The Obsession (23 page)

“I’ve been dreaming about that place since I sat up there smoking dope with Dikes. Now I find your smoking-hot chick’s pretty open and flexible about landscaping. She listens. She’s got the vision, man, just like with the photos.”

Lelo boosted himself up to sit on a workbench, unwrapped the sub. “We get a job like that? That place is a landmark—sad one these last few years, but still. Showing how we can turn it around’s got my parents doing the bebopping boogie. Going to try to work a deal for pictures we can use for promotion, keep her outlay down some. How come you let Denny play that country shit in here?”

“It’s all right, and it keeps him happy.” Finished, Xander walked over to the soda machine, plugged in coins for a Mountain Dew and a ginger ale.

He grabbed paper napkins—Diablos were hot, and messy—then joined Lelo on the bench.

“Is that Mrs. Wobaugh’s Camry?”

“Yeah, she’s driving it into the ground.”

“I had her for American history.”

“Me, too.”

“About bored me brainless.”

“Me, too.”

“Who said that shit about history repeating itself?”

“There are a lot of people who said that shit,” Xander told him. “A favorite is: ‘History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page.’ That’s Byron.”

“Cool. So, why do we have to study it, be bored brainless, if it’s got one page?”

“We keep thinking if we do, we’ll change the next page. Not so much,”
Xander decided. “But as somebody else said, hope springs. So high school kids get bored brainless.”

“Guess that’s it.”

They ate in the easy, companionable silence of old friends.

“Saw you got a couple banged up good in the lot.”

“Wreck last night on 119. Driver of the Honda blew a one-point-one.”

“D-W-fricking-I. Hurt bad?”

“Busted up some, and the other driver, too. Didn’t sound major. Cars have it worse.”

“Cha-ching for you.”

“Should be.” As he ate, Xander studied Lelo’s truck. “Are you bringing that piece of shit in here for me to fix?”

“Yeah. I can leave it if you can’t get to it, hitch a ride home.”

“I can get to it. I bought the damn muffler a month ago, figuring you’d come to your senses eventually. I can shuffle you in next.”

“Dude. Gratitude. The chief stopped me this morning on my way out of town—let me off when I told him I was coming back here after some business, and you were taking care of it.”

Unsurprised, Xander washed down fire-hot Diablo with ice-cold ginger ale. An excellent combo. “That’s one way to come to your senses.”

“I’m going to kind of miss the noise.”

“Only you, Lelo.”

“The chief told me they haven’t found Marla.”

Xander paused with the can of ginger ale halfway to his mouth. “She’s not back?”

“Nope, not back, nobody’s seen or heard from her. Since he had me pulled over, he asked if I had, if I noticed her with anybody Friday night. Saw anybody go out after her. It’s gotten serious, Xan. It’s like she poofed.”

“People don’t poof.”

“They run off—I tried that when I was pissed at my mother over something. Packed up my backpack and set off to walk to my grandparents’. I figured it only took about five minutes to get there—by car—and being eight I didn’t calculate the difference on foot so well. I got
halfway there when my mother drove up. I figured I was in for it big-time, but she got out and cried all over me.”

He took a hefty bite of his sub. “Not the same, though, I guess.”

“We can hope it is. She took off on a mad, and she’s sitting somewhere sulking.” But the odds of that now, Xander thought, weren’t good. “It’s too long for that. Too damn long for that.”

“People are thinking she got taken by somebody.”

“People?”

“They were talking about it in Rinaldo’s when I got the sub. Local cops are talking to everybody now, from what I can see. Seems she hasn’t used her credit card since Friday either. And she didn’t take her car, any clothes. They had Chip and Patti look at that, to see if they could tell if she grabbed up some clothes. Everybody there saw her walk out of the bar, and that’s it.

“I can’t say I like her. I know I had sex with her a couple times, but Jesus, she has a mean streak. But it’s scary, man, thinking something really happened to her. A lot of people are fucked-up, you know? And do fucked-up things. I don’t like thinking about it.”

Neither did Xander.

But he couldn’t put it away. By the time he had Lelo’s truck on the lift—and Lelo, with a yen for ice cream, had wandered off to get some—he had a twist in his belly.

He got a clear picture of the look she’d tossed him when she’d come out of the bathroom—where Patti had dragged her on Friday night. The look she’d shot him, full of hot fury, before she shot up her middle finger and stormed out.

That was his last image of her—a girl he’d known since high school. One he’d had sex with because she was available. One he’d blown off countless times since because, like Lelo, he didn’t really like her.

She could have walked home in under five minutes, he calculated. And at the pace she’d stormed out, more like three. A dark road, he considered, even with some streetlights. A quiet road that time of night with nearly anybody out and about in the bar for the music and the company.

He tried to see the houses on the route she’d have taken, the shops if she’d cut across Water Street. Shops closed. People would have been awake—or some of them—but those at home most likely sitting and watching TV, playing on the computer. Not looking out the window after eleven at night.

Had somebody come along, offered her a ride? Would she have been stupid enough to get in the car?

Three-to-five-minute walk, why get into a stranger’s car?

Didn’t have to be a stranger, he admitted, which tightened the twist in his belly. And there, she’d have hopped right in, glad to have an ear to vent her temper to.

Nearly two thousand people made their home in the Cove, in town and around it. Small town by any measure, but no one knew everyone.

And a pissed-off, drunk woman made an easy target.

Had someone followed her out? He hadn’t seen anyone, but he’d shrugged and looked away after she’d shot him the look and the finger.

He couldn’t be sure.

Even people you knew had secrets.

Hadn’t he found black lace panties in the Honda of the very married Rick Graft—whose wife wouldn’t have been able to wish herself into panties that small—when he’d detailed the interior?

Graft came off as a happily married father of three, who coached basketball for nine- and ten-year-olds and managed the local hardware store.

Xander had tossed the panties, figuring it was better all around that way. But he couldn’t toss away the knowledge.

Or how Mrs. Ensen had smelled of weed and cheap wine, and the mints and spray cologne she’d used to try to mask it, when he’d answered the breakdown call and gone out to change her tire.

And she a grandmother, for Christ’s sake.

No, you couldn’t know everyone, and even when you did, you didn’t.

But he knew Marla wouldn’t sulk alone for going on four days.

He was very much afraid that when they found her, it would be too late.

H
aving a houseful of men had some advantages. Xander and Kevin carted out her shipping boxes and the smaller box of prints she’d framed for potential sale locally.

It left her free to carry her camera bag.

“Thanks. I’ll get these shipped off this morning.”

“You’re heading to New York, Xan.”

“Weird,” was his thought on it. “Gotta go.” He tapped Naomi’s camera bag. “Going to work, too?”

“I am. I’ll take an hour or two before I head to town.”

“Where?” When her eyebrows raised, he kept it casual. “Just wondering.”

“Down below the bluff. We’ll see if the rain washed in anything interesting. And pretty spring morning. Boats should be out.”

“Good luck with that.” He yanked her in for a kiss, gave the dog a quick rub. “See you later.”

She’d be within sight of the house, he thought as he swung onto his bike. And he’d already had a short, private conversation with Kevin about keeping an eye out.

Best he could do, but he wouldn’t be altogether easy until they found out what happened to Marla.

—

N
aomi considered taking the car. She could drive nearly a half a mile closer, then take a track down through the woods—since she wanted shots there first—make her way down to the shoreline.

But quiet area or not, she didn’t like the idea of leaving her car on the side of the road with her prints locked inside.

She got the leash, which immediately had Tag racing in the opposite direction. Since she had his number, she only shrugged and started down the curve of road.

He slunk after her.

She stopped, took a dog cookie out of her pocket. “You want this, you wear this until we’re off the road.” She held out the leash.

Dislike for the leash lost to greed.

He strained against the leash, tugged it, did his best to tangle himself in it. Naomi clipped it to her belt with a carabiner, then stopped to frame in some white wildflowers the rain had teased open like stars on the side of the road.

He behaved better in the forest, occupying himself by sniffing the air, nosing the ground.

Naomi took carefully angled shots of a nurse log surrounded by ferns and blanketed with lichen and moss—yellows, rusty reds, greens on wood studded with mushrooms that spread like alien creatures. A pair of trees, easily ten feet high, rose from it, the roots wrapped around the decaying log as if in an embrace.

New life, she thought, from the dead and dying.

The long rain soaked the green so it tinted the light, seducing wildflowers to dance in sunbeam and shadow. It scented the air with earth and pine and secrets.

After an hour she nearly headed back, left the shoreline for another day. But she wanted the sparkle of sun on the water after the misty damp
of the forest. She wanted the deeper, rougher green of those knuckles of land, the strong gray of rock against the blues.

Another hour, she decided, and then she’d pack it up, run her errands.

Thrilled to be off the leash, Tag raced ahead. She turned onto the bluff trail, one he knew well now. He barked, danced in place whenever she stopped to take other pictures.

“Don’t rush me.” But she could smell the water now, too, and quickened her pace.

The trail angled down, and proved muddy enough from the rains that she had to slow again. Considering the mud, she realized she’d now have to wash the damn dog before running into town.

“Didn’t think of that, did you?” she muttered, and used handy branches to support herself on the slick dirt.

All worth it. Worth it all in that one moment when the water and pockets of land opened up through the trees.

She balanced herself, risked a spill to get shots of the view through low-hanging branches with their fernlike needles.

Down below it would be bright, sparkling, but here, with the angle, the fan of branches, the inlet looked mysterious. Like a secret revealed through a magic door.

Satisfied, she picked her way down to where the dog barked like a maniac.

“Leave the birds alone! I want the birds.”

She scraped her muddy boots on rippling rock, climbed over them. Caught the diamond glint she’d hoped for, and happily, just beyond the channel, a boat with red sails.

She blocked out the dog barking until she got what she wanted, until the red sails eased into frame. When he raced back to her, she ignored him, took a long shot of the inlet, of the twin forks of water drifting by the floating hump of green.

“Look, if you’re going to tag along, you just have to wait until I’m done before— What have you got? Where did you get that?”

He stood, tail ticking, and a shoe in his mouth.

A woman’s shoe, she noted, open toed, long skinny heel in cotton-candy pink.

“You’re not taking that home. You can just forget about that.”

When he dropped it at her feet, she stepped around it. “And I’m not touching it.”

As she picked her way down, he grabbed up the shoe, raced ahead again.

She stepped down onto the coarse sand, the bumpy cobbles of the narrow strip. Tag sent up a fierce spate of barking, a series of high-pitched whines that had her spinning around to snap at him.

“Cut it
out
! What’s wrong with you this morning?”

She lowered her camera with hands gone to ice.

The dog stood at the base of the bluff, barking at something sprawled on the skinny swatch of sand. She made herself walk closer until her legs began to tremble, until the weight fell on her chest.

She went down to her knees, fighting for breath, staring at the body.

Marla Roth lay, wrists bound, her hands outstretched as though reaching for something she’d never hold.

The bright, sparkling light went gray; the air filled with a roar, a wild, high wave.

Then the dog licked her face, whined, tried to nose his head under her limp hand. The weight eased, left a terrible ache in its place.

“Okay. Okay. Stay here.” Her hands shook as she unlooped his leash, clipped it on him. “Stay with me. God, oh God. Just hold on. Can’t be sick. Won’t be sick.”

Setting her teeth, she pulled out her phone.

—

S
he didn’t want to stay; she couldn’t leave. It didn’t matter that the police had told her to stay where she was, to touch nothing. She could have ignored that. But she couldn’t leave Marla alone.

But she went back to the rocks, climbed up enough to sit so the air could wash over her clammy face. The dog paced, tugged on the leash, barked until she hooked an arm around him, pulled him down to sit beside her.

It calmed them both, at least a little. Calmed her enough that she realized she could do the one other thing she wanted. She took out her phone again, called Xander.

“Hey.” His voice pitched over loud music, noisy machines.

“Xander.”

It only took one word, the sound in her voice on a single word, to have his stomach knotting.

“What happened? Are you hurt? Where are you?”

“I’m not hurt. I’m down below the bluff. I . . . It’s Marla. She’s . . . I called the police. I found her. I called the police, and they’re coming.”

“I’m on my way. Call Kevin. He can get down there faster, but I’m coming now.”

“It’s all right. I’m all right. I can wait. I can hear the sirens. I can already hear them.”

“Ten minutes.” Though he hated to, he ended the call, jammed the phone in his pocket, swung a leg over his bike.

On the rock, Naomi stared at the phone before remembering to put it away. Not in shock, she thought—she remembered how it felt to go into shock. Just a little dazed, a little out of herself.

“We have to wait,” she told the dog. “They have to get down the trail, so we have to wait. Someone hurt her. They hurt her, and they must have raped her. They took her clothes off. Her shoes.”

She swallowed hard, pressed her face against Tag’s fur.

“And they hurt her. You can see her throat. The bruises around her throat. I know what that means, I know what that means.”

The panic wanted to rear back, but she bore down, forced herself to take careful breaths. “Not going to break.”

The dog smelled of the rain that had dripped from wet trees, of wet ground, of good, wet dog. She used it to keep centered. As long as she had the dog, right here, she could get through it.

When she heard them coming, she drew more breaths, then got to her feet. “I’m here,” she called out.

The chief broke through the trees first, followed by a uniformed deputy carrying a case. Then another with a camera strapped around his neck.

She couldn’t see their eyes behind their sunglasses.

“She’s over there.”

His head turned. She heard him let out a breath of his own before he looked back at her. “I need you to wait here.”

“Yes, I can wait here.”

She sat again—her legs still weren’t altogether steady—and looked out to the water, to its sparkling beauty. After a time, Tag relaxed enough to sit down, lean against her.

She heard someone coming, too fast for safety on the steep, muddy track. Tag sprang up again, wagged everywhere in happy hello.

“They want me to wait here,” she told Xander.

He knelt down beside her, pulled her in.

She could have broken then—oh, it would have been so easy to break. And so weak.

He eased back, skimmed a hand over her face. “I’m going to take you up to the house.”

“I’m supposed to wait.”

“Fuck that. They can talk to you up at the house.”

“I’d rather do it here. I’d rather not bring this into the house until I have to. I shouldn’t have called you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I called before I . . .”

She trailed off as the chief walked back to them. “Xander.”

“I called him after I called you. I was pretty shaky.”

“Understandable.”

“I . . . I’m sorry, the dog . . . I didn’t see her at first. I was taking pictures, and I didn’t see her. He had a shoe—her shoe, I think. I just thought . . . I’m sorry, I know we weren’t supposed to touch anything, but I didn’t see her at first.”

“Don’t you worry about that. You came down to take pictures?”

“Yes. I often do. I—we—I mean the dog and I walked from the house, through the forest. I spent some time in there getting photos, but I wanted to take some here. After the rain. There was a boat with a red sail, and Tag had the shoe. A woman’s pink heel. I don’t know what he did with it.”

Sam took the water bottle out of her jacket pocket, handed it to her. “You have a little water now, honey.”

“All right.”

“You didn’t see anybody else?”

“No. He kept barking, and whining, but I didn’t pay any attention because I wanted the shot. Then I yelled at him, and turned. And I saw her. I went a little closer, to be sure. And I could see . . . So I called the police. I called you, and I called Xander.”

“I want to take her up to the house. I want to take her away from here.”

“You do that.” Sam gave Naomi’s shoulder a light rub. “You go on home now. I’m going to check in with you before I go.”

Xander took her hand, kept it firm in his as they started up the track. She didn’t speak until they were in the trees.

“I hurt her.”

“Naomi.”

“I hurt her on Friday night, at the bar. I meant to. And she walked out of there with her wrist aching, her pride ripped up, and her temper leading her. Otherwise, she’d have left with her friend.”

“I looked at you instead of her. You want me to feel guilty about that, to try to work some blame up because it was you, not her? This isn’t about you and me, Naomi. It’s about the son of a bitch who did this to her.”

It was the tone as much as the words that snapped her back. The raw impatience with anger bubbling beneath.

“You’re right. Maybe that’s why I needed to call you. I wouldn’t get endless
there-there
s and
poor Naomi
s from you. That sort of thing just makes it all worse. And it’s not about me.”

“Finding her’s about you. Having to see that’s about you. You don’t want any
poor Naomi
s, I’ll keep them to myself, but goddamn I wish you’d gone anywhere else to take pictures this morning.”

“So do I. We sat right out on the deck earlier. And she was down there. She had to have already been there.” She took a breath. “Does she have family?”

“Her mother lives in town. Her father left I don’t know how many years ago. She has a brother in the navy, joined up right out of high school. A couple years ahead of me. I didn’t know him really. And she has Chip. This is going to flatten him.”

“They don’t care about that.”

“Who?”

“Killers. They don’t care about any of that, they don’t think about all the other lives they rip apart. He strangled her. I could see the bruising, her throat. He dumped her clothes near her. I think she was wearing those pink heels on Friday night. I think she was. She must’ve been with him since then, since she left the bar.”

He wanted to pick her up, just lift her up and carry her back to the house. Instead, he kept a solid grip on her hand.

“There’s no point in telling you not to think about it, so I’ll say yeah, it’s most likely he took her after she left the bar. We don’t know what happened after that. They’ve got ways to figure out if she was killed there or somewhere else and dumped there.”

“Yes, they have ways.”

When they came out of the forest she saw the two patrol cars, Xander’s bike.

“If he didn’t kill her there, why take her all that way? Why not dump her body in the forest, or bury it there? Or drop her in the water?”

“I don’t know, Naomi. But if you hadn’t gone down there this morning, it’s likely she wouldn’t have been found yet. You wouldn’t see her from the house, not as close as she was to the foot of the bluff. And from the water? Maybe if somebody came close to shore, maybe. So maybe leaving her there gave him more time to get away.”

As they approached the house he looked over at her. “Do you want me to have Kevin pull the crew off for the day?”

“No. No, for once I think I prefer noise to quiet. I think I’m going to paint.”

“Paint?”

“The second guest room—my uncles’ room. I wouldn’t be any good at work, and I don’t want to go into town. Errands can wait.”