Forty-three
“I should have your badge!” Rex Buchanan was livid as he walked into the kitchen and found T. John Wilson drinking coffee with his wife. “You and the rest of the department. What have you done besides swill coffee, shoot the damned breeze and mutter ‘no comment’ to the press! Who burned down the mill? Who tried to kill my son-in-law? Where is Sunny McKenzie? And who the hell is Marshall Baldwin?”
T. John sighed loudly. “We’re working on all those things. Let’s start with Mrs. McKenzie. We’ve had dogs tracking her, but she’s a slippery one. Just the other night the dogs went crazy, started howling and carrying on somethin’ fierce. I thought we’d found her in a cabin not far from Hayden Lake, you know, up on some of that property you own in the foothills.”
“I know the cabin. I used to go fishing there when I was a kid.”
“Been there lately?” T. John asked.
“Well—” Rex glanced nervously at his wife.
“Oh, Rex, no.” Dena reached for her cigarettes.
“She needed somewhere to live, damn it. If she turned herself in, Chase would have her locked up again and she’s the mother of Willie—”
“And your mistress!” Dena said, puffing up, not caring any longer what anyone thought. She was at the center of all the town gossip as it was.
T. John pushed himself upright. “Well, she’s not at the cabin anymore.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.” Rex leaned against the table, then sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. He stared out the window to the grounds and the pool. For years he’d tried to recapture a fleeting youth when Lucretia had been alive and he’d failed. Miserably.
“Thought you might know where she is.”
Pulling off his driving cap, Rex worried it between his meaty fingers. “No,” he admitted. “She left me.”
“Oh, Rex.” Dena fought a losing battle with tears.
“Just like Lucretia.”
“You know, I’ve been wondering about that. Your first wife, I mean. I wasn’t around then.”
“She left me.”
“Left you? But I thought—”
“Left me for heaven,” Rex clarified, the lines in his face becoming deep chasms of age. “Couldn’t take it anymore. Because of Sunny.”
“That’s always puzzled me,” T. John admitted as he stared across the table at the man who had once been the most powerful force in Clackamas County. “Why, if you were so in love with your first wife, you fooled around with another woman?”
“Because Lucretia was a cold-hearted bitch who locked him out of her bedroom.”
“Dena!” Rex stood, but she sent him a look that could curdle cream.
“It’s true. I know. I had to have the locks removed when I moved in. I don’t know what happened, Rex, or how you managed to father two children with her, but I know she ruined you, treated you like a leper, and then, when you turned to another woman, she got her ultimate glory by sitting in her damned Thunderbird, turning on the engine and listening to Elvis!”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“And she didn’t even care enough about her kids to worry about them. Derrick found her, you know, and little Angie was upstairs in her crib. What would have happened if there was a fire, or Angie had fallen out of her bed and started down the stairs? Have you ever wondered what it was like for Derrick to find his mother dead behind the wheel of her damned birthday present?”
“Dena!”
“No wonder he’s screwed up. Anyone would be. Lucretia deserved to die, Rex. Any decent woman would have taken care of her children first before she turned on the damned record player and the car. She was selfish in life and selfish in death and you’ve spent the last thirty-odd years feeling guilty about it!”
Rex’s face had gone blank. He felt nothing inside, just a growing numbness. “Lucretia was an angel.”
“For God’s sake, Rex, open your eyes!”
“Find Sunny,” he said to T. John. He ignored his wife and her ravings as he had for over thirty years. “I can’t lose her, too.”
T. John reached for his aviator glasses and slid them onto the bridge of his nose. “Where’s Willie Ventura?”
“His name is Buchanan, now.”
“Well, whatever he calls himself these days, he’s missing. You know anything about that?”
“Dena threw him out.”
T. John stared at the second Mrs. Rex Buchanan.
Dena rubbed her arms as if suddenly cold, then found her lighter and lit her cigarette. The flame trembled. “He gave me the creeps, okay? Him padding around here. He got into Rex’s liquor a couple of times, one of the rifles is missing from the gun case, and I found him in Angie’s room, just staring at that damned portrait of Lucretia. I know everyone thinks he’s harmless, but that boy is evil. Pure evil. And he’s not as dumb as he lets on.”
“Shut up, Dena! He’s my boy.” Thrusting out his chin, Rex glared at the detective. “Find him, too. If you’re successful, I’ll donate money to your campaign, Wilson. I know you’re planning to run for sheriff, and it’s time Floyd Dodds had some decent competition. You find my boy and Sunny and I’ll bankroll you. Legally or illegally. I don’t care. I just can’t lose any more of my family.”
“But they’re not your family,” Dena cried.
Rex smiled weakly at his wife. “That’s where you’re wrong, Dena. That’s where you’ve always been wrong.”
Cassidy didn’t know how much longer she could keep up the charade. She’d spoken little to Brig since she’d discovered his true identity a few days ago. They’d agreed on a plan of action, but she didn’t know how much longer she could pretend that nothing had changed when her entire life was turned inside out. As for her personal life with Brig, it didn’t exist. They lived in the same house, were dedicated to the same cause of finding out the truth about the two fires, but they had little personal contact. It was safer that way. He hadn’t shown up at her morning swims, though he’d insisted that Ruskin accompany her and she’d purposely avoided Brig whenever he was in the house. But she couldn’t keep up the masquerade. Not when her life was unraveling.
Her mother was upset. Willie and Sunny were missing. Rex was in a foul mood. Felicity and Derrick were fighting again and she was pretending to be married to her supposedly dead brother-in-law while her husband was the one who had died, his body already shipped to Alaska.
“Give me strength,” she said as she walked into the newspaper office and headed straight for Bill Laszlo’s desk. “I have something for you,” she said to his bent head as he pounded furiously on the keys of his computer. He hadn’t heard her approach and he nearly jumped out of his chair.
“What?”
“I think we should talk it over with Mike first.” She didn’t wait, just headed for their editor’s office.
Gillespie was ecstatic. For once the Times would scoop all the other state papers, including the Oregonian. Hooking his thumbs in his suspenders, he beamed as proudly as if he’d been the first man on earth to give birth. “So Chase is willing to give a statement about Marshall Baldwin being Brig McKenzie.”
“Yes.”
“The town will breathe a sigh of relief, let me tell you,” Laszlo said. “From what I can dig up, no one much liked Brig. Big trouble with the law, with girls, with everything and everybody—the ultimate town bad boy.”
Cassidy managed a thin smile. “He was my brother-in-law,” she reminded him. “I wouldn’t lay all that bad-boy garbage on too thick with Chase. He might not like it.”
“’Course not,” Mike said, shooting Bill a warning glance. “Just ’cause a kid gets a little reputation—”
“A legendary reputation,” Bill countered. “You should hear the Reverend Spears. He hates the guy—well, he’s not too fond of your husband, either.”
“Or me,” Cassidy said, the hackles of her back rising.
“Called Brig a heathen.”
“Well, Brig probably called him a few choice names as well,” Mike said. “Okay, let’s not let this get cold. Chase is willing to give a statement today?”
“That’s right. At the company offices. One o’clock. He should be done talking to the Sheriff’s Department then.”
“We should be down there! Getting a statement from Sheriff Dodds and Detective Wilson! Christ, why didn’t you call me sooner?” Bill said, scooting out his chair.
Cassidy wouldn’t be pushed around. “At the office. One o’clock. You blow it at the sheriff’s office and there’s no exclusive.”
“But—”
“It’s all right,” Mike said, though his face was red and he looked angry enough to spit nails. “This is Cassidy’s game, Bill. We’ll play it her way.”
“Christ, Mike—”
“Can it!” the editor growled.
Bill kicked a trash basket in frustration, sending it reeling against the wall.
“And no other news agency will be there?” Gillespie clarified.
“Not unless you call them,” Cassidy promised.
“You sure took your sweet time comin’ forward,” T. John said, eyeing Brig suspiciously. He pulled out his lower lip and studied the contours of Brig’s face as if searching for a lie. “I’ve been badgering you about John-Doe-slash-Marshall-Baldwin’s identity from day one.”
“I know. I was protecting him.”
“From the law?”
“He was still under suspicion for the deaths of Angie Buchanan and Jed Baker, wasn’t he?”
“True enough.” T. John leaned back in his chair, tenting his hands, not seeming to buy one word of Brig’s story.
“He came back to try and square things. Yes, he wanted to do business with me, but—”
“That was just a cover.”
“Yeah.”
“You shoulda come forward a lot sooner.”
“My mistake.” Brig leaned back in his chair. He was sweating a little because he sensed in T. John a deep-seated hunger, not unlike his own. The detective would go to any lengths to get what he wanted.
“Could be construed as withholding evidence.”
“Could.”
“And you knew where he was?”
“Not really. He’d call occasionally and I guessed he was either in Canada or Alaska.”
“Why?” T. John was still watching his every reaction.
“Infrequent references to the seasons.”
“But you didn’t ask, nor did you check out the phone bills from the telephone company to see where he was calling from.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t too interested in seeing him again.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because he was in love with my wife.”
T. John seemed to stop breathing. “Your wife. Cassidy?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought he was involved with the other girl, her older half sister.”
Brig lifted a shoulder, a gesture he’d seen Chase do often. He felt as if a noose had been thrown over his neck whenever he thought of Chase, and there was a spot in his soul that had died with his brother. Guilt, rage and vengeance burned through his blood, but he managed to display no emotions. “Brig got around.”
“Had himself quite a reputation, I’ll grant you that. I’ve talked to some of the women who were involved with him. They’re all married now, have kids, don’t want to say too much but from what I can piece together he was one helluva ladies’ man.”
Brig’s stomach turned sour at the thought. The noose seemed to tighten a notch. “He was young.”
“And randy.”
“Right. And randy.”
“And your wife, she took a shine to him, too?”
The detective was pushing it. “Yes.” Talking about Cassidy bothered him. He hated dragging her into this mess, but had no choice.
“But you married her.”
“She thought Brig was dead.”
“And you knew different?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she ever stop loving him?”
Brig looked the detective squarely in the eye. “Yes,” he said for certain, though he knew that he’d killed that love himself, only days before.
Derrick hung up the phone with shaking fingers. His life was over. Lorna had just called—told him about the videotapes she’d made of his little sessions with her daughter, who, she happened to mention, wasn’t eighteen, sixteen or even fifteen, just a fourteen-year-old who looked older than her age.
The contents of his stomach threatened to rise up his neck. Fourteen! Christ, she was younger than his daughter. You’re a pervert, Buchanan, just like your old man.
As he sat at his desk, god of the Buchanan empire, he saw it all crumbling away. He would be ruined, shamed, exposed. Felicity would divorce him, the girls would refuse to see him and his father would disinherit him. No matter that the old man had been banging other women for years, or that he’d been attracted to his own daughter. God, it was sick.
Again Derrick’s stomach rumbled and he pushed himself up from the desk. Forty-eight hours. That’s all she’d given him, then copies of the video taken in her big four-poster would be delivered to news stations, his wife, and the fucking Sheriff’s Department.
He didn’t doubt Lorna for a minute. She’d marked him from the beginning. She wanted a million, but she wasn’t greedy—or so she’d told him—she’d take payments. Fifty thousand a month for a couple of years when you threw in interest. And just for kickers, if he was willing to risk the utter humiliation and ruin of his reputation and family, Lorna had friends, including Dawn’s father, an ex-con with a nasty temper.
“Shit,” he growled, staring out the window, sick with himself and the lust that burned through his blood and always led him into trouble. What could he do? He was backed into a corner. And his family—oh God, what would happen to his daughters? He may not have paid them the kind of attention Felicity had expected, but he loved them. In his own way. He kept his distance for their safety. After seeing his old man lust after Angie, he wasn’t going to put himself in temptation’s way—not again.
“Derrick?”
He visibly started. Felicity’s voice jolted him out of his reverie. She was standing in front of his desk, staring at him, looking as if she could kill. Oh God, she knows! The inside of his mouth turned to sand.
“Something’s going on.” Felicity saw the nervous tick in Derrick’s cheek and she steeled herself for the worst. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s going on.”
She didn’t believe him. He’d been acting secretive again, as he had at various times over the years. She suspected that he had affairs and she wasn’t stupid enough to think she didn’t care. Each time he stepped out on her, it hurt. It hurt like hell. She’d given him everything, risked everything. Everything. And still he didn’t want her. He never really had, but, she decided, the least he could do was be faithful. That seemed to be too much to ask these days.
She was usually comfortable in the building, or any other piece of property bearing the Buchanan name, but this afternoon something wasn’t right. She glanced at her watch and then her husband again. He was sweating and trying his best to seem casual. Something was up.
The trouble involved Chase. As she’d hurried past the open door of Chase’s office, she’d seen him from the corner of her eye and he’d offered her the hint of a smile—his first since the fire—the kind of chilling grin that made her blood run cold.
“You sure there’s nothing I should know about?” She stared through the reception area and down the short hallway to Chase’s open door.
“What is it, Felicity?” Derrick didn’t bother hiding his irritation. “Look, I’m busy. If you’ve got something you want to talk about—”
Felicity dragged her eyes away from Chase’s door and faced her husband. Derrick had the nerve to check his watch as he snapped a lighter to the end of his cigarette. “I wanted to talk to you about Angela.”
“Here? Now? At work?”
“She’s refusing to go to St. Therese’s. Wants to stay here because of that boy she’s been seeing…”
“What boy?”
“Jeremy Cutler. He’s a nobody, just a horny kid who—what the hell is she doing here?” Felicity saw Cassidy, along with that other reporter—the tall guy who’d hit on her a couple of times at the athletic club—Bill Laszlo—saunter into Chase’s office.
Derrick was following her gaze. “Cassidy is Chase’s wife. She’s also a Buchanan. She belongs here. As much as you do.”
She turned sharply, pinning her husband with a glare that could cut through steel. “But Laszlo doesn’t. I’m telling you, something’s up. Something big. It has to do with Chase and Brig. And I’m going to find out what it is. You might want to come along since it probably has something to do with the fire.”
“Why would I care?”
She crossed to the door and shut it, then leaned against the cool panels. “We both know that you weren’t home the night of the fire, and I don’t think we want Detective Wilson getting any ideas that you might have been down at the mill.”
“I wasn’t there.” He slipped his lighter into his pants pocket.
“Then where were you, baby, hmm?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and drumming the fingers of one hand against her forearm. “And where were you when the fire was set at the gristmill the night Angie died? Everyone thinks you were with me. That’s twice that I covered for you.” Holding up two fingers, she tried to keep her rage under control, but years of lying, nights worrying, days praying she could keep her straying husband under control, erupted. Anger seared through her gut and now these problems with Angela…“I’ve never asked you where you were that night seventeen years ago, just gladly lied for you even though I knew you were in love with your sister.”
“My what—?”
“Don’t act so innocent. Don’t you think I know who the father of Angie’s child was?”
“Jesus, Felicity, listen to you! I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Derrick had the decency to look shocked. God, he was good at lies, at deception. Almost as good as she was. But she knew better than to trust him and there wasn’t any time left for pretending. She’d done enough of that to last her a lifetime.
“I saw you with her, you know,” she said, advancing on her husband and keeping him in her cold glare. “I know you were screwing your sister…your own damned sister!”
His face was the color of chalk. “You’re crazy! I never—”
“Save it for someone who’ll believe it, Derrick,” she hissed, afraid that someone might overhear their conversation. “I figured you were the father of her child and so I covered for you on the night she was killed.”
“Oh, Christ, you think that I did it…that I started the fire and murdered her…burned her?” Now she had his full attention. His throat worked and his color had returned. Oh, God, she thought he might actually cry. Well, tough.
“I know it, baby. What I don’t know is why you started the fire at the sawmill a few months ago. Unless you were jealous of Chase because of Cassidy.”
“That’s sick!”
“Are you trying to tell me you haven’t been balling your half sister—or been attracted to her?”
“Where do you get this?” he said, his eyes incredulous, but she saw it then, that little spark of guilt. He’d always been as perverted as his father. She’d thought once Angie was dead that he’d change, but he hadn’t.
“Pull yourself together,” she said, though inside she was dying a thousand deaths. She’d never called him on it before, never felt so threatened. “We’ll deal with this later, but right now I think we’d better find out what your brother-in-law is saying so that we can adjust our stories accordingly.”
“I didn’t—”
“Just shut up! We don’t have time for any more lies!”
Derrick glowered through a cloud of smoke. “Chase doesn’t know anything.”
“I hope you’re right, Derrick. I hope to God that you’re right, but considering your track record, I think I’ll just go down and check.”
Darkness shrouded the forest. Only the thin light from a handful of stars and a sliver of a moon cast any glow on the trickle of water running through the ravine of Lost Dog Creek. Sunny closed her eyes and felt the night close in on her. A breeze riffled her hair, causing trees to sway, branches to dance and stir up the dust of the rocky shore. An owl hooted his lonely song and soft footsteps crept through the forest. Night creatures. Not humans. Not dogs. She’d been careless before, let those kids see her—and the Sheriff’s Department had called in the hounds. So easy to fool.
Her visions were strong, getting more powerful, and she knew that the time had come for the truth, as ugly as it might be. Her sons’ lives depended upon it. She had no other choice. All deception had to end. She felt a tremor deep within the earth and smelled the scent of a distant thunderstorm approaching as she laid the dead twigs and dry leaves in a circle of rocks. Then she reached into the voluminous folds of her skirt and found her matchbook and the front page of yesterday’s edition of the Times: ALASKAN INDUSTRIALIST MARSHALL BALDWIN IDENTIFIED AS BRIG MCKENZIE. Grainy black and white pictures of Brig as a boy and Marshall Baldwin surrounded the article that described the fire years ago in parallel to the most recent blaze that took Brig’s life.
But the article was a lie.
Brig was alive.
Chase was dead.
She ached from the inside out, felt the pain of losing her firstborn as if a knife had been thrust into her heart. She let out a long, keening moan that caught on the wind. Chase had been so good to her for so many years.
She swore in her mother’s native tongue that she would wreak her own savage vengeance upon her son’s murderer He would not go unpunished. “Death to you and those you love,” she whispered, as if she could speak to her son’s killer. She pulled out a match. With a scratch and the smell of phosphorous, flame sizzled to life, shifting in the hot air, casting the ground golden as she dropped the match.
Tinder-dry leaves sparked and the flame was born.
The wind rose in the trees, fanning the small fire. Staring at the hungry flames, Sunny reached into her pocket once more. Pulling out her bone-handled knife, she held it aloft to the heavens, then swiftly sliced her own hand, letting drops of blood drizzle from her palm onto the fire, where they sizzled and spat.
Chase would not be forgotten.
She closed her eyes and drew up the vision.
Her three sons stood at a wall of flames, smoke billowing skyward, their bodies bronzed and sweating. They faced the flames, their arms raised to the heavens.
Rain fell from the dark sky and yet the fire continued to rise in the sky, growing and feeding, casting out its evil heat, consuming everything in its wake, and yet her sons didn’t move.
Run! She tried to yell. Get away! Her voice was still. Save yourselves!
When they didn’t move, she walked forward. Take me, she silently cried to the fire. Take me and leave my boys!
She felt the heat. The flames touching her legs.
Her sons turned to face her.
She gasped.
Buddy’s face was blue, his hair wet, and he staggered, gasping as the rain drenched him, forcing him to the ground, where he flopped like a fish on the land.
She cried out.
Chase’s features were burned off his face, his eyebrows gone, his skin charred, his hair aflame. His body buckled and he fell, the scent of burning flesh filling her nostrils.
Brig, leaning on a crutch, faced her. Then the crutch changed, morphing into a woman, Cassidy Buchanan, who stood beside her husband’s brother, her shoulders holding him up, as if she belonged with him. Brig leaned hard against her.
“You did this!” he yelled at his mother, his voice booming through the heavens. He pointed an accusing finger at her. “You killed my brother!”
Tears fell from Sunny’s eyes. Fell to the flames at her feet.
Fire and water.
I loved my boys. I would not hurt them. Nor you, son, she tried to say, but her tongue wouldn’t move, and to her horror, appearing in the smoke and flames was Chase’s killer, a dark shadow on the prowl, a person she recognized, moving silently, determinedly, ever closer to Brig.
Sunny’s heart froze.
The murderer’s face was horrible, lips pulled into a cruel smile, eyes that glittered like a snake’s, features that were the embodiment of evil.
No! Sunny tried to scream as terror ripped through her soul, but her lips were mute, her tongue unable to form words, and she shuddered with a fear so cold she didn’t realize the flames from her small campfire had caught on the hem of her dress. She dropped to the ground and rolled, her legs burned, her heart heavy.
There was little she could do.
She was considered crazy. A lunatic. A witch.
The police wouldn’t believe her.
Rex would dismiss her notions.
Even Brig would doubt her if she told him the truth.
It seemed that all of her sons were doomed.