Unseen (13 page)

“I’ve got big gaps,” Gemma admitted.

“Maybe that’s from the head trauma. People always forget stuff with head trauma. Takes awhile to get over that and you may never remember stuff that happened right before your car crashed,” she warned earnestly. “But maybe the accident put your head on straighter. You seem more…” She searched for the right words. “More…in the moment! That’s what they’re always saying. ‘Be more in the moment.’ You’re more in the moment.”

Macie returned with a huge plastic tub of dirty dishes. She dumped them beside the growing pile in the sink. “Where’s the damn busboy? First Denise, then Aaron. And the new girl’s waiting for a ride from her boyfriend.” Macie snorted in disgust.

“Don’t you think Gemma’s different since the accident?” Charlotte asked her mother. “More in the moment?”

Macie gave her child the kind of scared look mothers sometimes can’t hide that says she doesn’t know quite what to think of this alien creature she gave birth to. She wrenched her gaze away to look at Gemma. After several tries, where she opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind, she said, “Maybe more focused. You don’t seem as scattered. How’s the headache?”

“Better. Really. It just felt like a wave of noise and confusion for a minute.”

“Good.”

“Macie…” Gemma followed her to the dining area. Charlotte tried to trot after them, but Macie said, “Give me and Gemma a minute.”

“Fine.” Charlotte clomped back to her stool.

“What is it, hon?”

“It feels like I’m missing pieces. Big pieces.”

“Mmmhmm. Did you call Dr. Rainfield?”

“I haven’t heard back from him yet. I left a message with his answering service.”

“Answering service? You
are
missing big pieces. That man’s old, honey. He sees people out of his home. Gave up his practice to his son, who moved it to Portland. You can just stop by. He’s over on Bellflower. The gray two-bedroom with the rose garden? It’s all sticks now but that’s that man’s pride and joy.”

“I remember,” Gemma said, with a flood of memory. She could see herself stepping up the sagging front porch steps to have a session with the doctor.

“Don’t know if he’s a quack or not. Most people think he’s okay, and I think he helped you. Got you to write that book.”

“Book?”

“Your diary, or whatever? To put down all the times you forgot things, or if you predicted something, like with Milo just there? I don’t know. You told me about it.”

“Did I?” Gemma asked faintly.

“You need to sit down?”

“No, no. It’s just—hard—getting these pieces of my past that are lost.”

“You don’t remember the book?”

Gemma thought hard, then slowly wagged her head
no
. She sensed the information was inside her somewhere, but the more she struggled to pull it out, the harder it became.

“You’d better go home and take care of yourself. See how you feel. I’d like you here next week, but if you can’t make it, just let me know.”

“I’ll be here. Count on it.”

“Well, go now. Shoo.” She snapped a towel at Gemma. Gemma glanced at the clock on the wall. Four o’clock. “Don’t even think about it,” Macie declared. “Get yourself well.”

“The day I chased that guy I was just having…breakfast?”

“You didn’t even get that far. Denise was showing off how she’d hemmed her uniform up, and you looked at her and then that guy…and you were gone. Like you made some kind of connection.”

Gemma said as if from a far distance, “I sort of remember.”

“Yeah?”

“The uniform was red.”

“That’s right. A prototype. But we kept with pastels. Do you remember why you went after that guy?” she asked curiously.

He was a pedophile.

The words ran across Gemma’s mind though she didn’t know where they came from. “What time was it?” she asked.

“Early. Seven a.m. Maybe even six.”

Letton was killed in the late morning. Tennish. It could have been him. She could have blasted after him, then made her plans to run him down at the soccer field.

Or, did you follow him to the diner first?

Shaken, Gemma left with a mumbled good-bye. She’d chased a pedophile out of LuLu’s on the morning Edward Letton was run down by someone who looked a lot like her. She couldn’t reconcile this other side of herself with her own view of who she was. Maybe this was how killers justified their actions? Maybe they just didn’t think of themselves as capable?

Suddenly she really wanted to find that book, that diary. Hurrying to her father’s truck, she slammed inside and headed for home.

Wolf dreamed of her.

She came to him with her hair down, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. Her scent was pine, a fresh mountain flavor. He opened his mouth to taste her and she opened hers, but it was a yawning cavern. He could see straight into her black soul.

His body was consumed with heat. Fire. Molten lava.

His arms reached for her. He held her and she started spitting and screaming. He threw her down.

“Burn.
Burn.
”

She howled and thrashed as he flung himself upon her. He was going to have her. She had no choice. No choice!

Br-r-r-ring.

His eyes flew open. The doorbell. Fury raged through his veins.

Four o’clock in the afternoon. Someone at his door. He hated anyone coming to his domain.

He jumped from the bed and strode to the front door. His dick was still stiff and he had to wait a moment before answering.

He opened the door and there she stood. Clipboard in hand.

“Hi. I just need a signature,” she said.

He glanced down at the box on the ground. A throbbing started in his temples.

“That’s not for me,” he said. He couldn’t recognize his own voice.

She tilted her head and examined the address. Her lips parted. “Your house number is 2702?”

“Over there.” He threw an arm toward the back of his house. To the fields beyond and to
them.
“Behind me. The farmhouse.”

A line formed between her brows. “I’m…I was sure…” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Never mind.”

He didn’t say anything and she gazed at him uncertainly as she walked away. He watched her tight butt in the brown shorts. Her calves were clean and strong.

But she smelled rotten. Evil.

Bile rose up his throat.

She was a witch. Another one he needed to burn the rot from, from the inside out. A gift to him from a higher power, the next one he needed to send back to hell.

He watched as she stepped into her truck and drove away. He opened his garage door and climbed into the truck which still smelled faintly of the other witch, along with the ammonia he’d used to scrub out the truck bed.

He could pick up this one’s trail after she left the farmhouse.

Chapter Ten

Will felt a slow anger building inside him as he headed toward Gemma’s. She’d lied to him. He didn’t completely believe her story about not remembering. Something was off. And he was pretty damn sure she’d showed up to finish Letton off but hadn’t been able to go through with it. Maybe she’d seen, as he had, that the man wasn’t going to make it. Maybe she’d had a change of heart.

Maybe he was hoping against hope that she was innocent, even with all evidence to the contrary.

Growling under his breath, he grabbed his cell phone and punched in the number he had for Sam McNally. In other states it was illegal to use a cell while driving unless you had an ear bud. Probably should be in Oregon, too, Will thought, but in the moment he was glad it wasn’t.

“McNally,” the detective answered.

“Hey, Mac, it’s Will Tanninger. Have you heard anything from the techs yet on Inga Selbourne, the body we found at the airstrip? They find anything at her place?”

“A helluva lot of blood,” Mac responded. “It’s been sent out for testing. Might be Inga’s or could be the doer’s. Somebody stabbed somebody with a piece of glass and I’m betting Inga nailed him. But if so, he’s not too worried about DNA. I’m going out to view the body this afternoon.”

“I didn’t notice any cuts, but the body was burned,” Will said.

“If it’s him that got cut, he’s got some marks on him. Got anything for me?”

Will told him about Inga’s affinity for the Portland bar scene. “She has a girlfriend named DeeAnna Brush who worked in administration at Laurelton General. DeeAnna quit and moved over to Good Samaritan.”

Mac grunted. “Good, I’ll check with her and see where their favorite spots were.”

“Keep me informed?”

“Same here.”

Will hung up and checked the meter of his anger. Down to a low simmer. Good. He wasn’t known for losing his cool but he felt oddly out of balance over the Letton case.

He was practically to Quarry when his cell rang. He looked at Caller ID and read:
Home.
Puzzled, he answered, “Tanninger,” though the call had come from his own rented, ranch-style two-bedroom house.

“Will?” an older, female voice warbled.

“Mom?”

“I stopped by to see you, but you weren’t here.” She sounded scared and Will knew just how she felt.

“You’re at my house?” he repeated, his heart clutching. She suffered from dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s, and although it had been a slow decline to this point, the disease was definitely winning. It was infuriating, and frustrating, and there was nothing to do about it. “You remembered where the key was?” he asked, half-incredulously.

“Oh, yes. I knocked and knocked and finally had to let myself in,” she confirmed. “Where are you?”

Will’s urgency to talk with Gemma fueled his frustration. “I’m working, Mom. In the car.”

“Are you coming home?”

Wild horses wouldn’t be able to keep him away. “I’m on my way. Mom, how did you get there?”

“Uh…?”

“To my house. Did Noreen bring you?” he asked, referring to his mother’s caretaker.

“I don’t think so…maybe…”

“Did she drop you off?” he suggested. He’d been trying to take her vehicle away from her for the past six months, but had been singularly unsuccessful. He’d hidden the keys, which she’d found, and he’d disabled the ignition, which she’d called a mechanic to come and fix. The craftiness inside the fog of dementia was mind-boggling. But since Noreen had come to live with her full time, he’d thought the situation was taken care of.

“No…my car’s gone…” she said suddenly. “I think it’s in a ditch.”

“What ditch?”

“The one by the road,” she said, sounding amused, as if she thought he was just the silliest thing.

Alarm bells clanged inside Will’s head. He told her again that he was on his way and actually put the siren and lights on as he tore back in the direction of his own house.

Gemma walked up the paint-chipped front steps to Dr. Rainfield’s door. She pushed the bell and experienced a kaleidoscope of warm memories: eating cookies and swinging her legs as she sat on a too tall chair; playing memory games with the doctor and beating him hands down; writing copiously in a red leather diary that he kept at his office.

Red leather diary.

She’d come here since she was a child. A young child. Jean hadn’t known what to do with a little girl who retreated into fantasy a great deal of the time and so she’d brought her to the doctor. Dr. Rainfield had played with her, had encouraged her to draw and color and express herself through art. Gemma had loved it. Had flourished. His attentions had almost put her back together again. Almost, but not quite. There were gaps.

Gemma heard the labored steps of the doctor, coming to answer her knock. The door creaked open and gray, bushy eyebrows above sharp, equally gray eyes, stared back at her.

“Well, hello, my dear,” he greeted her.

“Hello, Dr. Rainfield. I called your answering service for an appointment, but I thought I’d stop by.”

“Oh, yes. I meant to call you.” He opened the door wider.

The aroma of canned chili met her as soon as she entered. It was early evening and she’d interrupted his dinner. “I didn’t realize you were in the middle of a meal.”

He gave a short bark of laughter. “My dear, you’re a welcome distraction. How are you?” He gestured to a living room chair and Gemma perched on the end of it.

Settling himself on the sofa, he regarded her carefully. And Gemma, although she’d had no intention of saying anything besides
Where’s the red diary?
found herself blurting out the events of the last couple of weeks as she knew them, finishing with, “Could I have run Edward Letton down? I don’t think so. Unless I’m two people, like a multiple personality or something,” she half-laughed.

He gave her an intense look. “I always thought you were just trying to forget things you didn’t want to know and sometimes it took out pieces you wanted to remember, too.”

His answer soothed her and a part of her relaxed. “Do you have a red leather diary? The one I wrote in?”

“You mean your journal?”

Gemma nodded, figuring they must be talking about the same thing.

“You took that with you right before you left.”

“Before I left?”

“With that boyfriend of yours. You don’t remember?”

“When I left with Nate,” she said.

He almost smiled. “You’re fishing. Let me help. You wrote in the journal during your sessions. Or actually afterward, while you waited for your mother to pick you up. But you didn’t want to take it home. You didn’t think it would be—safe.”

Gemma blinked. “My mother didn’t have any boundaries.”

“True,” he admitted.

“I didn’t want her to read my thoughts. I was afraid she’d use them to her advantage.”

Rainfield’s brows lifted. He didn’t say it, but she knew he concurred with her. She saw that he had been a port in the storm for her. Jean LaPorte had loved her but it had been a love full of strings attached. Rainfield had been an objective listener and more of a father to her than her own out-of-his-element father, Peter.

Gemma said suddenly, “She used you. As a kind of babysitter, tutor, svengali. But she also resented you for that. She resented Macie, too, for being my friend.”

“She just wanted more from you than you could give.”

“I ran off with Nate to get away from it all. But then I came back.” Gemma gazed at him seriously. “I’ve always had all these gaps?”

“Little gaps.”

“They feel pretty big now.”

“You said you were in an auto accident. I’m no expert on head trauma, but it sounds like the problem’s been exacerbated by the crash. It’ll probably pass. What does your doctor say?”

Gemma didn’t answer that Rainfield was the only doctor she was seeing. That her physical injuries hadn’t been examined since she left the hospital. But he understood nevertheless and he tsk-tsked her.

“You should see someone.”

“I’d like to see you,” she responded. “On a regular basis.”

“Oh, child, I’m retired. My answering service is more to keep me in touch with old friends and old patients, but it’s just for friendship. I don’t see anyone anymore. My son’s taken over my practice. He has offices in Portland.” Rainfield climbed from the chair and Gemma got to her feet as well. He shuffled toward the kitchen, stopping just inside the open door. Out of Gemma’s vision, he reached for something, then returned with a card in his hand. “I’ll call him and tell him you’ll be making an appointment.”

Gemma looked down at the card. Dr. Tremaine Rainfield’s offices were in downtown Portland. She didn’t want to drive to Portland. She didn’t want to make the trip, and she didn’t want to see someone else. She also still didn’t have a driver’s license, and she felt she was flirting with disaster every time she got behind the wheel. But she didn’t disclose these thoughts, just let him think what he would.

“So,
I
was in possession of the journal last,” she said as he walked her to the door.

“I don’t think you gave it to Nate.”

“Me, neither.” Nate Dorrell had turned abusive over time. She recognized that he had simply been an escape route, though at the time she’d convinced herself that her decision to leave Quarry with him had been wrapped up in feelings of everlasting love, joy, and desire.

“Call Tremaine,” he said, nodding at the card in her hand. “But you can stop by anytime, if you’d like.”

If you need a friend, was what he meant.

Gemma smiled and wished him good-bye. She needed more than a friend. A lot more.

The patrol car was practically still moving as Will jumped from behind the wheel and ran to his own front door. It was ajar about six inches and he had a moment of dread before he heard his mom tunelessly humming from somewhere inside.

He found her in the kitchen. She’d discovered a bag of store-bought cookies from God-knew-when from the cupboard he used as a pantry, and was happily munching away. He hoped she didn’t break a tooth.

“Hi, Mom. I don’t see your car,” he said. “You said it’s in a ditch?”

“I’m not supposed to drive.” She raised her brows and gave him a look that said he was a naughty boy for denying her.

Dementia sufferers had little or no logic and reasoning. Nevertheless, Will tried to remind her of their earlier conversation. “You told me your car was in a ditch.”

“Yes, I think it is.”

“But you didn’t drive it here.”

“Didn’t I?” She furrowed her brow.

“It’s not outside and it’s not anywhere around the neighborhood.” As Will had driven into the suburban/rural area, he’d kept an eye out for any sign of her white Chevy Impala.

“Oh, I think Noreen took it.”

“Where is Noreen?” Will demanded.

“She dropped me off and took the car to the shop.”

As if on cue, Will’s cell phone rang and he saw the Caller ID was from the woman in question. “Where are you?” he barked into the phone, ignoring the niceties.

“I had to get the car in,” Noreen responded, sounding surprised and a little hurt by his tone. “Your mom backed it out of the driveway into the ditch. Did she tell you? I’m getting a rental to drive her in and will be back to pick her up, probably within the hour.”

“I wasn’t home when you dropped my mother off,” he said through his teeth.

“You didn’t get your mom’s call?”

“She called me from inside my house.”

Noreen made a strangled sound, directed at herself. “She said she’d talked to you and you were home! I was going to walk her inside, but she waved me off and I wanted to get the car in…oh, golly…is everything okay?”

“She’s here. I’m here. Everything’s fine. We’ll see you when you get here.”

He snapped his phone shut, half mad at Noreen, half at himself. He didn’t know what to do about his mother. There were no easy answers.

She was staring at him, picking up on his controlled anger if not the reason for it. “Was that Dylan?” she asked, and Will just stared at her, flummoxed all over again.

“Mom, Dylan’s dead. He’s been gone a long time.”

“Oh? I thought I just talked to him.”

Will could practically count the seconds elapsing inside his head. He told himself to get over it. There was no need to rush. Noreen would return and then he could be on his way.

His mom took another jaw-breaking bite of the cookie. He winced at the sound of her teeth clacking and grinding.

“Do you want me to make dinner?” she asked, as if the idea had just popped into her head.

She hadn’t made a meal in a decade.

“Why don’t you sit down at the table,” Will suggested, forcing himself to be patient. He pulled out a chair for her. “I’ll make…peanut butter sandwiches.”

She beamed at him. “That sounds wonderful.”

He slapped peanut butter on bread in a controlled fury as his mother sat down at the table and began babbling on about Dylan. He closed his eyes. His brother was more real to her than the son who’d survived. Damn disease. It had robbed him of her. Robbed him of his only living relative, as his father had died when Will was just a child, from heart problems.

His anger hadn’t abated by the time Noreen arrived to collect his mother. She apologized profusely and Will nodded in curt response. Her negligence would not likely be repeated and that, at least, was something.

As he drove toward Gemma’s house, he tried to put his anger aside but it just kept growing, morphing, aiming itself at Gemma herself. She’d run down Edward Letton, and though the prick deserved to die, in Will’s biased opinion, it was not her choice to make. Vigilantism was a crime. Killing was a
crime.
She’d come back to the hospital with the intention of killing Letton and only hadn’t because…she’d seen he was on his last legs and there was no need.

Her intention was what mattered. She’d
intended
to end Letton’s life. He wouldn’t be the last. Maybe he wasn’t even the first…

That thought gave him pause. Will made a mental note to check other pedophile deaths in the area.

But in any case, it didn’t matter how attractive she was. And it didn’t matter that he understood, and even sympathized with, her motives, she had to be stopped.