Wicked Lies (26 page)

SEVEN DEADLY SINNERS NABBED FOR BURGLARY: LOCAL TEENS CAUGHT IN POLICE STING

“You sure were Johnny-on-the-spot with your story,” said Buddy, one of the paper’s stringers who wrote local-color pieces in the hope of becoming a full-fledged reporter. Harrison could have told him there was no money in the business, but Buddy was as eager as Harrison had once been, and money and job security weren’t really what either of them was after. “How’d you get your byline out so fast?” Buddy demanded.

“Experience and talent,” Harrison said.

Buddy snorted.

“Is he still here?” Harrison asked.

“Went home. Be back around noon.”

“Okay.”

He
was Vic Connelly, the paper’s owner and editor, a garrulous guy with wild white hair à la Albert Einstein and a gruff attitude. Harrison had hoped to catch him and talk about the follow-up articles he planned to put together and also tell him that he next intended to put all his energies into going after the Justice Turnbull story.

After checking in with Buddy and his office voice mail and e-mail, then dinking around with his follow-up story for half an hour, he left the offices, heading to his apartment to run through the shower and make himself feel human again. Keeping to Lorelei’s side was all fine and good, but her couch, as she’d said, left something to be desired.

When he was dressed, he pulled the piece of paper John Mills had given him from his wallet and yanked out his cell phone. Written on the scrap was the young officer’s direct cell number. As he placed the call, Harrison examined his beard growth in the mirror, scowling at his reflection. He looked like he’d just come from a weeklong bender.

Maybe it was time to spiff up a bit. Get rid of the down-and-out look he’d cultivated for the Deadly Sinners. He didn’t need to pretend he was anyone but who he was any longer, now that his deception with them was over. Not that his usual look was much more than what he’d been projecting; he wasn’t exactly the Brooks Brothers type. But now he thought about Geena Cho and the Tillamook County Sheriff Department’s staff. If he expected even the least modicum of information from them, it was best to look a little more tended, somewhere in between his own scruffiness and Pauline Kirby’s camera-ready slickness.

“Mills,” a serious voice answered.

“Officer Mills, it’s Harrison Frost of the
Seaside Breeze
. You suggested I call today? That you might have some information for me?”

“Oh yeah . . .” A pause. A hesitation. Then, as if Mills had finally connected the dots, he said quickly, “Bryce Vernon is a developer with property up and down the northern Oregon coastline. His son Noah is turning eighteen the day after tomorrow.”

Click.

Harrison hung up thoughtfully. Bryce Vernon was Noah Vernon’s father and Noah Vernon—N.V.—was turning eighteen the day after tomorrow. In a very few days he would no longer be a juvenile, and then all kinds of things could happen. He might be tried as an adult. He could go to jail. He might want to talk to a reporter about how misunderstood he was by his parents and how persecuted by the local police. He might lawyer up, and then again, he might have a helluva lot to say.

Faintly smiling, Harrison grabbed up his razor and went to work on his stubborn beard.

Detective Savannah Dunbar entered the sliding doors to Seagull Pointe and said to the woman at the desk, “The sheriff’s department got a call from your director, Darius Morrow?” She flashed her badge.

The receptionist nodded. “Oh. Oh, yes. Let me page him.”

Savvy twisted the kinks from her neck. She’d been up half the night with the damned fire at the old Tyler Sawmill. The blaze had exhausted all the county emergency crews, and both the fire and sheriff’s departments were stretched thin. She, herself, had already worked a full shift, and it looked like she wouldn’t be going home any time soon.

A few moments later a man and a woman met Savannah in the reception area. The woman was Inga Anderssen, whom Savvy had met before, but the man was someone new. Darius Morrow, no doubt. Inga looked disappointed upon recognizing Savvy, as she said brusquely, “Madeline Turnbull died sometime yesterday evening.”

“Oh.” Savvy was a little surprised since she’d just seen Madeline the day before. “You called because you think it could be the result of foul play?”

“I’m the director of Seagull Pointe,” the man broke in, holding out his hand. “Darius Morrow.” He had a horseshoe of dyed black hair around a bald pate and wore a worried expression that looked perpetual. “We called because when we checked on Ms. Turnbull, there was, ah, another woman in her room. Unconscious. Seated in a wheelchair.”

Savvy asked, “Who’s the woman?”

“We don’t know,” Inga responded, her voice tight, her lips even tighter. “She’s not a patient here.”

“Where is she now?”

“We moved her to a bed in an empty room. She was about to fall out of the chair.”

“Still unconscious?”

“Yes. The doctor on staff isn’t in today, so we called nine-one-one. They’re sending an ambulance.”

“She’s alive, then?” Savannah asked. The vibe here was all wrong.

“The ambulance should be here any second.” He seemed nervous.

“What about Madeline Turnbull’s?” she asked. “Her death was expected,” Savvy said, touching all the bases. “Natural causes. Right?”

“The medical examiner will determine that,” Morrow said.

“You think there’s a chance of foul play?” Good God, what had she stepped into when she’d taken the call? Neither Morrow nor Anderssen answered immediately, and they seemed to be a tad too careful in not looking at each other.

“Foul play? No,” Morrow said after some consideration. Then, tellingly, “We don’t see how.”

“Excuse me for a moment.” Savvy took a few steps away and called dispatch, confirming what Darius Morrow had said, that an ambulance was due to arrive within minutes and that the ME was on his way. “Send another unit here,” she added. “I just don’t like the feel of this.” She snapped off the phone and said back to them, “I need to take a look at the Jane Doe.”

“Of course . . .” The director was beginning to sweat as he and Nurse Anderssen led the way to a small room down the end of one long hallway. At the door Morrow hemmed and hawed and finally left Savvy with Inga. He racewalked away, either to another situation that needed immediate attention or from the issue at hand. Inga entered the room first, with Savannah coming up behind her. The woman lying in the bed had been hooked to an oxygen supply; her breathing was labored.

What struck Savvy the most was how young she was; she’d expected someone much older. The atmosphere of the nursing home/assisted-living facility, she supposed.

“She’s been strangled,” Savvy said, seeing the bruise marks forming on the woman’s throat.

“What?” Inga seemed surprised.

“Didn’t anyone examine her?”

“Yes, yes, but we were just concerned about her breathing. . . .”

“What about Madeline Turnbull?” Savvy had no time for excuses. “Was she strangled as well?”

“Maddie? No . . . I don’t think . . .” The older woman’s face was full of consternation, and Savvy realized no one had examined the dead woman that closely; they’d been overtaken by the more immediate problem of their new, unexpected patient. By bringing up the staff’s lack of response to Madeline Turnbull’s death, Savvy had inadvertently embarrassed Inga Anderssen in a way that wouldn’t do any good in her public relations with the woman.

“How did she get here?” Savvy asked aloud, though it was more a rhetorical question than anything else, as she motioned to the woman lying on the bed.

Inga Anderssen pursed her lips and folded her arms across her chest. “We aren’t certain.”

“Who found her?”

“I think the morning nurse’s aide, but I’m not sure,” Inga hedged.

Savvy turned and pinned the woman with her gaze. “Find out who it was, and send her to talk to me. I’ll need a conference room, a list of anyone who visited Madeline Turnbull or had access to her room and this one as well. I want this facility sealed off and any tapes from your cameras inside these walls, as well as the film from the parking lot.”

“But . . . but . . . I don’t think we have cameras or . . .”

“Then tell the director what I need. But first, take me to Madeline Turnbull’s room.” She thought for a moment that Inga would refuse her, but Savannah was the law. Inga turned on her heel and, stiff-backed, led Savvy through a maze of hallways to the room where Justice Turnbull’s mother had died.

There were no obvious strangulation marks on Madeline Turnbull; her neck did not display the same bruising. But Savvy bent down and looked closely into the woman’s eyes and thought she saw the telltale signs of petechial hemorrhaging that signified constriction of airflow. She glanced at the pillow, then back at Madeline Turnbull.

Inga bustled up and bent over the woman’s body, staring into her eyes as well.

Smothered,
Savvy concluded and thought Inga knew it as well.

“I’ll need that private room,” Savvy said. “Where the hell is your boss?”

“I’ll get Mr. Morrow.”

“Do that,” Savvy said, unable to hide her irritation with the incompetence of the nursing home staff in general as she waited for the medical examiner to arrive.

CHAPTER 21

I
t was one o’clock when Laura stopped by Conrad Weiser’s room in intensive care. She didn’t know the security guard all that well but felt oddly responsible for his injuries because of her connection to Justice. She wished she could have warned him somehow of the coming danger, even though she knew that was unreasonable.

Nina Perez was waiting for her as she left the ICU and said, “No change,” less a question than a statement of fact, and Laura nodded.

“Dr. Zellman is being released soon,” the nurse then told Laura. “He still isn’t talking.”

“Have they determined whether it’s definitely physical damage to the voice box or emotional trauma?”

“I’d say a little of both, but I’m not his doctor.” She looked troubled. “You think the police are any closer to catching Turnbull?”

“I hope so,” Laura said, wondering if even now Justice was on his way to find her. A shiver skated down her spine. She was having second thoughts about calling to Justice. Despite her earlier bravado, she knew that taunting him was dangerous, even deadly.

As she was walking back to the nurses’ station, she happened to see Zellman being released into the care of his wife. The trim woman had wheeled her husband to the door of the hospital, per hospital policy, but the injured doctor practically jumped out of the chair as soon as he was outside the front doors, nearly kicking the offending chair into the surrounding shrubbery. On his feet, he started striding across the parking lot, bristling with outrage or anger or something, his wife half jogging along behind him.

Laura watched them for a long moment. The rumor was that Justice hadn’t been handcuffed when he’d been escorted by Zellman to the van, and that his escape was mostly Zellman’s fault. Underestimating Justice was something Catherine had said everyone at Siren Song had been guilty of, once upon a time. Laura didn’t plan on being a victim to it again.

Or had she already by tweaking his tail last night?

Staring through the hospital’s front doors, seeing her own watery reflection, a strange feeling creeping across her skin, she backed away from the glass panes automatically, her heart slamming into her ribs in a hard, systematic beat.

He was out there.

Somewhere.

Waiting.

And it felt like he was right outside. . . .

Justice stared, unblinking, through the windshield of the woman’s compact. He was in a different world. A world that swirled with emotion and half dreams and urgency that racked his body with pain. Colors blended and shapes shifted, as if he were underwater. He closed his eyes, and his mission pounded through his brain. He needed to take them. All of them.
Soon!

They were miserable creatures, and their old taunts ricocheted through his brain, reminding him of why they were all doomed, why he had to defeat them. He felt the one that was outside the gates like a living snake within him, twisting his insides, curling around his guts, tightening and writhing, sickening him. His skin crawled at the smell of her; that nauseating scent filled his nostrils.

She was close. So close.

Then he knew.

She was inside the walls of this hospital.
This
hospital.

Ocean Park.

Inside, tucked away, thinking she was safe behind a curtain of fog and the concrete and steel walls. And she was laughing at him.

Shaking with the effort to fight the bile in his throat, he yanked himself to the present and gazed hard at the front of the hospital. He was parked in the side lot with a narrow, angled view to the front doors. She was in there. Just inside the vestibule. Invisible with the fog.

But she felt him. This he knew. He heard the pounding of her heart, sensed the blood pumping furiously through her veins . . . hers and that nasty little incubus within her. He smiled as he sensed her fear.