfriend,” she said. “I can’t go with you.”

“Who, who is he?” His moon face looked crestfallen.

A mental image of Will Tanninger came to her—his dark eyes with their lines of humor, his thick brown hair, the quirk of his lips. “He’s a detective. A policeman,” she clarified. “I love him very much.”

“You said you’d go with me.”

“No, I didn’t,” she reminded gently.

“Can I come in?”

“Not now,” she said. “But I’m going to be working at LuLu’s, starting next week. Come and visit. Bring your mom.”

“I don’t want to bring her.” He slid a sly look Gemma’s way.

“You like Macie’s peach cobbler.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll get you a piece next week at LuLu’s.”

Tim nodded but she could feel him trying to come up with another reason to stay. His brain, however, couldn’t hold the thought. When she closed the door, he reluctantly retraced his footsteps, hunching back down the long drive. His mother lived in a house at the edge of town and it was a long walk home, but Tim walked everywhere. He’d never had a father that Gemma knew of, and there were no siblings.

As she watched him become a smaller and smaller figure in her line of vision, she realized she was back in her old life with most of her memories still able to be accessed, some more easily than others.

The urgency she’d felt at the hospital to get on with whatever had been driving her seemed to have taken a backseat. Was it because Letton had been incapacitated? Still in the hospital, as far as she knew? Or, was it something she still didn’t understand fully?

“Maybe a little of both,” Gemma said aloud, running a hand along the ridge of her cheekbone, still feeling a surprisingly jarring ache from the remnants of her injuries.

Chapter Seven

Gemma was in the kitchen preparing a cheese sandwich—the extent of her groceries being bread, cheese, and a head of iceberg lettuce—when her land line rang, startling her. The phone hadn’t rung five times since she’d been home from the hospital. Half expecting it to be Allie Bolt or Davinia Noack, she picked up the receiver on the wall phone and answered with trepidation, “Hello?”

“Ms. LaPorte? It’s Detective Tanninger.”

Her heart rate zoomed. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that. Was he planning on arresting her? Did he have enough evidence? “Yeah?”

“Has your car ever turned up?” he asked.

Her pulse slowed down gradually. Of course. The car. That would be the evidence that would convict her or set her free. It made her hesitate a bit. She’d been anxious to find her mother’s vehicle but was almost afraid to learn what she’d done with it.

“Uh, no. Haven’t found it yet. I guess you haven’t either.”

“No.”

“Is Edward Letton still alive? I’m assuming he is, since I haven’t seen a report of his death.”

“He’s still alive.”

“In the hospital?”

He sidestepped that one. “Have you remembered anything else about what happened to you?”

“No.”

“Who dropped you off at the hospital?”

“No.”

He was still fishing around, thinking she’d done it. For a wild second she thought about spinning him some alibi that she’d been with Macie all day that day. Macie would cover for her. But another part of her—a less self-preservative side—wanted to take credit for her actions. “I’m having enough trouble just remembering my day-to-day life. I hope you’re spending as much time on Letton. Checking out his house. Grilling him. That girl might not have been his first victim.”

“We’re being very thorough where Mr. Letton is concerned,” he assured her.

“And his wife? You got her under lock and key? That woman’s certifiable.” But then who was she to call the kettle black?

“How’s your head?” he asked.

“Less purple and green. Kind of brownish, actually.”

“Pain?”

“Some,” she admitted. “What are you really after, detective?”

“Would it be all right if I interviewed you again? I’ve got some more questions.”

Bullshit,
Gemma thought. There were no more questions. He wanted to run over the same material again, see if her story had changed. And since her story hadn’t changed, she said, “I’m starting work at LuLu’s next week. You could stop by there.”

“LuLu’s?”

“The diner in town.” She explained how Macie had leased the place from her parents and now was her tenant. “She needs some extra help, so I told her I’d fill in for a while. The peach cobbler alone is worth the trip.”

“Okay.” He sounded reluctant, but she hadn’t given him any other choice.

“See you next week,” she said, and pressed the disconnect button on the phone before he could say anything else.

That was two people she’d invited to the restaurant, Tim and Detective Tanninger. Macie should give her a raise, she thought with amusement. Maybe once she knew what her pay rate was, she could ask for an increase. Hah!

Gemma looked out the window and saw the late afternoon shadows creeping across the ground. She felt incredibly tired, the weight of figuring out who she was pressing down on her. Heaving a sigh, she trudged upstairs, walked to her room, slipping onto her bed. Dealing with Detective Tanninger seemed to zap her spirit in ways she didn’t completely understand.

For a few minutes she ran over her life as she knew it before the accident. She had two classifications, Before and After the accident. After was pretty clear, but Before was still a jigsaw of memories with missing pieces.

What she knew was:

Before the accident she’d been living quietly at her parents’, now her, farm. She’d spent a lot of time bobbing and weaving to avoid giving psychic readings to Jean LaPorte’s clients, who were a tenacious bunch, to say the least. Jean herself had been gone about a year. Before Jean’s death Gemma had been somewhat complicit in her dealings with those same desperate seekers and had helped her mother tell them fairy tales. She’d also helped Macie out at the diner. Had preferred that job to being her mother’s apprentice psychic. Since Jean’s death Gemma had been doing…what…? That piece was still unclear.

If she thought back a few years earlier, she remembered following Nate to the ends of the earth, from military base to military base, planning, dreaming of, a future that included the two of them.

Nate, however, had ruined that idea many times over. He was a self-described commitment-phobe and had proven it by the series of women he flirted with and slept with. He’d denied he’d ever slept with any of them but Gemma had known. She’d seen it in her mind. She’d made the mistake of describing one of his trysts right down to the color of the girl’s shoes and had spooked him enough that he’d forgotten about his own guilt. And he’d accused her of seeing other men. Of being involved with one in particular, though Gemma had vigorously denied it.

Nate’s guilt was also superseded by Gemma’s weirdness, and the relationship had ended abruptly. They’d been on the east coast and Gemma had gathered together the remains of her self-respect and enough cash to make her way back to Quarry.

How many years ago had that been? Two? Three? Longer? Gemma wasn’t entirely sure. Her father had still been alive at the time. He’d welcomed her with open arms and Jean had welcomed her with her own agenda.

Fast forward to now: Gemma alone. Living in her parents’ house. Fending off Jean’s believers. Chasing after pedophiles and do-badders of every kind…

“Gotta get to the diner. Then gotta find a real life,” she told her reflection in the hall mirror. The glass was wavy and distorted, an antique her mother had acquired in payment from one of the ladies who had little in the way of real cash. Her distorted image looked back at her, both a good and evil reflection of the same face.

The guy just was not going to die. He was going to
linger
. And after lingering he might even
get better.
This, Lucky could just not have.

She stuffed her hair under the knit cap and stared at her reflection in the old mirror. A sense of time passing filled her head. Seconds ticking by. She had to kill him. There was no other answer.

She’d dressed in baggy denim jeans; a black nylon jacket that zipped up to her chin; used, men’s Nike’s; and the ear-buds of a few-generations-old iPod pressed into her ears. Foundation covered most of the remaining bruises, and she’d darkened her eyes with mascara and eyeliner and smudged the black color beneath her eyes, giving her the pale, wasted appearance associated with drug addicts. Her hazel eyes stared back at her. If she didn’t smile, she looked like someone to avoid.

Not exactly the dress of someone who hoped to fly under the radar, sneak into the hospital and find her way to Edward Letton’s room undetected. But one thing she knew was that drawing attention to herself could work in the reverse sometimes. Everyone remembered the clothes and the hardness; no one really remembered the person.

She had a gym bag containing scrubs. If she had to, she would change, but nurses, aides, and hospital personnel knew each other more than people thought. A stranger in scrubs was like a red light, so the only way that would work was if no one who worked with the staff saw her. The scrubs were for the fifth floor only.

It was early evening. Dinnertime. Much later and it got too quiet. Better to have some distractions. Some noise. Maybe even a diversion?

Lucky had to think about that. What she wanted was to sail into Letton’s room and end his miserable life. Pulling the plugs wouldn’t be enough. Alarms would sound at the nurses’ station or somewhere and they would all rally round to save his miserable ass. She would like to smother him with a pillow. Simple and clean. Except that when his body went into distress it would also send off alarms that would alert the staff.

She possessed a handgun. She’d stolen it from her car-jacking friend and kept it in the glove box of whatever stolen vehicle was in her possession at the time. But bringing it into a hospital was not going to work. Especially considering her disguise.

She would have to improvise. It would have to be quick. A weapon to smash him over the head with.
Kapow!
One shot.

But could she do it?
Could
she? Following him to the soccer field had been easy. And as soon as he tried to approach his victim, she’d been committed. No problem. She also knew she could defend herself if someone attacked her. She’d certainly wrapped Ezekiel’s neck with the lamp cord without a qualm. And then there was that first kill…

But to physically attack him while Letton lay sleeping…or immobilized with his eyes open…unable to defend himself…well, she just wasn’t as sure. She’d committed violence. She’d been responsible for several deaths, but she’d either been attacked first or had stepped in to save someone who was about to be attacked.

She wanted to think of herself differently. Wanted to be a stone killer. Someone with no conscience and no remorse. Unfortunately, she hadn’t evolved to that point yet.

Still…Edward Letton had to die.

Lucky drove to the hospital in the rattletrap truck she’d appropriated. She parked halfway down one row, beneath a large maple whose orange leaves were shriveling and falling off. As she climbed out of the truck an amazingly large, red leaf sashayed down on the stiff breeze, landing on her hood. Lucky stared at it a moment, then dragged herself back to the task at hand.

She grabbed her gym bag from the passenger seat. Looking up, she saw an elderly couple edging toward the front doors. The woman was using a walker, carefully negotiating each step, but the older guy kept his eyes on Lucky. She knew what he was thinking. She looked like a thug. To alleviate his fears, she cocked her head to the imaginary music playing from her iPod and started moving to the beat. Bobbing her head and closing her eyes, she was in the zone. When she opened one eye a slit, he’d turned back to his infirm wife and eased her over the curb and through the sliding glass doors.

Lucky rounded the building and chose a side access door that was still unlocked. After a certain time she suspected they locked everything down but the ER. She wouldn’t be around that long. She found the stairs and headed upstairs until she saw the guard outside the room, then headed to a different hallway.

She walked quickly forward, assessing. Restrooms for guests were down the right hallway, marked with a little blue sign that stuck out from the wall about a foot below the ceiling. She boogied her way along as there were people in the halls. They all gave her curious looks and then moved on.

The restrooms were close enough to Letton’s room to work, but the guard was outside the door, planted stolidly in a chair. As she dipped inside the restroom the guard’s head was turned the other way. She caught sight of the bag of Doritos sticking from his pocket just before his head swiveled back her way, but she was safely inside by then.

And she was alone in the restroom. Good. She headed into a cubicle and stripped and changed into her light blue scrubs. She’d also put cleansing cream in her bag and she rubbed it all over her face, listening for anyone entering, but no one did.

Hurriedly, she stepped from the cubicle and rinsed her face in the sink, scrubbing off the makeup until her face was fresh and pink. Now the bruises were visible, faintly coloring her skin an ugly red-brown shade. She put on her pair of rosy-lensed glasses. In the scrubs she looked wholesome and innocuous. She tried on a smile and was rewarded with a friendly, guileless face. Again, good. She reapplied the foundation over her bruises, then finger-combed her hair until it lay faintly poofy against her scalp, but its straightness was legendary and that wouldn’t last long.

The gym bag…if she stuffed it in the garbage can the police would find it after Letton’s death was discovered. They would learn that the hip-hop dude/girl was a disguise.

There were acoustic tiles overhead. Lucky returned to her cubicle, stood on the seat of the toilet and reached above, sliding a tile out with the tips of her fingers. It took her three tries to toss the bag out of sight, and then an inordinate amount of time to replace the tile. She’d just hopped onto the floor when someone burst into the bathroom, a woman in a hurry, who strong-armed open the cubicle next to Lucky and sat down as if her bladder were about to burst.

Lucky eased out of the cubicle and bathroom, heart skittering. This was where she could not run into trouble, this was where another hospital employee could wonder who she was. Drawing a breath, she sauntered down the hall toward Letton’s room. The guard saw her coming and he straightened, looking slightly guilty. She could see he was still chewing on something and trying to disguise it.

“Aw, honey, you jes keep on eatin’.” She flapped a hand at him and smiled. “The vending machines are better’n the cafeteria, huh. I know, I know. Though sometimes they kin really put on a nice special. Last week the chipped beef on toast was somethin’.”

“Yeah?” The guard hitched up his pants, eyeing her appreciatively. “The meat loaf was good, too.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“The vending machines are closer, though,” he said a bit longingly.

“Don’t you got someone to cover for you?”

“Just lunch,” he grumbled.

Lucky cruised on by, looking back at him through her glasses. “Want me to pick somethin’ up for ya?”

“Nah.” He grinned at her as she walked toward the end of the hall. Just before she turned the corner, he said, “Hey.”

Bingo.
Lucky smiled to herself. She glanced back at him inquiringly.

“You got a minute? The vending machines are close, and if you were here…?”

Lucky pretended to consider. “I gotta coupla minutes, but no more.”

“I’m like the wind,” he said, and was already gallumphing down the hallway.

Lucky returned to the guard’s abandoned post, feeling her blood rushing through her veins. She was alone in the hall. Alone…

Carefully she pushed open the door to Letton’s room. She moved in quietly, feeling unusually alert, alive. Maybe a pillow was the answer. If she were quick enough. If she had enough time to escape.