Nowhere to Hide (12 page)

September walked in without paying a cover because it was still early for a Friday night. She chose a spot at the bar, and sat down, wearing only her sleeveless black T-shirt and black pants. No jacket, and therefore, no gun. She wanted to blend in as much as possible and had stopped by her apartment to change her shoes, eschewing the practical, clunky black flats for sleek black boots with wooden heels. She’d brought a black messenger bag along as well, and now she lifted the strap over her head and searched around underneath the bar for a hook to hang it on. Failing that, she set the bag on the bar, effectively saving Sandler a seat at the same time.

“What’ll you have?” a blond, female bartender asked her, flipping a white cloth over her shoulder.

“Club soda with lime,” September answered. She was still working, or more accurately, working again, as stopping by the family home had been more of an off-hours thing, though she could undoubtedly argue that it was all in pursuit of the Do Unto Others killer and claim overtime. Didn’t matter. At this point she just wanted to find the psycho as soon as possible, whether she got paid for her efforts or not.

She was delivered her drink and then the bartender moved on. There was a male bartender as well, but he was much further down the bar, closer to the front door, and he wasn’t as young or ripped as Dom at Xavier’s, so September figured Sandler wouldn’t be pouring on the charm.

Gretchen had called September as she was driving back toward the station and said that she was getting ready to leave and to meet her at The Barn Door. She would fill September in on her reinterview with Emmy Decatur’s parents and they could ask questions of The Barn Door staff together.

September had received a call back from Deputy Danny Dalton, who’d caught her as she was leaving her apartment after the footwear exchange. Dalton hadn’t been all that thrilled to talk to her.

“I already gave you guys the file,” he said smartly. “Everything I learned was inside. I write a damn good report, Detective. You should see what you could’ve got.”

“I’m not denying the report,” September said. “I just wanted to get some impressions from you, if that’s possible. Anything you might have thought. An observation, or anomaly . . . anything.”

“It’s all in the report,” he said again, not giving an inch.

“Let me ask you a specific question,” she said, giving up the pretense of trying to keep up relations between county and the Laurelton PD. Dalton didn’t care, and neither did she. “Greg Dempsey suggested that his wife—his estranged wife, Sheila—was seeing other men. There was no mention of it in your report.”

“He never said anything to me.”

“From your impression of Dempsey, do you think he just made that up for us? Or, maybe he added it after he thought things over?”

“Dempsey’s a dickhead. I’ll go with made it up.”

“Maybe,” September answered, though she knew she was too personally involved to make that kind of judgment.

“Look, you want to get together and talk, I can do it. But everything I learned is in the report. I was pretty damn careful about getting it all down, especially when I heard you guys were taking over.”

“Okay, good,” September said, sensing an insult in there somewhere but not caring much. “If I need anything else, I’ve got your number.”

“Sure. You won’t though. It’s all in the report.”

That could be the epitaph on the man’s grave, September decided now, sipping at her soda. It was damn hot in the bar despite the fans. She thought about switching to a chilled glass of white wine, but then wine reminded her of The Willows and that reminded her of Jake Westerly and she decided to stick with soda.

Damn the man. He’d invaded her thoughts as much as he had in high school, and she’d thought she was way over caring a whit about Jake Westerly. She should be way over it. She really should.

Gretchen came in wearing what she’d started the day in: gray pants, a white blouse, and a gray jacket. She was still carrying her Glock at her hip and the expression on her face said: Don’t fuck with me.

Hmmm . . . September thought. Why was she looking so hard-nosed? A finger of guilt slid down her bag. Had Sandler learned about September’s relationship to Jake?

“God, I’m tired of assholes,” she said, grabbing the stool next to September and shoving her satchel out of the way.

“Who’s the asshole?” September asked.

“Thompkins. I asked him to check on Glenda Tripp’s employment and instead he checks with the lieutenant, like I’ve overstepped my bounds. He thought it had something to do with the Zuma case, I guess, and that’s not ours any longer.”

“What did D’Annibal say?”

“Told George to get the fuck on it . . . in nicer terms, of course.”

Lieutenant Aubrey D’Annibal was known for being put together in creased slacks, fresh dress shirts, shined shoes, tailored jackets, and his silvery hair was combed, clipped, and styled. His conversation rarely fell into expletives. Reading between the lines, September guessed he’d said something like, “Go ahead and do the research, Thompkins. It’s for the Do Unto Others case.”

“So, did George learn anything about Glenda?”

“Not really. Looks like a dead end as far as connecting Tripp to Dempsey. Tripp applied all over the city for a teaching job, and was finally given summer classes at Twin Oaks. She took the job because she needed the experience, but she got paid next to nothing. She was hoping to get on staff this fall, but well, we know it never happened.”

“Any staff members still there from when Sheila attended?”

“We can look into that when school opens Monday. For now, I need a drink.” She tried to catch the female bartender’s eyes, but she was busy with a group of cowboy types and it was the male bartender who caught Sandler’s raised hand and came down the bar to help them.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Cranberry juice, a little lime and vodka.”

“Cosmo?”

“Whatever.”

As he turned away to get her drink, September asked her, “Did the Decaturs offer anything more?”

Gretchen shook her head. “Mostly it was more of the same. What a wonderful girl she was. What a bright light. They just want to talk about her, like the Schenks did about Sheila, and they do not want to even brush on Emmy’s murder and sexual assault. Remember Emmy’s coworker, Nadine, who said Emmy’s parents had kicked her out her junior year? That they didn’t care about her?”

“And you said, ‘Don’t believe it.’”

“Well, I was right on that one. The parents are really having trouble with her death. I did ask them what schools she went to. Brandyne Elementary and Junior High, and Rutherford High. Not Twin Oaks. Same district, different lineup.”

September made a “hmm” sound. She visualized the Decaturs from the time she and Gretchen had interviewed them at their home on Sycamore Street, which was on the opposite side of town from September’s Sunset Elementary, Sunset Junior High and Valley Sunset High. Emmy Decatur had attended schools in the same district, but hers didn’t funnel into Valley Sunset High like September’s, and since Sheila hadn’t stayed past sixth grade, she hadn’t attended either Brandyne Junior High or Rutherford High where Emmy had been until she dropped out. Rutherford High and Valley Sunset had long been rivals within the same district, and though a lot of students knew each other from sports, or family friends, or because they’d crossed from one high school to the next, a lot of them only knew their own classmates. It didn’t appear there was a connection between Emmy Decatur and Sheila Dempsey through their schools. They hadn’t attended the same elementary school and Sheila never made it to junior high or high school in the district where she might have met Emmy. If there was a connection between them, she and Gretchen needed to keep looking for it.

“Glenda Tripp went to a Portland school. Lincoln, maybe,” Gretchen said.

“Do you think the killer changed his m.o. with her?” September asked.

“Nah. It’s just like we’re thinking. He didn’t have time to move her body to a field. He kills them somewhere else and drops them off. He was interrupted. Does it seem to you he’s just targeting a type—athletic women with darker hair? It seems that way to me.” She slid a look at September.

“I know,” she said. “I fit the part. But he picks them up outside of bars and he sent my artwork to the station, which is different, too.”

“All three vics lived in the Laurelton area, so maybe he’s from here.”

“If he did them all,” September said.

“Do you think it’s a question? I know we’re dancing around, keeping it from the public, keeping the feds from taking over before we know, but really?”

September locked eyes with her partner. “He did them all.”

Gretchen nodded once. “I agree. We’ll go on that assumption from here on out.”

“And I do think the killer’s the same person who sent me my artwork and the card with my age.”

“Okay.” She pressed her lips together. “Then it’s someone who knows you. Maybe he’s even lived here all his life. One of your classmates?”

“At least you didn’t say it was my family.” September drew a breath. “So, that’s how he has my artwork? Because he knows me and he’s saved it all these years and decided to send it to me now . . . ?”

“How’d he get access to your grade school project?” she asked, nodding, circling back to the same basic issue.

“I don’t know.” September shook her head. She didn’t believe for an instant that either her father or March could have sent that “bloody” artwork. Stefan was a possibility, she supposed, but he was an odd duck whose interests seemed more juvenile than alarming. He’d never had a girlfriend, or boyfriend, for that matter, that she knew of, and, since he’d never shown the least little bit of interest in moving out, she’d just kind of always thought of him as a Peter Pan type. If he had a job, she didn’t know what it was. And the killer wasn’t July, or either of the two stepmothers. Besides the fact that she just couldn’t imagine any of them as the killer, the three victims had all been sexually abused and unless somebody found irrefutable evidence to the contrary, September was sticking with the theory that their doer was male.

But for September, that meant that Gretchen had been right the first time: the killer was one of her classmates. Jake Westerly was a better candidate. He’d gone to second grade with her. He remembered the project. He knew Sheila.

“So, if it’s not one of your family,” Gretchen was going on, “then how does he have your artwork? I really don’t believe anyone held onto your second grade leaf project all these years.
All
these years. Gotta be some other explanation.”

September knew she was going to have to tell Gretchen about her personal association with Jake Westerly soon, but she wasn’t ready to barrel down that road just yet. She wanted to do some more digging into the case. Logically she could see that turning the department’s attention on Jake could actually eliminate him as a suspect, but she just needed a little more time to process everything. Her gut told her it was a coincidence that he was anywhere near this investigation. She just didn’t know whether she could trust her gut.

“So, where’d you go when I was with the Decaturs,” Gretchen asked, unaware she was touching on the very issue September was struggling with.

“My father’s house,” September said. “To the attic. I thought I might find my old artwork, but there were enough boxes and junk that it just made me feel tired. I’m going to go back, but maybe I’m on a wild goose chase. I don’t know.”

“What about this Jake Westerly? Did you follow up on him?”

There it was. She wanted to lie, but she curbed the impulse. And it would just cause further suspicion if she were found out. “I did,” she said. “I had a face-to-face with him, actually.”

“Yeah?” Gretchen was surprised. “You track him down to his office?”

“I went out to Yamhill County. His family owns Westerly Vale Vineyards, which is just up the road from my family’s vineyard.”

“Really. And you didn’t think to tell me that?”

“I wanted to do some checking first.”

Gretchen thought for a moment, then said, “Well, ladi-dah. The wine country . . . So, what’d he say? Did you ask him if he was sticking the old johnson to our vic?”

“More or less. I tried to use the D’Annibal approach and keep it a tad less lowbrow.”

“I’m too crude for you? That could hurt my feelings.”

“Could, but didn’t.”

She gave September a shark-like smile. “All right, then. Tell me the whole thing.”

“He said, no. He and Dempsey were just friends, maybe more like acquaintances. She cut his hair, and she showed up at his vineyard and invited him to The Barn Door. He went, but she was with another couple. A guy named Phil Merit, his girlfriend, Carolyn, and a woman named Drea. He couldn’t remember the women’s last names.”

“That’s a helluva lot more than Dawson gave us.”

“Dalton, who said very clearly that everything he’d gotten was in his report.” She then related her conversation with the deputy.

“He doesn’t deserve to be pissed at us,” Gretchen said when she was finished. “He didn’t try hard enough. Sounds like a guy just putting in the hours.”

Her drink materialized and she made eye contact with the bartender, but almost immediately her gaze slid away. September had been right, at least; not Gretchen’s type.

But then Sandler called him back. “Excuse me,” she said, pulling out her identification. “You know a guy named Phil Merit? Might come here some?”

The guy squinted at her ID as if he didn’t believe it. “I don’t think so.”

The female bartender glanced over from pouring a Widmer from the tap. “Phil Merit, yeah. I think I know him. Maybe. You looking for him?”

“We heard he came in here with some friends, one of them being Sheila Dempsey,” Gretchen enlightened her.

“Oh . . . yeah . . . Sheila Dempsey. The one they found in a field?” the woman asked.

“Uh huh.”

“You can drink on the job?” the male bartender asked.

“I’m off regular hours,” she said with forced patience. “Doesn’t mean I can’t ask questions.”

The female bartender glanced from Gretchen to September. “And you think the killer came in
here?
”