A Dark Love (22 page)

C
aroline waited until she heard Ken’s Jeep drive off then slid out of bed. Her plan was to leave for Durango as quickly as possible, taking her chances there until the next Greyhound passed through. There was no time to make plans now. Last night proved it.

She took a quick shower and checked herself in the mirror.

The bruises were fading but not gone.

She heard movement in the kitchen and knew Nan was awake.

She gathered her things into a neat pile. A few items of clothing, toiletries, a brush for Pippin, and her savings. Enough to tide her over until she found another job. Her gaze fell on the picture book Ken had given her. She packed it in the knapsack as a reminder that life could be wonderful.

Just not for her.

She carried her things down the front stairs and left them near the front door where Nan wouldn’t notice.

The smell of frying bacon greeted her. Nan hummed a cheery tune at the stove.“’Mornin’, Alice.”

The older woman’s eyes looked bluer than usual today.

“Good morning, Nan.”

“Coffee’s on,” Nan lifted the splash cover on a cast-iron skillet to give the bacon a stir.

The dogs crowded around Nan’s feet.

Caroline couldn’t leave until breakfast was done. She poured herself a cup of coffee.

A timer went off and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“My spoon bread is done. I’ll start the eggs in a minute.”

Caroline gave her a quizzical look as Nan bustled over to the oven. Nan didn’t eat much in the morning, not to mention the fact that it was the one meal Caroline usually prepared.

“I figured we’d have company for breakfast,” Nan said.

By which she meant Ken. Caroline shrugged. “I heard him leave a while ago. He told me last night he’d check on you, ah, on us, later.”

“Ah, well, we’ll save some for him,” Nan said, draining the bacon. “He’s a lovely man. I’ve known him since he was born.” She cracked brown eggs into a bowl and whisked in milk and fresh-cut chives. “No matter what sort of situation you might find yourself in, Ken Kincaid is a good man to know. There’s nobody better.”

Their eyes met.

Nan looked happy. Caroline decided Nan knew of Ken’s attraction to her, and approved. If Nan knew the truth about Caroline’s past, however, she wouldn’t look so happy. Caroline studied the remains of her coffee. “He’s a good person.”

Fortunately, Nan was like most folks in Storm Pass, considering a subject finished after a sentence or two.

She spooned great heaping piles of eggs onto Caroline’s plate, along with thick-sliced bacon, fresh fruit, and slices of warm bread topped with butter. She fussed over Caroline like a mother hen, pouring glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice like it was champagne for a celebration.

Seeing Nan like this only sharpened the pain in Caroline’s heart for the hurt she was about to cause by running off. She wasn’t hungry but did her best. It could be days before she had a hot meal. “This is the best breakfast I’ve ever had.”

Across the table, Nan beamed.

T
he man on Ken’s driveway had empty eyes and the drunken look of a fighter who’d taken too many punches. Any similarity with a prizefighter ended there, however. The man was thin, with ghost white skin dotted with pockmarks and an intensity that rolled off him in waves.

Ken took in the red-rimmed eyes and the leather bag he was clutching to his chest like a kid with a security blanket. A white Yukon was parked at the end of the drive. Ken did some quick calculations. One, he could take this guy blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back. Two, there was a razor-sharp bowie knife in the Jeep glove compartment. Three, there was a shotgun gathering dust inside the house. While Ken pondered why he was cataloguing ways to hurt the guy, the man cleared his throat to speak.

“I, ah, wanted to go fishing.” He licked his lips and flashed a nervous smile. “That’s all. I heard you’re the man to see.” He let his head drop with a pleading glance that reminded Ken of the way a small dog will roll on its belly in the presence of a bigger one.

Something in Ken’s gut tightened. “How’d you get here?” His voice came out colder than he’d intended.

The stranger winced like he’d been stung. He looked in the direction of the Yukon, which was parked well out of earshot.

Ken remembered Alice’s story about her close brush with an SUV yesterday.

“I parked down near the road. I didn’t want to intrude, seeing as how busy you are and all.” The man shoved his thin hands into the pockets of his fatigues, which were still crisp like they’d never been washed. He kicked at a clod of dirt with the toe of one barely worn boot, shifting his weight. “I promised my boy we’d come here all summer, then I got stuck at work, then he got real sick and my ex wouldn’t let me bring him.”

The man stared at his feet.

Ken watched, frowning, as the man’s thin shoulders hunched. He waited wordlessly while the guy cleared his throat and looked up at him again through steel-rimmed glasses.

“He worships you, you know? You’re Ken Kincaid. He’s got posters of the Chiefs all over his room, and I promised him I’d come here, bring him back some fish we caught together, and…” The man’s voice trailed off.

Ken suspected then that he understood what he was seeing. The wild look, the nervousness, the dry mouth. The strange little man in front of him was acting like any groupie outside the Chiefs’ locker room after a game. “Look, I’m sorry, but the weather up on the mountain is unpredictable this time of year. I’m not taking any more fishing clients up till next spring.”

The man’s nostrils flared like a bull as he pushed a
breath out his nose. A flash of something crossed the guy’s face as his lips worked themselves into a thin white line.

Disappointment?

But the man pulled his fishing cap, the overpriced variety that was designed to block out UVA rays, down low over his face so it was impossible to tell. He shook his head slowly and spread his bony hands in disbelief. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell him. He’s been in the hospital awhile this time, and he can finally eat again. His favorite meal in the world is fried fish sticks, and—” His voice broke.

Ken swallowed. He pictured the guy’s son watching every pro game from every sport on TV, dreaming he’d make himself into more of a man than his loser of an old man. “I’ll tell you what,” he began.

The man brightened.

“I’ve got some old publicity photos inside, and a football or two. I’ll sign one with your son’s name.” A football with Ken’s autograph could still fetch a decent price on eBay. If the guy was after money, this should be the end of it.

The man’s face fell. His lower lip quivered, and his pale blue eyes glinted. He blinked a few times and shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, he’d love that.”

Ken drew in a breath, considering. He was headed up to the cabin anyway. He could bring the man along, send him back to Denver or wherever with enough frozen fillets to feed his son for a month. Something made him hold back. Whether it was the fact that the guy had showed up unannounced or that his face was oozing like a skid row junkie, Ken swallowed the impulse to invite him along.

As though he could read Ken’s thoughts, the man glanced at the gear inside the Jeep. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. It looks like you were about to head off for the weekend. Probably got your girl waiting on you somewheres.” He gave a small smile, revealing rows of tiny white teeth set in bright red gums.

His folksy manner of speaking didn’t match his expensive gear. Ken wasn’t overly curious as a rule, but he kept thinking of Alice and her near-miss yesterday. “Where are you from?”

He extended his hand. “Oh, pardon my manners. I’m Jim Bell. I live just south of Denver.”

The guy’s hand was soft to the touch, and Ken released it as quickly as possible.

Jim Bell licked his lips and wrung his hands before rubbing his chin, which was already raw. He kept his leather purse tucked firmly under one arm and cast another glance at the Jeep. “I guess you need to be going. Someone’s waiting on you.”

“She’s not waiting on me.” The words were out before Ken remembered his old rule for dealing with fans. Never give them any personal information. But he was out of practice. And he felt sorry for this guy, who had managed to sweet-talk just one woman in his entire life. And she’d thrown him out, despite the sick kid. Poor guy. “I was headed up on my own.”

Jim Bell perked up, his voice high with wonder. “So, you’re headed up to your cabin right now?”

The guy’s hair wasn’t really gray, it was a dingy shade of white. Which made him younger than Ken had thought, probably near his own age. Spooky. Ken nodded.

Jim Bell watched Ken intently. “Oh,” he breathed. “My son would just not believe this.”

Ken pictured the kid, bald from chemo treatments or worse, a patchwork of clumps the color of old straw like his dad. Ken wanted a big family. Boys or girls, it didn’t matter. In the end, that had been the deal breaker with his ex-wife. And in the last few years, he had come to accept the possibility it might not happen. Until Alice. The thought of her softened him. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “How old is your son?”

A big smile spread across Jim Bell’s pale features, as though he sensed an invisible tide had changed direction. “Seven.” His voice broke.

Ken glanced up at Ute Peak, which was disappearing behind a telltale gray mist. “Okay, Jim, I can bring you up to my fishing camp.”

The man’s smile deepened.

He didn’t have the look of someone who smiled as a rule. “I have to warn you, though, I was headed up there mainly to shut the place down for winter. There’s a storm brewing. We might get some fishing in, and we might not. We may just turn around and be back by late afternoon.”

Jim nodded, triumphant. “That’s fine.” He reached into his hip pocket. “I’m happy to pay you anything at all for this.”

Ken waved him off. “No charge, Jim. You save the money for your son.”

The man protested, which struck Ken as funny. He would have pegged the guy as the type who had never bought a round in a bar in his life.

“Please,” Jim Bell said in his intense way. “Money’s no problem. Really. This means the world to me. You have no idea.”

Fans were the same no matter what their age. “No,
I won’t take your money, Mr. Bell. Anyhow,” he said with a chuckle, “I can’t promise you’ll catch any fish up there today. This isn’t going to be your typical fishing expedition.”

Jim Bell’s eyes narrowed behind his steel-framed glasses. He spoke slowly, measuring each word. “You know, I think you’re right.”

C
aroline stashed her stuff in Nan’s Buick and ducked back inside to finish clearing the breakfast dishes. She loaded the dishwasher and ran it although it was not even half full, emptied the garbage, and tried to take care of as many things as she could for the woman who had helped her when she’d needed it most.

And then it was time to go.

“I’m taking Poppit to the groomer,” she announced.

Nan looked up from her needlepoint. Outside, Ute Peak was already hidden behind a white curtain of snow. “You picked quite a day,” Nan said. “Come back early, Alice. You’re about to discover why they call it Storm Pass.”

Caroline forced a smile, not trusting her voice to speak. Her plan was to drive to Durango and catch the next Greyhound to Denver, whenever that might be. She would map out her next move from there, leaving the keys tucked under one wheel of the Buick and a note in the glove box. She would call later to say where the car could be found. She took one last look at Nan, her brilliant blue eyes set in her lined face, snug and sound in her cherished home, surrounded by a lifetime
of happy memories. “I’ll be careful,” Caroline promised.

Nan smiled and went back to her needlepoint. “Enjoy your outing, Alice.”

Caroline tried to press the scene into her mind so she would remember it forever.

They made decent time up to the entrance of the state wilderness area. The roads were slick. The temperature had dropped eight degrees since they left Ken’s place, and the snow fell thicker the higher they climbed.

Ken kept the Yukon headlights in his rearview mirror. Jim Bell was not a mountain driver. That was evident after the first couple of switchbacks. He took the turns too fast and jammed on the brakes midway, like someone used to flat roads at sea level. The SUV had dealer plates, fresh off the lot. No matter. That Yukon could pretty much drive itself at slow speed. Ken kept the Jeep in low gear and took the turns extra slow, hoping Jim Bell was paying attention.

Unless this storm blew past quickly, they’d stay at the cabin just long enough to turn off the gas and drain kerosene from the portable heater before heading back down. Ken had some rainbow trout fillets stored in his freezer that the guy could take home to his son.

In the second car, Porter drummed his fingers across the dash, his heart racing faster and faster. His mouth was dry inside like a piece of cotton. He took a swig from the Coke left over from yesterday, swishing the flat syrup inside his mouth before swallowing.

Things were going his way.

One side of the road was edged by a narrow band of loose rock and a wall of granite. The other had a guard
rail and a sheer drop to eternity. The goddamned snow kept falling. Porter shifted into overdrive. He kept one eye on the Jeep and one eye on the guardrail. He could take Kincaid out now, make it look like an accident. But chances were the Yukon would fly off the mountain after the Jeep. And that would spoil his plan.

Kincaid at close range was exactly what Porter expected. Tall, dark, and handsome. Right out of an ad for men’s sportswear with a suntanned face and big white teeth. Porter knew guys like Ken Kincaid always got exactly what they wanted. Except this time he had gone after Porter’s wife.

Caroline would have fallen for him right away, Porter could see that. Swooning in her slut mode for the guy’s easy smile and big hands. Tall guys always got laid without even trying. Kincaid, with his pro-football career and A-frame house on the side of a mountain, screamed cock. No doubt, Caroline didn’t understand the true nature of her motivation.

The thought of his wife raised bile at the back of Porter’s throat. If she could just see this for what it was, if she would only open her eyes and look at the truth. He’d tried so many times to get her into sessions with a Freudian analyst. Hell, most people could never afford what he had offered. Three times a week for nine years, maybe as little as seven. And she could have achieved what most people were too limited even to dream of. A detailed map of the inner workings of her own mind.

In the beginning she laughed, insisting she didn’t need therapy to love someone. Her soft lower lip would drop into a pout when they argued, and she would tell him he couldn’t expect to win just because he was a shrink.

She had little respect for his vocation.

Eventually, something shifted in her. Porter sensed it as soon as it came to pass. Her eyes shuttered against him and he knew he had lost her, as completely as he had lost his mother that day long ago when she walked out. Caroline had been corrupted by the violation she had suffered as a child by the simple fact that she had liked it. Unless and until he could make her admit this, she was doomed to act out her corruption again and again.

Porter balled his fist and pounded the wheel, groaning aloud. One chance remained. Perhaps she would gain insight into her own moral corruption after she witnessed the damage she had caused.

That’s why Kincaid needed to die.

Convincing Kincaid to bring him up here had been easy. Porter had learned at a young age how to read people’s faces to get them to do what he wanted. It was his primary survival skill.

Porter’s strategy didn’t work with downtrodden types like the gum-cracking waitress and her tattooed boyfriend. People like that could smell a con, since they were often cons themselves.

He’d watched Kincaid size him up. Kincaid had taken care not to show aversion to the boils on Porter’s face, or his albino-like skin and colorless hair.

Surprisingly, Kincaid hadn’t looked away, locking in on Porter instead with an unflinching gaze. Athletes had the capacity to shut out everything and focus.

He knew Kincaid wouldn’t want to take him to the cabin. Kincaid had no good reason for doing it.

So Porter chose his moment and played his trump card.

Kincaid had leaned his weight on one hip, considering Jim Bell’s sickly son.

Porter had fidgeted shamelessly, running through the catalog of body language indicating low self-esteem, knowing that a lack of physical control would be a sign to Kincaid of ultimate weakness. Which in turn would make him feel superior. Guilt would follow, which in turn would motivate him to make a decision he would later regret.

Pippin perched on the passenger seat of the Buick, ears pricked, happy to be out. The car slogged through the snow until it lost traction and fishtailed. Caroline hit the brakes, worsening the skid. They slid to a stop in the middle of the road. She sat, hands shaking, working up the nerve to try again. No wonder Nan called it the old boat.

The pavement gleamed wet. Tiny snowflakes flashed past the headlights. She prayed Greyhound would be running on schedule.

She passed the turnoff for Storm Pass but didn’t take it, heading straight out to the county road. She glimpsed Kincaid’s Garage, with Gus’s pickup parked outside. The inside bays, she knew, provided shelter in winter for Ken’s red Porsche.

She bid a silent good-bye and tightened her grip on the wheel, which did nothing to quiet the quaking of her body. She wasn’t used to driving in snow. At this rate, she would be lucky to make it to the Greyhound stop in one piece.

She pressed her foot on the accelerator. The Buick responded slowly, sliding into another skid. This time Caroline kept on the gas, slow and steady, steering into it until the car righted itself.

There was, Caroline thought, a method to winter driving.

W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

Officer Mike Hartung loved his job, he really did. Like now, where the last of the morning rush was wheeling past him in Eckington, a neighborhood that was most definitely not listed on D.C. tourist maps.

He had grabbed a few hours’ sleep at home last night before heading back to Georgetown just before dawn to see what the night crew uncovered. They had done their jobs thoroughly. By the time Hartung’s takeout coffee had cooled, there was little they didn’t know about the habits and lifestyle of Dr. Porter Moross; his wife, Caroline Hughes; and their dog, Pippin.

The dog, for example, was a purebred.

The wife had a cache of things hidden up in the attic crawlspace. E-mails and cards from an old beau, along with some Milky Way bars and an unopened bag of cherry Twizzlers.

The collection of DVDs, pills, and syringes would have been enough to convince anyone that Dr. Porter Moross was a straight-up freak. And that was not taking into account the contents of the Sterlite container Moross kept under their bed.

A hush fell over the room when one of the officers pulled out a horse’s tail and riding crop.

“Thank God for latex,” he said, referring to the gloves they all wore when handling evidence.

There was a snicker or two. One guy shook his head and left the room. Everyone else just kept working.

They hit pay dirt in the office, after the computer had been hauled off to have its hard drive analyzed and the safe had been cracked.

They hit the mother lode inside Moross’s locked files, in the form of an old-fashioned check ledger where Moross had kept backup entries in his tiny, precise handwriting of every dime he spent. Control freak, Hartung thought. The contents of the ledger would be reviewed by a forensic accountant if the wife didn’t turn up safe and sound pretty soon, but Hartung never forgot something he had first heard as a rookie.

In the end, money is what brought down Al Capone.

He figured it was worth a minute or two to check out the latest entries. One jumped right off the page. Two years’ payment in advance to a U-Store facility across town.

Judging by the location, Moross wasn’t using it to store the leftover antiques that wouldn’t fit in this place.

Officer Mike Hartung looked up from the ledger and motioned for his partner to take a look. “We got something here. I got a good feeling.” Hartung grinned. He loved his job. He really did.

And here he was, loving his job and loving life, loving the look on the face of the sleazebag proprietor of a self-storage facility inside a gray slab of a building that could have passed for a Third Reich bunker but for the gang graffiti on its walls.

The proprietor was falling over himself to be helpful, despite the fact he didn’t know guests were coming. The goons posted outside had disappeared when the first squad car pulled up.

“No problem, no problem,” the man said, waving away Hartung’s warrant. “Come right in, come right
in.” Despite the morning coolness and a breeze that promised autumn at last, the proprietor was sweating like a pig. In fact, he looked ready to wet his pants. “Please,” he said, “look around, whatever you need.”

It was amazing, Hartung thought, what the sight of six cops armed with bolt cutters and semiautomatic AR–15 assault rifles could do.

He waited while the proprietor went through his files. “Here it is, a five-by-ten walk-in on the top floor. That’s a corner unit, our very best, our very best,” the proprietor said, slicing one hand through the air with a proud little flourish.

As though, Hartung thought, the biggest selling point of this place was you could stash your assault rifle for safekeeping when it was not in use.

The proprietor handed over the passkey and Hartung signaled his crew. Two men headed back outside to take up positions at the exits. Two ran up the rear stairwell, leaving Hartung and his partner to take the front.

The proprietor looked ready to throw up.

Hartung leaned in close, keeping his voice as hard and cold as the steel entrance door. “Nobody comes in, nobody leaves. I’ll let you know when we’re finished.”

The man’s head was bouncing like a bobble-head doll in a van with bad shocks. “No problem, sir, no problem at all.” He backed away from the counter, and this time Hartung was positive he smelled urine on the guy’s pants.

Hartung turned away to follow his partner, who was already taking the concrete stairs two at a time.