Blind Spot (24 page)

And then there was Natasha’s baby.

Lang sat on the edge of Claire’s couch, processing the history that Dinah had shared with them about herself and her relationship to the women at Siren Song. Dinah’s father, Herman Smythe—Herm, to his friends—had written an account of the Colony, and it was now at the local historical society. Herm, who was in his eighties, was currently living at a care facility outside Deception Bay, but he’d spent some time within Siren Song’s walls when he was younger.

Which basically added up to jack shit, when you thought about it.

“You want me to put that information on a note and throw it through the gate to them?” Lang suggested. “That’ll get me inside?”

Claire, however, was more encouraged. “Could we visit your father?” she asked Dinah.

“I don’t know how lucid he might be, but sure.”

“How old is he again?” Lang asked.

“Old enough to be my grandfather,” Dinah admitted. “He was a man of excess, in love and life. I know more about him from afar than as a true father. My mother raised me. Alone. He popped in now and again, was thrilled to see me for a good ten minutes or so at a time, but then he’d go.”

“Where’s your mother now?”

“Remarried. Moved to California last year. My mother is twenty years younger than my father.”

“And your father knew—knows—Catherine?”

“He knew Mary a lot better,” she said with pointed meaning. “It’s quite possible some of the women who live there are my half sisters.”

“Your half sisters,” Lang repeated. He looked over the slim woman with her blond/light brown braid. “You’re one of them?”

“No.”

“Who are you?” he asked, feeling like there was more going on in this room than he’d been led to believe. “How do you know Dr. Norris?”

Claire intervened. “We’re neighbors. Friends.” She turned to Dinah. “You seriously think they’re your sisters?”

“I think my father had sexual relations with Mary,” she answered. “He’s as much as said so. He could be one of them’s father. Or several of them…it’s not clear.”

“Start at the beginning,” Lang said in his investigator’s voice, then, as a thought occurred to him, “Did you work at the local grocery store?”

She gave him a funny look. “The Drift In Market? No. Why?”

He shrugged.

“I’m not one of the girls from Siren Song,” she stressed again. “My mother was a local townie from Deception Bay who got swept up in romance by my father, but twenty years is a pretty big gap in age. The romance didn’t last. They split up not long after my birth. I was raised by a single mother. My dad has always just been around the area. I was never close to him emotionally, although we’re more like a father and daughter now that he’s in the care facility.”

“What happened to Mary?” Lang asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Your father’s book…” Claire said thoughtfully. “Do you think there’s anything in it that would help us in connecting with Catherine and the girls?”

Dinah shook her head. “Let me explain something. The girls you speak of are
women.
The oldest ones are in their thirties and they go down to, I don’t know, early twenties, maybe?”

“Cat’s in her early twenties,” Claire said.

“But I don’t really know them,” Dinah went on. “Nobody knows them. They stay in the lodge. There was a time when the state tried to go after them for lacking education requirements, and after a wrangle, Catherine allowed them to be supervised and take their GEDs. No problem there. They were well educated and passed easily. They keep to themselves by choice.”

Lang said, “All we want to do is talk to them.”

“Are they all Mary’s daughters?” Claire asked.

“Probably. Or Catherine’s, I suppose.”

“How many of them are there?” Lang asked her.

She shook her head.

“Would your father know?” he pressed.

“Maybe. You can ask him. Does it matter?”

“If Jane Doe’s one of their own, why aren’t they moving heaven and earth to get her back?” he demanded, half angry. “Catherine doesn’t let them leave, as a rule, apparently, so why hasn’t she come looking for her?”

Claire said, “Maybe they let her leave.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Her pregnancy?”

“From what she’s saying,” Lang said, pointing to Dinah, “that’s not much of an issue after all. This Mary had affairs and a lot of children. Kinda flies in the face of this old-fashioned, morally strict life they supposedly live.”

“Mary’s affairs were long ago. And Catherine’s, too, if she had any,” Dinah said. “They do live an old-fashioned, morally strict life now.”

“The person who knows is Jane Doe,” Lang said. “If Catherine won’t talk to us, maybe she will. Soon.” He glanced at Claire. “She’s walking already.”

“There’s no guarantee,” Claire began, but Lang made a sound of frustration.

“A man is dead,” he stated flatly. “There’s a killer out there. I’m not going to wait around for Catherine to talk to me, or Cat to wake up and point the finger at her attacker.”

“What are you going to do?” Claire asked.

“I don’t know yet. Something.” He suddenly strode toward the mudroom, yanked on his boots, and threw on his jacket. “Thanks for the wine,” he said, then banged out the door into the wet and windy night.

Claire felt strangely bereft. She didn’t want him to go. Didn’t want to give up his
maleness,
for lack of a better word.

“He’s something,” Dinah said, pointedly looking at Claire.

“Don’t go there,” Claire warned and Dinah smiled.

“Would you like to talk to my father?” she asked.

Claire turned back to her. “Yes, I would,” she said without hesitation.

“Tonight? We could be there by seven thirty.”

“Well…” Claire set down her wineglass. “Why not? Let’s stop for sandwiches on the way. I’ll buy.”

Tasha allowed herself to be wheeled back to her room by Maria, careful to hide the clothes Gibby had brought to her beneath the wheelchair’s cushion. Gibby had wanted to shout to the whole world about how he’d helped her, but Tasha had shushed him into silence. She just hoped he would stay that way until she got away.

It seemed to take the night nurse forever to settle Tasha in and leave. Twice Tasha glanced fearfully toward the wheelchair because the cushion was tilted and lumpy and a tiny bit of fabric stuck out like a tongue. Tasha was nearly weak with worry that Maria would notice, but the nurse was completely oblivious as she talked both to Tasha and herself, finally dimming the overhead light on her way out.

In darkness, Tasha slid out of the bed, feeling cumbersome and off balance. Sometimes she couldn’t believe she was going to have a baby. Rafe’s gift. The one Rita wanted so badly.

She had to leave tonight!

Fumbling around, she yanked the cushion off the chair and tossed it on the ground. Her fingers closed over the pants. She found the zipper and arranged the pants so that it was in front, then stepped first one leg, then the other, into the canvaslike material. Pulling them up, she smiled into the darkness. Pants. She was leaving one world behind, joining a new one.

She couldn’t get them zipped all the way unless she kept the waist under her protruding belly. Good enough, she thought, though the hemlines dragged on the ground. Gibby might be short, but there was still too much pant leg and she couldn’t bend over to roll them up. Feeling precious time slipping away, she sat down in the wheelchair and tried to perform the task, frustration and fear nearly boiling over. In the end she lowered herself to the ground and bent her feet inward to reach the hem. Quickly rolling the legs up, she then found her shoes and slid her feet into them.

Gibby’s shirt was next. She tossed off the hospital gown with disdain and buttoned up the plaid long-sleeved shirt. It nearly burst the buttons across her abdomen. Then tiptoeing to the door, she glanced both ways in the hall. No one around.

But how, how was she going to get through the locked exits? She couldn’t push her way out and if she even tried, alarms would sound. Distantly. In one or several of the staff rooms. She’d heard it before when Maribel had banged against one of the bars, crying that she was going to miss the bus.

Only the keycard and code would let her out noiselessly.

Could she risk turning on the light? she wondered. Just for a moment? Just to look at herself?

She debated, then finally flipped the switch, the room flooding with light. Quickly she examined herself in the mirror and smiled a bit in awe. She looked
modern.
Sure, the clothes were masculine, but it was so much better than either the hospital gown or the gingham or printed ankle-length cotton dresses she’d worn her entire life.

She was sick of being part of the Colony. Sick of being different. Penned up. Told what to do, what to think.

The new Tasha was through trying to conform. There was no Natasha from Siren Song any longer.

She was reborn.

Her finger was touching the light switch when the door swung inward. The moment before she plunged the room into darkness, she saw Rita’s face.

And the knife in Rita’s hand.

The care facility where Dinah’s father resided was called Seagull Pointe and it was composed of white-painted cinder blocks and sprawled around a parking lot with a center island where a wind-whipped pine waved its branches at approaching vehicles. Its utilitarian design seemed born in the fifties, and what it lacked in architectural interest it made up in maintenance. The place looked freshly washed and painted, and when Claire and Dinah walked inside, a faint citrusy scent overlaid the sharp odor of ammonia and chlorine from cleansing products.

The woman manning the front desk knew Dinah and said that Herman was sitting by the nurse’s station, one of his usual haunts, apparently. They found him in a wheelchair, idly chatting with a younger woman and holding her hand.

Dinah threw Claire a look. “Some things never change,” she said.

One of the attendants greeted them with a big smile and said loudly, “Look who’s here, Herm. Dinah and a friend. They’ve come to see you.”

Herm had a full head of silvery white hair, light gray eyes that seemed slightly unfocused, and a lean body dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a gray V-necked sweater vest over a white shirt. Seeing Dinah, he patted his companion’s hand, then got to his feet, leaving her for his daughter. He bowed low over her hand.

“You want to walk to your room?” she asked, grabbing the handles of his empty wheelchair and pushing it forward.

“Sure thing. Exercise is good for you.” He gave Claire a long, glittering look from eyes that seemed to suddenly come alive.

“I’m Claire,” she said.

“Are you a doctor?” he asked, surprising her. Before she could respond, he said, “Dinah always wants me to see another doctor.” In an aside, he said, “She thinks there’s something wrong with me.”

“Claire’s actually interested in the Colony,” Dinah said as they headed down the hallway, three abreast.

“Ah…the Colony. I wrote a history about them, did you know?” he said. “Where is that book?”

“It’s with the historical society,” Dinah reminded him. “But Claire was wondering about the women, the girls, when you knew them, who are under Catherine’s care. You remember them?”

“Sure, I remember them. So many girls, and it was too bad about Nathaniel.”

“Nathaniel?” Claire asked.

“Terrible accident. Died very young. He’s in the graveyard, but the book…it’s with Parnell,” he stated with sudden certainty. “I didn’t give it to him. He took it. I think he meant to give it back to them. Did he ever do that?” He turned to Dinah for verification. “It wasn’t his to give!”

“Parnell is dead,” Dinah said carefully. “He’s been dead for years.”

“Killed himself,” Herm remembered. “Where’s the book?”

“At the historical society, Dad, but it only follows the Colony through Mary and Catherine’s generation. Nothing about the women who live there now.”

“Hmm.” He thought that over. “I’m sure there’s more. Much, much more.” He turned to Claire. “Parnell threw himself off the jetty. Did you know that?”

“I’ve never heard of Parnell,” she admitted.

“Well, he was their doctor. The cult’s. Dr. Parnell Loman. He attended them and he had a daughter of his own. I always wondered if he took her from them. She never had a mother that anyone knew of.”

Dinah said for Claire’s benefit, “There were two doctors. Brothers. Both in my dad’s generation: Dr. Parnell Loman and Dr. Dolph Loman.”

“Dolph!” Herm sneered. “Pompous ass!”

Dinah went on, “Parnell’s dead but Dolph is still on staff at Ocean Park. Semiretired, I think. Dad was kind of in competition with both of them for the ladies’ affections around here.”

“I was quite a swordsman in my day,” he said, leaning toward Claire with a wink. “Still am.”

“I see.” Claire was amused.

He made a face. “But Parnell, though. He liked ’em young.”

“Takes one to know one, Dad,” Dinah said with a laugh.

They’d reached his room and Dinah wheeled the chair inside as Herm and Claire followed. Herm seated himself back in the wheelchair with a sigh. He wasn’t as strong as he would like them to believe. The room held a twin bed and there were two orange molded plastic chairs, which Claire and Dinah each took. A wheelchair-accessible bathroom was attached.

“What do you want to know, girl?” Herm asked, folding his hands in his lap.

Claire thought about it a moment, hardly knowing where to start and what to ask. She finally told him of the general belief that Cat had come from Siren Song, and after glossing over the attack at the rest stop, explained about Cat having an accident and that she was unresponsive.

“She in a coma?” he demanded.

“In a manner of speaking,” Claire said. “A catatonic state.”

“She blond? They all are, you know. Blondish, anyway. All of ’em.”

“Yes,” Claire said.

He nodded. “There’s a bunch of ’em there. And there are some that have left. They used to give ’em away, you know. She had so many of ’em, and Catherine got sick and couldn’t take care of ’em and Mary was—well, I guess you’d call her a loose woman. Hah! Damn near pornographic, she was. Sexy. I was trying to interview her and she dragged me into her bed so fast I never got my shoes off! My pants were down at my ankles!”

Dinah stared off into space, long suffering, clearly having heard her father’s embellished stories too many times to count.

“She dropped babies faster’n you could count,” Herm went on. “Screwed everything in pants. Mind you, I left that out of the history. Kept those lurid parts to myself.”

“So, the women who live at Siren Song now are Mary’s children, not Catherine’s?” Claire asked.

“Catherine’s legs have been clamped shut since the Ice Age, dear girl. She had to clean up Mary’s messes, didn’t she. I always kind of liked her, but she hated me. She hated every man who Mary took to bed.”

“How many children did Mary have?” Dinah asked curiously.

He shrugged. “I wasn’t a regular guest after the first couple of times. Mary told me some history, and from what I already knew, I compiled the book. Showed it to Mary. I was going to include the babies, but Catherine came at me with a fire poker once, and I quit being invited. Never got their names down, but Isadora’s the oldest. Then there was Jezebel, but she was adopted out, I think. And then another one was adopted out. Or two or three. Don’t rightly know. Go ask Parnell. He’s their doctor.”

“Parnell’s dead,” Dinah reminded.

“Ask that cold bastard Dolph, then. He would know.” He nodded his head and stifled a yawn. “Catherine…She and I have run into each other a few times over the years. She’s never forgiven me for the book, though it’s just facts. I didn’t put their weirdness in it.”