Nowhere to Hide (37 page)

His hands started to come up again like blinders, and Della bit out in a low voice, “He does this when he talks about Wart. It’s a shield, I think.” To Hague, she added more loudly, “He’s not here. Wart is not here. You’re safe.”

“Safe,” he said, his lip curling as he stared past her. “He came to the west hallway. He waited till they were gone and then he would tell us about them. The bad things. He said he took both of them behind the counter.”

Della shook her head. “There was no examining table. There was no counter. Whoever Wart was, he scared Hague,” she said. “I never saw him, but his name comes up sometimes when he’s under stress.”

September understood that Della didn’t believe there was a “Wart.” But she knew someone with that nickname existed. “Does Peter have a last name?” she asked Hague.

“No.” His gaze had been wandering around the room, but now it came back to her. “No, it’s Louie!” he suddenly shouted, making September jump. “Louie took the girls behind the counter. They screamed, but he had the knife.” He looked around wildly. “The government tells him to do it. They put receivers in the folds of your brain, so they know what you’re thinking. They KNOW.”

“Louie?” September repeated a bit breathlessly.

“He never told them about the bad thing, the doctors . . . They aren’t real . . . they keep their hands in his pockets. They have rigor smiles and they keep their hands in their pockets.”

Della shot Liv and September a fulminating look, then said, “Shhh, Hague. Don’t think about it.” She grabbed September’s arm and practically spun her around, dragging her back to the door. “I’m not going to let you torture him anymore. He doesn’t know anything. You’re just poking at his fears!” She whirled on Liv, who’d come up quick, thinking apparently that she needed to save September. “This is over, Olivia. I won’t have it again. Don’t come back.”

“Don’t leave, Livvie!” Hague yelled at Della, angry.

“I’ll be back, Hague. Don’t worry,” Liv told her brother.

“You can’t—” Della started.

“Shut up, Della,” she cut her off, getting in her face.

“I—” Della sputtered.

“My brother’s my brother,” Liv told her in a low voice that nevertheless packed a punch. “I’ll see you both again. I won’t let you stop me.”

Della’s mouth was open as September and Liv left the apartment and got into the elevator. Liv muttered about Della’s highhandedness all the way out to the street, then she took a hard look at September. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Nothing.” She heard her own voice and it was a stranger’s.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

September let out a breath. She felt like she was floating. “No . . . no . . . it’s good. He said Wart’s name is Peter.”

“Or Louie. Hague’s not very clear at the best of times,” Liv apologized for her brother.

September lapsed into silence. She couldn’t talk anymore. She could feel Liv’s eyes studying her, and it was all she could do to act normally after Hague’s comments.

Louie took the girls behind the counter.

She felt sick with a chill. Starved for air. She had to get to her car, and the station, and talk to Sandler, and Jake. . . .

I’ll call you.

She wanted to laugh hysterically and cry and ululate. Jake didn’t want to talk to her. But she could call him. She should call him.

But what she was thinking was crazy. She knew it. She knew she had a weakness for making connections too soon.

Yet . . . yet . . . Louie’s was the burger spot where May and Erin had been killed. Erin worked behind the counter and the killer had a knife.

He’s good with a noose.
Hague had said that about Wart—Peter—too. And May and Erin had been subdued and killed by strangling first.

No . . . no . . .

Wart and the Do Unto Others case . . . it wasn’t about
her sister
!

Liv dropped her off at her apartment and like an automaton September drove to the station. It was Saturday. She wasn’t supposed to work, although she knew everyone else would be clocking overtime on Do Unto Others. Vaguely she saw Guy Urlacher’s mouth moving but there was only white noise in her ears. Fugue state . . . she thought distantly.

The people in the squad room seemed watery and elongated. Agents Bethwick and Donley weren’t there, but George Thompkins seemed to have lost thirty pounds and Sandler looked stern and rail-thin but kind of loopy, too, as she leaned into September.

Through watery pools and ripples she heard: “
Did Auggie reach you? He called the station.
”

“No . . .”

“
How
—
did
—
you
—
hear?
”

“What?”

Did she say that? Was it her voice? She wondered if she was having some kind of breakdown.

Gretchen was frowning at her. “How did you hear about Georgia Friedman? Your brother and Frick and Frack are on the scene. How did you know?”

“Who?”

“Nine, what the hell?” She snapped her fingers in front of her face.

September came back slowly. She was following her own internal dialog so closely that the world faded away. “Who’s Georgia Friedman?”

“The vic found at Haverly Park in southeast.”

“I didn’t know. I just came in,” September said.

“Auggie called on the station line, looking for you. The 911 call went to the Portland police.”

“I’ll call him, but—”

“It’s our doer, Nine,” Gretchen said grimly. “He caught up with her outside a bar. But he screwed up this time. She scratched him and though he poured bleach on her, there’s flesh under her fingernails. Might be able to get some DNA anyway.”

“Good.” She shook her head, clearing her mind. She needed to
think.

“There’s something else,” Gretchen said, shooting a look to George, who shared something unspoken between them.

“What?”

“He carved into her skin.”

She got a cold feeling in the small of her back by the way she was acting. “Not ‘Do Unto Others,’ I take it . . .”

Gretchen shook her head, her almond-shaped blue eyes serious as they gazed into September’s. “This time, he carved the Roman numeral nine into her skin.”

“Oh, shit . . .” September expelled, and sank into her chair.

He stared stonily at the face in the mirror. The vertical lines beneath his left ear were a dark branding. Sociopath . . .

You screwed up!

There was no more waiting.

He’d been following Nine around all summer. It was time to stop.

It was time for them to be together.

September stared across the squad room. Concerned, Gretchen had brought her a cup of hot coffee, but she hadn’t touched it. She couldn’t process. It was too much information. The doer had carved IX in the latest victim’s torso. That was another message to her, no doubt. But did any of this have to do with May’s death?

Feeling herself trembling inside, she inhaled and exhaled several times, then put a call in to Jake. She didn’t care if he didn’t want her to call. She couldn’t wait. When the call went straight to voice mail she ground her teeth, and sent him a text:

Please call. I need to talk to you. I’m sorry.

It was pathetic but she was past caring. There were so many pieces of information vying for attention inside her head she was shut down and overwhelmed. She sat quietly at her desk as they waited for more information from the federal agents. Auggie called again and was relieved to get hold of her. He’d been working with the Portland police and was called out to the scene with Donley and Bethwick. He wanted to make sure she was all right, and September assured him she was. She didn’t have to tell him about visiting Hague; he was too absorbed in what he was doing.

Off the phone, her gaze traveled to the bulletin board with the first three victims’ pictures and bullet points. Lulu Luxe had been added under her real name, Dolores Werner, and now Georgia Friedman had joined the board.

And what about May Rafferty? Should she be there, too?

September had planned to spill the information to Gretchen as soon as she walked in, but she’d been blindsided by Do Unto Others’s latest kill. Now, she got up from her desk and walked down the hall to the break room and went to her locker. There was nothing in it. She hadn’t even put her messenger bag in.

She stood there a moment, thinking hard. Then she turned quickly and found the steps to the basement and the evidence room. There was a uniform at the counter reading a copy of
People
. Seeing her approach, the man quickly put it aside. September showed him her badge and said, “I need the evidence box on a cold case from fifteen years ago.”

“Write down the date and name,” he said, sliding her a form. She filled it out and slid it back to him, and he punched the information into a computer, stared at it a minute, then headed through a steel door. Before it closed behind him, she saw row upon row of metal racks filled with boxes that held information on unsolved cases.

It took him a while, but he returned with a box, and said, “You wanna take this upstairs, we gotta couple more forms to fill out.”

September was staring down at the name,
MAY
RAFFERTY
.
“Maybe. I’ll just stay here for a minute and see.” She took the box to a counter on the far wall and opened the lid. Inside were plastic bags with her sister’s bloody clothes and sneakers. She’d been casually visiting her friend at the burger spot. There was no knife; the killer had brought it with him and taken it away. The thin cord he’d used to strangle her was in a separate plastic bag, however. She glanced at it, shying away from the sight of her sister’s dried blood.

It was the report that interested her that was nestled in the box alongside the evidence. It, too, was in a plastic bag, but that was mainly for safekeeping. She wouldn’t be contaminating evidence by looking at it as it had been created by the detectives who’d worked the case.

She read through it quickly. Knowing it was her sister’s, she found each word stung her even more than other homicide cases. It didn’t take long, and she slipped it back in its plastic sleeve.

“Thank you,” she told the uniform.

“That all you need?”

“I think so.”

She was barely at the stairs when she was already dialing her cell phone, punching in the number for the Rafferty house. Her father picked up a few moments later, and before he could say more than, “Hello,” she answered in a flat, grim voice, “It’s September. I’m on my way over to see you. Don’t leave. Just . . . stay there.”

“What’s this about?” he asked, surprised.

“May, Dad.” She could scarcely control the tremor in her voice. “It’s about May and the fact that you lied to me.”

September’s emotions were all over the place as she drove to Castle Rafferty. May? Had Wart killed
May
? It couldn’t be that far back.

But didn’t you think this went all the way back to grade school?

But that was before the storage unit,
she argued with herself.

Then how did he find the storage unit? He was watching. . . watching the house . . . watching for you.

“No,” she said aloud. “That doesn’t fit.”

Unless May was first . . . and you were second . . .

She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but she kept focused on the road. By the time she wheeled into her father’s house, she was a bit calmer. Not much, but some.

Braden opened the door for her as she stalked inside. Rosamund was there, one hand protectively cradling her belly. September could scarcely stand to look at her and would have preferred to be alone with her father, but apparently it wasn’t to be.

“You never told me the truth about May,” she bit out.

“What has this got to do with May?” he asked, clearly feeling this had come out of left field.

“There was no robbery. You always said it was a botched robbery, but you knew it wasn’t. You knew it was a straight homicide.”

He shook his head, but his gaze fell from the accusations in her eyes. “There was money at the scene.”

“But none taken. I pulled the evidence box. I saw the report. Nothing was stolen from the store. May and Erin were forced into a back room and he tied them up with a cord that they believed he brought with him. He
meant
to kill her. He went there to kill her.”

“You don’t know that. You and August were fifteen!” he came back at her, his face red. “You’d lost your mother, and now your sister was killed. Forgive me for wanting to spare you some of the horror.”

“You should have told me,” September said stubbornly. “Later, if not then. You should have told me.”

“I’m sorry, Nine,” Rosamund put in diffidently, “but aren’t you overreacting just a little? Your father wanted to spare you.”

“Stay out of this.” September couldn’t even look at her.

“Well, excuse me for trying to help. I’m part of this family, too, whether you like it or not!”

“Rosamund,” Braden said flatly. A warning.

September forced her gaze away from her father and to her stepmother. She wanted to blast her for so many things, but it wasn’t really about her.

Rosamund ignored the warning. “All your stuff’s in the garage. It’s safe, okay?” she told September. “I brought everything back that was there. Sorry, I didn’t go with Jorah to the storage unit, but that workman was sneaking around and I didn’t feel that I could leave. Ask Suma. She stayed with me, too.” She waved a finger at September. “I called Mel about him, too, and believe me, I sure got a discount!”

September barely heard her. Her mind was on her sister and the way it must have come down at Louie’s that night. If Wart/Peter had killed her sister and her friend then she needed to tell Sandler. Maybe get Frick and Frack going on it.

“I told you about that guy, when I told you about the storage unit,” Rosamund was whining to Braden. “I can’t believe you don’t remember.”

Braden snapped at her, “I remember you going on and on about Mel’s and I told you to use a reputable company next time. That’s what I remember.”