Unspeakable (5 page)

Chance was lying beside her. When Collin had seen him last night, he'd been wearing a yellow T-shirt. Now, it was crimson, with countless slashes and tears from knife wounds. Chance must have been cursing at them right up until someone had put that gag in his mouth. Collin knew he hadn't died easily. He'd heard the killers talking about it. He'd also heard one solitary gunshot. That must have been what had obliterated most of Chance's face. From his nose to his gray-brown hairline, it was just a bloody pulp.

Collin felt his legs give out and he sank down until he was sitting on one of the steps. Numbly, he stared down at the horrible scene in the living room. His mother looked so pitiful lying there. He couldn't see her face, but he knew someone must have shoved a gag in her mouth, too. He remembered her screaming:
“Oh, sweet Jesus, my baby! Don't hurt him! Collin, get out of here! Oh, no . . .”

Those were the last words he'd heard from her.

Collin stared at that sad, lifeless thing sprawled on the living floor. He couldn't believe it was his mom.

And he couldn't believe that at the end, she'd actually been thinking about him.

I
t was her second day of not smoking, and Olivia Bischoff was going a little crazy.

Usually after lunch, before heading back to work, she'd duck into the alley behind the old medical building and sneak a cigarette. It was a filthy place to feed her filthy habit. But she wished she were there right now, puffing away on a Virginia Slim.

Instead, she was in a pretty garden courtyard that was part of the Portland Wellness Cooperative's small campus. On sunny days like this, the half-dozen café tables in the courtyard were premium lunch spots. Olivia's supervisor, Dr. Winifred Frost, had snagged them a table. On it now were the remnants of their lunches: two salad containers, two Diet Coke cans, and Olivia's Yoplait, which she was still finishing.

“Do you not want to talk about it?” Winnie asked. Dr. Frost had become
Winnie
to her about a year ago—after Olivia had finished her six-month training period as a therapist-counselor. Olivia now had her own patients and her own office—just down the hall from Winnie. At forty-seven, Winnie was like the big sister Olivia never had. When she first met her, Olivia thought Winnie looked sort of like an ostrich—tall and skinny, with large brown eyes, a wide smile, and a slightly weak chin. Her brassy, brown hair was always a bit mussed—like a bird's crown. Yet Olivia no longer noticed the avian similarities in her friend. She thought Winnie was exotic-looking and pretty. She was divorced—with two handsome brainy sons, one in college and another in high school.

“Do I not want to talk about what?” Olivia asked, over her last spoonful of Yoplait.

“About how much you're dying for a cigarette,” Winnie said.

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Go ahead, talk. It's all I think about. I may gnaw away at this spoon until there's nothing left—I'm so orally fixated.”

“Try chewing on cinnamon sticks or cloves.” Winnie crumpled up her napkin and stuffed it inside the plastic container with her salad. “For the record, I think what you're doing is fantastic. I mean, you've been a slave to the habit for—how long?”

“Seventeen years,” Olivia admitted. “I started senior year in high school, Marlboros.”

It had been her boyfriend's brand. He'd been good-looking and grungy, always arguing with the English teacher about the real meaning of different literary classics. He'd liked to converse with homeless people, and hang out in cemeteries. Smoking had given Olivia something to do while she tagged along for these sometimes monotonous yet deep, intellectual endeavors. He'd dropped her for a college freshman over spring break. The relationship had left her with a serious smoking habit—and a weakness for edgy, brooding guys. Of the two susceptibilities, cigarettes were far more comforting and dependable. Smoking had gotten her through all those long study sessions in college—and later on, when she was earning her master's in social work at the University of Washington. So at least cigarettes were good for something—unlike most of the good-for-nothing guys she dated.

But that was all in the past.

Now she had a great husband—and a compelling reason to kick her pack-a-day habit. They were trying to have a baby. She hadn't planned on telling Winnie any of this until she was actually pregnant. It wasn't something she was eager to share with her supervisor after eighteen months on the job. But Winnie was also her friend, and she needed to confide in someone.

“Good for you for quitting,” Winnie said. She toasted her with her Diet Coke can, and then took a swig. “Awful as it is, I know you enjoy your cigarettes. I hope he appreciates the sacrifice you're making.”

“
He
? What makes you so certain the baby—when I get pregnant—will be a boy?”

“I was talking about Clay,” Winnie replied, one eyebrow arched. “What's that handsome husband of yours giving up? What sacrifice is Clay making?”

Olivia let out a stunned little laugh. “Hey, he isn't too thrilled with this sex-on-a-schedule routine, but he's there for me each time.”

“God love him. What a trouper.”

Olivia frowned. “You just don't like Clay. It's that simple.”

He wasn't like all those intense, self-involved, troubled types she'd been attracted to in high school and beyond. Clay Bischoff was different. With receding blond hair, beautiful blue eyes, and a confident smile, he won everyone over. Though he had been a bit of a party boy when she'd met him, he'd also held a high-powered job at a PR firm. Plus he'd really been there for Olivia when her mom had been dying of pancreatic cancer. She still remembered one of the last lucid things her mom had told her:
“That Clay is a nice young man. You should stick with him for a while.”

Her mother hadn't told her to marry him, but that was what Olivia had done. She'd even managed to cut back on cigarettes for him—and never smoked in their Queen Anne apartment. She'd always stepped outside for a smoke.

Then Clay had accepted a job offer in Portland, where he'd grown up. They socialized a lot with his old school chums. Olivia wasn't exactly crazy about them—or their wives. Smoking became her excuse to step outside during some of the more intolerable
“Hey, remember when . . .”
social gatherings. By the time Clay and some of his friends had formed a softball team, Olivia was exceeding a pack a day.

That had been almost a year ago, when she'd decided they should have a baby. Clay had been all for it. She'd made three other attempts to quit smoking since then, and each time, when she'd gotten her period, the disappointment had been so overwhelming she'd broken down and started smoking again. She'd probably leaned on Winnie and complained about Clay a bit too much during those setbacks. Her friend had a skewed opinion of him.

“I'm just saying,” Winnie sighed, while gathering up her salad container and Diet Coke. “You're going through withdrawal right now, and some months down the line, you may have to take maternity leave from here. Clay isn't making any sacrifices for this. He hasn't even said anything about giving up his Little League—”

“It's not a Little League,” Olivia muttered. “It's a men's softball team, and they play for charity.”

“Charity begins at home,” Winnie replied, getting to her feet, “which is where your husband and most of his friends should be. Instead they're ignoring their wives and families to go swing at a baseball and relive their old high school glory days. I mean, really, three nights of practice a week—and a game every Saturday? That's N-U-T-Z, nuts.”

Olivia got up from her café chair. “You know, every time I'm unhappy and I confide in you, it comes back to bite me in the ass.” She quickly gathered up what remained of her lunch and took it to the trash can.

Winnie followed her. “Oh, don't pay too much attention to me, honey. You're talking to a golf-widow divorcee, who discovered her husband was two-timing her with a twenty-eight-year-old paralegal. I'm bitter and jaded.” They threw out their trash, and then Winnie gave her a nudge as they headed into the old medical building together. “For what it's worth, I'm not sure about how great a dad Clay will be, but I know you'll be a wonderful mom.”

Olivia worked up a smile. “You really think so?”

“At least, you'll be a better mother than the one Collin Cox had.”

Olivia laughed and pressed the button for the elevator. “Well, that's high praise. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

It was all over the newspapers, tabloids, and TV that Collin Cox's recently slain, drug-addicted mother was a potential candidate for World's Worst Stage Mother Ever.

In the elevator on their way up to the sixth floor, Winnie asked if she wanted to go out for a drink after work. Olivia figured she'd conquer one vice at a time for her yet-to-be-conceived baby. For now, she could drink. Besides, Clay had softball practice tonight. Olivia said yes.

She had a half hour before her next patient, but found her message light blinking when she got back to her office. It was Sheila at the admissions desk. One of Olivia's regulars, Layne Tipton, was waiting for her:
“He knows he doesn't have an appointment, but it's quite urgent, he says. Anyway, I thought you might be able to squeeze him in before your one-thirty. . . .”

The admissions people practically never let patients in without an appointment. But twenty-year-old Layne Tipton was so damn handsome almost everybody made exceptions for him. He was just the kind of guy who would have broken her heart in college.

Olivia found the brooding, dark-haired, dark-eyed young man nervously pacing around the waiting area. He wore a black T-shirt that showed off his muscular arms—one almost completely covered with tattoos and the other untouched. His jeans were torn in several places and he had a jacket tied around his waist. Despite his ragtag attire, he still looked like a fashion model. Olivia noticed the other people in the area looking at him. Most of them probably had no idea someone so gorgeous could have so many problems.

“Hi, Layne,” she said, coming up behind him.

He swiveled around and gaped at her with his beautiful sad brown eyes. “I really need to see you,” he whispered. “Something happened. . . .”

“It's okay,” she said. “I've got some time for you.” She patted him on the shoulder, and led the way down the narrow corridor to her office. The halls of the old medical building had been cheaply updated years ago with fluorescent lighting overhead and gray carpeting. As she neared her office door, Olivia glanced back at Layne, plodding behind her.

“I got fired yesterday,” he whispered. “Another customer at the garden store complained to my stupid boss, and he fired me. Then this morning, my mom found out—and oh, God . . .”

As soon as he stepped inside her office, he made a beeline for his usual spot at one end of the tan sofa. He plopped down on the couch, buried his face in his hands, and cried.

Layne had grown up with an abusive, manipulative mother. He'd attempted suicide twice—once by slashing his wrist, and again with pills. He'd admitted to Olivia that before starting to see her, he'd even bought a gun to use on himself. For a while, he'd lived on the streets and hustled. He'd been arrested for all sorts of infractions—from shoplifting to assault to public indecency. The last charge had stuck, and put him on the list of registered sex offenders in Oregon. He'd been caught with his pants down in some bushes in a public park, satisfying an older gentleman for fifty dollars.

In his hustling days, Layne had been “gay for pay.” He said he wasn't interested in sex with men beyond the monetary rewards. But Olivia was pretty certain he found a warped sense of importance and acceptance in those sexual encounters. Apparently, Layne's mother knew about some of his minor brushes with the law, but he'd managed to keep her in the dark about his hustling days. He'd recently moved back in with her after a stretch at a halfway house.

With a notepad and pen in hand, Olivia sat across from him in the easy chair. While he sobbed, the fan hummed in one corner of the room. The two big windows behind her desk were open to their six-inch maximum, allowing some air to circulate through the stuffy office. The windows had a view of the alley where Olivia usually took her cigarette break.

“All right.” She handed Layne a Kleenex. “Let's talk about what happened at work.”

He blew his nose, wiped his eyes, and told her about his run-in with a “bitch customer” at the garden store, where he'd been employed for two months. Olivia felt sorry for the customer. Layne didn't seem to grasp when he was being rude or incredibly tactless with people.

“I'll be honest with you, Layne,” she finally said. “From everything you've told me, I'm not sure this woman did anything to deserve your hostile treatment. Are you sure you weren't mad about something else—and maybe decided to take it out on this woman who was just buying some azaleas?”

He squirmed in the corner of the sofa. “I should have known you'd side with her.”

“Well, it's obvious you went to work yesterday in a bad mood. And it's also obvious your getting fired isn't what's really upsetting you right now. Otherwise, you'd have called me or come in here yesterday, when it happened—”

“Of course, I'm upset about it!” he argued. “That fucker boss of mine, he's such a prick! I'd like to slit his throat. Believe me, if I ever see him again—”

“Layne, you don't mean that. Didn't he give you a break by hiring you?”

“The bastard told my mother that I had a record!” he screamed.

“All right,” she said calmly. “Okay. Let's talk about it. What happened exactly?”

Layne started crying again. “I didn't want her to know I got shit-canned—so I—I left the house like I was going to work this morning. I hung out at the library and the park. . . .”

“Were you looking for company?” she asked, without judgment in her tone.

“No!” he said, shaking his head over and over. “I just didn't want her to know I'd gotten fired. But she called the garden store, and my boss started giving her all sorts of shit. He went on and on about how much I've screwed up—and how he'd done me this big favor letting me work in his crappy store when I had a
criminal record
. That fucker! I could kill him. . . .”

Olivia had a feeling Layne's boss wasn't the one who had gotten hostile over the phone, not from what she knew about Layne's mom. Mrs. Tipton was a piece of work.

“Your mother already knows you have a record of sorts,” Olivia said.