Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

They were catching on quickly now.

“Renee is-was Hudson’s sister.” Becca hitched her chin toward the door to his room.

“If you’re the target, then why kill her?”

“I don’t know. I think…I think it has something to do with Jessie’s murder.” Becca went on to explain the links, as she saw them, that Renee was digging into the past and had riled up the murderer, who then focused on her.

It had sounded so much more solid before she said it aloud. It was impossible to explain.

“Back to last night,” Kirkpatrick said, her eyes narrowing. “This guy who chased you, did he say anything to you?”

“He called me ‘sister.’ Said he was God’s messenger.”

“Hmmm. Maybe ‘sister’ as in the ‘we’re all sisters and brothers’ communal sense?” the woman cop suggested.

“It seemed more personal, but…” She shrugged.

“He say anything else?” Clausen asked.

She closed her eyes, remembered. “He called me the ‘Spawn of Satan,’ I think, then later said ‘Jezebel and Rebecca.’”

“Did any of it seem to make sense?” Kirkpatrick asked.

When Becca shook her head, Clausen said, “Sounds like he talks to God, or is doing the Big Guy’s bidding.” Clausen kept his expression neutral.

Kirkpatrick’s eyes held Becca’s. “Would you recognize his voice?”

“I don’t know,” she said, but as she remembered her struggle and panic, she nodded. “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, but I think I would recognize his voice.” And the thought of it made her shiver. She prayed she’d never see him again, never hear the horrid, snakelike sound of his whispered curses.

“But you don’t remember anything that would make him identifiable? No tattoos or scars or facial characteristics.”

Becca shook her head. “I didn’t see him, but I do know that I knocked him good with that rock. He staggered and it gave me time to run. He may have some damage. A black eye or bruised forehead or something.”

“Anything that would send him to seek medical attention?” the woman detective posed hopefully.

“No.”

“Doesn’t sound like that kind of guy, even if he needed it,” Clausen agreed.

After a few more questions about her confrontation, hoping to learn something more about her attacker, anything that might help, they gave up. Clausen promised to return to speak with Hudson when he awoke. “If you think of anything else, call,” Clausen insisted and handed her his card.

“I think you’d better see this.” Gretchen, subdued for her, waved Mac over to her desk.

“Just a sec.” He headed for the break room and a cup of coffee before wending his way back to Gretchen through the maze of desks where cops were already on phones, booking suspects, going over notes, and shuffling paperwork.

Even the Homicide Department was cranking it up. Aside from the regular caseload there had been a fight in one of the local watering holes. Another drug deal gone bad, and one twenty-three-year-old had been stabbed and died on the way to the hospital. Another couple of kids had been drag racing on 26. A bad accident, one kid in the hospital, not expected to make it, another dead. The driver, of course, suffered a few cuts and a broken leg.

Gretchen was seated at her desk, printouts spread upon the neat surface, her computer screen glowing.

“I’m not here long,” he said, yawning, stopping close enough to look over her shoulder. He was driving back to the beach after a perfunctory appearance at the station. He’d been up half the night after dealing with Hudson and Becca’s accident, and he’d been back and forth on the phone with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department and rereading the notes he’d taken.

He’d dropped off Levi and Ringo with Connie on his way to work this morning and Connie, in her gracious way, had said, “This is emotional blackmail, telling Levi that he can keep the dog here when you know I’ll be the one taking care of it.”

“For a day. I should be back tonight.”

“Should,” she repeated. “I know you, Sam. You’ll get caught up in this case, this same damned case involving that Brentwood girl, and you’ll lose track of time, or have to go…investigate something somewhere and you’ll leave me holding the bag again.”

“One. One day. That’s all.” Over her shoulder he saw into her house, warm light glowing softly, the corner of a modern green couch, the smell of cinnamon and some other spices wafting from the kitchen. “You just have to keep the dog one day. He belongs to a victim. As soon as she’s out of the hospital she’ll want him back.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the damned pound? Isn’t that where strays are usually kept?”

“He’s not a stray.” Mac’s patience was thinning.

“And one way or the other, I end up the bad guy. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” Connie’s face was getting redder by the second.

“I’ll be back tonight.”

“Tom’s allergic,” she said, folding her arms under her breasts and looking imperiously down from the doorway, but Mac was already halfway to his Jeep.

He’d known she would keep the dog. Not for him. But for Levi.

Now Gretchen pointed to one of the copies of documents she’d dug up. “You tell Rebecca Sutcliff that Jessie Brentwood’s her sister?”

“Haven’t had a chance yet.”

She snorted. “Look at this. Rebecca Sutcliff…I’ve done a little digging on her. Remember that bone spur we found on Jezebel Brentwood’s skeleton?”

“Yeah.” He was interested.

“Rebecca Sutcliff has one, too.”

“You have her medical records?”

“Ummm. You heard her tell the paramedics she was in an accident sixteen years ago. Same kind of thing, run off the road. Guess which road.” She looked up at him.

He was lifting his cup to his lips but hesitated. “You’re shittin’ me.” He knew what she was going to say before the words crossed her lips.

“I’m definitely not. She was run off the road not far from Elsie on Highway 26, but taken to a hospital in Portland.”

“Ocean Park wasn’t much then,” he said, wired by the new information and looking closer as she moved from one computer screen to the next.

“Anyway, I got the medical report. She was relatively unhurt, but pregnant and lost the baby.”

“Shit.”

“And there was a report of a bone spur…same spot as Jezebel Brentwood’s. And so I did a little more checking, pulled military records on her father, medical records on her mother, and here’s the kicker. They both have O positive blood; Rebecca Ryan is B neg.”

“They aren’t her parents,” he said flatly.

“Not biologically.”

“So she and Jessie have the same parents, but they’re not the Ryans.”

“Both of ’em must have come through the same adoption agency, or attorney, or whatever.”

“In Portland? How’d they both end up at St. Elizabeth’s?” Mac wondered.

“Coincidence, maybe. Jessie was a runaway and had burned through a lot of schools by the time she was sent to St. Lizzie’s.”

“The Brentwoods don’t like to talk about her. Don’t want to mention her adoption or anything about it.”

Gretchen gazed at him through her narrowed Siamese cat eyes. “Think the asswipe that ran Sutcliff and Walker off the road last night knows something about this?”

Mac actually grinned at her. “You’re starting to think like me, Sandler. Making connections out of nothing.”

“Not such a leap. You think he’s the same guy who stabbed Jessie.”

“He’s certainly a person of interest.”

As he headed for the door, she yelled, “Bring me back some saltwater taffy this time, cheap ass.”

Becca hung around the hospital and waited. She’d just grabbed a cup of decaf tea and a newspaper at a kiosk in the lobby when her phone rang. She caught the glare of an older woman with a fluff of white hair piled high on her head who silently dared her to answer. The woman’s gaze moved to a sign stating the hospital was a “cell phone free zone” and Becca took the hint as she checked Caller ID. Seeing the number was Sam McNally’s, she answered as she walked across a carpeted hall and through the automatic doors of the main entrance to the outside.