Tough Customer (44 page)

"It was one of several gifts Oren gave me over time." She told him what she'd told Ski and Sheriff Drummond about Oren's refusal to take back his unwanted gifts. "To avoid seeing him, I gave up trying to return them. Why do you ask now?"

"It crossed my mind that we never talked about it once we determined that Sally Buckland was wearing one identical to it. You didn't know that he'd given her one, too?"

She shook her head.

"Do you have yours here?"

"Upstairs. I brought everything Oren had given me when I came to Merritt."

"Seems like you had an intuition. Like you might need this stuff for evidence."

"Maybe that's a trait I inherited from you."

The remark seemed to please him immensely. But he kept to the subject. "Mind if I take a look at the bracelet?"

She went upstairs. When she returned a few minutes later, her mother was in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of coffee. She was disheveled but positively aglow. She gave Berry a shy smile and a mellow good morning, but rarely did her eyes wander from Dodge.

Berry had collected all the items Oren had given her into one small duffel bag. She unzipped it and dumped the contents onto the kitchen table, then sifted through the articles in search of the bracelet. When at first she didn't see it, she sorted through everything more carefully.

Then she looked at Dodge and Caroline with misapprehension. "It's not here. How could it not be here? The last time I saw it, it was with all this other stuff."

"When was that?" Dodge asked.

"I don't remember exactly."

"Before you moved here, or since?"

"Since. I was trying to talk myself into making a clean sweep, getting rid of any reminders of him. I changed my mind, but the bracelet was here, I'm sure of it. It was the most personal of the gifts."

"Maybe you removed it at some point and just don't remember."

"Of course I would remember!" Then, immediately sorry for taking out her rising anxiety on her mother, she reached for her hand and gripped it. "I would remember, Mother." Sinking down into one of the chairs at the table, she moaned, "You don't think--"

"That it was your bracelet on Sally Buckland's wrist?"

Dodge had finished the awful thought for her. She wanted to nullify it before it could become fact. "It couldn't possibly have been. When would Oren have taken mine?"

Dodge cleared his throat. "It's possible--just possible--that Starks was here."

"Here? You mean, in this house?"

Berry and Caroline listened with incredulity as he told them about the photos that had been discovered in a trash can not far from the motel where Oren had been hiding until Davis Coldare walked in on him.

"Looked like he was getting the lay of the land, so to speak. There are shots of the house from every angle. Some of you," he said uneasily. "To get them, even using a telephoto lens, he had to be fairly close to the house. Maybe he was ballsy enough to have come inside when you weren't here and made himself at home."

"He knew where to find your bedroom the night he shot Ben Lofland," Caroline said.

Berry hugged herself, rubbing her hands over the goose bumps that had broken out on her arms. "He went through my bureau drawers? Pawed through my things?" The thought made her physically ill.

"We don't know that he did. But it's possible."

"I want to see the pictures," Berry said.

"No you don't. Trust me."

"I want to see them, Dodge."

He cursed under his breath. Berry caught words of self-chastisement for telling her about the damn pictures. "You'll have to ask Ski," he said. "He made me give them back to him."

Just then his cell phone rang. He checked caller ID. "Speak of the devil." He answered, listened, then said, "On our way." He disconnected. "Starks is showing signs of coming around."

"It's an ugly scene," Ski told them as they joined him outside the ICU.

Inside it, the hospital bed was surrounded by an attending physician and several nurses, all doing something different, moving with a sense of urgency while trying to give assurance to their patient, whose agitation was obvious. Oren was struggling against the restraints securing him to the bed.

A nurse, noticing them, came to the door. "You can wait down the hall, Deputy Nyland. I'll come and get you if he starts to speak coherently." It was a subtle suggestion for them to relocate.

They moved as a group to a small waiting room. Berry and her mother sat down on a love seat. "This whole ordeal ...," Caroline whispered, shaking her head remorsefully. She never finished the thought. Those words said enough.

Dodge took a chair. He removed a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, fiddled with it, replaced it. Ski stood near the door, his back to the wall. He was watchful and tense, like a soldier waiting for the shot that would end a short cease-fire.

No one spoke for a time. But the pressure on Berry's chest became such that she finally blurted out, "I stole from him. From Oren."

The three looked at her with bewilderment.

Before they could speak or she lost her nerve, she plunged on.

"You know that Oren had worked on the campaign that Ben and I finished on Friday." They nodded in unison. "That was when things with Sally were coming to a head. She resigned, and it was understood that Oren was the reason."

She hesitated, then lowered her head. "No, that's not quite accurate. I
made it understood
that Oren was the reason."

"What do you mean, Berry?" Caroline asked.

"Management consulted me about Sally's leaving. I told them that she'd left because of Oren."

"Which was true."

"Let me tell this, Mother, please." She paused to collect her thoughts. "I led management to believe that the company had narrowly escaped a costly sexual harassment suit, when actually Sally had never suggested such a thing. I went further, intimating that other women in the office were considering taking matters to that level. This rattled them. They asked 'How bad is it?' In my opinion, as a female employee, what should be done with Oren Starks? Should they give him a warning and probation, or fire him outright? Was he or was he not redeemable, dispensable?

"It should be obvious to you what I told them. I remained silent about the excellent work Oren was doing. I didn't tell the bosses that his original idea had been the best, and that Ben and I were designing the entire campaign around it. Instead, I fed their paranoia and made them fear the worst if Oren remained an employee.

"He got his pink slip the following day. He wasn't allowed to take any of his work with him. He was escorted from the building by security guards and treated like a criminal." In a voice barely audible, she added, "He became one."

No one spoke for a long moment, then Dodge said, "Wait a damn minute here. You can't blame yourself for what Oren
became.
People get fired from jobs. They don't start killing. He was what he was before he got fired."

"He's right, Berry." Ski spoke more quietly than Dodge, but he was just as adamant.

"But that's not the end of it. After his dismissal, he asked me repeatedly to intercede on his behalf. I kept stringing him along, telling him that I had tried to get him his job back but that Delray's decision was firm. It was a lie. I never spoke up for him. Not once. Quite the contrary. After he was gone, I took credit for his work. Ben did, too, just by remaining silent. He knew how I'd played it, and, tacitly, he went along. He never acknowledged to anyone Oren's valuable input." In an undertone, she added, "I've since learned that he never really trusted me after that."

She paused to take a breath. "As for Sally, I encouraged her to leave the company. I told her she would never shake free of Oren as long as she remained at Delray."

"Also true," Caroline said.

"In all probability," Berry agreed. "But I had a selfish reason for urging her to resign. She was good. Clients liked her unassuming manner. Management did, too. She posed a threat to my advancement. I wanted her gone. So I pressured her into leaving. I played both ends against the middle. I manipulated Sally into leaving, and I saw to it that Oren got fired. All for my self-gain."

She turned her head and spoke directly to Caroline. "No one is prouder of your extraordinary success than I am, Mother. But it's a lot to live up to. I'm equally ambitious, but when it comes to achieving goals, I don't have your patience, your style, or your grace. I'm wired differently, I guess," she said, glancing at Dodge.

"In any case, the pressure and guilt I was feeling over what I'd done intensified. That's why I launched into you that day, and then later had the scene with Oren on my porch. I came here to Merritt to get my head straight, my priorities readjusted. During that process, I realized I must acknowledge my underhandedness and rectify it. When I called Oren last Thursday night, I told him that his name would be on that campaign when it was presented." She paused, then added softly, "It wasn't enough."

The silence among them was heavy, then Dodge heaved a sigh. "You ask me, that's all bullshit. Okay, so maybe your ambition got a little out of hand. Sally Buckland had free will. You may have nudged her, but she made up her own mind to resign.

"As for Starks," he continued, making a face of distaste, "behind this guy's smarts was a weird little creep with violent tendencies just begging for a chance to get out." He pointed a stern finger at Berry and said, "Now, you've fessed up. Drop it."

She felt a rush of affection for him and would have expressed it out loud if the doctor treating Oren hadn't suddenly appeared in the open doorway. "Any of you named Berry?"

She stood up.

"He's saying your name over and over."

"Should I ...?"

He gave a pragmatic shrug. "Up to you." Then, as abruptly as he'd appeared, he vanished.

Caroline reached for Berry's hand. "Don't go in there. We shouldn't have even come."

Berry looked over at Dodge, silently asking for his opinion. "I wish he'd've died out in the Thicket, spared you this."

When she met Ski's eyes, he said, "If you go in, I'll go with you. I need to hear what he has to say."

She went to him. He placed his hand on her elbow, and together they left the waiting room and walked down the corridor.

Oren's ICU was a scene from a horror show. She approached the bed with trepidation. His eyelids were wildly fluttering. He was murmuring her name, like a chant. His hands were moving restlessly, his fingers plucking at the bedding while his wrists pulled against the restraints around them.

"Can he hear me?" she asked.

"You can try," one of the attending nurses replied.

Berry swallowed her misgivings. "Oren?" When he didn't respond, she cleared her throat and said more forcefully, "Oren? Can you hear me? It's Berry."

His eyelids blinked open, but his eyes were rolled back into the sockets, unfocused. He spoke her name in a thin, raspy voice.

"Yes. It's me." She groped for something to say that wouldn't sound entirely inane. "You're in the hospital. The doctors and nurses are trying to help you."

"Berry." Again her name passed through his lips as he blinked rapidly to bring her into focus. "Berry."

"I'm here."

"You're alive."

"Yes."

"You should be dead."

She sucked in a quick breath and recoiled. Ski put his hand on her shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

But before she could move, Oren managed to twist his hand, enabling him to grab her wrist. She looked down in horror at his cold, moist fingers clamped around her wrist. His eyes were now wide open and focused on her. The madness in them caused her to sob in fright.

"You will die," he said with malice. "You will
die.
"

She wrenched her wrist free and stumbled backward, coming up against Ski but remaining transfixed by Oren's maniacal gaze. Then suddenly his eyelids fluttered again. His throat bowed hideously. His head slammed back into the pillow, knocking askew the gauze that had been covering the hole in the side of his skull and the brain matter bulging out of it. His body began to buck uncontrollably.

"He's seizing," one of the nurses said in an urgent voice.

Ski turned Berry away and propelled her from the room. Outside in the corridor, she fell into his arms.

SKI KNEW THAT IF HE'D RETURNED TO THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE immediately following Oren Starks's death, he would have been beset by reporters and other deputies, all salivating to know the grisly details. He needed some downtime before returning to the fray, so he was making calls from his kitchen table.

Besides, he could better handle outstanding matters here, where he wouldn't be constantly interrupted. He had his cell phone, a carafe of strong coffee, and a checklist of people to call. First was Sheriff Drummond, who expressed appropriate concern over the wasted life of Oren Starks, then commended Ski on his capture.

"It was a coordinated effort, sir."

The sheriff dismissed his humility, then asked about Caroline and Berry, and after Ski had assured him that they were as well as could be expected, the sheriff stunned Ski by telling him that he'd decided not to run for reelection.

"It's time I passed the baton." He paused, then added, "I'd be pleased to endorse you as my successor. There'd be nobody better. And I don't say that just because you're the hero of the moment."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence."

"You've earned it. Think about it. We'll talk it over soon."

Ski was flattered and excited, but he couldn't indulge in thoughts about the future when duties in the present were so pressing. Doggedly he continued down his list, next calling the nursing home where Oren Starks's mother was a patient. The administrator reminded him of the extent of her illness. "She's unresponsive, Deputy Nyland."