Wicked Game

Chapter Thirteen

“How long does it take to draw a picture?” Gretchen kvetched as she and Mac drove to the Dandelion Diner, where they were to meet Hudson Walker. McNally was behind the wheel, squinting against sunlight that bounced off the wet pavement. “Facial reconstruction on a computer can’t be that hard. It’s just a matter of dimension, measurement of the bones, right? I mean, if that’s your area of expertise, why the hell does it take so long? Who are these techs anyway?”

Mac grunted, passing an RV that was edging into his lane. He halfway agreed with his partner but hated being subjected to her monologue. It was as if the woman couldn’t keep an idea inside her head. Once formed, it ran right past her lips and there was no stopping it. She had no governor. She just spewed.

And it was a pain in the ass.

“If we knew those bones were your little girlfriend, then we could take this investigation to the next level. And waiting for the damn DNA results is Chinese water torture. Unless you’re sleeping with one of the lab techs, nobody gives a shit about a rush order. Even then it’s fifty-fifty.”

“You know from experience?” Mac asked mildly as he stopped for a red light and the RV, driven by an older woman in a trucker’s cap, pulled alongside.

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell. Your complacency scares me, McNally. When did that happen?”

Twenty years ago, he thought. And it wasn’t complacency. It was cautiousness and diligence and awareness. But there was no way he was going to convince Gretchen she might not be employing her best investigative skills. She had all the answers already. No use in him wasting his breath.

As the light turned green and some idiot in a Ford Focus ran the light, crossing in front of him, he hit the brakes. Gretchen swore. “For the love of Christ, we oughtta pull that moron over!”

“The traffic guys’ll get him,” he said, gunning it to get in front of the RV, then whipping the cruiser into the gravel lot of the diner.

Inside, the Dandelion was painted bright yellow and the booths were covered in green plastic. Mac slid into one and Gretchen sat down opposite him as a waitress offered coffee, turned over the cups already on the table, and filled them each with a stream of steaming liquid. “I’ll give ya a minute,” she said around a wad of gum. “Specials are written on the board.” She indicated a chalkboard hung near the counter, then wandered off to a table of four men in their sixties.

Mac stared through the window to the outside lot.

“What do you ask them-these ‘friends’ of Jessie Brentwood’s?” she queried sarcastically as she picked up a plastic-encased menu and scanned it. “What kind of investigation is this? I should probably know.”

He felt irritation flare and tamped it back down. “Don’t piss me off.”

“What? I can’t ask questions?”

“You know the drill. Don’t act like you’re an idiot.”

“You’re a piece of shit, McNally. You act like the Lone Ranger. No, worse, you wouldn’t even trust Tonto. You seem to think that this case is yours and no one else’s.”

It has been. For twenty years.

He didn’t have time for this. It was annoying as hell to be saddled with her. But it won’t be for long, he reminded himself. His partner would get restless and move on. With that thought in mind, he decided to be more conciliatory. “We just talk. About what was up twenty years ago. Cover the same ground. See if anything else pops up, something they might have forgotten they’re supposed to keep secret.”

“Like they’re part of a conspiracy? All in it together.”

“Not quite.”

“And this guy is one of the ones you call the ‘Preppy Pricks.’”

Mac nodded. As men they didn’t seem as privileged or entitled as they’d been as teenagers, but he wasn’t able to completely forget their behavior when they were younger.

“Do you write off this meal?” Gretchen asked, flipping the menu over. “The department doesn’t pay for it.” She gave him a look and he realized she was asking. As if anyone would give him special treatment.

“The department doesn’t pay for much.”

It was her turn to grunt an assent.

Mac watched a blue Jetta pull in and park. Seconds later a woman climbed from the driver’s side. Mac felt his gut tighten, but he showed no emotion. Rebecca Ryan, now Sutcliff. He recognized her instantly and remembered his last conversation with her as if it were that morning.

“I didn’t talk to her before she left,” Becca had said to him, seated on the front steps of the high school. She’d been nervous talking to a cop, her hands clasped in front of her, almost as if she’d been praying, her book bag on the step beside her, and she’d glanced into the parking lot. Her hair had been long and a light enough brown to appear almost blond, her eyes hazel and wide. It was her profile that reminded him of Jessie Brentwood, whom he’d only seen pictures of, though full on, Becca’s face was rounder, appearing more innocent whereas Jessie appeared to have secrets filling her head, a wicked little smile teasing her lips, her eyes a shade of green and gold that reminded him of a restless ocean.

He’d quizzed her up and down, backward and forward about Jessie, but Becca Ryan had known little, basically nothing. She’d run with Jessie’s crowd and that was it.

“I didn’t ask her to come here,” he said now, his gaze following Becca’s entrance into the diner.

“She’s one of ’em?” Gretchen asked, her head swiveling with interest.

“Yeah. Rebecca Sutcliff. She must be meeting Hudson Walker.” Has Sutcliff, now a widow, somehow hooked up with Jessie Brentwood’s ex?

At that moment a large, beat-up pickup wheeled into the lot and parked next to the Jetta. Mac tore his gaze away from the approaching Becca to witness Hudson slam the door to his truck and stride toward the diner’s front entrance.

How long had they been an item? he wondered.

Becca waited for Hudson, but they didn’t so much as touch as they entered the diner. Mac was shifting his thoughts on how he planned this interview to go when Gretchen took the bull by the horns and gestured toward a nearby table. “Let’s move over here.” She grabbed her cup of coffee, slid from the booth, and shifted to a chair. Mac would have agreed that the table was a better choice than the intimacy of a booth, but her ever-constant decision-making-never so much as waggling an eyebrow at him for direction or corroboration-really bugged the hell out of him.

It was evident Walker and Becca Sutcliff were together and, Mac guessed from the looks they passed between them, definitely a couple. He made quick introductions all around, then they sat and the waitress poured a couple more cups of coffee while a busboy swabbed at their recently vacated table.

Becca’s hair was scraped into a ponytail. She wore a black-and-white plaid scarf around the neck of her leather coat, and the way she pulled the scarf from her neck was nothing short of sinuous, at least in Mac’s opinion. He remembered very clearly how she’d been as a teenager: wide-eyed, skinny, skittish, and smart enough to keep her thoughts to herself. He hadn’t put together that Hudson Walker might be more interested in her than his own girlfriend, Jessie Brentwood, but then maybe that was just conjecture on his part now.

Hudson Walker had filled out over the years and had earned a few more lines around the corners of his eyes, as if he squinted in the sun a lot. He was dressed down, jeans and shirt, lightweight jacket-a far cry from Christopher Delacroix III’s tailor-made wool suit. The man’s tie had probably cost more than Mac took home in a week.

Hudson took a seat across from Mac’s. He gazed across at Gretchen, who was sizing him up but good. “You’re Hudson Walker,” she said. “The vic’s boyfriend from twenty years ago?”

“The ‘vic’ being Jessie Brentwood? You’re saying you identified her body?” Hudson asked, turning to Mac.

“Still unconfirmed,” Mac said. “We’re waiting for DNA.”

Hudson swivelled his gaze to Gretchen. “I dated Jessie, yeah.”

Walker was weightier since high school, more in demeanor than actual pounds. And Mac understood before the man said a word that Hudson Walker had no intention of helping him any more now than he had when he was younger.

“You wanted to see me,” he said in a tone that let Mac know just how he felt about that.

Mac opened his mouth, but Gretchen jumped in again. “Everybody said Jessie Brentwood ran away, but then those bones showed up.”

“But you’re still not certain they belong to Jessie, so maybe this is a little premature.”

Mac said, “I think it’s just an exercise-confirmation. We’ve gone through all the missing persons files. We’ll find those remains belong to Jezebel Brentwood.”

Becca drew in a quick breath. Her skin was pale. In fact, she looked out-and-out sick.

“You all right?” Mac asked.

Hudson turned to her. “Becca?”

“I’m fine.”

“Was it something I said?” Gretchen asked wryly.

Mac cringed. His partner had no class. “Are you sure you’re-”

“Excuse me.” Becca suddenly scraped back her chair and headed toward the women’s room, which was clearly marked at the end of the row of booths.

Hudson half rose from his chair but let her go.

“She always scare so easily?” Gretchen asked in mild surprise.

Hudson’s gaze shifted to Mac’s partner, and Mac had to fight to keep his lips from twitching with amusement. Gretchen was pissing Hudson off but good. One of her favorite tactics, though what good it would do in this case, he had no idea. Before Hudson and Gretchen could go to the next level, Mac said, “I’d like to just run over the sequence of events before Jessie Brentwood disappeared.”

“You just said you don’t know if the remains are even Jessie.”

“Slow days at the department,” Gretchen said. “We’re up to our asses in cold cases instead of current events.” She took a sip from her cup, scowled, and added cream. “Crime’s on a downswing. What can I say?”

“It’s no secret I thought something happened to her twenty years ago,” Mac cut in. “You were one of the last people to see her.”

Hudson hesitated a moment. Mac could almost see when he made the decision to tamp down his annoyance and just get on with it. “We had a fight,” he stated rotely. “She didn’t think I was being honest with her. I didn’t think she was being honest with me. We were both right.”

“And what were you lying about?” Gretchen asked.

“More like omissions of the truth. We were in a high school romance that had run its course.”

“You liked someone else,” Mac said, his eyes following the path Becca had taken.

“It was over. That’s all.”

“You didn’t follow her into that maze and stab her to death?” Gretchen asked conversationally.

“She was stabbed?” Hudson asked. He turned to Mac for corroboration.

Mac nodded curtly. “That’s the ME’s opinion.”

Walker seemed to think that over while Mac, with a warning look at Gretchen to keep her big trap shut, asked more questions about the timeline of the last night Hudson saw Jessie. It was more of the same from his notes from twenty years ago, less really, as Hudson’s memory wasn’t as clear as it had been then.

“She said she was in trouble,” Hudson said. “Something was out there.”

“In trouble? What do you mean? Trouble with her parents? At school? Maybe pregnant?” Gretchen leaned a little forward in her seat.

Mac wanted to smash his foot down on hers. She seemed determined to blab all aspects of the case before he was ready. Some of the information had to be held back from the press, the populace in general, so that only the police and Jezebel Brentwood’s killer knew the truth.

Walker lifted a hand and dropped it again in weary exasperation. “It wasn’t as defined as that. More a case of something unclear-like trouble was going to find her. I think she said something like that. ‘Trouble’s coming’ or something. I don’t remember her exact words, but she was on edge. She couldn’t sit still.”

His story was the same as it had been for twenty years.

“Did you suspect she wanted to run away?” Gretchen asked.

“I just thought we were having a fight. We’d had a bunch of ’em. The only time she said she wanted to get away was when she asked me to take off for a weekend with her.” He snorted and picked up his cup. “Like either of our parents were going to go for that.”

Something niggled at Mac’s brain, something he couldn’t quite catch. So Jessie had wanted to run off for a weekend, so what? And yet…He reminded himself to look at his notes.

Walker glanced in the direction Rebecca had gone again, and Mac could tell he was starting to get antsy over her prolonged absence. But then the door to the restroom opened and Rebecca came back to their table. Her skin was no longer pale, it was flushed, and Mac deduced that she’d been damn near scrubbing her cheeks raw.

“You okay?” Walker asked, obviously concerned. Yep, they were involved.

“Yeah. I’ve been fighting a bug. Guess it’s trying to get the upper hand.” She smiled wanly. Mac didn’t buy it.

“Can you handle some questions?” Mac asked her. “Or we can check in later.”

“No, go ahead.” She clearly wanted to get the interview over with. “I heard you wanted to talk to all of us, and since Hudson was coming anyway…”

“So you two are a couple now?” He wagged his finger between them.

“We’ve known each other since high school,” Becca said. Her gaze was steady now. “We hang out sometimes.”

He let it go. For the moment. Then he asked her about her own timeline of what had happened in the days before Jessie Brentwood disappeared.

Rebecca was even fuzzier than Hudson; she wasn’t a close friend of Jessie’s and only kind of remembered what they’d said to each other in their last meeting. Mac ran through the events of those last few days-what had been happening at their school-but Rebecca could add nothing noteworthy.

Luckily Gretchen kept her tongue in her head.

In the end, Mac knew about as much as he had to start with, and that the sexual tension between Hudson Walker and Rebecca Sutcliff was almost palpable.

Did it have anything to do with Jessie? Was it something entirely new?

“If those two haven’t hit the sheets already, it’s only a matter of time,” Gretchen observed as they left the diner. Becca and Hudson were climbing into their respective cars as Mac and Gretchen got into the cruiser. “They act like they’re just friends, but something’s going on.”

“Maybe.”

Mac pulled out of the lot and, in his rearview mirror, noted that Becca and Hudson’s vehicles drove off in different directions.

“And what did you say that sent Rebecca to the bathroom for a dash of cold water to the face?”

Mac looked at Gretchen, then gunned the cruiser into traffic heading toward the station. “Who, me? I didn’t have a chance to say anything.”

“What then?”

Mac shook his head, but admitted, “She did look like she was about to pass out.”

“Something scared her.”

Mac reviewed what had been said and remarked slowly, “She was already scared when she got here. Why did she come?”

“’Cause she knew you were going to be calling her and she wanted it over with the support of Loverboy. Who, by the way, is just a friend.”

“They say that attraction in high school is the easiest to rekindle. What attracted once can really heat up in the now.”

“Look at you-Mr. Love Life.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“But you might have something there. I went to my last class reunion about three years ago and I witnessed a couple of hook-ups. A few of ’em divorced their spouses and ended up together. I couldn’t believe it. My high school boyfriend was a jerk then and a major loser now. It wouldn’t have happened. No way.”

He eased down the road, barely noticing the other vehicles.

“I bet she’s the reason Brentwood and Walker had their little spat. You know, the whole ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ theory?”

He mentally chewed on that. Maybe there was something to it. “Rebecca Ryan wasn’t a big part of the investigation twenty years ago, so I didn’t expect her to be now.” Mac cut the cruiser through a back alley, avoiding a Dumpster and a double-parked delivery truck.

“I think we’d better add her to the suspect list.”

“Or elevate Walker a bit.”

“He’s close to numero uno anyway, isn’t he? Being the boyfriend and all? With her pregnant?”

“He’s up there.”

“Maybe Rebecca Ryan should be, too,” Gretchen said.

Mac didn’t respond. The more he learned about the Jessie Brentwood case, the stronger he felt he was growing closer to some dark and unexpected truth.

Becca watched her fingers shake as she threaded her key into the lock of her front door and let herself inside. Ringo jumped off the couch and trotted over to her happily and she bent at the knees and scratched his ears and held him close for long minutes. Then she checked that she’d locked the door behind her and walked into the kitchen, grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and drank it down completely, her eyes closed, her heart still racing.

She’d seen Jessie at the diner.

Outside the window. Clear as day. Her hair blowing in the sharp wind. She’d pressed a finger to her lips, asking for Becca’s silence. Another vision. Similar to the one at the mall. She’d glanced ahead into the eyes of Detective McNally, who’d been watching her so intently it made her short of breath.

I can’t faint, she’d told herself sternly, feeling that familiar headache take over. Then she’d made an excuse and quickly headed to the bathroom, filling the basin with cold water and pressing her face into it, counting slowly to ten. She did it twice more, turning her skin red but bringing her ringing ears into line and her woozy head back to sharpness without actually passing out.

Jessie had dematerialized in those few moments. When Becca had returned to her seat in the diner and risked a glance at the window, all that was outside had been their respective vehicles and a stretch of parking lot gravel.

What did it mean? What did Jessie not want her to tell?

“Am I crazy?” she asked, bending down to the dog, who licked her chin line and woofed softly.

Becca headed for the living room couch and sat down heavily. Ringo jumped up beside her and curled in a ball, watching her with dark, sharp eyes.

What’s going to happen next? she thought worriedly.

Renee felt they were in danger. Believed Jessie had said they were in danger. Twenty-year-old danger…

Becca ran her hands through her hair. She hoped she didn’t have to see McNally again. She hoped that this interview was it. She hoped he wouldn’t want to talk to her “alone” without Hudson. “Get real,” she muttered to herself. If the police thought that either she or Hudson were involved in Jessie’s disappearance, her murder, McNally would be back and it wouldn’t matter what she wanted.

She hoped this feeling of impending doom that seemed to be weighing on her was just an aftereffect of her vision.

But she knew better. Deep in her heart, she knew better.

With the ever-present notes of jazz surrounding him, Glenn looked down at the invoices on his desk, invoices that carpeted the entire cherry expanse, and wondered what the hell was going on. Blue Note shouldn’t be in the red, at least not this far in the red. They had customers. Not as many as before, but according to the receipts, Blue Note wasn’t doing that badly, and actually, they’d been doing great for a while. It was just that ever since that incident with the college kid who’d died after being served at Blue Note, things had gone bad. It wasn’t their fault that the kid had tried some kind of recreational drug and had a bad reaction to it before he’d come to their restaurant, but Blue Note kept getting lumped in with the event, so…

But that still didn’t explain the flood of red ink in which he was drowning, both here and at home, where the spending just kept happening.

His mind jumped to thoughts of Gia. Damn the woman. She’d tried to haul him into bed just before he’d bolted for the restaurant. He’d thought about telling her about the nursery rhyme, but all she wanted to do was get laid and conceive. He needed a baby like he needed a hole in his head.

“Glenn,” she’d called from the stairway. “Bring your big, luscious self over here!”

He’d been in the kitchen and he’d walked toward the front of the house. The blob had been bare-ass naked and hanging onto a newel post, jiggling her goods in a way that had made him feel slightly nauseous.

He’d run for his life. But now he was here, the clock on his desk reminding him it was after seven, the minutes of his miserable life ticking by, the dinner hour, what there was of it tonight, in full swing. Make that half swing. Or maybe no swing at all, he thought sourly as he sat in the midst of all this financial misery and wondered if it might not be a good idea to take a long walk off a short pier. Who would miss him? Gia? She’d find someone else. Scott? Like he cared about him beyond what he could get in sweat equity. His good friends from high school…?

If they’d been so good, where had they been in the last twenty years?

After the cop had come to the restaurant, he and Scott had told everyone about how Detective McNally had paid a visit. But Glenn had kept the nursery rhyme note to himself. Scott hadn’t mentioned it, either. Most of the guys had spoken with the detective and it had put everyone on edge. The Third had warned them to keep their cool. None of them had wanted to speculate about Jessie, at least not too much. They all wanted the investigation-and maybe Jessie herself-to just go away forever.

Glenn rubbed his temples.

Jessie…

He felt almost physically ill, thinking about her. Yanking open one of his desk drawers, he pulled out his bottle of Bushmills and poured himself a half glassful. Drinking sounded like a good idea. A damn good idea.

He was deep into his second glass when there was a knock on his office door. “Come in,” he called garrulously. He didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone.

“Glenn?” a female voice asked.

A shiver ran through him. Premonition. His lips parted and he half expected Jessie to enter the room, but it was Renee whose cap of dark hair and brown eyes peeked into the room. His heart rate had skyrocketed and now, with the rush of adrenaline dissipating, he felt goddamn good and mad. Hudson Walker’s sister-excuse me, twin sister-had always bugged him. Even in high school she’d been nosy and high-handed, as if she were better than everyone else.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

“Sorry. I know you’re busy. I tried to call, but my cell phone’s dead-forgot to recharge, so.” She shrugged, clutching her purse in a death grip as she walked into the office. Despite her apologies, she seemed tense, even worried. “Look, I heard from Hudson that you talked to McNally, and I’m sure my name’s coming up on his list. I just wanted some feedback. What did you tell him?”

So that’s what the visit is all about. Weird. He wondered if Renee was working on her “story” about Jessie, or was this something else? Glenn selfishly didn’t offer her a drink. He hoped she wasn’t going to sit down, but she did just that, perching on the edge of one of the club chairs, her elbows now on her purse in her lap, her fingers pushing through her hair.

“I haven’t said anything,” Glenn told her. “There’s nothing to say. You sure look like hell.”

“Thanks.” Her voice was dry but oddly unsure.

He squinted at her, wondering if he was just feeling the effects of the Bushmills or if Renee was hiding something, holding something in. “Talk to Scott. He was here when McNally showed up.”

“Is he around?”

“Yeah. He’s going back to the beach tomorrow.”

Was it his imagination or did she stiffen slightly? “Where’s your restaurant again? What part of the coast?”

“Lincoln City.”

“Oh. South.”

“South of what?”

She hesitated. “Deception Bay. I go there sometimes.”

“Really? Why? It’s like…nowhere. We checked out all the towns before we opened Blue Ocean, well, Scott, he did the searching, and Deception Bay didn’t make the top ten, or even the top fifty.”

“It’s…a good place to get away. Writers, we need peace and quiet. But anyway, back to the cops.”

“Yeah?”

“If you thought you knew something. Nothing concrete, but…something that might actually have bearing on the investigation…would you tell the detective?”

“I wouldn’t tell him anything. Nada.” He thought about the nursery rhyme and wondered if he should mention it to Renee, but saw no reason. “You’ve been working this story. What do you think? Did you learn something?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“That sounds like a lie.”

“It wasn’t,” she assured him and seemed about to unload. God, he hoped it wasn’t about her divorce. Women loved to talk about relationships, good or bad, but he just wasn’t interested. He had his own domestic problems.

“What then?”

“I was at the coast a couple of days ago. I ran into some people…that I think knew Jessie.” Renee looked away from him, to the pictures on the wall, snapshots of Scott and Glenn when they opened the restaurant.

“At Deception Bay, right?” Glenn was having trouble following and sitting up straight. The booze was hitting hard.

“Jessie’s family used to have a house there and there was talk of a cult nearby and-”

“Does this have a point?” Glenn asked just as the door opened and Scott stepped into the room.

“Renee,” he said in surprise.

Doesn’t anybody goddamned knock anymore?

Renee got to her feet. “I’m glad you’re here. I came by because I heard that you two met with McNally.”

“More like he met with us.” Frowning slightly, Scott threw a look Glenn’s way. “Are you drunk?”

“Workin’ on it,” Glenn said, wishing they’d both just go away so he could continue his drinking in peace.

It wasn’t about to be.

Renee and Scott discussed McNally for what felt like eons before they headed out together.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Glenn drew out the bottle and sloshed his glass a hefty refill.

He just wanted to stop thinking.