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Chapter 15

Liv woke up as if she’d been asleep, though she hadn’t. One moment she was tangled on the couch in Auggie’s arms and legs, the next she was off her astral plane and back into reality with a bang.

Her first thought was: we didn’t use protection.

Her second: it’s way down the list of my worries.

When she stirred, he lifted his arms, managing somehow to prop himself on his elbow and regard her lazily. She watched him push a strand of her honey-brown hair away from her face.

“I am crazy,” she said seriously.

“It must be catching.”

Feeling idiotic, she picked up the scraps of her clothing, eased herself from his embrace, headed into the bathroom and closed the door behind her with a soft thunk that sounded as loud as thunder to her ears.

She dressed hurriedly. Checked herself in the mirror.

Good. God.

She stepped back into the living room to realize he’d put on his boxers and jeans again. He was still shirtless and standing beside the couch.

They stared at each other. After a moment, she said, “Well.”

He said, “Wanna go again?”

“Yes . . . no . . . no . . .”

He sat back down on the couch. Liv told herself to stay away from him, but she walked over and sank down beside him as if she had no will.

He laced the fingers of his left hand through those of her right. Her heart was thudding so hard it hurt. He was looking at her, she could tell, but she couldn’t turn toward him.

“I want to,” he said, his breath fanning her ear. “Tell me you don’t and make me believe it.”

The heat from his hand was radiating up her arm and through her chest, reaching toward her hammering heart. She was no proof against his slow seduction. If it was a battle, he was going to win. It made no sense to her. She should be running, planning, escaping . . .

When he stood up again, pulling her with him and leading her to the bedroom, she complied as if the whole thing had been scripted.

And when he turned her toward him at the side of the bed and his mouth captured hers and her hand was on his chest and she felt the light and fast beat of his own heart, she moved her mouth down to his bare chest and lay a row of kisses down his sternum that had him making a strangled sound.

A moment later they were both on the bed, their clothes being ripped off with frantic fingers and searching mouths.

Auggie lay beside Liv on the bed, his naked body spooned up next to hers. He couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. He would guess awake, as he was. And probably just as conflicted. But happy. Or, maybe relieved. Or something.

Damn, but this shouldn’t have happened. Especially as many times as it had.

Damn, but he wasn’t sorry.

If he let his brain travel along the recent road of these last moments he could get all stirred up again and he knew that wasn’t a good idea.

Well, not unless she wanted to again, of course.

Her eyes were closed. Her lashes lying soft and weblike against her cheek. As if feeling his intense gaze, her lids opened and she turned her hazel eyes to him. They searched the depths of each other’s eyes.

“What now?” she asked.

“Grandview,” he told her, and then a bit more reluctantly, “Time to get dressed.”

September stood beside Gretchen at George’s workstation and listened with only half an ear to his report. He’d met up with Paul de Fore’s parents, who were making burial plans for their son. In the course of his one foray into real fieldwork, he’d learned enough about the de Fores and Paul to convince him that the Zuma massacre had nothing to do with them.

“They’re relatively sane, hard-working, unimaginative. Neither of ’em has enough passion to break a smile. Their son sounds just like them, from all accounts. More rigid maybe. But whoever shot the shit out of Zuma . . . it ain’t them.”

“In your opinion,” Gretchen said.

“Yours, too. If you’d talked to them.”

George had also been digging into the Zuma finances and their contracts with video-gaming distributors. “Military, schmilitary. They’re just developing video games. Lots of shooting and fake blood and gurgling sound effects. Rad showed me some backdoor ways to get to upper game levels. That’s about the extent of their secret military involvement. And with Phillip Berelli as the company comptroller, they look like they’re paying all their bills and taxes, too.”

“So, you’re saying this wasn’t about Upjohn or de Fore,” Gretchen said.

“Doesn’t read that way. And it doesn’t seem like this was some disgruntled employee. Most everyone who’s worked for Upjohn left on their own accord.” George looked at September. “You okay?”

He knew all about the body they’d discovered; September and Gretchen had reported all they knew to D’Annibal with George standing by. D’ Annibal had gone to talk to someone at county.

“I keep wondering where Wes is,” September said. “He met the first vic at a bar.”

“He was miles away. On his way back,” George said.

Gretchen’s desk phone rang and she walked over and scooped up the receiver. “Detective Sandler.”

“You look like hell,” George observed.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Who would you look at?” September asked him. “As the target for the Zuma shootings?”

“Possibly the receptionist. He shot her twice in the chest and that’s pretty serious business.”

“But he kept on going,” September pointed out. “He shot de Fore. Then Maltona. Then he went after Upjohn and Dirkus who were together in Upjohn’s office. Maybe he made a try for the upstairs.”

“I hear your brother’s contacted the other one, the bookkeeper. She’s damn lucky she wasn’t there on Friday. Maybe she’s the target and that coulda been her Waterloo.”

Gretchen slammed the receiver into the cradle. “Nine,” she said shortly.

September looked at her.

“Camille Dirkus is with Upjohn at the hospital. Let’s roll.”

Grandview Senior Care was a squat, brick hospital with wings sprouting like spokes from a central hub. Some of those wings were connected in the back, and Auggie imagined hallways that turned off hallways that turned off hallways until you were back where you started. He also suspected that when the facility had been a mental hospital, its halls and rooms weren’t quite so tired looking. Or, maybe it was just that with so many wheelchairs, walkers and elderly residents the place had picked up that sense of being in another time. Somewhere slowed down. Out of rhythm with the goings-on outside their doors.

“Hello,” a middle-aged woman with a lean, outdoorsy look greeted him. Her narrow face had a windburned quality to it, etched by lines around her mouth and eyes.

Auggie glanced back, through the sliding glass doors to the parking lot. Liv was sitting in the passenger side, staring at him through the window, her eyes covered by sunglasses. She’d been afraid to come in, and she’d been even more afraid to let him go alone, but in the end she’d allowed it, saying simply, “Go on.”

She was discombobulated, he knew. Making fatalistic choices. The only way he’d been able to penetrate her defenses and make love to her.

To the woman, he said, “I need to talk to someone about one of the doctors who was here when Grandview was a mental hospital.”

She lost interest immediately. “Oh, that was a whole different company. They’ve been gone a while.”

“Is there someone, though, who might know about that company?”

“I guess you could talk to Sofia,” she said reluctantly. “She didn’t work for them, but I believe her sister did.”

“Is Sofia here now?” Auggie asked. Inside his pocket, his cell phone was feeling very heavy. He needed to call D’Annibal again. He needed to make certain the lieutenant felt he was actually working the job. In truth, he wondered if he really was. He’d sort of lost perspective on his own directive. From putting a tail on Liv Dugan to becoming her hostage, and then her lover . . . well, that wasn’t exactly in the playbook for detective work.

The receptionist pushed a button and said into the receiver, “Sofia? Are you available? There’s someone at the front door for you.” A few moments later the phone buzzed back and she picked it up. Her gaze met Auggie’s and she nodded. “She’ll be right up.”

“Thanks.” There was no chair but there was a short bench along one wall. Auggie sauntered over to it, casting an eye toward the door and Liv who was still looking his way. He gave her a surreptitious thumbs-up.

Ten minutes later a large woman with short, gray hair above her ears, wearing pink surgical scrubs, her breath heaving as she half-waddled, half-strode into the waiting area, skewered Auggie with a look. “You wanted to see me?” she said with a trace of disbelief as she looked him up and down.

Her voice was gravel. Her expression was bland, but he sensed a certain disapproval coming from her. “I wanted to talk about Grandview Hospital, before it was a senior-care center.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“I understand your sister worked at Grandview?”

She cast an eye toward the receptionist, who met her gaze blandly and shrugged. “She did. For a short time.”

“Can you help me, or should I talk to her?”

“What do you want to know?”

This was normally where he would haul out his identification and suggest they go in a room and have a talk. Most people, upon realizing he was with the police, fell all over themselves to give him what he wanted and get him on his way. Unless, of course, they had something to hide.

But without the ID, he was relying on Sofia’s cooperation out of the goodness of her heart. Her very large heart, in a very large chest. And he didn’t want to take a chance that Liv would find out who he was before he was ready. Especially after what they’d now shared . . .

“I’m actually looking for a Dr. Navarone,” Auggie said, cutting to the chase.

Sofia’s eyes glared down at him. “Why?”

From across the room the receptionist was looking at them curiously now, too. Auggie said, with a mixture of fact and fiction, “I think he treated my brother when he was at Grandview. The treatment didn’t help him. I’m not interested in a lawsuit. I just want to talk to the man, find out what Dr. Navarone’s treatment was.”

Sofia snorted and it was a loud noise. “Treatment,” she said with a curl of her lip.

“I heard it was unconventional,” Auggie encouraged her.

“That’s a nice word for it.”

“What would you call it?” he asked.

“Dangerous. Stupid. Maybe even criminal. That’s what my sister said, and she would know.”

“What kind of things are we talking about?”

“What’s your brother’s name?” she asked.

“Hague Dugan,” he answered without hesitation.

She seemed to think that over. “Dr. Navarone used psychotropic drugs. Deprivation techniques. He experimented. Got his hands slapped for it, too, according to Andrea, my sister. To his credit, Navarone seemed to really believe he was helping his patients. A lot of people bought into it for a long time . . . until they didn’t.”

“What happened?”

“Somebody died. They couldn’t prove it was because of Navarone outright, but he was booted out as soon as they could figure out how to get rid of him. Andrea thought it was the beginning of the end for the facility.”

“Do you know what happened to the doctor?”

“He was a visiting doctor at different places. Maybe one of them took him. He still has his license . . . at least as far as I know.”

“You remember his first name?”

“I didn’t know him,” she reminded him, but she thought it over anyway. After a moment, she said, “Frank, I think. Frank Navarone. Google him,” she said, turning away.

Auggie fingered the cell phone. He fell in step beside her and when she looked at him askance, he asked, “The men’s room?”

“Take that hallway and where it turns to the left you’ll see the restrooms.”

It was in the opposite direction she was going, so he stopped as if he were heading the other way, waiting until she got far enough ahead of him. She’d already forgotten him, however, and was aiming toward a room farther south. Auggie yanked out his cell and quickly placed the call to D’Annibal’s office.

“D’Annibal,” the lieutenant answered.

“It’s Rafferty,” Auggie said. “Anything new on Zuma or the Martin killing?”

D’Annibal didn’t waste time with preliminaries. “Nine and Sandler interviewed Camille Dirkus, mother to Aaron Dirkus, Upjohn’s son. Apparently the son and a couple of the whizbang Zuma techs who worked the computers had this little marijuana-growing operation. Upjohn found out about it and threatened to fire Dirkus’s ass. Camille was fighting with both of them, but it’s possible some other player with a bigger operation took offense.”

Auggie stared into the middle distance, stunned. He hadn’t expected there to be an answer. Could that be? He immediately wanted to refute the lieutenant’s words. Could he have been so wrong about Liv? Had he blinded himself to the fact that her personal dramas were just that, personal dramas? Was he so completely wrong?

D’Annibal was still talking, telling him how the department was following leads, plucking threads, finding this big one smack in the middle of Zuma’s fabric. He finished with, “So, bring in the Dugan woman and let’s get on with it.”

“Okay,” Auggie said, but the reluctance in his tone reached D’Annibal’s ears.

“Whatever the problem is, fix it.”

“I will. Hey, put out the word to look for a 2005 GMC truck. Gray. Trask Martin mentioned it to Liv. Said a guy was looking for her at her apartment and that’s what he drove.”

“Liv?”

“It’s what she goes by,” Auggie answered evenly.

“Got a license number?”

“I woulda given it to you.”

“Not much to go on,” D’Annibal reminded him tautly. “While you’ve been playing house with one of our suspects, we got all kinds of stuff breaking around here.”

“She’s a suspect?” Auggie challenged him, but the lieutenant just ran right over him, “I sent Nine and Sandler out on another call this morning. A dead body found in a field . . . a woman . . .” Quickly, he brought Auggie up-to-date on the homicide that had taken over the station this morning.

A field. A woman. “You think it has anything to do with Zuma?” Auggie asked, his mind racing.

“That’d be a stretch. But it’s a copycat of the Dempsey homicide about a month ago.”

Auggie knew about as much as the public on the Dempsey murder; he’d been wrapped up in his Alan Reagan persona and hadn’t been following it too closely. But the particulars were ringing other, distant bells. “Did you put someone on that cold case, the serial strangler around Rock Springs twenty years ago?”

“I said I would. Got a lot of stuff coming down here, Rafferty. I’ll check on the truck, but I—”

“Who’re you talking to?” Liv demanded in his ear. Auggie whipped around. She’d pulled on her baseball cap and was staring at him from beneath the brim with wide, wounded eyes.

He clicked off his phone and dropped his arm. “The lady I was talking to, Sofia . . . her sister used to work for Grandview. She gave me her number. I was trying to reach her and follow up.” The phone rang in his hand and they both looked at it. Auggie felt his pulse escalate. D’ Annibal. The ass.

Liv’s gaze was like a laser on the phone. “Are you going to answer it?”

Hell. No. Shit. He glanced at the number and realized it wasn’t D’Annibal. It wasn’t even in this area code.

She was waiting for him to answer and he did so like a man facing the gallows, in slow motion, his mind screaming through excuses and explanations when she learned he was with the police.

“Hello,” he said into the phone.

“Oh . . . uh . . . I got a call from someone named Dugan? About Everett LeBlanc?”

Auggie snapped to attention. “Uh, yes. Ms. Dugan is right here.” He held out the cell to her and mouthed, “LeBlanc.”

“What?” Liv whispered, but she took the phone.

He looked around. There were no cameras here but he wished they were outside of Grandview, in the privacy of the Jeep.

“This is Liv Dugan. Is this Mr. LeBlanc?”

Auggie put a hand on the small of her back and guided her back outside as she spoke on the phone. He lifted a hand in a silent good-bye to the rangy receptionist as they stepped back through the sliding glass doors. He could tell Liv was not talking to Everett LeBlanc himself. Sounded like the man might be renting LeBlanc’s home and was using his phone.

They were at the Jeep when she hung up.

“What?” he asked.

“He’s staying at the LeBlanc home. Everett was married to Patsy—must be the nickname for Patricia—but they’re divorced.” She shook her head and looked around the grounds. Dappled sunlight lay on the grass, filtered through three large oak trees. “He gave me Everett’s Portland number.”

“What is it? I’ll plug it into the phone.” Liv recited the number and Auggie added it to his call list under LeBlanc. “You want to call him now?”

“I don’t know.”

“C’mon.” He put his arm through hers and led her to the Jeep. When she was safely inside, he went around to the driver’s door.

Liv watched him slide into the driver’s seat and start the engine. She was fighting the conflicting desires to run far, far away or throw herself into his arms. The last few days had been jagged peaks and low troughs, and she felt that same out-of-control sensation that had swallowed her up as a teenager and sent her to Hathaway House.

She’d never had sex like that. Never. But then she’d barely been sexual at all. It had all been so embarrassing and messy and uncomfortable, and now she knew it had been partly because of her; she couldn’t give of herself. Couldn’t let herself be transported away.

Until yesterday. When he’d said, “I’m going to kiss you.”

For a heartbeat she’d thought it was sort of a joke. Ha, ha, ha. Just kidding. Except when he’d looked down at her through blue, blue eyes as he captured her mouth and her knees had buckled. Buckled.

She was still having trouble putting the memory of his body moving inside hers to some other part of her mind. Every time her brain touched on it she got a sexual thrill just from remembering it. No wonder people raved about sex. She finally got it.

And those dancing, jolting thoughts were superseding her paranoia, keeping it locked down as if it had been physically subdued.

She’d agreed that they should go to Grandview together, but she’d still been floating inside with thoughts of their lovemaking. Then when she’d watched him enter the building and talk with first the receptionist, then the larger woman, then disappear around a corner, she’d suddenly gotten scared, certain she’d been had.

She’d smashed on the baseball cap, entered the building, offered the woman at the desk a smile, then walked past as if she knew where she was going, had been at Grandview a hundred times before. She’d been blind. Her brain fed with images of Auggie calling the police, or sneaking through the back corridors, looking for an escape, or something.

And then she’d caught him on the phone and she’d nearly come undone.

Who are you talking to? she’d wanted to scream. Luckily, her voice had sounded normal when it came. A bit strained. But normal.

And he’d answered her easily. She’d scarcely been able to remember because she’d been consumed with thoughts of his mouth and tongue and hands working on her skin, and she’d focused on his lips and couldn’t think!

And then the phone rang again and it was about Everett LeBlanc, and he’d guided her outside and they’d had a conversation and she still couldn’t think, but something that shot through everything was the feeling that she was being played and nothing was what it seemed.

He was looking at her now. Those eyes intense.

She remembered the way he’d sighed and groaned and laughed softly at different moments of their lovemaking.

Lovemaking . . .

“There’s something wrong with me,” she blurted out, unable to stop herself. “There must be. I feel out of control.”

He glanced away from her, as if it hurt to look at her.

“What about your girlfriend?” she asked. “What was it like with her?”

“Ex-girlfriend,” he reminded her. He looked back at her. “It wasn’t like this.”

She collapsed against the Jeep seat, spent. She was still holding his phone and she saw him look at it, slide a hand her way, palm up, asking for it. She put it into his hand, careful not to touch his skin. She was way, way too susceptible.

“This isn’t going well,” she said on an expelled breath.

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” She choked out a laugh. Then shook her head. “Are you going to call the sister and ask about Navarone?”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “She told me to Google him. I think that’s what I’ll do.” And then, “We need to talk to your brother.”

A shiver slid down her spine. She was trusting him some, but it felt dangerous.

He glanced at the Jeep’s clock, said, “Let’s get something to eat,” then pointed the nose of the vehicle back on the road. As they sped away from Grandview Senior Care, he said, somewhat ominously, “We don’t have much time left. I want to find out as much as I can before things change.”

“Before things change . . .” she repeated.

He slid her a look, a frankly assessing look that was full of repressed sexual energy. Her heart jolted. So, he was feeling it, too. She gazed back at him, suddenly wanting to pull over and make love in the Jeep. As fast and furious as possible.

As if picking up her vibe, he hit the gas and growled low, “Look at me like that again, and we won’t make it back to the house.”

With that she sank back into the seat and wondered if she were truly losing her mind.