Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

“No…”

“Goddammit!” He shook her off him and ran down the steps. There was no car anywhere, so he took off at a run and kept running until there was not a drop of energy left in his body and he threw himself onto the grassy berm that bordered the playground of a nearby school.

“Jessie,” he murmured brokenly, then broke down and sobbed.

“What was it that Renee said when you met with the other girls?” Hudson asked Becca, holding a cool washrag over her head as she lay on the bed.

They’d checked into a motel near the county sheriff’s offices, basic and weather beaten, willing to take pets, and surrounded by a small strip mall and a couple of fast-food eateries. Neither of them felt like driving home, and Hudson had decisions to make about the disposition of Renee’s body anyway.

So they’d just headed into the musty-smelling room and Hudson had insisted Becca lie down on the bed while he ministered to her. He’d shaken out a couple of aspirin and handed her a glass of water while Ringo paced around the top of the bedspread, occasionally glaring at Hudson as if Becca’s condition were his fault.

Becca had tossed back the aspirin, insisting she was fine, though her headache wasn’t giving up its grip. Hudson, meanwhile, kept going over everything and anything that could explain what had happened, a circular litany that did not require any input from her. She understood that this was his way of trying to grasp his sister’s death, and she lay quietly, petting her dog, as he paced the room, running on restless energy, unable to stop.

“What was it Renee said when you met with the other girls?” Hudson asked.

“She thought something was after her. Us. She was digging up stuff about Jessie and she stirred it up.”

“It.”

“She couldn’t explain her feelings. Tamara thought she’d taken the Tarot too seriously, but it was more than that. But she was determined to get the story, like it was going to save us all, I guess. I don’t know. She didn’t say that. It just seemed like that.”

He squinted his eyes, as if in pain. “Something that killed her.”

“Why would anyone kill Renee?”

“Her story about Jessie. God, I don’t know.” He shook his head in frustration.

Becca sighed, feeling that same frustration. “You said Renee called you. What did she say?”

“I couldn’t hear her. It was a bad connection.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“She was excited about the story. About Jessie. Something about getting justice and some history…about people living on cliffs. Colonies forming on cliffs,” he corrected himself.

Becca shook her head, perplexed.

“Your visions,” he said. “You said you’ve had a series of them since Jessie’s remains were found.”

She looked into his tense face. He was grasping at straws. Lines of weariness radiated from the corners of his eyes. She suspected she looked much the same.

“Like I said, I had the first one at the mall. Jessie was standing on a cliff above the ocean. She put her fingers to her lips and then she said something to me. I couldn’t make it out. And then I saw her outside the Dandelion Diner.”

“When we met McNally and his partner?”

She nodded. “That’s why I went into the restroom. I was afraid I was going to pass out. And then I saw the nursery rhyme note to Glenn, and then this latest one, my car being pushed off the road.”

“Do you think you were reminded of it because of Renee’s accident?”

“Possibly.” But it had felt far more real than that. A vision, not a memory.

Hudson came back to the bed and lay down beside her, moving a reluctant Ringo aside. “I can’t take it all in.”

“Me, neither.”

He draped an arm around her, pulling her close. Time passed while they were lost in their own thoughts. Becca eventually heard Hudson’s breathing grow more even, but her own mind ran through a maze of alleys, seeking answers that were always around the next corner, always just out of reach.

Gretchen was waiting for Mac when he crossed the room to his desk, and she didn’t waste time with hellos or even to ask where he’d been all afternoon. “Reports are on your desk. The fire was arson, gas line was purposely damaged. The DNA results are back from the Preppy Pricks. And we’ve got our artist’s mock-up on what she looked like.”

“Jesus.” Mac snatched up the files and glanced through them. “Good things really do happen in threes.”

“That’s bad things.”

“Hmm. See if Hudson Walker’s DNA matches with the baby’s.”

“Already told ’em. We should get a call soon.”

“And the rest of the Preppy Pricks,” Mac added as an afterthought.

“They’re checking them all,” Gretchen said impatiently. “What do you think of this?” She plucked the rendering of the victim’s face from the pile and held it in front of Mac’s eyes. He gazed at it hard. “This your little girlfriend?”

“I only saw pictures of Jessie.”

“Me, too. And?”

“I think this is pretty close,” he said slowly, though his heart was beating like a drum as he looked into those sexy, knowing eyes, the perfect mouth that he imagined twitching upward in a teasing, knowing grin. “What are little boys made of?” He could almost hear the rhyme slip through those sensuous lips.

“Don’t go all careful on me now,” Gretchen warned with a snort. “You’ve been saying it all along and now you’ve finally made me a believer. This picture’s a dead ringer for Jezebel Brentwood. Those bones are hers and her baby’s. And DNA’s gonna prove it.”

The phone on his desk rang and Mac swept it up. “McNally.”

Gretchen’s brows lifted and Mac nodded that it was indeed the lab tech with the information. “Thanks,” Mac said thoughtfully, hanging up a moment later.

“Well?” Gretchen demanded.

“It’s Jessie. The baby’s DNA matched her father’s.”

“Walker?”

“Zeke St. John.”

Gretchen screwed up her face in disbelief. “Walker’s BFF?”

“Mac!” Pelligree called from across the room. “Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department reported a fatal accident on Highway 101. Victim’s name is Renee Walker Trudeau.”

“What?” Mac jumped to his feet.

“Jesus Christ,” Gretchen murmured.

Pelligree was sober. “Her brother identified the remains.”

“I’m going,” Mac said, snatching his coat and heading out the door.

For once Gretchen remained behind, sinking slowly into a chair. She and Pelligree looked at each other in the wake of Mac’s departure.

“He was right,” she said on a note of admiration. “There’s a helluva lot more to this case than any of us thought.”

Soft music…some vaguely familiar hymn whispered through the funeral parlor. Becca sat staring vacantly at the closed coffin, a testament to how badly Renee’s body had been mangled in the “accident.” Sprays of flowers surrounded the glossy wooden casket and candles burned brightly, but the cloudy, gray day seeped through the windows, bringing in the gloom of winter. The gangly nondenominational preacher with a bad comb-over and rimless glasses stood at the dais as the music faded. He led the mourners in prayer, though Becca could barely concentrate.

Seated next to a grim-faced Hudson, a few chairs away from a blubbering Tim Trudeau, Becca kept her own ragged thoughts at bay. The group of mourners was larger than the small room in the funeral home, and the back doors had been opened to a covered area that had been extended with tents and outdoor heaters. Either Renee had made an incredible amount of friends in less than forty years, or a lot of those who’d come to pay their respects were the curious.